December 15th

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Welcome to On the Way with Tony Crisp. Each weekday, Dr. Crisp will be discussing biblical passages, people, places, and prophecies. Tune in daily to start your day right and deepen your understanding of how to better walk the way and enjoy the journey. Here's your host, Dr. Tony Crisp.

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Welcome to On the Way. This is Tony Crisp, and this is the 365 Bible Reading Plan. Today is December the 15th, and our chapter for today is 2 Peter chapter 2. But there were also false prophets among the people, even as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Lord who bought them, and bring on themselves swift destruction. Swift ruin. That's exactly what it says. Now it is amazing that Peter goes from one subject to another so fluidly and still keeping continuity. The scripture says that indeed we are to make sure that we are saved, that we're walking on the road of life, walking toward heaven through this world in which we are now living. And that the way that we do that, Peter says, is by taking heed unto the most sure word there could ever be, the very words of God, the Bible. And then he says, Be careful, because there are some false prophets among us. Now false prophets are those who say they have authority that they don't have. They're giving prophecies that God never gave. They are pseudo prophetes, they are false prophets. And there are false teachers as well. That is those who again claim to have authority, but they are teaching things that are in error. They seem so close to the truth. Just remember the most damnable and cursed heresies, deviations from truth, are those that contain ninety percent truth. They seem so good, but yet they have that one element that leads astray. This is the deceptiveness of the devil. We've got to remember what a lie is. A lie is a deception. It is willingly seeking to deceive. And this is who Satan is. And this is what his people, this is what his demons, this is what his teachers do. They deceive. They don't tell the whole truth. They only tell that portion of truth that pertains to getting what they want and what they feel they deserve. So he says, False prophets and false teachers are among you. By the way, they always are. From time immemorial, anywhere that there is truth, the truth of God, the enemy will plant a counterfeit. It will look something of the same, but it is different. The scripture teaches through the apostle Paul that even the devil himself appears as an angel of light. Sometimes we think that the devil is going to come to us as some kind of creature from the swamp with all of the hideous looks. Most often the devil comes to us as an angel of light. He looks so pretty, he looks so good, it looks so tempting, it looks so delicious. It looks like that if we could just do this, then everything would be well. That God may be withholding something better from us, and that we have some secret access or some secret code or some secret handshake or some secret method to get inside of the mind of God. God's word is clear and plain. Yes, there are portions that in this life we have difficulty explaining, but these teachers, they come in with the idea of good, but their ways are evil, their lifestyles are evil, their attitudes are bad, and they bring with them death and hell, they bring with them destruction and doom. And so this is how he opens up chapter two. And then he says that we have record in the ancient world of how God judges people and knows how to judge and who to judge and when to judge. And he gives us examples of that. Now the reason I just said those phrases is because we are the opposite of that. We don't know who to judge, we don't know how to judge, we don't know when to judge, we are sinful in ourselves, and even the best of us have to be careful because judging other people is risky business. First of all, our judgment is jaded. We have our own baggage that we carry with us. God is the only true judge that is always right. We might get it from time to time, but God never misses it. And God said that he knows how to preserve and he knows how to punish. He knows how to keep people in reserve and judgment as a reservoir that will be poured out upon people in the proper time, and he knows how to deliver and rescue from danger. So verse 4 begins, for if God did not spare the angels who sinned, but cast them down to hell and delivered them into the chains of darkness to be reserved for judgment. Now this is the first example he gives of the angels that I believe he's referencing, Genesis chapter six, those angels that understood their created order, but wanted outside of God's order for their lives, and they rebelled and came to earth, saw the beautiful daughters of mankind, and they seduced them, they deceived them, and had sexual relations with them, and the offspring brought about the final judgment of God upon mankind, and God saw that man's heart was wicked and evil. You see, this is where man goes without God, and without God's spirit living in his heart, because all we like sheep have gone astray, we turn every one to our own way. The Lord looked down from heaven to see if there was any righteous, and there was none righteous, no, not one. That's in the Old Testament and the New Testament. Our hearts are depraved, and only God can rescue us, only God can help us. And God knew how to reserve these demonic beings, these evil angels, in Tartarus, in the chains of darkness. It is unfathomable. It is not even for man to imagine and for it to enter into his heart the torment that these angelic hosts that were once walking in the light of God, but in their own choice became rebellious. That's the first example. And the scripture says in verse five, and did not spare the ancient world, but saved Noah, one of eight people. He was a preacher of righteousness, and he brought in the flood on the world of the ungodly. That is, God used Noah as a righteous man, a man who did not involve himself with the culture of