08 The Certainty of Judgment: Hope and Warning (2 Peter 2:5–10)

Krisan Marotta: Hello, this is Krisan Marotta. Welcoming you to today's Wednesday in the Word podcast. This is the eighth talk in our series on the book of Second Peter and the second talk on the section of 2 Peter, chapter 2 verses 4 through 10. The lecture notes for today's talk are on the link below the podcast, and you can find them on the website at wednesdayintheword.com slash 2 Peter 8. In the last podcast, we looked at chapter 2 verse 4 and the question of whether or not Peter is quoting a book called First Enoch, and then if so, why is he quoting it? And I'm not going to go over all of that again. What I want to do in today's podcast is look at the section from 2.4 to verse 10 and talk about the main point, talk about the section as a whole. Regardless of what you think about whether Peter quotes Enoch and 2.4 or not, the point he is making in this section is fairly clear, and that's what we want to talk about today. Just to review, Peter is writing to churches who are troubled by false teachers. The false teachers are distorting the apostolic gospel and deceiving believers into leading immoral lives. And in chapter one, Peter insisted that the apostolic gospel is a revelation from God and that believing the gospel results in a lifestyle that is marked by a pursuit of godliness. Then in chapter two, he turns his attention directly to this problem of the false teachers, and he starts out saying, Look, there were false prophets before the time of Christ, there's going to be false teachers after the time of Christ. These false teachers are claiming to teach the true gospel, but in fact they are rejecting it, and God will judge them for it. Peter just said in verse three of chapter two, their condemnation from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep. So just because they appear to be prospering now should not make them or us think that all is well and they're doing okay. The fact that they are prospering now means nothing. It may seem like their judgment is idle and their destruction is asleep because they aren't paying any consequences immediately, but trust me, Peter says judgment is coming. And that's the point he's gonna go on to make. So he speaks of their condemnation as being from long ago. That sets up what he's gonna say in this section in verses four through ten. He's making the point that judgment is certain and his evidence is how God has handled judgment in history. So let me read this section for us. For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to pits of darkness reserved for judgment, and did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a preacher of righteousness, with seven others when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly, and if he condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to destruction by reducing them to ashes, having made them an example to those who would live ungodly lives thereafter, and if he rescued righteous lot, oppressed by the sensual conduct of unprincipled men, for by what he saw and heard that righteous man while living among them felt his righteous soul tormented day after day by their lawless deeds. Then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from temptation and to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment, and especially those who indulge the flesh in its corrupt desires and despise authority. Verse ten continues, but the sentence ends there and we're going to look at the rest of verse ten in the next podcast. This is one big sentence in the Greek and the main point is fairly easy to see. This is a big if then clause, and Peter states his conclusion explicitly in verse nine. So the if clauses are in two four for if God did not spare the angels when they sinned, two five, if he did not spare the ancient world, two six if he didn't spare Sodom and Gomorrah, two seven, if he rescued righteous lot, and then in verse nine the then, then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment. And what Peter does in this section is give a series of historical examples of when God responded with judgment and when God responded with mercy. The overall point being that the Lord is going to rescue the godly, as evidenced by Lot and Noah, and he will judge evildoers as represented by the fallen angels, Noah's contemporaries, and Sodom and Gomorrah. So he said in two three the condemnation of the false teachers is not idle and their destruction is not asleep, and then this is his historical proof. Well, it seems to me that judgment is not a very popular topic today. In the past we had teachers that we might call fire and brimstone preachers, but those kind of preachers are few and far between today. Judgment just makes us uncomfortable. It's like bad PR for God. We'd much prefer to talk about God's love because people respond to God's love. Talking about God's judgment offends modern Americans. In fact, I heard a story that when the ministry that developed the four spiritual laws was developing them, and this may be apocryphal, I couldn't verify it, but this is the story I remember reading somewhere. That originally their four spiritual laws begin with judgment, and that was the first spiritual law, but that became so unpopular that they just took it out and started with God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. Well, here in chapter two, Peter is talking about judgment, and it seems that if anything qualifies as a fire and brimstone message, well, chapter two of Second Peter would fit it. He even brings up Sodom and Gomorrah, which is of course where we get the phrase fire and brimstone. When Jesus talks about the coming of the kingdom, he refers to fire and brimstone falling on Sodom, and that's in