Our Keeper

Transcript

Alright. Thank you very much and hello again, radio friends. How in the world are you? You doing Alright today? Oh, I trust so. I’m fine, thank you, nice of you to ask. I feel great. Now, we’re looking at the second chapter of 2 Peter. And Peter is sighting different times when God judged ungodliness and when he rescued people and so on. Let’s look at that and see exactly what happened.

“God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and reserved them in chains against the Day of Judgment.” Now, what was the essence of that sin? Do you remember? Satan said, “I will exalt my throne into the sides of the north. I will be like the Most High.” It was the attempt to — you might say play God instead of God. How are thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning.” This is Isaiah chapter 14. “How are art thou cut down to the ground thou which didst weaken the nations. For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north. I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the Most High. Yet thou shall be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit.”

We’re talking about Satan there. Our Lord Jesus said, “I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven.” The Lord Jesus Christ always from eternity to eternity, God the Son was present when Satan was cast out. Now why? Because he wanted to take the place of God. Does it ever occur to you that our so-called new age beliefs and the various types of religious faddism that show up from time to time, all have the same dreary theme and that is “You don’t need God. You can be God yourself.” That’s the essence of what we call New Age thinking, you know that and it’s the essence of the stubborn, proud spirit of the human heart, “I don’t need God. I’ll make it on my own.”

Well, what happens? The wages of sin is death. “Who hath woe, who hath wounds without cost, who hath redness of eyes, they that tarry longeth the wine.” You go the way of the transgressor, he calls the way of the transgressor is hard. “Be sure your sin will find you out,” the Bible says. Talk to anybody in the AIDS ward, talk to anybody in the wards of the hospital where people are dying of sexually transmitted diseases and say, “Is this what you wanted?” “No, this isn’t what I wanted.” “I thought I was having a good time.” Now, you’re dying because of it.

Well, you say, “Brother Cook, that’s pretty drastic. You know you’re talking to some very nice people.” Well, I know that and I’m grateful for you. But I want you to realize that the spirit of getting along without God is something against which we all need to guard. There is a modern writer that has a book out just recently where she says “We are guilty of trying to play God.” Even in our praying we tell God what to do and how to do it. Now, I believe in supplication. The Bible says, “Let your requests be made known unto God.” So I believe in asking God for things. But when it comes to being guided and when it comes to obeying the Word of God, you better let Him be God. You better obey what He says.

No, the sin that was judged in the — Satan and his crowd, they were thrown out of heaven and it was the sin of trying to replace God. And he tried the same approach in the Garden of Eden. He said, “God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, just by disobeying Him, ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.” And all through the centuries that have followed he has been enticing people with the same approach. You can better yourself by dumping your dependency on God. Don’t believe it. You need Him. Jesus said, “Without me ye can do nothing.” You can’t accomplish anything without your blessed Lord.

Now, what was the problem with the old world, the antediluvian culture, the people that lived before the flood? God saw that every thoughts of the imagination, of the thoughts of man’s heart was only evil continually. It was a continued surrender to evil that did the man, and Noah was called a preacher of righteousness. That’s what it says here in verse 5, “A preacher of righteousness.” So they heard the message. They heard him preach. They laughed at him no doubt and jeered and didn’t receive the Word but they heard him and rejected it.

So, what is the problem there? The problem is a continued surrender to evil. Now, that’s the next step. It’s not by chance that these things are listed as they are. The first step is saying “I think I can better myself without God.” The next step is to say, “Let me give myself completely to evil.” And it comes to the place where your values are reversed. And so you go over to Romans 1 where Paul is discussing what happens to people in this relationship and it says, “Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do them, but have pleasure in them that do them.” The ferocity with which certain groups that are dedicated to immorality resist any effort to curb them or to change them, is the testimony, it seems to me to this very thing. They have given themselves over to sin and that’s what did in the old world, the antediluvian world that people lived before the flood.

