The scripture reading is 2 Thessalonians 1, if you'd like to follow along. 2 Thessalonians 1, beginning in verse 5. This is a classic. imprecatory passage in the New Testament here that we read this morning and we'll relate to the text that we're going to be looking at next. 2 Thessalonians chapter one beginning in verse five. This is evidence of the righteous judgment of God that you may be considered worthy of the kingdom of God for which you are also suffering. since indeed God considers it just to repay with affliction those who afflict you and to grant relief to you who are afflicted as well as to us when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might when he comes on that day to be glorified in his saints and to be marveled at among all who have been believed because our testimony to you was believed. To this end, we always pray for you that our God may make you worthy of his calling and may fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by his power, so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, in you and him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ. And those are numbers of things that we are praying for when we pray that the Lord Jesus would soon come. Well, let's ask the Lord's blessing as we turn to the ministry of his word. Father, we thank you for every word in the scriptures that you have given to us for your glory and for our good and edification. We thank you, Father, that from Genesis to Revelation, we see your plan of redemption of your people, that you that you put into play in eternity past before the creation of the world. Father, we thank you that you have called us out of darkness and into the light of your son. And we pray now, Father, that as we look into your word, that you would teach us, that you would convict us where conviction is needed, that you would lead us to repentance where we need to repent, and that you would increase our assurance and our hope and our faith as we hear your promises in your word. And Father, we also want to pray again at this point in our service for all of those believers that are listening to us online and following our services each week We ask your blessing upon them. We pray, Father, that in particular, those that are in difficult circumstances, numbers of them have been cast out of their churches because they took a stand against evil. And so, Father, we pray that you would be a very real assurance to them that you would encourage them, that you would give them confidence and faith to know that they are serving you and that you see all that is happening to them. And so we ask your blessing upon them and we pray this all in Christ's name, amen. We are come to Matthew chapter 16. And as I began to write out this sermon this week, I put, as you can see there in your handout, if we have enough time this morning, we'll turn back to Matthew 16 and look at Peter's confession. I'll tell you right up front, we're not going to do that because we're not going to have time to do that this morning. I'm gonna talk to you about something else, but I do wanna at least introduce Matthew 16, this important part of Matthew 16 to you. This is the well-known passage in Matthew's gospel, Peter's confession. Peter's confession of Christ as the Messiah. Here it is in verses 13 to 20. Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, who do people say that the Son of Man is? And they said, some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah, or one of the prophets. He said to them, but who do you say that I am? Simon Peter replied, you are the Christ, the son of the living God. And Jesus answered him, blessed are you, Simon Barjona, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." Then he strictly charged the disciples to tell no one that he was the Christ. Now you probably know that that passage is one of the key passages that the Roman Catholic Church has always pointed to, to claim that the Pope is Christ's vicar on earth, and they claim that they can trace the lineage of the popes and so on back to Peter, and that Christ was here making Peter the first pope. Much, needless to say, has been written on that passage, and people seem to be confused about it. Well, here's this argument and here's that argument. What amazes me is it is not that difficult. It is not at all difficult to see that the Apostle Peter is not the rock that Christ's church is built upon. And when we look at this passage, I will show you from Scripture that that notion is preposterous, that Peter is, in fact, Scripture kind of goes out of its way to show that Peter or any other human being is the rock upon which Christ builds his church. And so we'll see that definitively. But what I wanted to do this morning is to direct our thoughts toward something I've seen happening repeatedly in our day and age. It's always been happening, but it's a way in which Satan works to deceive us. And it seems as the days that we live in are increasingly evil, and they are increasingly evil. There's no question about that. that it's vital and crucial for each one of us to clearly understand Satan's tactics and that without doubt