Father, we thank you for gathering us here in your providence, in your will, to hear your Word tonight. Lord, encourage our hearts. We pray that you'll lift us into a higher plane, into a closer walk with yourself, not by some bypass method, but by the means of grace that you've ordained. by the power of your Spirit working through the Word. And may there be some little text, some little truth, that will bring the answer that some may be seeking. Lord, speak tonight. Give help in the pulpit and in the pew. We ask in our Savior's name. Amen. Amen. 2 Peter chapter 2 is our portion, and we are continuing on the subject of false teachers and how they, through various ways—subtle, cunning, crafty ways—seek to deceive and to destroy. The word that I majored on last week was the word pernicious. And I described it as a slippery word. It's oily. It's a kind of a word that there's no one synonym that will do it. It's the word for destroy, for destruction, for waste. And these false teachers are working by pernicious ways. They destroy souls. And we wondered, where did they get their energy from? Why do these men use religion with such vibrant zeal for their cause? And we went to 2 Corinthians 11, and we saw how the very angels of darkness can be transformed into messengers of light, and we see the devil's power at work. Now, we have to agree tonight that we're living in a very difficult period of church history, and these days are getting rapidly worse and worse. I look over my days in Canada, and I see a vast change in this nation concerning biblical things and the gospel. The very foundations of society have been and are continuing to be torn up and destroyed. Some must ask, if the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do? And it becomes a crushing and a straightening pathway that we have to walk. We see this destruction in politics. We see it in the leadership of men who set themselves according to principles and philosophies that are contrary to the truth of the Bible. We see it in the lack of leadership. We see it in the confusion that there is in various countries that have no one help from God. And yet, there seems to be chaos in the making. We see it in the loss of morality. abortion, and now euthanasia, doctor-assisted suicide. In Ontario this week, the first permission in that province of an elderly person who was granted doctor's assistance to end their lives. We also see it in the soaring rate of suicide. I talked about that a little last week. We see it in the apathy that there is toward spiritual things and the gospel. We don't see a generation today of people who long for prayer. Prayer meetings are by and large empty. The seats are empty. There's but the little remnant who gather to pray. We may call an extra prayer meeting and get a little short-term surge of interest, but that too soon fades out. God's people are content to live on a very low level of commitment. Church membership. Why bother? Put yourself under authority to men? Why do such a thing? Let's be a free agent. Let's be independent. Let me do my own thing. This age of autonomy is really the harvest of the seeds of feminism and humanism that has been sown for well over a decade, two decades or more. A hundred years ago, certainly prior to World War I and up to World War II, churches were still living on the assets of revival. Now the history of revivals in the Western world has been the 1800s, the 19th century. The days of Moody and Spurgeon and many who witnessed God turn nations back to God in a mighty way. But then things began to peter out. Our grandparents and our parents where members attended large denominations. Denominations that were bulging with people going to church and seeking to live at least in the moral boundaries of Christianity. They were salt and light in the nation. They had a voice even in politics. Christian politicians were not the rare, but very often the common thing. They were days of Christian statesmen, Christian educators, who influenced the youth of their day and often saw them walk in a good path. In my little bit of research, I suppose that E. C. Manning would be the very last politician preacher in Canada. He was already an elderly man when I came to Canada nearly 32 years ago, and he was on radio, I remember, on a Sunday afternoon listening to Ernest C. Manning. He, by the way, was known as the longest-serving politician in Canada, and up until a point in all of the world. He served in the legislature of Alberta for 25 years, from 1943 to 1968. As a young man, he went along to a Bible school that was run by William Eberhardt. And he was the first to graduate from that Bible school. And in 1930, he took to radio preaching, and then later became a politician. And all of that while, he was a farmer outside Edmonton. And so he was a man of business, a man of politics, and a man preaching the Word. Just try. to elect such a Christian to political office today, he wouldn't get off the ground. And I say this, therefore, to let us see how far this country has moved from its Christian moorings. I sometimes have the opportunity to drive around Canada BC, of course, somewhat, Alberta, somewhat, and in Ontario. And what do you see? You will see united churches that are closed, congregations that have merged, and it's in a survival attempt to provide ministry in lonely parts of the country. I know there's a population shift towards cities. And I know that there are many demands to try and keep a church going. I know of a Presbyterian church in St. Albert in Saskatchewan, and just last year it was sold for one dollar, and the congregation merged with the United Church. Now, it was sold for a dollar because it needed renovations that would cost well over a million dollars, and so it was something of a liability. But a man I know, Pastor Dave Webster, he is a Baptist pastor, Beulah Baptist Church in Saskatchewan, he got to know about this building and his congregation bought it for a dollar. And just at Christmas time, they had their very first services. And if I know Dave Webster, he