NOTE: There will be no audio streamed during our evening time of prayer, audio will resume when the message commences.

Order of Service

• Call to Worship — Psalm 92:1-4
• Hymn — All the Way My Savior Leads Me (#605)
• Westminster Shorter Catechism — Question 7
• Hymn — I Know Whom I Have Believed (#705)
• Time of Prayer
• Sermon
• Hymn — Rock of Ages (#499)
• Benediction — 2 Corinthians 13:14

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Sermon Title: The Emptiness of False Teachers

Scripture: 2 Peter 2:17-22

I. What False Teachers Have to Offer Is Emptiness

A. False teachers deprive like waterless springs

1. They present themselves as ministers of the gospel but offer no true nourishment
2. They promise freedom (2 Peter 2:18-19) — a freedom from moral constraint, license to live according to sensual passions
3. The promise is empty: they themselves are slaves of corruption (2 Peter 2:19); cf. Romans 6 — you are a slave to whatever overcomes you

B. False teachers deceive like mists or fog

1. Their deception leads people to believe untrue things about Christ, sin, and holiness
2. Their manner is loud, pompous, boastful emptiness (2 Peter 2:18) — performance designed to overwhelm and impress
3. Their words are false words meant to exploit (2 Peter 2:3)

C. True freedom is found only in Christ

1. John 8:36 — if the Son sets you free, you are free indeed
2. Galatians 5:1 — for freedom Christ has set us free
3. Christ does not deprive — he endows, bestows, supplies, and enriches

II. What False Teachers Are Is Emptiness

A. False teachers are apostates (2 Peter 2:20-22)

1. Two camps on apostasy: (1) true believers can lose salvation; (2) those who fall away were never truly saved
2. The second view aligns with the perseverance of the saints — the golden chain of salvation: predestined, called, justified, glorified (Romans 8:30)
3. Those Christ draws to himself, Christ will never lose

B. Two kinds of knowledge

1. A cold knowing informed by facts — knowing details about Christ's life, death, and teaching
2. A personal, intimate knowing informed by faith — true saving knowledge that transforms
3. The false teachers had the first but not the second; they never truly knew Christ at all

C. The outward transformation of false teachers was never inward

1. They had briefly escaped the defilements of the world (2 Peter 2:20) — an outward show of godliness
2. Like a dog returning to its vomit and a sow to the mud (2 Peter 2:22), they reveal their true nature
3. Calvin: the servant who knowingly despises the commands of his Lord deserves a twofold punishment — for them the gloom of utter darkness is reserved (2 Peter 2:17)

III. Application and Warning

A. The warning is not that a believer can lose salvation

1. Christ secures his people through the merits of his death and resurrection applied by the Holy Spirit

B. The warning is to search our own hearts

1. Have we today fled for refuge to Jesus Christ?
2. Are we resting in our own efforts, good intentions, or mere Bible knowledge with a little Jesus sprinkled in?
3. Biblical knowledge and Scripture memorization are good, but knowledge that puffs up is empty — true knowledge thaws cold hearts and bends stiff knees before the Redeemer

C. Do not be deceived or deprived

1. Do not follow the flashy, well-reasoned, glamorous words of false teachers
2. Do not follow their greedy and sensual examples
3. In Christ — gentle and lowly in heart — you will find rest; his yoke is easy and his burden is light (Matthew 11:29-30)