Take your Bible and turn to second Peter. And we're in chapter two this morning. Before I get started, I want to mention that tonight I have a special ten and a half minute video that I want to show. I found it this week on the White Horse Inn, and I want to encourage all of you to be here tonight, especially those of you who don't normally come on Sunday night, because the video's content is the state of the church, and it's very apropos to what Peter's talking about, actually, in this chapter. It's an important topic in our day and age. Maybe this would even serve as a little bit of an introduction to the discussion that I hope that we'll be able to have tonight. I recently had a conversation with an old friend about some of my beliefs. He's a friend from college and I haven't really seen him face to face except one time in the past 20 years. But we've always had our differences of opinion and we probably still do. And in the course of the discussion, he told me how glad he was that he went to a particular seminary, because unlike most other seminaries and the students that he's talked to from them, his school taught people to, quote, think for themselves. Now, I wanted to be gracious in my response to this because I could have misinterpreted what he was saying. But the context of the statement was about my Calvinistic theology, which I don't think he's ever really liked. And it seems to me that he was implying that if you hold to Calvinism, then you aren't the kind of person who thinks for himself. I guess if you believe that Calvin or the what the Calvin or the Puritans believe, then you're somehow a mindless puppet. I think this is ironic. Because we both went to a college where nobody was reformed, and I was the only person I knew that changed my views. Meanwhile, his views on this remain the same as the day is when he was born. Carry this out to the way that we practice church. If you compare our two churches, it is this one that looks nothing like evangelical churches in our day, but his follows every trend imaginable. I just don't understand what makes people say things like this. But I've heard it time and time and time again, I can't tell you how many times I've heard people say that. It seems that in our day, if you disagree with orthodoxy, then you're a self thinker, you're an enlightened one, you're a progressive, you're someone who isn't afraid of change, someone who wants to be contemporary rather than out of touch to reach people where they are. You're a truly free spirit. I think it's just the opposite, however. Because this is nothing but the spirit of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. And look where that got the human race. Friends, I don't want to think my own spiritual thoughts and the very idea frightens me to death, and it should frankly frighten you, too. Instead, I want to think God's thoughts after him. I want to interpret the scripture with the apostles and the church. I want to hold fast to the to the traditions that have been passed down to me by Jesus and Paul and Peter and John. So I want. Apparently, this is what the New Testament wants me to do to Paul did not tell Pastor Timothy to be a free thinker or to be relevant, he told him to guard the deposit entrusted to him. That was his job. Yes, the Thessalonians were to prove all things, but not independently of the scriptures. And so Luke tells us that the Bereans were more noble than the Thessalonians, and frankly, it's the opposite reason of what most people think. It's not because they were skeptical when they heard Paul and tried to prove him wrong. It's because it says they received the word that he gave them and joyfully examined the Holy Scriptures to see that these things were true. Jude says that there is a deposit once for all entrusted or delivered to the saints. It's like the gold in Fort Knox, this deposit was put there by the apostles and Jesus found his church upon them. Jesus gave these men the keys of the kingdom in order to discipline people who arose up from among them and sought to infiltrate the ranks and to destroy the sheep. You see, Christianity has a great repository of beliefs that it's up to each new generation that comes along to seek out and understand and hold fast and teach the beliefs that have been given to us. To hold fast to these things without wavering, so that when false teachers come and seek to poison the water and contaminate the only food that preserves us, we will be able to stand up in the midst. I don't understand Christians who think that Christianity should be any other way. They just aren't reading the same Bible that I am. Now, Second Peter is the letter that we're studying. He's concerned with false teachers that go around telling people not to worry about those pesky little laws, those silly doctrines, those nutty apostles whose visions were more like sugar plums than anything meaningful or serious. Chapter two is remarkable. When you compare it with Jude's letter, now I've given you an insert that I put together this week, kind of color coded in order to show you just in visual form how many similarities there are between Jude and second Peter. And it's these similarities that force us to look at both of these letters together. This is the reason why I preached on Jude, but really haven't stopped that series until we finish with this letter. As you can see, just from looking at the colors, the similarities between these two letters, especially the chapter two here in Jude is uncanny. In fact, as far as I