Not Of This World Pt. 16
Otherworldly Destruction
2 Peter 2:11-22
Orchard Church | Pastor Jim Jackson
Otherworldly Destruction | Not Of This World Ep. 16
We are in 2 Peter chapter 2. We're live all over the world right now. I'm glad you're here with us as we study God's word from toasty baking southern California. I saw somebody was watching us on their phone as they were driving across east Texas. God bless you. Go across east Texas in this weather. But we are in 2 Peter chapter 2. We're going to start in verse 1. 2 Peter 2 11. Those of you guys that were here last week are awake already. I like that too. 2 Peter 2 11. This is the context here is we're continuing speaking about false pastors and false prophets and false teachers. It's obviously a big deal for Peter and he's going to talk about their character in this passage. Bold and willful, they do not tremble as they blaspheme the glorious one speaking of angels. Whereas angels though greater might and power do not pronounce a blasphemous judgment against them before the Lord. But these like irrational animals under light and rational animals, creatures of instinct born to be caught and destroyed, blaspheming about matters of which they're ignorant will also be destroyed in their destruction. Suffering wrong is the wage for their wrongdoing. They counted pleasure to revel in the daytime. They are blots and blemishes reveling in their deceptions while they feast with you, circle feast. They have eyes full of adultery, insatiable for sin. They entice unsteady souls. They have hearts trained in greed, circle greed, accursed children. For saking, circle forsaking the right way, they have gone astray, circle gone astray. They have followed the way of Balaam, the son of Beor who loved gain from wrongdoing. But was rebuked for his own transgression. A speechless donkey spoke, circle speechless donkey spoke, with a human voice and restrained the prophets madness. These are waterless strings, springs, and myths driven by a storm. For them, the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved. For speaking loud boasts of folly. They entice by sensual passions of the flesh. Those who are barely escaping from those who live in error. They promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption, underlying the sentence. For whatever overcomes a person, to that he is enslaved. For if after they have escaped, circle escaped, the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled, circle again entangled in them. And overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first, underlying all of verse 21. For it would have been better for them, never to have known the way of righteousness, than after knowing it, to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them. What the proverb says has happened to them, the dog returns to its own vomit. Circle vomit. And the sow or the pig, after washing herself, returns to wallow in the mud. Everybody ready for pigs and dogs? If you got your notes, pull them out. They should be inside your bulletin if you came on campus. If you're online with us at the top of the comments section on Facebook and on YouTube, you'll see a link, click on that link in the description area. If you're on YouTube, below the video, and my notes will come up. Number one is this ungodly character. Let me lay something out for you this morning. You will not be able to walk with God if you don't work on your character. Here we go. It doesn't matter if you come to church. It doesn't matter if you read your Bible. It doesn't matter if you pray every day. It doesn't matter. What does matter to make those things matter is that you are a person of God. And people of God are not magically made. They don't walk out of the God building. Well, I went in the building now I'm godly. You know how godly people are built? And you can be a godly person? Is it's built through building your godly character? You cannot walk with God. Listen to me. You cannot walk with God unless you work on your character. You cannot. It's impossible. It doesn't work. You can read Bible all you want. There are atheists who know the Bible better than most pastors do. It doesn't matter how much Bible knowledge you have. It doesn't matter if you sing songs to God. It just doesn't matter. If you are not a character person of God, all the things you do externally are valueless. So let me lay that foundation because we're going to walk into what Peter's talking about today, which is pastors who lack integrity, pastors who don't have godly character and are leading people astray. But this when he speaks of pastors is just a reflection of everybody else. It's all of us as it deals with this issue. So here it is. Number one, ungodly character. Peter compares heretical teachers and pastors to ignorant animals. They pridefully boast about the angelic realm, which not even angels do against other angels. While one angel can destroy thousands of men by himself, these teachers aren't afraid of offending them. So Peter makes this interesting phrase where he says these teachers aren't afraid to speak of things they have no idea what they're talking about. So whatever these teachers were talking about, as far as like the angelic realm, either whether it's judging them or speaking against them or saying the pastor had power over the angelic realm or something, whatever this is, Peter's letting the readers know pastors that speak very verbosely about things they have no knowledge of are just prideful arrogant tools. That's in the Greek. You have no idea