some of you here and I would say really all of us to one degree or another this morning are influenced by I hope no one here is under this spell, as we're gonna describe, but you might be, and if you are, I hope that the lights go on for you, but certainly, this is something that all of us face up to with constantly, and we need to realize it for what it is, and that we're able to wrestle with it, and not be deceived by it. So let me just explain some of the main points here. First of all, these observations. Sin does not always bring immediate visible consequences. By that I mean negative consequences, right? In this life, sin does not always bring immediate visible consequences. In fact, people who reject Christ often live apparently happy, comfortable, and a key word that we're going to see the psalmist use, prosperous lives, right? Is it not true that we see in the world around us the wicked prospering? Absolutely they do. We see people who embrace rankly, grossly, immoral and evil lives being quite popular They seem to even be, they put themselves off as, and the world puts themselves off as, being very wise. Now, of course, they're fools in God's sight, but they look like they're very wise and have it together, and they give what sounds like good advice. You see that theme in the media and in the movies all the time, right? Look at, here's the sexually deviant people, but if you want to know real wisdom, life wisdom, go to these people, and they will be wise counselors in contrast to you narrow-minded religious types, right? So the deception is that we see people who are apparently nice, maybe nice to you. They are happy and they are prospering. They're prospering. They reject Christ. They pursue and, or at least justify, all kinds of wicked and immoral sins. And they prosper. And here's the trap. Here is the trap. If we fail to, as the psalmist, we're going to see the psalmist say, if we fail to consider their end, then we are in a very, very dangerous spot. And we are in danger of, well, even of renouncing Christ. We're told in scripture that sin leads to death. and that God's wrath is upon the wicked. But you look around and sometimes, sure, you see people reaping the negative consequences of their sin. You see that, you see that happening. But you also see people not reaping the harvest of evil and judgment and so forth on themselves. They're doing quite well even though they're evil. And they don't die. Apparently, they're living quite well. We read in scripture that God's wrath is upon them, but where is his wrath? Where is it? They're prospering. They're doing just fine. Ask them, just ask them. You know, that's one of the things you face up to as a Christian today. You go present the gospel to someone, and so here's, would you like to, You know, here's God's plan in Christ that you can have an abundant life, life indeed, and they say, well, I already got it. I'm fine. And by all visible accounts, they are fine. Consider the rich fool in Luke chapter 12. He, Jesus, told them a parable saying the land of a rich man produced plentifully. And he thought to himself, What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops? And he said, I'll do this. I'll tear down my barns, build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years. Relax, eat, drink, be merry. And he did. He built the barns. He filled them up, and he did relax and eat and drink and be merry. The people around him, living in that day, they didn't call him the rich fool. They called him the rich guy, and they wanted to be like him. They wanted to emulate him. He was happy and satisfied, and in fact, for all appearances, his own summation of his life was true. Relax, eat, drink, be merry. I want to be like that guy. You can go online, I like to look at boats, and if you look online, like on YouTube or something, and you look under boats, you'll come across these luxury yachts. Some of these huge ones that billionaires have, and they have a helicopter pad, and you name it, it's on there. I mean, the thing is a ship, it's not a yacht. And you go up and, Talk to somebody like that if you ever had the chance, you know, and want to present Christ to them as like, hey, I eat, drink, and be merry. I'm just having a great time. And he is. He's prospering. Things went very well in his present life for the rich man during his earthly life. They went very well for him. You don't see any indication. The Lord doesn't give us any indication that at night he's laying there and saying, I'm just so unfulfilled. I'm so unfulfilled. He felt very fulfilled. And that's how it is today. I saw in the news last week that Jacqueline Kennedy's estate at Martha's Vineyard is up for sale. And if you've got $65 million, it can be yours. 