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Having a conversation around a campfire with his grandson who's about 25 years old. As they sit around the campfire, the chatter moves from casual conversation to a conversation about things that matter.
The grandfather tells the grandson about the great tales of his life. He tells about the triumphs and the tragedies. And he tells of God's sustaining grace toward him during these nine decades. While the grandson enjoyed hearing about the triumphs, as time went on after this conversation, he couldn't get his mind off of the tragedies that his grandfather told him about.
In these tragedies were included untimely deaths, people who died in their 20s, 30s, 40s, and 50s, long before old age. But the tragedies that stuck with him the most were those related to those who walked away from their relationship with Jesus Christ.
They went their own way. And they made shipwreck of their faith as 1 Timothy 1 .19 warns that some would do. Not only were the tragedies of those who walked away from the faith, but even those who became useless to the Lord because for whatever reason, whatever sin it was, they were sidelined from useful service to the Lord.
The sins were forgiven, but the consequences that go with the sin went with the person till the end of his or her days. The grandfather told his grandson around the campfire that life is a minefield. And at any moment, someone may take a wrong step and the bomb will go off.
Many that he knew walked through that minefield and either were destroyed or greatly damaged. The grandfather told the grandson 1 Corinthians 10 .12, take heed lest ye fall. We all need to understand that this life produces many tragedies and we don't want to be one of them.
We want to be those who triumphantly make our way to the finish line of the life of faith. Where we can say along with the Apostle Paul, as he did in 2 Timothy 4, I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race.
Henceforth, there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that day. And not only to me, but also to all who have loved his appearing. As the grandson thought about this conversation that he had with his grandfather, these examples would prove effective for him as it inspired him to be sober-minded as he went through the life of faith.
Scripture too, many times, uses examples of past tragedies to warn the readers about what has happened in the past and not to be like those people who failed in some way, but to be different. To not be a tragedy, but a triumph in this world.
And what the Lord would do, and what the Lord has done in the past, is he brings judgment upon those who have turned against him. Now this morning as we continue our sermon series through 2 Peter, we are going to see the Apostle Peter talk about great judgments of the past and how judgment will come upon false teachers.
It's been a little while since we've been in 2 Peter, but 2 Peter 2 is all about false teachers, warning us about them, telling us about what they're like. And while the Lord judges false teachers, he always preserves the righteous.
And we're going to see this theme come up in this passage this morning. So this time I encourage you to turn in a Bible with me to 2 Peter 2. We will be zeroing in on verses 4 -9. And if you don't have a Bible, as always we have those red Bibles that you can follow along in.
And this sermon is titled, Past Justice Remembered. And I'm going to begin by reading the text. 2 Peter 2, verses 4 -9. 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 day of 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 heard.
Then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment. Here's our big idea, what this text is calling you to do. Learn from past calamities the justice that will come upon false teachers.
Learn from past calamities the justice that will come upon false teachers. And we're going to see three judgments how in this text. But before we zero in on these verses, let me give you a little recap about where we've been.
And of course, last week, we had a bunch of people from the outside at our church at the conference. And what a blessing it was to take part in not only Sunday, but Saturday as well. If you can believe it, we had 185 people with us here on Saturday.
So if we want to know how many people can this place hold, well, we did it. So that's really exciting. But it was such a blessing to go through that weekend with you. And I just want to say, I'm so proud of this church for everybody who came together for the conference and so many comments about how we worked so well as a team.
And I just want to say how proud I am of Eureka Baptist and all these people who came from all over the place have a really high view of our church, the church family we have because of the weekend that they took part in last weekend.
So that's where we were last week. Two weeks ago, we were in 2 Peter 2. We looked at verses one through three. And the title of that sermon was Watch Out for Wolves. And in that sermon, it was actually a two Sunday sermon, we were instructed to prepare to face the grim reality of false teachers.
This morning, as I've already explained, we continue the theme of looking at these false teachers. And we're going to begin by zeroing in on verse four, where once again, Peter writes here, 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 day of judgment.
This is a sobering verse concerning angels. Not everyone who was good stays good. Any good story you read, there are a variety of characters. Some characters are presented as good right from the get go, and they stay good.
Other characters are bad and they become good at some point in the story. Some characters are good and at some point in the story, they become bad. And when we think about humanity, the Word of God tells us everyone starts out bad.
