As we looked at the first three verses of this chapter last week we focused on the characteristics of the false teachers that would flood the church at large. We noticed that they produce divisions, put out false teachings, promote the flesh and seek to profit financially from those who follow them.
But these verses, 4-10, now allow to focus instead on the character of God more closely for He is the subject of every one of these sentences, except the parenthetical remark about Lot in verse 8. This is important because Peter wants us to remember the greatness of God especially in times that others are seeking to take advantage of us.
For this reason Peter gives us the key idea of this passage in verse 9 as, God knows how to rescue the godly from temptation, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment.
From this passage we can discern five aspects of God that make known to us who He is and why we can trust Him even in the darkest times.
1. God’s Justice
The first aspect of God that we see is His justice. Peter describes for us in the passage that God is just. He always brings about justice. He rights every wrong. Because we cannot see the outcome of every situation we have to trust that God’s Word shows Him to be just. Again this is another reason why Peter outlined, for us in the previous chapter, how important it is that God has shown Himself to be true. Because God’s Word is true we can trust it when it says He is just even though we don’t have all the evidence to see that. In these verses God’s justice is shown by His action.
B. Those He condemns
First, God’s justice is shown by His action in those He condemns. Peter mentions three groups upon which God’s just wrath was poured. We’ll briefly look at these and see the justice of God’s condemnation in each case.
The first group upon which God’s just wrath had been poured was the angels. In verse 4, Peter notes, “For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to pits of darkness, reserved for judgment.” God, who had created the angels for His worship and praise, was dishonored by those who would leave the purpose for which they were created. These angels rebelled against God’s purposes and chose their own way. So He cast them out of heaven. As a side note, the Scripture calls these angels who have fallen, demons.
What this tells us about God is that no one is beyond God’s justice. Even those, whose home had been heaven itself, were judged by God. These false teachers who were seeking to infiltrate the church in Peter’s day thought themselves to be beyond the judgment of God. They thought that God couldn’t touch them. Their lifestyle, as we discussed last week, showed that they did not fear a coming judgment. They lived and indulged in wickedness openly as an affront to the holiness of God. Yet Peter says that even the angels who sinned were cast into pits of darkness. The most powerful of God’s creatures were not exempt from judgment and neither are these false teachers.
The judgment of these angels also tells us that though God’s judgment may be delayed it will come. The verse declares that they have been committed to pits of darkness and reserved for judgment. Apparently, some of these demonic hosts were so wicked and powerful they were actually locked up until the day of judgment though some were allowed to roam free upon the earth. But as they are being held, their judgment has not yet been meted out. Judgment for all the ungodly will take place. It may not take place when we think it should but it will take place. And though these false teachers are not now being judged they are being reserved for judgment.
The second group upon which God’s just wrath was poured was the anti-diluvian (or pre-flood) world. Peter notes this group in verse 5, “If God did not spare the ancient world.” As those before the flood became more vile and wicked, God proposed that He would destroy them all. Genesis 6 describes the condition of the world as, “the wickedness of man was great on the earth and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.”
The destruction of these people in the flood shows us that God’s justice is complete. No one escaped. There was no one who was able to cling to ark and outwit God. God gave the people 120 years to turn from their wicked ways (God is patient). But when the time for judgment came there was no turning back. And there was no place to hide. The Scripture tells us that seven days before the flood came upon the earth God closed Noah and his family in the ark. There was no opportunity after that time for people to be rescued from the flood.
As the waters of the deep broke up, when rain fell for the first time in human history and people began running to the ark and started to pound on the door and beg to be let in it was too late. Judgment had come and God’s judgment would be complete. The people had an opportunity to be rescued from the flood but their time had passed. God is patient but there comes a time when His patience ends and judgment begins. And when that occurs it will be complete.
The third group upon which God’s just wrath was poured was the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. Verse 6 says, “If He condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to destruction by reducing them to ashes.” There sin was primarily seen as sexual immorality. In verse 7 Peter called their behavior, “sensual conduct.” But what we must note is that this behavior was only the end product of what was already in their lives. Ezekiel describes the extent of their sin that caused their sexual debauchery. What was their sin? It was arrogance (or pride), abundant food and careless ease. They were self-centered people who sat around eating too much while they watched DVD’s and played video games. And they were too unconcerned to care about those around them in need.
