Greetings, and welcome to the Beacon Broadcast from Beacon Baptist Church on Kirkpatrick Road in Burlington, North Carolina. The Beacon Broadcast is supported in part by the gifts of faithful listeners. If you'd like to correspond with Pastor Barkman and The Beacon Broadcast, or if you wish to support this radio ministry, write to The Beacon Broadcast, Post Office Box 159, Alamance, NC 27201. The Beacon Broadcast, Post Office Box 159, Alamance, NC 27201. Now with today's message from God's Word, here is Pastor Greg Barkman. The verse that we are currently examining is found in 2 Peter chapter 2, and it is verse 5. And it divides into two parts. Two-thirds is actually three parts, but two of the three parts deal with the certainty of divine judgment, and the second of the three parts deals with assurance of divine preservation. Peter's point is that God has promised judgment for sinners and God will carry out his promise. So you better get ready for it. You better not gamble your soul. You better not roll the dice on the assumption that somehow God will not do what he says he will do. And that is exactly what many people do. Many people deny the reality of God's judgment, even though the Bible is very clear about it, but one way or another they say, well that isn't so. That isn't really true. Well, as we've said before, saying it isn't so doesn't mean it's going to go away. You can say it, but that doesn't cause it to disappear. The question is not, what do you say about it? The question is not, what does somebody else say about it? The question is, what does God say about it? What does God's Word say about it? What does the Bible say about it? And that settles the issue. Whatever the Bible says about it is the reality. That's the truth. And we need to accept that as truth and prepare ourselves accordingly. So that is the text that we are examining on this Tuesday, February 3, as we gather together again around the Word of God by means of radio, and do so because some of you, our radio listeners, help us with the financial costs of maintaining this ministry. Well the certainty of divine judgment is the first and the third part of verse 5. It says, and did not spare the ancient world. And then it concludes the verse with this phrase, bringing in the flood on the world of the ungodly, the certainty of divine judgment. But the middle part of the verse deals with the assurance of divine preservation. But saved Noah, one of eight people, a preacher of righteousness. Did not spare the ancient world, but saved Noah, one of eight people, a preacher of righteousness. And we learned on the broadcast yesterday that Noah was, according to these words, a preacher of righteousness. He was, according to everything we learn about the biblical account, a preacher of grace. Though judgment was declared and promised, it was held off for 120 years. Plenty of time. to repent, plenty of time to veil yourself of the salvation which God provided. The ark is here, the ark of safety. All you need to do is believe the message of God and walk onto the ark, and you'll be spared from the judgment which God has pronounced, God has declared. But if you ignore the warning, and then the judgment falls upon you, and you have no ark of safety, it'll be too late in that day. When the rain begins to fall, it's too late to get on the ark. God shut the door. And when God's judgment begins to fall, dear sinner, it's too late to come to Christ. God will shut the door. Right now, the door is open. This is a time of grace. Just like that 120 years that Noah preached was a time of grace. Hear the message, hear the warning, hear the the invitation, hear the opportunity, come, come, come onto the ark, and save yourself from the judgment to come. But all of those who mocked, all of those who ignored, all of those who delayed, who equivocated, all of them were caught in the waters of that torrential flood, and there was no opportunity for salvation when they waited too long. And the same is true in regard to eternal salvation in Jesus Christ. Don't trifle. Don't delay. Certainly don't mock. Certainly don't ignore. Certainly don't contradict and deny. But even believing but failing to avail yourself of the remedy is really not fully believing, is it? You're playing. You're trying to have it both ways. As the saying goes, you're trying to have your cake and eat it too. You're trying to have as much as you can of this world and its delights and hope that you will find some way to slip into the arc of safety at the last moment before it's too late, and inevitably you're going to be caught short. God will shut the door. So Noah was a preacher of righteousness, Noah was a preacher of grace, but I also note that Noah was a preacher of disappointment. And what do I mean by that? Although Noah preached faithfully for 120 years, he had very little visible success. Very few results for his preaching. To many, in our day, Noah was a failure. What do you mean? A preacher who preaches for 120 years and nobody but his wife and his sons and daughters-in-law believes him. He preaches for 120 years and at best we can say that seven people were saved under his ministry. Why, that's not even one in every 15 years, is it? Why? What kind of a preacher is that? Why would anybody support him? Why would anybody believe in him? Why would anybody