Main Idea:  Believers must be equipped to identify, avoid, and renounce false teachers who proclaim a faulty gospel contrary to Scripture.

The Faulty Character of False Teachers

• 10b–13a  Bold and willful, they do not tremble as they blaspheme the glorious ones, whereas angels, though greater in might and power, do not pronounce a blasphemous judgment against them before the Lord. But these, like irrational animals, creatures of instinct, born to be caught and destroyed, blaspheming about matters of which they are ignorant, will also be destroyed in their destruction, suffering wrong as the wage for their wrongdoing.
• 13b, 14 They count it pleasure to revel in the daytime. They are blots and blemishes, reveling in their deceptions, while they feast with you.They have eyes full of adultery, insatiable for sin. They entice unsteady souls. They have hearts trained in greed. Accursed children!
  • 2 Peter 2:2, 3
  • Titus 1:7–10
• 15, 16 Forsaking the right way, they have gone astray. They have followed the way of Balaam, the son of Beor, who loved gain from wrongdoing, but was rebuked for his own transgression; a speechless donkey spoke with human voice and restrained the prophet's madness.
  • Jude 11

The Faulty Doctrines of False Teachers

• 17 These are waterless springs and mists driven by a storm. For them the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved.
  • Jude 12, 13
  • John 7:37, 38
• 18, 19 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.
  • John 8:31–36

The Faulty Path of False Teachers

• 20, 21 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 commandment delivered to them.
  • 1 John 2:19
• 22 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.”

So What?

• By holding fast to the truth of Scripture, believers are able to identify, avoid, and renounce false teachers.
  • 2 Timothy 4:1–5

Definitions

• Necessity of Scripture:  the Bible is necessary for knowing the gospel, for maintaining spiritual life, and for knowing God’s will.