The Lord Knoweth How to Deliver the Godly — L.R. Shelton Jr

The Judgment of False Teachers and the Deliverance of the Godly

In your Bible began this morning the 2nd Peter chapter 2. I want to read to you the first 9 verses. 2nd Peter chapter 2. But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privately shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that brought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction.

And many shall follow their pernicious ways, or assiduous ways, by reason of whom the way of truth shall be evil spoken of. And through covetousness shall they with feigned words make merchandise of you, whose judgment now of a strong time lingereth not, and their damnation slumbereth not.

For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness to be reserved under judgment, and spared not the old world, but saved Noah the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness, bringing them to flood upon the well of the ungodly, and turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah into ashes, condemning them with an overflow, making them an example unto those that after should live ungodly, and delivered just Lot, vexed with the filthy conversation of the wicked.

For that righteous man dwelling among them, in seeing and hearing, vexed his righteous soul from day to day with their unlawful deeds. The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptation, and reserve the unjust under the day of judgment to be punished.

Reading the first nine verses of 2 Peter chapter 2, I ask God's blessings again. My Father, we come to that time when we deliver thy precious word. We cannot do it without thy spirit working effectually in us, enabling us, giving us the words to speak, and taking them home to ready hearts who are in need of these words.

And our Father, for they will do the work in each and every heart this morning. So you bless it. Give to us that which is needful for our souls and for our lives. Strengthen our faith, Lord, in our prayer, in Christ's name and for his sake.

Amen. This is our fourth message in going through this second chapter of 2 Peter on false preachers and preachers. And we've come to verse 9 in our exposition. But what before it was in our messages, we showed you the characteristic marks of the false prophets and teachers and preachers in opening up verses 1, 2, and 3 and a little from the rest of the chapter in our first message.

And then we gave you the contrast from the word of God of the true shepherd of God, so we could keep the two in mind as we went through this chapter. And then last Wednesday we had a word of warning from verses 4, 5, and 6 when it showed us that if God spared not the angels of sin that cast them down into hell, if he spared not the old world before Noah and only delivered eight souls by the flood, from the ark, from the flood, the flood overcome in the way of the ungodly, if he turned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah into ashes from bim and bum with an overflow, and delivered just Lot, as long as, like Noah, from the filthy conversation of the wicked that he was in, and verse 8 says he was a righteous man dwelling among them in seeing and hearing and vexing righteous souls from day to day with their awful deeds, and I know all about that.

I went to the place where I had a man in the back of me, he could not speak four words without bringing in the name of God and blaspheming. The man in the front of me, he could not get on the phone without telling a dirty joke to any and everybody that he talked to.

I had to listen to this all day long. Around my house, Monday mornings, I always used the expression, I said, today I'm going from Jerusalem down to Jericho. Yesterday I was in Jerusalem in the house of God, now I'm going down to Jericho among the wicked to hear that for five days.

The Lord Knows How to Deliver His People

But, if God did all of that, and he delivered Noah, he delivered Lot. Our text this morning, our message this morning, is a very encouraging word to the people of God. I want you to look at it with me, with me in verse 9.

The Lord mayeth how to deliver the godly out of temptation, and to reserve the unjust under the day of judgment to be punished. This word got a hold of my heart, because those four words that start that verse off.

The Lord knoweth how. Now the Lord knows how to do a trillion and one things. But it struck me, as I both see the verse down, the Lord knoweth how. What does he know how to do? He knows how to deliver the godly.

But what's he going to deliver them out of? The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptations and trials. And even in the last day, he will deliver from that judgment and that casting into hell.

The Lord knoweth how. And I pray that God will write those words upon your heart, as he's written upon mine, as an encouragement in the days in which we're living. In this day and world of apostasy, and all that's around us, this wicked and perverted generation in which we're living, our souls are vexed with the unlawful deeds that we know about, and we see, and the things that we hear.

And God knows how to deliver us out of those things. Now if all the other things be true, that is, the judgment of the angels, the judgment of the world before the flood, and the judgment of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, if those things be true, and they were, and they are, then the Lord knows how to deliver, or to rescue the godly out of temptations and out of every trial.