what you're talking about because you're not afraid of offending an angel who God built to just be a wrecking machine. So I have it in your notes there in 2 Kings 1925, one angel, one destruction angel, angel of death put 185,000 warriors to death in one night. So one angel just goes through this camp of I think it was Assyrian soldiers and kills all of them. All of them are dead in the morning. So that's one angel who has the ability to do that to humans. The only reason we don't see that happening in the world is literally God restrains angels from the power that they've got to function in the world. So when somebody speaks of angels or the other realm or whatever, you literally have no idea what you're talking about. And so understand this, there's a whole other realm outside of us. It's a spiritual, you're a spiritual creature with a physical body. There will be a day when the spiritual part of you, the thing that makes you really you, because you're not just this DNA that stands here, the spiritual part of you will go back to God, the moral part of you goes back to God. All the moral things you've done with this physical body, that your soul will go back to God either for eternal life or eternal judgment. That's the choice you and I get to make in this world with the bodies that he gave us. But there's a whole other spiritual realm you and I don't realize. When you are dead, this is death, this is dying. And I do this. When you are dead, when I am dead, you are going to see a whole other realm you never knew existed. And if you have a mind to be blown, your mind's going to be blown. Because you're going to see the angelic realm, you're going to see God who actually made the angelic realm. And it's it's even hard to even put into words how immense and amazing that that moment is going to be when you release this body to go to God. And here's the here's our principle. Never get drunk on your own importance. Never get drunk on your own importance. So really remember that your life is in the hands of God and you are built to serve him. So we live in a culture of arrogance and pride and getting followers and I'm an influencer, blah, blah, blah. And it's like we just we we just desperately want attention. We desperately want to be an influencer. We desperately want like somebody to go, wow, you're amazing. Let me help you with that. If the choices you make are based on popularity, you have no character. Your character and when I talk character, I'm talking about how you make your decisions, the decisions I make in public, in private, my decision maker. If that isn't influenced and dictated by God, I have no character of value. If my character relies on people to give me value, then that will just come and go as my popularity comes and goes. I'll make decisions like if I feel social pressure does like say something or do something, I'll go do that thing because I hope nobody says something bad in the comments section. But if I know I'm standing with God, then I do everything I can to honor God and it doesn't matter what people or our culture says, you stand with God and you know you're on the right path. That's what it means to have a character that matters. Okay, so here we go. Remember, don't get, it doesn't matter if you're an influencer. I have a friend of mine that's one of the biggest influencers on Instagram and understand that someday that can end, someday that will be over. And what you've done for God with the influence of the time that God gave you is what matters. If God makes you super popular and whatever, awesome, honor God with it. I don't know if you saw the woman that won the 400 hurdles and like she just gave this rip and testimony in front of the whole world about how like she just broke a world record. She's the best of the best of the best of the best and she's just like and I just want to give all glory to Jesus and I just live my life for him and I just you know I appreciate my husband being the pastor of our home and stuff. I'm like she's just going, what in the world? But that's a point. That's a point. God puts you at the top athletically, financially, influenced wise, awesome. But don't go do great things for God there too. So it doesn't matter where you end up, your character has to be the same all the way to the top. That's the issue. Never change for people. Always do God's stuff and God will bless your life. The pastors that he's talking about here in this is chapter have not done that. They've actually not followed God and they're supposed to be men of God and they serve as an example of what not to do. Look at Proverbs 11-2, Proverbs 11-2, "When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with the humble is wisdom." You want to be a wise person to be humble and let me help you with humility. Humility isn't weakness. Humility is strength under control for the good of others. Instead of using people with the authority God's giving you, you use it to bless people and help people. It's what God does for us and it's what he calls us to do for others. So humility isn't weakness. It's actually the opposite of weakness. It's taking the strength that God gives you and blessing others rather than yourself. Pride says, "How can I use people to get what I want?" Humility says, "How can I use what God's given me to bless others? Our culture teaches you, get all you can while you can. Be all about you, boo." And we just gorge ourselves on ourselves and we live these anxious, angry, super saturated, selfish lives. But once we realize, man, when I start