2 Peter 2

2 Peter 2:1-22

FAITH—ITS FRIENDS AND FOES 2 Peter 2:1-22. IN the treatment of Peter’s First Epistle, we called attention to the fact that the two natural divisions found in the body of the Epistle were introduced by the word “Beloved”.As would be expected, the introduction to this Second Epistle is more formal,“Simon Peter, a servant and an Apostle of Jesus Christ, to them that have obtained like precious faith with us through the righteousness of God and our Saviour Jesus Christ: “Grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God, and of Jesus our Lord” (2 Peter 1:1-2). From this salutation he passes to the subject of the Truth already received by them, and urges steadfastness in the faith, upon the ground that he will shortly finish his life-work, and longs to feel that his ministry to them is not to be a fruitless one.The Epistle is divided into three chapters; but the break in thought does not correspond entirely with the chapters; and yet for our purposes we propose its discussion under three heads.THE GROUND OF FAITH If it is interesting to listen to any well-informed, spiritual man speak on the great subjects of Scripture,—and it is,—how much more instructive is it to give attention to what an inspired Apostle has to say! Men are constantly tempted to forget that when they read what Peter wrote they are actually receiving what God hath spoken; and when they read what John wrote they are being made familiar with “The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to shew unto His servants things which must shortly come to pass; and He sent and signified it by His angel unto His servant John” (Revelation 1:1).What then has Peter to say concerning the ground of precious faith?First, that it is based upon the calling of God.“According as His Divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and Godliness, through the knowledge of Him that called us to glory and virtue?” (2 Peter 1:3). When I was a lad I listened with the utmost interest, to debates that occurred as often as my Uncle John visited our home; involving always the questions of Arminianism and Calvinism.Father was a conservative Arminian; uncle a radical Calvinist. I always voted the debate won by the last speaker. The longer I study the Bible at first hand, the more am I persuaded that while human responsibility is everywhere regarded, and even prized in the Word of God, the great fact remains that we are “saved by grace”, and that not of ourselves. How could Peter put it more strongly, “His Divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and Godliness, through the knowledge of Him that called us to glory and virtue”.Surely your salvation, your sanctification, your glorification, and mine, are all of grace, and all of God. “By the deeds of the Law there shall no flesh be justified in His sight” (Romans 3:20).Some of you were not present, and hence I dare repeat what Dr. John Robertson said at the Hennepin Avenue Methodist Church, on his first afternoon there one winter. There was a faithful worman who lived six miles up the valley who was ever present and on time at Robertson’s services.