And then he also knows how to keep the ungodly under chastisement, under the day of judgment and doom. So let's go over it again. The Lord knoweth how. What does he know how to do? He knows how to deliver the godly.

Well, what is he going to deliver them out of? He's going to deliver them out of temptations, or as the word says in other places, he delivers us from all our afflictions. And he also gives us the word in 1 Corinthians 10 -13, that there is no temptation, or test, or trial that hath come to the sons of men the godly, but that is common to all men.

But God is faithful, and that he'll not put on us any more than we're able to bear, but he will with the testing, the temptation, the trial, make a way of escape that we may be able to bear it. God knows how to deliver out of a million circumstances, and trials, and testings, and we are to trust him.

And that's where faith comes in. So we should pray that God would strengthen our faith. The disciples asked for that. We told them something hard, and they said, Lord, he said, Lord, strengthen our faith.

Give us more faith. And so this is what we should do. Ask of God that he would strengthen our faith in the hour in which we live, and that our eyes would not be upon stealth, our eyes would not be upon the filth, and vileness, and wretchedness of the world.

It should not be upon the circumstances and situations that the world is in today, for God sits above them, and our eyes should be upon him, and our faith should be in him, for he knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptation.

Trials, Unbelief, and the Need to Persevere

So from these verses of scripture, which we've been looking at in this chapter, these past Sundays, it is a fact that the godly, the people of God, the true believers, they faced problems, and they faced difficulties, and they faced trials.

Noah did. Lot did. They were faced with it. Noah was a preacher of righteousness. As he built the ark, he warned. He preached. It is said that Enoch was a preacher of righteousness in Jews. He preached to all in that same time.

How do we know what God would do? And so they were in difficulties, and problems, and trials. The greatest danger, the greatest danger in the situation that you and I face today in the whole world, is becoming full of unbelief, and despairing, and feeling that the whole thing is helpless, and hopeless, and there's no deliverance that might come.

The utter helplessness, and the futility of going on. You know, we sit here week after week. We work here week after week. We've always been a little small group. As long as I've been here, I've been here from the beginning.

And sometimes we go up, and sometimes we go down. They come, and they go. And God's faithful stay by the grace of God. But God does not want us to give away to despair. He does not want us to give away to the utter helplessness, and futility of the situation.

Things over which we have no control. Like he doesn't want us to get all upset at what's going on in our governments today. We can't control it. We can't do anything about it. Let's face it that it's there, and only God knows how to deliver.

Therefore, we should look to him. The pile of evil seems to be getting worse all the time. But God is on the throne. Everything seems to be organized against us. We'll let everything under the sun go.

But you start talking about the Lord, and the Bible, and the things of this nature, and it's taboo. It's gone out the window. And in all of this, we could be discouraged if we were not looking to him, for him who sits upon the throne.

And all that blasphemy, vileness, evil, sin, is all around us. There's no fear of God before the eyes of men. Every man does what seemeth right in his own eyes. False religion is on every hand, all over the universe.

How are we going to overcome all of this? For teachers and preachers are bound by the tens of thousands. And men are carried away with every wind of doctrine that comes along. Do we become discouraged?

Our text says no. It says the Lord knows how to deliver the godly out of temptations, out of these trials and temptations that come upon us. What encouragement then do we have to continue standing for God?

What encouragement do we have to continue to stand for the truth? What encouragement do we have to keep on going? And the whole world seems like the days of Noah and the days of Lot again. Well, we certainly do not want to be like these false teachers and false preachers who denied the Lord God.

Oh, my friends, my beloved, beloved one this morning, I ask of you, please, never entertain the devil's thought in your mind to deny the living God, to deny the Lord Jesus Christ. Oh, you say, I will never do that.

Peter said that. And he was writing his presents all the time. And what did he do? Never say you're not. The only thing that will hold you is the grace of God. So our encouragement is to continue in the place where we are.

We are not, I tell you, we are not to listen to these false teachers or preachers. We are to not even listen to those who try to tell us to turn back or go back. It's all helpless and all hopeless. No, it's not.