If you never believe in Christ, then you stay bad. And by the way, this five year old language, this is my weekly routine, talking about this with my son. So that's why I'm saying, so you get it on Sunday mornings too, right?
The bad guys.
We all come into this world, the bad guys, it's true. But we need to be redeemed by the blood of Christ. So we go from darkness to light. One of the most well-known movies over the last 50 years is a movie we probably all know very well, that's Star Wars.
The most interesting storyline in Star Wars is Anakin Skywalker. His story is followed closely from his youth where his great talents were spotted and he's trained as a Jedi. Anakin starts out as a good Jedi, but sadly as a young man turns to the dark side becoming Darth Vader.
But this isn't where the story ended. In the end, he destroys the evil emperor and dies on the good side. This is what we call a round character in a story. Starts out good, becomes bad, and then finishes good.
Stories are so interesting and the story of the world we live in is the most interesting of all. As we think about the cosmic battle that took place between God and angels at the beginning of creation, it's sobering to think about.
When God created the heavens and the earth, he also created angels. Colossians 1 .16 describes the creation of these angels. Every angel was good at the very beginning, but Revelation 12 describes their fall.
Verses three and four of that chapter say, another sign appeared in heaven. Behold, a great red dragon with seven heads and 10 horns and on his head, seven diadems. His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and cast them to the earth.
What the apostle John is seeing here in this vision is the fall of angels from heaven. And we know the story from scripture. Satan rebels against God. He's not content in the place that God has given him.
Satan is among the highest angels in heaven, but he's not content staying in that place. He wants the place of God. He wants to be worshiped. And one third of the angels have the same desire that grows in their hearts.
And what happens here is, as Revelation 12 describes, one third of these angels rebel and they're sent to the earth. Ezekiel 28, verses 14 through 17 describes Satan. You were an anointed garden cherub.
I placed you, you were on the holy mountain of God. In the midst of the stones of fire you walked. You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created till unrighteousness was found in you. In the abundance of your trade, you were filled with violence in your midst.
And you sinned. So I cast you as a profane thing from the mountain of God. And I destroyed you, O guardian cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire. Your heart was proud because of your beauty. You corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor.
I cast you to the ground. This was Satan in the beginning of creation, but he was cast down because of his rebellion. Satan told this to Jesus when he tempted Him in Matthew 4.
He told Him,.
All these I will give to you if you fall down and worship me. Satan has always desired to be worshiped. And when he's with Jesus in the temptation early on in Jesus' ministry, he's calling Jesus to worship him.
What Peter is saying in this text is that Satan and these angels are being held under judgment in chains of gloomy darkness. And they are held in this place until the final judgment.
So think about this.
God made these perfect angels that were dazzling. They were in His court worshiping Him. And then this great rebellion happened where Satan rebelled and one-third of the angels went with him. Does God overlook their rebellion?
When they chose to rebel, there would be grave consequences. And those consequences end for them in the lake of fire. Right now, they wander on the earth and they are kept in gloomy chains awaiting that final judgment.
So the gloomy chains mentioned here in verse 4, this is not literal. This is figurative. They're stuck on the earth. They're not allowed in the throne room of heaven. And what awaits them in the future is this final judgment where they will be thrown into the lake of fire where they will suffer forever and ever.
And this brings us to the context of this passage, which is false teachers. Peter is describing false teachers. And let's follow this logic. Do you think that the Lord is going to overlook the heresy spread by false teachers and their wicked life?
And the answer is, of course not. He didn't overlook the rebellion of these dazzling angels who were once in His court, who once served Him. He's not going to overlook that. The moment they rebelled, they were sent into judgment and they will be in the lake of fire.
And let me make a side point here. It's incredible to think that when the angels rebelled, there is no redemption plan for angels. Judgment awaits them. But for humanity, there is a redemption plan. Genesis 3 .15, where the seed of the woman will bruise the head of the serpent, describing the crucifixion of Christ.
I remember sitting in a service one time hearing that and just being amazed.
At that reality.
There is no redemption for angels. But for humanity, there is. But there still needs to be a judgment for humanity. And that judgment is the cross. God is the just judge of the world. The judgment is either in hell for sin or it's at the cross.
And praise be to God that if we find refuge in Christ, we don't have to face God's judgment because Christ faced it for us 2 ,000 years ago. So learn from past calamities the justice that will come upon false teachers.
