Sermon notes January 26th, 2025

2 Peter 2:16-3:18

2 Peter 2:16-17

16   but he was rebuked for his iniquity: a dumb donkey speaking with a man’s voice restrained the madness of the prophet.

17   These are wells without water, clouds carried by a tempest, for whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever.

• Peter likens the false teachers to waterless springs. Needy people go to them for refreshment and for relief from spiritual thirst but are disappointed. Their wells are without water. They are also clouds carried by a tempest. The clouds hold promise of rain for land that has suffered from prolonged drought. But then a windstorm comes and drives the clouds away. Hopes are dashed; parched tongues are unsatisfied.
• Pretending to be ministers of the gospel, they actually have no good news to offer. People go to them for bread and get a stone. The penalty for such deception is an eternity in the blackness of darkness.

2 Peter 2:18-22

18   For when they speak great swelling words of emptiness, they allure through the lusts of the flesh, through lewdness, the ones who have actually escaped from those who live in error. 

• Their victims are the ones who have actually escaped from those who live in error. These unsaved people once indulged freely in sinful pleasures, but they’ve had a change of heart. They decide to reform, to turn over a new leaf, and to start attending church. Instead of going to a Bible-believing church, they wander into a service where one of these false shepherds is holding forth. Instead of hearing the gospel of salvation through faith in Christ, they hear sin condoned and permissiveness encouraged. It all comes as rather a surprise; they had always thought that sin was wrong and that the church was against it. Now they learn that sin is given religious approval!

2 Peter 2:19-20

19   While they promise them liberty, they themselves are slaves of corruption; for by whom a person is overcome, by him also he is brought into bondage. 

20   For if, after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the latter end is worse for them than the beginning. 

• Verses 20–22 refer, not to the false teachers themselves, but to their victims. They are people who had reformed but who had not been born again. Through a partial knowledge of … Christ and of Christian principles, they had turned from a life of sin and begun a moral house-cleaning.
• Then they come under the influence of false teachers who mock virtue and crusade for liberation from moral inhibitions. They become involved again in the very sins from which they had been temporarily delivered. 

• As a matter of fact, they sink lower than before, because now that religious restraints are gone, there is nothing to hold them back. So, it is true that their latter state is worse than the first.

21   For it would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than having known it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered to them. 

22   But it has happened to them according to the true proverb: “A dog returns to his own vomit,” and, “a sow, having washed, to her wallowing in the mire.”

• This passage should not be used to teach that true believers may fall from grace and be lost. These people never were true believers. They never received a new nature. They demonstrated by their last state that their nature was still unclean and evil. The lesson is, of course, that reformation alone is not only insufficient, but is positively dangerous, because it can lull a person into a false security. Man can receive a new nature only by being born again. He is born again through repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.

2 Peter 3:1-7                            New King James Version

1   Beloved, I now write to you this second epistle (in both of which I stir up your pure minds by way of reminder), 

2   that you may be mindful of the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets, and of the commandment of us, the apostles of the Lord and Savior, 

3   knowing this first: that scoffers will come in the last days, walking according to their own lusts, 

• From the subject of false teachers in chapter 2, Peter turns to the certain rise of scoffers in the last days. In this Letter as in the previous one, he first encourages his readers to cling to the Bible. Because these scoffers say:

4   and saying, “Where is the promise of His coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation.” 

• What they really say is this: “You Christians have been threatening us with warnings about a terrible judgment upon the world. You tell us that God is going to intervene in history, punish the wicked, and destroy the earth. It’s all a pack of nonsense. We have nothing to fear. We can live as we please. There is no evidence that God ever has intervened in history; why should we believe that He ever will?”

5   For this they willfully forget: that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of water and in the water, 

6   by which the world that then existed perished, being flooded with water. 

• The scoffers deliberately ignore one fact—the flood. God did intervene at one time in the affairs of men, and the specific purpose of His intervention was to punish wickedness. If it happened once, it will happen again.
• It is a withering indictment of these men that they are willfully ignorant. They pride themselves on being knowledgeable. They profess to be objective in their reasoning. They boast that they adhere to the principles of scientific investigation. 
• But the fact is that they deliberately ignore a well-attested fact of history—the deluge. They should take a course in geology!

7   But the heavens and the earth which are now preserved by the same word, are reserved for fire until the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.

