Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Read (and listen!) through the New Testament in 8 weeks with your small group or on your own.
Immerse: Messiah is the first of six volumes in Immerse: The Bible Reading Experience. Messiah takes the reader on a unique journey through every book of the New Testament. Each section of Messiah begins with one of the Gospels, and together they combine to provide a life-changing reading experience centered on Jesus. This fresh arrangement of the books highlights the depth of the New Testament’s fourfold witness to Jesus the Messiah. The Son of God, who fulfills all the longings and promises of the collected Scriptures, can be experienced in Messiah through the rich variety of lenses provided by the books of the new covenant.
The Immerse Bible Series is the proud winner of the prestigious Bible of the Year award from the ECPA Christian Book Awards. Immerse: The Reading Bible is specially crafted for a distraction-free listening and reading experience, helping you dive in and get immersed in Scripture. You’ll have a great experience using Immerse by yourself. But for an even richer experience, try reading with friends.
Immerse: The Bible Reading Experience is an invitation to a different kind of community interaction with the Bible. Less like a Bible study, more like a book club.
- 8 or 16-week Bible listening plans take you through a large section of the Bible like the New Testament or the Torah
- Meet once a week for a free-flowing discussion about the text
- Wrestle with questions and celebrate ‘aha!’ moments together
Nothing impacts spiritual growth more than spending time in Scripture. Immerse removes many of the barriers that make Bible reading difficult and invites communities to become transformed together through the power of God’s word.
Welcome to the saddleback church anchored life challenge which can also by found on the saddleback companion app or by purchasing the immerse messiah book from tyndale.
The anchored life challenge includes speakers such as Andy Wood, Rick Warren, and Stacie Wood.
Immerse Messiah 25
===
[00:00:00] Welcome to Immerse Messiah Reading for Week 5, Day 25.
Immersed in 2 Peter and Jude. In the time since Peter's first letter to the believers in Asia Minor, their persecution was likely on the rise. Emperor Nero had blamed the Christians for a destructive fire in Rome and had unleashed a new attack on them. By this time, Peter recognized that, like Paul, he would also soon be executed.
As an eyewitness of Jesus life and ministry, Peter decides to put parts of his testimony in writing for the sake of future generations. Specifically, Peter wants believers to know that while Jesus was on earth, He had already displayed the glory He will have when He returns. We were not making up clever stories when we told you about the powerful coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Peter [00:01:00] insists that he himself saw the splendor of Christ openly revealed on the holy mountain and heard God's voice declaring Jesus to be his dearly loved son. In addition to increasing persecution, the churches faced another threat. False teachers had infiltrated their communities. Peter tells the believers to watch out for those who lure back into sin, those who have barely escaped from a lifestyle of deception.
They promise freedom, but they themselves are slaves of sin and corruption. These teachers were leading people into immorality by misrepresenting God's grace as a license for wrongdoing. On top of that, the believers faced still another threat, which Peter addresses in the final part of this letter.
Scoffers were saying that if Jesus really was going to come back, he would have done so already. This seems to have been an excuse for licentious living, since there would [00:02:00] be no final judgment if Jesus was not coming back. Peter explains that God has a good reason for the delay. His patience allows time for more people to repent.
So the believers should persevere in their longing for the new world that will come with Christ's appearance. The New Heavens and New Earth, a world filled with God's righteousness. Peter concludes by asking his friends to be faithful in living peaceful, pure, and blameless lives. He encourages them to grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
Notice that Peter's warning about the false teachers echoes the language of a brief letter that Jude had written. Perhaps Peter was putting his authority as an apostle behind Jude's similar warning. We get an even clearer picture of what Peter is saying by reading Jude's letter. Jude was one of Jesus half brothers, though he humbly calls himself a slave of Jesus [00:03:00] Christ and a brother of James, whose name would have been widely recognized as he was a leader of the church in Jerusalem.
It's hard to be certain precisely whom Jude was writing to, since he addresses his readers simply as, all who have been called by God the Father. But like Peter, Jude feels an urgent need to address the presence of false teachers in the churches. These teachers were saying that God's grace permits immoral living.
And Jude warns his readers to watch out for these teachers because they are destined only for judgment. Those who follow Christ faithfully will instead keep trusting in God, who is able to keep you from falling away and will bring you with great joy into his glorious presence without a single fault.
The Letter of 2 Peter. This letter is from Simon Peter, a [00:04:00] slave and apostle of Jesus Christ. I am writing to you who share the same precious faith we have. This faith was given to you because of the justice and fairness of Jesus Christ, our God and Savior. May God give you more and more grace and peace as you grow in your knowledge of God and Jesus our Lord.
By His divine power, God has given us everything we need for living a godly life. We have received all of this by coming to know Him. The One who called us to Himself by means of His marvelous glory and excellence. And because of His glory and excellence, He has given us great and precious promises.
