All right, you guys, I think if we actually get started, we'll see if we can't kind of finish up this chapter in 2 Peter 2. So if you're not already there and want to grab your Bible and get there, that's what we're looking at this morning again. 2 Peter 2. So, last week we got through verse 16 here, basically talking as we go through the chapter about the topic of false teachers and how Peter looks at them, how Peter talks about them, and all of those things. The end of what we talked about last week, Peter is again comparing the false teachers and talking about them, are greedy, you know, they are trying to get money. There's a reason why false teachers try to do what they're doing, especially in our day, right? Of all of the things that really kind of would strike me as something odd that somebody would put themselves out there as some kind of a Christian and want to be a teacher, pastor, somebody, if they weren't really truly converted, real disciples of Christ, why would they ever do that? And there really is something about the religious leader, the aspect of the office, the pastor or something, that there's a sort of a, like everybody kind of looks at that like there's a, I don't know if prestige is the right word, but there's sort of an authority that's with that. And then there's, with that can often come, if you do things certain ways, a level of power and even money. right? All that stuff. Power usually leads to money. That's why people want power is primarily because of the greed. And so Peter's been talking us through these characteristics of false teachers basically since the first three verses, which we talked about a few weeks ago now. But the three characteristics to make sure we start with this again today in verse one is that they secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the master who bought them. This is speaking to false teaching. How do you know a false teacher? First and most obvious thing is that they're teaching falsehood. And so destructive falsehood in many cases, things that are denying the person in the work of Christ that not only will end up shipwrecking their souls, but they're ultimately teaching things to people to believe in things that will shipwreck their souls too. You don't know who Jesus is. You don't trust in him for salvation, in faith by grace alone. You teach other things. You teach that Jesus is a heavenly slot machine and you put a few dollars in and you take a hundred thousand out, all that kind of stuff. All of that has tremendous damaging effects on both authentic Christians and on keeping non-Christians out of the kingdom. And so the false teachers, this is kind of the key thing, but they also can be seen in verse two by their sensuality. And we'll talk about this a little bit more again today about how they really pursue what feels good and they teach others to do the same. I think that whatever it is, it feels good often, often, whether publicly or not publicly, there is some sort of a sexual immorality that goes hand in hand very often with the false teachers. And you see that much more in scandals of our day because of the way information flows. But that's clearly been the case throughout much of the history of the church, that there's always those wolves in sheep's clothing who figure that they can prey on innocent women and stuff like that and fulfill their own sensual pleasures in many different ways. And the third thing in verse 3 is what I started talking about, about greed. They're exploiting people. They're trying to bilk them out of money. And this is where we ended last week in verse 15 and 16. Peter equates this with Balaam, that prophet from the Old Testament that's talked about in Numbers 22. We see the story about Balaam The king of Moab is trying to hire him to be a prophet to come and prophesy against the Israelites. Now there's other aspects of the story of Balaam that isn't really to Peter's point. Peter's point about Balaam is that he was greedy. He loved gain, he says in verse 15, from wrongdoing. What was the wrongdoing? What he wanted to do was go and prophesy something against Israel so that the king of Moab would pay him. But he kept telling the king, like, God's going to make me say the truth, right? which he ultimately did, but he had determined evidently, because we read this about the donkey and Peter gives us this commentary right here in verse 16, that he was rebuked for his transgression when his donkey spoke with a human voice and restrained his madness, his insanity. What was his insane idea? As a prophet of God, he thought he could go and prophesy the opposite of what God told him and make money off of it. That's insane. And he knew it because he kept telling them, I can't say anything other than what God's saying. The irony is, is that he didn't really believe that. He just kept saying that, most commentators agree, in order to drive the price up. Well, if you won't do it for 100 bucks, will you do it for 200 bucks? There's probably a lot more than that, right? But Peter points to