serving God rather than just accumulating for self, humility starts to build in me and then God starts to bless my life. Look at Proverbs 16, 18, "Pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit goes right before a fall." And here I'm going to help you. Ready? It's like if you're walking in the darkness and there's cliffs all around you like on this stage and you can't see anything but you got a flashlight and God gave you that flashlight to turn it on so you can see where you're going. But you are so prideful and arrogant you go, "I'm not going to listen to anybody. I'm not going to. I don't need that." You are literally on the verge of destruction and you're in the dark and you are literally almost ready to go over but your pride keeps you from saying, "I need to change." You go, "I'm fine. Man, if everything's fine. I don't need to change. I don't need to listen to you. I don't need to listen to that person. I don't need to listen to anybody. I'm good." Rather than going, God asks you to change and when you change you turn the light on in your life because humility from God produces the blessing of God and it helps you to not destroy yourself. Pride says, "I don't listen to anybody and you're literally going off." Some of you guys are on the verge of going off a cliff in the dark. You just haven't got there yet because pride goes right before a destruction. But humility says, "Let's turn the light on. Now I can see what I'm supposed to be doing with my life and I can avoid all the pitfalls of death because God is guiding me." Peter then described their motives for wanting to lead others. Like perversion at all levels of leadership, so everybody pays attention, all levels of leadership can have perversion at it. He's speaking of pastors here. Anytime you have authority in your life, you have the ability to either bless people or hurt people based on your character. It all comes back to who you are on the inside. At every level of leadership, whether it's pastoral, whether it's presidential, whether it's parenting, parents have authority over their kids, kids have authority maybe over the dog. You know what's interesting? You can tell a lot about your kid's character by how they treat things that are weaker than them. One of the greatest litmus tests of your character is how you treat those that can't do anything for you or how you treat those that have less power than you do. If you watch your kids and they just start abusing the cat or the dog or the birds or whatever and you just see your kids being like just because they have the power over something they abuse it that gives you an insight into their heart. And that's extrapolated back into us as parents. We have power over our children. How are we helping them become godly adults rather than just having authority over them? Same thing with pastors. Pastors are called by God to love and lead people. Sometimes they say hard things. Many times they just say, "Hey, let's walk with God together." But pastors can abuse that authority too. We've talked about the last couple of weeks. How many times do we have to hear about pastors committing adultery which he talks about right in this passage? How many times do we have to hear about mishandling of money or whatever? You know what a lot of the bad view of church comes from? How many of you guys were alive in the 80s and 90s? I mean some of the old heads or so. Some of you guys are like, "I better Google 80s." You want to know why our culture such as look at pastors and go, "I don't trust pastors and they're all about money or they're all churches are all about blah blah." You know where that comes from? That wasn't the case 60, 70 years ago. People trusted pastors. They had the most respect in our culture. You want to know why that's almost flipped all the website down? It's because you can just literally Google it for yourself. Like all the TBN preachers of the 80s and early 90s. "Oh, I just, I need another jet. I got to get the gospel around the world." Supersonic speed. Like, do you need a jet? Like the Holy Spirit can handle it. Like you see their houses and they say, "Oh, he's been sleeping with the secretary or he's been sleeping with the camera guy." And you go, "What is this?" And so then our culture goes, "I don't trust that anymore." Why? Because the hypocrisy of a few have poisoned the well for many. That's why Peter comes so strongly against false teachers, false pastors. It's because it only takes one or two to just poison the whole pool. Even if there's 1,000 that are great, five will wreck it for everybody. Then everybody thinks, "Oh, you're just a hypocrite. You're like everybody else." That's why, ready? Here we go. Some of you guys are in levels of authority. Everybody in here has some level of authority over something or somebody. Could be pets, could be kids, could be your CEO. You run your own company or your supervisor at work. You have authority. Here's my challenge to you. Your character will show how you use your authority. Do you bless those under you? Do you bless your employees? Do you bless those that are in your area? Or do you just use them? Everybody hates to be used. Everybody loves to be helped. So the beauty of authority is, do you use it to help people? We would hope that the leaders of our country would have the most integrity. I don't even care how you vote. I'm an equal opportunity offender. You would think, "They're running the greatest country on earth. They should be the best of the best." The most integrity, what they do in the