Luke 17. And that's how that phrase became associated with judgment. Well, however unpopular judgment is today, Peter seems to think it's important. Remember, this is the letter he wanted to write before his days on earth ended. He's putting his final thoughts on paper. He believes his earthly life is about to end, and he wanted to write down the things he thought were most important to remind people of long after he is gone, and he includes judgment. That raises the question, why is this topic so important to Peter that he spends so much time on it in this letter? One of the fundamental problems with all of humanity is that we are short-sighted. We live like we have blinders on, and we get very, very focused on today and the here and now, and all we can see are the problems of today, the goals we have, the difficulties we're facing, the challenges, the responsibilities, and so on. In fact, there's a new mental health syndrome called fear of missing out or F O M O FOMO, fear of missing out, and that seems to be a product of social media. People have become addicted to their smartphones and their tablets and their iPads, in part because information is now instantaneous and they think they might be missing something. So if they're five minutes away from their phone, they might miss some big trend on social media. And social media makes us constantly aware of what other people are doing and saying and thinking and everyone else seems to be having this great time or finding the latest trend and we don't want to miss out. I suspect that Peter would find that problem not only ridiculous but dangerous because it's precisely the problem of being short-sighted and blind to the bigger picture. What we ought to legitimately fear missing out on is eternity. Social media, among other aspects of modern life, just blinds us to that bigger picture. And by the bigger picture I mean the eternal picture. We tend to lose sight of the fact that we have a creator and one day we are gonna have to stand before him. This is God's world. We don't exist because of some random cosmic big bang. We don't exist because we have a right to exist and the world now owes us life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We exist because the creator of the universe decided that we would exist. He created us, he designed us, he placed us in a particular place in history, and we are in the midst of this world that God designed and created. He's telling a grand story and we're part of it. And the story he's telling stretches from the dawn of creation to the final day of judgment, and we, my friends, are part of it. That's what I mean by the big picture. And that's what we tend to forget. We're in the midst of a world that is part of the grand purposes of God and we need to ask ourselves what difference that makes and how we're going to relate to Him. And I would say this is a major theme in the Bible. The Bible repeatedly claims that the truly wise person fears the Lord. The Bible claims that the truly wise person looks at how God has acted in history and uses that knowledge to understand the present and the future. And the Bible claims that a wise person deals with reality and that reality involves seeking to understand who God is and what he's doing in this story. Reality is more than my present experience, it includes this grand sweep of history from creation to judgment. That's what we lose sight of. We tend just to focus on the here and now. Now fortunately, God has told us what he is doing in history and where it's all going and the truly wise person pays attention. And I would argue that Peter is coming from this perspective. He's urging us to remember what God has done, what God has said and what he's going to do. He's urging us not to be short-sighted, thinking that my only problems are the problems of today and the fear of missing out. Rather, we are to remember the big picture. Remember how God has dealt with humanity in the past and how he has said he will deal with us in the future. God does not change his rules. How he dealt with rebellion in the past is how he's going to deal with rebellion in the future. How and where and when and under what circumstances he showed mercy in the past is how he's going to show mercy in the future. So why does Peter spend so much time on judgment in this letter? Because this is a very important truth that we need to know and remember. So in this long sentence, Peter gives us three examples of God's judgment. The judgment of the angels in two four, which we looked at in the last podcast and we're not going to go over again. The second one is the ancient world that was judged by means of a flood at the time of Noah. And third, the judgment of Sodom and Gomorrah by fire and brimstone. Peter draws two conclusions from those three examples. One is a note of encouragement and one is a note of warning. Let me read his conclusion again in two nine. Then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment, and especially those who indulge in the lust of defiling passion and despise authority. Let's start with the warning. The Lord knows how to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment. Notice right off the bat this judgment involves an element of waiting, and I think that waiting is deliberate. There is a day of judgment coming. The ultimate judgment has not been pronounced yet, and Peter describes the situation as God keeping them. You get the picture that the Lord has his hand on the scruff of their necks and that he's holding on to them until the day of judgment arrives. He has them ready for the day of judgment and they will not escape his grip. And now this is the same element of waiting he introduced in verse three when he said their condemnation from long ago is not idle