him as this guy who's in this case a false prophet, although strangely a prophet who spoke truth, who evidently had an actual line of communication with God, to whom God spoke. Yet he was false because he had these wrong motives. What's his wrong motive? Greed's his motive. This is the same thing that Peter is talking about in verse 3. That they will exploit you with their false words. That's exactly what he was trying to do. His donkey talks to him and he still ends up figuring out how to get God to curse the Israelites. Not Peter's point, but Balaam figured out how to get that done. He had those Moabites intermarry and have relations and have kids with the Israelites. Then that set God against them because they were disobeying God and then God punished them for it. Like that was Balaam's idea. That's talked about in a little bit more detail. I mean, one of those letters, I think in Revelation, it mentions those kinds of things and gives us some explanation. And we see that happening and being discussed in Deuteronomy 23. So there's Balaam and all of this stuff here going through verse 16. Today, we kind of pick up with verse 17. My inclination is to try to finish at least this chapter today, which is only five or six verses, but because we see this in the way Peter wrote this chapter, it's a relatively short chapter, all told it's only 22 verses, right? But he repeats himself. He gives us numerous examples and he just churns this over and over again. As a demonstration, I really think that in a short letter that, remember, is his last, that he knows is his last, that he wants to be important, he spends nearly half of the letter churning again and again over these same three points about the false teachers. So that he's trying to leave this with the people reading the letter that this is important stuff You got to pay attention to it. He had experienced all of this stuff He was obviously seeing it happen in the Old Testament as he studied that he could see it in Balaam and other places Sodom and Gomorrah and all this other stuff and but he wants them to know that what the what these factors are and the fact that we covered a couple weeks ago that verse 9 says the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials and how to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment and They're going to be judged. But God can keep you from this. You just have to stay faithful to the Lord. You have to know the truth. Where are you going to get the truth from? Yeah, the Word of God, right? that word of the prophet, the prophetic word, verse 19 says, that's more fully confirmed, that you will do well to listen to, to pay attention to, as a lamp shining in a dark place. What's darker than false teachers? I'm not sure there is anything. I mean, that's just a total affront to everything about who God is. The fact that God spent all of this effort, sent his very own son to come to communicate that the truth of the gospel to us to die as a sacrifice for our sins and then false teachers come along and deny who he is and deny what he did i mean that you think anything offends god more is is from god's perspective anything more of moral darkness than false teachers i think that's why peter so serious about it plus it's it's happening so verse seventeen hopefully will pick up where we left off. He says, Peter writes this. These are waterless springs and mists driven by a storm. For them, the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved. See that that's that's like the worst kind of the punishment. the gloom of utter darkness. It's a repetitive, it's not darkness, but it's utter darkness. And it's the gloomy part of the utter darkness you see. Anyway, he's making that point again. Verse 18, for speaking loud boasts of folly, they entice by sensual passions of the flesh, those who are barely escaping from those who live in error. They promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption. For whatever overcomes a person to that he is enslaved. For if after they have escaped the defilements of the world, Through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them, and overcome the last state has become worse for them than the first. For it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than, after knowing it, to turn back from the holy commandments delivered to them. What the true proverb says has happened to them. The dog returns to its own vomit, and the sow, after washing herself, returns to wallow in the mire. You can see this grouping of thought here again about the kind of punishment they deserve and why. But what are they like? Verse 17 gives us a couple of word pictures about what false teachers are like. Incidentally, these are similar or the same as some of the descriptions of the same thing in Jude verse 12. You want to see that? Chapter 1, verse 12. It says, These are hidden reefs at your love feasts, as they feast with you without fear, shepherds feeding themselves, waterless clouds swept along by winds, fruitless trees in late autumn, twice dead and