Sermon for Lord's Day January 22, 2023 Luke 21:1-4

verses of the 21st chapter of Luke in your hearing this morning.

If you would, stand with us to honor the reading of God's word. As well, we are trying something a little bit different.

Sir put a speaker in the nursery for families when they have to go in there and can't be in here for the sermon.

So we're going to try to go with the microphone on and if I'm too loud, you know, just kind of, you know, just make some kind of a sign.

But in any case, I'll try to adjust as we go, maybe step back a little bit further if need be.

But Luke chapter 21 verses 1 through 4, these are the words of the living

God. Jesus looked up and saw the rich putting their gifts into the offering box and he saw a poor widow put in two small copper coins.

And he said, truly, I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them for they all contributed out of their abundance.

But she out of her poverty put in all that she had to live on.

Greg, would you care to lead us to the Lord in prayer? Heavenly Father, merciful God, we give you thanks that we have this time to assemble together and to worship you with one another, with the churches who are currently assembled together anywhere, but also with the saints in heaven and heavenly hosts together.

God, we ask that your spirit be with us this day, with us in understanding and wisdom, bless

Pastor Claude as he preaches the same thing before him, the blessing that he is, that he proclaims your word in truth.

God, we just ask that you break down our pride and submit to those who are above us who are ultimately submitting them to you and to your word.

We ask these things in Jesus' name.

Amen. Amen. Amen. So if you are taking notes today and want to put down kind of a brief outline of where we're going to go, don't necessarily have a title for the sermon for this passage of scripture today.

But I do have some points that we're going to follow through. So the first thing that we're going to look at this morning is just we're going to make a brief examination of verse one through four, looking at the context, asking ourselves some questions on that.

Secondly, we're going to be giving a brief explanation of what

I'm very strongly using very strong language, but intentional language, a brief explanation of the damnable practice of the scribes and the

Pharisees, because it truly is a damnable practice that they set forth.

Thirdly, we're going to be looking at, take a brief look at church history to see that this practice, this act, this damnable practice that was perpetrated by the

Pharisees is a damnable practice that is still being practiced in churches throughout history and even in our very day and time.

And last of all, fourthly, we're going to, by way of application, look at what the scripture says about what we can do about these things that take place.

These things that are beyond our control, but we do have control in how we respond and how we react in these instances.

So, first and foremost, notice here in the text, verse one through four.

Now, some may have been taught that this passage is about giving until it hurts, and some think that this passage is about sacrificial giving.

However, I would argue today that this passage is much more than a simple statement about giving from the heart out of love for the

Lord. It's much more than that. I'm not saying it's less than that, but I'm saying it's much more than that.

Because that principle is definitely set forth here in the text, but these three sentences that make up the first four verses of this 21st chapter, these first three sentences serve as a perspective change to us as readers concerning what is taking place in the text.

Now, what do I mean by that? Well, very simply, by way of analogy, let me take that statement of perspective change and kind of apply it to if you like to watch

TV or movies. How many of you have ever watched a TV show or a movie that the perspective never changes?

The camera's set in one place, it's fixed, and it never moves, right? That's kind of challenging, right?

So what happens in videography and filmography, in making TV shows and movies, the events are happening all at once, but many times the camera angle changes.

And so these first four verses, three sentences in all, we see a perspective change happening.

The events that are taking place aren't changing, but we see a different perspective. We have kind of a different angle on these events.

So what Jesus says to his disciples, to those who are listening here in this context, what

Jesus says is another declaration of the judgment that was to come upon that generation.

Let's keep that in our minds. Remember, as we have read previously in Luke's Gospel, we're not talking about the end of time as we know it, but the end of this period, this time, this age that Christ promised that judgment was going to come in that generation.

Keep that in mind. So last week, we read, you remember in verse 45 through 47, we looked at that text and we got greater context from Matthew chapter 22, and we saw

Jesus denouncing the scribes and the Pharisees. He rebuked them, he denounced them, he spoke against them.

And in verse 46, just two verses up from where we are today, notice the words of the

Lord. He said, beware of the scribes. And he said this, who like to walk around in long robes, who love greetings in the marketplaces, and they love the best seats in the synagogues, and they love the places of honor at feasts.

And then verse 47, keep in mind what he says here, who devour widows' houses and for a pretense make long prayers.

