Is God Asleep At The Judgment Wheel? - [2 Peter 2:4-10a]

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True or false? God is love. Some of you aren't answering right away because you know the propensity for trick questions here.
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True or false? God is only love. That makes it a little bit easier.
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Good. I'm glad for the young ones who know the difference as well. True or false? God judges sin.
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If that's the case that God is light and not only love and God judges sin, what's going on in the world?
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There seems like a lot of people getting away with sin. A lot of people who run their mouths about the
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Lord Jesus and deny His deity or His little resurrection or His soon return. Saying false things about Jesus.
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Things that are not true. That He's not the Eternal Son, the Omnipotent, Almighty, Unchangeable One.
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What is going on? Is God's judgment asleep? I mean, maybe He's been judging people for so long that He's kind of tired.
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You know, when you're a parent, you think, well, you're on your children to obey and then by the time you're a grandparent, obey?
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You're just too tired to get them to obey. Is that the way God is? Will God judge sin?
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Will He judge sinners? Is the universe upside down? Is there any equity and fairness and justice?
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If you'll take your Bibles and turn to 2 Peter chapter 2, we'll answer that question from Scripture.
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God, yes, is love. God is light. God is holy. He is righteous.
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And He judges sin and He judges sin on His own timetable. And for us as Christians, we need to be reminded that God's justice is true and just and right.
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It just might not be according to our timing. We live in a chaotic, sinful world and we say,
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Lord, where's your justice? And the message in 2 Peter 2 verses 4 through 10a is essentially
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God judges sin and He rescues the godly. We're not going to get caught up in it all as Christians and somehow
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He won't be able to figure out how to preserve us as He judges the world at the second coming. But we'll be rescued.
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We'll be preserved. And so today in 2 Peter, we're going to look at chapter 2 verses 4 through 10a, which is essentially six and a half verses and one sentence.
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And it's all designed to teach us that what God has done in the past, He will do in the future.
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It's kind of a minor premise. God judges, God judges, God judges seed in history to the major premise of He will judge in the future.
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And the whole thing is happening with all the false teachers who are saying Jesus is never going to come back. He's not faithful.
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He's not true. He's not omnipotent. He hasn't been raised from the dead. He's not coming back to judge the world.
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And since He's not coming back to judge the world, the false teachers say, well, live a life commensurate with that.
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Live ungodly, live rebelliously, live lawlessly. Who cares? I mean, if this is all a myth, why suppress our desires to live the way we want if Jesus is never going to come back?
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And therefore, Peter begins to remind the people passionately. I mean, Peter is not, oh, you know what?
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This is no big deal. He is passionate. He's like a shepherd who wants to deny
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Jesus temporarily, knows not to deny Jesus anymore. And when people deny
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Jesus, he's going to call them on it. And he wants Christians to know that you can trust the
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Lord. You don't have to have judgment on your timetable. By the way, aren't you glad Jesus didn't judge on a certain timetable for you before you were saved?
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And so we watch this letter unfold with Pastor Peter's heart, as it were, and he wants
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Christians to know, God will take care of the unrighteous, He'll judge sin, and He'll preserve you.
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It's okay. And that's really the theme. If you look at chapter 2, verse 9, everything's leading to this.
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If you'd like to know what is the main point of the passage in verses 4 through 10a, and you say,
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Pastor, by the way, why do you keep saying through 10a? Because if you see, even in your own Bibles, there's kind of a spacing there and a split.
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The sentence from verse 4 to 10a ends with authority, despise authority.
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And then there's a space there for the next sentence to begin. And on a side note, we did not have verses in the original manuscripts, right?
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It was just all a run on. And it was said by one person that the man who was separating things into verses for easy recall was riding a horse when he did it.
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And this was one of the times in verse 10 where there was a little hiccup and he didn't divide it properly.
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Nonetheless, the flow of thought from verses 4 through 10a is summarized in verse 9. Everything about this passage drives to this, and therefore that should be the point of the sermon.
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When pastors preach, the point of the passage is the point of the sermon, not what I think or what
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I feel. This is God speaking, and here's what He's after. Then, there's a bunch of ifs, if, if, if, if.