know, only the synoptic gospels, which are Mark, Matthew, Mark and Luke, and maybe the kingly chronicles of Israel have two or three books that are so nearly word for word as what we have going on here today. And this means that we are to look at this this morning because it's doubly important, attested by two or three witnesses in the scripture. God is so concerned, in other words, about what is before you this morning that he basically repeated himself near the end of your Bible. Maybe he put it at the end so that like any good book, the climax would stick out in your mind. Now, you don't need to sit there and spend the rest of the time reading that because I'm going to talk about it. But you go on this afternoon and look at all the similarities. When exactly is on the mind of Peter and Jude? Jude refers to certain people that have crept in unnoticed. Peter is more specific. He calls them false prophets that arose among the people. Now it's possible they're talking about two different circumstances. But my point is that the concern here is not with folks like Richard Dawkins or the Dalai Lama or Confucius. These are false teachers that are outside of the Christian community. But the people in mind here are infiltrators into the church. And I feel it's important that when you think of church here, you should also think not just of the true church, but also of sects and cults I'm not saying that cults are true churches, of course, but I am saying that Western cults are Christian perversions. OK, Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses, Unitarians, Christian science, the emerging experience, even Oprah Winfrey's New Age spirituality all use Christian terminology, don't they? What they do is they gut orthodoxy of its definitions and add heretical ones to those words. So Peter says they bring in destructive heresies. So the application is not only concerned with someone who might spring up within Reformed Baptist Church here in Boulder, but with anyone who uses the name of Christ to teach false doctrine. Now what is it about the false prophets that makes them so dangerous? It can be summarized in three points. They promise the people peace when God threatens judgment. They lack divine authority. And they will certainly be judged by God, that's what makes them so dangerous. Now, the first point is that they promise peace when God threatens judgment. I don't know of anything more dangerous than this. Peter's concern is with the subtlety that is used by the false prophets. And I really want you to I want you to get this. It says they secretly bring in destructive heresies, you see. Now, this was a concern in the early church, and it is a major concern in our day, Paul said, for example, in Galatians, some brothers have infiltrated our ranks in order to spy on the freedom that we have in Christ. How does the infiltration spread? Well, for example, in Timothy, it says they will gather around them a great number of teachers that will say what their itching ears want to hear. Now, listen carefully. It is the smooth talk. It is the tickling of your own ears, the flattery, the self-esteem gospel, the narcissism of what is preached in so many pulpits and classrooms today that makes it so dangerous. Why is that dangerous? It's because the teachers are saying exactly what you want to hear and you're willingly gathering them around you. They tell me all sorts of good things about me. Oh, I would not want to hear that. They use my own gullibility and lust against me. Generally speaking, if some pastor is telling me exactly what I want to hear, it probably isn't true. But it's happening all the time, all the time. In fact, it happens so much in our day and age that one sociologist has dubbed this the heretical imperative. He calls our culture the heretical imperative. That is, you must virtually be a heretic in today's Christian world because heresy means to choose. And the most important doctrine in today's church is free choice. So preterists go around telling people that they're living in the eternal state, that Jesus came back spiritually against every creed and orthodox confession of the church. And people listen to them because it allows them to live their lives however they see fit. And health and prosperity teachers tell people that they can create wealth by drinking the magic formula called faith and people are allowed to continue living in sin. And the emerging church appeals to our cultural sensibilities of environmentalism and tolerance and relativism. And in the process, it annihilates scriptural authority and even relevance. It obliterates true knowledge of God in Christ, and it turns the worship of God into something that is more at home in a wicked fertility ritual than in a covenant renewal ceremony. Oprah goes around telling people that they're basically good and that they're little gods within themselves. Totally sovereign free wills. She throws in a little common sense ethics and steals a little from the biblical law here and there in order to make it seem so nice and so good and so Christian that now millions and millions of her followers claim to be Christians. But she offers nothing but pagan new age, one world government spirituality. These are seductive things. Because it's exactly what you want to hear. But it says that these heresies have a result in verse one swift destruction. I want to look more closely at this verse. And I want I want you as a reformed Christians to listen to what I'm going to say here. Because there's been two