uprooted. What do all of these word pictures... They all mean one thing, by the way. What do they mean, really? Empty promises. Yeah, empty promises, no fruit. Yeah. See, in Jude's, they're hidden reefs at the love feast. What happens when you're in a boat, you're going along, you don't know that there's a shallow reef there, and you run into it. It's hidden. Right? The reef, the danger is hidden. They sort of hide that stuff. How do they do it? They make big promises. Peter says that in verse 18, right? They... Where is that? They owe loud boasts. They boast loudly. They're making these promises that don't come true. Jude says this, that they're shepherds who are feeding themselves. Is that what the shepherd's supposed to do? No, of course, right? The shepherd's supposed to be concerned about taking the flock to the green pasture so that they can feed themselves. Does he get paid and does he eat? Yes, that's not the point, but like the false shepherd, the wrong shepherd, the wolf in sheep's clothing is there to devour the sheep, not to lead them to where they get fed. Same word picture, right? Waterless clouds swept along by winds. You guys notice that yesterday? Did any of you get like the massive rain yesterday that those clouds look like they should have delivered? I mean, think about being in the desert and seeing clouds like that and going, ha, ha, ha. It's 100,000 degrees out here, and we haven't seen rain for six months, and those clouds look promising. They're waterless clouds that just blow right by. That's disappointing. That's the point. That's how the false teachers are. They're like fruitless trees in late autumn. There's that tree that's supposed to have the fruit on it. It's the time of year to harvest, and no fruit. Walk up there to the apple tree, and there's not an apple on it. I guess it's disappointing. Peter uses the same kind of word pictures in verse 17. Waterless springs. You try to put yourself back then into that time period where this agricultural analogy doesn't mean as much to us. Most of us probably haven't even ever really seen a spring, let alone had to use one to get water for our animals and stuff like that. But you see this oasis thing in the desert over there that indicates there's a spring. because there's grass growing and lush trees and stuff, and you drive the entire flock halfway across the desert to get to the oasis and the springs dry. See, false teachers are like that. Big promises. They boast of many things. They're speaking loudly and they're boasting about things, making big promises. You can think about that especially as being true in the prosperity gospel. Right? Which is that term that we use in our day for them teaching that you come to Jesus and He gives you all the desires of your heart. The main purpose of Jesus is to fulfill your deepest desires and provide for you financially and give you everything. But what happens when He doesn't do that? empty promises, right? You either realize that those are empty promises and this is a false teacher, or you listen to them and continue to send them money when they say, well, you only gave me 100 bucks, now give me 200 bucks, next time you'll get what you want. You can see that stuff on the Christian so-called religious TV stations and listen to that stuff by these guys who are constantly flashing their phone number for more money. It's like being a mist driven by a storm. Like I said, that's the same kind of analogy. Huge thunder clouds, little bitty mist. That's all you get. We needed the rain. We didn't get the rain. Sean? I don't know if this has any relation to it. Maybe you can find some kind of correlation. But this verse reminds me of, it says in Luke 24, Yeah, this is correlated with some of the next stuff that Peter writes here, I think, in this way of like, after they've escaped the defilement of the world, then they go back to it. Like this is the spiritual, the demonic influence that accompanies that, right? When the Christian gets saved, you get cleaned up, you drive out the demons, the Lord converts you and then if you're not careful, they'll come back. They come back and bring five more friends with them. Because they went out there and they found this waterless, it's like they didn't find any other place to go and they came back and found that you had prepared a new place for them. because you were still living in sensuality, right? You never really got away from that. That's the big issue. Christians who, people who seem to have or maybe authentically got converted, but yet the demonic guys can come and see. This used to be a place where we had lots of fun and they come back and they can still have lots of fun there. How do you know at that point if you're a Christian or not? Well, the same thing with this. How do we know whether these false teachers are actually converted Christians or not? All of this evidence is not good evidence. So when you've got this in your life where you've escaped, that's what he says right in verse 18. They themselves have escaped from those who