Immanuel Sermon Audio
2 Peter (61:66)
All right, if you saved your page from last week, it's right after 1 Peter, 2 Peter. So, it's a short book, it's only three chapters, and we're going to end up reading most the time to do that. Instead of just reading straight through it, we're going to read sections of it as we work through it. 2 Peter, you remember last week in 1 Peter, the emphasis on 1 Peter is that he was writing to people who were suffering, people who were being persecuted for their faith. We applied a lot of what he said in 1 Peter to other types of suffering in our life, maybe not directly persecution but other issues of suffering. So, the focus in 2 Peter is definitely on suffering, and in particular, how to suffer well. What do you need to do in your life to suffer well? There's good suffering, and there's bad suffering, and Peter wants us to suffer well, he wants our suffering to be done the right way. In 2 Peter, it's a little bit of a different emphasis, and in 2 Peter, he's talking about things you can be certain about, things you can be sure about. So, we're going to talk about that tonight. I started off with just a little bit of information about Simon Peter, and if you notice in 2 Peter 1-1, it's actually spelled a little bit differently than it is most other places in the New Testament. Simeon Peter, and Simon and Simeon was sort of the same name, just sort of a variation like calling somebody Jim or Jimmy, it's the same name, and so it's Simeon Peter, and I gave you just a few words on your sheet, and I'm going to give you some verses. If you want to jot these verses down, you can, you can go back and read them later. We're not going to look at them tonight, but on your outline, I gave you a few words that describe him, and then I'll give you some verses as we go. In John 1-41, we learned that he was from Bethsaida. That was where he was from, and in Mark 1-21, we learned that he lived in Capernaum. Capernaum had access to water, there was more commercial activity there, seems that Peter and Andrew and their family possibly owned a fishing business, and so if you were going to do business, that was the place to be in their little neck of the woods. So from Bethsaida, lived in Capernaum, presumably from what we read, if you kind of read between the lines a little and put the pieces together, it sounds like Peter and Andrew and Peter's wife and Peter's mother-in-law all lived in the same home, in the same house together, and so you can catch a few details here and there throughout the gospels and even in first Corinthians that maybe he was married and lived there in this home with his brother and his wife and his mother-in-law. In Mark 1-16, it describes Peter fishing with a net that really doesn't strike us one way or the other in particular, but that's sort of a clue that maybe Peter wasn't just absolutely loaded, the poor fisherman would fish with nets, and so some people look at that verse and they say, "Well, maybe he didn't have a whole lot of money," but then you read on in the gospels and it definitely mentions that he owned a boat. We saw that in Luke 5-3 just a few months back, Luke 5-3 says that he owned a boat and you had to have some money to own a boat and to run that kind of fishing operation. And so probably what you have is a guy who wasn't dirt poor. He had a decent little business going, but you ever know a fisherman, they like to keep their favorite rod or reel or tackle box or whatever, and so he just had the nets. He didn't want to get rid of the nets. He liked fishing with the nets, but he was definitely a fisherman. In Acts 4-13, we read from a group of religious leaders that Peter is untrained or uneducated, and some people take that, we mentioned this last week, some people take that verse and they say, "Well, that means that he was illiterate. He was just some dopey guy that didn't know up from down." But what those guys are talking about, those are the religious leaders in Jerusalem, and what they're saying is you haven't been to seminary, how is it that you're able to argue with us on this sophisticated level of theology and quoting the Old Testament and things like that? And most scholars will tell you that if you lived in a place like Capernaum and you owned your own business, you were literate. You were probably trilingual. You could probably speak Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic, and you would be writing and reading things all the time. So he was not a dumb guy, he was an intelligent guy. He's listed first in every list of the apostles, and in one of those lists, he specifically pointed out as the first, meaning not just the first chronologically to be called as an apostle, but he was the leader of the apostles. He was set apart and sort of designated with that role. He was also part of the inner circle of three. Peter, James, and John were this sort of inner circle that got to go into some special situations with Jesus. They went further with him and guessed seminary when he prayed. They got to go up and see the little girl raised from the dead. They got to go up on the amount of transfiguration, things like that. So he sort of had an inner circle, and Peter was in that, and Jesus nicknamed him or named him the rock, gave him this name Peter when his name was Simon, and you can look at that at Matthew 16, 17. I know people debate exactly what Jesus meant when he said, "You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church." And