2 Peter 2 - part 2

So, verse 11 then, Whereas angels which are greater in power and might, greater than human, they won't bring reeling accusation against them before the Lord. And yet, this is what these others are doing. So then, they're as natural brute beasts, made to be taken and destroyed.

Remind us of those that were being fattened themselves for that slaughter. James is now, Speak evil of the things that they understand not, shall utterly perish in their own corruption. Perish without hope.

Would the things they understand not be the things of God? For us today, would we say they don't understand the Bible? You can quote parts of the Bible, but I think they have loose leaf Bibles, they take some parts out. It's amazing today, even in our own government, they tell God bless you, and yet they're passing bills that are contrary to the things of God. Well, we can't do anything about those except live the life ourselves.

Really, in the day in which we live, the most important thing is to keep oneself right, no matter what others are doing. Keep ourselves right, and keep, I'm going to say, in the love of God. Keep enjoying the things of God, and living for self.

That's the idea of a brute beast, I think. And things you understand, but they're without hope. Living according to their base nature, just like animals.

Like animals, that's exactly it. You can see it in the world, all around us. Now, we would take verse 12 to say that these that are made to be taken and destroyed is referring to the beasts, not the men.

They were not selected to destruction individually. No, no, the analogy is the animal whose only value is taken and destroyed, like a feral hog out in the woods. It's of no value to anybody.

Until you kill it, then you might be able to eat it. Yes, so the made to be taken and destroyed is the brute beast, or are the brute beast. Sure.

And God will be glorified in judgment. Certainly. So are we learning also in the context the reason why, I think our brother David Vallance has already alluded to this, but up in verse number 3, we read, through covetousness, verse number 14, covetous practices, verse number 13, the wages of unrighteousness, and then that's echoed again in verse number 15, the son of Bozer who loved the wages.

So this is coming out of a covetous nature, and they're teaching these things for the benefit they are receiving. Because of what they are getting out, they're getting gain through preaching this false doctrine. There's also a nature that's linked with the brute beast, that the brute beast makes its prey the weaker, and would seek to destroy, to take the weaker.

That's exactly how these are described. We've been encouraged in chapter 1 to go in for knowledge. And there's many different words used in chapter 1. And one of the ones that was pointed out was having a full knowledge.

Here are people with no knowledge. They understand not. They do not know the things of God.

They don't know the purposes of God. They only know their own evil intent. So we have the quest for power, which is really what the pride of life is all about.

We have the quest for pleasure, the sexual indulgence, the lust of the flesh. And we have the quest for gain, covetousness, the lust of the eye. Those three features, as I said earlier, are completely epitomized by these people.

They behave like animals, with one exception. They're fallen, and animals are not. What do animals do? They eat, they drink, they marry, and they give in marriage, so to speak.

Animals really don't marry. But what I'm getting at is this. What are animals' lives all about? They're about eating, drinking, playing, reproducing.

Not in and of themselves wrong things. I mean, humans do those things too. But there's no reverence.

There's no rationality. There's no restraint. Animals do not restrain themselves.

They're programmed creatures. They do what their instincts tell them to do. They have no capacity for rationality, and they certainly have no capacity for reverence.

These are things that are spiritual that are completely lacking in these people. And this is the problem too. When we talk to people in the world today, not only are they completely biblically ignorant, but maybe because of that fact, they don't even have a category in their thinking for the sacred, for the holy.

They don't know what that is. And they certainly, you know, by despising authorities, which is the way most people live their lives, they have no respect for God or for his claims. And these are things that we need to make sure don't creep into our thinking as well.

Yeah, so they would be wondering, why doesn't God take care of this right away? They said, don't worry. He'll take care of it in his time. And they shall perish in their own corruption without hope just as animals.

And they'll get the reward. They'll be paid in full. They think they're getting away with it now.

And, you know, in the book of Malachi, what was it they said, where is the God of judgment? If God's not judging it, then it must be okay, so we just go ahead doing it. But God is going to come in and judgment. And what they're doing, it's so pleasure and riot in the daytime.