And the first judgment how? Is by expelling one-third of the angels from heaven. The second judgment how? You are to learn from past calamities the justice that will come upon false teachers is by flooding the entire ancient world with water.
So we move on to a past demonstration, another one of God's justice in ages past. As verse 5 describes, 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.
So we saw the judgment already that came upon the angels after they sinned against God. And the greatest judgment in this world that has ever come upon humanity is what's described in verse 5. The global flood.
Genesis 6 -8, chapters 6 -8 describes this flood. Genesis 6, 5 -7 describes why the flood happened. The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. So the Lord said, I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them.
I mentioned in the previous point my view. Actually, I didn't mention this, but I'll mention it now. The evil line of Cain intermarried with the righteous line of Seth. And what happened was unprecedented evil on the earth.
As the Lord looked down from heaven upon this evil, he couldn't take it anymore. He decided to send a flood. Think about how amazing water is. We need it to survive. Much of our body is made of water.
You can't go long without water. We can go several days without food. You can't go a day without water. And yet this precious commodity, this precious resource that we have, God uses as an agent of judgment on the world.
If there's too much water, that's a problem for us. We will drown. We will be destroyed. And that's what the Lord used. And we've seen floods in our lives. There have been some springs where there have been some big floods in the Midwest.
I remember growing up, the floods of the Red River, the border of North Dakota and Minnesota, major floods in that place. I remember when I was growing up in Chaska and Shakopee in that area, the Minnesota River, they had a sign there that said, this is how high the water reached.
And it's unbelievable when you look at it. Like, that's how high it was? I mean, it's way above your head. But that's how high the water goes in flooding. And this is what happened to the entire earth.
It doesn't matter how high you would go on a mountaintop. Eventually, the waters reached even that height. And Alan can tell you, they actually find fossils on mountains. Because the animals are flocking there, trying to get away from the waters.
But eventually, the waters overtake them, and they drown, and then they're fossilized over time. And what's interesting is that this flood can be seen in our very area. We see the evidence of the flood and the ice age that followed.
If you hike at Interstate Park, you can see it. You can see it in the rocks, in the sandstone, in the trap rock. It's incredible to think that we have evidence, even in our own backyard, that there was a flood.
And I love what Ken Ham says. How do we know that there was a flood? Well, there's billions of dead things all over the earth, under the ground. The flood record is all over the place, and yet, the unbelieving world still denies it.
And we'll look at that more in chapter three, as Peter talks about that. But what Peter highlights here, is he highlights the reality of the flood. And he says, once again, if God did not spare the ancient world, if He did not spare them when they sinned, but sent a flood on them, then once again, is He going to spare the false teachers who blaspheme Him, who spread heresy, who deny Christ, who lead others astray?
Is He going to spare them? And the answer is no, no. He does not spare the wicked. We read that this morning, Mark did. Exodus 34, verses six and seven. The Lord's character, He's a gracious God. The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, abounding in steadfast love.
But by no means will He clear the guilty. We need to understand this about God. A God who does not judge sin, is not a God worth worshiping. A God who does not judge sin, is not a God worth worshiping.
So the God that so many love to create, is not a God worth worshiping. A God who's just loving, and He just lets people do whatever they want. God has a just standard, and He brings that justice on the ungodly.
And what we see here, a secondary theme we see in this passage in 2 Peter 2, is that the Lord spares the righteous. The Lord spared Noah and his wife, and his three sons, and their wives. He spared them.
He told Noah, this flood's coming. Build this big boat, so that you will be protected from the waters that will come. That will come upon this world. It's incredible to think that the Lord spares the righteous.
He preserved Noah, a herald of righteousness, with seven others, when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly. So he's a herald. He lived righteousness before these wicked people, and he proclaimed it.
Noah was like a prophet telling people, the waters are coming. Find refuge in God before the waters come. And that's what we are. To this world. Because a flood is coming to this world. And 2 Peter 3 talks about it.
Christ is coming back. And are people ready to find refuge when he comes? So, once again, he's telling the story of the flood to tell us. All these false teachers of the past, all these false teachers who are in the present, who blaspheme the name of Christ, they're not going to get away with it.
We get so angry, right, when we see these people say false things about Jesus. Live sinful lifestyles. They're in it for the wrong reasons. We can get so upset at them. And the Lord is telling us through the Apostle Peter, guess what?