sometimes non-Catholics get too afraid that if we say Peter is the rock, then that means we're agreeing that he was the first pope. I don't think Peter was the first pope, but I do think he's the rock in Matthew 16. And I think when you get to the book of Acts, he's the one that steps up and leads, and he's the guy preaching on the day of Pentecost. He's leading when they choose Matthias. He's the one that speaks when they're drug before the Sanhedrin a couple of times. He's clearly the mouthpiece in the first half of Acts until Paul's sort of his story takes over. He's the rock, and clearly the leader of the Twelve. He was a missionary. You can look at Acts 10. He was the guy who had the privilege of sharing the gospel with him, baptizing the first Gentile convert when he went to Cornelius' house and shared with his family, that's in Acts 10. You also read in 1 Corinthians 9, 5. That's the verse that talks about Peter had a believing wife. His wife was a Christian, and it sounds like from 1 Corinthians 9, 5, that he took her along with him in his travels. She was either just accompanying him or maybe even part of his missionary team, but he's traveling around. And 1 Corinthians 1, 12 certainly suggests that Peter had been in Corinth because you had some people in Corinth who said, "Peter's our favorite preacher." We like listening to Peter better than Paul or Apollo or any of these other guys. So he traveled around and he preached and worked as a missionary. And he's also called a pillar of the early church. You can look at that at Galatians 2, 1 to 10. Peter, John, and James, not James the brother of John, but James the brother of Jesus, are recognized as pillars in the early church. And they're sort of the three key leaders there in Jerusalem. Here's one thing I don't want you to miss. Okay, that's just some history, so you kind of know some stuff about Peter. A lot of that you're familiar with. Do you remember all the times, remember, Peter is the leader of the 12. Remember all the times the 12 come to Jesus and they're arguing about who is the most important and who's the greatest and who's going to be first and who's going to get to sit at your right hand and who's going to get this and who's going to get that. Obviously, if Peter's the leader of the 12, he's involved in that. And from everything we know about Peter, he always was running his mouth, so certainly if he didn't start it, he jumped in on it and had something to say about that. He's part of this ego trip among the apostles. But look what he says in 2 Peter 1-1, how he introduces himself here. He says, "Simian Peter, a servant, and in my translation it's called servant, a translated servant. If you go down to verse 2, there's a note that says it really means slave or bondservant. Peter, a slave and an apostle of Jesus Christ." And I just think it's interesting that however many years have passed since Jesus was on the earth and Peter's following him around, Peter is gone from the guy who's arguing about I want to be first, I'm the most important, I'm the leader, I'm always talking, I'm jumping out there, yada, yada, yada. He still understands that he's an apostle. But now he tacks on to that with a lot more humility, I am just a slave of Jesus. He's not introducing himself as, hey, I'm Peter, the apostle, the first one, the top dog, the leader, one of the pillars of the church. He just says, this letter is from Peter and I'm a slave of Jesus, I am an apostle, but I'm Jesus a slave. And look what he says in the very next part of verse 1, to those who have obtained a faith of equal standing with ours by the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ. So the guy that used to say, I'm the first, I'm the most important, I'm the best, now says I'm a slave of Jesus. And even though I'm an apostle and even though I'm the leader of the apostles, if you're a follower of Jesus, your faith is equal to mine. I'm not on some pedestal above you, I'm not on some power trip to rule over you. You and me are on the same level here. I have a specific role given to me by Jesus, yes, but our faith is completely equal. And I just think it's worth pointing out, sometimes we read the Gospels and we paint Peter as this cocky, loud, big mouth, arrogant, boastful guy. And he was that. He was past tense that. But over time, the Holy Spirit convicted him of those things, changed him, pointed him in a new direction, and he learned to be a humble guy. So I think that's worth pointing out. If you get online, I told you last week that there's a lot of good Bible resources online and there's a lot of not so good Bible resources online. And I just did some random checking this week about the book of 2 Peter because I was curious what I would find. And if you do that, there's some good stuff out there, but there's an awful lot of stuff that's going to tell you, especially when you start googling or looking up 2 Peter, Peter did not write this. So these people online, all these smart guys with all these letters after their name, they're saying, "Why are you telling all these people all this stuff about Peter?" He's not the guy that wrote it anyways. You just wasted 10 minutes of your talk. That's completely pointless. He's not the guy who wrote it. And they look at 2 Peter and they compare it to 1 Peter and they say, "First Peter is written very eloquently. It's very good, grammar, it's high vocabulary. Then you get to 2 Peter and it's just kind of like almost