One day she was missed. The next morning the young pastor walked his way to the country home and rapped on the door, and there was a feeble voice from within, saying, “Ye’ll have to lift the sneck and come in yersel.”Robertson’s application was right! If the Lord ever gets access to us and ministers to us in our sore sickness, He will have to come the whole way. Yea, more, He will have to “lift the sneck.” We have not even the power to respond after that He has stood at our heart’s door; He must even impart the power to open, as Christ imparted to Lazarus the ability to sit up in answer to His call, and to quit the grave. It is all of grace.It is fostered by the good promises of God.“Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the Divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust” (2 Peter 1:4). Once I attempted to speak from this text, “The Great and Precious Promises.” Attempted, I say! Who could say more? The man has never yet lived who appreciated the true greatness of God’s promises, or tasted all the preciousness that they contain. There is not an experience into which you come, but the promises of God compass you, and bear you up, if only you know how to lay hold upon them, as the life-preserver bears up the shipwrecked mariner. There is not a sorrow through which you pass, but God hath provided for it a sustaining promise. There is not a joy into which you enter, or a rest into which you come, but underneath them are the eternal promises. No wonder Isaac Watts called upon us in these words:“Tell of His wondrous faithfulness, And sound His power abroad; Sing the sweet promise of His grace, And the performing God.” Is it not a marvel, beloved, that we are so poverty-stricken when such an inheritance hath been left us? It is our fears and our faithfulness that cheat us out of our certain riches and secure joys.Ernest Gordon, in the life of his father, illustrates, “All remember Sancho Panza, hanging desperately from the window all the night long, his toes within three inches of the ground, his forehead beaded with perspiration, in abject terror of the supposed abyss beneath. A parable, truly, of most Christians, and a type of the conduct of many Christian institutions!”Oh, to learn how to release our hold and drop upon the promises of God, to find indeed that they are world-wide and strong as the granite pillars of the earth; yea, stronger, for the “earth shall pass away”, but not one jot or tittle of all that God hath spoken”.But let us not forget the object of these promises, that “by these ye might be partakers of the Divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust”.This faith is consonant only with Christian conduct.“And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge; “And to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience Godliness; “And to Godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity. “For if these things be in you, and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. “But he that lacketh these things is blind, and cannot see afar off, and hath forgotten that he was purged from his old sins. “Wherefore the rather, brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure: for if ye do these things, ye shall never fall: For so an entrance shall be ministered unto you abundantly into the everlasting Kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 1:5-11). Have you not noted that men seldom ever retain their faith in God after they have once become corrupt in conduct. Let lust, or any form of sin, into the life, and shortly you will be disputing the great doctrine of grace, and denying the necessity of an atonement, and scoffing the certainty of judgment. In all likelihood, you will go further and you will speak of the Church with contempt, and of its members with acrimony. Somehow the thinking and acting of men will get together, “As he (a man) thinketh in his heart, so is he”, and “out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh”.The great need of the hour, beloved, is a sound faith in Scripture teaching; and corresponding conduct on the part of them that profess it. The saintly Gordon once said, “We believe you ought to contend earnestly for ‘the faith which was once delivered unto the saints’; but in doing this you should seek to be like the saints once delivered to the faith.” So often have I found a loose theology and loose living linked together, that I have come to feel that one of these always mothers the other into being. Sometimes a man loses his faith first and falls into evil conduct afterwards; and then sometimes a man falls first into evil customs and gradually surrenders his faith.Peter’s appeal is, We should remember that the ground of our faith is in the grace of God, and that the growth of it depends upon our conduct. This is a remarkable phrase,“And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge; “And to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience Godliness; “And to Godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity. “For if these things be in you, and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. “But he that lacketh these things is blind, and cannot see afar off, and hath forgotten that he was purged from his old sins. “Wherefore the rather, brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure: for if ye do these things, ye shall never fall: “For so an entrance shall be ministered unto you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ”. If one rises up to say that this is not in accord with the first statement made, “that we can supply nothing,” remember it is not so, for our supplying depends upon our receiving. If I only had some one to whom I could make appeal at pleasure, and who would provide me with unlimited funds, I then in turn could “supply” not alone my own needs, but that of others; being “supplied,” I could “supply.” That is what the Apostle requires.