God brought a flood. And just as he brought a flood, judgment's coming on these people too. And we take comfort in that. Because we want justice. It's a good desire to want justice. We love it when people repent.
But if they don't repent, guess what? We want justice. Because when there is a severe wrong done, it cannot be left unpunished. That's how God is. And he creates us to have that desire too. So learn from past calamities the justice that will come upon false teachers.
The third judgment how is by flooding the entire ancient world with water. And here's our third and final judgment. I think I just said third there. That was supposed to be second. But the third and final judgment where we are to learn from past calamities the justice that will come upon false teachers is this.
By sending fire on the ancient cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. So thus far we have seen the Lord's judgment in banishing out of heaven one third of the angels. We just saw him sending a flood on the entire earth for the judgment of the ungodly of those times past thousands of years ago.
And now we see verse six, where he talks about these two cities in the Middle East, where Peter writes, 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.
What Peter describes is the Lord's judgment on these two cities. Many of you are familiar with this account from Genesis chapter 18 and 19.
A number of years ago,.
We went through Genesis and we looked at this in detail. In this account, the angel of the Lord is standing with Abraham and the angel of the Lord, who is the Lord by the way, taking on bodily form here, he has a serious conversation with Abraham.
And what the Lord tells Abraham is that he is going to destroy the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. The letter in the New Testament that's most similar to second Peter is Jude. And Jude describes the wickedness of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Jude seven says,.
Just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulge in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example of undergoing a punishment of eternal fire. So we learn here the type of sins that were taking place in Sodom and Gomorrah.
There were all sorts of sin, but what's highlighted is sexual sins. And not just fornication, not just adultery, but perversion, pedophilia, homosexuality. These were the sins taking place in the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah.
And this might sound familiar, right? This is the country we live in. These sins abound. And these were the sins that Scripture addresses were present in these cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. And in the Genesis account, you also find that there were all sorts of sins that were present in these cities.
These were grievous sins taking place. And as the Lord is with Abraham on this hill, overlooking Sodom and Gomorrah, the Lord tells Abraham, I'm going to destroy them. So we can kind of imagine here, imagine being in a place where there's kind of a scenic overlook, where you can look down at these cities.
And as you're looking down, the Lord's telling you, I am going to destroy these two cities. As Abraham hears this, he's troubled. And we know how the story goes. If there's 100 righteous people, if there's 50 righteous people, if there's 10 righteous people, will you spare this?
And the Lord says, yes, I will spare it. And then he says, what about if there's one righteous man? And the Lord says he would spare the city for that one righteous man. And we know how the story goes.
Lot, Abraham's nephew, is that righteous man. And not only is Lot spared, similar to the story of Noah, Lot and his family are spared. We know it didn't end well for his wife, right? As she turns back and gets turned into a pillar of salt.
But the Lord does this. He spares the righteous. And we have to think about the rapture.
As we think about this.
This is a theme of scripture. Guess what's coming on this world? Christ is gonna come back one day. It might be a day just like this. We're going through our day,.
And all of a sudden,.
All these people are snatched from the earth. The graves are opened up, where the righteous are taken out of the graves. We meet them in the air. And then what happens over the next seven years? What Matthew 24 says is that what happens is worse than the flood.
Because if those days had not been cut short, no human being would survive. But for the sake of the elect, those days will be shortened. The seven years of tribulation that are gonna come on this earth, when God pours out His wrath as is described in Revelation, it's going to get ugly on this earth.
But we're not gonna be here for it. Because if you believe in Jesus Christ, everyone here who has a sincere relationship with Jesus Christ, you will be spared. Just as Noah and his family were spared.
Just as Lot and his family were spared. So too will you be spared. So when we talk about, is there a pre-trib rapture? This is a theme in Scripture.
If we're reading the Bible,.
We can see it. We do not go through this earthly judgment. So we see here this theme of God not sparing the unrighteous. He brings judgment upon them, but sparing the righteous. And we see here in verses seven through nine, and if he rescued righteous Lot, greatly distressed by the sensual conduct.
Of the wicked.
So Lot is looking around,.
And he's saying, I hate living in this place. They're just a bunch of pagans.
They're ungodly.
They'll do whatever they want. This was Lot's experience.
And we should tell him,.
Well, move.