a sophomore in high school wrote it. It's not as polished. It's not as well written." And so they say, "He didn't write it. There's no way they don't match." And I'm not going to get into all the arguments of that with you. We didn't get into all the arguments of it one way or the other last week. I just want to tell you, sometimes you're going to read a theory like that online or you're going to flip on the history channel and they're going to say something like that sort of attacking the credibility of the Bible. And at first glance you may hear that and you may say, "Oh, wow, we never talked about that in Sunday school. Oh, well, why didn't they tell me that at church? I wonder if the preacher knows about that. I wonder if my Sunday school teacher is aware that Peter didn't really write this book and you can just sort of start to psych yourself out." And I'm just telling you, the arguments they come up with are just, they're really dopey for why Peter couldn't have written this letter. If you think about it with just a rational brain and you just want to try to poke holes in the idea that Peter didn't write it, it's not hard. You don't have to be a rocket scientist or some sort of ancient literature scholar to poke holes in it. Look, in the ancient world it was very common for people to write letters, documents, stories, et cetera, et cetera with someone called an amanuensis, a scribe. So you sit there and you dictate your thoughts and your ideas to this person and they put it down on paper. It's entirely possible that Peter did that with first Peter, shared his thoughts, and some really brainiac guy wrote it down and sort of polished it up a little bit, still Peter's words, his thoughts. And then maybe Peter sat down and scribbled out second Peter. That's possible. Or maybe Peter's not as dumb as we think he is. And maybe he's the guy that wrote first Peter and he was a really good writer and putting sentences together and vocabulary. And then with second Peter, maybe his amanuensis was not the sharpest guy around and he just sort of, you know, wrote it on his level. Or maybe he used an amanuensis both times. Maybe he didn't actually write either of them and it's reflective of who possibly copied it down for him. But all I'm telling you is, and the only reason I bring that up is because I know on television and Facebook you see articles posted and you come across stuff on the internet. People questioning the Bible, questioning the reliability of the Bible, was this really written when we think it was, was it really written by the people we think it was? I'm just telling you, when you believe in the truthfulness of the Bible, it doesn't mean you have to throw your brain out the window and it doesn't mean you're a total idiot. Okay, whatever they want to write online or talk about on the History Channel, I'm just telling you, there's good reasons, really good reasons to think that Peter actually wrote it. And if you ever see something or you come across something, you know, as you're rolling through Facebook or you're reading on the internet or you're watching the History Channel and it just stumps you, come talk to me. I may not have the answer but we can find it and I promise you there is an answer. And there's a way to keep your mind engaged without being just a simpleton and to still believe in the reliability of Scripture. So that's a little soap box and I'll get off of it. Second Peter, here's the outline of the book, very, very simple. There's an introduction and there's a conclusion. In the middle, three chapters to the book, sort of a different focus in each chapter. Chapter one, he's talking about assurance of your faith, how to know for certain that you are a follower of Christ. In the middle of the book, it's really the heart of what he's talking about here. He talks about false teachers and that's connected to the first section because he wants you to have assurance and the way you have assurance is by knowing the truth, not falling into the nonsense of the false teachers. And then the last section there, excuse me, chapter three is about judgment and that relates to the false teachers because what he's specifically saying is God's going to get those guys. It may look like they're getting away with it for now, it may look like they're getting away with it for a long time, but in the end, God's going to get them. So those are the three basic sections. So I told you the book is about certainty and we're going to break it down, we're going to look at those three sections, assurance, false teachers and judgment and the things that Peter wants us to be certain of. But I just want you to think in your brain about things that are certain. You've probably heard this quote from Benjamin Franklin, he said, "In this world, nothing can be said to be certain except death and taxes." Those things are probably certain and you can probably add to that in our day and age, you can also be certain that when you pay those taxes, some of your money is going to get wasted. That's probably also a certain thing. You can probably mark that down as pretty true. So equally as intelligent as Benjamin Franklin said this, the sun is going to come out tomorrow. You can bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow there'll be sun and there's going to be sun tomorrow. It may be behind the clouds, but it's going to be there. You can be sure that sun is going to come up. Some other things that are certain, if you