You see their sexual escapades were simply the result of boredom. Instead seeking how they could use their lives profitably they thought about how they could fill the void in their life with anything that would bring them pleasure.
God ended up destroying them because they had completely reversed the purpose for which God had made them. He made them to worship and know Him. But they only wanted to focus on and please themselves. God was just in destroying them because they refused to seek after God though He made Himself evident to them.
God does show His justice by those He condemns.
B. Those He rescues
But secondly, and more importantly, God’s justice is shown by His action in those He rescues. First we notice that He rescued Noah and his family. Verse 5 observes that though God did not spare the ancient world, yet He “preserved Noah, a preacher of righteousness, with seven others.” Genesis 6 says that Noah found grace in the sight of the Lord and He was declared to be a righteous person in God’s sight. Noah was able to preach righteousness because God had made Him righteous. Noah wasn’t proclaiming His own righteousness but a righteousness that had come from God.
In the same way verse 7 says that God rescued righteous Lot. Lot had been made righteous too. He was brought out of Sodom because God had declared Him to be righteous.
Notice that God only rescues the righteous. This tells us it is absolutely imperative that we have been declared righteous by God. The truth is both Lot and Noah had sinned. Neither of them were perfect (or righteous). The Scripture declares that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. So why did God declare these individuals righteous or just? Why was God Himself still able to be just while He didn’t wipe these individuals away with the rest of the people? It is because the author of Hebrews declares that they were made righteous before God by faith. There he says, “By faith Noah, being warned by God about things not yet seen, in reverence prepared an ark for the salvation of his household, by which he condemned the world, and became an heir of the righteousness which is according to faith.” Noah inherited righteousness by faith. He didn’t earn it or work for it but received it simply by placing his trust in what God had said.
This is what the Apostle Paul declares in his letter to the Romans. There he notes, “apart from the Law the righteousness of God has been manifested . . . even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe . . . being justified (or made right with God) as a gift by His grace through the (purchase made) which is in Christ Jesus.”
You see God’s justice demands that anyone who is not completely righteous must be handed over for the day of judgment. Anyone who has not had all their sin removed will be handed over to punishment. And hopefully you can see that you are either on one side of the coin or the other. The choices are: judgment or no judgment. So where do we obtain our righteousness to avoid judgment? We receive it from Christ. Jesus Christ lived righteously. The Scripture says that He committed no sin. And yet He paid the penalty for our sin on the cross though he didn’t deserve it and by God’s grace alone He will gladly exchange an individual’s sin for His righteousness to all who will call on Him for forgiveness. This is why Paul says in Romans 8, “There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” Those who have placed their faith in Christ and have been born again by the Spirit of God have received the righteousness of Christ and have no more sin on their record. For this reason God will not judge them. Christ has taken all the judgment away. This is the Good News of the Gospel. For everyone else who rejects Christ and His free gift there is judgment. But the good news part of this is that it is available to everyone who will receive it. If you have not received forgiveness it is because you have not humbled yourself to receive it.
So here we see God’s justice. We see His justice in those He condemns and we see His justice in those He rescues. And those whom He rescues cannot boast that they were better than those whom He condemned because the righteousness they have was not their own righteousness but a righteousness given to them by God they humbly received.
2. God’s Warning
The second aspect of God that we see is His warning. In verse 6, Peter describes God’s warning. Here he notes that God “condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to destruction by reducing them to ashes, having made them an example to those who would live ungodly thereafter.”
The destruction that reigned down upon Sodom and Gomorrah was seen by the world for millennia to come as a warning that God will punish sin. The magnitude of the destruction that occurred caused the shock wave of God’s justice to be felt through the centuries. As the Scripture describes it people were able to see the smoke of its burning from a great distance. And so not only did God’s justice span a great distance geographically but also in relation to time.