didn't spend a million dollars on the renovations. I know that he was able to keep it going and so on. Now, we free Presbyterians are just a little drop in the bucket when it comes to the vastness of this country and the great work that needs to be done to see it turned back to God. And to be a Christian in 2016 is a very daunting thing. We're cutting against everything in society. And peer pressure is very, very powerful. It's hard. to be the only one that stands up for the Lord Jesus. It's hard for teenagers in school. It's hard in the workplace. And it's getting hard in some churches to stand up for the Lord Jesus and let His name be magnified. Now, it's hard to stand for the truth and to tell men that this world is under judgment. And that brings me now to 2 Peter 2 and verse 3. The very last part of that verse, whose judgment now of a long time lingereth not, and their damnation slumbereth not. And so to speak in those terms, and maybe to have your Bible open at your workplace, and at the lunch hour conversation comes around to such things, and you tell them, did you know that this world is under God's judgment? My! you would feel the wrath of man in a very short time. And the church that dares to preach this will certainly not be the popular church. It'll not be the megachurch. It'll not be the church with the crowds and the vast funding and the prosperity things that we spoke of last week. Yet this is what gives relevancy to the Christian message. This is why we must preach the gospel. This is why we must reach the world that's blind and perishing in their sin, because there is wrath, and God is angry with the nations that forget Him, and we are called to raise the alarm and stand for Him. Now, before we get into this message, you might be asking, but how did this happen? How can the nations of the Western world—Britain, various countries in Europe, North America, U.S. and Canada—how can they have all the assets and the best blessings of gospel Christianity and then blow it? and fall into what we're really seeing, a return to paganism, man-centered, humanistic thinking. Well, it didn't happen overnight. And I would trace it back to Darwinism, 1859, the publication of that book, The Origin of Species. And as Darwin put out that book in the scientific realm to try and explain the origin of things, there were liberal theologians that were rubbing their hands because they now not only had a theology, they had science to back up their liberalism. The Oxford Movement in England behind the Anglican Church in 1850 was certainly fast at work. Now, the Oxford Movement produced what we call High Anglicanism. High Anglicanism is kind of—well, my mother described it as just a paper wall between it and Roman Catholicism. I remember as a boy her explaining it that way. Then there came the Ecumenical Movement. The seeds of it, really, were in 1920s through missionary endeavors to try and unite Protestants and Roman Catholics to bring Christianity to the nations. And that blossomed into 1948, the birth of the World Council of Churches, this movement of one world church. But to bring about unity, it would cost truth. And that, again, brought things terribly down. The other thing we have to realize is that there have been no major revivals in the 20th century. Think on this. We're living in a day when there has not been a mighty outpouring of God's Spirit in a national or even in a city-wide scale in a hundred years. The history of God's church is like a graph that goes up and down and up and down, and now the graph has been going down, down, down for a hundred years. And we are living in dark, desperate times, and we're called to preach the gospel in an evil day. And our mission and our ministry is not to stick our head in the sand, to run from reality, but to face the issues that are before us. When churches do not face the issues, it creates a vacuum, and the cults multiply. And that's what has happened in our generation. The fastest growing religious organizations are the cults, and they are multiplying while the Christian church in its various shades is diminishing and weakening. We don't even be able to seem to reach the children of our day. That comes around as a very sad thing. The days when churches gathered in boys and girls and preached and taught the gospel is really slim today. Now, the thing that Peter points out here in this verse 3 is that the nations of the ungodly are already under judgment of God. See the words judgment and damnation. You need to link those two together to understand that this is not just talking about discernment or wisdom. This is not just talking about knowing the difference between right and wrong. This is the difference between heaven and hell. This is God's wrath upon nations that are blinded in their sin, and they're headed for damnation. The reality is, God is going to speedily and totally destroy. the nations that forget God, and these false teachers. They are under God's wrath. I have three things I want to say tonight. I know I had a long introduction. Forgive me. That was necessary time just to impress on you where we are at in 2016. But the three things we need to look at in this passage is judge not by the appearance of things. Judged by the history of God's judgments. That's number two. And the third one, judged by the evidence of purity. Now we are called to judge. And I tried to deal with that last week. Do not fall into the trap where we are judged not that you be not judged. That's talking to the hypocrite. That's talking about the person who has a beam in his eye and he's trying to pick a little speck out of someone else's eye. But God's people are to judge. God's people are called to judge righteously. We are to be fruit inspectors. By their fruits ye shall know them. And we are to judge not by the appearance of things. And we are told here in this passage, not by popularity, because many will run after them, not by money-making, because these people work by covetousness. and not by their claims of God's blessing, or that they are