Charles Spurgeon, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, probably the best of the great British preachers of the 19th century. Todd is this the Prince of Preacher. You read his manuscripts today and you can tell what a great master of the pulp that man must have been. Todd is students. He said, when you preach on heaven, how do I be a smile on your face now? A gleam in your eye? When you preach on hell, well your ordinary face will do just fine. You're going to be looking at a rather difficult passage this morning from 2nd Peter, chapter 2, verses 4 through 12. 2nd Peter, chapter 2, verses 4 through 12. Peter writes, for if God did not spare angels when they sinned but sent them to hell, putting them into gloomy dungeons to be hell for judgment. If you did not spare the ancient world when you brought the flood on its ungodly people but protected Noah, a preacher of righteousness and seven others. If you condemn the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah by burning them to ashes and made them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly. And if you rescued a lot, a righteous man who was distressed by the filthy lives of lawless men, for that righteous man living among them day after day was tormented in his righteous soul by their lawless deeds he saw and heard. If this is so, then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly men, rescue godly men from trials and hold the unrighteous for the day of judgment while continuing their punishment. This is especially true of those who follow the corrupt desire of the sinful nature and despise authority. Bold and arrogant, these men are not afraid to slander celestial beings yet even angels are there stronger, although they are stronger and more powerful. Do not bring slanderous accusations against such beings in the presence of the Lord, but these men, blasphemy matters they do not understand. They are like brute beasts, creatures of instinct, born only to be caught and destroyed, and like beasts they too will perish, let's pray together.
Father, as we look into the Word, some parts of the Bible are so clear that you can't misunderstand them. Some are difficult, but you can understand them if you work at it. Some of them are just mystery that's beyond us and we want to understand it until we see you face to face. This passage verges on, borders on those last two. It's difficult, Father, so we ask your light to turn on the flood light of truth, your truth into our minds and make our minds alert and await to the truth of your Word. Don't stop there, Father, take that light and flood it and into our hands and our feet. Help us to understand your truth with our minds, receive it with our hearts, act on and obey it with our hands and our feet. Use this word to mold us and shape us and to transform us more and more into the image of Jesus. Who's the name I pray? Amen. We looked at, when I looked at how to do and preach and do second Peter, this is one of those passages I thought, well maybe I'll be out of town when we get to that one. Until Doug this past week, this is one of those that I'd rather just skip, but this is why you preach through the whole books of the Bible folks. This makes you confront passages and issues topics that you just wouldn't talk about if you didn't have to. This is why you do this, it's the whole council of God, but why talk about judgment and hell? Don't I always say that the gospel means good news, which is exactly what it means. Don't I always say that this is all about grace? God pronounces judgment to warn his people, so he doesn't have to execute judgment, so he doesn't have to dispense judgment. He makes these pronunciations of judgment through his servants, the prophets or the apostles or whomever. He makes these pronunciations of judgment to warn his people, you're going the wrong way. The bridge is out, you're going over a cliff, turn around why you can, he warns of judgment, so he won't have to execute judgment. Pastor of all souls, Presbyterian and London writes this. No man has ever appreciated the gospel till the law has first revealed to him himself. It is only against the inky blackness of the night sky that the stars begin to appear and is only against the dark background of sin and judgment that the gospel shines forth. It's hard to decide where to break this passage, too, if you read all the second Peter, it's hard to decide, verses 4 through 9 are all one long sentence in the Greek. But I decided to take a bigger chunk than that, because frankly this stuff's really depressing, it's hard to look at. And I want to pay it a little more quickly, and it raises issues. I will not be able to answer all the questions in there. Someone is just frankly beyond us, I think. But we're going to take a look at the big picture here, and see what this passage teaches us. It teaches us about judgment, it teaches us about the nature of judgment, about the causes of judgment, about the certainty of