The event was so clear in the minds of the people of Israel in Jesus’ day (over 2200 years after the fact) that He was able to use this picture of judgment effectively to speak of that that awaited those who would reject Him. He said that if the miracles He performed in their midst had been accomplished in Sodom it would have remained until this day. And because of their rejection of Christ their judgment would be greater than the judgment of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Even today the testimony of Sodom and Gomorrah still stands. In recent years, an area on the South East shore of the Dead Sea has been marked as the site of Sodom and Gomorrah. They found what initially they thought to be charnel houses, places where dead bodies were burned and the bones were afterward buried. But as they examined these houses on the edge of the cities they saw that these brick houses instead of being burned from the bottom up were burned from the top down (which if you know anything about fire it just doesn’t happen that way). And the bricks of the building were burned so hotly that they were permanently discolored.
Peter says that this is an example to warn us to flee from the coming wrath. God is not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance. What we need to remember is that God need not withhold judgment. It is His patience that keeps Him from taking all away in judgment. The Psalmist said, “Oh Lord if you should mark iniquity who could stand?” God could have caused the Sodom and Gomorrah to perish in a quiet fashion, as with a epidemic, but it would not have served its purpose to bring others to repentance.
3. God’s Concern
The third aspect of God that we see is His concern. He detests seeing His children experience hardship at the hand of the wicked. Verses 7 & 8 say, “He rescued righteous Lot, oppressed by the sensual conduct of unprincipled men (for by what he saw and heard that righteous man, while living among them, felt his righteous soul tormented day after day by their lawless deeds).”
God hears the cry of His children for deliverance from evil. In the book of Exodus the Lord said to Moses, “I have surely seen the affliction of My people who are in Egypt, and have given heed to their cry . . . for I am aware of their sufferings.”
In the same way, God was concerned for Lot and his family. He was concerned that they be delivered from such a condition. Sodom wasn’t just a bad city it was a completely corrupt city. As a matter of fact God promised Abraham that if He found 10 righteous people in that large city He would not destroy it. Since Lot and his family were the only righteous ones He rescued them from the destruction of the city. He was concerned for Lot.
Look at the words that Peter uses to describe Lot’s condition before his rescue from Sodom. God brought Lot out from the midst of the evil of Sodom and saved him from the torment he endured because He was concerned for Lot.
A. Lot was oppressed
First we see the verse says that Lot was oppressed. In another place in Scripture this word was used to describe the suffocating cruelty of the Egyptians over the Israelites when they had been slaves in that country. As the Scripture described the Israelites calling out to God in their condition perhaps we can see that Lot too was calling out for God to rescue him from this terrible condition in which he found himself.
Lot suffered under the stifling immoral conduct of the people around him. They were not content to carry out their immorality privately but flaunted their actions in front of Lot and then they persecuted him when he asked them not to harm those in his household. He was oppressed by their conduct.
B. Lot was tormented
Secondly, the Scripture says his soul was tormented day after day. This word, “tormented,” describes an awful, dreadful suffering that overcomes an individual. The demons, in speaking to Jesus, about their coming judgment used this word. They asked, “Are you here to torment us before the time?” The word was also used in Scripture of people who would suffer tremendously for five months, during the tribulation period, when they were bitten by poisonous locust-like creatures.
Lot saw this conduct and it caused him great pain inwardly. He was truly a righteous person. He saw that the sin of his fellow citizens was an affront to a holy God and that it would corrupt his family. It pained him to see this.
Friends, don’t let the conduct of this world cause you to grow callous to its wicked behavior. Don’t allow yourself to get caught up and permit yourself to become complacent with the immodesty, the sensuality and immorality of what takes place around us.
Please don’t tell me that killing 1.5 millions babies a year is simply a matter of choice and is not a moral issue called murder. I hope that you are still moved by such a thing. Please don’t tell me that sex and living together before marriage is simply a way to determine compatibility and not a moral issue called adultery. Please don’t tell me that pictures of naked people on billboards and TV and the Internet is art and not a moral issue called immorality. Do these things still grieve us or have we grudgingly accepted them? If you have accepted them as normal you will find yourself giving in to such things. Saturate your heart and mind with the pure milk of the Word instead of the polluted streams of the world.
God is concerned about His children. And in the concern of our heart we must cry out to God to transform our lives, our families, and our society so that judgment will not fall upon it. Can God transform a society? Yes He can. He has done it before and can do it again.
As an example of God transforming the hearts of a people let me tell you about the HMS Bounty. You have heard of the HMS Bounty, haven’t you? In April 1789, the famous mutiny took place, led by Captain Bligh’s one-time friend, Fletcher Christian.
