The Lord Know How To Judge The Rebellious And Rescue The Righteous

2 Peter 2:1-10

Transcript

These are the words of God. But false prophets also arose among the people, just
as there were be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in
destructive heresies, even denying the master who bought them, bring upon
themselves swift destruction. And many will follow their sensuality, and because
of them the way of truth will be blasphemed, and in their greed they will
exploit you with false words. Their condemnation from long ago is not idle, and
their destruction is not asleep. For if God did not spare angels when they
sinned, but cast them into hell, and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness
to be kept until the judgment, if he did not spare the ancient world, but
preserve Noah, a herald of righteousness, with seven others, when he brought a
flood upon the world of the ungodly, if by turning the cities of Sodom and
Gomorrah to ashes he condemned them to extinction, making them an example of
what is going to happen to the ungodly, and if he had rescued righteous Lot,
greatly distressed by the sensual conduct of the wicked, for as that righteous
man lived among them day after day, he was tormenting his righteous soul over
their lawless deeds that he saw and heard. Then the Lord knows how to rescue the
godly from trials, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of
judgment, and especially those who indulge in the lust of defiling passion and
despise authority. Praise be to God. Thanks, John. Let's take a moment and we'll
pray as we open up the scripture. Lord God, we are always in need of your help
as we read your word, and we pray that your spirit would work now as we look at
this text and cause us to trust in Christ. Lord, give us understanding and
clarity as we work through this, we pray in your name. Amen. Okay, so there are
many things, I know on Father's Day we tend to celebrate the cool things that
dads can do, but there are many things that you and I have no expertise about
whatsoever. We face something and we have no idea what to do about it. And when
that happens, which it does often, how great is it to know someone who does have
expertise in that area, who does know how? We used to own a home that was well
over 100 years old, so of course it had weird electrical issues, and I knew
nothing, literally nothing, about the wiring of the house. I just knew
periodically we would flip switches and nothing would happen. If I tried to fix
that, I would probably electrocute myself. But when something didn't come on, we
had a good friend, a friend in the church, a retired electrician. We'd call
Glenn, and he had been in the trades for 50 years. He knew exactly what he was
doing, and he was happy to help. And we were able to thrive as homeowners
because of his expertise. He knew what to do even when we didn't. And I bring
that up this morning because there are so many things that we do not know how to
do, and yet the Lord does. And we'll see one of them this morning. We're moving
into chapter two of this letter, so let me just briefly, let's remember what
we've established so far. The apostle Peter is writing this short letter to
these churches. He knows that his remaining time on earth will be short. He
knows that he will die shortly. So with that in mind, he is writing to establish
and exhort and encourage these churches. Keep on growing. He says that at the
beginning of the letter. If you look back at chapter one, verse five through
eight, he says, for this reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with
virtue and virtue with knowledge and knowledge with self-control and self-
control with steadfastness and steadfastness with godliness and godliness with
brotherly affection and brotherly affection with love. For if these qualities
are yours and are increasing, they keep you from becoming ineffective or
unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. Keep on growing, Peter
says. We also know that if a person is going to grow, they need to hold fast to
the word of God. This is what they need to be giving their attention to. The
apostles themselves are going to die out. This is in like the mid 60s AD. But
the apostolic teaching has been passed down to us through the word of God. And
this is what we must hold fast to. That's how Peter exhorted the church in
chapter one. We have the prophetic word more fully confirmed to which you would
do well to pay attention. Now today we come to the danger of false teachers.
