WWUTT 356 If God Did Not Spare Angels?

The Devil, Angels, and the Day of Judgment

Just as the Lord God did not spare the devil and his angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains until the day of judgment, so the unrighteous around us are being kept until the day of judgment as well when we understand the text.

Many of the Bible stories and verses we think we know, we don't. When we understand the text is an online ministry committed to teaching sound doctrine and exposing the faulty. Visit our website at www .utt .com.

Now here's our host, Pastor Gabe Hughes. Thank you, Becky.

And greetings, everyone. Today is the day for us. We are heading to the hospital. Becky is going to be induced and God willing, we will be holding our fourth child on Monday, January 23rd. However, I have recorded these Bible lessons in advance and the earliest that I would be able to tell you about it on the podcast is Friday.

So if you want to find out what we are having, what the child's name is, the weight and the length and all that good stuff, might even be able to post a few pictures as well. You got to follow me on Twitter.

So go to twitter .com slash pastor underscore Gabe. And we thank you for your prayers. As we have come down to the home stretch here, we have definitely been feeling the results of the curse and my wife more so than I have been.

But she is a strong woman. She has done incredibly, an incredibly wonderful job with the delivery of our previous three children. And I know that she will do great today as well. Second Peter chapter two verses four through ten is where we are going to be.

And in fact, while I was talking about the effects of the curse, we're also going to be in Genesis chapter three a little bit today as well. If you want to mark your Bible there, let's read through this particular section and then I'll talk about how we're going to break this up this week.

Second Peter chapter two, beginning in verse four. 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 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.

So what Peter presents here are four premises. If A, then B, if God did not spare angels, then he knows how to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment. Verse nine, if he did not spare the ancient world, but preserve Noah, a herald of righteousness, then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials and to keep the unrighteous under punishment.

Verse nine again. So if this, then this is the way that Peter presents this. And here's how we are going to break this up this week. We're going to look at each one of these premises on a different day.

Now there's four of them here, but we're going to combine Sodom and Gomorrah and lot on Wednesday. So today we're going to talk about verse four, and then tomorrow will be verse five. And then on Wednesday, it'll be verses six through eight.

But on all three of these days, we'll be combining each premises with verses nine and 10. If this, then this. So first of all, in verse four, for if God did not spare angels when they sin, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains.

And this is coming off of what we had just read at the end of second Peter two, three, their condemnation from long ago. Speaking about false teachers, their condemnation from long ago is not idle and their destruction is not asleep.

So as we're looking at the world around us and we're observing the unrighteousness happening, we see those who are living in the defiling passions of their flesh. We hear the blasphemies that come from their mouths and our ears are ringing with it.

I particularly think about this after the women's march that happened in Washington, D .C. this past Saturday. What a horrible demonstration of worldliness. And there are people that will try to defend it and say, hey, there were Christian women there as well.

You know, the whole women's march was outspokenly against any sort of pro-life stance at that women's march. And if there were women there that were representing the pro-life cause, they were not being considered among what the women's march was out there to represent.

The number one issue that was that was being spoken about in that march on that weekend in particular, with the 44th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, which was past January 22nd in 1973. The whole point of that was to declare their right to be able to abort and kill their children.

Yeah, there were other women's rights things that they were talking about, but that was the central issue and why the women's march leaders, including Cecile Richards, who is the president of Planned Parenthood, were saying that no pro-life cause is a part of that women's march on that day.

It didn't matter if there were women that were there talking about being pro-life. That whole women's march on Saturday in Washington, D .C., was a pro-death march. It was women who were claiming the right to be able to put their children to death.

And the men who got them pregnant are no less innocent. But it was still wickedness on the part of those women being able to declare the right to commit murder, to sacrifice their babies to Moloch. Just what we saw happening among the Jews in the Old Testament as well.

And so I think about just the blasphemies that came from that particular weekend. I remember seeing a picture of two women who were holding a sign that said, if Mary had an abortion, then we wouldn't even be in this mess.

And we see this stuff happening in the world around us, and it grieves our hearts and our ears ring with the blasphemy and the false teaching that we hear. You think about the false teaching that is being proclaimed in pulpits of churches that claim to be the church of Jesus Christ.

But what is being preached is heretical. It is completely against what it is that we read in the scriptures, the doctrines of saving faith according to the truth of Jesus Christ and his sacrifice on the cross and his resurrection from the grave and the promise of his coming again in not only deliverance but in judgment.