judgment, and about the end of judgment. So let's look at it. First of all, the nature of judgment, verse 4, for if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but sent them to hell, putting them into gloomy dungeons to be held for judgment. Now there are different kinds of judgment. There is a kind of judgment that is simply natural consequences of our own unrighteousness and or stupidity. The world runs by natural laws, the laws of physics, you know many of them, the law of gravity. You know about the law of friction, if you've ever wiped down on a bike and done a face plant, you erode rash, you know about the law of friction. You know about the law that says that two objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time. Although if you've ever been on the subway of Mexico City, you will question that, but two objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time. We know those laws, if we try to font those laws, you try to drink and drive. You think you can run in the face first or brick wall? If you're sexually promiscuous, or if you watch the matrix too many times and think you can dodge bullets like that, you will run into judgment in the form of natural law of natural consequences. You'll crash your car, you'll break your bones, you'll get sexually transmitted diseases, or you get a lot of bullet shaped holes through you. If you don't think that natural laws apply to you, you will experience God's judgment in the form of natural law. It's been said, we don't break God's laws, God's laws break us. There's a second kind of judgment here and that is judgment as an essential characteristic of God's holiness. Imagine if you've ever been in a courtroom, imagine the judge looks at a criminal, finds him guilty and says, I'm really going to throw the book at you, and he doesn't do anything. What kind of respect you have for a judge like that? What happens to the people under his judicial oversight if the judge is known for a man who talks tough and never dispenses any kind of judgment? What happens to a high school principal? He says, no, don't break these rules or else and there's no or else. What happens to a parent who says to his or her child, now if you do that again and there's no if, there's no then to the if. As many of you know, I am a recovering youth pastor and back in the day, I used to occasionally go and substitute teach just so I could sort of be in there, you know, be in their element and all that. If I was called in a substitute teach in a class where I knew something about it, maybe one of the social sciences, I try to teach on it. There's something that's just way beyond me, anything to do with math and like that is look, you guys, you got to study all today, okay? I've got work to do, you got work to do. Keep it down, keep it down to a dull roar. If you get out of hand, I'll give you a friendly warning. Do it again, I'll give you a second non-friendly warning. If I have to speak to you a third time it's a lunch detention. In this school did Saturday morning breakfast clubs, so if I speak your fourth time it's a breakfast club. Okay, friendly warning, not so friendly warning, lunch detention breakfast club. Everybody clear, everybody's clear. What do you think happened? I was a substitute. So there always be somebody who'd push it. I always push the envelope, push the limbs. I remember one class in particular, the young man his name was Manny. I don't remember Manny's last name. It wasn't Smith, but it was something pretty common in Miami, maybe in Rodriguez or Garcia, but Manny was sort of the class clown. Nice kid. Manny, there's your friendly warning. Don't do that again, settle down. Manny, there's your not so friendly warning. Next time, Manny, it's a lunch detention. Well, you know what happened, third time, Manny? Mr. Sonto, Mr. Rodriguez, that'll be a lunch detention. What do you think he said? That's not fair. And the whole class, yeah, that's not fair. Did I tell you exactly? Did I warn you over and over? Yeah, but what would they have done to me? If I said, okay, I didn't really mean it. Teachers, can you feel my pain? Have you been there? Do you know what I'm talking about? If we threaten, if we give these clear or else's, and we never follow through, what would that say about our God? Hell is mentioned in one form of the other in the Bible, 134 times that I could find. It is spoken of as the inevitable consequence of a life of rejecting the God who created us and the Messiah who redeemed us. It is described in unrelentingly, unremittingly, horrifying terms, fire that burns and is never quenched. Outer darkness, weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth, eternal separation from God. And here is described as gloomy dungeons. I honestly find the Bible's descriptions of hell so horrifying, I don't like to even think about it very long, much less talk to you all about it. I find it very difficult to think about for long. That's one of the reasons