Henry: Welcome To Immerse: The Daily Bible Reading Experience.
Day 49.
immersed in second, 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 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 in 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 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 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 second Peter,
this letter is from Simon Peter, a 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 escaped 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 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 failed, who develop in this way are shortsighted 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 and are standing firm and 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 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 where they're 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 city's 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 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 and your fellowship meals.
They commit adultery with their eyes and their desire for sin is never satisfied.
They lure unstable people into sin, and they are well trained in greed.
They live under God's curse.
They have wandered off the right road and follow the footsteps of Balaam.
Son of bor who loved to earn money by doing wrong.
But Baam 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 seeing those who have barely escaped
from a lifestyle of deception.
They promise freedom.
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're worse off than before.
It would be better if they had never known the way to righteousness, then
to know it and then reject the command they were given to live a holy life.
They proved 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 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's 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 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 and 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 not be carried away by the errors of these wicked people
and lose your own secure footing.
Rather, you must grow into grace and knowledge of our Lord and
Savior Jesus Christ, all glory to him both now and forever.
Amen.
This concludes today's Immer Reading experience.
Thank you for joining us.