allowed to continue in their wicked ways. See? I've been doing this many years. See the increase? See the following? See the popularity? See the money that's coming in? And they make that their argument, we therefore have God's blessing. Well, what's the richest church in the world? Would you join it? Would you sign up to be a member of the richest church in the world? With all its gold and all its finery? No, that's not the way to judge. Now, we know that all men who are not believers are condemned already. John 3.18 says that he that believeth not is condemned already. But there's a special category here for these false teachers. And God's mind is working here of those who preach another gospel, and judgment for them will be multiplied. Look at verse 13 in this chapter 2. They shall receive the reward of unrighteousness. God works on a reward basis. Now, He doesn't save you on a reward basis. We're saved by grace, not by works. We're not saved on the basis of what we do in our performance. But God judges men in their sin according to their works, according to their deeds. And He bestows upon men the rewards of their unrighteousness. Verse 14, they're guilty of beguiling unstable souls. And in verse 20, their latter end is worse with them than at the beginning." Now, they mock because of their freedom to sin and resist against God, and they mock because they feel that they don't come under the immediate judgment of God. And they say, where is the appearance of His coming? Where's the promise of His coming? Look how long the world has continued There's coming a day when those tables will be turned, and those who mock at God's long suffering will weep and cry under the wrath of God's judgment. And so don't be fooled into thinking that big religious leaders and organizations have God's blessing. If they deny the Lord that bought them, and that's what we read of here in this verse 1, damnable heresies, even denying the Lord. If the ministry is denying the Lord, that's the point of judgment. That's the point at which we exercise discernment. Are you doing that? Are you a discerning Christian in these times? Because if you don't exercise good biblical judgment, you're going to be swept away. You're going to fall. You're going to lose the ability to say no to false ministry. You're going to walk into the crowd and say, isn't this exciting? And you're going to get that feel-good experience. And you'll say, this has to be God. And all the while it can be a delusion. if in that ministry they're denying the Lord, the Lord that bought them. You'll want to be in a safe place. Really, that's what Peter is crying out for here. Walk safely. Use good judgment. God has given you intelligence. He's given you His Word. He's given you His Spirit to teach you. And you must exercise due diligence. that you don't fall prey to some false way. Then secondly, judge by God's history of judgments. Someone has said—this comes from psychology, by the way, but in this case it fits—the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. And of course, the psychologist will take the child from childhood and say, well, behaving all that way, don't expect a sudden change. You're going to continue on. Well, let's apply that to the history of God's judgments. This is the kind of God we know in the Bible. He is a God who does judge and destroy the wicked. The modern man says, no, that's foolish. God is love. The gospel's grace, not judgment and damnation. It's not God intervening in this world in a negative way to rip out ungodly men. That's contested. But look at the history of God judging, and there are three grand examples in this passage. The angels that sinned, the people in the days of Noah that sinned, and the people in the days of Lot that sinned. And two times God uses what I would call the strongest language possible. God spared not. He spared not the angels that sinned, and He spared not the wicked in the day of Noah. Now, why is it put that way? Because that's contested. It's contested. God spares people. A good God wouldn't damn someone. A good God wouldn't judge the wicked. No, we read here, God spared not the angels that sinned. Now, it's a very strange thing that angels in heaven end up in rebellion to God. But that's what happened to the devil, Lucifer. He raised up his ugly head, seeking to be like the Most High. You can study that in Isaiah 14 sometime. And Lucifer and those who followed him, those wicked angels that rebelled in heaven, they were cast out. Let's look at what it says here in verse 4. For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment. They're still there! They're incarcerated! They're in chains! And they're still there waiting for the judgment day. The angels that sinned, God spared them not. And Peter says that even those angels higher than men, nearer to God, already in heaven, And yet due to some manner of rebellion cast down to hell. Does God judge his creatures? Is God a moral God? Does God believe in right and wrong? Certainly did with the angels. And then the second example is God spared not the old world in Noah's day. Verse 5, and God spared not the old world. Now the old world is the pre-flood world. The world that existed in its millions and perhaps billions of people who were corrupt—we read that over in Genesis 6—the people became corrupt, filled with violence, rebellious to God. Did God judge them? There was a line. that the sinners of Noah's day crossed. God said this, My spirit shall not always strive with man. There'll come an hour when judgment will fall. Now, it wasn't the day that they were born. It wasn't when they could read or write. It wasn't their first sin. God immediately judged them. It wasn't their first hearing of the gospel by Noah preaching righteousness. It wasn't the day that Noah started building the ark. And it wasn't the day that the animals came into the ark. It wasn't the day that Noah and his family went into the ark. It was on the seventh day after all were in, and the hand of God moved. There was no pulley system for man to operate the