live in West Texas, the wind is going to blow. Mark it down. Wind is going to blow in West Texas. You can get down that if you're a Texas Rangers fan, your heart is going to be broken in the fall because they're going to choke. That's a certain thing. They may get you excited. You may think, "Oh, we got the pitchers this year. We got the bats. We got the," no, they're going to let you down, it's certain. Here's another certain thing. You don't get to choose your parents. You can cry all you want about who you ended up with, but you don't get to pick them. You don't get to pick your parents. Here's some other things that are certain. Things are going to change. Things will never be like they used to be and the good old days weren't all good. Those things are true. Things are going to change. You can't go back to the way it used to be, and that's okay because the way it used to be wasn't as good as you remember it being. Those things are certain. Here's one last one. This one is from a rabbi online. I thought this was pretty good. Too much certainty leads to boredom and too much uncertainty leads to chaos. You can ponder on that this week. That can be your philosophical reflection from Wednesday night. Listen, Peter wants you to be certain about things. He wants you to have rock solid conviction and assurance and confidence in three things. The three sections of the book. Here's the first one. Peter wants you to be certain of your salvation. He wants you to be certain. This is where we're going to just start reading through some of these sections. I'm going to put some bullet points up. I originally put these on your outline and they weren't even close to fitting, so I didn't put them all on there. If you want to try to scribble them down, you can try. If you want to just write the verses down, that's fine too. If you just want to read along with me, that's great. But one of the things he says, wanting your salvation to be certain, is that God, who is omnipotent, he's all powerful, that God has given you all you need for life and godliness. You, if you're a follower of Christ, lack nothing. You can have confidence that you lack nothing because God is omnipotent. So he says this in 2 Peter 1, 3, "His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire." Twice in there he talks about God granting you things. He has granted you all things that pertain to life and godliness. And he says in verse 4, "He has granted to you his precious and very great promises." And his point is, to give you assurance, you have everything you need to be certain of your salvation. You can rest in the power of God, you can rest in the promises of God, and he wants you to be certain. Here's the next thing he talks about, being certain of your salvation. How does that come about? You need to make every effort to grow and mature in your faith. This goes back to last week. I told you I'd had this conversation with a pastor friend about whether or not a Christian would or needed to pursue obedience. And my answer is absolutely. There's so many calls to discipleship. There's so many calls to repentance. And my pastor friend said, "No, you say by grace alone through faith alone. Do you believe it?" And then sort of whatever happens is cool. One way or the other, you're going to be saved in the end. That's not Peter's take on it. Peter's take on it is if you want to know for certain that you're saved, you need to continue to grow in your faith and mature in your faith. So look what he says. Verse 5, "For this reason, make every effort, not do it if you have a spare time, not do it if you're so inclined. You need to make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, virtue with knowledge. Knowledge with self-control. Self-control with steadfastness, steadfastness with godliness, godliness with brotherly affection and brotherly affection with love. If these qualities are yours and are increasing, meaning you're continuing to make progress, you don't ever arrive there, but you're continuing to press on, they're yours and they're increasing. They keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. Whoever lacks these qualities is so near-sighted that he's blind, haven't forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins. Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to make your calling and election sure. For if you practice these qualities, if you practice these qualities, you will never fall. Therefore in this way, there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. So you need to make every effort to grow and mature in the faith. And then here's the last thing he says, if you want to be certain of your salvation. You need to understand that the Word of God provides us with a solid and a certain foundation. Not some religious experience that you had, not some sort of prayer that you prayed at VBS or church camp back when you were in high school or elementary school. If you want to be certain about your salvation and your relationship with him, you've got to nail this down, that the Word of God gives you that foundation. And he talks about this, starting in verse 16. And I'm going to let you read 16 to 21 on your own, you can read that later, and I'll just paraphrase it. Peter says, look, the stuff I'm telling you about Jesus, I did not make up out of thin air. I walked with the guy and I heard him and I touched him and I ate with him and I spent three years trailing him around. I mean, this is real stuff. I