And then he said, these will receive the greater condemnation. And he placed this emphasis on the great evil that was being perpetrated by these scribes and these

Pharisees, particularly named here in verse 47 as devouring widows' houses.

Who do we see first here in the text? We see a widow coming, right?

A widow putting in her two mites. You could modernize it and say her two cents, however the case may be, whatever translation that you're reading, it's important for us to know that what is taking place here is a connection between what has been said and what is going to be said later in this chapter, which we'll get into,

Lord willing, next week. So, we see a connection. Verses 1 through 4, when

I finally got this this week, it was like, duh, did you know that verse 46 and 47 of the 20th chapter come before verse 1 through 4 of the 21st chapter, and verse 5 through 38 and the remainder of this chapter come after that?

So, logically speaking, this is in between, right? So, many times we want to take the chapter breaks and we want to assume that there's some kind of whole different thing that's going to take place and a whole different idea that's going on.

In reality, it's not a different idea. It's not a different scene. They're still in the temple.

As a matter of fact, let's look at the scene here. Let's look at what's going on and ask ourselves some context questions.

So, question number one, where are they? In the temple.

Who is speaking? Jesus. What is being spoken of?

And I know these may seem elementary, but for me, these help me understand and to clarify what's happening.

So, what is being spoken of? That's our next question. What is being spoken of?

Well, quite simply, Jesus is making an observation about how the rich give what they have left over, but the widow is giving essentially all that she has.

That's the observation that Jesus is making, but it's in the same frame.

It's in the same context. It's in the very next breath, literally the very next breath, that he denounces the

Pharisees for devouring widows' houses. It's in the very next statement there.

So, Matthew Henry said this, that charity to the poor is the main matter in religion is true.

He said, Our Lord Jesus took all occasions to commend it and to recommend it. He had just mentioned the barbarity of the scribes who devoured poor widows' houses, and perhaps, as Matthew Henry said, this is designed as an aggravation of what he just told them.

Kind of like pouring salt in the wound. How many of you loved it when you were a child and you had a wreck and you ran to your mom and you just wanted her to make it better?

What did she do? She got out a bottle of alcohol. You've got bare skin, nearly bone showing.

She pours alcohol on you, and then she smacks you for crying more.

We can all relate with that. So, Jesus basically is pouring salt in the wound here.

He's not letting off the gas pedal, if you would have it, with these Pharisees and with these scribes.

And so, Matthew Henry goes on to say, it's designed as an aggravation of what he just said, that the poor widows were the best benefactors.

He's making a point that the widows were the best benefactors to the public funds of which the scribes had the disposal.

This poor widow, in other words, this poor widow was putting in all that she had when she ought to have been taken care of from this treasury.

But this treasury was going continually to the scribes and Pharisees, and the heart of the problem was greed.

It was greed, and it was pride. Now, we can argue, we can discuss, we can arm -wrestle, whatever you want to do about the amount here.

More than none, what we found that the denarius was a day's wage, but what she gave was two small copper coins.

Some versions say mites, some use other translations. But basically, this was one 128th of a day's wage that this poor widow gave.

So the amount there isn't necessarily so significant, but it is important to know how small in comparison it was to a day's wage in that time.

It seemed as though it was a small thing. So the question comes next.

Why would Jesus speak about this? Why would Jesus say what he is saying here in the text?

And the reason is because the widows, remember again, the widows were just mentioned in his previous sentence, in his last breath.

The widows were mentioned before concerning having their houses devoured by the scribes and Pharisees.

Now, what does it mean that they devoured widows' houses?

Again, the words mean things and the meanings of words are important. So what does this word devour mean?

It means this. To devour is a forcible appropriation or forcible taking of widows' property.

So this is what was taking place. Under the guise of religion, under the guise of righteousness, under the guise of the name of God, these widows were capitalizing on the poverty of the widows and literally taking their houses from them.

What little bit they had, they were taking from them. This devouring on its face may have seemed to us, it seems evil and it seems wicked and it should very well seem evil and it should be wicked.

And we should understand that these Pharisees, these scribes, what they did was that they prayed upon the fatherless and they prayed upon the widows.

They prayed upon the weak, they prayed upon the poor. Now, what does it mean to pray upon?

