Participants: Tom Shepherd & Deyvy Rodriguez
Series Code: PBOTB
Program Code: PBOTB00022A
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00:20 Hello friends. Welcome to Books of the Book.
00:23 My name is Deyvy Rodriguez and I'm very happy that you're with 00:26 us joining us for this Bible study. We have Dr. Tom Shepherd. 00:30 He comes from Andrews University. He is a professor of 00:33 New Testament interpretation and today we're studying the books 00:37 of 1 and 2 Peter but today we are doing the second chapter 00:41 of 2 Peter, actually the last part of 2 Peter. 00:47 Dr. Shepherd, what are we sharing today? 00:48 Well we looked at the question of the false teachers in 00:52 2 Peter chapter 2 and last time we read verses 1-11. We found 00:57 that he had some pretty strong words to say and so right now 01:01 what we're going to do is read the last half of this chapter. 01:05 It's a little bit longer part of a passage but it's 2 Peter 01:10 2 starting in verse 12 and going through verse 22. So why don't 01:16 you read verses 12-16 and I'll read verses 17-22. 01:22 But these like natural brute beasts made to be caught and 01:25 destroyed speak evil of the things they do not understand 01:29 and will utterly perish in their own corruption and will receive 01:33 the wages of unrighteousness as those who count it pleasure to 01:38 carouse in the daytime. They are spots and blemishes carousing in 01:42 their own deceptions while they feast with you having eyes full 01:47 of adultery and they cannot cease from sin enticing unstable 01:51 souls. They have a heart trained in covetous practices and are 01:55 cursed children. They have forsaken the right way and gone 01:59 astray following the ways of Balaam the son of Baer who loved 02:04 the wages of unrighteousness. But he was rebuked for his 02:07 iniquity. A dumb donkey speaking with a man's voice restrained 02:11 the madness of the prophet. 02:13 Verse 17: These are waterless springs and mists driven by a 02:18 storm. For them the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved 02:23 for speaking loud boasts of folly they entice by sensual 02:26 passions of the flesh those who are barely escaping from those 02:30 who live in error. They promise them freedom but they themselves 02:34 are slaves of corruption. For whatever overcomes a person, to 02:39 that he is enslaved. For if after they have escaped the 02:42 defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and 02:45 Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and 02:49 overcome. The last state has become worse for them than the 02:53 first for it would have been better for them never to have 02:57 known the way of righteousness than after knowing it to turn 03:01 back from the holy commandment delivered to them. What the true 03:04 proverb says has happened to them; the dog returns to it's 03:09 own vomit and the sow after washing herself returns to 03:12 wallow in the mire. Hmm. Now we were saying that the 03:16 angry pastor was applying to Peter. 03:19 Yeah, you can see it here can't you. It's almost like the page 03:22 is still warm. It's like whoa! 03:24 And that he is angry at the false teachers, right? He was 03:28 talking about the false teachers. 03:32 Not the flock. He's not trying to destroy the flock. He's 03:35 talking about those false teachers. So he's protecting 03:38 the sheep and speaking against the false teachers. 03:41 Verse 12 talks about animals and he seems to talk negatively, 03:47 in a bad way, obviously, about animals. What's the matter here? 03:51 Yeah, he says in verse 12, but these, now he's talking about 03:56 the false teachers and then he says, like irrational animals, 04:01 now he's still talking about the animals, creatures of instinct 04:07 born to be caught and destroyed. Blaspheming, now he's talking 04:13 about the false teachers, blaspheming about matters of 04:16 which they are ignorant, will also be destroyed in their 04:19 destruction. So a lot about destruction there and a lot 04:22 about animals that are irrational and born to be 04:28 destroyed. You know, we have a lot of people who really love 04:32 animals and who really care for them in a special way and we 04:36 oppose the idea of abusing animals and so people wonder 04:41 why is Peter talking about this? Why does he speak like this? 04:45 He seems so mean about talking about animals. Well one 04:52 commentator, Peter David, says that we should recognize that 04:57 Peter's subject here is the false teachers and his primary 05:02 presentation here is not about animals, okay. It was common 05:06 enough in the ancient world to speak of animals in this way and 05:10 so on the one hand we should not take Peter's words about the 05:14 false teachers as