live in error and they have people in their care, the flock, the church, the people who are coming and listening to them. They've barely escaped. They were amongst those who lived in error. This is kind of the description of every Christian, right? We just barely escape from the stuff that we used to be enslaved to. The habits, how do we know we barely escape? Because the habits come back in such a way as they tempt us with a lot of power sometimes, don't they? Any of you ever gone back to like a pig, a dog returning to the vomit or a pig going back to the mud? back into the old things you used to do? But is that how it's supposed to be for Christians? It's not supposed to be that way for Christians, but we all know that experience. It proves that we barely escaped, because sometimes we're drugged back into it, or we allow ourselves to be drugged back into it. The issue is that with the false teacher, according to verse 18 here, is that they are more purposeful about this. They're speaking their loud boasts of folly and they entice by sensual passions of the flesh, those who are barely escaping from those who live in error. They're enticing people, they're purposeful about it. Maybe some of them are themselves deceived and they don't realize what they're doing. Others of them are deceitful and they know full well what they're doing. And they're purposefully trying to draw people back into the world, away from the Lord. Why? They may not actually be thinking through, I'm trying to draw them away from the Lord. All they're thinking is I'm trying to draw them to me. And that's an issue. How are they doing that? They're appealing to every kind of different sensuality. There's that word again, right? The sensual passions of the flesh. It's not just sexual stuff, but it certainly includes that. It's all kinds of different stuff. It's either by the overt teaching that it doesn't matter how you live as long as you prayed the prayer, or it's people getting that from the teaching because you never teach otherwise. That's the deceitful part of it, really. There's those who can preach grace all day long, They can teach aspects of the gospel, but never actually touch on the part about how you're supposed to have turned to the Lord. You're supposed to have come in repentance. They can teach faith all day long, but repentance never comes off their lips. Both of those are required for salvation, aren't they? And so, why are they doing that? To one degree or another, it's this. They're enticing people by the sensual passions of the flesh. They're either overtly putting it out there, drawing them by music and entertainment or any number of things. In our day, aren't there churches that hang the banner on the side of the building with the rainbow flag that says love is love and everybody's welcome here and all that sort of stuff? It's not that everybody's not welcome here, but we're not celebrating the homosexual, LGBT, whatever stuff, right? All those alphabet soup letter things are, we're going to condemn as sin. We're going to continue to say so. Does that mean that we don't love the people who are LGBTQ? We should love them the same as we love the drunkard and the drug addict and, you know, and the self-righteous Pharisee. So that doesn't mean that we reject all of those people, but we're not trying to entice them. I mean, of all of the craziest things you've ever seen, drive down Montview. There's like a whole series of churches over there between Colorado and Quebec on Montview. There's all these old churches, old ones, cool ones, nice buildings. Most, half of them are Universalists, Methodists, different. There's a couple of them that got, the banner covers up the cross with the rainbow, you know, and what are they doing? They're enticing people by the sensual passions of the flesh. I mean, that should be so obvious. But yet, Sunday after Sunday, perhaps some honest Christians with sincere faith taught so poorly that they don't know any different. In fact, they not only don't know any different, they actually defend the stuff, right? Taught so poorly, they go in there denying the Lord who bought them. shipwrecking their faith. I mean, is it any wonder that he says this? That the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved for those who perpetuate such things? Phil? I was just thinking, you know, I've been in this church for a while now. I feel like I could figure out a false teacher or a false teaching. But this thing about other people being enticed, they're escaping their tithes. I find there's a lot of ways to fall back into this. Oh, for sure. Maybe I justify, well, yeah, I got a bigger problem. I'm working on it, or whatever, but I'm not taking it as seriously as I should be. Or it's interesting how you'll run into people and you ask them what they believe. They say, well, I was Catholic, and I don't know church at all. But I'm thinking about going to Joe's Witnesses Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we have to be able to recognize it so that we don't get sucked