dark, the backroom deals, nobody makes backroom deals. Everything's just like legit and awesome and amazing. We look at our president and go, "You're amazing. Thank you for being such a bastion of integrity." You want to know why? Because that's one of the most powerful positions on the face of the globe. And you would hope that whoever takes that position would have such level of integrity you as an American citizen can trust them to do their job well for your benefit, not special interest. And I don't even care how you vote. Red, blue, green, alien, whatever you vote. I'm just saying, "Ready? Whoever we put in authority, you hope that they do well with that authority, not the worst." Unfortunately, we've seen a lot of bad in politics, in the church. So my encouragement to you is this. Whatever level of authority you have, use it to do good, not worse. Use it for God's glory, not your own. The worst situation is someone having authority that their character can't support. Whoops. The worst scenario is somebody having authority that their character can't support. You've got a bunch of authority, but you don't use it well. By exploiting the trust of others, these pastors have forsaken the godly path and gone astray. Instead of staying close to Jesus, they let their character become corrupted. There is no shortcut to godly character. Here we go. This could be the most important thing I tell you today. Here's the principle. Godly character, how can I become a godly man? How can I become a godly woman? I'm going to tell you right now. Godly character is developed by making godly choices over long periods of ungodly chances. You want to know where your character is developed? It's not developed up here on stage. It's not developed because you did something here at the church. It's not developed here. Those you guys don't remember film. Anybody remember film? From the ancient days of like 20 years ago, you have to develop film in the dark. And the picture comes through in the dark. And you know what? The most perfect picture of yourself is what you do when no one sees, is how you think when no one hears. It's your inner thought life that produces your character, because your character produces your action, and your action literally guides your life. Your life goes where your character leads it, and your character is produced by the decisions you make many times just in the dark when no one sees it. Are your thoughts godly? Are your actions godly? Are your desires godly? If you can get those right, your whole life gets right. Godly character is developed by making godly choices over long periods of ungodly chances. There's a ton of bad things you could do. There's a ton of bad places you could go. There's a ton of other things you could do. But when you hit those choices, you start making godly decisions. No, but I'm not going there. No, but I'm not hanging out with that person. No, but I'm not dating her. No, but I'm not going with him. No, but I'm not going to take that job. No, but I'm not moving there. No, but I'm not doing that thing. It's just no, no, no. And you say, the more times you say no to ungodly chances and yes to God, your way becomes straight. And then that's the pathway of God's blessing. Your character is not developed when it's easy. Your character is developed when it's very hard. Because it's the hard that just grinds your character into this beautiful diamond for God. Number one, ungodly character. Number two, ungodly influence. These pastors have an ungodly character which brings about bad action. And then the worst of all is that they start influencing other people. Instead of pursuing godliness, these men pursue dishonest gain like Balaam. So let me help you with that. Balaam was an Old Testament prophet and I have it in your notes there in the book of Numbers chapter 22. I'm not going to go there and read the whole thing, but I'm going to tell you this short story. Look at me. Balaam, what's interesting about him, he's a really interesting study in the Old Testament because God never calls him a false prophet and actually God, the true God actually speaks to him and actually uses him in the world. And the prophet Balaam actually talks to God and seems to know God. But what's interesting is Balaam uses his gift for himself. He's paid by others to prophesy against other people. So instead of honoring God, he honors himself and he prostitutes his gift for money. It's literally what Peter's talking about here. He's allowed his character to become corrupt, loving money, loving fame, loving whatever it is. So watch, Balaam is on his way to curse Israel because he's paid by a guy and he's riding a donkey. This is riding a donkey. He's riding a donkey. That's in the chapter 22. And all of a sudden the donkey sits down on this open path and Balaam was like, dude, I need to get going. It's like when your car breaks down in the 15. He should have never bought you. So he starts hitting his donkey. And the donkey's like, the donkey, God gives the ability for the donkey to speak. The donkey's like, what are you doing? And then the even stupider part is Balaam speaks back to his donkey. I'm hitting you because you're not going. And the donkey's like, haven't I been with you for like since you were in your youth? And then Balaam's like, yeah. Well then, haven't I always done the right thing? Yeah. And then it says that God opened his eyes and there was an angel of death that he couldn't see on the pathway. That was literally going to put him to death. And the donkey had more