And we'll hear preachers that preach against those kinds of things, against the life-saving message of Jesus Christ, of the gospel of Christ. And we see and observe all of this wickedness going on around us, and it causes us to have to ask, God, what are you doing?

How long is this going to go on? Habakkuk said the same thing. In Habakkuk 1, the first four verses, how long do I cry out violence before you do something about this? And those who are violent, they just continue to win.

They just continue to see success, and they are the ones who oppress those who are righteous. But as we are being promised here by Peter, if God did not spare even angels when they sinned but cast them into hell and bound them and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness, then he knows how to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment.

This is the promise that we have according to what Peter is presenting here. So let's understand this concept a little bit more, the devil and his angels being kept in chains, because aren't they kind of exercising their power now?

They are, but they're being restrained. Likewise, those who are evil are allowed to revel in the daytime, which is the way Peter puts it here in 2 Peter 2. They're allowed to exercise their evil deeds, but only to a certain extent.

Mankind is not as evil as he could be, and that's by the gracious and restraining power of God. As we're going to be looking at today, exploring some more of these scriptures. So first of all, let's go to Genesis chapter 3.

Let's look at the very fall of man in Genesis 3. And so at the very beginning of this particular chapter, we have an introduction to the devil for the first time and his first words, as recalled in the Bible.

Now, the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, did God actually say, you shall not eat of any tree in the garden? This is the way that the devil is first presented in the Bible.

And we have heard those words echoed by the devil ever since all the way through human history. From this point on, the devil whispering in our ears, did God really say, causing us in our flesh to question the very authority of God and the truth of his word?

As I talked about heresy that is being preached in some places that claim to be churches, they are slithering snakes that from their mouths echo the words of Satan. When he said, did God actually say, and you must be wary of those false teachers for they are servants of Satan.

Eve responded to the serpent in verse two, we may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, you shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden. Neither shall you touch it lest you die.

And you have not only here, the devil's question causing Eve to doubt what God's command actually was, but she's also adding to it a bit of legalism. Oh, we're not supposed to touch it either, or we're going to die because that wasn't part of the command as we saw it given in chapter two.

But the serpent verse four said to the woman, you will not surely die for God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God knowing good and evil. So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate.

And she also gave some to her husband who was with her not doing anything apparently and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened and they knew that they were naked and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.

And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the cool of the day. And the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, where are you?

And he said, I heard the sound of you in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself worst game of hide and seek ever. And God said, who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?

And the man said, the woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me the fruit of the tree and I ate. And then the Lord God said to the woman, what is this that you have done? And the woman said, the serpent deceived me and I ate.

See, no one wanting to take ownership for their own sin. But God doesn't even question what it is that the serpent has done. And I kind of take that to mean the devil was perfectly proud of what it was that he had done.

He had no reason to beat questions like, yeah, I did it. Look at what I did. I messed up your creation, right? These these creatures that were made in your image that you have made to to be rulers over all that you have created.

I messed all this up. Yep, it was me. And so the Lord God said to the serpent, because you have done this cursed, are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field on your belly? You shall go and dust.

You shall eat all the days of your life. I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring. He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel. And of course, verse 15 is the proto evangelion.

It's the it's the first declaration of the gospel, the promise of Christ, who is going to come and deliver all mankind from sin, from the work of the devil. As we have it said to us in first John, chapter three, verse eight, the reason the son of God appeared was to destroy the work of the devil and thus fulfilling the promise that was given here in Genesis 315.

To the woman, God said, I will surely multiply your pain and childbearing in pain. You will bring forth children. Your desire shall be for your husband and he shall rule over you. And my wife and I being reminded of the curse of birth pains today with our fourth child coming into this world, Adam to Adam, it was said because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, you shall not eat of it.

Cursed is the ground because of you in pain. You shall eat of it all the days of your life, thorns and thistles. It shall bring forth for you and you shall eat the plants of the field by the sweat of your face.

You shall eat bread till you return to the ground for out of it. You were taken for you are dust and to dust. You shall return. Now, here's the thing that I want to focus on in light of what we have read in second Peter, chapter two related to the devil and his angels being kept in chains until the day of judgment.

First of all, we know that this being kept in chains is limited. It's not this total being restrained to hell, because when we read in the book of Job, Satan was allowed to even come before God as as the creatures of heaven were presenting themselves before the Lord.