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And now we come to the then in verse 9, just so we can all see it big picture, so we know where we're going to go. Then the
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Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials. That's on the positive side, to preserve us while we're waiting for the second coming and we're in the trial of this ungodly world.
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And to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment. The Lord knows how to do that.
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And so we can just rest in Him. We can just trust in Him. Whenever I want to try to fix something and I don't know how to fix it, since my dad has been dead for almost 30 years now, how do
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I fix anything in my house? How do you fix things in your house? You can say it.
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YouTube, of course. You look at YouTube and you're like, I don't know how to do this. Now I know how to do it.
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You're like, okay, the Lord, does the Lord know how even the name Lord, sovereign, think of Yahweh in the
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Old Testament, He knows, He's omniscient, He's got the power to do it, and He knows how to rescue you even though you're in a corrupt world as we wait for the
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Lord's return. And He also knows how to judge people. God is holy. He judges sinners.
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And in the midst of that judgment, we'll make it out alive. Now, before we look at the passage in detail, it's always good to say, well, what's gone on so far in the book?
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And what's gone so far, what has gone on so far in the book is simple. Peter says in chapter 1, verses 1 and 2, you're safe.
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You've been given faith. You stand before God as righteous because Jesus' righteousness was given to you and your sins were given to Jesus for this great exchange.
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As Jesus, the public person, doesn't obey for Himself but for us, and He dies on the cross for our disobedience, not
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His own, because He was sinless. And not only that, Peter says in verses 3 and 4, you can live a holy life.
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You've been given divine nature. You've been given divine promises. Not only can you live a life of full pardon, but the power by the
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Spirit of God dwelling in you, you can live a holy life. And therefore, verse 5 of chapter 1, well, then work hard at it.
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Make every effort. Not because you're going to get saved this way to keep your salvation, but because this is just a logical fruit or evidence of salvation, adding virtue and moral knowledge and brotherly love.
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And Peter then says in verses 12 to 15 of chapter 1, this is important because I'm going to die and you need to know this truth.
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Eternal matters are at stake. Every person here will die one day and stand before God, every single one.
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And so eternal truths are temporally important because they're eternally important.
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And Peter says, you know what, this isn't my own idea. I just didn't say, well, I think this is going to happen.
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My God told me, He said, you know what, the Spirit of God in verses 16 through 21 moves men along like He moved prophets in the
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Old Testament, like He now moves apostles along. And they don't say their own words. It says in chapter 1, verse 21, they don't produce words by their own will, unlike the false teachers.
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Their men spoke from God, unlike the false teachers. And they're carried along by the Holy Spirit, unlike the false teachers.
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And then he says in verse 1 of chapter 2, if I were to put it in modern parlance, or at least for a couple hundred years ago, over in that direction,
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I think, let's see, yeah, that direction, we have a little slogan that you all know. And someone said to a group of other people, don't shoot until you see the whites of their eyes.
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And now we see the whites of their eyes. What do they look like? False prophets, chapter 2, verse 1, arose among the people, that is among Israel, just as there will be false teachers among you.
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Of course, that's where they go. They go to the church. They go to the people of God, who secretly bring in destructive heresies, including, and at the top of the list, denying the
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Master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction, destructive heresies, swift destruction.
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And many, this is not a one -off, will follow their sensuality, and because of them, the way of truth, the gospel of the
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Lord Jesus Christ, will be blasphemed. And in their greed, be careful, they will exploit you with false words.
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Their condemnation from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep.
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Verse 4, F -O -R -4. So you see what Peter's doing there? He's saying, you know what?
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You think maybe God's sleeping because he hasn't judged all these false teachers yet. You just turn on the TV, and it is a barrage of false teachers 24 -7, right?
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Often. And you think, well, God, when are you going to do something about it?
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And now Peter's going to give three Old Testament demonstrations of God judging sinners and sinful creatures.
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So that you say, oh, he judges then, he'll judge now. God is, what's the theological term when we say
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God doesn't change? That's known as what? The what of God? Immutability of God.
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And that root word is mute. And it's not mute like we can't hear, but mute like mutant.
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God does not mutate into something better, more holy, more knowledgeable. God doesn't learn.