Why are you putting yourself through this? But this was his home. This is how bad it got. It reminds me of my experience. So before I was a pastor, before I went to seminary, I worked as a sales rep for a running shoe company.
And I just hated going to these sales meetings because it was like Sodom and Gomorrah. We'd go to these sales meetings. There was no regard for God whatsoever. Excessive drinking. The women were immodest.
Swear words were just in just about every single sentence that was spoken. And I'm thinking, what kind of a company is this? They make good product. It was kind of interesting. I went to one of these meetings and the owner of the company, there was a group of about 20 of us in this room and the president of the company, it was Brooks, by the way.
I love Brooks running shoes. I just don't like the company, the people.
Okay, let me say that.
They make the best running shoes in the world. But the people, it wasn't, and again, it's not just Brooks. It's all these companies all over the place.
That are like this.
These secular environments. So the president, he tells us, this company is built around good people.
And I'm thinking,.
My 24-year-old self was thinking, I haven't met one good person yet. And this company is built, his definition of good was different than my definition of good, that's for sure. And I used to joke that if there were ever a rapture, no one would even know it.
And you get in certain environments in the world where it's just so secularized. It's just so dark. And truly, if there were a rapture, no one would know it because there's no one righteous in here. Or maybe two people would be gone and they'd be like, oh, where is Fred?
Well, he went to the bathroom.
No, he's gone.
He was raptured. So anyway, I'm way off of my notes here. So we see here, Lott, he is tormenting his righteous soul over their lawless deeds that he saw and heard. And we know here in verse nine, the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment.
Okay, and once again, we have to bring this back. The context of this chapter is false teachers. He is going to judge them. He judged the angels. He judged the ancient world with the flood. He judged the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah.
And I mentioned, it's interesting, the archeology. There's actually archeology of this place being scorched by fire. Even in the present day, some archeologists have unearthed this. If you want, Alan Walker could tell you more about that.
Just like the flood, right? There's evidence this happened historically. And it's pretty remarkable when you think about it that this place was destroyed by fire. So God destroyed by water. He destroyed by fire.
And he's gonna do the same thing to false teachers at the end of the age. These people who blaspheme the name of Christ, these people who get into the ministry for the wrong reasons, for their own selfish gain, to prey on people, to spread their own agenda.
He is going to bring judgment on these people. That's what Peter's telling us here. So wait for the judgment. It's coming. It's delayed, but it will come, just as it came in the past. So that's why I titled this sermon, Past Justice Remembered.
So whenever we have those moments where we're like, Lord, how long? When are you gonna bring justice? Think of a passage like this. Think of these accounts from the past. The Lord does do right every single time.
So here, as we summarize this, learn from past calamities, the justice that will come upon false teachers. And in this text, we've seen three judgments how. First, by expelling one third of the angels from heaven, flooding the entire ancient world with water, and thirdly, as we have just seen, by sending fire on the ancient cities of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Those who pervert God's truth have a dark future ahead of them. As we look at the Lord's justice through the historical accounts where God's justice was displayed as we have seen today. And this is instructive for us because we can think they're gonna get away with it, but we know that they will not get away with it.
And we should praise the Lord for the justice that will be done. We always praise the Lord. It's easy for us to praise the Lord for His love, for His goodness, for His mercy. But how often do we praise the Lord for His justice?
We will be praising the Lord for His justice in heaven. And so may we do that now in this world, during our lives. Now next Sunday, we're going to focus on the character of these false teachers and the reality that what they promise is life, but what they really provide is as lifeless as it gets.
So we'll look at this one Sunday from now, Lord willing, at this time, let's bow our heads in prayer. Father in heaven, we do thank you for this time we've had as we've looked at this text. And we do give you praise, Lord, as I just mentioned.
We praise you for your justice. And as we think about justice, we must think about the cross of Jesus Christ where love and justice meet, where He took our sins upon Him and bore your holy wrath and Jesus paid it all, all to Him we owe.
And we rejoice in knowing that He paid the penalty for our sins. And my prayer is that anyone here who does not have a relationship with Christ, that that person today would believe in the Lord Jesus and be saved.
So we ask that, Lord, and help us to go through our lives understanding that you will bring justice, Lord, upon these false teachers who cause so many problems. But we rejoice, Lord, knowing that you protect the righteous as we see throughout the story of Scripture.
And it's in Jesus' name we pray, amen.