People are doing things in the daytime that they would have always done in the dark. Men love darkness rather than light, but they're so brazen in the world today, they do these things openly. With a veterinarian here, it's a little hard to speak along this animal line, but what Brother David has said, animals function on instinct, we on conscience.

Animals, I don't think, have a conscience, do they? No. No, but we do. What we see around us today is a world void of conscience.

And worse than that, even natural instinct, we do have things by instinct. Okay? But we have a conscience. These people are going beyond even their conscience.

Yeah, conscience, of course, has to be governed by a set of rules, doesn't it? Yes. So we're governed by the scriptures. But that's something they don't want.

They just take whatever scriptures they want and they say, God has given you that God-given desire and why not practice it? Outside of marriage or whatever. Since we're looking at this, and our brethren have helped us to realize, we're not looking at secular voices, we're looking at so-called spiritual leaders here in this section. So how do spiritual leaders get around this? One way they get around the Word of God is by saying, what the Word of God says to you is what it means.

It becomes a subjective book that you interpret according to how it affects you. So if a particular verse speaks to you, then it's okay. If it doesn't speak to you, it's not important.

And so the Word of God becomes, really, I become the judge of the Word of God rather than the Word of God becoming the judge of me or the controller of me. So it takes all the authority out of the Word of God and invests the authority in me. So the value of readings like these where there's exposition of Scripture in its context is to guard against that.

Exactly. And our own personal reading should be as well with a consciousness that it is the Word of God. Right.

Yeah, many years ago at meetings in a home, and the man of the house, he didn't go to the meeting, but he came in afterwards. Oh, he said, I love the Word of God. He said, ten people can look at it and get a different meaning, and they're all right.

And I said, that's not the Bible I have or the God that I have. But that's the way people look at it. Go ahead.

I was going to ask you about these spots and blemishes, blots and blemishes. These men were like a stain on a clean garment, and they were feasting with the believers. Is that the Lord's Supper or love feasts or what? Well, it wouldn't be the Lord's Supper, but I think the love feasts seem to be linked with the Lord's Supper in 1 Corinthians 11.

What would you think? Explain to us what a love feast is. Well, I suppose as far as 1 Corinthians is concerned, they were all getting together before they broke bread and eating their own, having a meal or a feast. What do you think there's more to it than that? Like a fellowship supper? Don't you think this is rather living high off the hog? They're making merchandise of you and they're really living it up off of you? Really is the idea that they're gaining from you? Isn't there a beautiful contrast here in these spots and blemishes with the first epistle and the Lord Jesus? And there He's without spot, and He's blameless.

So they were feasting with them, though. It must have been a meal, wouldn't it be? Why did they feast with you? A few years ago, we were in an assembly that they had foregone their midweek meeting and were having cottage meetings or they were having three or four different meetings in homes instead of their Bible reading, their Bible study. And it looks to me like that situation would be ripe for these men to come in.

There's not elders there. They're not being governed by any teachers. Maybe one or two, but it's not an assembly meeting.

And there would be all sorts of opportunity to teach error, to propagate because the people they were teaching would now respect that person. And if he was charismatic in character, he could develop a following. It just seemed to me like that was a wrong road to go rather than to have an assembly Bible reading.

Would these be social gatherings where there's a mixture of believers and unbelievers and their interchange of thought and the believers are being swayed, apparently, by some of their own teaching? There's an overindulgence. And I think the next verses would tell you why they would have these feasts. They get everybody together and have an eyes full of adultery.

They're looking for partners and so on. It's really a love feast, overindulgence. Having eyes full of adultery that cannot cease from sin.

They're looking for sexual partners, really. I think that's what it means. And beguiling unstable souls.

They have a heart that has been exercised, trained by experience with covetous practices. Cursed children. You're somewhat insulated from this sort of thing in the assemblies, as Brother Sandy was saying this morning.

But you look at church history, as it's called, and you see that this is a spot-on analysis of what has happened again and again and again. Before, for example, John Wesley and George Whitefield began to preach and to turn England around in many ways, just using that as an example, the worst people in the country, the place where you would go to find the greatest excess of riot and sexual immorality were people who were in the church. It could not have been lower.