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And on the negative side, God does not mutate into something worse and devolve. He doesn't evolve or devolve because he's the eternal
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I am. I am that I am. So God doesn't change. And if God doesn't change because he judges angels who sin, he judges those in the flood of Noah's day, and he judges
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Sodom and Gomorrah, will he judge in the future? And by the way, angels getting judged and the flood and Sodom and Gomorrah, those were all awful, full of odd judgments, but they don't compare at all to the soon return of Lord Jesus that 2
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Peter 3 talks about. Those things are going to be minor compared to the glory of the Son of Man coming in the clouds with power.
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Or, and maybe some of you were saying, Pastor Mike, really?
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Another sermon on false teachers? Well, I have a few thoughts. Number one,
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I didn't write this. It's just the next set of verses. And this is important.
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22 out of the 27 New Testament books talk about false teachers. They're all around us.
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We have false teachers almost like inside of us trying to say, well, work to be good, work to have God's pleasure.
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There's a lot of false teaching. Satan is alive. And his demons are alive.
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And if we want to extol the personal work of Jesus, He will do everything He can because He's the father of what?
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Lies to tell us that's not true. And so we need to know. It's not good enough for us as Christians to say, we want to be known for what we're for, not what we're against.
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I'm against false teachers, aren't you? I'm against somebody who says, Jesus isn't God. He's not coming back.
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He's not thrice holy. He becomes deity in His baptism. Whatever they want to say, I say no.
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And Peter said, there's no possible way on my watch as a shepherd will these wolves come in and slaughter the people.
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And Peter's attitude is essentially, over my dead body will this happen. And so if you're one of those that just say,
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I don't want to know about false teachers. I just want to have positive, encouraging things. And this is especially a good passage for you.
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I want to appeal to you as a friend to say, you need something more than just, Jesus lived for me, died for me, was raised for me, the end.
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I don't want to know anything else. No creed but Jesus. By the way, is that a creed?
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That's a creed. So I want to understand things. So I'm not a duped.
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I'm not a patsy. I don't fall into this because the text says, many do. Peter wants to encourage believers.
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And the way he does it, is talking about how sinners are going to be judged.
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I don't think there's language like this in all the New Testament that is so blistering, as my mom would say, except the
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Lord Jesus' words in Matthew 23. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you shut the kingdom of heaven in people's faces.
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For you neither enter yourselves, nor allow those who enter to go in. You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel.
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Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, you clean the outside of the cup and plate, but inside you're full of greed and self -indulgence.
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Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you are like whitewashed tombs, which appear outwardly beautiful, but within are full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness.
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You serpents, you brood of vipers, Jesus said, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell?
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I think Peter learned a lesson from his master. How do you talk about false teachers?
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And it is not with warm embrace, unity at all cost. It is reject, identify, run from.
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I don't know if you like football, but one of my favorite things to watch, not to experience, is when a running back has the football and they're running and somebody's going to try to come and tackle them.
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And that runner takes his fist and he puts it up into the chin of the opposing tackler, would -be tackler.
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What's that called? A stiff arm. Just the name of it sounds good, doesn't it? Don't stiff arm me.
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I'd like to give stiff arms. I wouldn't like to receive them. But here's the stiff arm of Peter saying, for the glory of the
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Lord Jesus, for His honor, for who He is, I'm not going to let this go. So if you'd like an outline, it's super simple.
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There are three demonstrations of God's Old Testament judgment that should drive you to say,
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God still judges sinners. He'll do it in the future. I can rest in that. But sprinkled in, you're going to see two or three instances of, in the middle of judgment, rescue.
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In the middle of justice being meted out, preservation. So that you say,
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God will judge unbelievers, but we're going to make it out just fine. We can trust the Lord God.
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Last comment before we look at the outline in the text. There is something worse than transgenderism.
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There is something worse than rampant homosexuality. There is something worse than divorce.
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There is something worse than you just think about whatever society is saying, here's what we believe, this is the new virtue, calling good evil and evil good.
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There's something worse. Those are bad things. But what's worst is the denigration of the person and work of the
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Lord Jesus. Falsely teaching about Him. Because, by the way, when you teach false things about Jesus, it leads to immorality.