why I want to page through this one more quickly, for my own benefit. If you take this stuff seriously and I do, this is hard to think about folks. C.S. Lewis, of course, summed it up probably the best when he referring to where Jesus said in Matthew 7, we talked about those who would hear, depart from me. I'm sorry, Matthew 25. When he said, depart from me, he cursed to my father. I never knew you. C.S. Lewis said, imagine banished from the presence of him who was present everywhere. He raised from the knowledge of him who knows all. What did say about God? If he said all this about hell, if he described all this about hell, then he never followed through. What would that say about him? Bishop J.D. Ryle about a hundred years ago wrote this and let me just quote it. It's a hundred years ago folks. A flood of false doctrine has lately broken in upon us. Men are beginning to tell us that God is too merciful to punish souls forever. That all mankind, however wicked and ungodly, will sooner or later be saved. We are to embrace what is called kinder theology and treat hell as a pagan fable. This question lies at the very foundation of the gospel. The moral attributes of God, His justice, His holiness, His purity are all involved in it. The scripture has spoken plainly and fully on the subject of hell. If words mean anything, there is such a place as hell. If texts are to be interpreted fairly, there are those who will be cast into it. The same Bible which teaches that God in mercy and compassion sent Christ to die for sinners, there is also teach that God hates sin and must from His very nature punish all who cleave to sin or who refuse the salvation he has provided. God knows that I never speak of hell without pain and sorrow. I would gladly offer the salvation of the gospel to the very chief of sinners. I would willingly say to the vileist and most profligate of mankind on his deathbed, repent and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved. But God forbid that I should ever keep back from mortal man, that scripture reveals a hell as well as a heaven that men may be lost as well as saved. I don't like talking about it either, folks. But when you stand before God, like what I'm saying, hate what I'm saying, respect me for saying it, disrespect me for saying, agree with it, disagree with it. When you stand before God, you will not say no one ever told me. You won't say that, you've been told. There's plain teaching here about the nature of judgment. Let's talk about the causes of judgment. When we encounter a passage that talks about judgment like this, it behooves us to ask, what does people do? What do they do to bring such judgment on themselves? Verse four, for God did not spare angels when they sinned but sent them to hell, putting them into gloomy dungeons to be held for judgment. What was the sin of those angels? The Bible talks about angels, but the Bible is not about angels. The Bible is about God and his glory and it's about his plan of redemption for fallen men and women, reconciling lost men and women back to himself as we said in the affirmation of faith a while ago. But it does talk about angels. Angels are supporting characters in this drama and this passage right here is one of the most difficult in all the New Testament to understand. Let me tell you what I think. Peter doesn't elaborate. I have to speculate but let me tell you what I think he means. I believe he's talking here about the angels who bet on the wrong horse in Satan's rebellion against God. Satan decided he wanted to be God instead. Happy people worship him. I think these are the angels that were cast out of heaven with him. Their sin was wrong worship, worshiping the wrong God. Verse 5. For if he did not spare the ancient world when he brought the flood on its ungodly people for protected Noah, preacher righteousness and seven others. What was the sin of those people? The sin of the people of the time Noah. Let me refer you back to Genesis 6, verses 5-2-8. I'm going to put this up on the screen for you here. Genesis 6-5-8. The Lord saw how great man's wickedness on the earth had become and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. The Lord was greedy and made man on the earth. His heart was filled with pain. So the Lord said, I will wipe mankind whom I have created from the face of the earth. Men and animals and creatures that move along the ground and birds of the air for I am grieved that I have made them. But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. Their hearts were unrelentingly, unremittingly evil, everything about them. Every inclination they have is to pursue sin. It brought grief and pain to the heart of their creator to the point where he grieved that he had created them. That broke his laws by refusing to live as he instructed them by refusing to be what he had created them to be. Their sin was wrong living. If he condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah by burning them