The Roman Catholic Church has its own examples throughout the years. And every really established church that is a mixture of believers or unbelievers or predominantly unbelievers, but these sorts of teachers really do this. So if this chapter seems like over-the-top, excessive, a little bit exaggerated, you need to read history.

And beware, because it can happen again. Can I ask, Christian history, David, was assembly testimony exempt from this? No, no. Without naming names, we have leaders in another line of assemblies within this last 50 years who were guilty of this.

So this warning is actually right up to date, and we need to take warning from this chapter. It's not just that we're saying the leaders in Christendom, they need to take warning from this, but this is up to date from the fact that we could go down this route adopting the practices and imbibing the doctrine. Following the teaching of Scripture will teach you to bridle your passions.

Following error will bring about licentious living and bridle passions. And that's what we have all the way through. So they seem to condone sin.

And again, the motive is a love feast. The motive is love. As long as your motive's right, just do what you want.

God has given you a desire, and don't try to curb it. We're responsible beings, aren't we? I mean, God has dealt with us. Our old man was crucified with Christ.

We've been raised to walk in units of life. But I was looking recently about the children of Israel coming into the land, and there had to be the circumcision and the judging of the flesh and keeping the flesh down. So we have a responsibility.

They have forsaken the right way. We want to go on the right way, but they've gone astray. So this is what we mentioned earlier about Gnosticism.

The flesh is essentially evil. So you can't fight it, so you may as well go along with it and separate it from the spiritual. So they have this anomaly, the livers alike, and then they profess higher knowledge in spiritual things, and it's not there.

But the apostle Paul says, present your bodies a living sacrifice. Because the body is what the, as you call them Gnostics, believe didn't matter, because really they were Platonic in their thinking, thinking that all spiritual, ethereal things were good, and all physical and material things were evil. The Bible does not teach that.

It teaches that the fall has affected all parts of man, and all parts of man will be redeemed, and that the physical part of man is exceedingly important for God. And therefore we're to present our bodies, not to licentious living, but to the Lord. Evil teachers like to bring in logic.

We go by the Scriptures. We don't use the logic of man. We use the Word of God.

There's nothing wrong with logic if you start with the right presuppositions. They start with the wrong presuppositions and rationalize upwards. We start with the Word of God as our basis.

Paul is the most logical thinker you'll ever confront. In accordance with the Scriptures. In accordance, but he starts with Scripture.

You brought us to verse 15, Balaam. Would this be, I mean, he is the perfect example for this chapter, I would take it, not just in his motivation, but would he be a man of verse number one who brought in error alongside of truth? He's a very puzzling character. He says some tremendously true things, but then he brought in error alongside of it.

And it ended in destruction. So he's a false prophet. As there were false prophets.

He spoke for God, didn't he? He spoke as though he was speaking for God and all his sacrifices. I have puzzled at some of those things and wondered whether he sacrifices to God or Balaam. Probably, but whatever it was, he knew some of the truth, didn't he? And he knew about burnt offerings and so on.

And the man whose eyes were opened, didn't he say? But here the dumb ass had to keep him from getting his legs crushed. He had a knowledge about God, but he didn't have a knowledge of God. Someone has said that Balaam was a man that wore a holy guise over a graceless heart.

He's the opposite of Lot in this sense. Well, there's a mixture of good and bad in the Old Testament. With Lot, there's only good in the New Testament because he's a true believer.

But with Balaam, there's only evil in the New Testament because he's not a believer. The so-called good things, the filthy rags of righteousness that were about him have been destroyed, and he himself also. Balaam was a religious leader.

We call him that. And in his story, there's money and there's immorality. And unfortunately, that story has been repeated down through the centuries right to this day.

So he's mentioned three times in the New Testament. In the book of Revelation, it's his doctrine. In the book of Jude, it's his deception.

Here is his direction, following the way. And isn't it interesting that verse number 2 says, Many shall follow. Here it says in this verse, following the way.

