2 Peter 2 - Fallen Angels, Righteous Lot, and a Talking Donkey

Today, you're on Tabernacle Talk, and thanks for tuning back in. We are in 2 Peter chapter 2, and in 2 Peter chapter 1, Peter's walking through with this group of believers.

He knows that kind of his time on earth is short, and so he wants to remind them of some really important things.

And he encourages them to follow Jesus, to do the things that Jesus does, that it brings assurance and comfort into our life as we follow the Lord.

And then he encourages them with letting them know, like, hey, you're not following fables or myths, things that are uncertain. You are following a very certain savior. He says, I'm an eyewitness of how he acted and taught and loved.

And I'm telling you that all of this is real.

He says, I even saw Moses and Elijah on the Mount of Transfiguration and how much more certain that made the word of God that I had heard from a child that I know that what God has said is true and accurate because I've seen the proof of it.

And so he says, and you can believe what God has said in his word as well, which ties right in with chapter two and where we are today.

Because he says, there are people, just as in the Old Testament, there were false prophets who were just in it for what they could get from the people, the accolades that they could receive, the things that they could extort from people, the lies

that they would tell that were not in line with God in his word. He says, there are those same types of people today. And that's where we find ourselves in second Peter chapter two and verse one.

He says, there were indeed false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. He says, just as there's true prophets, there's real prophecy that comes not from the will of man, but from the word of God.

And then he says, there were false prophets then, and now there's gonna be some that will come to you guys. He says, they will bring in destructive heresies. Okay, it's destructive, a heresy, it's something that divides people in a bad way.

There can be a good division, a division that is separating ourselves to Christ, saying, hey, I'm not going to follow in this wicked way anymore, I'm separating myself to Christ, that can be good. But here, these are destructive divisions.

He says, they'll bring in these, even denying the master who bought them. Here he's saying, Jesus, though he paid with his blood, with his death for them to be redeemed, they'll deny him and they will bring swift destruction on themselves.

He says, many will follow their depraved ways and the way of truth will be maligned because of them. These false teachers, they're gonna make Jesus look bad. People are going to say, ah, Christians are like that because of these types of people.

And man, maybe with your church background, you've known some people like this, that because of the way in which they have twisted the word of God or because of the wickedness and the sinfulness that they've engaged in, they have made the name

Christian a bad name for other people. He says this in verse number three, they will exploit you in their greed with made up stories. So these people, they are covetous, they are after money.

He says their condemnation pronounced long ago is not idle and their destruction does not sleep. He says they're going to extort people, they're gonna make Jesus look bad, they're gonna deny Jesus. They're going to divide places.

And don't worry though, like they're not gonna get away with it. He says God already set a long time ago that those that were going to be in this wickedness, the results, the end action of that is their destruction.

And then he goes on to like illustrate, here is how certain it is that those that rebel against God in this way, that they will receive just punishment.

Verse number four, for if God did not spare the angels who sinned, but cast them into hell, the word there is, the Greek word is Tartarus, it's a place of deep torment, it's the pit.

He says, if God didn't spare the angels who sinned, but cast them into hell and delivered them in chains of utter darkness to be kept for judgment, okay, God's saying this, where would we read about that?

Where are the angels that sinned and God cast them into hell and put them in chains of utter darkness? Well, at the time of this recording, it's not this upcoming Sunday, but two Sundays from now.

We're gonna be going over this passage in Genesis 6, where the translation of scripture that the apostles and that Jesus would have mainly worked from, the Septuagint, which was translated in about BC 200 or so, it gave specific naming to the

question that people have posed in Genesis chapter 6, where it says that the sons of God saw the daughters of men, that they were very fair, and they took them for their wives. And it's the same type of language that's used in Genesis 3, where Eve

saw the fruit, that it was beautiful, and she took it and she ate. It's the same exact language that says, okay, these sons of God. Okay, well, what does that mean? And there's been a lot of debate, a lot of questions on that.

But the, just so you all know, in case you don't want to wait a couple of Sundays to hear, frankly, what I believe the Bible very clearly teaches on this, the only time that the sons of God, the Bene Elohim, are ever mentioned in the Hebrew Old

Testament, every time it talks about angels. It's not used in overabundance of times, but every time that it's used, as in Job 1, it's talking about angelic spiritual beings.