We've got to, we've got to go on. Now, there's another thing the Bible teaches, and which the health, wealth and prosperity people and all the cults teach, that we shouldn't have afflictions, shouldn't have trials.

We shouldn't have sickness and sorrow and all of those things. That's not what the word teaches. We must understand that we're always going to confront evil. We're always going to confront the devil. We're always going to confront the world.

We're always going to be there. God has, there's been no difference since the first man, when the first child of God had to stand against his brother who killed him. Therefore, we should pray that God would give us the eye of faith to look away from circumstances, to strengthen our hearts, to encourage our hearts, and to look to him who is the living God, the sovereign God, who is above all of this, the one who knows how to deliver the godly out of temptation.

The Almighty Power of the Sovereign God

How is he going to do this? First of all, we should understand this morning that the God of the Bible, the sovereign God who sits upon the throne, is all powerful. He's all powerful. There's nothing lacking in God's power to deliver.

We must consider that God has the power to deliver. He has the power to work all things after the counsel of his own will. The Lord God is almighty. The Lord God is all powerful. It is in his hands, it is in his arms that he holds us.

It is by his power that he delivers us. Temptations are going to come. Trials are going to come. Evil will be around us. We're going to see it held away. But he has power to deliver. Never forget that.

The one who called us, and the one who saved us, is the one who will hold us by his all mighty power. And then even in that last day when we stand at the judgment, even then he knows how to deliver the godly out of that day, the day of judgment.

For I know whom I have believed, and I'm persuaded that he is able to keep me against that day, that day, the day of judgment that is coming. And that day, God said he would hold us and he would keep us.

God’s Sovereignty Over History and Evil

So let's look at some things this morning. What do we face? No matter what the world does, and the world's going to spin in this chaotic condition as far back as history tells us about. Men forget, and forget history.

They forget that man has always been wicked. He's always been, like Whitfield said, half devil and half beast. He's already always carried out these things that we see today. God allows it. We don't understand God's ways or past finding out, but God is on the throne.

No matter how the world reduces itself to utter chaos, still God is above it. God is more powerful than Satan. God is more powerful than the world. God is more powerful than anything. And I praise him that out of chaos, as we've seen down through the years and the centuries and the ages, out of chaos God has worked his purpose.

You go back through history. Did you all, did all of y 'all read those two books on history of the church that we got, got a stand, wrote and we presented? If you haven't, y 'all are reading them. God has never let the church die.

God has never gone off and left his people. They had been persecuted. They had been killed. They had been treated terrible. He hadn't gone off and left them. And God's people should be like the three Hebrew truths, when they wouldn't bow down to Nebuchadnezzar's idol and worship it.

And all they did was stand and throw heads all against him if they stood. They stood for the truth. They stood for God. And Nebuchadnezzar said, don't you know that I have power to throw you in that furnace?

And I'm going to heat it seven times hotter than it was. And they came back and said, our God, whom we serve, shall deliver, either by life or by death. He will deliver. We can always bank on God's faithfulness to deliver.

And that should encourage our hearts. So in all of the chaos that we see today, and there's rumblings everywhere, that area around Palestine and the Jewish nation of Israel and that whole area in there is just sitting on a powder keg, waiting for somebody to light the fuse.

Everything's in a chaotic condition. But as we face these things, as we consider what stares us in the face, even this next year, for we've heard, I have heard, the failing of the stock market. It's going to go down in bucks.

The economy's going to go way down. Everything's going to be in a chaotic condition. The Y2K event that people are talking so much about is only a little over a year away, if it's going to come. It's faceless, it's staring us in the face.

Our nation is becoming more wicked day by day. More people are being deceived by the false teachers and prophets. But brother, in spite of all of that, as it was with Lot and as it was with Noah, God is on the throne.

And God is above all of it. He knows how to deliver us out of the situation that we may find ourselves to be in. So how are you going to take care of all of this ministry if all of this happens? I don't know.

I didn't know how to take care of it last week. I didn't know how to take care of it 20 years ago. I didn't know how to take care of it 10 years ago. Where are you going to get your money? The same place you've been getting it for all these many years.

