Better Never to Have Known, 2 Peter 2:20-22 (July 31, 2016)

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1 Better Never to Have Known, 2 Peter 2:20-22 (July 31, 2016) 20 For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first. 21 For it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than after knowing it to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them. 22 What the true proverb says has happened to them: The dog returns to its own vomit, and the sow, after washing herself, returns to wallow in the mire. PRAY We are working our way through 2 Peter this summer, and for the third consecutive week we are in chapter two, and for the third consecutive week we are looking at the subject of false teachers. False teachers had infiltrated the churches in Peter s day, and Peter warns that there will always be false teachers leading people away from Jesus Christ, from the way of righteousness. Now, I don t know there s much more to say about the false teachers themselves that we haven t already said the past couple of weeks. If I spent a lot of time this morning on the reality of false teachers, the danger they present to the church, how to spot false teachers, we d be going back over material we ve already covered. So I m not going to do that, but instead show us something else that I m sure Peter would have wanted us to know: how we can avoid winding up like the false teachers? This is a warning passage in the Bible, and Peter says that only judgment awaits the false teachers. I know some of you have to be thinking: false teachers again? I know that s honestly how I felt as I began to prepare the sermon. But there is tremendous application in these verses for all of us who claim to follow the Lord Jesus and want to be faithful to him. And whether you realize it or not, there is a real threat that you can wind up like these false teachers and you need to be warned of it. In fact, especially because you are in a church like ours in the Bible belt, you need to take care that you don t wind up like the false teachers. Or, put another way, put more positively, this passage is about the assurance of salvation. How can you know that you are really, truly, eternally safe in the arms of the Lord Jesus Christ? Christians have sung hymns for a hundred years or more with lyrics like this: Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine! Did Fanny Crosby, who wrote that song, really mean that she knew she belonged to Jesus, and Jesus was, no doubt about it, hers? Or are those just pretty words? What I hope to do is build on the bad news of what will happen to those who are like the false teachers and show you how you can be certainly assured that you are in a state of grace, that you belong to the Lord Jesus J.D. Shaw 1

2 Three points: first, why is the position of the false teachers so dangerous? Second, what exactly are the false teachers anyway? Third, how we can be sure we don t wind up like them (or, how can we have the assurance of salvation)? First, why is their position so dangerous? Look back at verse 20: For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first. These false teachers, whoever they were, evidently didn t start out as false teachers. When they first came to know Peter and the other Christians there in the churches he supervised, they appeared to be sincere, faithful followers of Jesus. There is no indication otherwise. They started out so strong, so promising. They had a testimony of how they came to know Christ. If you asked them, Explain to me the gospel in five minutes or less, they could do it. Nothing outwardly would have ever indicated that something was wrong. But something was wrong, and though they at one time claimed to trust the Lord Jesus, now they abandoned him. They renounced the faith. And in so doing Peter says in verse 20 that their last state has become worse for them than the first. Note: Peter does not say, Now they are right back where they started from. No, he says, Where they are now is worse than where they began. They are worse off for having been so promising in the faith and then leaving it. Verse 21: For it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than after knowing it to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them. You wouldn t expect that, would you? Peter says that if you had to choose between never hearing about Jesus or hearing about Jesus, following him, then, after a period of time, finally rejecting Jesus, you always choose the former. The latter is far, far worse. Better for them never to have known As one commentator put it, there is no hint here of, Well, at least they accepted Jesus as their Savior when Peter preached here ten years ago. Just the opposite Peter says he wishes they had never known Jesus as their Savior than to accept him only to later reject him. This is so common where we live, so devastatingly common where we live. Probably ninety percent of the people in our state have, at one time or another, attended a church service or attended a revival meeting and made a decision to follow Christ. And for a period of months or maybe even years, a large percentage of that group of people did so many of the things you would think a Christian would do. They attended church. They went to a Bible study. They may have read their Bibles, they may have gone on mission trips, they may have been a regular at a prayer meeting J.D. Shaw 2

3 But then at some point maybe it was when they went off to college, maybe it was after they got married, maybe it was after something bad happened in their family they quit. They quit all of it. No indication whatsoever they believe in the Lord Jesus. They no longer outwardly do anything you would expect a Christian to do, there is no real place for Jesus and his church in their life, and now they either openly reject Jesus as Savior, or the only way you d know they are a Christian is if you asked them directly or when they like a Facebook post. How many people like this do you know? It grieves me how many I know, how many have been in my churches. How many people are like this in Mississippi? Tens of thousands? Hundreds of thousands? That probably wouldn t be an overstatement. And Peter says, Better for them never to have known Every pastor knows someone who made a profession of faith in Christ at the end of a Sunday morning worship service or by a campus minister who seemed to be really sincere for a while, but then fell away and there is now no longer any reason to think that person believes. We all know that person, and we all know some loved one of that person, often their mom, who still insists he s a Christian, because of that decision for Christ he made so many years ago. Insists he is right with the Lord, in spite of what s happening now. At least he accepted Christ as Savior back then, she says. Not Peter better for them never to have known Now, why is that? Two reasons. First, to have once trusted Jesus and then reject him results in deeper spiritual bondage. Let s read verse 20 again: For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first. So Peter says that if you once escape the clutches of sin, the bondage of sin, through following Jesus, your life is changed, but then you return to your sin, you are overcome, and your last state has become worse than the first. The bondage, the entanglement, is then worse than it was before. In Matthew 12:43-45, Jesus talks about this I confess I had no idea what these verses were about until last week. When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it passes through waterless places seeking rest, but finds none. 44 Then it says, I will return to my house from which I came. And when it comes, it finds the house empty, swept, and put in order. 45 Then it goes and brings with it seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and dwell there, and the last state of that person is worse than the first [precisely what Peter says in verse 20]. In his commentary on 2 Peter 2, Matthew Henry says this: The devil more narrowly watches and more closely confines those whom he has recovered, after they had once gone off from him and professed to be the followers of the Lord Jesus Christ; they are [then] kept under a stronger guard You know that in Luke 15 Jesus says that there is rejoicing in heaven when one sinner repents. Therefore, it makes perfect sense that when 2016 J.D. Shaw 3