into it. We also have to defend the truth as necessary. We have to fight some of that stuff. And the reality is, just so I don't sound like I'm picking on one side, there's a continuum, right? There's a scale here. Rainbow flag waving, you know, Thing over here and over here you got the ultra super legalist who who is only about the law and never about grace And they're doing potentially as much damage as the ultra progressive liberal guys And so we don't want to we don't want to swing our pendulum so far the rainbow flags. We're gonna hate everybody We're gonna go out there and protest the funerals of the military guys because they're part of the Totalitarian establishment of you know blah whatever like we can't do that either right we Peter's not saying Only avoid those who are of the ultra liberal there were those then too by the way He's also saying look at verse 19. They promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption and There's two ways to be enslaved, isn't there? Some people have this desire in themselves to be the ultra-authoritarian. Not the super-permissive guy, but the ultra-authoritarian. That's a different kind of a false teacher. Equally as dangerous. But those guys do a much better job than the... well, I don't know anymore. They do a good job on their own of enslaving people to all kinds of man-made religion. all kinds of man-made rules. They do it all in the name of righteousness and ethics and morals in the face of this immorality and the lack of standards on this end of the spectrum. Over here, these guys are no better teachers. They're no less false teachers. because of this saying, right? They're themselves slaves to corruption, so they promise freedom, kind of like a cloud that promises rain but doesn't deliver. They promise freedom because they know something of the gospel. What they actually do is put people back in slave, in slavery. Isn't that what Paul rails about in different places, like in Galatians, about what the Judaizers were doing, these ultra-conservative, legalistic, pharisaical, rule following, you know, back enslaved. You can't be a Christian unless you get circumcised. Nobody's actually really saying that these days, but, you know, you can't be a Christian unless you, something. Peter presents to us something that fits both ends of the spectrum. What, of course, is the danger about being drawn back into being enslaved? There's freedom in Christ, right? Doesn't Jesus teach us that? That we can actually have real freedom? Real freedom from all of this enslavement to sin? But to trade one kind of enslavement to one kind of sin to another kind of enslavement to another kind of sin doesn't actually set you free. to be taken out of the camp of the promiscuous, the concentration camp of the promiscuous, and taken across the road to the concentration camp of the legalist, are you any more free? You're no more free. Peter's concerned, right? They promise freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption. And if they themselves are slaves of corruption, what else can they be other than guys who enslave others in some kind of corruption? Verse 20 and 21, I think, talks specifically about those leaders, although you could apply this to just about any Christian, really, because it's applied this way indiscriminately to Christians elsewhere. But if these false teachers, they've escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Christ, and then are again entangled in them and overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first. This is a principle in the scripture, isn't it? Hebrews chapter 6. If after you've experienced the goodness of Christ, you've experienced the godly fellowship of the Holy Spirit amongst the believers, and if after you've experienced those things and you turn your back on it, if after you've known the brotherhood, the sisterhood, the family of Christ and been overjoyed at the preaching of the gospel, if at some time in your past you had that and you turn away from that, then there's no longer any sacrifice for sin. You might be finding yourself in a position where you can't come back because now you've denied the Lord. You've trampled underfoot, Hebrews 10 says, the blood of the covenant. And he may make it to where you can't come back. He may judicially blind you. That's what Jesus described all over the place with the Pharisees, those seeing they can't see. Because they refused to believe, therefore He removed their ability to see. This is the same kind of thing that Peter is talking about. You used to be in this defiled place, you used to be just one of them, and then you seem to have some conversion. The reality is that most false teachers have some kind of something somewhere back there that is an evidence of them having changed. Otherwise, they're really not going to be credible to anybody, hardly at all, right? You really don't just get this sleazeball drunkard, drug addict, sleeping with prostitute guy who never stops any of that, who walks into a building one day and says, listen to