300 and some acres. their prime real estate and all the buildings and so forth on it. Jacqueline Kennedy obviously had some very rough bumps here and there in her life, but all in all, if you're a Kennedy, you had it pretty well. Eat, drink, and be, and be merry. To my knowledge, I don't know any of them that know Christ. But the circumstances in this present life of people who reject Christ and are even overtly evil, very, very often, their circumstances are quite comfortable and even luxurious. Now, on a lower scale, you might not be around the Kennedys, but on a lower scale, Even here in our community, maybe if you're a student at school, or in the workplace, in our businesses, and in the community, we see people who are temporally blessed. They are, they're prospering. So if you're into, in case, Mena, you're into the dairy industry here, right? You can look around the dairy industry and you can see people who are rich and prospering, but they're anything but godly, right? But they're prospering. They're doing quite well. And you can pick any other number of areas. As I said, in school, you see people who, they have no time for Christ. They hate his word. They embrace and promote all kinds of sexual perversions. By the way, sexual perversions, immorality, homosexuality, this is becoming a fad. It's an in thing. Increasingly young people are boasting, they're boasting about it. They're not homosexuals, but it's the in thing to do, you see. This is how the thing is going. I suppose maybe every generation of Christians say this, but it's true. I know it's true in my generation. Things that you would be arrested for, when I was in high school and so forth, and not even that long ago, you would actually be arrested for them. Now it's commonplace, and it's accepted, and people boast about. But they climbed the career ladder to success, They enjoy wide popularity right up to the day that they die. And the danger is that we might start to envy them, that we crave to be like them. And it can sneak up on you. I want to dress like them. I want to talk like them. I wanna have the things that they have, and I wanna hang out with the people that they hang out with. I wanna look like them, I wanna be them, you see, because they're prospering, and I'm not. I think one of the most classic places, and in a way, one of the most important places in the whole Bible, where this very topic is set out quite clearly, is Psalm 73, and it was written by a man named Asaph, He lived about 3,000 years ago. And he wrote about this very subject. He wrote about how his envy, he began to envy the ungodly. And he said, I came that close to stumbling. And we'll see what he means by stumbling. in a second, he almost lost his faith in the Lord. Listen to this, this is one of my, I think I'd say this is my favorite psalm because of the content of it. Psalm 73, a psalm of Asaph. Truly God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart. and knowing what we know about the Psalms, we'll probably come back to that statement toward the end, but here's the interlude here. But as for me, my feet had almost stumbled, my steps had nearly slipped. For, because, I was envious of the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. For now he's gonna describe them. They have no pangs until death. Their bodies are fat and sleek. They're not in trouble as others are. They're not stricken like the rest of mankind. Therefore pride is their necklace. Violence covers them as a garment. Their eyes swell out through fatness. Their hearts overflow with follies. They scoff and speak with malice. Loftily they threaten oppression. They set their mouths against the heavens, and their tongue struts through the earth. Therefore his people turn back to them and find no fault in them, and they say, how can God know? Is there knowledge in the Most High? Behold, these are the wicked. Always at ease, they increase in riches. All in vain have I kept my heart clean and washed my hands in innocence. For all the day long, I've been stricken and rebuked every morning. If I'd said, I will speak thus, I would have betrayed the generation of your children. But when I thought how to understand this, it seemed to me a wearisome task until I went into the sanctuary of God. Then I discerned their end. And here's the truth of the matter. Truly you set them in slippery places. You make them fall to ruin. How they're destroyed in a moment, swept away utterly by terrors. Like a dream when one awakes, oh Lord, when you rouse yourself, you despise them as phantoms. When my soul was embittered, when I was pricked in heart, you know, back when I was envious of you, I was brutish and ignorant. I was like a beast toward you. Nevertheless, I am continually with you. You hold my right hand. You guide me with your counsel, and afterward, you will receive me to glory. Whom have I in heaven but you? And there's nothing on earth that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. For behold, those who are far from you shall perish. You put an end to everyone who is unfaithful to you. But for me, it is good to be near God. I've made the Lord God my refuge, that I may tell of all your works. We could almost conclude right there, and there it is, pretty plain, isn't it, what he is saying. Verses two and three, but as for me, my feet had almost stumbled, my steps had nearly slipped, for I was envious of the arrogant, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. Now, here's something that we really need to emphasize. Asaph is emphasizing