streams of the Reformation. One is kind of what I call classical Reformation orthodoxy on this doctrine. All of the first generation reformers held to it. And then there was a second view that came along later with the scholastics that has become probably the more dominant view in our day. Peter was concerned with false prophets who were quote denying the master who bought them. Now probably this has at least in mind denying his second coming when it talks about the master will look at that more next week it may be maybe next week in Chapter three. But. When they deny the master who bought them, it says it brings their swift destruction. I want to focus on the phrase denying the master who bought them, even though the point I want to make at this point in the sermon is to talk about the destruction that's coming. This verse brings up what some people think are theological problems against Reformation theology, as if this is a proof text for losing your salvation or against particular redemption. First, it has a near parallel in Jude, and this is important because you've seen that there's parallels in these letters. Jude says they deny our only master and Lord Jesus Christ. And from the parallel, it seems conclusive to me that Peter is talking about Jesus here, even though he doesn't use his name. Both men use the word despotism for master. Sometimes it's translated as Lord in the English Bibles. More often, it's translated as master. But the normal word for Lord is Curios. So Peter and Jude must have something special in mind. This word for master signifies an earthly master of a slave. And sometimes it emphasizes God's Lordship. Now, I want you to think about this analogy of slavery. How do masters get their slaves? Unless they're born to them generations later, they buy them, don't they? Peter uses the word agoradzo, which is part of the redemption word group in the New Testament. The point is that Jesus as master bought these false teachers as his slaves through the cross. Now, that's a quote from Tom Schreiner, who would nobody would ever call anything but a five point Calvinist. But this verse does not prove that people can lose their salvation as if people are saying that these false teachers were saved by Jesus purchase of them as his slaves, but are suddenly destroyed on the Day of Judgment. Peter never says they were saved. He says they were bought. And I was thinking of this example. If a man buys a slave, it doesn't mean he saves the slave. In fact, it doesn't mean anything like that. It means he has legal rights on that slave as his property. And this way, Jesus has legal rights on the whole world, which is why he will be their judge on Judgment Day. Jesus could not judge them if he didn't if they didn't first belong to him. So, think of Jesus like Philemon, the slave owner. Philemon owned Onesimus, who was his slave. And Philemon was under no compulsion to set that slave free. Now, if Onesimus wants to be free, it will not be as a result of his own free will, will it? Because he's a slave. He can't just choose to leave and so be free. No, slaves have no freedom. It would come as a result only of Philemon, who alone has the power to set him free. But Paul appeals to Philemon to do just that, because in the same way, Christ has set his people free from sin and death, not merely in buying us, but also in effectually calling us to himself by his free grace alone. Jesus has different purposes then in buying people on the cross. He does not set everyone free, nor must he. And so they are not free. But the good news is, of course, what Jesus says in John 8, if the Son sets you free, you are free indeed. That's the grace and mercy of God. That's the freedom of God to do what he wants. Now, only when salvation and buying are equated is there a problem. Now, unfortunately, a lot of people do this today. But why do we equate words and create problems that do not exist in the text? Calvin and Luther didn't equate the two words, and they saw no problem taking Peter at face value. Listen to Calvin. He writes, he means that Christ is denied when they who had been redeemed by his blood become again the vessels of the devil and so render void as far as they can that incomparable price. It's John Calvin. Luther wrote they should be under him as a master who owns them, but now, even though they believe that he is a Lord who has ransomed all the world with his blood, they do not believe that they are ransomed and that he is their master. Stephen Sharnock, a Puritan divine, wrote that Christ purchased the continuance of their lives, their state of execution that offers that offers of grace might be made to them, but it doesn't mean that he saves them. The point that Peter is making is summarized by Tom Schreiner in his commentary on this. Take the verse straightforwardly. Some who submit to Christ Lordship subsequently deny him and therefore are damned forever. Peter is only following Jesus, who said whoever denies me before others, I will deny before my father in heaven. But Peter, like Judas, concerned that these false teachers will use their heresy to promote their sensuality, it says, which in turn causes God's name, which is the truth, the way of truth to be blasphemed. Last week, I mentioned Bill Maher, who blasphemes God every chance he gets because of the things that have been done in the name of religion. Now, isn't this exactly what Peter says we are to expect from unbelievers when the church acts like and sometimes is worse than the world? Why should it