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In the first part of this chapter, Peter warns us that false teachers will arise among us just as false prophets infiltrated the people of Israel. He shows us how they operate. They introduce destructive heresies, exploit people through greed, are themselves immoral and lead others into immorality. He reminds us that God will certainly judge them. Just as He judged fallen angels, the ancient world before the flood, and Sodom and Gomorrah, so He will judge the false teachers – while at the same time rescuing the righteous.

Peter moves from describing their false teaching, their immoral behavior and their greed to their arrogance. Verse 10: These people are proud and arrogant, daring even to scoff at supernatural beings without so much as trembling. But the angels, who are far greater in power and strength, do not dare to bring from the Lord a charge of blasphemy against those supernatural beings. False teachers are proud and arrogant. Peter gives an example of how great their pride and arrogance are. They scoff, mock, insult, speak with reckless boldness about supernatural beings – meaning fallen angels – without so much as trembling.

In contrast are the good angels, who are beings of immense power and intelligence. They are mighty servants of God – capable of carrying out divine commands, executing judgment, warring against demonic forces, controlling forces of nature.

If anyone is qualified to scoff at fallen angels, it’s the good angels. Yet Peter informs us that they don’t dare to bring from the Lord a charge of blasphemy against those supernatural beings. Good angels – much wiser and more powerful than human beings – when confronting rebellious angels, treat them with respect. They don’t make fun of them or act as if they are the judges of the fallen angels. What the good and holy angels don’t dare to do, false teachers do boldly. They speak insultingly about the fallen angels and boast about their authority over these powerful beings.

Peter is teaching us that pride and arrogance are marks of false teachers. He is warning us about a kind of false spirituality that is boastful, contemptuous, sensational, and rebellious against God’s authority.

Peter has a lot more to teach us about false teachers. They are not a minor nuisance in Messiah’s community. They are spiritual predators. These false teachers are like unthinking animals, creatures of instinct, born to be caught and destroyed. They scoff at things they do not understand, and like animals, they will be destroyed. Their destruction is their reward for the harm they have done. They love to indulge in evil pleasures in broad daylight. They are a disgrace and a stain among you. They delight in deception even as they eat with you in your fellowship meals. They commit adultery with their eyes, and their desire for sin is never satisfied. They lure unstable people into sin, and they are well trained in greed. They live under God’s curse. They have wandered off the right road and followed the footsteps of Balaam son of Beor, who loved to earn money by doing wrong. But Balaam was stopped from his mad course when his donkey rebuked him with a human voice. These people are as useless as dried‑up springs or as mist blown away by the wind. They are doomed to blackest darkness. They brag about themselves with empty, foolish boasting. With an appeal to twisted sexual desires, they lure back into sin those who have barely escaped from a lifestyle of deception.

This is one of the strongest and most intense passages in the Bible about false teachers – because the danger is real.

These false teachers are like unthinking animals, creatures of instinct, born to be caught and destroyed. Peter compares them to animals that operate by instinct. They hunt. They kill. They eat. Right and wrong, will this please or offend God, morality – don’t enter into their thinking. They follow their own desires regardless of truth or God’s authority. And like animals that humans hunt and use for food, God will catch and destroy them. Judgment is surely coming for them.

They scoff at things they do not understand. They are arrogant and ignorant and insult things they don’t understand – like angels, God-ordained morality, the true God-ordained leaders in Messiah’s community.

They scoff at things they do not understand, and like animals, they will be destroyed. Their destruction is their reward for the harm they have done. Sin, rebellion, arrogance, ignorance result in divine judgment. The false teachers will reap what they have sown. God will pay them back for the harm they have done by destroying them.

They are shameless. They love to indulge in evil pleasures in broad daylight. Most people prefer sinning in secret. They don’t want to be seen when they are engaging in shameful, immoral activities. Not the false teachers. They sin in broad daylight. They sin openly – not embarrassed by indulging in evil pleasures that should shame them.

They are a disgrace and a stain among you. Imagine sitting down to an elegant meal. The table is covered with a white tablecloth. Someone reaches for a glass of red wine but knocks it over. Like a stain spreading across the tablecloth, the false teachers corrupt the purity of Messiah’s community.