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Heterodoxy leads to heteropraxy. Because if you believe like Peter does, if you have the right view of God, and the right view of Jesus, and the right view of the
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Father's work and the Spirit's application, you want to live a holy life. And so we run around and we watch
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America, if you will, and the world, and I think maybe you should start to say to yourself, we're only seeing the evidence of sin.
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The fruit of sin. What's at the root cause? It is a blasphemy of the person and work of the
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Lord Jesus. And that should be very, very upsetting to us. If the most important truth in all the world is that Jesus died for our sins in accordance with the
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Scriptures, that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scripture, no wonder
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Satan tries to attack. And when Satan attacks, do you know what Peter says? I'm going to shut your mouths.
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Remember, that's what Paul said to Titus. When you meet false teachers, you shut their mouths. Mouths who must be stopped.
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You put a gag in the mouth of false teachers by telling the truth and by rebuking them. I remember sometimes when kids hear me preach, they hear me say things that maybe they're not allowed to say at home.
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But if you ever see a false teacher, young Beckwiths, or any other young ones around here, you have my permission to tell them, you shut up.
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Fair enough? The young kids are like, yes! Yes! Shut up!
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Just feels so good to say, doesn't it? I mean, you're going to tell me false things about my bride, and I'm just going to stand there and go, yeah, tell me more.
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N plus one, just keep telling me all these awful things that aren't true about my bride and my face. No. How much more?
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No wonder Paul said in 1 Timothy 6, perverse disputings of men, of corrupt minds, and destitute of truth, supposing that gain is godliness.
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King James says, from such withdraw thyself. Demonstration of God's judgment, number one, found in verse four of 2
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Peter chapter two. Again, what Peter's going to do is to say, you know what? God judges sin. He's got a track record of it.
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By the way, what's track record? You know what a track record is? Where does track record come from?
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Prue will know this. I don't know if many others do. It's kind of from a racetrack, from betting. So you go to the racetrack, and you bet on a horse.
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In Nebraska, they used to have a place in Omaha that once in a while we would go to, and it was Nebraska spelled backwards.
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That was the name of the horse track. Nebraska spelled backwards is, of course, Exarbon. And so you go to Exarbon to put money on the horses, and I'd say, well,
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I don't know how to bet. I mean, I'm 18. I wasn't a believer then. I don't know how to bet on horses.
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Well, how did they run in the past? How did they fare with a certain rider, with a certain weight?
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What was their record in the past? What was their track record? What's the track record of God judging sin?
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1. Angels that sin. Verse 4. 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 judgment, then you see the semicolon there because he's leading to the then statement of verse 9.
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If God, or since God, judged angels, He's going to judge these false teachers.
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Rest. It's okay. We don't have to be the theological sheriffs of the universe.
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I got off Twitter quite some time ago now, and it was good for me to get off because sometimes I gave myself the designation of theological sheriff of the universe when a lot of people were saying bad things.
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I needed to correct them. I mean, the world needs my correction, does it not? And this is a good reminder for me that the
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Lord knows. He's got all this covered because He judges sin. Sin against His holy name,
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He will judge. And He judged the angels. He judged the angels.
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That's the minor premise. Working to the major premise of He's going to judge false teachers. Is God's destruction asleep?
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Verse 3. Verse 4. He didn't spare angels. They sinned.
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You say, well, I want to know all about their sin. What kind of sin was this that they did? Well, before I do that, the angels who sinned were rebellious.
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Those in the flood, they sinned. They were ungodly. Those in Sodom and Gomorrah were lawless.
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And so God judges false teachers who were rebellious, ungodly, and lawless because they're falsely teaching about Jesus because Jesus is the exact opposite.
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He's not rebellious. He's obedient. He's not ungodly, but God incarnate. And He's not lawless.
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He's the perfect law keeper. Jesus emptied Himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men and being found in human form.
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He humbled Himself by becoming what? Obedient to the point of death, even death on the cross.
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Therefore, God has highly exalted Him and bestowed on Him the name that is above every name so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth.