Peter's been writing to us about the importance of paying attention to the words
of scripture. He says how the scriptures came about. The end of chapter one
tells us this. It says no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, wasn't
self-generated, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy
Spirit. The true words of God are given by the Holy Spirit. Yet, in the midst of
the development of scripture, there have always been false teachers among the
people of God. And Peter reflects that this has always been the case and will
continue to happen. False teachers have already arisen in the churches. They're
casting doubt on the idea that Jesus will come a second time. We read about that
in chapter three. And Peter foresees that there will be more false teachers to
come. So in chapter two, he goes on the attack. In this case, Peter knows his
time is short and chapter two takes on a very aggressive tone. He's not pulling
any punches. When you read through chapter two, it's very intense. And yet, as
intense as the tone of the passage is, it's intended to also bring a message of
comfort to God's people. And here's what we'll see today. The Lord knows how to
judge the rebellious and rescue the righteous. The Lord knows how to judge the
rebellious and rescue the righteous. This passage that John just read is broken
into two parts. In verses one through three, we'll hear about the nature of
false teachers, how they have always been part of the church, what they do, what
they look like. Then in verses four through 10, we see these Old Testament
examples to see how God rescues the righteous and judges the rebellious. So
let's look at this first one through three, the nature of false teachers. What
they do, what they look like. But false prophets also arose among the people,
just as there will be false teachers among you who will secretly bring in
destructive heresies, even denying the master who bought them, bringing upon
themselves swift destruction. Many will follow their sensuality. Because of
them, the way of truth will be blasphemed. And in their greed, they will exploit
you with false words. Their condemnation from long ago is not idle and their
destruction is not asleep. At the end of chapter one, Peter's been saying to the
churches, we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed to which you will do
well to pay attention. So he's going to die and he wants to ground them in the
words of scripture. And in the Old Testament, we see prophets, faithful men of
God, proclaiming God's word to God's people. But in the midst of that, there
were also false prophets. The Old Testament has numerous examples of this. These
were people who did not care about the well-being of God's people, and they
spoke their own messages for their own selfish purposes. Often they spoke what
they thought people wanted to hear. We could think about Balaam, the prophet
Balaam in the book of Numbers, who tried to make money by cursing the
Israelites. His motivation was greed. He was promised a reward if he would curse
the people of God. Or we could look at Hananiah in the book of Jeremiah, who
spoke against Jeremiah's words and said that Israel's captivity to Babylon was
only going to last a couple of years. That was a great message in terms of what
people wanted to hear. But it was not true. Those were not God's words. They
were his words. And just as there were always false prophets in the past, now
false teachers have arisen in the church. And Peter reflects back, that's always
been the case. This has been happening in the past, and Peter says the same
thing is happening now and will go on to happen in the future. False teachers
will bring in destructive heresies, secretly bring in destructive heresies. And
you can read the New Testament and wonder sometimes, why is there so much space
given to false teachers? Is it really that big a phenomenon? Is it that big a
problem? There's only one New Testament book, Philemon, which is quite short,
that does not address false teaching on some level. The other 26 all touch on
it. I think we could gather from that alone that false teaching is very
significant, something that the Bible takes very seriously. And this passage is
very helpful to us because it helps us see a couple things. It helps us see what
a false teacher does, and it helps us see what a false teacher looks like. The
false teachers here are described as those who secretly bring in destructive
heresies. So we have to say, okay, what is a heresy? What is really, what really
constitutes a heresy? In the Christian church, a heresy is a teaching that is at
odds with a firmly established and accepted doctrine as taught in the Bible.
I'll just say that one more time. I see some of you are taking notes. A teaching
that is at odds with firmly established and accepted doctrine as taught in the
Bible. I'll try to give you some examples starting from the Bible first. So in
Acts 15, you read about a party of the Pharisees who were teaching Gentiles that
the entire Mosaic law needed to be observed and they had to be circumcised if
they were to be saved. That was a heresy. That Jewish observance and
circumcision was required to be right with God for Gentiles. That was a heresy.
In 2 Corinthians 11, the Apostle Paul talks about his opponents who proclaim a
different gospel and a different Jesus. Paul's opponents seem to have condemned
him and criticized him because of some of his physical suffering and hardship.