and their destruction is not asleep. The judgment of the false teachers and all those who are rebellious is coming. It may not be here now, it may not look like they're paying any price for their rebellion, but God has them in his sights. Ultimately he's going to handle rebellion the way he always handles rebellion and they will be judged. And the examples Peter picks then show how God responds to rebellion. Explicitly in the story of the angels in two four, we are told the angels are kept in darkness until the day of judgment comes. They picture the conclusion Peter's drawing. The day of judgment is not here yet, but it's coming, and those who rebel against God are marked and kept for that day and they will not escape. The other two stories are not about the final day of judgment, but they do give us a model for understanding how God deals with rebellion and how he hands out judgment. These two stories are about historical judgment that God brought upon people living at certain times in history. He brought the flood on the world in the days of Noah, which is recorded in Genesis six, or at least the story starts in Genesis six, and he wiped out Sodom and Gomorrah in the days of Lot, and that story begins in Genesis nineteen. Now I'm not going to go over those stories in detail here, but I encourage you to read through them for yourself, and I'll put a link to them in the lecture notes. Wednesday in the Word dot com slash two Peter eight. Note that these stories include an element of waiting. In the examples, it seems like judgment is asleep. Until the day actually arrives, it seems like everything is going on as normal, life is usual, and then judgment happens. And in fact, Jesus makes the same point in Luke seventeen, and he uses the same two stories to make exactly this point. Let's look at that. This is Luke chapter seventeen, verses twenty-six through thirty. And Jesus is speaking. He says, Just as it was in the days of Noah, so it will be in the days of the Son of Man. They were eating and drinking and marrying and being given in marriage until the day when Noah entered the Ark and the flood came and destroyed them all. Likewise, just as it was in the days of Lot, they were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building. But on the day when Lot went out from Sodom, fire and sulfur rained down from heaven and destroyed them all. So it will be on the day when the Son of Man is revealed. Now it's interesting that although it's not his main point, Jesus also includes the same positive conclusion that Peter makes. Noah entered the Ark, Lot left Sodom. God saves those who trust him in the day of judgment. But what Jesus is emphasizing in this section is that until it happens, until judgment comes, it's going to seem like every other day everything is going to be going along normally. Just another day with another day's list of things to do and responsibilities to meet, buying, planting, selling, drinking, eating, and you think today's just going to be like yesterday and the day before that and the day before that. But today will be the day of the flood or the fire and brimstone. It's judgment day. Peter is making that same point. It may seem like just another day. It may seem like judgment is asleep and condemnation is idle, but that means nothing. God will judge the rebellious and he will save the righteous. The day of reckoning is coming, but up until that day it's just going to be life as usual. This is one of the lessons that we can learn from the past. Life seems to be continuing on this unending smooth path of normalcy, but the day of judgment is coming. What we ought to fear missing out on is the day of judgment. It's easy to get lulled in by the routine of thinking it's never coming, everything's going on just the same. But what we see in both the story of the flood and the story of Sodom and Gomorrah is that everything seems normal, but there comes a point when God will no longer hold back his judgment and he will deal with the rebellion against him. But remember there's another side. The past also shows that God is faithful to his people and he will preserve them in the day of judgment. And we see in these two stories that God rescues his people. The judgment did not come on Noah and his family, and Lot and his family are spared and removed from the town before the judgment arrives. Now in verse 9 it says, Then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials. Your translation might say the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from temptation. That's not the best translation, in my opinion. It's not wrong. I think it just doesn't quite capture the idea of the context. The Greek word that's used here is often translated trial or temptation, and it is frequently used in context where the thing being tested is your character. The trial is the kind of test that tests what sort of person you are, whether or not you are following God. Are you trusting Him or are you trusting something else? And God puts us in situations where we are forced to choose whether or not to trust or follow Him. And that takes our faith and forces it out into the open where we have to act on it. We've talked about this before. The trials are for our benefit and they reveal to us that we are actually children of God and they make us stronger and more mature. And I think that's the kind of situation Peter has in mind. I don't think this is a general kind of promise to the effect that any time I feel an urge to do something wrong, God is going to rescue me from that temptation and keep me from doing it. That's not the kind of statement he's making. Rather, I think he is going to keep me from falling away from the faith. Remember the stories that he's drawing this conclusion from. Sodom and