And that's all in contrast to chapter 1. Peter says, We have not followed cunningly devised fables. So you'd almost think he was listening to God and didn't want to do it, but still his motivation was the wages of unrighteousness. But it's also good to know, I'm glad that the account is in the Bible because here's a man trying to curse God's people and they didn't even know it.

And yet God is preserving them. And when he looked down upon God's people from the heights, he saw something that we don't often see about God's people. He saw their perfection and their order and the shirt of a king was among them and so on.

And tremendous what God put in his mouth. So it shows that a person can speak great things, great swelling things and still not be representing God at all. And of course, we know it's already been mentioned that if he couldn't curse them, he could corrupt them.

And that fits in exactly with it. Now it says, These are wells without water. Springs without water.

They promise refreshment, but there really is none for God's people. The analogy to the clouds almost would remind you of Ephesians 4, isn't it? Carried about with every wind of doctrine. And that's similar here.

These men are propagating doctrine and they themselves are being carried about. This is carried about by the storm. So you just follow the conversation today.

These men are big on the conversation, right? What's that man, Bell from Michigan? Yeah, Rob Bell. Rob Bell, yeah. The clouds also suggest clouded thinking or confusion, don't they? The cloud is what obscures the sun or blocks the light.

And again, these people with their weasel words, as we were thinking of earlier, and your point is good, Sandy. These are religious people. So to talk about this being Richard Dawkins is out of context here.

They'll say things like, Well, you know, your Bible is true, all right, but there's a trajectory in the Bible. In the Old Testament, women had no place at all, and they were property, they were chattel. And in the New Testament, they weren't allowed to speak in the church, but they had been elevated to some sort of equality.

So if you do those two lines and make a trajectory, you'll see that eventually God's purpose was that they should be fully equal in ministry and that they should be able to speak because that's the arrow that was heading upward throughout the Bible. That kind of confusion, that kind of, you know, anti-biblical, anti-truth stance is appealing to some people, just as an example. So clouds block the light and confuse people.

But the mist of darkness is reserved for them. Their end is the utter darkness. There's a mist on them right now, what they're teaching is going to be on them forever, reserved forever.

For they speak great swelling words of vanity. There's lots of messages they give, but they're empty. Just like the clouds, that's the example, they're going to bring in.

There's nothing really concrete in their teaching and they allure through the lust of the flesh. That word allure is actually the same word in verse number 14, rendered beguiling. Isn't it the idea of a snare or an enticement? Enticement, yeah.

And the snare that is placed before people is actually this licentious living. So you can be, as our brother Valens has said, you can be religious, but don't forget, you can have this lifestyle that accompanies it. You can sin as much as you want, and that's what's being condemned here, and it's actually a snare, it's an enticement.

I think, Brother Lavery, when you read this in your introduction, you changed those that were clean escaped to those that were just escaped. Is this suggesting that they go after people who are newly saved, not yet grounded in the truth? And begin to try to inculcate their doctrines into them? Yeah, well, at least I had thought that it was people that were searching. They weren't satisfied with their life, so they're searching for something better.

But instead of getting maybe salvation, they're being led astray. These are the kind of people that will pick them up and they've just escaped, while they promised them liberty. But it's not really liberty to sin.

They're saying, no, you're not sad, but this is the way it should be. They're not teaching them the truth. Is that what you would say, basically? That's fine.

A rendering is those who are just escaping. It's an act in progress. It's not complete.

It's still going on. They are escaping. So that's the kind of people they latch on to.

It's good even to apply it to ourselves. And if you look at it as people that are searching, you need to see them saved and we need to see them grounded, don't we? It's good to follow up on work. If you see a few souls saved, don't just forget them.

Go back and try. We need to be grounded in the simple truth because people can be laid astray, I know. It has happened.

There are some cults out there. I remember a young man who ended up in a cult. He did everything to sway them.

It was an Eastern thing, you know, where the father became the son and the son became the spirit and the spirit became the church and then we become God. Lots of evil. And yet you couldn't convince them hardly.

So there's lots of teachings out there. If there are souls that are interested, we should be asking God to guide us to them. Lead me to some soul today.

If we're going door to door, it's kind of out of vogue now. It's hard to do. But it's good to still do it and try and get there.