So that heresy may also have involved the promise that following Jesus, if you
were doing it correctly, would also involve health and prosperity. In Galatians
1.7, we read, there are some who trouble you who want to distort the gospel of
Christ. Again, in that case, that had to do with Jewish observance. But these
false teachers are undercutting the apostolic preaching of justification by
faith in Christ alone. Now that did not stop just in the New Testament church.
Over the years, there's always been heresy present in the church. Historically,
there were the Gnostics, they were heretics, because they denied God as creator
and denied the goodness of the created world. Then there were the Arians. They'd
said that Jesus was not fully God, that he was a created being. So you wonder,
those are just historical examples. You might wonder, what is a heresy today?
Does that stuff really happen? It's a word we don't really want to throw around
lightly. A heresy is not every subtle little disagreement that different
Christian traditions or denominations or two people or two churches might have.
Because there are some people who, under the label or the guise of discernment,
think that it is their job to expose every single error in other churches, every
error that they believe exists when really they're just blasting people who seem
to disagree with them. We don't want to be heresy hunters in that way. But we do
want to be exactly as serious as Peter is about this topic. So let me talk for a
moment about heresies today. If you go about half a mile down the road on Maple
Road, you'll come to 1424 Maple Road, where there's a Mormon church, a church of
the Latter-day Saints. I'll just use this as one example. Mormons believe that
Jesus and Lucifer were spirit brothers, both created by the Heavenly Father.
That's a heresy. That has no biblical foundation. Closer to home, closer to
evangelical and charismatic churches, you'll often hear what's called prosperity
teaching, which is the idea that if you are following Jesus, the blessed life,
the one that Jesus died for, is so that you could have health and wealth and
prosperity in this life. That is a twisting of scripture. It's a heresy. You
might wonder, why is it that it seems like so many people in the church today
are so confused about what the Bible teaches about marriage and sexuality? Well,
it's because false teaching has infiltrated the church. Or you might be aware
that in recent years, in the last few years, there's been a big — there seems to
be, some people think, I think you could probably debate this statistically, but
there could be that there's been a resurgence both in Catholicism and in the
Orthodox Church, particularly among young men. And there are a number of
interesting reasons why that might be. And if some of those young men are
craving things like tradition and structure and authority and direction, I would
be very sympathetic to that. But what the Catholic Church teaches about papal
authority or the elevation of tradition alongside scripture or the veneration of
Mary or any one of those things — I could keep going — those are heresies. When
the Orthodox Church teaches its adherents, its worshippers, to venerate icons
and to do that as a way to pray and worship, that is a heresy. So those are
heresies that we see, some of which existed long ago, and it continues today.
There's always been false teaching in the big C Church universal. This passage
always tells us not only that those will exist, but look at what false teachers
look like. Look at how Peter describes them. First, he says, they are secretive
and devious. Their agenda is not initially evident, secretly bringing in
destructive heresies. They will lead many people into sensuality because they
themselves are given to sensuality. The text says many will follow their
sensuality. The tendency toward sexual sin is a trademark of false teachers, in
all its various forms. In the time that Peter was writing, people were casting
doubt on the second coming of Christ. And the implication was, you all don't
need to be so morally uptight. Christ isn't coming back. They are greedy and
exploitive. In their greed, they will exploit you, this text says. A false
teacher is not a shepherd looking out for the good of the people that is
entrusted to their care. They're greedy. People are a means to an end. And that
end is their financial gain. They will exploit people for that purpose. What's
the end result of all this? Peter says it here. Because of them, the way of
truth will be blasphemed. There are so many examples of this. Whether it's
televangelists who exploit people for money by promising healing, or it's
preachers who are manipulating their flocks, or it's spiritual leaders who are
leading a secret double life of sensuality. There are so many examples of this
that I don't even really need to give them. It's depressing to think about. But
the end result is the way of truth will be blasphemed. In other words, people
will mock Christianity and despise it. And our witness is affected because of
the consequence of this false teaching. And this has happened throughout the
history of the church. It does happen currently. And sadly, I'm sure many of you
are sitting here thinking not only that that has happened, that it happens
conceptually, you're thinking that has happened to me. If you want to know how
this kind of cocktail of deception, sensuality, greed, exploitation work
together, you really don't have to go very far from home. You might have read
about this just this week. About 65 years ago, land was donated down in East
Aurora, and funds were raised up for the creation of a Catholic seminary called
Christ the King, which existed up until recently. You probably all know this,
that right now the Catholic diocese is currently trying to raise up about 150
million to settle with clergy abuse survivors. So as part of that, that property
in East Aurora was just sold for $4.2 million to a cult. So now we have a cult
in East Aurora, a worldwide cult headquarters, and the survivors, the abuse
survivors, are not being compensated by the Vatican, which has only $10 or $15
billion in their holdings. No, it's the gifts of well-intentioned parishioners
that were given in good faith and are now being used to compensate the very
grievous sexual sin of the priests. And Peter says, their condemnation from long
ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep. So he wants his readers to
know, don't be mistaken. God is going to bring judgment on these false teachers.