me, and everybody listens to him. Like that doesn't really happen. They have some cleaned up thing where they appear like they might actually be a Christian, but it's just an appearance. It's just a facade. This is the case with Christians or people who profess to be Christians, churchgoers. That's the danger, isn't it? That's the frightening thing, is that if we don't really turn from those things, then we're not going to be able to turn from those things. And clearly he says this, these guys, this is what they do, they escape the defilement of the world. through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Notice that he says this, the knowledge of Jesus, not faith in Jesus, not by turning to Jesus, not by trusting in Jesus, not by surrendering their life to Jesus, not by denying themselves and taking up their cross and following Jesus, not that, just the knowledge of Jesus. Some of them are deceitful and they see in that an opportunity. The knowledge of Jesus means that there are people who are following Jesus, who I could maybe get to follow me if I act like I'm one of these Jesus guys. Some of them are deceitful. Others of them are deceived. They really seem to think that they're gonna be changed and somehow they really quit smoking and drinking and going with girls who do, right? And so they have some evidence of something and then they gain their following because of their charismaticism and their personality or whatever opportunity they take advantage of. Ultimately though, they're again entangled in these things and overcome by them so that their last state is worse than their first. How's the last state worse than the first? Yeah, they had something really precious and they let it go. Although worse than that, they didn't just let it go, they threw it down and trampled on it. That's a worse state. It might be the same sin, but to have had something of the experience and to turn your back on it, that's a much worse state. Because, like I said, it involves God who has sent His Son and provided the message of the Gospel. And you've experienced what that's like. You've claimed that that's yours. And then, after doing that, you turn your back on it. God doesn't like this when people go, I don't need Jesus. I'm fine. He likes it much less when you go, yes, I need Jesus. I mean, no, I don't. Right? And in the meantime, you're teaching other people. They're teaching other people with wrong teaching. They're teaching other people with their wrong example. They're teaching other people with their false ideas, right? And ultimately, what are they about? Sensual pleasure and greed. That's what's underlying it. It would have been better, verse 21 says, for them to have never known the way of righteousness than after knowing it to turn back from the holy commandments delivered to them. And here it is, what the proverb says is true. Have you ever heard a more, when you stop and think about it? I'm not sure that there's a more accurately descriptive proverb in the Bible than the one about the dog returning to its own vomit. If you haven't seen that, come over sometime. Whatever reason, that dog gets the upset stomach and they go out there in the corner and they hork up whatever they ate last. Then before it gets cold, they go eat it again. I want you to have your stomach turn over that on purpose because God gave that proverb to Solomon on purpose and Peter repeats it here so that we can actually get disgusted appropriately by what it is that the false teachers are doing. It's that but worse, for no dog was ever condemned to hell for eating its own vomit. Never the utter darkness, most gloomy place of the utter darkness was ever assigned to a pig who after washing herself returns to wallow in the mud. That for me is a less powerful descriptor, but Peter likes to repeat himself in this chapter, doesn't he? Because he wants to make this point. These guys are disgusting pigs and women. These people, these false teachers, are disgusting pigs who roll around in the muck and the mire, go clean themselves up enough to get people to follow them, and then they lead them back into the muck and mire. As a group, they go, let's go back and eat all our old vomit. Does that help? I mean, does that help to understand why Peter's upset? What he's working on, what he sees as the truth, what the Lord is revealing to him through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. He's revealing this to Peter to give it to us so that we can recognize the false teachers and understand the actual danger of following them. 2,000 years later, this is the popular thing in our day, but 2,000 years later, there is no new doctrine. But how many of the things that are going on around us weren't around 50 years ago? Did God choose to hide all of that stuff for 1,950 years? I mean, that stuff by itself, doctrines invented by demons delivered to false teachers, presented as righteousness. These are the dangers that we have in our day. And every day, every age has had. Anybody have anything that we want to extend