There may be some out there that are searching. But usually they'll go for what's not true first, won't they? They're searching. They won't go for the truth of God.

But that doesn't absolve us from trying to reach out to get them. We can give them liberty, but it's liberty in Christ, not liberty to sin. So is verse 19 then a commentary on the technique or techniques of these false teachers that are going to target the naive, those that were just escaping, promising them freedom, but they themselves are ensnared in depravity, like a 300 pound man trying to sell diet books.

Why did you look at me when you said that? What is the freedom that they're offering them? What concept do they have that the believer is living under? Well, I think it's freedom. Yeah, I think it's freedom to sin. And they're saying, you shouldn't curb your bodily appetite.

It's all right, God gave it to you, so why do you curb it? God gave it. So what would you say, Duncan? Well, I was just thinking, going back to when I was in the office, sometimes you wonder what people thought of your life because I don't do this and I don't do that and we don't do this and we don't do that. And you come in on a Monday morning, there's been a game at the weekend and they're talking about the game.

We don't come in and say, boy, we had some gospel meeting last night, it was just wonderful. The minister was at a conference all weekend and all our hearts were just lifted up. We don't do that.

We tell the unsaved about the negative things in our life and they think we're under bondage. No, I can give you liberty. We can free you from all that because you're under bondage.

But we're not. We're bond servants of Christ Jesus. But we don't do these things because they're not profitable to please him.

Many people confuse liberty as in libertarian free will with true liberty. In other words, they think as long as they have the freedom to make a choice autonomously, that that will automatically lead them to freedom. Ask Adam if that happened.

Ask Eve, right? No. Liberty is not being able to do whatever you wish. That will lead you to the bondage to sin.

And whoever commits sin is the slave of sin, the Lord Jesus taught us. But where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. So liberty is the desire and the ability to do the will of God.

Everything else is slavery. If you're here today and you're following your instincts and appetites, you're not free. If you have gifts and talents that are not being developed because you don't choose to do that, you've made a free choice, but you're not free.

If you fail to be what God has asked you to be, if you fail to walk in His will, you're a slave, you're not free. The only freedom is to do what we were designed to do, to be what God intended us to be, which is His own children and walking in the liberty of the children of God. So don't confuse libertarian free will or the ability God has given us to make choices with freedom because freedom is something that can only be found in Christ and can only be enabled by the Spirit of God.

And if we could get that message to people, I think, and to ourselves, because I'm sure I know the tactic these men are taking here. As you're saying, Duncan, Christianity, as it's being taught by these prophets and apostles, this is a bondage. I mean, it's all legalism.

It's all rules. And that's a mischaracterization. That's a caricature, obviously.

Rules are important, but only for those who love the Lord who gave them and desire to keep them in their hearts. But no, they don't see it that way. They just see it as all negatives, all strictures, all can't-dos, all denial of human authenticity.

And they say, you know, come our way, and you can be whatever you feel like being. It's an easy life. They offer an easy way.

Think of Paul, I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus. These are what shows I belong to the Lord. That's what his liberty brought him, but it was liberty to serve the Lord.

So, it says, they themselves are servants of corruption. For whom a man is overcome or subdued of the same, he is brought in bondage. So the teachers were slaves of corruption, and they couldn't break their own chains and their own habits.

We used to show the children that the effects of sin would take a roll of little sewing thread and put a couple of strands around the strongest boy's body, tell him to break it, and he did it, no trouble. But at the time, you had 20 or 30 around, couldn't get out of them anymore. And as sin progresses in the life of an unsaved man or sometimes a believer, it gets hard to break, the harder it is.

And only the power of Christ can break the bondage of sin. So we're born servants of sin, unto death, this is Romans 6, or of obedience unto righteousness. So we are born servants, but we're born servants to Christ.

There's a term that, I'm sorry I have to say that it's used, and I realize that it's maybe not just in the context of this, it's called, by some that have unfortunately left our circles, it's called brethren bondage. What they mean by that is that there's a liberty they'd like to enjoy, and that they don't want that old hymn book with all these old hymns in it. Okay? They don't want the version that I'm holding in my hand today.