“For so an entrance shall be ministered unto you abundantly”. When Christ said, “Give, and it shall be given unto you,” He did not mean that we should entice God into generosity by our example; but He did mean, as God is generous toward you, be generous toward others, and the Giver of all good will not withhold His hand, but open it more widely still. In other words, “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure” (Philippians 2:12-13).Yea, there is a harmony in Scripture, and the God who hath called you by His grace, and fostered your faith by His good promises, has the right to expect, yea, even to command, Christian conduct.There is a pathetic touch here before the Apostle passes on to the next subject of supreme importance. It is a reference to his approaching decease. It sounds like what the great Apostle Paul has to say, “I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand” (2 Timothy 4:6). Peter knows that his days are numbered,“Wherefore I will not be negligent to put you always in remembrance of these things, though ye know them, and be established in the present Truth, “Yea, I think it meet, as long as I am in this tabernacle, to stir you up by putting you in remembrance; “Knowing that shortly I must put off this my tabernacle, even as our Lord Jesus Christ hath shewed me. “Moreover I will endeavour that ye may be able after my decease to have these things always in remembrance” (2 Peter 1:12-15). If a father feels that his last words should be weighty, no wonder that an Apostle takes advantage of the same influence and employs it for God.But to continue with Peter’s Epistle is to come uponTHE MARKS OF THE FALSE PROPHET Four of these are mentioned here:First, The denial of the credibility of the Scriptures. Peter refers to certain teachings that had even in his time taken root with men, and answers: “For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and Coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of His majesty. “For He received from God the Father honour and glory, when there came such a voice to Him from the excellent Glory, This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. “And this voice which came from Heaven we heard, when we were with Him in the holy mount” (2 Peter 2:16-18). We have among us some men who talk of “up-to-date interpretation of the Scriptures.” Why, bless you, the Scriptures are always up to date. This language sounds like Peter had written it yesterday in answer to the latest professor of theology, who has told his classes that they are not to take all they find in the Bible as true; or as if in refutation of Foster’s “Finality of the Christian Religion.” Walter V. Couch, in “The Presbyterian,” speaking of Dr. Clark’s volume, “How to Use the Bible”, (a book in which that theological celebrity took the position that the Old and New Testaments are alike unworthy of confidence, and counsels that we pick out little bits here and there and make up for ourselves a bible from the Bible,) says, “This is coming out into the open, except as to the title of the book, which, to prevent misconception, we think should have been, ‘How to Misuse the Scriptures.’ “False prophets” they are; “destroyers of the faith.” I am more and more persuaded that the denomination that retains them in its bosom is dooming itself in the process, and hastening the day when God will remove its candlestick out of its place.Second, The rejection of the doctrine of plenary inspiration.Peter says:“We have also a more sure Word of prophecy; where-unto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the Day Star arise in your hearts; “Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the Scripture is of any private interpretation. “For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost” (2 Peter 2:19-21). What is his claim? We have the Word of Prophecy. Aye, “We have also a more sure Word of prophecy”. It is a light shining in a dark place; it is a light which is of no “private interpretation”, “For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost”.A. J. F. Behrends, in his little book, “The Old Testament Under Fire”, said, “When, thirty years ago, I entered the ministry, the crisis of the destructive criticism on the New Testament had only just passed. We were in the restless waters produced by the exhaustion of a terrific storm; and that, as some of us know, is worse than the tempest.