it. He's saying, I'm telling you, when I was envious of the wicked, I was that close to stumbling and falling. My steps had nearly slipped. It is a very dangerous position. When we, if we're foolish enough, in fact, he says, how stupid is this to envy the wicked? Well, it's as stupid as a beast. You're not even acting like a human being when we do that. We're acting like a, and in fact, even an animal would have more sense than this. That's his emphasis, I think. If this morning anyone here is envying the wicked because they're prosperous, then you are in a very slippery and dangerous, dangerous position. What are you in danger of slipping into? A disavowal of Christ. Disavowal of Christ. A washing of your hands of your faith. This is what happened to Demas, we read about him, 2 Timothy 4. Paul says, for Demas, in love with this present world, has deserted me and gone to Thessalonica. You know what this means. I remember teaching on that verse a long time ago, years ago. And somebody afterwards in class, nobody that's still here now, but they came up and said, yeah, but, I don't know, Demas was a Christian. He was Christian, he just had a lapse. This kind of language in scripture is not talking about a Christian. Demas was an apostate. His heart loved this present world. He was a New Testament Lot's wife. That's what he was. He's looking back, you see, and into a pillar of salt and she went. To be in this kind of a position of envying the wicked is to be in the position of loving this present world. See, that's the temptation. And it's to be then on the slippery edge of hell itself. And this is why this is Satan's tactic. He's greasing the skids. He's making it as slippery as he possibly can by showing us the prosperity of the wicked. And I think when Asaph wrote those words about, I almost stumbled. I almost, almost slipped. I think that when Asaph was writing those words and thinking about it, he was shuddering when he, when he realized how close he had come to going over the edge. My feet had almost stumbled. My steps had nearly slipped. You know, we try to be positive with people, and you know, we see people may be there to tell. They've got their eyes set on the world. envying the wicked as Asaph was doing, and we try, well, it's just a stage. They're just going through a stage. Well, let me tell you, what the Bible's telling us here is this is a very dangerous stage, very dangerous, and you may not ever come out of it. As we'll see, as we see here in a moment here, it's only, and Asaph recognized it, it was only the grace of God that, grabbed him and pulled him away from that edge. They're not in trouble, as others are. They're not stricken like the rest of mankind. You know, you look at them, look at the clothes they wear, look at the cars that they drive, look at the trips that they get to take, and they just keep getting richer and richer and richer. They're prospering. We see this increasingly in our nation today, right? ungodly, wicked people who are set against anything righteous, it seems, they're millionaires and they just keep getting wealthier and wealthier and wealthier. They're just the kind of people that prosper. Therefore, pride is their necklace, verse six. Violence covers them as a garment. They wear violence. It's what they do. They bully and they intimidate. Their eyes swell out through fatness. Their hearts overflow with follies. They scoff and speak with malice. Loftily, they threaten oppression. They set their mouths against the heavens and their tongues struts through the earth. Therefore, his people turn back to them and find no fault in them. And I think what verse 10 means is Asaph is seeing people who claim to have been the people of God going over the edge, going over the edge. And therefore, his people turn back to them and find no fault in them. This is what I want to be like. This is the way to live life. Here it is. And they say, how can God know? Is there knowledge in the Most High? Behold, these are the wicked, always at ease, they increase in riches. Trouble-free, getting richer and richer, and they mock God. This is another thing that's definitely increasing today, in our day. Definitely among young people, but really among young and old, and that is the mocking of God. The mocking of God. get your work cut out for you if you're gonna follow Christ in this present world. That's how it's always been. But now, even more so, if you're a Christian and you profess Christ and people know that's your stand, you go to church, you're not for the endorsement of sexual perversions. You're not for abortion. You do not think that you should remain a virgin before you're married, and you'll be mocked. It's not just a mocking by the wicked, it is like, what? I never heard of anything so stupid. What kind of a person are you? That's the kind of thing that definitely comes our way in this world. And the people that are wicked, that are pushing that stuff, they're prospering. and living lives of apparent ease. Asaph lets us in on his dangerous thought process while he was still on the slippery edge. Verse 13, all in vain I kept my heart clean and washed