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And every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. These people that sinned or these creatures that sinned were doing exactly the opposite of what
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Jesus has done. And now we see these angels sinned and did
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God judge them? Ah, no big deal. He cast them into hell.
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God has a track record of judging sins. It's okay, Christian. What sin was that?
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You really have two options. Option was before Adam fell, the angels fell, one third of them, and God judged them.
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That's one option. Now there's another option, and for those of you that have never heard this option, you're going to think, what in the world?
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But you could study it on your own if you please. Option number two is there were angels, they inhabit men's bodies, they procreate with women, there's a cohabitation of the two beings, and now we have an irredeemable offspring called
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Nephilim or giants, and God says, you know what, you've done that, I put you in the holding cell of hell.
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How many people have heard that option? Some. How many never have, but are going, what? I give you some words of the beloved reformer
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John Calvin. But as Peter mentions here, but briefly, the fall of angels, and he has not named the time in the manner of other circumstances.
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It behooves us soberly to speak on the subject. Most men are curious and make no end of inquiries on these things, but since God in Scripture has only sparingly touched on them, and as it were by the way, he thus reminds us that we ought to be satisfied with this small knowledge.
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And indeed, they who curiously inquire do not regard edification, but seek to feed their own souls with vain speculations.
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And so I think it's very important that the point is not we have to figure out every little detail of this controversial two options, but he judges angels.
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When they sin, he judges them. Sometime on your own, you can study the parallel passage in Jude, where it says the angels who did not stay with their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day.
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Well, what's the point? Angels sin, he judges. And by the way, he casts them into something that's very interesting, only used here in all the
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Bible, a holding cell for awaiting the ultimate judgment, he casts them into hell.
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And if you see your ESV, there's probably a little marker there, and it's called Tartarus. T -A -R -T -A -R -U -S.
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Tartarus was a holding cell for beings, for angels who fell, and they would get put in a holding tank, incarcerated.
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It's common in myths of Greek language backgrounds. Here's the idea.
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These angels sin, God judged them by putting them in an incarcerated place where they'll wait for the final judgment, where the devil who had deceived them,
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Revelation 20, was thrown into the lake of fire, and sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet were, and we will be tormented day and night forever and ever.
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The point is God judges angels who sinned. And here's what he might be doing,
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I think. These false teachers, we're big shots, we're preeminent, we have a lot of followers, look at us, we're the top of the theological false teaching food chain.
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Try to say that fast, Lee. Fast. Oh, you think you're so preeminent? Let's take the most preeminent created being ever, an angel, they sinned, you think they got away with it?
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And you're not even close to an angel. That could be the drift here. Peter doesn't say the time, he doesn't say the nature of the sin, he just says they sinned and they were judged, and that's really what we're after today.
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Reserve for judgment. God has a track record of judging sin. Will false teachers get away with it?
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Of course not. Secondly, found in verse 5, here's another demonstration of God's track record of judgment.
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And all of this, dear Christians, should behind the scenes make us think, I'm so glad I don't get judged by the
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Lord. He didn't spare them. And by the way, we are spared as Christians because Romans 8 .32
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says, God didn't spare his own son, right? We should be getting this, but we're not.
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But now that we're children, we're warned. If he did not spare the ancient world, but preserved
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Noah, so you can see both judgment and preservation there, because that's what we need even today, understanding
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God will judge false teachers and preserve us. A herald of righteousness with seven others when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly, semicolon.
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If God judges everybody on the earth during the worldwide flood except for Noah, his wife, his three sons, and their three wives, eight people made it out alive with billions of people on the earth, mothers, children, and the rest.
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You think God doesn't care about sin? If God judges in Noah's day, will he judge today? The Lord saw the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
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And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. I will blot out man whom
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I have created from the face of the land. But Noah found favor in the eyes of the
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Lord. Now the earth was corrupt in God's sight, and the earth was filled with violence. God saw the earth, and behold, it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth.
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God said to Noah, I have determined to make an end of all the flesh. I will destroy them with the earth.
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Make yourself an ark of gopher wood, make rooms in the ark, and cover it inside and out with pitch.
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And Noah did all that the Lord had commanded him. The waters prevailed on the earth for 150 days, but God remembered
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Noah and all the beasts and all the livestock that were with him in the ark. I just read to you selected passages from Genesis 6, 7, and 8.