be any difference? So the two things, false teaching and sinful behavior, go hand in hand, and that's ultimately the point of this. Peter lists eight more moral vices that mark these heretics, and I'm not going to get into a big word study on any of these because they're pretty straightforward. They're greedy, in verse three. They are lustful and despise authority, in verse 10. He says they blaspheme glorious ones, in verse 10. He says they have eyes full of adultery, in verse 14. He says they entice unsteady souls, in verse 14. He says they forsake the right way, in verse 15. It seems to me that when you look at the list here, greedy, lustful, blaspheming, glorious ones that the classic. Three money, sex and power lay behind, ultimately the apostatizing from the faith. And so the idea is that if you are taken captive by any of these three, then you are in danger, especially when you justify sinning in the name of God. Verse 20 tells you why, if you have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, then become entangled in them and overcome by them, then you become worse than they were at first. Verses 21 and 22 explain it from another perspective, if you have known the way of righteousness after receiving the commandments of God, Then you are like a dog that returns to its vomit. Do you hear that? I mean, I don't know how you could get any more blunt than that. You are like a pig that washes in the water and then returns to the mud. So obviously, then it is worse to have known the truth and rejected it. Then to never hear it at all. And this is the danger, frankly, that you put yourself in every week that you come to church. Here, there is a seriousness of coming together to receive the word of God, to participate in the sacraments, to take vows together before God of our fidelity and love towards him. If our lives, when we leave this place, are taken up with greed, lust, pride, fame, then we're hypocrites and the truth is not in us. And likewise, if we tolerate heretics and false teachers, how is the truth in us? Now, Peter follows this up, this is kind of the theology of the passage. With a whole litany of examples from the Old Testament, and many of these follow not only the exact examples, but the very order that it's presented in Jude. So what we find here is that the New Testament uses Old Testament stories as warnings and examples. Using what we would call the moral intent of the text. An argument is developing in Peter in this section that goes like this, if then. If verse four, see that if verse five, if verse six, if verse seven, then verse eight. So that's what he's going to lay out here. He begins with a bizarre story that was popular in his own day, but relatively unknown in our own. He says, if God did not spare angels when they send, but he cast them into Tartarus and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment. That's his first step. Now you see the same example given by Jude, except for Jude is a little bit more detailed. He says the angels did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling. So God has kept them in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day. Now. We first learned that at some point in the past, there was a number of angels that sinned. And I talked about this in my sermon when we looked at this in Jude. And so I'm not going to spend a whole lot of detail on it here. I want to focus on something else. But Jude is talking about the story that we read this morning for the gospel in Genesis six, the story of the Nephilim, where the sons of God marry the daughters of men and produce literal giants as children. Now, he references first Enoch, And it seems to me, as I argued there, that it makes the matter beyond dispute that this interpretation of Genesis six is what is in the mind of Jude and Peter, that angels left their heavenly authority to have sex with human women. And I know that as bizarre as that sounds. that I can find no way of denying that this is Peter and Jude's inspired interpretation of Genesis. And a lot of people have not come to grips with that when they're trying to deal with what is Genesis actually mean. Since I talked about that view in Jude, I want to focus on the result of the sin that's talked about by both Peter and Jude. When he talks about committing them to chains of gloomy darkness. Because this is the emphasis. Peter says that God cast them, first of all, into Tartarus. Now, some of the text read hell. This is a bad translation, OK? This is a word, a Greek word. It's not the word Gehenna. It's the word Tartarus. It was used in Greek mythology. It was used in Jewish apocalyptic literature. Listen to this. In Greek mythology, it refers to an underworld where the Titans, you know, the Titans are there. Giants are sent to await judgment. Now, I want you to keep in mind. Second, Peter and what he says about chains of gloomy darkness into Taurus, as I read for you a little small portion of Hesiod's Theogony. This was written in 700 BC. Among the foremost Katchus and Bray us and guilless and satiate war for war raised fierce fighting three hundred rocks one upon another. They launched from their strong hands and overshadowed the Titans with their missiles and buried them beneath the wise past earth and bound them in bitter chains when they had conquered them by their strength for all their great spirit as far as the earth to Tartarus. And you can debate this with me. All you want. But I don't buy into Joseph Campbell's thesis that Greek mythology symbolizes