commend him? Why, We certainly expect preachers to do better than that in our day, and so many times we look to preachers to produce certain results, and if they don't produce the results that we think they ought to produce, then we're off to find somebody who can and will. I hope you're not one of those people. The measure of a preacher's success is not visible results, not how many people believe his message, but it is how faithful is he to the Word of God. I'm sorry to tell you this, but a great many of the preachers in our day are not preaching the whole counsel of God. I would say the majority of preachers in our day are not preaching the whole counsel of God. Some are complete apostates, they deny most of the fundamental doctrines of the Bible. Others are just wishy-washy. They may believe these things, but they're too careful. They don't want to offend anybody. And many preachers are just basically too pragmatic. Their primary goal is to accomplish visible success. They want to have a growing church. They want to have growing numbers. They want to have visible success. Many preachers go into the ministry assuming that a growing church and increasing numbers and reports of visible success are what God desires, what God has commanded, they are the measure of a man's ministry, contrary to everything that the Bible teaches us about that. The Bible says no such thing. The Bible commends preachers for being faithful to declare the truth, all of it, without compromise, without equivocation, without obscuring it. without repackaging it to try to somehow make difficult truths more popular. God's measure of success is faithfulness. When preachers stand before the Lord, their standard of judgment, of measurement, is going to be the same as that of every Christian. Were you faithful to the assignment I gave you? And of course God gives different people different assignments, in the sense that we're not all preachers. We all have opportunities and responsibilities to serve the Lord, but the details of that differ from person to person. But the only test is, were you obedient? Were you faithful? Did you carry out your assignment as I gave it to you? And for the preacher that means, I called you to preach the Word of God. Did you preach the Word of God? All of it. Or did you think somehow that I had called you to be an editor to edit the Bible, to pick and choose what parts to teach and what parts to pass over? That's what an editor does. You submit your manuscript to a publishing company, and the editor goes over it, and he says, I'm going to throw this out, and I'm going to change this, I'm going to throw that out, and I'm going to change this. And that's the editor's prerogative. Now you can say, I can't accept that, and he can say, all right, then we're not going to publish your material. Go find another publisher. But if we're going to publish it, then you've got to understand, I've got the the authority to edit it. I can reshape your manuscript to suit our needs. That's the editor's prerogative. Well that may be the editor's prerogative, but that is not the preacher's prerogative, and in fact that's no Christian's prerogative. None of us have the right to edit the Word of God. God has given us the Bible as He wanted to give it to us, and it is our responsibility to believe it all and to preach it all. Now obviously you can't preach all of it in every sermon. It's not possible to preach all of it every time you stand in the pulpit. Sometimes I'll preach a message and occasionally someone will say to me, well, why didn't you say this? Why didn't you say that? I thought you would have said this. And they'll bring up something that I didn't say. And I will say, because I didn't have time, I can only say so much in an allotted period of time. or because that particular thought or statement was not in this text. I have said that at other times. If it's something that's true, if it's something in the Bible, I believe that, I preach that, but I can't preach everything on every occasion. Surely you understand that. But I don't skip and choose. I think I told you about pastor that I'm acquainted with who was preaching years ago, many years ago, preaching through his church through the book of Romans. And he preached faithfully, expository sermons through the book of Romans, for the first eight chapters. But he began to get bogged down a bit toward the end of chapter 8, and when he finished chapter 8, he said to his congregation, I've changed my mind. There are too many difficult things in chapters 9, 10, and 11, particularly 9 and 11, particularly 9, so we're going to go on to a different series. He refused to deal with that. That's what I'm talking about. You don't preach Romans 9 if you're not in the Book of Romans, necessarily, but you ought to be willing to preach it At times, when it's appropriate, some people will avoid whole books of the Bible where there's things in there they don't like. That's not my prerogative. That's not anybody's prerogative. And Noah was a preacher of disappointment in the sense that I'm sure he wanted a whole lot more people to believe his message than actually did. But as far as God is concerned, he was a good preacher, a faithful preacher, and received a well done from God. Until tomorrow, Greg Barkman saying good day, may God give you his eternal peace.