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Every single person on earth was judged, and might I say, with a judgment that is less severe than what false teachers believe, or deserve, rather.
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False teachers, they're saying bad things about Jesus. While the people in Noah's day were saying bad things about the
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Messiah with their lifestyle, obviously ungodliness is sin. The point that I'm making is simply, false teachers should get more punishment, and in fact they will.
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God punishes sinful people. Do you notice in verse 5, this is kind of interesting, I don't know if you thought about it, he didn't spare but preserve, that's the theme of this whole section,
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Noah a herald of righteousness with seven others when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly.
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A herald of righteousness. Did you know Noah was a preacher? Now most people think because Genesis only tells us
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Noah did the work, and his preaching was a demonstration of his work.
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As one man said, every time he and his boys cut down a tree and yelled timber, every time that happened, a message was given.
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Every time an axe stroke was swung, a message was given. Every time a plank was laid on the deck of the ark, a message was given.
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Every time a hammer hit a nail, there was a message given. That's true. But here we get some more insight from 2
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Peter, and that is he's a herald of righteousness. I am sure people would say, Noah, what are you doing?
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Look at Noah, what are you doing? You're not even by a lake or a river or a stream, or it doesn't even rain.
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What are you doing? And I'm sure then Noah preached righteousness. This is the right thing. Like Jonah at Nineveh.
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Hebrews 11, John by faith, Noah being warned of God of the things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house, by which he condemned the world and became heir of righteousness, which is by faith.
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The ancient world is not spared. The angels weren't spared. But Noah was spared.
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There is people, there are people, maybe a few people, but there are people who are spared when
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God judges. God has a track record of judging sin. Number three, found in verse six.
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By the way, the way to preach an epistle is to let the epistle preach. It's got three points, there it is, and no poem, sorry.
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Sometimes I like to preach Song of Solomon because it's a poem and then you can give three points. So three points in a poem, you've got a poem in three points, right
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Bob, Pastor Bob? Okay. God judges sin.
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Does he have a track record for that? Angels? Yes. Noah's flood? Yes. Sodom and Gomorrah verse six?
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Yes. 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, semicolon, getting ready for the then statement, if, if, if, then,
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God judges sin. Look at Sodom. How many people have been close to Sodom and Gomorrah these days on a trip to Israel?
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And by the way, if you'd like to go with us, February of next year, and we will go close to Sodom and Gomorrah, and what will you see there?
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Nothing. And what will you smell there? Sulfur is what you'll smell. God judged Sodom and Gomorrah.
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Why don't we just go to that passage because it's important for us to see. Genesis 19. Of course, we could see all the different connections to the
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Old Testament that the New Testament writers make, but I think this is an important one. Genesis chapter 19.
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God judged rebellious angels. God judged ungodly people in the flood, and God judges people in Sodom and Gomorrah who are licentious and ungodly.
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Genesis 19. I won't read everything, but a few verses, or several verses.
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Two angels, Genesis 19, came to Sodom in the evening. Lot was sitting at the gate of Sodom.
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When Lot saw them, he rose to meet them and bowed himself with his face to the earth and said, My lords, please turn aside to your servants' house and spend the night and wash your feet, that you may rise up early and go on your way.
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No, we'll spend the night in the town square, which is a bad idea. He pressed them strongly, so they turned aside to him and entered his house, and he made them a feast and baked unleavened bread, and they ate.
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Before they lay down, the men of the city, the men of Sodom, both young and old, all the people to the last man, surrounded the house.
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And they want something. They want someone. And they called to Lot, Where are the men who came to you tonight?
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Bring them out to us, that we may know them, that is, intimately, that is, sexually. Lot went out to the men at the entrance, shut the door after him and said,
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I beg you, my brothers, do not act so wickedly. Behold, I have two daughters. They've not known any man.
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They're virgins. Let me bring them out to you and do to them as you please. Only do nothing to these men.
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They've come under the shelter of my roof. I'm responsible for them. Stand back. This fellow,
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Lot, came to sojourn. Now he's become the judge. We'll deal worse with you than with them.
