BIG IDEA: THE LORD KNOWS HOW TO RESERVE THE WICKED FOR JUDGMENT AND PRESERVE THE RIGHTEOUS FROM BEING POLLUTED
INTRODUCTION:
Key: The Lord knows what is going on; He is not unaware of the evil that is taking place — even though to us it seems like there is no judgment; God has His own timing; He is able to protect His own and He is a faithful and righteous judge to punish the unrighteous. We can see from history how God has punished the ungodly; we can be certain that He will carry through on His threats of judgment.
cf. parallel passage in Jude
THE REALITY OF FUTURE JUDGMENT AND THE PRESERVATION OF THE RIGHTEOUS
I. (:4) EXAMPLE OF THE SINNING ANGELS – “God did not spare”
A. What Was Their Gross Sin?
“For if God did not spare angels when they sinned”
Somehow fallen angelic beings procreated with humans and produced a wicked generation (Gen. 6); They knew it was wrong and yet disobeyed anyway.
B. What Was Their Immediate Painful Punishment?
“but cast them into hell and committed them to pits of darkness”
God has committed them to Tartarus = pits of darkness (place of punishment characterized by gloom and darkness). They are reserved for future punishment in God’s timing.
C. What is the Certainty of Their Ultimate Eternal Punishment?
“reserved for judgment”
Lesson: If God punishes the angels (whom we cannot see), surely he will punish the wickedness around us which we see so clearly.
Piper: “Angels are the most glorious and mighty beings under God. But all their power and dignity was of no use when they sinned. God was unsparing in his sentence”
II. (:5) EXAMPLE OF JUDGMENT OF NOAH’S SINFUL GENERATION
VS. PRESERVATION OF NOAH AND HIS FAMILY
“God did not spare … but preserved”
A. What Was Their Gross Sin?
“and did not spare the ancient world”
God does not make decisions based on the will of the majority. Back in the days of Noah you had a whole generation of ungodly sinners:
“Now the earth was corrupt in the sight of God, and earth was filled with violence. And God looked on the earth, and behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted their way upon the earth.”
B. What Was the Lifeline Thrown to Righteous Noah and His Family
“but preserved Noah, a preacher of righteousness, with seven others”
God preserved Noah for that 120 year period when he had to endure the mocking and ridicule of his neighbors while he obeyed God in building the ark. Eventually the worldwide flood came. Only Noah and 7 others were safe inside the ark.
C. What Was the World’s Immediate Painful Punishment?
“when He brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly”
Look at how the world likes to scoff now and deny the reality of a worldwide flood.
Lesson: Judgment comes swiftly and unexpectedly according to God’s timetable and
only the Righteous will be preserved.
III. (:6-8) EXAMPLE OF JUDGMENT OF SODOM AND GOMORRAH
VS. PRESERVATION OF LOT
“He condemned … He rescued”
God made an example of these ungodly cities; yet false teachers today persist in their immoral lifestyles, imagining that they will escape the long arm of God.
A. What Was Their Gross Sin?
“and if He condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to destruction”
same type of immoral behavior that was condoned by the false teachers
Green: “There are curious parallels between our contemporary scene and Sodom, for that city was as famed for its affluence and softness as for its immorality — and, of course, like any men come of age, they thought they had outgrown the idea of God. They found out their mistake too late.”
B. What Was Their Immediate Painful Punishment?
“by reducing them to ashes”
C. What Was the Intended Lesson from Such Severe Condemnation?
“having made them an example to those who would live ungodly thereafter”
D. What Was the Lifeline Thrown to Righteous Lot?
“and if He rescued righteous Lot”
Strikes us as unusual (given what we know about Lot) to see him characterized in this passage as righteous; The point is that God did not allow Lot to get swept away in the devastation; He held off the judgment until He had delivered Lot from the city.