to ashes and made them an example of what was going to happen to the ungodly, if he rescued blood a righteous man who was distressed by the filthy lives of the lawless men, by the way this is one of the things I won't be able to get to this morning how Peter could call a lot a righteous man. I'll let you study that one on your own. For that righteous man, verse 8, living among them day after day was tormented in his righteous soul by the lawless deeds he saw and heard. What was the sin of these people? People that were reading about now in Sodom and Gomorrah. You can read in Genesis 19. Their sin was basically twofold, sexual perversion and lack of compassion for the poor and the needy. The sexual perversion you may know about, Genesis 19 is the story of how God looked on Sodom and Gomorrah. They were so wicked, they got to the point where there's an attempted scene and I want to be delicate here and other young people in the room. It's an attempted scene of homosexual wickedness in Genesis 19. That you probably know about. What you may not know though is that Sodom and Gomorrah were also guilty of lack of compassion for the poor and the needy. Let me read you from Ezekiel 16 and 49 and 50. I'll have this put up on the screen as well. Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom. She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned. They did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I did away with them as you have seen. So the causes of judgment that we see here in this passage, worship of false gods, seething, aggressive, opportunistic, evil, sexual perversion, lack of compassion for the poor and the needy. Folks, that ought to cause every Christian in this country to pause and consider our ways. God is not a respect of nations, but He knows His people. He knows the culture we inhabit. This ought to cause us to pause and think about who we are and what we are. So we've talked about the nature of judgment. We've talked about the causes of judgment. Let's look at the certainty of judgment. Verse 9. If this is so, then the Lord knows how to rescue godly men from trials and to hold the unrighteous for the day of judgment while continuing their punishment. This is especially true of those who follow the corrupt desire of the sinful nature and despise authority, the reality of condemnation and judgment. And I hear somebody here, or somebody might be listening to this on the internet letter saying, I don't believe God would do that. That's not the God I believe in. I don't believe in a God who would dispense judgment and condemnation. You remember I think it was two weeks ago? I had you help me out a little congregational participation. I asked you which way it's true north. If you weren't here, let me tell you, we were quite literally all over the map. We point out true north actually is from me to about that corner of the room there. That's true north. Will you do another congregational participation with me? Don't have to close your eyes, but I do need to participate if you will. If I were to tell you that there is an island off the coast of Greenland called Disco Island and that the water around to the east of Disco Island is called Disco Bay. Would you believe me? Let me come on. Show me how many of you would believe me if I told you off the coast of Greenland there's a Disco Island and the water around is called Disco Bay. Show me hands. Well, come on. This is faster. Can't talk in here. I'm standing behind a pulpit with a Bible. The rest of you wouldn't believe me if I told you there's an island off the coast of Greenland called Disco Island and the water around is called Disco Bay. I know you, you'll go home and you'll look it up and your athletes are going to the internet. You can. It's pronounced as spelled D-I-S-C-O. I think there's an alternate spelling D-I-S-K-O. There is a Disco Island. Now here's the point. Those of you who did believe me, there was a Disco Island. Those of you who didn't believe me. There was a lot of shame on you. Their national anthem too is Shake Your Booty by K-C in the Sunshine. That's not true. That's not true. But there is a Disco Island. How do I know this silly? I used to at the physical therapy clinic I used to go to. I'd stand on an upper body exercise or for 25, 30 minutes in front of a map of the world. What else do I have to do? I learned all kinds of things about geography. The fact that you did believe it or didn't believe it. Does that have any impact whatsoever on whether there really is a Disco Island? None. If we took a vote in here, it was a thousand to one. There was a Disco Island or a thousand to one against it. Would that have any bearing on whether there really is a Disco Island? Of course not. It really is there whether you believe it or not. Does your belief that God would extend condemnation in judgment or not? Does it have any impact on the reality of who God is and what he is? No. And he said in his word here, it is appointed