The cyclone was over, but it had cut a terrible swath, and the desolation seemed hopeless. I have lived to see the school of Baur and Renan buried out of sight, and the New Testament intrenched more strongly than ever. The school of Wellhausen is only nineteen years old. If I live twenty years longer, I shall expect to see it laid out for solitary burial, with none to mourn over its departure.” Thirty years have passed since Behrends wrote those words. His book was published in 1897, and now Wellhausen is commonly rejected. Practically every theory he put forth regarding the Old Testament Scriptures is repudiated by the present-day critics. “Buried without a mourner!”But let us not forget that these scholars have had their victims.

When, yesterday, the blighted remains of the murderer and suicide were made ready for burial, aside from his own flesh, none mourned. The public said, “To the world it is a good riddance.” But that did not bring back to life his victim; nor console the broken hearts of her friends nor the bereaved members of his family.

But, I say it solemnly, today, and I say it believing with all the fervor of my soul that I speak the truth, that black and awful as was the business of that murderer in deceiving, ensnaring, destroying, more far reaching still in its effects, more awful in its eventual outcome, more destructive and damning is the work of those men, who at this hour, are wearing the Name of Jesus Christ as a cloak under which to stab His character, and are holding chairs, endowed for the purpose of teaching the Word of God, as thrones of power from which to pass sentence against its sacred character. If such men are to remain honored ministers in the evangelical bodies our foundations are removed, our history has reached its climax in disaster, and our mission is over.A friend of mine tells me that he once heard Wendell Phillips speak. His opening sentence was, “I pray daily for the dissolution of this Union.”It rendered his auditors insane! They hissed and howled and threatened! But when Phillips explained, “Better a brief battle, however much bloodshed it involves, and after that a Union and freedom, than eternal division and strife and slavery!” they calmed and were convinced.Proud as I am to belong to the great Baptist denomination, I am clear in this, that if, tomorrow, we should disfellowship every man who denies the plenary inspiration of the Scriptures and disregards their authority, we should rise out of the division infinitely strengthened, to enjoy a faith, and to know again the power of the old days, and the enduement of that Spirit that made our fathers flaming lights.But Peter takes an additional step; his third mark is this:The substitution of skeptical theories versus the Scriptures.“But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among yon, who primly shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction” (2 Peter 2:1). It is always so! Men know that even the most unthinking will not stand for ruthless destruction, hence they claim always to be “constructive critics” which means, We will set up for you something else, and better. One such pleads, “Wait until I write a new book and tell you what I have put in place of the Bible.”What would you think of a man who deliberately took the foundation from beneath your house and removed the last stone, and when you expostulated with him, said, “But see the beauty of the paint, it is untouched; and the shapeliness of the finial, it is undisturbed. Count your untouched blessings and be content. And if you still feel that you have been injured, wait until the spring time and I will sow flower seed at your front door?”What would you think of the man who first slew your child, and then afterwards sought to placate you by proffering a pretty coffin?The time has come for the Church of God to part company with infidels!“And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel”? (2 Corinthians 6:15). But there remains another mark of the false prophet, and the Apostle presents it:He adopts irreligious and corrupting customs.They are described in this Epistle by “lascivious doings”, “covetousness”, “greed”, “make merchandise of you”, and Peter argues“For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment; “And spared not the old world, but saved Noah the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly;” and applied his argument to men,—“For it had been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than, after they have known it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered unto them. “But it happened unto them according to the true proverb, The dog is turned to his own vomit again; and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire” (2 Peter 2:4-6; 2 Peter 2:21-22). In the third chapter the Apostle discusses THE OF FINAL They involve the custom of scoffing at sacred things. “There shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lust” (2 Peter 3:3). No matter what view of the millennium one may hold, he must admit that the spirit of reverence for holy things, which was regnant with our fathers, is not so much found with their children. The multitudes disregard the sanctity of the Sabbath. How far we have come from the behavior of our fathers in the sanctuary—the place of the special presence of God—one gets a hint when he visits Canada, or goes back to England; and witnesses the people enter the House of God in a hush, and sees them bow the head before service, and again at the close of service,—a few moments in silent prayer. This is not a custom there with the English church only; but with the dissenters as well.In our own America—the most progressive of nations—one almost needs to use a gavel and call order in commencing many a religious service. The Jew never burned a piece of paper without looking upon it to see if the Name of God was there; and the Puritans held every page of the Bible in holy reverence. Their descendants, in many instances seriously question its authority, and in not a few, mock its claims. Marriage, domestic life, regard for the law, these are not held in as high esteem as once.“Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts” (2 Peter 3:3). This has wrought its way into the Church of God also; and has found expression in the interpretation of the Word, and has resulted in the utter fulfilment of Peter’s prophecy, namely:The repudiation of the Second Advent promises. He declares that they will say,“Where is the promise of His Coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation” (2 Peter 3:4). For hundreds of years after Christ the denial of the literal Return of the Lord, the setting up of His throne, and the establishment of His Kingdom, was hardly known among professed saints; today that hurtful “heresy” is popular to the point of the majority; and, while it does not, and perhaps never will, include the better students of the Word of God, it is extremely agreeable to the world.Peter says, Remember that men would not believe in the coming flood, and they perished in consequence. The heavens that now are, and the earth, according to prophecy, are stored up for fire, and men will not accept that, because they see no signs of it.“But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. “The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some men count slackness; but is long suffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. “But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall Pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up. “Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and Godliness, “Looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat? “Nevertheless we, according to His promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness” (2 Peter 3:8-13). To deny His Return, to deny these physical changes that are to be wrought in the world; to deny the overthrow of wickedness at His Appearance, and the establishment of righteousness at His personal Reign, is to discredit every twentieth verse in the entire Word of God, for that proportion of it relates to the literal Return of the Lord.I have just been reading a book of Dr. Haldeman’s, of New York, Pastor of the First Baptist Church of that city, in which he says, “Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesies that the Lord is coming in glory; Abraham catches glimpses of Him as the coming Man, and rejoices in view of His day. Jacob has a vision of the Epiphany and splendor when, surrounded by the angelic host, the Lord God looks down from the height of the golden ladder. Moses sees that revelation of Him in the burning bush, not as the weak and crucified, but as “Yaweh” the Coming One, coming in triumph. The Psalms are full of the one utterance, uttering His Coming and portraying the movement in Heaven when the whole universe shall be attuned in rhythm to the music of His Kingly descent. Isaiah spells it out in the notes of seraphic splendor and in the announcement of earth’s response from exalted mountain, shivering earth and tossing seas.