We're not talking about a folding our hands and saying, Lord, bless these people. Like wild animals in the bush, in the woods, in the forest, where the dominant animal sneaks silently, where the lion sneaks silently up to its prey, to the gazelle or whatever it may be in the wild.

The lion sneaks up to its prey. The prey, unbeknownst to them, is about to get eat.

And the lion pounces, the prey is eaten and it's destroyed. And they did not see this coming.

This was the practice of the scribes and the Pharisees in this day and time.

So Jesus rightfully points out that what is being given by this poor widow is a blessing and what's being given by the rich is simply out of their abundance, out of their over and above, rather than thoughtful, loving giving to the

Lord going on. So why would Jesus speak this? And what does the word devour mean?

Again, the word devour means forcible appropriation of a widow's property. The Pharisees prayed upon the widows and some may say, some may say this, some may say that it is such a shame that quote unquote religious men would act in such a manner.

And you would be right on the face of that statement saying it's wrong for religious men to act in such a manner.

The issue is this, they were not good religious men. They were not good religious men and women in that day.

For if they were, they would not have acted in such a manner. Jesus called, what did

Jesus remember last week in Matthew 22? What is the term Jesus repeatedly used for the scribes and Pharisees as a synonym?

He said, woe to the scribes, Pharisees, hypocrites.

This is what he called them. He said, he was saying to them that they were hypocrites.

They were pretenders. They were, and even more strongly put, they were godless, irreligious, heathen.

Now, how is that? How are you going to receive that? If you are constantly, if you and I are constantly told, oh, you're a good person at heart, you're fantastic.

God loves you just the way that you are. Just keep on keeping on and the

Lord will bless you. Friends, imagine if you come upon a preacher who preaches the doctrines of grace, when all you've heard your entire life is that you're so good, you're so grand, you're so great,

God loves you. And then somebody tells you that you are not good, you are not grand, you are not great, you are not fantastic, you're not wonderful, that you are a sinner, that you're vile, that you're wretched, that you're poor, that you're naked, that you're blind, that you're helpless, and that you're hopeless when it comes before a holy standing before God.

And they were constantly thinking of themselves to be grander and greater and more holy than everyone else, when in reality they were irreligious, godless, heathen.

Now, I use the word religion, and I use that word intentionally because, please, church, do not be afraid of this word religion.

Religion is a good word, and I'll tell you why it's a good word, because it's a Bible word.

And I know, again, Andy Stanley's apparently up and about saying the Bible says it's not the best place for us to start when we're teaching people about Jesus, but I'm going to argue with him, and I'm going to say this forthright, the best place that you can start to know about God, to know about Jesus Christ, to know about heaven and to know about hell, to know about right and wrong, is to go to the book itself, the

Bible. The 66 books of the Old and the New Testaments.

So religion, religion is still a good word because it is a Bible word.

In James chapter 1, verse 19 through 27, this is the word of God.

James writes this, know this, my beloved brothers, let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger, for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.

Therefore, put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness, and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.

But be doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.

For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like one who looks intently at his natural face in the mirror.

For he looks at himself, and he goes away, and at once he forgets what he was like.

But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.

If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person's religion is worthless.

So there is a good religion and there is a bad religion. But James says this person's religion is worthless if they do not bridle their tongue.

And he said religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this, to visit orphans and widows in their afflictions, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.

This is the context in which the scribes and the Pharisees should have been abiding by.

This is the context by which you and I as believers in Jesus Christ should be abiding by.

Now, what went on with the scribes and Pharisees was nothing short of a treacherous act.

Treachery still takes place today in Christendom. But be sure of this, that though the treachery takes place in Christendom today, it is not

Christian at all. This stealing, this fleecing of the saints of God is what was taking place here.

This fleecing of the poor widows, those who were uneducated, unlearned, unknowing, who were unaware and who were genuinely ignorant because they did not have access like we have access today.

They were ignorant of the truth of God's Word and they were essentially fleeced.

Do you know what it is to be fleeced? The definition of fleece is to do this, to obtain a great deal of money from someone, typically by overcharging or swindling them.

That's what it means to be fleeced. I would say that there's a great deal of fleecing that has taken place in all of our lives over our lives.

Hopefully we've not been the fleecers. I'm sorry if you've had to be the fleecy.

God help you if you are a fleecer. You should not fleece the people of God.

So as an example to understand again what Jesus said, he saw they put in two copper coins.