God's on the throne. Well, supposing there's no economy. All right, there's no economy. I'll go through one depression. I'll go through another one, by the grace of God. I lived through the 30s. You should have lived through the 30s.

Then you would have known what a depression is. I lived through it. I could tell you a lot of stories about it. And I'm sure there's at least two more here this morning that could tell us about the 30s.

Did God deliver? Certainly he did. He brought us to this hour. And the thing, I praise God, we should remember. Let faith be in operation. Because the God we serve, the God of the Bible, is a God who is spoken of like this.

God’s Omniscience and Presence With His People

The Lord has searched me and known me. Thou knowest my down sittings and my uprisings. Thou understandest my thought of fall off. Thou compass my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all of my ways.

The Lord is everywhere. For there's not a word in my tongue but, O Lord, thou knowest it all together. Thou hast beset me behind and before and laid thine hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me as I cannot attain unto it.

Whither shall I go from thy spirit? Or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there. If I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. If I take the wings of the morn and dwell in the outermost parts of the sea, even there shall thy right hand lead me.

Thy hand lead me and thy right hand shall hold me. If I say dark, surely the darkness will cover me. Even the night shall be light about me. Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee, but the night shineth as the day.

The darkness and the light are both the light to me. This ought to tell us that God knows where we are. He knows our thoughts, our down sittings, our uprisings. He's acquainted with all of our ways. Nothing escapes his notice.

Beloved, let me tell you something. If he loved me enough to die for me, if he loved me enough to shed his precious blood, that I might be delivered from going down to the pit. If he sent the Holy Spirit in his power to regenerate me and make me a new creation in Christ and adopted me into his family and made me a child of the living God.

If he did all of that, does he want to lose me? No, he doesn't. He wants to keep us by his almighty power. The Lord knows how to deliver. And so let's face it. God has allowed evil. He permits it. We do not know why or how.

God’s Wisdom, Providence, and the Restraint of Evil

But we do know, we do know the word says, and I also read that in Romans chapter 11. So precious to my, to my heart. Last night, all the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God, how unsearchable are his judgments and his ways past finding out.

Who hath known the mind of the Lord? Who hath been his counselor? Who hath first given to him that shall be recompensed to him again? For of him and through him and through him are all things to him be glory forever.

Amen. But that 33rd verse, the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and knowledge of God, how unsearchable are his judgments and his ways past finding out. Beloved, we don't know the mind of God and why God does things as he does.

We don't know why he has permitted evil. We don't know why he desired to save precious souls out of human race. We don't know what moved him except his love that he sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins.

But we do know one thing, we have permitted all of this, that he keeps it in bounds. Read the book of Job. The Lord said, Satan said to God, you see Job? Yes. He said he's a righteous man. He hates evil.

He said, but he only, he only worships you and praises you because of what you've done to him. Take away all his possessions if you give him, he'll curse you to your face. All right, the Lord said to Satan, you have permission to do it, but don't touch him.

He took everything away from him. And what did he do? He cried. When his wife come to him, he said, the Lord give it and the Lord take it. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Naked came I into the world and naked I will go up.

And then Satan came back again and he said, if you just take that hedge you've built around his personal way, he'll curse you to your face. He said, all right, do what you want to do, but don't take his life.

So he sent him those boils that he had for nearly a year. There was a limit. There's a limit to evil. There's a limit. God holds it in bounds. Did you know that the believer, would you believe that the believer is the sustaining thing in this world today that's holding it?

Did you know that God has put us here to hold the world again? The reason he hasn't destroyed it is because his people are here and they are the light of the world and they are to be instruments of God's peace.

Not only that, but he is the one who has ordained the higher powers. He is the one that's given us governments. At least there's some restraining force left in this nation and some of the countries of the world.

All of this is of the Lord. Therefore, what he wants us to do is to go fast and to look to him and have our eye upon him because he knows all about it. And the thing I loved about going through those two books on the glorious church, God never let his church go to a place that he didn't send revival.