The corruption within the church is a depressing thing to think about. Peter's
goal is not simply to say false teachers will be judged. He's also providing a
strong word of encouragement to these churches. Look now at this second point in
verses four through 10. We've seen what false teachers do, what they look like,
and we've seen that it's nothing new. But now we see that God knows how to
rescue. Look at verses four through 10. For if God did not spare angels when
they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of gloomy
darkness, to be kept until the judgment. If he did not spare the ancient world,
but preserve Noah, a herald of righteousness with seven others, when he brought
a flood upon the world of the ungodly. If by turning the cities of Sodom and
Gomorrah to ashes, he condemned them to extinction, making them an example of
what is going to happen to the ungodly. And if he rescued righteous lot, greatly
distressed by the sensual conduct of the wicked, as that righteous man lived
among them day after day, he was tormenting his righteous soul over the lawless
deeds that he saw and heard. Then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from
trials and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment,
and especially those who indulge in the lust of defiling passion and despise
authority. So Peter starts out by making, he makes a point by the repeated use
of this word if, if you read the sentence in Greek, it's one long run on
sentence. And it helps us see these examples are meant to all hang together. So
there's four ifs in a row, and I'm going to walk through them quickly to see how
Peter's argument works, how his line of reasoning works. The idea here is that
Peter's moving from like a minor premise to a major premise. In other words, if
point A is true, how much more is point B true? It's kind of like if you sit,
tell, so if someone tells you like they really like the chicken wings at
Domino's, you'll be like, if you like that, let me show you this, right? It
built this idea is it's building from a smaller thing to a greater thing. So if
number one, Peter says, if God didn't spare angels when they sinned, but cast
them into hell and committed them to change the gloomy darkness to be kept until
judgment, that reference to angel sinning is probably, probably referring to the
sons of God, the angelic creatures in Genesis six. But the point is they
rebelled against God's authority, and God did not fail to judge those angelic
creatures. The second example, if God didn't spare the ancient world, but he
preserved Noah, a herald of righteousness and seven others when he brought a
flood upon the world of the ungodly. So think about this. We know this story, or
many of you know the story in reverent fear, having heard God's word, Noah
constructs an ark. He is completely out of step with the wickedness around him,
with the prevailing culture that ark took decades to build. People mocked him.