Gomorrah were consumed by fire and brimstone, but Lot wasn't. And in Noah's day you could easily say the entire world was under trial and failing that trial. They were being tested to see what kind of people they were and they were rebelling against God, but Noah was rescued from that mistake, that tempting mistake. He was rescued from that judgment. Though he was certainly saved from judgment, he was also rescued from the trial that everyone else failed. While everyone else was turning away from God, he remained faithful. Noah was a person who put his trust in God and yet he lived in the midst of a wicked civilization. And in his case, it's not just that a few of his neighbors and close friends were rebellious, but he had a kindred spirit here and there. We're told that every last one of his neighbors was wicked and rebellious to God. Not just most of them, all of them were rebellious to God. So the peer pressure he faced was immense. Everyone else would have been saying, Turn away from God, give this up, why are you still trusting that in him? And the question is why didn't Noah join them in that rebellion? Why didn't he throw away his trust in God and join the crowd? That would have been the easiest way to succumb to all that pressure from his universally rebellious culture. Why? Because God rescued him from that trial. I think that's what Peter's saying. God preserved him in the midst of it. The same is true for Lot. He lived in the midst of a wicked and perverse city, and what made him different? Why didn't he just follow the way of his friends and co-workers? Well, the same reason as Noah, because God preserved him. God rescued him. It's not just that God rescued Noah and Lot from the coming judgment. God did do that, but he also rescued them from that trial of living in the midst of a rebellious world and the temptation to turn away. God preserved them in their faithfulness so that they would not fall under judgment. God took Noah and God took Lot through that trial, and they emerged as people of faith who would continue to trust him when literally everyone else they knew was rebellious. So God kept Noah and Lot for mercy and grace, just as he keeps the rebellious for judgment. Now, Noah and Lot were still sinners, and we have examples. Of the ways they sinned recorded in the Scripture, but they were sinners who repented of their sin and continued to trust God for mercy and grace and forgiveness. So they were sinners, but they were righteous in the sense that they continued to trust and follow God. Notice I don't think Peter is saying that God rescued Noah and Lot because they were faithful, but rather that God actually preserved them in their faithfulness through this trial so that they would be rescued. That idea fits very well with what Peter has said in the letter so far. Peter talked about God calling us and choosing us in chapter one. He's been talking about the results of faith in our life, the kind of character that God produces in us as a result of faith. And here again, this is God acting on us. But how does God's calling and maturing us work itself out in our lives? Well, it reveals itself in our continuing to trust and follow God. It works itself out in our continuing to pursue holiness and godliness, even though we are still sinners. So Peter can rightly say that God preserves the righteous in the midst of these trials and also urge us to choose to follow God because that's how God's choosing of us works itself out. Let me make another point from the Lot story. Lot is Abraham's nephew, and he's living in Sodom. As recorded in Genesis 18, God sends angels to Abraham, and God tells Abraham, among other things, that he plans to wipe out Sodom and Gomorrah. And then Abraham begins bargaining with God. Abraham says, Lord, what if there were fifty righteous people in the city? Would you spare it? You wouldn't destroy the righteous along with the wicked. So if there were fifty righteous people, then you wouldn't wipe them out, right? And God says, Right, he wouldn't he would spare it. So Abraham says, Well, what if there were only forty-five righteous? Would you spare it for forty-five? And God says, Yes, he would. So Abraham says, Well, what about forty? And God says, Yes, and that keeps going until Abraham bargains God down to ten, and God says he wouldn't wipe out the city if ten righteous people were found there. Well we know how the story turns out. Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed, so there must not have been ten righteous people there. And I think the way we're supposed to understand that story is that there was only one righteous person there, and that person was Lot. We're not told much about Lot. Genesis nineteen twenty nine says that God rescued Lot for Abraham's sake, so you could argue that even Lot wasn't righteous, but God spared him as a mercy to Abraham. But I don't think that fits the story. I think the story reveals that Lot is living a different kind of life than his neighbors and that he does in fact trust God. And I think we're meant to see Lot as faithful. As recorded in Genesis nineteen, two angels come to Sodom and Lot invites them into his home. The men say they will sleep in the town square and Lot begs them to stay in his house instead. It's not clear whether Lot is just trying to be hospitable or whether he knows exactly what kind of town this is and how dangerous it would be for the men to sleep out in the open. I suspect it's the latter that he knows it's too dangerous, but we're not told for certain. So the men stay at Lot's house and sure enough the men from the city bang on Lot's door, demanding that Lot hand over the visitors, essentially so that they can rape them. Lot tries to protect them, and scholars debate whether Lot was right