Good morning, today is Friday, May 29, 2020. My name is Keith and welcome to the Worship Daily from Green Acres Baptist Church in Athens, GA.

I just want to remind you, today and tomorrow will be the final additions to the Worship Daily for the next couple months. We are finishing our Easter season this Sunday and with the end of this season we bring to a close the major movements in the church calendar that we have been observing all year. Think back, we started with the season of preparing for the birth of Jesus during Advent last year in December and we have moved all the way through the Gospels and the story of Jesus to his ascension and the giving of the Holy Spirit. As we look toward Pentecost Sunday this coming Sunday, we are reminded of our place in this grand story and that we now live with the empowering of the Holy Spirit and the Spirits guiding and helping us to live the teachings of Jesus. I hope observing the calendar as a devotional tool has been helpful for you.

Yesterday we noted that Peter is rejecting the false teachers and their corrupt lifestyles in this final letter before he dies. 

Peter objected to the claim that he and the other apostles just made up the resurrection and future return of Jesus in chapter 1. Now, Peter addresses the the false teachers when they say there will not be a final reckoning of all things. These false teachers were ignoring Jesus’ teachings on money and sex and were hiding behind their false idea that there would be no judgement from God. So Peter reminds the church that God will meet rebellion with His justice.

So, Peter gives three examples from the Scriptures about how God brought divine justice to situations: 1) the sin of the angels, the flood in Noah’s day, and the destruction of Sodom and Gamorrah. But, then Peter reminds the people about how God was always faithful to His people. So, the story of Lot being saved from the destruction of Sodom and Gamorrah, as sad of a story as it is, provides us an example of how God will bring divine judgement, but will save those who are His.

These false teachers are distorting the teachings from Paul that we are free in Christ. Peter turns the tables and says that these false teachers are actually slaves to their flesh and to sin. Because they reject the teachings of Jesus with their corrupt lives, they are not free at all.

2 Peter 2:1-10, 17-22

But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them—bringing swift destruction on themselves. Many will follow their depraved conduct and will bring the way of truth into disrepute. In their greed these teachers will exploit you with fabricated stories. Their condemnation has long been hanging over them, and their destruction has not been sleeping.

For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but sent them to hell, putting them in chains of darkness to be held for judgment; if he did not spare the ancient world when he brought the flood on its ungodly people, but protected Noah, a preacher of righteousness, and seven others; if he condemned 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 he rescued Lot, a righteous man, who was distressed by the depraved conduct of the lawless (for that righteous man, living among them day after day, was tormented in his righteous soul by the lawless deeds he saw and heard)— if this is so, then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials and to hold the unrighteous for punishment on the day of judgment. This is especially true of those who follow the corrupt desire of the flesh and despise authority.

These people are springs without water and mists driven by a storm. Blackest darkness is reserved for them. For they mouth empty, boastful words and, by appealing to the lustful desires of the flesh, they entice people who are just escaping from those who live in error. They promise them freedom, while they themselves are slaves of depravity—for “people are slaves to whatever has mastered them.” If they have escaped the corruption of the world by knowing our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and are again entangled in it and are overcome, they are worse off at the end than they were at the beginning. It would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than to have known it and then to turn their backs on the sacred command that was passed on to them. Of them the proverbs are true: “A dog returns to its vomit,” and, “A sow that is washed returns to her wallowing in the mud.”