metaphors of larger philosophical and psychological ideas. That's nothing but 20th century psychobabble, if you ask me. I think that there's a better way of understanding mythology, especially Greek myth, which is that it is the retelling of real history in a way that the gods are made to be the heroes because they were the historical progenitors of Greek civilization. It's simply amazing to me that such widely diverse sources as Hesiod in 700 B.C. and Peter in 60 A.D. in Israel would both talk about a group of ancient demigods, both having close connection with giants and titans being bound in prehistoric times past and gloomy chains into Tartarus. Now, it's for this reason that I think you cannot think that this is hell. Revelation makes it clear that the final judgment of the demons is still in the future. This is some kind of a holding place, gloomy, dark and terrible, and for at least 4000 years, these angels have been locked up in this place, unable to escape, unable to roam freely. Chained there to the wall. You get the imagery of a dungeon, don't you? With these shackles screwed to the wall and these captives being held up against it. Except for this is for 4,000 years. That's a long, long time. But this is only a holding cell. The judgment hasn't even come yet. God was so angry with these beings for leaving their positions of authority that he bound them up so that they would not be able to wreak havoc upon the world of men in our day. That's that's my understanding of it. Imagine with this kind of thing going on in the world of Noah's day, just how wicked a place it must have been. No wonder that God wiped them all out. So Peter, unlike Jude, continues the thought then. He says the ancient world was destroyed in the flood. Now, I'm going to skip because Peter does something else here that you doesn't do that, I want to tell you about at the end. For now, I want to move on to Sodom and Gomorrah. Cities are turned to ashes and condemned to extinction, he says. And why does God bother to tell you about Sodom and Gomorrah It's because it's an example of what's going to happen to all ungodly people. The sins of Sodom and Gomorrah are numerous, we like to focus on generally one, but there's many in the scripture. There was leftover memory, it seems to me, in the minds of those men of the Nephilim, and so we find them actually seeking to have sex with angels. But more than this, they wanted to commit homosexual sin, which is where we get the word sodomy. It appears that they were also very cruel and inhospitable, unwilling to help the poor and needy, Ezekiel says. They lived in pride and excess, having all manner of physical wants at their beck and call. That's the way the prophets bring out the city of Sodom and Gomorrah. They were at ease. They were comfortable. They were lax in their physical lives. And this carried over into their spiritual lives. In short, who were these people? They're pretty much every developed country in the world today. That's who they were. But it says they were condemned to extinction, utterly obliterated from the face of the earth. I recently got to go to Israel. They don't know where Sodom and Gomorrah actually are, but they're pretty sure that the city that Lot fled to, Zoar, is in this waste wilderness over sort of by Masada. And let me tell you, there's nothing left of that place. utterly desolate. That's just Zohar. What about Sodom and Gomorrah? Well, it serves as an example of the power of God to do anything that he wants, any time that he wants to sinners. The point here, like it is in Jude, is that soon God is going to do the same thing to all ungodly people. He doesn't finish here. Apparently, these guys want you to keep thinking about this. Starting in verse 10, he picks up the list again. This time he brings up Jude's topic of those who blaspheme glorious ones. But unlike Jude, Peter doesn't go into extra biblical sources. He doesn't talk about Michael and the archangel. He's simply content to leave it at the level of men blaspheming. He brings up the way of Balaam in verse 15. Jude talked about Balaam too. Peter's even more interesting, I think, than Jude when he talks about this story, because Peter referenced or alluded to Balaam's prophecy like we saw last week with the star that is Christ in chapter one, verse 19. But it says that Balaam was a wicked man who loved to gain from wrongdoing. He would fit well into Wall Street today, wouldn't he, if he were not a prophet of the 12th century B.C. But it says God used a dumb donkey to rebuke him, to restrain the prophet's madness. So Peter gives a list of sins, then, after these stories that is many times exactly like Jude's. There's irony in Peter's list because While God used an irrational animal to rebuke Balaam, the donkey, he says right after this, it is the false prophets who are actually irrational animals, creatures of instinct born to be caught and destroyed. You thought that the donkey is a dumb animal. He's saying the false prophets are worse because at least the donkey talked with a human voice. What a terrible way to describe false prophets. Balaam's donkey was smarter than they were. I think of them like fish or worms without any sense of reason, nothing but instinctual creatures, they're like sharks. They just attack. But their only purpose in life, as far as it concerns men, is to be caught and eaten or squished like bugs. And we don't often think of people that are made in the image of God in this way. We see that is what sin is able to do. It