my hands in innocence. Have I done this for nothing? Look at these guys, they're wicked, they're prospering. I'm lucky if I have another meal, right? All the day long I've been stricken and rebuked every morning. And this is how close he came. He said, if I had said, I will speak thus. That means that I think verses 13 and 14, all in vain I've kept my heart clean and washed my hands in innocence. All the day long I've been stricken and rebuked every morning. He said, if I would have confess that with my mouth, if I would have said that, these were my thoughts, if I would have said this and declared that, I would have gone over the edge. I would be renouncing Christ. And he says, if I'd have said that, if I would have spoke thusly, I would have betrayed the generation of your children. That's how close he came. The difference between thinking something and declaring. So why didn't he? What was it that stopped him? What happened? Well, here's what happened. And this is really the heart of the matter, verse 16. But when I thought how to understand this, it seemed to me a wearisome task. It is confusing, isn't it confusing? You see wicked people prospering. That's confusing. It doesn't make sense, and it sure doesn't seem right. So what happened? I went into the sanctuary of God. And I think what he's saying, he may have literally gone into the temple, but certainly he meant, I ask God, I pray, Lord, I can't understand this, what is going on? And the Lord answered him, and the answer came, ah, Have you, Asaph, have you considered their end? And he says, oh, I understood. I discerned their end. And this is what he saw. Listen to it again. Here's reality. Here's reality, look. These people that we want to be envious of, right? That we want to be like. Oh, I wish I was like them, see. The truth of the matter is, those guys are walking on a greased tightrope that spans the pit of hell. Truly, you set them in slippery places. You make them fall to ruin. How they are destroyed in a moment. How long does it take to die? I mean, actually, your soul will depart your body. How long does that take? What, twinkling of an eye, right? They're destroyed in a moment, swept away utterly by terrors. Like a dream, I don't wanna wait so long. When you rouse yourself, you despise them as phantoms. What is their life really like? Again, I think it helps. Put faces, put pictures in your mind. Who is it that you're tempted to envy? Because they're prospering. They're wicked, but they're prospering. Who is it? Well, here's what scripture says about them. Not only are they walking in a slippery place, but when the Lord destroys them in a moment and they're swept away, their whole life, this whole thing, the mansions, all of their prosperity, everything that their life stood for, will be nothing more than a vapor. It's like a dream. You have this dream and you wake up, you know, it's kind of like just for a second, you can kind of remember that, but you lose it, it slips away and you can't remember the details. That's what these guys lives. That's it. They're done. They're done. The billionaire that everybody's looking, they're done. Who, who, who, who was that? The Lord actively puts them in slippery places all the while that they're prospering, and they seem to be, and they're boasting, and they're arrogant. All of those things give the illusion, and you've gotta see these things by faith. This is how you see these things, by faith, by believing God's word here. Here's the reality of it. It's an illusion that they're on solid ground, that they're, oh, I wanna go look at the solid ground of gold they're standing on. That's why I wanna set my feet on that. But in reality, the eyes of faith show us they are on a greased tightrope. I think Jonathan Edwards, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, I think he emphasized that point. In fact, Edward said, not only are they on a greased tightrope, it was kind of like the language that he used, spread over a bottomless pit. He said, it is only the delay and the mercy of the one who wants to cast you into hell that is keeping you, the wicked, from going over the edge. In a second, they will be gone. And so, your enemy, the devil, wants to entice you to get on that greased hyperbole with him. Did I just see recently that there was some tightrope-type guys walking across a tightrope spanning between a couple of skyscrapers somewhere in New York? And I think that was happening. Well, I don't imagine they greased the thing before they stepped onto it. But let's say they did, and you're standing, man, I gotta get up there, because I want to get on that with them. That's where I want to be. Well that's why Asaph is saying, I was like an idiot. I was like a beast in my thinking when I was envying these people. Because what I was seeing was a lie. It was an illusion. They're not on solid ground. They're right over the pit of hell then itself. And so what the Lord did is he taught Asaph to discern their end. Don't look at, stop looking at their present life. Those details are up to the Lord. He can deal with them, He can pour wrath on them right now. In fact, the