He said, truly I tell you this poor widow has put in more than all of them for they all contributed out of their abundance but she out of her poverty put in all that she had to live on.

In context, you've got to continually go back to verse 46 and 47 and understand the connection that's being made here.

Jesus is rebuking the Pharisees for their activity of devouring widows' houses at the same time there's a widow that comes in that gives very little to nothing.

However, as a demonstration, it's almost an act of providence that this little widow comes in and puts in her two cents into the treasury here.

She comes in, Jesus makes this statement and again, some people may say and we may ask ourselves, well sure this went on then but how does it go on today?

And for that we want to take a look very briefly at church history. Church history is so important, church.

It is very important and something that we need to be aware of because what took place here took place a hundred years later, a hundred years after that, so on and so forth and sadly in 2023 it is still taking place.

This fleecing of the saints of God, for example, during the days of the

Reformation in the 1500s. Miss Lincoln isn't here.

I think she was born just a little bit after the 1500s. I said if she hears this she'll laugh too.

But during the days of the Reformation the Roman Catholic Church set out to raise funds to build

St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. Their primary mode of fund collection, not fun collection but fund collection, their primary mode of offering taking if you would have it, it happened to be the fleecing of the common people.

The Roman Catholic Church did this. Now how did they swindle the people? The answer is simple.

They had a man named Johann Tetzel. Johann Tetzel was apparently a good salesman.

He led a campaign by selling what are called indulgences to the common uneducated folk, to the folks who had little to no knowledge of the scriptures.

And this is why it's important for us to know the scriptures. Because if you know the scriptures you won't be taken by the religious swindlers of our day, by the liars that propagate the truth of the gospel as though it's something that it's biblically absolutely not.

You will not be deceived and not be taken away by these things. But if you do not know the scriptures you will certainly be taken captive by the lies that they tell.

Now what Johann Tetzel did in selling indulgences, he basically played on the emotions and the ignorance of the common folks.

Superstition was rampant in that day. Guess what? Superstition is rampant in our day.

Doctrines like purgatory were superb for keeping citizens in fear and ignorance lent strength to wild ideas about demons and witches.

Now what do we hear in Christendom today? We hear a large focus on demons and witches.

We hear a large focus on superstitious ideas. We see that even today in the day that we live is no different today.

The same problems, the same troubles, the same trials are faced by people because guess what?

People never change. People always stand in need of help.

People always stand in need of hope. And get this, people always stand in need of salvation by and through the person and word of Jesus Christ and him alone.

So they prayed on the uneducated folk. And what were indulgences?

By definition, just to give you this so that you don't have any questions on this, what were indulgences?

They were basically, simply put, pardons. They were handwritten pardons from purgatory.

So if you had a family member, purgatory, by the way, is an unbiblical doctrine.

There is no in between heaven and hell. To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. If you die lost, you will find yourself in hell.

If you die saved, you'll find yourself in the presence of the Lord. So this pardon from purgatory was what was sold and it could be bought for money at different levels, different amounts of money would get you different privileges and different pardons for purgatory for your family members.

The citizens of Europe under the rule of the Roman Catholic Church were kept in great ignorance.

As I said there, they held to these ideas, but Johann Tetzel fed on their superstitions, he fed on their fears, and it was very easy for Tetzel to convince people who believed.

And again, we hear these same types of things today. He found it easy to prey on people who felt that their dear mother, their departed wife, or their beloved child were at that very moment burning in flames in purgatory, and if they would just pay money, they could release them from that torment.

Now that is sad, but it is a sad truth and it is a sad reality that great numbers of people bought into that lie.

Now, in a sense, the selling of indulgences, also in a backhanded way, was a way to get the poor to willingly pay their taxes.

They wouldn't say that that's what the money was going to, they wouldn't say that that's what it was for, but they would say, oh, if you do this good deed, we have on the authority of the

Pope that you will be able to release your family members from purgatory and they will not have to suffer the fires of hell.

Now what is sad here in this, the Roman Catholic Church to this day still claims this.

They claim that Jesus, Mary, and the saints did so many good works that left behind what's called merit, quote unquote merit, that they didn't need.

And they call this the treasury of merit. And it was like these pardons, again in simple terms, you can understand it this way, they were like checks written on the treasury of merit.