• When God created the earth, He seeded it with sufficient water to destroy it. In the same manner, He seeded the heavens and the earth with enough fire to destroy them.
• In this nuclear age, we understand that matter is stored-up energy. The splitting of an atomic nucleus results in the fiery release of enormous quantities of energy. So, all the matter in the world represents tremendous explosive potential. At present it is held together by the Lord (Col. 1:17, “in Him all things consist”). If His restraining hand were removed, the elements would melt. In the meantime, the heavens and the earth are being reserved for fire until the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.

2 Peter 3:8-11

8   But, beloved, do not forget this one thing, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. 

• Why then the long delay in God’s judgment? Well, first we should remember that God is timeless. He does not live in a sphere of time as we do. After all, time is determined by the relation of the sun to the earth, and God is not limited by this relationship.
• God has promised to end the history of ungodly men with judgment. If there seems to be delay, it is not because God is unfaithful to His promise. 
• It is because He is patient. He does not want any to perish. His desire is that all should come to repentance. He purposely extends the time of grace so that men might have every opportunity to be saved.

9   The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.

10  But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, in which the heavens will pass away with a great noise, and the elements will melt with fervent heat; both the earth and the works that are in it will be burned up. 

• It will come as a thief—that is, unexpectedly and destructively. The heavens will pass away. This certainly means the atmospheric heavens, and may mean the stellar heavens, but it cannot mean the third heaven—the dwelling place of God. As they pass away with a deafening explosion, the elements will be dissolved with fervent heat. The elements here refer to the constituent parts of matter. All matter will be destroyed in what resembles a universal nuclear holocaust.

11  Therefore, since all these things will be dissolved, what manner of persons ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness, 

• Everything material has the stamp of oblivion upon it. The things of which men boast, the things for which they live are passing things at best. To live for material things is to live for the temporary. Common sense tells us to turn from the tinsel and toys of this world and live in holiness and godliness. It is a simple matter of living for eternity rather than time, of emphasizing the spiritual rather than the material, of choosing the permanent over the passing.

2 Peter 3:12-14

12  looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be dissolved, being on fire, and the elements will melt with fervent heat? 

13  Nevertheless we, according to His promise, look for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.

14   Therefore, beloved, looking forward to these things, be diligent to be found by Him in peace, without spot and blameless; 

• The truth concerning the new heavens and the new earth should deepen our desire to live holy “as to the Lord.” It is not only a truth that we should hold but one that should hold us. Knowing that we shall soon stand before God should create within us a desire to be without spot and blameless, that is, to be morally clean. It should make us zealous to be found in a state of peace, not strife.

2 Peter 3:15

15   and consider that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation—as also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given to him, has written to you, 

• And consider that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation. His delay in judgment is to give men full opportunity to be saved. As we consider the multiplying wickedness of men, we often wonder how the Lord can put up with it any longer. His forbearance is astonishing. But there is a reason for it. He does not desire the death of the wicked. He longs to see people turn from their wicked ways and be saved.

16   as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which untaught and unstable people twist to their own destruction, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures.

• Some Bible truths are hard to understand, such as the Trinity, God’s election and man’s free will, the mystery of suffering, and so on. It should not disturb us if we find matters in the Bible which are above our understanding. The word of God is infinite and inexhaustible. In studying it we must always be willing to give God credit for knowing things which we can never fully fathom.
• Peter is not criticizing Paul’s writings when he speaks of things that are hard to understand. It is not Paul’s style of writing which is difficult to understand but the subjects which he deals with. Barnes writes: “Peter refers not to the difficulties of understanding what Paul meant, but to the difficulty of comprehending the great truths which he taught.”
• Instead of accepting them simply by faith, untaught and unstable people twist some of these difficult truths to their own destruction. Some false cults, for instance, twist the law into a way of salvation rather than a revealer of sin. Others make baptism the door to heaven. They do this not only with Paul’s writings but with other Scriptures as well.

2 Peter 3:17-18

17   You therefore, beloved, since you know this beforehand, beware lest you also fall from your own steadfastness, being led away with the error of the wicked; 

18   but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory both now and forever. Amen.

But Peter cannot close his Epistle with an exhortation to the saints. The climax must be glory to the Savior. And so, we find the lovely doxology: To Him be the glory, both now and forever. Amen. 

• This, after all, is the ultimate reason for our existence—to glorify Him—and therefore no concluding note to this Epistle could be more fitting.