Truth

False teachers always have an angle that slants in their favor. And the teachers Peter warned his readers about were coming into town for personal profit.

Since the beginning of time, they have been around. They come from every race. They have lived in every century. They have penetrated every culture. They have whispered their message behind closed doors and shouted it from the street corners. They have spread their poison one-on-one and before groups of thousands. They have used tablets, scrolls, books, radio, television, and the Internet to mislead anyone who will listen. False teachers have been and always will be among us.

The early church was saturated with false teachers. To gain a hearing, they devised clever stories that would appeal to their listeners. To the intellectuals, they philosophized. To the emotional, they told stories that grabbed the heart. To the spiritually naive and immature, well, anything worked with them. False teachers always skipped a significant doctrine (or two), but they could sure draw a crowd, so Peter made it clear that his message about Jesus was as an eyewitness.

It is early in the morning as you sit down with pen and paper. Composing on a computer won’t do. You want these words to flow straight from your heart, personalized with your distinct handwriting. The end of your life is near, and you write knowing that you are expressing your last thoughts. What would you write in that letter? Here is what Peter writes in his final letter.

I often hear people say, “My goodness, with all the natural disasters around the world; the earthquakes, hurricanes, and floods, and all the wars and threats of more to come, the craziness of our culture calling wrong right and right wrong, we have to be living in the end times.” It’s true. Peter makes the point in our passage today. 1 Peter 4:7 The end of all things is at hand; therefore be self-controlled and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers.

The message of the gospel is a message of grace, hope, and transformation. The power of the gospel stops a person in their tracks, causes them to realize their sin, and turns them to God. The gospel is not about being born into a Christian home, going through catechism, attending church, or being a good moral person. It is about life transformation.

Some will think your lifestyle is strange. Your stance on truth doesn’t change based on the whims of the culture. You may be called bigoted for believing life begins at conception and should be protected. It certainly is not “woke” to believe that gender is assigned by God as he knitted us together in the womb.

Let’s face it…you shouldn’t say everything that comes to your mind. We should always pursue peace. For instance, “That is the ugliest baby I have ever seen!” is a thought that needs to be kept caged even if you have never been more convinced of anything in your life! “Absolutely!” is always the answer to the question, “Honey, does this dress make me look thinner?” Don’t hesitate. One aspect of a successful marriage is the understanding that every sentence ending with a question mark is not always a question!

“The seed of every sin known to man is in my heart.” Those words were proclaimed by the great Scottish pastor and writer Robert Murray McCheyne and echoed by John Owen, a seventeenth-century English theologian. We are capable of every sin.