discernment about spiritual things than the prophet did because the prophet's mind was muddled by money. And God rebukes him. He goes, if that donkey hadn't sat down, I would have slaughtered you on the on their path. And all of a sudden Balaam's like, I love you, donkey. I love you. Sorry. I punched you square in the face. Here's the point. Ready? Balaam was rebuked by the donkey and repented. Even in the story, God, what do you want me to do? I won't go if you don't want me to go. I'm God goes, no, I want you to go here. But here's what I want you to say. So even Balaam was like, I got rebuked by a donkey and I'm changing. And Peter goes, some of these people are so arrogant and prideful, they won't even repent. Like he even repented because a donkey spoke, but these people, when they hear the truth, they just keep on doing the same old thing. Pride goes before destruction. You're going off a cliff and you're like, I don't care. It's the poison. Look at me. It's a poison of being human because we don't want to be told what to do, but we know what we should do. And we fight against what's true. However, Peter points out that Balaam was rebuked by a donkey and listen, but these men, whoever he's talking about here, second Peter, listen to no one. These Christian men have escaped the defilements of the world through knowing their Lord and Savior Jesus, but they've chosen to turn back to their old life and try to influence others to join them. And here's our principle. God created leadership as influence. Make sure the power and influence you have to lead, make sure the power and influence you have leads others to Jesus, not away from him. You have influence in this world. It might be small or it might be massive. Use your influence for the glory of God. And God will bless you with more oftentimes because you can handle it. Showing that your character can handle the blessing of God. And it's interesting here because Peter doesn't say these teachers are false because they're not saved. Peter doesn't say these teachers crept in among you and they're totally aberrant teachers because they're not Christians. He's saying, they were true. They've escaped the defilements. Literally means to like, they've already, Jesus says, has made them new. He's taken them away from the defilements of the world. And I have that in your notes there, that this means being saved from sin, being saved from destruction, being saved from punishments of God. But it says they return back to it on purpose. And they went back to their old way of life and now they're trying to influence others, hey, come join me. Come on. Rather than saying, I'm walking with God, let me walk with God. Because there's no way an unbeliever can ever deny Christ because they don't know Christ and there's no way an unbeliever can walk with Jesus and then all of a sudden go back to the old life. An unbeliever is always in the old life. So these are saved people that are now choosing against the path they should have gone and now they're trying to get other people to come with them. Hey, come back with me. I know we talked about God before, but let's go back to the sexual things we were doing before because God doesn't really care. And so you see he's using his influence, whoever these people are, to actually do something against God rather than for God. So let me encourage you, ready parents, we bring it all the way home. When you launch your kids out, you're gonna probably be the best day of some of your lives. But by the time your kids are ready to fly the nest, make sure that they've seen the good use of authority and love in the home. You're gonna have to make tough decisions as parents sometimes. Because your kids are sinning, they're doing things against God. You have to make tough calls. My encouragement to you is this, even though you're not perfect, you won't be a perfect parent, you can make tough calls and still honor God. And then when your kids end up leaving the home, they go, man, I appreciate it. We care that my parents had for me enough to say no or enough to say these things. Use your authority for good because you are the authority in your home or at work tomorrow when you get to work. Be the supervisor that everybody wants to work for not because you're easy, but because you're a man or woman of integrity and you lead people well because you care about them. Like a pig or a dog that is washed, clean, or made healthy, they choose to return to their sinful life and stay. For these men, it would have been better to not have known Christ than to know Him and turn back to destruction. Here's our principal. True salvation can lead to true denial, which brings about true judgment. Where are the people in here that buy plants and actually have plants stay alive? Where are my green thumb people? Any green through people? There's not a lot of planters in here. So I have, well, some people have thumbs that are green, keeping plants and living things alive. I have thumbs of death. So when I show up to Home Depot or I show up to Lowe's or I show up to a nursery or whatever, and I'm coming near where the plants are in the little containers, the little jars, I can hear the plants going, God, no, God, no, please, no, God, don't let him take me. Because as I'm grabbing them and putting them in the cart, I just hear them going, because they know they're on a one-way trip to death. So I'll buy plants or trees or whatever, and they'll last a little while. But you know what, because I get lazy or forget to turn the irrigation on or