really experienced it. I saw him transfigured in all his glory on the amount of transfiguration. I experienced that. And then Peter comes back around and he says, but let me tell you something that is more unshakable than walking around with Jesus in the flesh. This is not about some religious experience that you had, okay? Nothing wrong with religious experiences. They're fine. I'm not telling you they're horrible. Peter says, I had a great religious experience. I followed Jesus around. What could be better than that? He was right there. We're right here. We were walking. We were buddies. It was great. But if you want something really certain, something more certain, you need to turn to the Scriptures and just look at one verse, verse 21. He says, verse 20 and 21, no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone's own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. The men who wrote these prophecies and promises and all of it, they were carried by the Holy Spirit of God. It was their words being written down and it was also God's words being written down. This is something you can rest on and it's a solid foundation underneath your feet. And I'll just tell you, when I talk to people who are struggling with assurance of their salvation, they're struggling with, am I saved? Am I not saved? Is God love me? Am I forgiven? Or am I not? And I talk to people who are wrestling with that. The ones who wrestle with it, most of them, not all, but most don't know the Bible very well. They don't have a foundation underneath their feet. They're trying to go back to, well, you know, I know I prayed this prayer a thousand times. I know it camp. I know it. Ladies retreat. This happened. Or I know it at Secret Church. You know, the light bulbs went off, but now I don't know. And you say, you're trying to put an experience underneath your feet as a foundation. It doesn't work that way. You've got to put the Word of God underneath your feet as a foundation if you want to be certain of your salvation. So that's the first thing. You want you to be certain of your salvation. Second, you want you to be certain that false teachers are going to come. Put it down. It will happen in every generation, in every place, in every denomination, in every church, there will be false teachers. So I had to, I started with this great giant list and I had to cut it down. A couple hundred years after Jesus died and went back to heaven, there came around a guy named Arias. We have no idea what he really looked like, but I think I got a picture of the Council of Nicaea, okay? Arias walked around. He was a clergyman and he started telling people in Alexandria, Egypt, you know Jesus isn't God, right? I mean, I love Jesus in all, Jesus is great, but you know he's not God. You know he was created by God. He starts going around telling everybody this. And they have this Council, the Council of Nicaea. And all the crazy kooky guys like Dan Brown and the Da Vinci Code and Bart Erman and all these very liberal scholars, they say at this Council they got together and they decided what was true. They just sort of made it up. That's not what happened. They called this Council because this kooky guy Arias was going around teaching stuff that nobody believed, but then people started believing him. And so they got everybody together and they said, wait a minute, wait a minute, we're coming together, all the bishops gathering together at Nicaea and we're going to hash this out and we're going to let you make your argument, we're going to hear you out, but we're going to figure out where we're going to side and they said, no, we have never believed this crazy idea. And so Council of Nicaea was a good thing. And you may remember I told you a story a while back, it was at the Council of Nicaea when Arias got up, he got to give his, you know, his two cents of why he believed what he believed and he's pontificating about all this stuff. And one, St. Nicholas, they didn't call him St. Nicholas then, he became a saint later, but Nicholas was there and Nicholas got so ticked off listening to Arias, he just walked up and punched him right in the face in the middle of the Council. That's a great church business meeting, when somebody gets punched in the face, something good is happening. And so Santa Claus, we like Santa Claus, he's okay because he got up and he punched a heretic in the nose. So you had Arias, then you had a guy, not too much after him named Pelagius. And again, we don't know what these guys look like, but that's the common profile picture for Pelagius on the left. And Pelagius walks around, he's up in Britain a couple hundred years later and he starts saying, you know, nobody's perfect, but nobody's really sinful either. I mean, sin, I think we've kind of overblown it a little bit, I don't think it's really that big of a deal, and you're not born a sinner and the things you do, you're a lot better than the church has been telling you for all these hundreds and hundreds of years. It's not as bad as you think it is, and the guy on the right is Augustine, or sometimes called Augustine, but Augustine comes along and just sort of doesn't physically punch him in the face, but theologically slaps him around and says, that's ridiculous. Open your Bible, man, read it from Genesis to Revelation. That's not true. Sin is a very real serious problem. So you had false teachers, Pelagius comes along, then you had a guy, I'm jumping forward about a