Everybody does know this, right? When I was little I didn't realize this. When you went to the store with your mom and you wanted something and your mom looked at you and said, we ain't got no money.

I looked at my mom, I said, just write a check for it. Guess what?

If you don't have money in the bank, it don't do you no good to write a check. And so what these pardons were, were basically checks written on the account of the treasury of merit, which they weren't possessors of.

Their names weren't on the account. There is one who gives saving merit, and that is

Jesus Christ. Mary, the mother of God, as it's so often termed,

Mary, the mother of God, did not go to heaven by any other means or by any other way than the death, burial, and the resurrection of her son for the propitiation of her sins.

She was not holy, she was not righteous in and of herself. The saints in and of themselves are not holy, they're not righteous.

Listen, I know some awful good people. Sir in here this morning, he's in a bad shape physically with his knee, but I'll go ahead and talk about him while he ain't here too.

Man, you talk about a good man. But guess what?

As good as he is, he ain't got left over goodness for me to reach in and pull some of that out.

Matter of fact, in and of himself, he ain't got no goodness at all. His righteousness, and he will tell you, is of Jesus Christ in him alone.

So it's sad that this kind of evil took place. It took place in the context of the passage that we're looking at.

It took place in the 1500s, which led Martin Luther.

Again, let me say this, we don't agree with everything Martin Luther did and everything Martin Luther said.

There are a lot of things that we are challenged with, but he did some pretty good things. One of the major good things that he did was this.

He got riled up about this selling of indulgences by the Roman Catholic Church. He decided he was going to write 95 statements and he was going to post them on the church door at Wittenberg for discussion amongst the theologians and the scholars to talk about.

Well, he got in a lot of trouble for what he wrote. Long story short, had to go on the run, feared for his life, a lot of things, but he was able providentially by God's grace and by God's mercy to translate the

Latin Bible, which no one could read but the priests. He translated the

Latin Bible into what was referred to as the vulgar language of the common people.

He translated it into German so the common man could read God's holy word.

But these are some of the things that he said about indulgences in his 95 statements. His statements were both practical and spiritual in nature, so just a few of them.

He said this, Christians are to be taught that unless they have more than they need, that they are bound to keep back what is necessary for their own families and by no means to squander it on pardons.

Plain language, don't waste your money on a pardon.

God has blessed you with what he has given you so that you can love and care for your family.

The Pope don't need the Basilica, but your family needs to eat dinner.

Amen? Your family needs clothes on its back. So he was riled up about this.

He goes on to say this, Christians are to be taught that if the Pope knew the exactions of the pardoned preachers, he would rather that St.

Peter's church should go to ashes than that it should be built up with the skin, flesh, and the bones of his sheep.

Now, obviously he feels strongly about this and against this. Obviously.

And he's taking some liberty. Obvious sarcasm against something else you may not know.

Luther was probably one of the most coarse of the reformers of the folks that we have in church history.

He was always talking about Putin and everything else. He was always publicly talking about that stuff.

But nonetheless, he was very direct, very straightforward in his speech.

He went on to make a very sarcastic assumption in one of his next statements when he said this, it must be the intention of the

Pope that if pardons, which are a very small thing, are celebrated with one bell, with single processions, and with single ceremonies, then certainly the gospel, which is the very greatest thing, should be preached with a hundred bells, with a hundred processions, and with a hundred ceremonies.

He said it's a waste of time for these pardons. It's a very small thing.

It's something that shouldn't be given time and attention to. But the gospel should be given attention with the most greatest and wonderful of pomp and glory.

The gospel is the power of God unto salvation. He went on to say this, the indulgences which the preachers cry as the greatest graces are known to be truly such insofar as they promote gain.

Yet they are in truth the very smallest graces compared with the grace of God and the piety of the cross.

He goes on, to wit, why does not the Pope, if he has this power, and tell me if this does not sound familiar today, why does not the

Pope empty purgatory for the sake of holy love and of the dire need of the souls that are there, if he redeems an infinite number of souls for the sake of miserable money with which to build a church?

The former reasons would be most just and the latter is most trivial.

I ask you, does this ring true? Because this is what we hear in the word of faith message in the world today.

This is what we hear in the prosperity gospel message preached today. This is something to raise to the word of faith teachers who claim that you can have the power if you're just filled with the

Holy Spirit, you can have the same power and do the same things that Jesus did and heal people.