unto man once to die and after this the judgment. God never bluffs folks. Think you're playing poker with him. Don't call his hand. You won't like it. Satan never warrants. God never bluffs. If he says judgment is coming, it behooves us to get ready for it. If he doesn't spare Disobedient Angels. If he didn't spare the people of Noah's day. If he didn't spare Sodom and Gomorrah, do we think that he's going to suddenly go slack and soft and change his ways for us? The immutable God who is the same yesterday, the damn forever. It is appointing unto man once to die and after this the judgment. And on that day every creature will bow to any and will acknowledge Christ's Lord whether they like it or not. Nature of judgment, the causes of judgment, the certainty of judgment and the end of judgment. I realize there are questions passage I haven't touched on. Look with me. Again, verse 10, the last part. Bold and arrogant, these men are not afraid to slander celestial beings. Yet even angels, although they are stronger and more powerful, do not bring slander's accusations against such beings in the presence of the Lord. These men blaspheme in matters they do not understand. They're like brute beasts, creatures of instinct, born only to be caught, destroyed, and like beasts, they too will perish. Why will all this judgment come upon them because of their ignorance and their arrogance? We don't know exactly what these men said about which celestial beings. Again, Peter, the people who was writing to them must have known because Peter doesn't elaborate. But they were repeating the same mistakes, ignorance, arrogance, even blasphemy. Ignorance leads to folly. Willful ignorance leads to disobedience. Disobedience leads to judgment. Judgment leads to one of two places, folks. Repentance or destruction. Sin and judgment. Is there any good news in this? Any good news here? Calvin Coolidge was vice president under Warren Harding. His vice president had the role of the president of the Senate. Two senators were debating something on the floor right in front of him. One senator said to the other and told him to go straight to hell. And the offended senator looked at Calvin Coolidge and said, did you hear what he just said to me? Coolidge looked up from the book he was reading. He said, yeah, I've been checking and you don't have to go. All this bad news points to the good news, folks. We have a way out. Because the atoning sacrifice of Christ, we don't have to go. Let me read one last verse to you. I'll have on the screen here. St. Corinthians 521, he that is God the Father made him, that is God the Son. He made him who knew no sin to be sinned on our behalf so that we might become the righteousness of God in him. Theologians like to talk about a double transfer, folks. He takes my sin. I get his righteousness. That's the hell of the cross, ladies and gentlemen. The hell of the cross, as it was the wrath of men poured out on God, the wrath of God poured out on a man. That's why Jesus suffered as no one could ever suffer. He took hell upon him so that we don't have to stand exposed to the wrath of God. Actually, let me clarify that. We have been exposed to the wrath of God because we're living in sin and under judgment. But the good news is everyone's been exposed to it. I'm just standing there to cure for it. We've all been exposed to the wrath of God. I'm standing here to tell you there's a cure for it. Whenever I talk about sin and wrath and atonement, I remember a quote from the Puritan leader, Cotton Mather, leader, statesman, preacher, Cotton Mather, over 350 years ago said his follows. The Lord sends preachers into the world to cry out that God reigns, that he will not suffer his glory to be scorned indefinitely, that he will vindicate his name in great and terrible wrath. There are also sent to cry out that for now a full and free amnesty is offered to all rebel subjects who will turn from their rebellion to call on him for mercy bow before his throne and swear allegiance and loyalty to him forever. The amnesty is signed and the blood of his son. Let's pray together. Father, these are deep and mysterious matters and I confess again, I don't begin to understand it all. But I thank you for giving us what light we have here and Peter's letter to the Christians and gather in Asia Minor 2,000 years ago. Lord, help us walk in that light today and if there's a person in this place who does not know for sure whether he will hear those words when he stands before you, well done, good and faithful, enter into the joy of your master, or depart from me you cursed. I never knew you, Father, that today would be the day that each and every one of us would make sure of our standing before you and embrace that amnesty given for us in the blood of Jesus Christ. We pray in his name, amen. Go now in the love of God the Father, the grace and the mercy of God the Son, fellowship and companionship of God the Holy Spirit and live the life, amen.