And the Septuagint, the Greek translation from about BC 200 that most of the apostles and perhaps even Jesus himself would have used, they quote from the Septuagint often throughout the New Testament.

It used the word there instead of something like Huioi Eloi, something like that would be, sons of God in Greek.

It said Angelos, the angels of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair and they went in and they saw them and they took them and they went in unto them.

And both here in 2 Peter and in the Book of Jude, both of these writers reference back to that action as kind of the last thing that God went, okay, I'm bringing the flood in to bring judgment on the earth because it's not just human wickedness, but

now it's pervasive, it's human and spiritual being wickedness as well. And this together, it demands justice, it demands judgment. There is bloodshed, there is sexual immorality, there's idolatry, all sorts of things.

And so this is why this judgment is happening. You might go, okay, well, I don't know about that. Well, back to 2 Peter 2 verses 4 and 5, Peter ties these 2 things together exactly.

He says, if God did not spare the angels who sinned, but cast them into hell and delivered them in chains of utter darkness to be kept for judgment.

And if he didn't spare the ancient world, but protected Noah, a preacher of righteousness and seven others, when he brought the flood on the world of the ungodly. So there he has those 2 things tied together.

Didn't spare the angels, but did spare Noah. Then verse 6, and if he reduced the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes and condemned them to extinction, making them an example of what is coming to the ungodly.

So here the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, I think we're getting to it next year in our church, beginning of 2025.

He says, if you reduce the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, and if you rescued righteous lot, distressed by the depraved behavior of the immoral. So here, God specifically takes time to say, lot was righteous.

Sometimes he gets a bad rap for being in the general area of Sodom and Gomorrah, or perhaps for being in the gate for trying to be a judge, for trying to do righteousness in that city.

He gets a bad rap for that, but the Bible says that he's righteous. So I sometimes say, let's side with the Bible on how it describes people.

So he's saying righteous lot, for as that righteous man lived among them day by day, his righteous soul was tormented by the lawless deeds he saw and heard. So there are three times in this chapter, God describes a lot as righteous.

He says, here's how I want you to think about this situation. So there are two examples. Destruction, salvation, destruction, and salvation.

And they're absolutely connected. So the destruction of the angels that sinned is paired with Noah. And then you have the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah paired with the sparing of Lot, that these two things are connected.

He says, if God did all of these things, then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials and to keep the righteous, the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment, especially those who follow the polluting desires of the flesh and

despise authority. So there he says, the polluting desires of the flesh, just like Sodom and Gomorrah were wanting to abuse the angels that had come to lot into his family, that's the exact same polluting desires of the flesh that the angelic beings,

those that we would now know as fallen angels, the demons, the same thing that they did with human women, they despise authority. That's Sodom and Gomorrah, they didn't care about God, they didn't care about the angels, and the angels in Genesis 6,

they didn't care about what God had said, they didn't care about his authority or that what they were doing was wrong. He says in continuing, so God knows how to save the righteous and punish the wicked, he says bold, arrogant people, they are not

afraid to slander the glorious ones, the spiritual beings. He says they just talk about the spiritual realm and they have no fear, no trepidation, they're just bold and arrogant.

He says however, angels who are greater in might and power do not bring a slanderous charge against them before the Lord. He says angels at least like watch how they talk about like sin and judgment and justice.

And he says the angels are more careful even though they're more powerful and they know more. He says they're more careful with their words than these false teachers.

He says but these people like irrational animals, creatures of instinct born to be caught and destroyed. And in their destruction, they are sorry, to be caught and destroyed, slander what they do not understand.

And in their destruction, they too will be destroyed. He says they talk about things that they have no idea.

It's why I want to be very careful to only talk about the things that I have like actually looked at in the Word of God, and I don't want to just go off about, hey, I think here's some like outside, crazy theory or conspiracy.

Even talking about Genesis 6 and the angels that sin, that's something that I have spent hours and hours and hours looking at in the Word of God and in looking at some of the ancient translations and some of those things to go, okay, is this what

God's Word is actually teaching or am I just spouting off something that I've got no idea about? And I wanna be careful because people have fallen into traps of saying, okay, I can go down this deep, deep rabbit hole and just get lost.

And Peter here says, they just don't understand what they're talking about. They're slanderous and they're obsessed with things that they really, they don't know. Verse number 13, they will be paid back with harm for the harm they have done.