dehumanizes us. Which is why we have so many little worlds of Hitler's and Larry Flint's and Al Capone's in our day. Like these Peters, Peters talking about men who are law to themselves. They have no authority to do what they do. In fact, they despise and reject authority, apostolic tradition, orthodoxy, law, morality, absolutes, truth and God, because these things only hinder their greater purpose, which is to look out for number one. Americans are very interested in themselves. Andy Couch, who's an editor of Christianity Today, says in this video that I'm going to show you tonight, we really are interested in me and the fulfillment of the project called me. And a lot of American Christianity plays to that interest. This is a mirror of what our culture wants and not an alternative, a different set of hopes than our culture is already looking for. But we need to give an alternative. Brothers and sisters, we have an alternative. But it's not in the hope that the world hopes for peace, peace, they say, when there is no peace apart from Jesus Christ. I want to come to the main difference, in my opinion, between second Peter and Jude, then Jude is much more concerned with just the warnings and the dangers. He only mentioned salvation briefly at the beginning in verse four and the end in verse 24. But Peter is a pastor writing to sheep that he knows need good news. And so he intersperses his list with the same hope that you find in the Old Testament narratives themselves. In spite of all that can be said that is wrong about the church, it doesn't stop the truth from shining forth the truth, which is always only a word away. You want to know how to change the churches in our day, just get them to speak the word. Frankly, if you hear a sermon that is nothing but hellfire and brimstone, and I want you to hear this, too, then the pastor is not doing his job. He's not preaching like a Christian. Because in this day, judgment has not yet come. In this hour, God has given hope to the world of men. In this time, Christ's blood still avails much to salvation. There's hope out of the darkness of sin and despair and self-absorption. Obviously, the hope is not in turning inward to your own wicked heart and passions or to the culture as if it were something to emulate. That is what false teachers would have you to do. But when you do not know the truth of the matter, your heart seems like it's a pretty nice place and the world seems like a pretty good place. But the Bible tells you that your heart is as clean as a menstrual cloth. And the most deceitful thing on planet Earth. It deceives you into thinking that everything is OK. That's what the warnings of history are given to do, to shock you out of your constant complacency of yourself. But it inserts hope just at the point that you are most vulnerable, most desperate, most needy, because after the law comes and thunders down on the mountain, the gospel comes. Look at Peter's words, even in verse one, We get all hung up about the theology, but Jesus is a master who spilt his blood even to buy the worst of heretics. The focus here must be on God's love to do that for even such as his enemies. And yet you were and perhaps still are his enemy. When we were God's enemies, Christ died for us. But you don't need to be his enemy. Because a herald goes out. A proclamation that's been going out, Peter says, since the days of Noah. It is by this word that you are saved. I told you I want to return to Peter's intention to bring up the ancient world that was not spared. Now it's time to see why. Verse 5. God preserved Noah, a herald of righteousness, with seven others when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly. Peter's probably alluding here to extra biblical legends that were told about Noah preaching during the years of building the ark, because the Old Testament story doesn't say that. But what did he preach? That's really the question. What was Noah preaching? A different gospel, because we only have the gospel in the New Testament. You know, it's interesting, you read Plato. He seems to have memories of Noah in his tale of the destruction of Atlantis, because Atlantis was destroyed, according to him, because of her great sins against the gods. But yet it was warned for many years about a coming disaster. But the pagans, like Plato, always get the message wrong or they preaching. What do you do in the midst of your sin against the God? You don't turn it into sins against the gods. Like Plato did. You don't turn inward to the goodness within yourself. You don't turn to babble to the hope of humanism, to a messianic president or to a new world order. You repent, that's what you do. When the message comes of God's judgment. And of his love in Christ, you repent. Noah was, according to the Silabine Oracles, a preacher of repentance. Quote. The phrase. I did not cease to preach, repent. Is often used in Jewish and early Christian literature about Noah. Repentance is a recognition of your sins against a holy God. It's a turning away to righteousness away from sin. Through faith. in the son of God. God did not leave the ancient world without a witness to his grace. You see, why did you read that for the gospel today? Pastor, for that reason, in Sodom and Gomorrah, God did not leave the cities without a witness to his grace. You realize that Peter says God rescued lot greatly distressed by the sensual conduct of the wicked. He lived among them day after day. Frankly, as you Christians are living among the wicked day after day