Now, what’s the answer to living in a world like that because we’re in that kind of a world today? It said He spared, saved Noah, “the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly.” What did Noah do? What was true of Noah that was so very special? Do you recall? We’ll go back. You’ll hear me turning the pages of my big Bible, that’s what that rustling sound is. And you go back to the sixth chapter of Genesis, “The Lord said, My Spirit shall not always strive with man, for he is also flesh, yet his days shall be 120 years.” And God saw, verse 5 of Genesis chapter 6, “God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually and it grieved him at his heart that he had made man on the earth.” But Noah, verse 8, “Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.” Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.

And verse 7, “he Lord said unto Noah, Come thou and all thy house into the ark; for thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation.” Noah was righteous. He found grace in the eyes of the Lord. What’s the point here? The point is you live in a dirty world. You live in a world that is furiously resisting the truth of God. If you want people to be offended just mention Jesus to them. You can speak of God Alright but you mentioned the Lord Jesus to people and they take offense. Why? Well, Paul called that the “offense of the cross” because that reminds them that they are sinners and need to be saved.

And so we’re living in a dirty world, in a world that is ferocious in its opposition to the Gospel. What do you? Cave in? Run away? No. You keep on walking with your Lord. Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. God said, “I’ve seen you as righteous.” Now, was he seen as righteous? Number one, it was the grace of God. Noah knew how to pray. Noah knew how to come to what we call the throne of grace. Noah knew how to obtain cleansing and forgiveness, and God knew how to make him a righteous man. And so he lived a godly life and he preached a godly sermon for those 120 years while the ark was being built.

You too beloved friend can stand for your Lord in a culture that is largely non-Christian. In some cases it’s anti-Christian. Some of the writers nowadays are talking about the post-Christian era. They say Christianity is passé, that’s what they’re saying. But I want to tell you something, the Gospel isn’t passé and God is still on the throne, and you can live for Him in blessing and in influence and in power every day of your life.

Well, here you have it. Then I said the first step was the one that Peter mentioned the angels that sinned. Their problem was they wanted to do away with God and be like God, be greater than God. The second was a whole generation of people giving over to sin and then he said the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah specific types of sin. Read what was true of Sodom and Gomorrah from that historical fact, we get what we call the term “sodomy” and God judged them for that sinful life. But again, delivered just Lot who was vexed with the filthy lifestyle of the wicked, the Lord knows how to deliver the godly out of temptation, to reserve the unjust unto the Day of Judgment to be punished. God knows how to deliver.

So again, what’s the point? You live in a society great segments of which are dedicated to specific types of sin, chiefly sexual sin nowadays. Along with that we have the drug epidemic and we have the crime wave that goes along with it, and we have the mounting wave New Age ideas that teach people that you can be God in your own life but the great problem is that men’s hearts are sinful and their ways are sinful, and specifically our society to the dismay of folk who are studying epidemiology they say it’s an epidemic now. Yes, it is. But he says, “The Lord knows how to deliver.”

How does God deliver you out of a filthy world? Number one, he saves you by His grace. Number two, he keeps you day by day, you who are kept by the power of God through faith and unto salvation. Number three, he programs your mind by His word. When you put His word into the computer of your mind, the Holy Spirit of God brings it out into your consciousness just when it’s needed. And number four, He rescues you by the power His indwelling Holy Spirit when you’re under the pressure of temptation. “The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptation.”

So, here you have it. There was an angelic rebellion and they tried to do away with God. Then there was a complete life of sinfulness in the pre-flood culture, then there was specific sinfulness in the case of Sodom and Gomorrah, and he says “God’s knows how to deliver.”

Take your stand beloved on the fact that if you belong to the Lord Jesus, you’re in His hands and He is going to keep you. You be true to your prayer life and to your Bible study and be true to God in obeying His will and He will deliver you, I promise you. The Bible says so and I believe it.

Dear Father, in this sinful world keep us clean, deliver us from temptation, help us, O, God to glorify thee. In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.

Till I meet you once again by way of radio, walk with the King today and be blessing!