E. How Bad Was the Conduct of the False Teachers? (How Severe Were the Temptations Faced by Lot?)
(described as parallel to that of the wicked men in the days of Noah and Lot)
1. Fleshly and Unprincipled
“oppressed by the sensual conduct of unprincipled men”
2. Lawless
“(for by what he saw and heard that righteous man, while living among them, felt his righteous soul tormented day after day with their lawless deeds.)”
Ritchie: “Noah and Lot both lived in corrupt, ungodly societies. Both were forced to remain in the midst of temptation for a period, Noah for 120 years, while Lot lived (the word means ‘he made permanent residence’) in Sodom. At no time were they removed from their respective locations. Only when God had begun judging their societies were either of these men removed to safety. In the same way, the Christians in Asia Minor had to live in a corrupt society, being tempted to unfaithfulness, to follow false teachers and to believe the mockers who denied Christ’s second coming. However Peter says, God would deliver them from the midst of temptation and personally return in power and glory to deliver them from ungodliness once and for all.”
Green: “The licentious behaviour of the lawless society in which he lived vexed him, lit. ‘knocked him up’. NEB catches the meaning with its translation ‘tortured’. It is customary for Christians today, living in a secularized society, no longer to be shocked by sinful things which they see and hear. They will, for example, without protest sit through a television programme presenting material which a generation ago they would never have contemplated watching at a theatre or cinema. But when a man’s conscience becomes dulled to sin, and apathetic about moral standards, he is no longer willing to look to the Lord for deliverance.”
IV. (:9) PROVEN PRINCIPLE
A. THE LORD KNOWS HOW TO PRESERVE THE RIGHTEOUS FROM BEING POLLUTED
“the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from temptation”
Why does God let so much damage be done to the Church, to His Bride? cf. the bad testimony resulting from the prominent downfall of TV preachers like Swaggart and Baker, etc.
Wuest (quoting Strachan): “The idea here is primarily of those surroundings that try a man’s fidelity and integrity, and not of the inward inducement to sin, arising from the desires. Both Noah and Lot were in the midst of mockers, and unbelievers. This peirasmos (testing, temptation) is the atmosphere in which faith is brought to full development.”
We have been given every resource for spiritual warfare that we need; we are fully equipped to handle the lies that are introduced, etc.;
How can people sit in church and be taught error and not question it?? 2 Reasons:
1) the false teachers tend to be DOMINATORS — they come in almost like Kings
(cf. OT warnings in Deut. about the abuses that will come from kings over Israel)
varying degrees of demonic control and charismatic influence
varying degrees of motivation by their own selfish lusts, etc.
plurality of elder structure should provide a check and balance against such abuse
Why do kids idolize sports heroes, movie stars, etc.?? the same thing happens in the church
2) the vast majority of believers are BLIND FOLLOWERS like dumb sheep —
we need to be checking out what we are taught like the Bereans
don’t just get sucked up into the jetstream and swept along with the crowd
B. THE LORD KNOWS HOW TO RESERVE THE WICKED FOR JUDGMENT
“the Lord knows how to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment”
“punishment” = word for pruning; interesting concept here; cf. fruit trees — need to be kept pruned in the first 4-5 years so that they don’t bear fruit (because they would not be able to sustain the weight of the fruit); then you prune trees as they mature so that they would bear more fruit; Here God is seen pruning the false teachers to prepare
them for just the perfect judgment He has waiting in store for them in His timing
CONCLUSION:
God is sovereign and in control; nothing can happen to us without God giving the OK.
The key to 2 Peter = 3:17-18: (Be on your guard and grow in grace…)
Believers are knocked down from their steadfastness because of:
1) they don’t have enough of a solid doctrinal foundation to begin with
“knowing this beforehand…”
2) they have not been careful to guard the truth which they did know
We need to value the Scriptures supremely; Don’t get bored being taught the Word — Understand how desperately you need the Word; as newborn babes long for the pure milk of the Word; you can’t get too much of it