The devil was allowed to be there. Now, he's not worshiping God, but God asked the devil, where have you been? And the devil says, well, I've been wandering to and fro on the earth. And God singles out his servant Job and says, have you ever seen a man as righteous as this?

And Satan goes, well, yeah, of course. Of course, he praises you because you've handed everything to him on a silver platter. You let me take everything from him and he'll curse you to your face. And God allows him to do that, but says to Satan, you cannot lay your hand on Job.

So there is an amount of of free reign, so to speak, that God allows Satan to do. But only so far. He is restrained to a certain degree. We also see this said in Daniel chapter 12, verse one, that the archangel Michael is presently restraining the devil until a day where he will stand up and get out of the way.

And then we have the man of lawlessness that will be revealed, as talked about in second Thessalonians chapter two, where you also know to be the Antichrist. And he will he'll be allowed to deceive the nations at that particular point.

So there there is a sense of the devil being restrained somewhat. But then there is also an amount that the Lord allows him to do to deceive people and the demons as well. In Matthew chapter eight, we have the story of Jesus walking through the Gadarenes or he arrives in the Gadarenes on the other side of the Sea of Galilee.

And there are two demon possessed men that come out of the tombs and they say to him, have you come to torment us until the time? So the demons are saying to Jesus, son of man, are you going to are you going to torment us until the time has come for you to judge us?

So we even have a sense there the demons understanding that they've been restrained to a certain degree and they beg God not to be sent out of the region, but instead cast us into these pigs over here.

And that's what it is that Jesus does. So we have this territorial domain of the demons, but they're not allowed to go beyond that. When the angel Gabriel appeared to Daniel, he said, I'm sorry that I'm delayed in coming to you to reveal the meaning of your vision.

I was being held up by the prince of Persia. And Michael had to come and beat up on the prince of Persia a little bit so that I could get away and come to you and reveal to you the meaning of your vision.

So there we even have either that was the devil himself or some sort of chief demon that was that was afflicting the prince of Persia and preventing Gabriel from getting to Daniel. But he couldn't go beyond that region.

He was restrained. You have also the story of the evil spirit that entices Ahab in First Kings chapter 22. Micaiah gives this vision of this holy conference that is happening in heaven. And the Lord says, who will entice Ahab that he may go up and fall at Ramoth Gilead?

And one said one thing and another said another. And then a spirit came forward and stood before the Lord and said, I will entice him. And the Lord said to him, by what means? And he said, I will go out and will be a lying spirit in the mouth of all of his prophets.

And God said, you are to entice him and you shall succeed. Go out and do so. Now, therefore, behold, the Lord has put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these, your prophets, Micaiah said to to Ahab, the Lord has declared disaster for you.

So the Lord even allowed this evil spirit to tempt Ahab into believing something from the mouths of his prophets who were false prophets. That wasn't true. And it led to Ahab's destruction in battle. So God allows demons to do a certain thing because he is accomplishing a work through this.

And it is ultimately all for his glory. But they can only go so far. They cannot go beyond the bounds that God has put around them. There is always a limitation. And God's sovereign hand is always upon each and every situation.

And so this is this is kind of the example of how it is said to us from Peter that even though 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, there is a work that they're doing, but they are restrained.

It's not as bad as it could be. And just the same, God knows how to restrain evil and keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment, which is going to happen as the Lord did these things in the Old Testament.

So he is also going to do it in the New Testament. Now, it is sometimes asked of me, and I'm kind of going to go on a little bit of a tangent here. But where was it that the devil fell exactly? I even looked this up on the Answers in Genesis website, and they theorized that it was probably somewhere around day three or four of creation.

I don't think that's the case. And we have no evidence in Scripture that points to that whatsoever. Rather, the fall of Satan happened at the same time as the fall of man. It's Genesis chapter three. The curse that was given to the serpent is the curse that was given to the devil at the same time that God had given the curse to the woman and also to the man.

The fall of creation happened there. It was where the devil and his angels were also cast out of heaven because of their treachery and rebellion against God. One of the evidences that we have of this is in Ezekiel chapter 38 when Ezekiel 28, when Ezekiel compares the king of Tyree to a fallen Satan.