They delight in deception even as they eat with you in your fellowship meals. They are inside Messiah’s community. They eat the bread and drink the wine with us. They smile. They participate – all while secretly deceiving and corrupting. This is why discernment is essential. Not everyone who eats and drinks and communes with us is true or trustworthy. Not everyone who claims to be a Christian, a Christian leader or Bible teacher – is one of us.

They commit adultery with their eyes, and their desire for sin is never satisfied. They are looking for people to seduce – married, unmarried – it doesn’t matter to them. Sin promises satisfaction but produces addiction. Their desire for sin is never satisfied. Their appetites are insatiable.

They are predators who look for the vulnerable. They lure unstable people into sin. They target the unstable, the weak, the wounded, the immature, the naive, the undiscerning.

They are not just greedy. They are well trained in greed. They are disciplined – like an athlete that trains every day – but their training is in greed – separating people from their money so they can use it to enjoy a luxurious lifestyle. They practice separating people from their money until its easy for them to do.

Some examples:

“Give $1,000 and God will return it 30, 60, or 100‑fold.”

“Your seed determines your harvest.”

“Your next level with God requires a sacrificial seed.”

“Sow a seed today and expect a financial miracle this week.”

“Someone watching right now needs to give $777 within the next 10 minutes.”

“The Spirit just told me there are 100 people who must give $1,000 tonight.”

“God showed me that if you give tonight, your debt will be cancelled.”

“If you loved God, you would give a lot more to this ministry.”

“Those who don’t give sacrificially to this work are robbing God.”

“The Lord told me that your healing is connected to your offering.”

“If you buy this anointed oil or prayer cloth, you will be healed.”

“Someone told me that he gave his last $500 to this ministry, and the next day he got a $10,000 check.”

“If you support this ministry, you will experience the same blessings I have that prove that what I am teaching you works – a luxurious lifestyle, a private jet, a mansion, expensive cars and clothing.”

The consequences for their false teaching, arrogance, immorality, greed and corruption of others is: They live under God’s curse. God won’t just criticize. He won’t merely rebuke them. He is opposing them. He is against them. He will harm them. He will make a complete end of them.

They have wandered off the right road and followed the footsteps of Balaam son of Beor, who loved to earn money by doing wrong. But Balaam was stopped from his mad course when his donkey rebuked him with a human voice. Balaam knew God – not only knew God, but was a prophet. He heard the voice of God. In the history of the world, very few men have been blessed to hear from God in the clear way that Balaam did. And what did Balaam do with his gift of prophecy? He monetized it. He used it as a business opportunity.

This was more than a mistake. Peter calls it a mad course. What Balaam was doing, the decisions he was making, was irrational. Insane. Madness. Why did he take this mad course? His love to make money altered his judgment. His love to earn money became more important than his desire to be faithful to the Word of God. Greed corrupts our ability to reason. When the desire to make money controls us, right thinking, godly thinking, disappear. Warnings are ignored. Boundaries are crossed.

But Balaam was stopped from his mad course when his donkey rebuked him with a human voice. Balaam’s donkey saw the angel who would have killed his master and refused to go forward. An animal became wiser than a prophet who received divine revelation.

The false teachers were guilty of following the same path. They wandered off the right road and followed the footsteps of Balaam. They monetized their ministries, sold spiritual influence, compromised the truth for financial gain and used the gifts God gave them for personal advancement.

It’s easy to see the sins of Balaam and the false teachers. It’s harder to look at our own lives and see where we might be falling short. We can know the Bible and theology, hear from God, be gifted – and live foolish, corrupt lives if the desire for money becomes more important than our desire for God. Don’t allow that to happen. Don’t follow the same mad course that destroyed Balaam and the false teachers of Peter’s day.

More about the false teachers: they promise much but produce nothing. These people are as useless as dried‑up springs or as mist blown away by the wind. A spring produces refreshing water. Imagine a thirsty traveler arriving at a spring only to find it dried up. Mist is a low‑lying cloud – which is made of water. The hope is that water will condense from the mist and be collected. But before any water can be collected, the wind blows away the mist away. False teachers have the appearance of being able to give spiritual power, deeper knowledge, freedom, fulfillment, prosperity – but they only deliver emptiness.