God's directive on how to treat 05:18 animals. On the other hand, since the false teachers are 05:21 acting like animals which is even a phrase that we use in our 05:25 time today, our own day, the depiction seems apt, kind of a 05:29 simile here that they're acting like this and that's what's 05:33 going to happen to them; they'll find destruction. So this isn't 05:36 a text that tells us how you should treat your dog or your 05:40 cat or any animal. The Bible has other passages that warn us 05:45 that we are to take care of our animals. It talks about not 05:49 muzzling the ox when he is treading the grain and so we 05:53 should care for the creation around us and not abuse it or 05:57 misuse it. Dr. Shepherd, false teachers at 06:00 some point went astray. You know they were good teachers, true 06:03 teachers. We were talking about that in previous programs. 06:06 How does a person walking in God's ways go astray? 06:13 How does a person in the Lord's way suddenly go wrong? 06:19 You know a lot of people think about this. I'm not sure that we 06:25 think about it enough. We think a fair bit about how to bring 06:29 people to Christ. We're thinking of evangelistic approaches. 06:34 What can we do. We talk about how you help people to hear the 06:38 message of the gospel. We talk about what kind of questions you 06:42 would ask a person to make a decision for Christ. But we need 06:47 to study as well how people lose Christ, how they go the 06:52 wrong way. And it's rather shocking how many people go this 06:57 way. I used to travel a fair bit with the students when I was 07:02 a teacher at Union College. We would go to churches all over 07:07 the place giving musical programs, playing my cello and 07:10 string quartet with these young people and I would go to 07:13 churches as small as 25 members. We very commonly went to small 07:17 churches. But I would call ahead to make arrangements and I would 07:21 call the pastor and I would say so how many members do you have 07:26 in your church? And the pastor would say oh we have about 80 07:30 members in our church. Then I knew what was coming next. 07:37 He would say, but about 50% attend, about half go to church. 07:44 So the real membership of the churches, at least those who are 07:51 regularly attending and the membership that there's some 07:55 problems with some issues with our people; about half the 07:59 church. I mean, it's shocking. We talked about in our previous 08:03 program about how a pastor should visit. The first place to 08:08 start is to visit those who have wandered away. Shepherds are 08:11 supposed to go after the sheep and help them come back. So we 08:16 need to think about this how people get saved and about how 08:21 people get lost. There is something I call the circle of 08:26 damnation. Now we talked about the circle of salvation before 08:29 when we talked about 1 Peter, but there's also a circle of 08:32 damnation, that is how people get lost. There's actually two 08:36 circles. There's one that's in 1 Peter and there's another one 08:41 in 2 Peter. And we've described some things, a lot of things in 08:45 1 Peter and I just want to refocus our attention as we 08:48 think about that a little bit about how 1 Peter talks about 08:51 this. The circle of damnation in 1 Peter is implicit. The one in 08:57 2 Peter is explicit. In other words, he doesn't directly 09:01 address it in 1 Peter, but he directly addresses it in 2 Peter 09:06 okay. So we think in 1 Peter, I tell people, I actually got it 09:11 from one of my professors, Dr. Robert Johnston. He had a 09:15 principle he called don't put beans in your nose principle. 09:20 Don't put beans in your nose. Why in the world such a strange 09:24 sounding kind of an idea, Don't put beans in your nose. Well you 09:28 just think about little kids and their playing, and they go into 09:32 the kitchen and they get the mother's jar and they open it up 09:35 and take out some of these dry beans, and they're going outside 09:37 and they're playing with them and they're just doing things 09:41 with them and one of them takes that bean and it just looks so 09:44 interesting and they just put it in their nose. They thought it 09:47 might be fun to put that bean in their nose. So they put that 09:50 bean inside their nose and then they try to get it out and they 09:54 can't get the bean to come out. So they find something around, 09:57 they don't want to tell their mother about this, but they find 10:00 something around and now everybody's becoming interested 10:03 in the bean in the nose. And they find something and they 10:06 poke it in there to try to get the bean to come out and of 10:08 course it just pushes the bean back farther into the nose. 10:11 Now the