or wrong to offer his daughters as a substitute. I'm not gonna get into that debate. In any case, Lot appears to be protecting men that he believes to be messengers from God. And Lot is a mixed bag. He tries to convince his sons in law to flee with him and they refuse, but then when it's actually time to leave, Lot hesitates and the men from God, the angels have to physically pull him and his wife and daughters out of the city. So Lot is clearly a sinner, and yet Peter describes him as a righteous man. And I think we're to understand that is that he was righteous in the sense that he remained faithful to following God even while living in the midst of a sinful and wicked generation. Yes, he was still a sinner and he made some big mistakes, but he continued to trust God. Peter speaks of Lot's distress over the behavior of his neighbors in two seven and eight. In eight he says, For as that righteous man lived among the city day after day he was tormenting his soul over their lawless deeds that he saw and heard, and in two seven he was greatly distressed by the sensual conduct of the wicked. That's not spelled out in the story explicitly, but I think it's really reasonable to conclude from the details we have. And it would explain why he so strongly begs his visitors not to sleep in the open but to stay in his house behind lock and key. He can figure out what his neighbors are will try to do even though he's appalled by it. He does try to stop them, and so clearly we see he's not like them. He's trying to live differently than the people in his city. And I think we're to understand that this is not an isolated event, but an example of the kind of life he tried to live. Both Lot and Noah deserve Peter's description of them as righteous, and yet both of them are sinners, and we have stories in Scripture of where they failed. But in their stories we see God preserving their faith even though they are surrounded by an evil and wicked generation. We see God preserving them through that trial. The world was tried and found wanting, and God judged them with the flood, but kept Noah faithful and saved him through the Ark. The same is true for Lot. Lot's city was tried and found wanting, but God kept Lot faithful and removed him from the city before judgment came. And these are the historical examples Peter gives to support his admonition to his readers. Basically he's saying there are two kinds of people in this world. There are those to whom God is imparting his moral character and his holiness, and these God will keep faithful and will save them on the day of judgment. And there are those who pursue their rebellion against God, and these God will keep until the day of judgment, and their destiny is destruction. Looking at how God kept Noah and Lot ought to encourage Peter's readers and those of us who follow the Lord today. Look at how God has acted in history. God will surely judge the rebellious, but God will also surely save those who trust him. God will judge these false teachers in your midst, and God will keep you faithful. God did not fail to judge the wicked generations in the past, and he will not fail to judge these false teachers and wicked generations today. Therefore, don't listen to these false teachers because they are leading you astray and they are not taking you any place you want to go. You don't want to join them in their destruction. This is reality. These are historical events. This is how God has always handled rebellion in the past, and this is how God will handle it in the future. This is how God worked with those who trusted him in the past, and this is how he will work with those who trust him in the future. He's going to rescue his people and he's going to destroy his enemies. When judgment comes, it's going to be a day like any other day, and don't be deceived by those who claim it's not coming. Look again at two nine and ten. Then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment, and especially those who indulge in the lust of defiling passion and despise authority. In two ten, why does Peter pick these qualities to end his argument? These qualities are characteristic of the false teachers he's been describing. They're licentious and they're lawless. They want to do what they want to do when they want to do it, and they do not want to submit to what God says is right. If Peter were writing, say to the self-righteous Pharisees, he might describe the problem differently, and verse 10 might read with different qualities. But he's highlighting the problem he thinks his readers are encountering right now. These false teachers are encouraging self-indulgence under the umbrella of being a believer. And that's what Peter's warning against. He uses this phrase, they indulge in the lust of defiling passion. Now we've talked about this before, so I'm just going to go over it briefly. Christians sometimes get ridiculed as believing that all desire is bad, but that's not a biblical picture. The biblical picture is that our desires find their proper place under the will of God. The desires themselves are not necessarily wrong, it's how we use them that matters. Notice in verse ten that this phrase is paired with despising authority, the lust of defiling passion and despise authority. I think he's pointing to this very idea. So these false teachers do not want to submit to the will and the rule of God. They don't want to listen to what God says about the proper place of desires. They want what they want in their own way. And I think that's what Peter's talking about. They're indulging in the kinds of desires that indeed defile us. There are times when we want things for selfish and self absorbed and evil reasons, and that's what makes it a defiling act. The problem with the false teachers is