These are the promises that enable you to share His divine nature and escape the world's corruption caused by human desires. In view of all this, make every effort to respond to God's promises. Supplement your faith with a generous [00:05:00] provision of moral excellence, and moral excellence with knowledge, and knowledge with self control, and self control with patient endurance, and patient endurance with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection.
And brotherly affection with love for everyone, the more you grow like this, the more productive and useful you will be in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But those who fail to develop in this way are short sighted or blind, forgetting that they have been cleansed from their old sins. So, dear brothers and sisters, work hard to prove that you really are among those God has called and chosen.
Do these things, and you will never fall away. Then God will give you a grand entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Therefore, I will always remind you about these things, even though you already know them [00:06:00] and are standing firm in the truth you have been taught. And it is only right that I should keep on reminding you as long as I live, for our Lord Jesus Christ has shown me that I must soon leave this earthly life.
So I will work hard to make sure you always remember these things after I am gone. For we were not making up clever stories. When we told you about the powerful coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, we saw His majestic splendor with our own eyes when He received honor and glory from God the Father. The voice from the majestic glory of God said to Him, This is my dearly loved son.
Who brings me great joy. We ourselves heard that voice from heaven when we were with him on the holy mountain. Because of that experience, we have even greater confidence in the message proclaimed by the prophets. You must pay close attention to what they wrote, for their words are like a lamp shining in a dark place.
Until the day [00:07:00] dawns and Christ the Morning Star shines in your hearts, above all, you must realize that no prophecy in Scripture ever came from the prophet's own understanding or from human initiative. No, those prophets were moved by the Holy Spirit and they spoke from God. But there were also false prophets in Israel, just as there will be false teachers among you.
They will cleverly teach destructive heresies and even deny the master who bought them. In this way, they will bring sudden destruction on themselves. Many will follow their evil teaching and shameful immorality. And because of these teachers, the way of truth will be slandered. In their greed, they will make up clever lies to get hold of your money.
But God condemned them long ago, and their destruction will not be delayed. For God did not spare even the angels who sinned. He threw them into hell, in gloomy pits of darkness, [00:08:00] where they are being held until the Day of Judgment. And God did not spare the ancient world, except for Noah and the seven others in his family.
Noah warned the world of God's righteous judgment, so God protected Noah when he destroyed the world of ungodly people with a vast flood. Later, God condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah and turned them into heaps of ashes. He made them an example of what will happen to ungodly people. But God also rescued Lot out of Sodom because he was a righteous man who was sick of the shameful immorality of the wicked people around him.
Yes, Lot was a righteous man who was tormented in his soul by the wickedness he saw and heard day after day. So you see, the Lord knows how to rescue godly people from their trials, even while keeping the wicked under punishment, until the day of final judgment. He is especially hard on those who follow their own twisted [00:09:00] sexual desire and who despise authority.
These people are proud and arrogant, daring even to scoff at supernatural beings, without so much as trembling. But the angels, who are far greater in power and strength, do not dare to bring from the Lord a charge of blasphemy against those supernatural beings. These false teachers are like unthinking animals, creatures of instinct, born to be caught.
and destroyed. They scoff at things they do not understand, and like animals, they will be destroyed. Their destruction is their reward for the harm they have done. They love to indulge in evil pleasures in broad daylight. They are a disgrace and a stain among you. They delight in deception, even as they eat with you in your fellowship meals.
They commit adultery with their eyes, and their desire for sin is never satisfied. They lure unstable [00:10:00] people into sin, And they are well trained in greed. They live under God's curse. They have wandered off the right road and followed the footsteps of Balaam, son of Beor, who loved to earn money by doing wrong.
But Balaam was stopped from his mad course when his donkey rebuked him with a human voice. These people are as useless as dried up springs, or as mist blown away by the wind. They are doomed to blackest darkness. They brag about themselves with empty, foolish boasting, with an appeal to twisted sexual desires.
They lure back into sin those who have barely escaped from a lifestyle of deception. They promise freedom, but they themselves are slaves of sin. And corruption, for you are a slave to whatever controls you. And when people escape from the wickedness of the world by knowing our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and then get tangled up and enslaved by sin again, they are worse off than before.
[00:11:00] It would be better if they had never known the way to righteousness, than to know it and then reject the command they were given to live a holy life. They prove the truth of this proverb, a dog returns to its vomit, and another says a washed pig returns to the mud. This is my second letter to you, dear friends, and in both of them I have tried to stimulate your wholesome thinking and refresh your memory.
I want you to remember what the holy prophets said long ago and what our Lord and Savior commanded through your apostles. Most importantly, I want to remind you that in the last days, scoffers will come. mocking the truth and following their own desires. They will say, What happened to the promise that Jesus is coming again?
From before the times of our ancestors, everything has remained the same since the world was first created. They deliberately forget that God made the heavens long ago by the word of His command, and He brought the earth out from the [00:12:00] water and surrounded it with water. Then He used the water to destroy the ancient world with a mighty flood.