And if God did not spare the ancient world, but he preserved Noah, a herald of
righteousness, the whole society was given over to wickedness. Noah was
completely out of step with the culture surrounding him, yet God brought
judgment on the ancient world and preserved Noah and his family. The third
example here is if God turned Sodom and Gomorrah into ashes, but saved Lot,
these cities were absolutely flooded with sexual immorality, and Lot lived
within that context, but was not participating in it. In fact, it distressed
him. I know that when we think of Lot's life as a whole, we don't probably think
of him as righteous in a composite. But what's probably specifically in mind is
that when men came to him looking for shelter, or angels who he thought to be
men, came to him looking for shelter, he righteously tried to protect them. And
God brought judgment upon those cities. And that fiery judgment is an example to
us of what will happen to the ungodly. It's a warning to us who might be tempted
to think, God is not really concerned about people's behavior. God is not really
ever going to judge. Isn't God just love? That is an incredibly prevalent idea
and false teaching in our day that God will never actually judge. And Peter
would have us look at the angels, at the flood, at Sodom and Gomorrah, and say,
what would make you think that? What would make you think that? Those two cities
are turned into ash. And God rescued Lot and got him out of there. So what Peter
is saying as both a warning and a comfort to these churches, moving from premise
A to premise B is this. If all those Old Testament examples that you are
familiar with actually happened, if that's true, then look at verse nine. Then
the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from their trials and to keep the
unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment. The Lord knows how to
judge the rebellious and rescue the righteous. He knows how to do that. This has
been going on for a long time. This was taking place in the days of your father,
says Peter. And it will be this way for those who are waiting Jesus to return.
Think about Peter knowing that his departure is at hand and knowing that there
has been and there will continue to be false teaching. And think about his
desire to establish these people. What a comfort it would be for him to know the
Lord knows how to judge the rebellious and the Lord knows how to rescue the
righteous. He's been doing it for a long time. He knows how. And think about the
comfort that it would be for these churches, knowing that Peter will not be with
them. They're going to have to function without his leadership, without his
presence. And knowing that greedy and sensual people will infiltrate their
ranks, they would have been reminded the Lord knows how to get us through. He
knows how. He's been doing it for his people for a long time. And for us today,
think about what this tells us about who God is. Our God is a rescuer. This was
a source of great confidence for the psalmist when he wrote this Psalm 71. In
you, O Lord, do I take refuge. Let me never be put to shame in your
righteousness. Deliver me and rescue me. Incline your ear to me and save me. Be
to me a rock of refuge to which I may continually come. You've given the command
to save me for you are my rock and my fortress. God is and has always been a
rescuer. When the Apostle Paul was at the end of his life, he said, the Lord
will rescue me from every evil deed and bring me safely into his heavenly
kingdom. The Lord knows how to rescue. And where do we see that most clearly?
Where do we see that put on full display more than on the cross, where he
rescues his people from the power and the penalty of sin and death? Our God
knows how to rescue and everyone who trusts in Jesus can find their rescue in
him. The Lord knows how to rescue. So when we think about this, when we think
about this text for ourselves, there's a couple simple points of application.
And the first would be this. Are we able to discern false teachers? We don't
need to be heresy hunters. But we do need to be discerning and understand the
difference between minor differences and debates and the twisting of major
Christian doctrines. We need to be people grounded enough in the scripture so
that we know those differences and are able to discern false teaching. But
correlated with this, we also ask ourselves not just like, do I have a good
apologetic answer for every little thing that people may bring up? But am I
standing firm? Am I standing firm in the gospel? Think about what Paul said to
the church at Corinth. He said, I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I
preached to you, which you received, in which you stand and by which you are
being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you. Are you standing
firm in the gospel, in the message of Christ's death, burial and resurrection?
Are you standing firm? We need to stand firm in the gospel that Christ died for
our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried and that he was
raised. We don't need to be overly bothered, rattled, hand wringing, shaken or
upset by what we observe. We need to remember that the Lord knows how to rescue
the righteous from all trials, and he knows how to judge the rebellious. Let's
pray. Lord God, we thank you for your word. Lord we pray that we would receive
it with humility and meekness. Lord we pray that you would protect our church,
we pray, from false teachers and false teaching. We pray that you would protect
us and give us discernment. And Lord, we thank you for this truth, that you are
able to rescue your people and that you are faithful to judge the rebellious. So
Lord, I pray that we would be both warned and encouraged by your word this
morning. Help us to stand firm in the gospel, in the truths that we've received.
In Jesus' name, Amen.