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They pressed hard against the man, Lot, drew near to break the door down, but the men, the angels inside, reached out their hands, brought
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Lot into the house with them, and shut the door. And they struck with blindness the men who were at the entrance of the house, both small and great, so that they wore themselves out, groping for the door while they're blind.
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Verse 23, The sun had risen on the earth when Lot came to Zoar. Lot's preserved.
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He's out. And the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire from the
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Lord out of heaven, and he overthrew those cities and all the valley and all the inhabitants of the city, and what grew on the ground.
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But Lot's wife behind him looked back and she became a pillar of salt. Back to 2
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Peter. The point is simple. God preserves some people in the midst of massive judgment.
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Few preserved, massive judgment. Most judged, a few preserved.
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The refrain is undoubtedly familiar to a Christian. Many are called, few are chosen. He turned the city, 2
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Peter 2 .6, to ashes and condemned them to extinction, making them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly.
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And to this very day, dear Bethlehem Bible Church, Sodom and Gomorrah are examples of what happens with sinful, licentious, homosexual sex.
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It's an example to today. The text is very clear. It has been said that if God spares today's cities from judgment, he will have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah.
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And false teachers are worse, though. That's the point. Sexual sins are bad.
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They're forgivable. That's true. Say demeaning things, false things about the
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Lord Jesus, especially about his character. You think, you know what? That was just a total butchery of the town.
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Men and women and children and everybody else. People say it wasn't butchery, it was surgery. It was amputation.
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The cancer had to be cut out. And I know what you're thinking.
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I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, you know what? Lot wasn't too hot either. So how was he rescued?
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Verse 7. And if he rescued uh -oh, uh -oh! Righteous Lot?
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Greatly distressed by the sensual conduct of the wicked? For as that righteous man
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Lot called righteous a second time, lived among them day after day, he was tormenting his righteous soul, number three, over their lawless deeds that he saw and heard.
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You mean to tell me Lot was righteous? That's amazing. One, two, three times.
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And here's what commentators say. Well, Lot was relatively righteous compared to everybody else. That's true, but that's not the point.
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How could Lot be righteous? I mean, maybe Peter's got some kind of, what do they call it when you kids, when you drink some kind of icy kind of slurpy things really fast and something happens to your head.
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What do they call that? A brain freeze. Maybe Peter's got the brain freeze. Righteous Lot?
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Did I not just read that he said to the people of the city, sleep with my two virgin daughters? And what about what happened with Lot's daughters after he got out of Sodom, where one night, one the next night, sleep with him incestuously to create children.
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How can he be saved? I mean, he's just not righteous.
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I have a different question for you this morning, dear congregation. Do you notice that it says in your text, in your
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Bible, verse seven, he was greatly distressed by the sensual conduct of the wicked. And do you see, dear congregation, in verse eight he was tormenting his righteous soul over their lawless deeds?
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I'd like to ask you this question instead of, how could Lot be righteous? How could you be righteous if your attitude about sensual conduct doesn't distress you?
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How can you call yourself a Christian when you're not distressed with the pagan, licentious world?
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How can you call yourself a Christian when you are not tormented day and night over the lawless deeds that go on all around you?
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Well, how can he be a Christian? How can he be righteous? How can you be righteous if you just go, you know what,
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I am no longer shocked at the sexual sin in America. I mean, just watch that show.
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It's only got that one five -part thing. You just fast -forward that, and otherwise it's really good. Now, the thing about Lot, we can't see everything about him, but we could see some of his attitude fruit, could we not?
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He wanted holy living. And one of the things when we seek people and they call themselves Christians, I think all too often we say to ourselves, they don't do what
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Christians do when I never know what's inside their hearts about how distressed they are over sin and godlessness.
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But everyone here at Bethlehem Bible Church has been taught that you are righteous based on the work of a righteous
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Savior. And this is positional righteousness. That even in chapter 1 verse 1, this could go true for Lot in 2
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Peter 1 .1, to those who have obtained a faith of equal standing with ours by the righteousness of our
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God and Savior Jesus Christ. We struggle with sin as Christians, and we fall short, and we're not tormented like we should be.