It's the thing that we read about many times in Psalms, as you throw the boomerang, the boomerang's gonna come back and hit you. He says, they consider it a pleasure to carouse in broad daylight. He says, they are sexually immoral.

He says, they are spots and blemishes, delighting in their deceptions while they feast with you.

He says, as you guys are observing the Lord's Table, these people are like a cancer, a mold spot that's growing inside of your, here at Love Feast, the times in which they celebrated the Lord's Supper and celebrated times of fellowship together.

He says, they have eyes full of adultery that never stop looking for sin. They seduce unstable people and have hearts trained in greed, children under a curse. He says, there is this wickedness in them that manifests in actions.

It's not just that they have like theologically wonky beliefs. It's not just that they are slanderous and talk about things they don't know about.

He says, it's also like their actions, their immoral, they are covetous, they are greedy, they take advantage of people.

Verse 15, they have gone astray by abandoning the straight path and have followed the path of Balaam, the son of Bosor, who loved the wages of wickedness, but received a rebuke for his lawlessness.

A speechless donkey spoke with a human voice and restrained the prophet's madness. He says Balaam, who went after money from, I think it's King Barak, Balak, something like that, that he wanted money so that he could do it.

So he told that guy, okay, here's how you can kind of ruin God's people or get God to not be blessing them if they engage in immorality. Immorality and idolatry.

He says, I can't actually pronounce a curse on them to make them not have food or something because God has blessed them, but here's how you can get them to step out from under God's blessing.

And he says, that is the way, Peter says that is the way that these false teachers, how they're interacting with God's people, they're getting them to step out of the will and way of God into wickedness.

He says these people are springs without water, mis-driven by a storm, they're useless, there's nothing beneficial coming out of them. He says the gloom of darkness has been reserved for them.

For by uttering boastful, empty words, they seduce with fleshly desires and debauchery, people who have barely escaped from those who live in error. So people, they come into church, they're looking for the way and life of Jesus.

And he says, and now they are trapped by this greed and this immorality that these teachers are giving. He says, verse 19, they promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption, since people are enslaved to whatever defeats them.

For if having escaped the world's impurity through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in these things and defeated, the last state is worse for them than the first.

For it would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness than after knowing it to turn back from the holy command delivered to them.

It has happened to them according to the true proverb, a dog returns to his own vomit and a washed sow returns to wallowing in the mud.

Peter here says, man, it would have been better for them if they hadn't even known like the goodness and the grace of Jesus than to know it and then go right back into evil sin.

Because now like they've known goodness, they've known to walk with God and now they don't just have emptiness from being in the world.

He says they have emptiness because they aren't a part of the world anymore, but also they aren't walking with God. So they have the worst of both worlds. And Peter says, this is not the kind of teaching.

Sound teaching focuses on what the Bible actually says, not what people want the Bible to say, not about what the Bible doesn't specify. We want to be careful to only say what the Bible says. Sound teaching includes that.

Sound teaching actually results in righteous action. That's not greedy. That's not sexually immoral.

That's not making off-color jokes. That's not always looking for a raise or trying to get funds, perhaps, out of a thing or inviting, always boasting of themselves and how much money they have.

And I have got this great house, and so you should give to the Lord so that you too can have a great house. It's not ones that are always trying to, man, just cozy up to sin, be friends of the world.

We need to be those that follow God's way because even in terrible, turbulent times like Noah or Lot lived in, we can still be righteous in unrighteous times.

May we not follow the way of these false prophets, ones that are after what they can get from people, as opposed to Noah, a preacher of righteousness, or Lot who told even the people that were coming to rape the angels, he says, hey, don't do this.

This is wickedness. May we have a heart that wants to protest against evil and to say, no, don't follow this way. Be a preacher of righteousness, even in your family, in your friend group.

Proclaim Jesus and his righteousness and his way and following him and let's not turn to wickedness. Let's not seek what we can get from people, but live that life of Jesus' character and shine it out to others.

Realizing that what God has done in the past of saving and condemning, that that will happen to everyone we know. May we proclaim Jesus' salvation to them. Thanks for tuning in today.

Tomorrow we'll jump into chapter three. Don't know if this will be one or two or three episodes for tomorrow, but looking forward to that time with you. Thanks for tuning in.

Thank you.