And by the same word, the present heavens and earth have been stored up for fire. They are being kept for the Day of Judgment, when ungodly people will be destroyed. But you must not forget this one thing, dear friends. A day is like a thousand years to the Lord, and a thousand years is like a day. The Lord isn't really being slow about His promise, as some people think.
No, he is being patient for your sake. He does not want anyone to be destroyed, but wants everyone to repent. But the day of the Lord will come as unexpectedly as a thief. Then the heavens will pass away with a terrible noise, and the very elements themselves will disappear in fire, and the earth and everything on it will be found to deserve judgment.
Since everything around us is going to be destroyed like this, what holy and godly lives you [00:13:00] should live, looking forward to the day of God and hurrying it along. On that day, He will set the heavens on fire, and the elements will melt away in the flames. But we are looking forward to the new heavens and new earth He has promised, a world filled with God's righteousness.
And so, dear friends, While you are waiting for these things to happen, make every effort to be found living peaceful lives that are pure and blameless in His sight. And remember, our Lord's patience gives people time to be saved. This is what our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you with the wisdom God gave him, speaking of these things in all of his letters.
Some of his comments are hard to understand, and those who are ignorant and unstable have twisted his letters to mean something quite different, just as they do with other parts of Scripture. And this will result in their destruction. You already know these things, dear friends. So be on guard. Then you will [00:14:00] not be carried away by the errors of these wicked people and lose your own secure footing.
Rather, you must grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. All glory to Him, both now and forever. Amen.
The letter to Jude.
This letter is from Jude, a slave of Jesus Christ and a brother of James. I am writing to all who have been called by God the Father, who loves you and keeps you safe in the care of Jesus Christ. May God give you more and more mercy, peace, and love. Dear friends, I had been eagerly planning to write [00:15:00] to you about the salvation we all share.
But now I find that I must write about something else, urging you to defend the faith that God has entrusted once for all time to His holy people. I say this because some ungodly people have wormed their way into your churches, saying that God's marvelous grace allows us to live immoral lives. The condemnation of such people was recorded long ago, for they have denied our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.
So I want to remind you, though you already know these things, that Jesus first rescued the nation of Israel from Egypt, but later he destroyed those who did not remain faithful. And I remind you of the angels who did not stay within the limits of authority God gave them, but left the place where they belonged.
God has kept them securely chained in prisons of darkness. Waiting for the great day of judgment. And don't forget Sodom and Gomorrah and their neighboring towns, which were filled with [00:16:00] immorality and every kind of sexual perversion. Those cities were destroyed by fire, and serve as a warning of the eternal fire of God's judgment.
In the same way, these people, who claim authority from their dreams, live immoral lives, defy authority, and scoff at supernatural beings. But even Michael, one of the mightiest of the angels, did not dare accuse the devil of blasphemy. But simply said, the Lord rebuke you. This took place when Michael was arguing with the devil about Moses body.
But these people scoff at things they do not understand. Like unthinking animals, they do whatever their instincts tell them. And so they bring about their own destruction. What sorrow awaits them. For they follow in the footsteps of Cain, who killed his brother. Like Balaam, they deceive people for money.
And like Korah, they perish in their rebellion. When these people eat with you in your fellowship meals commemorating the Lord's love, [00:17:00] they are like dangerous reefs that can shipwreck you. They are like shameless shepherds who care only for themselves. They are like clouds blowing over the land without giving any rain.
They are like trees in autumn that are doubly dead, for they bear no fruit and have been pulled up by the roots. They are like wild waves of the sea, churning up the foam of their shameful deeds. They are like wandering stars, doomed forever to blackest darkness. Enoch, who lived in the seventh generation after Adam, prophesied about these people.
He said, Listen, the Lord is coming with countless thousands of his holy ones to execute judgment on the people of the world. He will convict every person of all the ungodly things they have done, and for all the insults that ungodly sinners have spoken against him. These people are grumblers and complainers, living only to satisfy their desires.
They brag loudly about [00:18:00] themselves. And they flatter others to get what they want. But you, my dear friends, must remember what the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ predicted. They told you that in the last times there would be scoffers, whose purpose in life is to satisfy their ungodly desires. These people are the ones who are creating divisions among you.
They follow their natural instincts, because they do not have God's Spirit in them. But you, dear friends, must build each other up in your most holy faith. If Pray in the power of the Holy Spirit and await the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will bring you eternal life. In this way, you will keep yourselves safe in God's love.
And you must show mercy to those whose faith is wavering. Rescue others by snatching them from the flames of judgment. Show mercy to still others, but do so with great caution, hating the sins that [00:19:00] contaminate their lives. Now all glory to God, who is able to keep you from falling away, and will bring you with great joy into his glorious presence without a single fault.
All glory to him, who alone is God, our Savior through Jesus Christ our Lord. All glory, majesty, power, and authority are his before all time, and in the present, and beyond all time. Amen.
This concludes today's Immerse Reading Experience. Thank you for joining us.