The problem posed to them is this, if you have that power, why are there still hospitals?

Why are there still the sick in our world? This is a damnable practice that is still practiced in Christendom today.

Luther went on to say this, away then with all those prophets who say to the people of Christ, peace, peace, when there is no peace.

Christians are to be exhorted that they be diligent in following Christ their head through penalties, through death and through hell.

And thus, thus Christians be confident of entering into heaven rather through many tribulations than through the assurance of peace.

In the 1500s, this was the stance of Martin Luther. And this is a biblical stance.

We are not to be proclaiming peace, peace, when there is no peace. For outside of Jesus Christ, there is no peace whatsoever.

The modern day prophets, I watched it this week, the modern day quote unquote prophets have already begun declaring shaking, shaking is a big buzzword, prosperity.

They're proclaiming and declaring peace, so on and so forth. And yet, in 2023, they fail to recognize that peace is not found or had or gotten in decrees and declarations of men and of women.

What these people are is this, they are nothing more than glorified soothsayers who are sailing under the flag of Satan, and they're calling it

Christianity. Glorified soothsayers who are sailing under the flag of Satan himself, and they're calling it

Christianity. My friends, we must know the difference. Peace is found in one man, and that is the man

Christ Jesus. How do we know this? Well, the Bible tells us so. In Ephesians chapter 2 verse 11 through 18, in closing, this is what the word of God says,

Therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh were called the uncircumcision by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands.

Remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, that you were alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, that you had no hope and that you were without God in the world.

That here's the good news. But now, in Christ Jesus, you who were once afar off have been brought near by the blood of Christ, for he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in the flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in the place of two, so making peace, and that he might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility.

This contrast that he's making is Jew and Gentile, and he goes on and he says this,

And he came and he preached peace to you who were afar off,

Gentiles, and to you who were near, Jews. He came and preached peace to you who were far off, and peace to those who were near, for through him, through Jesus, through our

Lord Jesus Christ, we both, Jew and Gentile alike, have access in one spirit to the

Father. This is how you attain peace. You attain peace not by giving your money to this organization or to that organization upon the promise of blessings being sent your way.

You obtain peace by repenting of your sin and by believing on the Lord Jesus Christ as your righteousness.

By application. This is kind of a so what,

Pastor. How do we apply this? This is it. Three things that you need to do, that you and I alike need to do.

Number one, stay on guard. Don't let down your guard.

Don't quit studying the scriptures. Don't quit attending church.

Don't quit attending Sunday school where you learn things, great things that are helpful and beneficial to you.

Don't quit attending Sunday service. Don't forsake the assembling of yourselves together as the manner of some is, because what that does, it not only increases your learning, but it increases accountability.

It helps us each and every one. It helps our accountability, and it helps us because we are able to encourage one another in the faith.

So stay on guard. Number two, stay in the word. Stay in the word of God.

Do not neglect the scriptures. And lastly, stay in prayer.

And I'll leave you with what the scripture says about these things. 2 Peter 2. This is what the word of God says.

Paul writing to the dispersed, scattered abroad, the dispersed saints of God scattered in the face of persecution.

And this is what he said in their day. Probably it was written in A .D.

50 to 60, somewhere there about. But he said this, 2 Peter 2, 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.

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 preserved 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, 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 that he heard.

The scripture says this, 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 who despise authority.

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, these false prophets, these false teachers, like irrational animals, creatures of instinct, born to be caught and destroyed, blaspheming about matters of which they themselves are ignorant, will also be destroyed in their destruction.

Suffering wrong is the wage for their wrongdoing. They count it pleasure to revel in the daytime.

And Peter says this, they are blots and they are 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. They are accursed children. Forsaking the right way, they have gone astray.

They have followed the way of Balaam, the son of Baal, who loved gain from wrongdoing.

But he was rebuked for his own transgression. A speechless donkey spoke with human voice and restrained the prophet's madness.

These, these are waterless springs and mists driven by a storm.

For them the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved 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 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, and they are again entangled in them and overcome, the last state of them are worse 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.

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.

Stand with us if you would, church. Again, I would exhort you and encourage you.

Stay on guard against false teaching, against false doctrine. Stay in the scriptures, for it's in the scriptures that you will know the difference between right and wrong.

And continue to pray. We are taught in the scriptures to pray without ceasing.