that day, with the sin of that day, but he preached the righteousness of God, and that judgment was coming, and that people needed to repent and turn, but no one did. Can you imagine that assignment for a hundred and twenty years? I believe, the scripture teaches, that he preached righteousness and repentance as he built that great ark, that safety boat that God had given him the plans for. He preached, he was faithful, and his sons and daughters-in-law and his wife were faithful to stick with him and stay with him. And God preserved them. He did it then, and he'll do it in the future. And then he gives the third example of turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah into ashes. He condemned them to destruction, making an example, a type for all of us to see, to those who afterward would live ungodly. And he delivered righteous Lot. Now notice that Lot is referred to as a righteous man three times. This is on purpose. God doesn't deal with triviality. Look what it says in verse 7. He delivered righteous Lot, who was oppressed by the filthy conduct, the ungodliness, and the wickedness of the people of Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities of the plain. For that righteous man, that's the second time, he's first called righteous Lot. Now that righteous man, verse eight, who was living among, dwelling among them, he tormented his righteous soul. Now this is amazing. Here was a man that was a follower of God choosing to live among evil people, that he himself lost his own testimony by tolerating the evil. He didn't involve himself with their ungodly living and the things that they were doing, but the fact that he was there with those people and had so vexed his own soul and grieved his own soul that he had no testimony, even among those who were his closest people that were in Sodom and Gomorrah. Now this is an amazing reality. It's not only true then, it's true now. When we live among the ungodly, and we do not rebuke their ungodly behavior, and we live as they live. Why? Because he chose to have the riches of this world, and what looked good on the outside. See, that's why he chose the cities of the plain. Because it was like the Garden of Eden. It looked so good to him, not up on the high mountains like Abraham and he had lived, and they were herdsmen, and they had all of these riches, and they had to move from place to place. Lot settled down and he settled among the ungodly. And the Bible says the Lord knows how to deliver the godly out of temptations and reserve the unjust under the punishment of the day of judgment, and especially those who walk according to the lust of the flesh in the uncleanness of their own souls, and they despise authority. There's two things that are pointed out here that are noteworthy by the Apostle Peter. One is the ungodly, filthy lifestyle of sin, debauchery, lust, and just filthy sexual immorality. And the other is despising authority. Now, some would say that Peter and Jude, they borrowed from each other. Well, that's not plagiarism. That is helping each other and quoting each other and using the same material. And this is what Luke did. Luke said he had many sources for writing his gospel and the book of Acts. Until he came on the scene at Troaz, he had to depend upon the apostles and eyewitnesses to get accounts of the birth, of the prelude to the birth of Jesus, to his sinless life, to his substitutionary sacrifice on the cross of Calvaria, of Skull Hill, of his subsequent burial and then resurrection and ascension. All of that, Luke was not around for that. So he had to rely on other sources. And so you can see Peter and Jude using one another and other sources of that day, because they talk about these evil, wicked, angelic beings, these demons and people that follow them as not respecting authority and not even in the spiritual realm giving those who have authority due, whether it is ungodly or godly, whether it is elect angels or evil. And the Bible uses this, and when we get to the book of Jude, we'll see this, but it's the same language that Peter is using here, that Michael, the chief angel, did not use a railing accusation against Lucifer, against the devil, when he was arguing about the body of Moses. He didn't speak ugly and harshly. Why? Because even though Satan is a falling being and his judgment is set for sure, he still has great authority. And God has allowed him to have that authority for a time, even though his fate and his judgment is sealed, which is the lake of fire. And that is a place that was prepared for the devil and his angels. It was never prepared for those of us who are part of the human race. But if we follow Satan and his angels, if we rebel as he rebelled, and rebellion here doesn't have to be through some kind of horrible, sinful, immoral behavior as we always think and as Peter's been talking about. It is our own selfish living and doing what we want to do instead of God's way and doing it God's way. You see, if you fail to turn your life over to Jesus Christ, that is the greatest sin of all. And for those of us who are saved and walking in the spirit life and followers of Jesus, you and I have a responsibility to walk with God all the days of our lives because if we don't, we make our own heart and life miserable and those around us miserable. I believe that the most miserable person on the face of the earth is not the lost person, but it's the saved person that knows God's will and is not doing it. That's the most miserable person on earth, is the child of God not walking with God out of the will of God. For on the way, this is Tony Chris.

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Thanks for listening to On the Way with Tony Crisp. Tune in every weekday for information on biblical passages, people, places, and prophecies. Fridays are for your questions. Email your questions to questions at TonyCrisp.org. Then just listen for your question to be answered on Friday's podcast. That's questions at Tony C R I S P dot org. Thanks for listening and have a blessed day on the way.