They are doomed to blackest darkness. Light represents the presence of God, truth, victory, happiness, life. Darkness represents the opposite: the absence of God, rejection of truth, defeat, misery, death. The darkness false teachers practice and promote results in their experiencing the blackest darkness. Blackest darkness is the full and final experience of everything darkness represents. It is the complete and total absence of God and life. Blackest darkness is another way of describing the reality and finality of Hell.

They brag about themselves with empty, foolish boasting. They don’t brag about the Son of God – who He is – the unique God-Man. They don’t brag about His amazing life and ministry and death and resurrection; His love, His greatness. No, they brag about themselves – their gifts, their revelations, their courage, their freedom, their authority, their success. They proclaim themselves as uniquely anointed, uniquely enlightened, uniquely bold, uniquely essential. But its foolish, empty boasting.

With an appeal to twisted sexual desires, they lure back into sin those who have barely escaped from a lifestyle of deception. They twist liberty into license. They entice the Lord’s people back to a sinful lifestyle by appealing to twisted sexual desires. “You can have all the sex you want, whenever you want, with whoever you want – because grace means freedom, because its natural, because created us that way, because the heart loves who it loves, because God understands and will forgive, because God cares about what we do with our souls not with our bodies.”

Peter ends this section with a warning about what happens to those who are taken in by the false teachers. They promise freedom, but they themselves are slaves of sin and corruption. For you are a slave to whatever controls you. And when people escape from the wickedness of the world by knowing our Lord and Savior Yeshua the Messiah, and then get tangled up and enslaved by sin again, they are worse off than before. It would be better if they had never known the way to righteousness than to know it and then reject the command they were given to live a holy life. They prove the truth of this proverb: “A dog returns to its vomit.” And another says, “A washed pig returns to the mud.”

They promise freedom, but they themselves are slaves of sin and corruption. For you are a slave to whatever controls you. False teachers promise freedom to live the way you want to live, while they themselves are slaves to sin and corruption.

The principle: we are slaves to whatever controls us. If our desires, our appetites, our lusts, control us – we are their slave. If money controls us – we are its slave. If approval controls us – we are its slave. Freedom is not doing whatever you want to do. Freedom is found in being a slave to God. When we are slaves to God, we will live the way God designed us to live and be everything God designed us to be. That’s the truest freedom.

And when people escape from the wickedness of the world by knowing our Lord and Savior Yeshua the Messiah, and then get tangled up and enslaved by sin again, they are worse off than before. For those who know the Lord, returning to a sinful lifestyle re‑entangles them – like an animal caught in a trap. Returning to a sinful lifestyle re-enslaves them like a master who catches a runaway slave. But now, their situation is worse than it was before they knew the Lord Yeshua because now they have rejected the truth they have learned. When you do that, your heart becomes harder. Your conscience becomes seared.

It would be better if they had never known the way to righteousness than to know it and then reject the command they were given to live a holy life. Rejection of truth brings greater resistence to the truth. Light that is rejected results in deeper darkness. Returning to the light becomes much harder. And rejection of truth brings greater judgment.

Peter ends with two proverbs. They prove the truth of this proverb: “A dog returns to its vomit.” And another says, “A washed pig returns to the mud.”

Animals are guided by God given instincts and generally do things that are in their best interests – but not always. The first from Proverbs 26:11 teaches this. If a dog vomits what it has eaten, it makes no sense to return and eat that same food that’s now in an even worse condition. The second proverb is not from the Bible but from everyday life. When someone makes the effort to wash mud off of a pig to make it clean and presentable, it makes no sense for the pig to return to the mud. We don’t want to be like the dog or the pig and return to our previous sick, dirty, sinful lifestyles. That makes no sense. So we must not listen to the false teachers who are encouraging us to do that.

Let’s pray:

Heavenly Father, protect Your people from false teachers. Give Your people discernment to recognize those who exploit others, twist truth, and promise freedom while they themselves are enslaved to sin. Keep our hearts humble, faithful, and devoted to Your truth. Protect us from the love of money, from immoral desires, and from wandering off the right path like Balaam. Help us to cherish the salvation we have in our Lord and Savior Yeshua the Messiah and never return to the sins from which You rescued us. May we walk in holiness, truth, and obedience, finding true freedom as Your servants. Amen.