this past? Thoughts or questions? That just gets us to the end of the chapter, which is a good place to stop. So, Hyman? I was just thinking about these prosperity guys, and I remember this a few years ago. When I get home from work, Yeah. And then the next day, I wanted to see what he'd come in. He wasn't all flashy with the suit. He had a little sweater. He looked like Mr. Rogers the next day. And he was saying how, well, the blessing isn't just for you guys. It's for me, too. And he tried to play on the sympathy of people, like, well, the blessing's for everybody. But really, all he's doing is sucking this money out of these people and living extravagantly while they're sitting there believing what he's telling them. You know, and the whole time it was just, it was just, it was kind of funny, like, a little bit, like, that he got caught. You know, I was kind of glad. I mean, I was glad, but it was just such a picture of the false teacher, like, taking advantage of people, like, so bad, you know? And it was just funny to see it, kind of firsthand, like, on TV or whatever, but, like, how he got exposed, you know? And anyway, it just reminded me about these, like, prosperity guys. Yeah, that prosperity gospel worked for them. Right. Yeah, they're getting prosperous from all of that. Exactly right. Yeah. In some ways, I think this is almost like the most embarrassing part of all of it is that the world has all that stuff figured out. I mean, you watched it on getting ready to listen to it in the morning, getting ready for work before you were a Christian because you found it entertaining. Okay. Well, I don't know why you were listening to it then. I mean, you just already said that you thought it was funny. I mean, but the world never gets bamboozled into this stuff. Why is that? Like, the world can figure this out without the Holy Spirit. Without being reading 2 Peter, they can see. It's that obvious. It's that obvious to the world about the false teachers claiming to be Christians. Now, they'll be bamboozled all day long by secular philosophies and stuff like that. But, but that's an embarrassment to the church. That's an embarrassment to Christians. You know, what was I thinking sending that guy $1,000 like anyway, but yeah, you kind of do like it to see when the Lord brings the hammer a little bit and he does periodically just in fulfillment of this. Yeah. Merch. a close college friend that she introduced me to this girl, the loveliest woman, stay-at-home, homeschool mom. She was upset that people had come to their church, you know, like with gross sin. She's like, I'm going to start inviting people into my home. I was in her home. She made the gospel nice and clear. The loveliest. I'm not kidding. Like, literally, we sat there and I was like, yeah, this is the type of mom you want to hang around with. You want people to go to her. Real clear on the gospel. And then Yeah. But now? Oh, really? She was 30. I mean, she got really popular. Wow. She had books. Then she's a famous person and all that stuff. But she was solid. And it was so interesting just to see that change. Yeah. And in her 30s, she had her two kids. And then she had this platform now that she's nationwide. And it's interesting because I remember I was thinking, she was solid. she became so different. And then the next thing I know, God killed her. Wow. Wow. And she has some random, in the hospital, she's saying to her big platform. And I was praying for her, please, God, help her to not be teaching this. And then I was like, it's interesting, because I was like, I wonder if God really did kill her. Right. She's in her 30s. She still had her kids young. She had this huge platform. And I was like, I wonder if he killed her because he's like, she does have a platform, or she really was saved. Or she was really heading in the wrong direction to keep her from going further. Yeah, could be anything, yeah. And yeah, it's so interesting, but. That's sad, though. Like, in our own lives. Right. Like, we know people that sometimes, and you know, I don't know, sometimes I think of her, too, because, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We've we've seen that in our little church over all the years, like here and there. Right. Just people with kind of divisiveness, just kind of just some of that that's heading that direction, you know. But yeah, I mean, that's really. The people are all around us, and we've got to keep our guard up a little bit, at least keep our radar on. We don't have to be guarded in such a way that we're unfriendly or that we're un-Christ-like or something like that, but we do have to have our radar up. I think, yeah, good example. Thanks. Susan? Yeah. Yeah, it jades the world against the church because that stuff's much more public than what we're doing here on any given Sunday morning. And so, you know, you get that both with Christians who get jaded and with unbelievers who get jaded and go, yeah, there's just a bunch of hypocrites. And oftentimes they mean that, you start asking, you know, what