thousand years here, so this is a big jump. You have this guy named Erasmus, and he's saying all kinds of crazy stuff. He doesn't think sin is all that big of a deal, and he thinks basically we can do things to save ourselves, and he's very critical of the Bible and the things that are in it and whether or not they're true in different things. And there's a guy on the right named Martin Luther who says, you're a crazy man. I mean, really? That's ridiculous. So you got a false teacher and somebody has to stand up and battle them and fight them and argue against them and point out their mistakes. Bringing it to the United States of America, you've got people like Joseph Smith, founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. You've got people like Charles Tays Russell, founder of the Jehovah's Witness. You've got people like Ellen White, founder of Seventh Day Adventist, and they're an interesting group because when most historians will tell you when Ellen White was around and immediately after her death, they were clearly what we would call a cult. And then after her death, they sort of moved a little bit closer, repudiated some of her stuff and moved a little bit closer to the truth. But you've got these people, and you could, look, you could put up dozens more, right? This is just three, I threw up there, false teachers who come along and they say, look, I know we've always said this, but it's really more like this. And you may be wondering, when I get up to these guys, you may be thinking, well, what about like, we just went to secret church, what about the false teachers and all the world religions? Okay, there's false teachers in world religions, but I put all these guys up here so far up for a reason, because all these people that I've put up would say, well, I like Jesus. All about Jesus, they went to church on Sundays, they lived pretty decent lives. It's not like they're out there shooting up heroin in the gutter, slinging crack to six year olds. I mean, they're just, they sort of look and act exactly like us, but they're teaching things that aren't true. And so you say, well, who are they in our day? And so I'll just put some faces up there, and you can look at those guys and you know who some of them are, maybe you know who all of them are, and I'll just tell you, they're all feeding you a bunch of baloney, okay? I don't care how much they're on TV, I don't care how popular they are, how many books they sell, it's just a bunch of garbage, all of them. You dig down deep into things they're actually teaching, you'd be amazed at what these people actually believe. You say, yeah, but the guy on the left is holding a Bible. That's the point. I know. And you say, well, one of those other guys up there, he talks about the Bible all the time. He preaches the Bible, well, false teachers don't show up and say, hey, let's turn your Bible in and let's burn them at the front of the sanctuary. That's not how it works. False teachers will come. So let's look at 2 Peter 2, let me point out some things. First thing he says is, "Redemptive history is filled with the presence of false teachers," meaning they're there in the Old Testament, they're there in the New, and they're going to keep coming. There's going to be false teachers that our kids and our grandkids have to confront, that stand up and say things that we would never even dream of. And they're going to have to stand up and fight against it and stand against it. It's filled with the presence of false teachers. Here's something you really got to understand, I've already mentioned it, kind of. False teachers do not announce they're coming or they're heresies. They don't wear name tags that say, I'm a heretic. Hi, I'm Bob, I'm a heretic. Hi, I'm Susie, I'm going to share some heresy with you. Hi, I'm Dave, I'm completely unorthodox in my theology. They carry Bibles, they go to church, they live decent lives, they look just like you and me, they use the same vocabulary that you and I use, same vocabulary, different dictionary. They use the exact same words, they mean something completely different. So people hear those words and they say, well, he's talking about Jesus, he's talking about faith and he's talking about heaven, sounds pretty good to me, but they mean something completely different. So they don't announce they're coming and they don't announce their heresies. I think when I think about that, I think about a guy in Kentucky and I've told you about him before, he was a pastor of a manual Baptist in Frankfurt, Kentucky, manual with an E, they spelled it wrong. And he started writing these articles in the paper, not a column, but he would pay for advertising space and put his column in, it was kind of dopey, but he did it. He didn't start every article saying attention, the words below contain heresy that would get you kicked out of any Orthodox Church in the history of the church. But that's what was in the article, Jesus really wasn't virgin born, come on, seriously, the miracles in the Bible, come on, we don't believe that stuff, Jesus died on the cross for sinners, really, you believe that old fashioned stuff about blood saving you and all that, come on, man, God's not like that, I mean, just write down the line. And what he presented it as is truth, I'm gonna share with you the truth, it didn't present it as heresy, it's the truth, so you gotta watch for it, you gotta know false teachers are not gonna announce they're coming. Third, the