Bligh, and 18 other crew members loyal to him, were set adrift in an open boat. In most cases such an act would have led to certain death for the men aboard, but Bligh was a magnificent seaman and landed in Timor, Java without any loss of life. Captain Bligh returned to England to report the crime. Many of the guilty sailors were found and hanged. Several, however, could not be found.
Twenty years passed, and the whole incident was forgotten until a sailing vessel discovered a small settlement on a remote island, called Pitcairn. When the crew landed, they could hardly believe what they had found – an utter utopia. There was no disease, no crime, no drunkenness, nothing but grace and harmony. When the crew learned the reason for the modest behavior among the islanders they were amazed. Nine of the Bounty’s sailors had fled to this island with a number of Tahitian men and women after the mutiny. The sailors quarreled with each other over what to do with the Tahitians. As a result, the Tahitians revolted, and within a few years, all but one of the sailors, Alexander Smith, had died. In desperation, Smith had rummaged through all of the other men’s belongings, looking for more whiskey. In his search, he found a Bible. He read it, believed it, and became a Christian. He introduced the entire population of the island to Christ, and they, with him, believed and obeyed the Word of God, transforming their society.
When we are burdened by the evil in the world around us we can cry out to God and He will hear us. God is concerned about us. Jesus said, “Shall not God bring about justice for His elect who cry to Him day and night?” God will hear and answer if we call out to Him because He is concerned for His people.
4. God’s Power
The fourth aspect of God that we see is His power. And this is truly the key idea of this passage as we look into it. God’s power is declared in verse 9. Peter says, “The Lord knows how to rescue the godly from temptation, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment.
In the next point we will look at the positive side of this but first let’s focus on the negative side. The Lord knows how to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment. The demonstration of His power is displayed in the fact that He can chose any means He desires to put an end to evil. Even the most powerful angels are nothing in comparison with His power. He locked them up. When the whole world became corrupt God covered them up with water. And when Sodom and Gomorrah fell into total and utter depravity He burned them up. God is not limited as to how he deals with those who oppose Him. If you remember from last week we discussed Korah and rebellion against Moses in which he partook. How did God deal with those rebels? He opened the earth and swallowed them up. And Moses described this as a new means of judgment. God’s is in no way restrained when it comes to how He will bring judgment. He is not sitting in heaven, wringing His hands, and wondering if the ACLU will say He is allowed to do what He is planning. There is no limit to God’s power. He knows how to keep the unrighteous under punishment while they await the day of judgment.
5. God’s Preservation
And this brings us to the truth of the last wonderful aspect of God and that is God’s preservation. God knows how to rescue the godly. He is completely capable to accomplish the rescue of the righteous so that they do not fall into the trap of these false teachers. Peter reminds us, that as His children, we need not fear either the inundation of the false teachers or that we might fall away and turn from God. Those who have made a false claim of trusting Christ will be led away by these false teachers but not those who have been made righteous in His sight.
Let’s look at one example that Peter gives us to reassure our hearts that God is able to preserve us no matter how dark it may get. Peter uses Noah as an example of someone who lived a godly life in the midst of a completely crooked world. The Scripture makes it clear that he and his family were the only ones who lived righteously among perhaps hundreds of millions of people. Think about the pressure to do evil in that day. The excuse that everyone else was doing it was probably used there to try to coax Noah and his family to do wrong. There was no one else who wanted to please God. And yet was Noah and his family alone? Did Noah falter in living out his faith in the midst of the wickedness? No! God was with him to strengthen Him to live in a way that pleased God.
And God has given us this promise of His preservation in 1 Corinthians 10:13, “No temptation has overtaken you but such as is common to man; and God is faithful who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will provide the way of escape also, so that you will be able to endure it.” There is nothing that God will bring us to, that He will not bring us through. God knows how to rescue the godly from temptation.
And this is our hope today. As ungodliness assails us we must continue to put our trust in the only One who is able to deliver us from evil. God has called us to be like His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. And it is for this He has given us strength to live.
Let us with resolute hearts live out the truth that God knows how to rescue the godly from temptation. And let us set our sights on the goal to which He has called us that we might run the race set before us with patience, fixing our eyes on Jesus the author and finisher of our faith.