So they have left to go to a place where they have this liberty. But the ones that have told me that today are no longer those places where they seemingly found that liberty, they're going nowhere. That's right.

I remember a couple that wrote to the brethren about the reason they were leaving the assembly, there was no love in the assembly, and then they wrote all the things that were wrong. I asked the elder, what did you tell them? He said, I told them there's not much love in this letter. You know, they don't show it.

But anyhow, we need to get a few more verses. These are their victims. For if they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they're again entangled therein and overcome.

The latter end is worse than the first. So of course, in this section, you can't ever think that they would be saved. They were reformed.

It would seem that life was reformed, but they returned to sin, and they sink lower and lower. So verse number 20, brother Bill, through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior, it's not so much that they knew Him as Lord and Savior, but there was a verbal acknowledgement of Him. And it was only that there was an acknowledgement, there was no reality in the soul.

So are these the victims of the false teachers or the false teachers themselves, you think, in this verse? Well, obviously the victims of the false teachers would take on the character of those who have taught them such. That's how I looked at it. I thought it was the victims, but I could be corrected.

I personally wondered if it wasn't the false teachers themselves. And he's ultimately then going to describe the ultimate end of the false teacher in verse number 22. So in other words, they profess to know the Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, but their lifestyle and their behavior is denying it.

They're entangled again in what they profess to have been released from. The word knowledge is full knowledge. It's not something that's part.

They've received the full knowledge. It's difficult. But it can have that connotation.

Yes. Apostasy is always in light of full knowledge. Everything God could reveal to them was revealed for them to receive.

They turned away from it. But they didn't accept it as knowledge. Right.

It was only a verbal thing. It's a mental acquiescence rather than their heart. I'm not sure it's that.

So whatever at least verse 21 tells us, they knew the way of righteousness. But after they knew it, they turned away. That's what apostasy is.

Turned away from the truth and from the holy commandment delivered unto them. Sorry. I was going to ask a two-fold question.

In what way at the end of verse 20 is their latter end worse than the beginning? And then what is the implication of verse 21? It would have been better never to have known it than to have turned from it. I think their judgment would be greater. So verse 21, judgment according to light.

And because they've had light, their judgment is greater. Verse 20, perhaps it is worse with them now because they have now married a professed religion, Christianity, with their licentious lifestyle. And so the result is it's really, it's actually even lower than when they were mere, whether it was idolaters or what they were.

They've actually brought this kind of living and married it to supposed Christianity and sunk lower. But verse 22 shows them for what they are. Their behavior is a testimony to what they are.

They were never saved. Their nature is unchanged. They still have that nature.

Contrasting with 1 Peter 2, ye were a sheep, but ye have returned. Here are the dog and the sow returning. I wonder if it's not a contrast with the divine nature of your chapter 2. Can I ask you why the word commandment there in verse 21 is singular.

Why is it singular? And why is it called the holy commandment? Are we looking at this was the gospel which was delivered? It's something that is looked upon as the whole. I take it that's the singularity of it. The apostolic message.

So it's linked as one united message here. But I wonder if it's not the moral obligations which are presented in the gospel. And that's why it's called the holy commandment.

So God now commandeth, our brother Higgins has just said, all men everywhere to repent. But that will mean a change of lifestyle. And that's why it's holy.

So the very opposite is unclean animals. That's good. So it was delivered to them.

It was presented to them. The full knowledge was available to them. Are we looking at two different things with the dog and the sow? Are we looking at one that's internal? Because it's affecting the internal.

Something's proceeding from these men. The dog has returned to its own vomit. And then the sow, we're looking at something external.

It's gone back to its wallowing in the mire. It seems that both animals have professed some sort of cleansing. The dog has said, I'm finally purged.

I finally got it out. And the sow says, Can we stop there? Can we stop there? Can we go any further? I'm finally clean. I've got the mud off.

But their natures aren't changed and dogs love vomitus. And of course, sows love mud. So what they are comes out in their behavior ultimately.

You can only fake it for so long. Well, I think the time is just about up. Anything else? Well, thank you for your help.