judgment of false teachers is absolutely certain, it's certain. And Peter 2, 3 says, "In their greed they will exploit you with false words, their condemnation from long ago is not idle and their destruction is not asleep." That's kind of a strange way of wording things, their destruction is not idle and their condemnation is not asleep, but what he's saying is, it's coming, make no mistake about it, don't think that God's sleeping on this thing, don't think that it's passed his attention, it may not happen today, it may not happen tomorrow, it may not happen in their earthly life, but it is coming, it's certain. And then he looked what he says in the very next section, just as an example, a reminder that God will bring judgment on him. God didn't spare the angels when they sinned, but he cast them into hell and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment. If he did not spare the ancient world, he preserved Noah, herald of righteousness with seven others when he brought a flood on the world of the ungodly. If by turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes, he condemned them to extinction, making them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly. He did rescue Lot greatly distressed by the sensual conduct of the wicked, as that righteous man lived among them day after day he was tormenting his righteous soul over their lawless deeds that he saw and heard. Then, okay, this is a long sentence, but this is what he's saying. God didn't spare him in the days of Noah, I know he saved a few, but he didn't spare him. There was judgment in the flood, and there was judgment in Sodom and Gomorrah. I know he saved Lot's family, but there was judgment in Sodom and Gomorrah. And if he did those things, verse 9, then the Lord knows how to rescue Godly from trials and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment, especially those who indulge in the lust of defiling, passion, and they despise authority. His point is, their judgment is certain. He also says, we just read this, put it up there real quick, that God is able to preserve his people from the danger of heresy, of false teaching, and he says, look, there was Noah. There was a righteous remnant, even in those wicked days. And even in Sodom and Gomorrah, the worst of the worst, there was a man. Not a perfect man. He read the story. He is not a perfect man, but he's a righteous man, meaning he trusts God and he believes God, and God is able to keep his people safe from this false teaching. Lastly, false teaching always leads to a lifestyle that does not honor God. And I'm going to let you read that. He's already talked about greedy people, people who love money, and then he goes on in 10 to 22 and he talks about different examples of what that might look like. He just look in the middle very quickly, verse 13, their blots, their blemishes, they revel in their deceptions while they feast with you. They have eyes full of adultery, they're insatiable for sin, they entice unsteady souls, they have hearts trained in greed, accursed children for saking the right way they have gone astray. So false teaching will always end up in a lifestyle that does not honor God. Last thing Peter wants you to be certain about, God is going to judge the world. He's going to judge the world. This is chapter 3. He starts off in verse 3 and 4 there, and he says, "I know that people have always laughed at the idea of a final judgment," okay? Happened in Peter's day, it happens in our day. And people say, "Oh, it's so slow and coming. You've been talking about a final judgment for decades and centuries and millennia, and here we are, nothing ever happens." Peter says, "That's okay, just keep laughing at it." He talks about the flood in verse 5, 6, and 7, and he says, "The flood is a picture of the kind of judgment that's going to come." He's not going to destroy the earth with water. Several times in chapter 3, he talks about destruction with fire. He mentions it there in verse 7, and then he mentions it again down later in the chapter. What he's saying is not that it's going to be like the flood and that it's water, but it's like the flood and that it's going to be a total wipeout. The flood was a complete reset, and that's what it's going to be when this final judgment comes, a complete reset, a total worldwide cataclysmic judgment. He talks about God's patience in verse 8 and 9. Gives the wicked an opportunity to repent, do not overlook this one fact beloved with the Lord one day as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slow to fulfill His promises, some count slowness, but He is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. You see that throughout the Bible, right? You see it in the life of Noah, before this big buildup to this worldwide flood, you read this, all these genealogies, these guys who live such a long time, right, lived these long lives before the flood, and Noah's name means kind of, he's here, it's coming, it's about to happen. It's sort of the idea of fulfillment has come when Noah's there, and so there's Noah and he waits all these hundreds of years before he does it. He just waits, and he's patient, and he's patient, and he's patient. And you think about if your Sunday school class is doing the gospel project right now, we're in Joshua in the conquest, things like that, some of the stories that are kind of hard to swallow, but you can go all the way back to Abraham hundreds of years earlier, hundreds of years