not that they have desires, the problem is the way they are acting on desires. Every human being acts on their desires, and many times it's appropriate and right and beautiful to do so. The problem with the false teachers is that they refuse to accept that God has set context and limits, and they won't admit that God has said there is a right way and a wrong way to conduct yourself and there is a right way to use the desires you have. They're not dangerous because they indulge physical desires, they are dangerous because they refuse to accept that God has a proper place for those kinds of desires. And they are dangerous because they are teaching others to ignore God when they're making decisions about how to behave. So their sensuality is a symptom of their refusal to accept God's authority. It's not that sensuality is inherently wrong. In the appropriate context, it's a beautiful thing, but unchecked with no willingness to listen to what God says about it, then it becomes rebellion. So as believers, we have to start with the assumption that God has the right to tell us what to do and what He made us for and how we ought to live. Refusing to acknowledge that is the heart of rebellion and will lead to destruction. Now all of us struggle with accepting God's will sometime, and none of us acts perfectly on it all the time. But at some level, to be a believer, we have to want what God wants for us. Now maybe talking about judgment makes you uncomfortable, or maybe it's just something that you've always had as part of your theology. I think at some level judgment ought to make us uncomfortable. We all know intellectually that death is coming someday. We think it's always far off in the future, but judgment is the death that is worse than death. We're talking about the creator saying, Life is mine to give and mine to take. And if we're going to take the Bible seriously, we have to come to terms with judgment. Sometimes folks talk about the Bible presenting two different pictures of God. They talk about the Old Testament God as being a God of wrath and judgment, while the New Testament God is a God of love and mercy. Well, Second Peter is in the New Testament and he's talking about judgment, and the Old Testament stories we just looked at show God showing mercy as well as judgment. The fact is that the God of the Old Testament is a God of both judgment and mercy, and it's easy to find plenty of examples of that in the Old Testament. We just saw two with Lot and Noah. And the God of the New Testament is also a God of both judgment and mercy. Jesus talks about God's judgment quite a bit as to the apostles. The idea of God's judgment is one of the distinctives of a biblical worldview. Throughout history, mankind has formed lots of different views of God. We've presented him as the clockmaker who winds up the clock and then leaves us to our own devices. We've seen him as the big sugar daddy in the sky who gives us whatever we want when we want it but otherwise leaves us alone. We've seen God as the benevolent but somewhat absent minded loving grandfather, and we've seen him as the impersonal force that binds the universe together. But the biblical view of God includes judgment. The Bible teaches us that God is holy and righteous and good, that we owe him our gratitude and our obedience and the very air we breathe, and yet we have rebelled against him. And unless we listen to him about how to find life, we are going to fall under his judgment. Yes, the gospel is good news, but it is good news because it is a response to the bad news, and the bad news is that we are sinners before a holy God, and one day we will stand before him. Our eternal destiny is in his hands. On that day we will fall under judgment unless we listen to God and accept the way He is revealed about how to find life. Yes, He is merciful and He is compassionate, but He is also our judge, and He has lovingly reached out to us to redeem us and rescue us from judgment. He sent His Son Jesus to be the Messiah, to keep the covenant, to willingly and voluntarily die on the cross in our place and to pay the price for our sins such that on judgment day we can be forgiven. And this is what Peter wants them to remember. He's sounding a message of both warning and encouragement. The warning is God is coming to judge, the encouragement is God will rescue his people. There is a right way and a wrong way to approach God and to seek his mercy, and the false teachers are leading you astray. They're telling you the wrong way. You dare not listen to them because eternity is at stake. We can be washed away in judgment like the flood, or by the grace of God we can be in the boat with Noah. We can perish in the fire like Sodom and Gomorrah, or God can graciously take us by the hand and lead us to safety like he did Lot. Those are the only two choices. And that's why Peter's language is so blunt. He wants to confront his readers with the stark choice they face. And his warning is don't listen to those who refuse to listen to God. They're in disdruction and you do not want to share it with them. Thank you for listening to Wednesday in the Word, the podcast that explains not only what a passage means, but also seeks to show you how to figure that out. If you've been blessed by this podcast, please share it with a friend. Telling someone else about it is the best way to get the word out. And if you'd like to learn more, you can find hundreds of episodes on the website and lots of Bible study materials and things to help you learn to study the Bible better. Our theme music is graciously provided by Reggie Coast. You can find more of his music on heartfeltmusic.org. Thanks for listening today. I'm Krisan Marotta, and I hope you'll join me next week for Wednesday in the Word.