in America. Says tormenting his righteous soul over their lawless deeds that he saw and heard. Now, you know, I've heard a lot of sermons, no pun intended on how lot was doing all sorts of evil just by being in Sodom. I can remember one that talks about his threefold movement from Genesis 13 to Genesis 19, where first he looks and he covets many walks. Many stops, many sits. In the city is an example of what you're not to do. Now, that's creative. But it's not how Peter preaches the story of life. Instead, Peter would have you recognize What Abraham's prayer to God for ten righteous soul recognized that there was a righteous man in the city and that God would not leave a righteous man there to be consumed with the rest. Now, of course, Lot was not without sin, but he was a man distressed over the sins of the city. The emphasis is not how to be like Lot or how to not be like Lot, but how the Lord knows to rescue the godly from trials. That's why the story of lots in the Bible, it seems to me. And isn't this the best way to finish today, even though the church is torn asunder by heretics? And even though you are tempted to give up your own faith and practice of godly living, the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials. He's already done this. By sending his son who rescues us from the coming wrath. You know, if you will only believe this message. Really believe it. Not just that's true, but that's true for me. Then God will rescue you too. You see, he will rescue you from every evil deed. If you will trust by faith and not try to attain by works of your own hands. That's the promise as a voucher of his pledge to you. Jesus has promised to renew his covenant every time you come together. The feast, as it is called in First Corinthians five, eight is a fellowship meal between Christ and his people. It seals the promises of God that are able to rescue us from the judgment to come. And you need that ceiling upon your heart. Because you sin and if you really know what your sin is, your sin makes you go. This can't really be true. God can't really do this for me because I know what I do to him. You need the sealing of God. Peter and Jude both talk about feasting, that's why I wanted to end on the Lord's Supper. They both use the phrase, but for them it was the heretics that feasted in their midst and they became blemishes upon their meal. That's why we have guidelines for following in the Lord's Supper. This is not a meal for unbelievers. If you're an open rebellion, if you've not trusted Christ alone, if you've not publicly professed your faith and been baptized, if you're under church discipline, then you must not expose yourself to divine wrath. But for those who are humble and trusting in Christ alone, the table is spread for you. It's given to you because you're a sinner that needs the grace of God, we climax our service every week with the supper so that even if I really mess up the scripture in my sermon, you have God's sealing promise of the death of Christ. And his body that is broken and is blood that's spilled for you. So let us come together as a body and eat and drink to our eternal comfort. Will you bow your heads with me? Heavenly Father, I know that we've looked at a lot of stuff here this morning There's an awful lot to think about. I wanted to put this all down here in one sermon because it's a big, giant flow of thought. Lord, we've considered how you are a stern judge and how you will not let false teaching and false living go unpunished. And we have seen example after example in real history, world history. History that Peter in the next chapter says people deliberately forget in order to continue living the way they want to live. All of the evidence is before them, but they don't want to remember your judgment, even though the people of that day knew full well that it came because of their sin. Lord, we live in a time of your mercy and your grace and your kindness towards the world. That's why we're not consumed in an instant. It's why you allow our United States to continue. It's why you allow any nation to continue. It's why you even allow your church on this earth, which is full of sinners, to continue. And yet we take advantage of your grace and your mercy by forgetting. What you have done for us by not taking seriously, wanting to be in fellowship with your fellow with our fellow brothers and sisters whom you've saved, we'd rather do just about anything but that. And for us churches, sometimes just the thing we go to on a Sunday morning for an hour and then we leave and get on with real life. But this is real life. Lord, we've come before you into your presence with your son and your Holy Spirit. And we have been taught many things by your word today, and perhaps the best of all is that you do not allow for your people to go and face judgment when Christ has already faced it for them and set them free. And I would pray, O Lord, that your gospel might shine forth in the lives of those who hear this message today, that it would change the way that we think, the way that we talk, the way that we live, that we would be people that are known for what we believe. I pray that you would seal this into our hearts, into our minds, into our hands and our feet and our tongues as we come together as a body now to celebrate the great covenant renewal meal that Jesus proclaimed. Showing that this is the new covenant in his blood, I would ask that you would glorify yourself, O Lord, in your church today. For Christ's sake, I pray. Amen.