whatever, they just go, you know what? It's very similar to walk with God. Many of us are dying spiritually because we choose to not walk with God. Many of us are backsliding into sin. The old stuff we left, the stuff we said we'd never do again, the stuff we said I'm tired of this stuff, I'm tired of living this way. We're starting to slide back into that. And here's the thing, ready? Backsliding into your old life isn't instantaneous usually. It's not, you don't just jump off and you're like, "Hey, I'm back!" It's this slow drift that's almost, you almost can't even feel. It's like when a boat's heading with wind, and all of a sudden you change the, the rigging on the sailboat, and instead of catching the wind that was going, you catch a different breeze or you catch a different part of the wind, and you start to blow back to where you were. And you start going back to rocks, and you start going back to destruction. And that's the idea here. The idea is that God is the builder of the boat, God is the giver of the wind, God is the sail giver, God puts you on the boat. The one thing God expects of you that he will not do for you is to continue to believe in him and walk with him. God will not walk for you. God gives you the strength to walk, God gives you the ability to walk, God gives you the pathway to walk. He just says, "Walk." And we can either go, "I will walk," or "I'm going to walk back this way to my old life." And we die inside, not because we just sinned a little bit, but we are making a conscious choice to go, "I no longer want to walk with God." So understand, ready? When we talk about pigs and dogs, Scripture is saying here that you can be cleaned up, God can make you right, God can make you healthy, God can make you whole, but it's us that goes back to the way we used to be. So I don't know how many of you guys have ever had a dog. I've had many. And here's what happens when they get sick. I'm going to leave you with a beautiful illustration to end this service. I've had dogs my whole life. You know what happens when they start getting sick? They start getting really slow, and they start walking around like this, and they'll have their head low, and they get really intense. And all of a sudden, you start to see a drool coming out of their mouth. And then this moment happens where they go like this, and they're back arches, and they go, "What?" And all this, like, bile and junk comes out. And I've seen my dog retching puke in the backyard, and then it's interesting, because after they're done puking, they're like, "I feel so much better." The tail's wagging. They're running around the backyard. They're like, "I'm free. I'm new. Tell me's better." About a half an hour later, I'll see this. Bro, are you stupid? You just puked that up 30 minutes ago, and you're over there tasting it? You're over there trying to eat it? Literally, that was making you so sick. You had to vomit, but now you're like, "That wasn't too bad." I wonder if I should re-intake. You know what Peter's saying here? Because it's just like when a dog gets healthy, in this illustration, God makes you right. You're good. You're good. But then you're like, "Man, I missed the old days." Remember when he used to sleep around? Remember when he used to get drunk all the time? Remember when he used to spend my money, how I wanted to eat, rather than like giving to God or whatever, like, "Man, those are good old days." Listen to me. Those weren't the good old days. The reason you left those days is because you really hated those days. You're just misremembering the past, because Satan puts it in your mind and like, "Man, I need to go back to the old days." No, you don't. You need to let those days die. You need to let that vomit stay in the backyard, and you leave it, and you never go back to it. I love the fact that Gino talked about that this morning. We didn't even plan that, but almost like God's real. So Gino's talking about like, "Hey, the drugs and alcohols, the weakness I had." And it's like, "I don't ever want to go back there. I don't ever want to go back there." And that's the idea. I let go of my past. Listen, you always use your past to remember the goodness of God. Don't go relive it. Don't go relive your past. Many of us are living the same old lives. We did pre-Jesus. That's unacceptable. Here's actually a picture that I'm going to leave you with. Here's a dog vomiting. There it is. There. I'm going to leave you with a beautiful spiritual picture. I want you to look at this vomit that's coming out, this dog's mouth. That's your porn habit right there that you went back to. This is the attention that you as a married woman need from other guys at work. "Hey, listen, ready? When you come to Jesus, it's ho-no-mo." So listen, this is you when you're spending your money and you're like, "I don't have money to give the God, but you're totally blow out your credit cards on stuff you don't need." This is every decision you and I make that dishonors God, but yeah, we kind of go back to it because we're like, "Man, this is just who I am. No, it's not who you are now. It's who you were." You always speak of your sin situation in the past tense because God loves you. God gave you a new nature. God gave you new drives and desires. Stop circling back to the old puke in the yard going, "Man, I kind of miss that puke." No, you don't. You let that green glob go. Now you're living a new way. Now you live in a new way because of God's great love for you. So go do great things for God this week. (audience applauds)