Go back through his church history and you'll find in the darkest of times, God has come in revival. And the people have been revived. It has spread in certain sections and countries of the world and it's held them together and they've been changed and God has added into the kingdom.

The greatest revival has been going on in China for a long, long time. Tens of millions of Chinese in the underground church. There's revival and there will continue to be revival. Look back over the revival and when God changed whole communities and towns and cities and he will do it again.

If he's not planned on coming, if he's not coming right away, we're going to see, we will see revival again. We have it at the turn of the century. Praise God if he would give it again at the turn of this century.

God has always left himself a witness. Why? He knows how to deliver the godly out of temptation. Therefore, what he wants us to do is to hold fast. He wants us to have a faith that will not let go. A faith that trusts him in all of his glorious attributes.

A faith that will praise him in the darkest hours. A faith that will thank him for everything that comes upon us. That will thank him for all that he's doing to bring his purpose together. His plans together to do what he's going to do in the world in which we're living.

Every age has felt that God could no longer put up with the world. I've read, I've read it many a times in many a centuries in the last four or five centuries that I've read since Martin Luther's time.

In every century, in every decade, there have been those who have felt well, they have made the statements there's no way that God could put up with this earth anymore. He must come in judgment. He must come with punishment.

It's either Christ or chaos. Well, here we are here. I don't know how long he's going to stay his hand. How long his patience is going to run. How long his long suffering is going to be. Because God is long suffering.

Not one of the many should perish, but it all should come to repentance. We could get the 100 years or 500 years or a thousand years from the coming of the Lord. Nobody knows what God is going to do. We don't know his mind.

So what we must do is to hold fast, to keep our eyes upon the living God, waiting daily at his gates, knocking there in prayer, not letting him go, asking for that heart of faith to take away our unbelief and to trust him in every hour, believing that he'll bring everything to pass according to his will.

And we have all encouragement to do it because he said the Lord knows how. I'll tell you something. I was born a pessimist. I really was. Because if it was going to happen, it was going to happen to me.

If it was going to go under, it was going to go under, under me. I was born a pessimist and I was a pessimist until the day God saved me. And when God saved me, he made me a, what's the other word? A what?

An optimist. And what is an optimist? An optimist believes in God. Another thing, faith. Faith is an optimistic thing. Faith is a living thing. Faith lives within us because it's God's faith. For I was crucified with Christ.

Nevertheless, I live. Yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. And the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. I cannot allow, by the grace of God, for that unbelief come into my heart.

I don't like to be contaminated with anybody else's unbelief. I want to trust the living God. He's been too good to me. He has proven himself faithful 10 ,000 times, 10 ,000 times to me and his ministry.

How could I doubt him? I don't want to. I could, but I don't want to. By his grace, I want to live in faith. Live in faith. God's on the throne and God will work out his purpose for his honor and for his glory.

God’s Judgment of the Unjust

But there's something else in here and then we go to the last one. The Lord knows how to reserve the unjust under the day of judgment to be punished. The love of God never forget that the sovereign God is a righteous and just God.

He's a God of wrath as well as a God of mercy and a God of grace. He's a God who will reserve the unjust under the day of judgment to be punished. Do not be like Asaph in Psalm 73. He said, I have washed myself and cleaned myself so that it can all be.

I suffer and the unrighteous go on in their way. It doesn't seem like they have anything that's wrong with them and they live in pleasure and they live in wealth and here I am suffering. Why do I have to go through this for the ungodly?

Oh beloved, put a hand over your mouth. Will you put a hand over your mouth real quick? Don't talk like that. If it belongs to the living God and he's washed you in his blood and he's given you a title to glory in Christ, what does it matter what happens to the ungodly down here if they prosper?

And you only have a meager bite to get by with or a meager dollar to spend. What difference does that make when you have the living God? Don't be like Asaph. Well, is that right? That the wicked should be blessed and me seemingly going on every day with problems and cares and things of this nature?

But remember, God is reserving the unrighteous for the day of judgment. Not only that, but he is chastising them now. Did you know that sin has its punishment now? Sin is punished even in this life before the ungodly ever gets to the life beyond.