earlier, and God told Abraham, I'm going to give you this land, but their wickedness isn't complete yet. They had decades and centuries to repent and to change, and they didn't do it. And you see all these examples throughout the scriptures, we talked about the city of Nineveh, when we were going through the Old Testament, we were in the Minor Prophets, we talked about some of the prophecies against Nineveh, and God's patience, and giving them a chance to repent and to change, and then eventually he destroyed it, but they had hundreds of years of warning ahead of time. So God is patient, and you see that in this final judgment. One last thing about certainty that God is going to judge the world is Peter says, we need to live our lives today, in light of the fact that there is going to be a judgment. You need to remember that. And we'll read these verses, verse 11 to 13, it says, "Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved, and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn. But according to his promise, we are waiting for a new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells, and the point in all of those is that we're waiting for the judgment and we're waiting for this new creation, but until it comes, what sort of people ought you to be? You ought to live lives of holiness and godliness waiting for this day to come." So those are some things Peter wants you to be certain of in those three main sections. Here's one last thing you can be certain of. This is like a bonus. I didn't even put this on your outline, but you can mark this down. He wants you to be certain that ignorant and unstable people will twist the scriptures. And this kind of goes back to being certain of your salvation. You need to have the Word of God underneath your feet as bedrock. And so we'll just read this final section and we'll wrap up with this. Look what he says in 2 Peter 3, 14, "Therefore beloved, since you are waiting for these be diligent to be found by him without spot or blemish and at peace, count the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as our brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters." He's talking about Paul in his letters and he says, "There are some things in them in Paul's letters that are hard to understand which the ignorant and the unstable twist to their own destruction as they do the other scriptures." That's an important verse in the Bible because it says that at least in Peter's mind, Paul's letters are lumped in with the rest of the scriptures, the Old Testament. Peter says, "Look, we've got the Old Testament, we've got these other books, we've got Paul's letters. They're equally scripture." And he says, "Here's something that happens all the time, ignorant and unstable people. They come to these things in the Bible that Peter says, they're hard to understand. It's not like all the cookies are on the bottom shelf. There's some stuff you really got to think about here, but the ignorant and the unstable are going to come to those things and they're going to twist it, they're going to twist it to their own agenda. You therefore beloved, knowing this beforehand, you know they're going to do it. You know ignorant and unstable people are going to twist the scriptures. You know that, so take care that you're not carried away with the error of lawless people and lose your own stability. But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, to Him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity, amen." So we want you to know there's going to be false teachers, they're going to twist this truth, they're going to twist the scriptures and you've got to watch for that and you can't be led astray by the things that they say. So on that note we're going to pray and we're going to pray that God would help us to stand firm and to have assurance and to watch out for these things. So let's pray. Father help us to come to the scriptures humbly. We don't want to be those who twist the scriptures or distort the truth, Father we don't want to be found outside of the faith once for all delivered to the saints. We want to be certain of our salvation and we trust that you've given us everything we need for life and for godliness. We want to grow in our faith and Father I pray for myself and for the people in our church family that your word would be our foundation, not something that I say, not something a Sunday school teacher says or a Bible study DVD says, but your word would be the foundation underneath our assurance. Father we know that false teachers will come, they have come, they are coming, they will come and we know that you will judge them and you will handle that in your time. We pray that you would keep us from the lies of the enemy. We pray that you would help us to live our lives in a way that honors you and lines up with the truth. And Father we want to live our lives today in light of the judgment that's coming. And it may be slow in coming as some count slowness, but we believe that it will come. Father until that day comes we do pray that you would use us to lead the wicked and the sinful and the lost to repentance and again to live our lives in a way that accords with the truth. Father we're grateful for your word and as we wrap up this series over the next few weeks pray that you would help us to understand the letters of John and the Book of Jude and the very difficult book at the end of the book of Revelation. We ask it in Jesus name, amen.