door. God shut them in. And in shutting the door of the ark, Judgment fell upon the wicked. Does God judge the wicked? This is His history. This is what He did in the past. And then example number three is the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, right here in verse 6, turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah into ashes. The bitumen, by the way, of Sodom and Gomorrah can still be found at the south end of the Dead Sea. That plain that God wiped off the map in a very sudden, fiery furnace can still be visited today. It's a place of death, and there's a sermon in the ashes. Sodom, those ashes can still be seen, and God called out those cities because of their sexual immorality. homosexuality, sodomy. I think Paul refers to it in Romans 1. Talks about men lusting after men. Changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image, and God gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts. We could read on. Does God judge sin and sinners? Come on now, answer the question. Many people want to hide behind the veil and say, no, evangelical is to be a nice religion. Don't mention that. You'll offend people. The church won't grow if you preach that aspect of God in His holiness against sin. And so many in that way are shut up to preach only half a message. Praise God, the gospel does save people from sin. And the gospel does bring men into purity, and is to be noted that they deny the knowledge of God, that it leads to vile affections. When the true God is denied, and men turn to deities of animals and so on, morality goes right down, down, down. How long will God endure such sin? We think of the great cities on the west coast of this continent, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Vancouver, and many other places where the sin of Sodom is now on parade. I did my little homework on when did this parade of sodomy begin in Canada and Vancouver. Well, they had what they call a gay week in Toronto in 1973, and then it turned into Gay Pride Day. What a wrongly misnamed event. How can anyone be proud of changing the natural use of the body into perversion? And what I don't comprehend is that husbands, wives, mothers, and fathers take their little children to stand along the side of the street to view the sordid, depraved event before their very eyes. It has brought this country, I surely believe, under the judgment of God. And we need to be praying for God's visitation. So we're to judge not by the appearance of things, we're to judge by God's history of judgments, we're also to judge by the evidence of purity. I want to go down to verse 10. It says, But chiefly them that walk after the flesh in the lusts of uncleanness, and despise government, presumptuous are they, self-willed, they're not afraid to speak evil of dignities, And it goes on right down there to verse 14, "...having eyes full of adultery, and that cannot cease from sin." How do we judge? We judge by the measure of purity. When God saves sinners, He saves them with a new heart to walk with God in the light of His Word and to do His will. This list doesn't sound like a good character reference for a religious leader. And Peter is saying, use your judgment. If they're following immorality, if they're following sin, they're not of God. They don't have the message of God. The gospel ministry is a high and holy calling. And only deceived people would follow after adulterers and flagrant sinners. And that's what we have in so many religious quarters. It's time for us to realize, to judge by purity. Next week, I want to preach on Lot. The Bible gives an amazing testimony for Lot. Lot was a fool to choose to pitch his tent towards Sodom. He only saw the green grass. He didn't see the wickedness of Sodom until he was in it and couldn't drag himself out of it. We are told here in this Scripture that Lot vexed his soul every day. He was a miserable man. The sight, the sounds of sin broke his heart. And when he saw his own children following the ways of the wicked, he was a defeated man. And then he lost his wife on the way out, when she looked back." These are warnings to us. And we are called in this evil day, this day when these sins are touted as good, touted as liberty, freedom. We're called to live for righteousness. It's a difficult day to live as a Christian. But God—look what it says here, and I want to preach on this next week. Next week are the following. Next week's Easter, so I may not, but we're going to preach on this before too long. And it says here in verse 9, the Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptations. And He's the same today. He can deliver us. He can deliver our children. That's why we pray. That's why we seek to walk with God. That's why we need a church that believes in God, and preaches His Word, and warns the wicked, and calls God's people to holy living. Because the Lord is able to deliver us from temptation, even though we're in the midst of a Sodom all around us. God is able to deliver us, and it is His covenant promise that He's going to call out a people for His own name, and He can keep us, kept by the power of God through faith, ready to be reserved unto that day. That's God's grace to us. I trust that you will be a man or woman of prayer. Don't throw in the towel and say, it's such an evil day, there's no point in serving God. Don't say, it's too wicked, it's too evil, it's all over. Well, we certainly see things go the wrong way around us. But we can be a church where we have God's help and God's power within us. Will you pray for that? Will you stand with us for that? We need God's people to rise up and stand for the Lord Jesus. We need wisdom to do it. We need unity to do it. We need the Holy Ghost to fill us and fit us. Surely the Lord will use us to deliver men, pulling them out of the fire, seeing souls saved and our families led in the right path. May God help us in an evil day and give us good wisdom, godly wisdom, godly judgment to know the difference between good and evil, right and wrong, and that we may so glorify him.