Now he's using hyperbole here. It's an exaggeration, but nonetheless, we have indications and hints of the devil being spoken about in this poetry that's being given by Ezekiel. Son of man, in verse 12, raise a lamentation over the king of Tyree and say to him, thus says the Lord God, you were the signet of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty.

You were in Eden, the garden of God. Every precious stone was your covering. Sardius, topaz, and diamond barrel, onyx, and jasper, sapphire, emerald, and carbuncle and crafted in gold were your settings and your engravings on the day that you were created.

They were prepared. You were an anointed guardian 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, oh 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. I exposed you before kings to feast their eyes on you. By the multitude of your iniquities in the unrighteousness of your trade, you profaned your sanctuaries.

So I brought fire out from your midst. It consumed you. And I turned you to ashes on the earth in the sight of all who saw you eating dust. The rest of the days of his life, right? All who know you among the peoples are appalled at you.

You have come to a dreadful end and shall be no more forever. So we have the description of the king of Tyree as being in Eden, the garden of God. Well, the king of Tyree wasn't there. Nor could you say of the king of Tyree that he was a guardian cherub.

Nor could you say of him that he was blameless in all of his ways until unrighteousness was found in him. That could really only describe Satan when he was an angel in the presence of God before he sinned.

He was he was blameless until he had sinned and rebelled against God. And then he was cast out of heaven. And as we have it described in the book of Revelation, a third of the angels that followed him were cast out as well.

And so you couldn't say that of a man because we are all born into sin, having inherited the sin of Adam through the seed of Adam. But because the devil was created perfect, perfect in all year, you were the signet of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty until the day that unrighteousness was found in you.

And in the abundance of your trade, you were filled with violence in your midst and you sinned. You have Jesus in the book of John describing the devil as having been a murderer from the beginning, filled with violence.

And so this is this is a description of Satan. So the day that man and woman fell in the Garden of Eden was also the day that Satan fell when Satan and his angels were cast out and the curse was given against Satan as well.

What we read about in Genesis chapter three is the upheaval of all of creation, the entire universe being subjected to futility because of sin and rebellion against God. That happens at the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden.

But what we have at the cross is the deliverance of all of creation being reconciled to God through the person and work of Jesus Christ, making peace by the blood of his cross, as described in Colossians 120.

The cross of Christ is the pivotal point of all of human and cosmic history. Where all of creation is now being restored by the work of Jesus Christ. So while all of it was subjected to futility at the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden, all of it is being restored to God at the tree of Mount Calvary, the cross of Christ.

What a beautiful picture that is. And so we are awaiting the day like all of creation groaning in birth pains, as is described in Romans chapter eight. Once again, something that I can relate to today as my wife is going through birth pains, as all of creation is anxiously awaiting its deliverance from the corruption that it was subjected to.

So we are all awaiting the day when the Lord God will return to judge the living and the dead, delivering the righteous into his eternal kingdom and subjecting the unrighteous to judgment and eternal torment forever.

So we have this said by the apostle Peter in second Peter chapter two, 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, then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment, especially those who indulge in the lust of defiling passion and despise authority.

We have this said to us in first John three, eight. I quoted this to you a little bit. I'm going to go back to verse seven, where John says, little children, let no one deceive you. Whoever practices righteousness is righteous as he is righteous as Christ is righteous.

Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. No one born of God makes a practice of sinning for God's seed abides in him, and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God.

By this, it is evident who are the children of God and who are the children of the devil. Whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother. And that's where we'll wrap up today.

Tomorrow, we'll pick up our study of second Peter chapter two in verse five. Our Lord God, as we bring this to a close, we pray and ask for your guidance upon us according to your word, that our minds and our hearts will be guarded against the devil's schemes.

That when it is whispered in our ears, did God really say we have stored up in our minds and hearts the word of God? And so we know the difference between the truth and the lie. We know the voice of the good shepherd, not the slithering voice of the serpent.

And so we follow the good shepherd's voice that was spoken to us through the word of God. Keep these words of Christ upon our ears as we go. And may our hope be restored in knowing that all of the violence and the deception and the blasphemy and the false teaching and the wickedness and the unrighteousness that is happening in the world around us.

We know by the promise of God that you are coming back to judge the living and the dead. Evil will be no more and we will live in your perfect kingdom forever. To you belongs all glory and majesty, honor and power now and forever.

In the name of Christ, we pray.

Amen. Gabriel Hughes is the pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Junction City, Kansas. Find out more online at www .utt .com.