A man cannot be happy in sin. The most miserable people in the world are the rich. The most miserable people in the world are those who have a whole world coming to their door. I don't mean what they show on a stage or a tv screen.

Follow them to their home while their makeup is off. Follow them when everything, everybody's gone and they're alone. Find out, you find out what a man is when he's alone. If he's happy when he's alone, if he's happy with his God, the Lord God of glory, if he's happy with the word, he's happy in what God has wrought for him, that's the man that you should want to follow by the grace of God.

Sin. You let a man get drunk, he might have all kind of pleasures, he thinks, in getting drunk. So he's going to punish, he's going to be punished, he's going to wake up in the morning with the biggest hangover and headache you've ever seen.

He's going to suffer for it. You let a man be promiscuous in his sexual encounters and he gets a dose of some disease, he's going to be punished. Man is going to be punished, he is being punished now.

He has to live with himself. I'll guarantee you there's not a soul in this house this morning that's saved, would not be willing to stand up and said, tell me, tell this audience that in the life, in their life of sin before God called them, even though they had all kind of things, they were still a miserable wretch.

Sin is punished in this life. Sin always leads to disease and unhappiness and wretchedness. The conscience is there to accuse. So my friend, my beloved this morning, don't envy those who seem to have it all.

Don't envy them. Look to Christ and be desirous to be more like him, to follow him more. This world in its present chaotic condition is being punished. We went into that last week, if you remember, in Romans chapter one, when God gives them over to reprobate minds, to do those things which are not convenient.

God gives them over to all their sexual lust and pride and everything about him, and God just gives them over. And what do they do? They're suffering. Man is suffering. Our insane asylums are filled with men who are suffering and women who are suffering.

Our jails are filled. I read the letters of many women who are suffering. Why? Because even now, God is reserving. He knows how to do what is needful. But even now, they're being punished because of sin.

And their only hope is what? The truth of God in Christ. But the thing that he says here is the Lord knows how to deliver the godly out of compassion and to reserve the unjust under the day of judgment to be punished.

Beloved, I want you to look at that. Not only in this life is he chastising the sinner, but the ungodly who will not turn to Christ is an ungodly sinner. And finding Christ there all in all, God knows how to reserve them to the day of judgment.

The day of judgment is coming to those who are outside of Christ. They bring upon themselves swift destruction. They go about seeking less than having none. But God's word is against them. He's going to reserve them against the day of judgment.

And they will have no excuse. You will have no excuse if you die outside of Christ. You have no excuse. People want to know, man kept writing me, well go ahead prove to me that the wicked are suffering now.

All I got to do is read the 16th chapter of Luke. Pull him in. He wants to try to convince me that they're asleep now. But God reserved them like he did the angels. They've been suffering from the moment they were cast out of heaven into the darkness of change there forever.

Man is being punished in hell now. But that's only the beginning. He knows how to reserve the unjust on the day of judgment to be punished. And that day of judgment is coming after death. But punishment follows that ungodly soul to the day of final judgment.

And then the final judgment will come and they'll be cast out of the presence of God forever and ever in the lake of fire. So they will burn with fire and brimstone says the word of God without hope and without God.

No mercy. And God reserves them just like he reserves the godly. Sometimes I've got to ask God to shut it off in me. When I began to think along this line and I think of those I know who have lived ungodly lives and went out into eternity.

They died without God and without hope. And all this time they're suffering the punishment of their sins. If you died tonight without Christ you would be reserved in a state of punishment under the final day of judgment.

God forbid that any of you that I'm looking at this morning would go out into eternity as an ungodly sinner. Without hope, without God, not washed in his blood. And to be reserved in chains of darkness until the day of final judgment.

Christ’s Love, Atonement, and Keeping Power

But there's one more truth here I want to bring out before we let you go and go into this next service of the Lord's Supper. This truth of the solitude of God to hold us and keep us. For the Lord knows how to deliver the godly out of temptation.

All of this is in love. God loves me. God loves me. Can you say that this morning? I know he loves me. His word tells me, his spirit witnesses with my spirit that he loves me. I know that he loves me with all that he has accomplished for me.