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We're not distressed like we should be. But those things don't mean we're not Christians. It means we're sinful.
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It means we could be chastened by the Lord. But we're trusting in the One, the Lord Jesus, who perfectly was righteous.
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And so, how is Lot righteous? Answer, he's positionally righteous before the eyes of God based on the work of the
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Messiah to come. He's not acting righteously when he says, sleep with my daughters. He's not acting righteously when he says,
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I sleep with my daughters. He is acting righteously when he says, I'm distressed and tormented.
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But if you want to get to heaven by being distressed and tormented, it will have to be a perfect, perpetual, entire torment perfectly for your entire life, and we can't do that.
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That's why we need our Savior. I stand convicted with you that we are no longer shocked at sexual sin in this country.
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We've all been Jerry Springerized. At least we're not that bad. Those crazy people.
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Lot was distressed. Many judged. Some made it out.
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God still judges sin. He's got a track record, and He has a track record of rescuing the godly.
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Even godly people who sin. Even godly people who aren't shocked at sexual sin. If you're a
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Christian, He's going to rescue you in spite of our failings. You know,
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I like to quote S. Lewis Johnson, and he said he was reading some journal articles, and he said, I was most shocked by this one because it has to do with a man who's a minister in the state of Massachusetts.
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My eyes burped up. He's a minister of the
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Congregational Church there. Last fall, he announced to his own congregation that he would preach on homosexuality.
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His own. The preacher said that it is important for respectable people like myself to come out.
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The only way a hostile environment can be changed is for people in leadership roles to come out.
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And you know what? I've been so put in the slowly boiling kettle like a frog, that doesn't even shock me.
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Does it shock you? That's just normal now. It doesn't really distress me that much, and shock me that much.
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But I want it to! Verse 9. Everything's leading to this main idea.
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Not only does God judge ungodly, but He protects His children. Then the
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Lord knows how. He knows how to do it. He knows how to rescue the godly from trials.
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What's the trial? Living in such a world. And to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment.
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And especially those who indulge in the lust of defiling passion and despise authority. I'm not distressed like I should be.
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Even though I'm a Christian, when Jesus comes back, will I make it? I don't live the holy life as much as I'd like to live.
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Am I going to make it? P .S. This kind of passage reminds me that we do not need to say to ourselves, we must live holy lives by moving to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, or moving to Montana, or a monkery, or a monastery, or a cloister, or a convent.
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God knows. He understands that we are among godless people, and we're evangelizing and being salt and light.
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But He knows how to rescue us. We're going to make it out alive. The second coming, when He comes back to judge sinners, we're covered.
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We're cleansed. We have a mediator. We have an advocate. When I think of the second coming, I don't think
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I'm getting judged, and you should not either. Here's what Paul says. Waiting for our blessed hope.
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How can we do that? Because He's going to preserve us. We're His children. The Lord has paid for all of our sins.
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We're righteous in the eyes of God positionally. The appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave
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Himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness, and to purify for Himself a people for His own possession, who are zealous for good works.
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The Lord knows how to rescue you. We're going to be fine. God judges sin. Angels.
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He judges sin. The flood. He judges sin. Sodom and Gomorrah. But even though thousands and millions of people were judged by God in those events, and creatures judged, there were a few, there were a few lot, and there's few today, and they're going to make it out alive.
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God has a track record of not only judging, but preserving. Bow with me, please.
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Thank you, Father, for this word. For those that are here today that aren't Christians, the only way that they'll be spared from your judgment is to cast themselves on the
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Lord Jesus Christ by faith alone. Would you grant them such faith? And for us as Christians, the world is godless.
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But God knows how to do things. Father, you know how. The Lord knows how to rescue us, and to keep us.
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We're thankful for that. We have hope. We have joy knowing that you're in control, and that you're just.
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And as Paul said to the church of Thessalonica, you,
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God, will pay back trouble to those who trouble us, and you will punish those who do not know God, and who do not obey the gospel of the
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Lord Jesus. But for us, we marvel at your second coming, and you have given us faith, and we believe.
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Thank you so much for the Bible where we see the preservation of Noah, the preservation of Lot, the rescuing of the godly, because we know that would be our only hope.