Jeremiah depicts the moment, when at His Coming, Jerusalem shall no longer be as the forsaken who binds her hair with the braid of widowhood, but as Jerusalem the holy, Jerusalem whose name shall be the Lord our Righteousness, and unto whom shall be gathered the nations, as unto the throne of the Lord.Ezekiel beholds Him coming in the chariots of cherubic glory. Daniel sets Him forth in the center of ten thousand times ten thousands of shining angels, coming to take unto Himself the crowns of all the kings of all the earth, as Ring of kings and Lord of lords.

The minor Prophets on every page proclaim that He is Coming. Hosea declares it in language of rebuke to the people who have denied Him; Joel in speech that makes the tongue to burn and the ears to tingle, while Habakkuk rises to the heights of sublimity in a diction unequalled, as he testifies of the God who shall come from Teman and the Holy One who shall cover the heavens with His glory, who shall fill the earth with His praise, before whose feet shall go the pestilence and burning coals, who shall stand and measure the earth, drive asunder the nation, scatter the everlasting mountains, receive the homage of the perpetual hills as they bow before Him and acknowledge that His ways are everlasting, and who shall fill the whole earth, with the glory of His presence. The last utterance of the Old Testament, as it is of the New, is, that He is Coming.” And he continues to say that the New Testament is as absolutely explicit and as replete in its teaching.What greater signs that we have come upon the final apostasy than that this glorious doctrine, this that was to the Apostle Paul “the Blessed Hope” of the Church, and to Jesus Christ, the climax of His own endeavors in redeeming the world, should be so popularly denied.But there is a further feature of this apostasy, namely:The wresting of the plainest speech of Sacred Writ. In proof of his biblical position, Peter refers to Paul’s Epistles, already written, and says that “they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other Scriptures, unto their own destruction” (2 Peter 3:16).Years ago Dr. George Lorimer said to me that he believed his first book was the best he had ever published. That first book is entitled, “The Galilean.” And if you turn to Lorimer’s chapter on “The Future of Jesus” you will find him saying, “Jesus is to come personally.

This is the plain import of His own words, and of those spoken on this subject by His disciples. * * I know there is a vague impression abroad that it sometimes denotes a spiritual and providential manifestation. But were this the case, the confusion would be lamentable and endless.” “If men are warranted by the exigencies of a theory which they consider more reasonable than any other, to manipulate plain declarations of Scripture, and to account that figurative which is clearly literal, why may not the opponents of evangelical views adopt the same rule, and, as it appears to them more rational to deny than to credit the Divinity of Christ and His resurrection, why may they not resolve all the proof texts in favor of these truths into mere poetic or metaphorical expressions?”That is exactly what they have done, and I say to you candidly, that they no more wrest the Scriptures, than do those who set aside what Christ and the Apostles said concerning the last days, the establishment of the Kingdom, the reign of glory, the millennium, and the final judgment.

Let us give ourselves to a fresh study of the Word of God and accept for our Instructor the Spirit Himself, lest we being “led away with the error of the wicked, fall from our own steadfastness”,“Come, Holy Spirit, Heav’nly Dove, With all Thy quickening powers; Kindle a flame of sacred love In these cold hearts of ours. “Look, how we grovel here below, Fond of these earthly toys; Our souls, how heavily they go, To reach eternal joys. “In vain we tune our formal songs, In vain we strive to rise; Hosannas languish on our tongues, And our devotion dies. “Dear Lord, and shall we ever live At this poor dying rate, Our love so faint, so cold to Thee, And Thine to us so great? “Come, Holy Spirit, Heav’nly Dove, With all Thy quickening powers; Come, shed abroad a Saviour’s love, And that shall kindle ours.”