child is crying and they come into mother and say mother 10:15 there's a bean in my nose. She says, a bean in your nose, 10:18 how did the bean get in your nose? Then the other child says 10:21 oh and tells how it happened. Mother says well let me see and 10:25 they get a flashlight and they are looking. Then she gets some 10:28 tweezers and she reaches up in the nose that's already sore 10:31 and red. She's trying to pull that bean out and she tries and 10:34 tries and it just keeps slipping out of the tweezers and going 10:37 farther in and now the nose is really red and this sounds like 10:39 an Eric B. Hare story. And what do they have to do next? 10:44 Go to the hospital. Go to the emergency room, $100 right off 10:48 the shot there you know just to take care of the bean in the 10:52 nose. The doctor has special tweezers and special things that 10:55 he uses, she uses, to get this bean and they finally get the 10:59 bean out. And they put some medicine on the nose to make it 11:02 feel better. The child is crying but feeling better. And they go 11:06 home and mother gathers all the children around and she says to 11:12 them, what lesson did you learn today? And they all say don't 11:17 put beans in your nose. And it becomes a story in that family 11:22 and don't put beans in your nose. Now you see, when somebody 11:26 says to don't put beans in your nose they say that because, 11:30 because why? Apparently something happened 11:33 before. There was a story to it. 11:35 Somebody was putting beans in their nose, okay. So when you 11:38 have negative commands that say don't do this and don't do that 11:42 and don't do that, when you have those in the Bible they are 11:46 there for a reason. They are there because somebody was doing 11:50 those things, was trying that out, you know, and ended up with 11:55 those problems, okay. So we want to look in 1 Peter and see if we 11:59 can sense some of that implicit negativeness. I would like to 12:03 read 1 Peter 1:13-17. We've read this before, but now we're doing 12:07 it with a little bit different eyes. 1 Peter chapter 1, verses 12:11 13-17. Therefore gird up the loins of your mind. Be sober 12:17 and rest hopefully upon the grace that is to be brought to 12:23 you at the revelation of Jesus Christ, as obedient children not 12:27 conforming yourselves to the former lust as in your ignorance 12:31 but as he who called you is holy you also be holy in all your 12:35 conduct because it is written be holy for I am holy. And if you 12:39 call on the Father who without partiality judges according to 12:44 each one's work, conduct yourself throughout the time 12:47 of your stay here in fear. 12:50 Yes. Now there are a lot of commands here and he's talking 12:53 about what you're supposed to do. You're supposed to do this, 12:56 and you better respect God, you better be in reverent fear 13:00 before God. Why does he tell them all this? Well because 13:04 there was always the risk that they would go back to the pagan 13:08 way of life, you see. Now let's turn over in the same book to 13:11 chapter 4, verse 15. But let none of you suffer as a 13:18 murderer, a thief, an evildoer or as a busybody in other 13:25 people's matters. So here see you mustn't be doing 13:30 this, you mustn't be doing this, you mustn't go this kind of way. 13:33 Of course that's what the pagans were saying about them, but 13:35 there was a risk that they might go off into that pattern of life 13:39 they might do something that was along those lines. So this is 13:44 the kind of expression that they're not supposed to follow 13:48 the passions that would pull them back into the pagan way of 13:51 life. But Peter also warns them about the push of persecution 13:55 that could come their way and let's read 1 Peter 3 verses 5 13:58 and 6. For in this manner in former 14:04 times the holy women who trusted in God also adorned themselves 14:08 being submissive to their own husbands as Sarah obeyed 14:11 Abraham calling him lord, whose daughters you are if you do good 14:15 and are not afraid with any terror. 14:19 In my version the last part says if you do good and do not fear 14:22 anything that is frightening. This is the intimidation that 14:28 could come from the outsider for them to submit and to go 14:32 the pagan way, not just submit to God but submit to the wrong 14:37 way. So he has both the expression of the problem of 14:41 passion and the problem of persecution, this implicit 14:45 circle of damnation that could take them out of the circle of 14:49 blessing, out of the household of faith. Well we've got more 14:53 to talk about in terms of the explicit circle of damnation 14:58 that's in 2 Peter and we'll come back to that after this break. |
Revised 2014-12-17