mere fact that they're pursuing all of their sins is the wrath of God, because He's handing them over to Him. But in particular, we've got to learn how, now wait a minute here. These guys aren't forever. What's gonna happen to them when they die? What is their end going to be? Well, here's the rest of the story of the rich fool. God said to him, fool, this night your soul is required of you and the things you have prepared, whose will they be? So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God. Consider their end. It's hard for me to describe this or put it into words. But I know, and I think most of you know, I know the pull that this kind of a thing can have on you. And I think in some way, in some ways, especially when you're young. It's like, I wanna have, and you know, these are the kind of people that are getting all the praise around. I think back at my high school years, especially, and there was a lot of wickedness that came across that PA speaker into the classrooms. Every morning, it's like, oh, wow, look at this fantastic guy. Boy, this student, look at this. And it's not wrong to reward good performance and so on in school, but this was like, these are the people you want This is it. And they weren't godly people then at all. And so the pressure is on you and the illusion. The devil is a master illusionist. It looks so good, so enticing. Yes, but what is going to happen to them at their end? I don't know this for sure. I don't know if I can know it for certain until we're with the Lord. But one thing that I've kind of been noting as my life has gone along is I've seen a few people die. I've seen, for the most part, I've seen ungodly people die. I haven't seen anyone die in peace. I've seen, I've seen people that, you know, you read biographies, for example, of Christians, and our library is filled with them and so forth, and we read about their life and we read about their death. And I think, for example, Martin Lloyd-Jones, when he died. And what you get is, not that they weren't suffering or something, but that they died peacefully, in peace. Some of them even wonder and even indicate that maybe they were seeing Christ at the moment. And the people, the ungodly people that I've seen die did not die in peace. They did not die with a smile. on their face. Even though you walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will be with you. My rod and my staff, they comfort you. But that promise is not for the wicked. It's not for the wicked. Consider their end and don't be deceived. There is a way, Proverbs 14, there is a way that seems right to a man. There's a way, it seems right, oh, that's the road I wanna be on. But the end of it, consider the end of the road, where's it leading? Death, it's leading to hell. After he came to his senses, Asaph describes what he was like, right? We already looked at that. When my soul was embittered, I was pricked in heart, I was brutish and ignorant. I was like a beast toward you. I didn't have any more common sense than an animal. He's confessing this, then, to the Lord. And finally, then, after he recounts the blessings of the Lord toward him, he gives this powerful summation. Just try to remember this. When you see the wicked prospering, behold, those who are far from you shall perish. You put an end to everyone who is unfaithful to you, but for me, it is good to be near God. I've made the Lord God my refuge that I may tell of all your works. There's the difference. The world is always, always calling. Come on, join us. Esau, the guy that ended up not being able to, repentance was impossible, that's it, he's apostate, he's reprobate, that's it, it's over for him. How did it happen? Bowl of porridge, bowl of oatmeal, wasn't just a bowl of oatmeal, but he's hungry, he comes in, here's his brother making this stew or whatever it was, and he wanted it, and so he trades it, he trades it for the birthright. Why was that such a big deal? What Esau was doing is, ooh, I see that goal that will satisfy me in this moment, right? Yeah, what is all this promise, God's promise to Abraham business and the inheritance and all that stuff? That doesn't help me now. Yeah, you take it. gives it to his brother, and he takes the bowl of porridge. And that's what happens. That's the danger that Asaph is warning us against here, is that, oh, give me prosperity now. That'll make me feel good now. And then you cast away Christ and eternity. Step away from these people, no matter how lonely it gets for you, and it will be lonely. Step away from them, and keep your eyes on Christ. But for me, it's good to be near God. I've made the Lord God my refuge that I may tell of all your works. And he becomes our true treasure. Father, we thank you for these truths of your word and we pray that you would keep us from that slippery slope. that we would, well, we ask you for forgiveness for the times that we have envied the wicked. We were being foolish and brutish when we envied them. Father, we pray that you would give us a real desire for Christ, and for Christ alone, and that he would be our only treasure. And we pray this in Christ's name, amen.