do you mean exactly? Well, you know, all the church, the sex scandals in the churches, all the guys just, they're all about money. So often that's the thought, they're all about money. And Peter couldn't be clearer in going, yep. Right? They are all about money. But you can find those who aren't. And so if you sincerely want to know the Lord and you sincerely want to be with His people, you can find that. But, you know, yeah, we can't deny that there's hypocrisy and that this really does blacken the name of Christ. It really does. Especially in the age of media, you know. Yeah? Well, I just remember when Jovita was first getting saved, and I'm just like going to church with her to be nice or whatever. We went to some church. They had it in a school. And they passed around the plate. Put your money in there. And then they played some songs. And the guy got up there and talked a little bit. And they passed it around again. Really? Yeah. I'm like, we ain't coming here ever again. I was going to say, you want to go get the box and carry it back and forth? I'm a little short this week. Yeah. Yeah, seriously. But I mean, that's just as clear as can be, right? Yeah, I know. I know this stuff from out in the world when people are trying to build money out of me. I know that from where I used to. Why did I forget that? Why did Christians forget that? And then brains check out when they just go, oh, he said the name of Jesus and it wasn't a curse word. I must need to give him money, you know. But yeah, that's really sad. Yeah. Virginia, you. It is. Oh no, that's not just you, sorry. Yeah. Yeah. I don't have time to talk all about Beth Moore. But yeah, I I do think that there's first there is this is kind of something that's spoken about in different ways, that there's a greater interest in the thing spiritual amongst women, period, than men. That's a that's a statistically significant truth. that more women are more interested in spirituality of some kind than men. You see that in yoga classes. More women in yoga classes than men most of the time. It's just kind of something about the way that God made women that they're not as boneheaded, they're not as driven by whatever men, you know, food, sex, and sleep that men are, I guess, or something. Whatever it is, that's not our point is to dissect that. But because of that, I think then therefore you also have more women that are more interested in trying to figure out this sort of stuff. And I mean, the Bible does kind of indicate this to us in some ways, right? That Eve is the one who was deceived. Adam went along with her. Does that mean that women are weak minded, that they can't figure out stuff on their own? It doesn't mean any of that. It's just there is this disposition of trust which is a quality of women, not a liability. But in our culture, all that stuff is treated as liability. But I don't think that's really true. Anyway, it might just be your experience, because you don't have as many guy friends as women friends, but it's all, I think, I hope. But I think there's also some truthfulness in that, and there's different things we could discuss about that, but probably aren't really necessarily fruitful, and I'll probably end up sticking my foot in my mouth more than once. I think there's a reality there as well. Yeah. Alright, anything else? On that note, we'll pray. Lord, thank you for our time together this morning. I thank you for giving us these instructions in the word, for giving us principles that we could discuss and look at. Lord, I thank you that I do believe for the most part, Lord, you've helped each one of us here to not be so deceived, to not be so easily drawn away. But Lord, there are some of us, Lord, that can be interested in hearing these things. Some of them tickle our ears. Some of these things are, popular in the world, and therefore, when we want to be popular in the world, they can be enticing even to us. And so, Lord, I pray that you would help us to see them for what they are, and not to be enticed thinking that we're going to enjoy a banquet feast when we go and do those things, but we're more like the dog returning to its vomit when we do that stuff. And so, Lord, I pray you'd help us to keep these things in mind. Give us discernment. Help us by the Spirit. Help us to watch out for one another and to keep pure in our doctrine and our practice here, Lord. Keep us from the sensual passions and the greed that drive so many. Lord, I pray you'd protect us from that. And just preserve our church and your gospel, Lord. Thank you for Peter and his writing and your inspiration to him, giving us your word here. Pray to help us to use it rightly in our lives. And pray for your help in the rest of our morning here, Lord. And pray for Ivan's preaching soon. And Lord, that as we sing songs this morning, that we would actually concentrate on you and lift our hearts up in praise to you. not merely be about singing to hear good voices, but singing to reach your throne. I pray you'd help us in that. In Jesus' name, amen.