4 a sinner repents hell rages. But if hell can get one of those repentant sinners back, it will do all in its power to keep him there. That s the first reason. Second, to have once trusted Jesus and then reject him results in a stricter judgment. Understandably Christians worry about will happen to the people in the world who never had a chance to become a Christian, because no one has ever preached the gospel to them. I mean, this is one reason why we do missions, especially to areas of the world where, as far as we know, the gospel has never gone. We want them to hear the good news of Jesus Christ. But we shouldn t worry about God being unfair to them. Very plainly Jesus says that God will take their ignorance into account. The people who never heard about Jesus will be judged accordingly, and fairly. In Matthew 11, Jesus says this: 21 Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. 22 But I tell you, it will be more bearable on the day of judgment for Tyre and Sidon than for you. 23 And you, Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? You will be brought down to Hades. For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. 24 But I tell you that it will be more tolerable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom than for you. Matthew 11: The towns that did not hear the good news of Jesus will be judged, but they will be judged more lightly than the towns that did hear and rejected Jesus. But for you, friends, think about it like this: right now you re sitting here listening to another sermon, getting more information, getting a better understanding of what you need to do with your life. Do you realize what you re doing to yourself? If you don t act on this knowledge, you re responsible for that. You cannot sit under the teaching of the gospel year after year after year, reject it, remain unchanged by it, live like you always have, and expect it all to just magically work out. No! Better to never have known, Peter says. Everyone to whom much was given, of him much will be required, and from him to whom they entrusted much, they will demand the more. Luke 12:48. OK maybe the most depressing point number one I ve ever preached. Maybe it gets better in point two: second, what exactly are these false teachers anyway? In other words, were these false teachers really Christians, were they people who had really trusted Christ and been saved, and then they lost their salvation? Or were they people who had merely appeared to be Christians, were they people who made an external and perhaps sincere profession of being a Christian, but inwardly they d never really changed? Were they or were they not true believers? Many commentators on 2 Peter will say these false teachers were Christians, they were genuinely saved, and then they fell away. These scholars do have strong evidence for their case. In 2 Peter 2:20, we read how these false teachers escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The Greek word translated as knowledge is the same word used in 2 Peter 1, where clearly those who 2016 J.D. Shaw 4

5 are described as having this knowledge are those who are genuine, true believers. It sounds just like how Peter describes Christians in the previous chapter. Just because Peter uses the same word doesn t settle the matter. Single words can have a range of meaning. If I tell you that I know old so-and-so because he and I went to high school together, and then an hour later someone asks me, Hey, do you know Mimi Shaw? I ll say I sure do, I am by no means implying the same level of knowledge. By no means. However, still, if our entire Bible was made up only of 2 Peter, then I think the conclusion we d have to draw is that the Bible does indeed teach that a Christian can lose his or her salvation. These false teachers were genuinely saved, and then they fell away. But 2 Peter does not comprise our entire Bible it is, rather, one of sixty-six books in the canon of Holy Scripture, and one of the bedrock principles of Bible interpretation is that you interpret the difficult, unclear passages by the clear ones. And elsewhere in Scripture we read that it is absolutely impossible, absolutely unthinkable, for a Christian to lose his or her salvation. Paul, in Philippians 1:6, writes to the church there in Philippi, and says, 6 And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. My favorite passage on this theme, which in theological terms is called the perseverance of the saints, is found in the gospel of John, where Jesus says: All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. 38 For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me. 39 And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. John 6: You cannot lose your salvation, not because you are so determined to keep it, not because you are so faithful to believe, not because you are so desperately holding onto Jesus, but because Jesus is so powerfully holding on to you. He will lose nothing of all the Father gives him. Plus, in verse 22, we read this: 22 What the true proverb says has happened to them: The dog returns to its own vomit, and the sow, after washing herself, returns to wallow in the mire. It s not that the false teachers were pigs, stopped being pigs, then returned to being pigs. They never stopped being pigs. They were cleaned up pigs, pigs that could say the right things, they knew all the right words and jargon, but pigs nevertheless, and pigs that were ultimately determined to return to the mud and the slop. Their nature never changed, only the externals. What were the false teachers then, if they weren t Christians? They were deceived. Jesus indicates there will be many like this. Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22 On that day many will say to me, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name? 23 And then will I declare to them, I never knew 2016 J.D. Shaw 5

6 you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness. Matthew 7: He never knew them. If you are here today and you have placed your faith in Jesus Christ, what term do you use most often to describe what you are, spiritually speaking? Would you call yourself a believer? A disciple? A follower of Jesus? A Christian that s probably the most common way we describe ourselves today, but it s virtually non-existent in the New Testament. Believer, disciple, follower, Christian all get us to look at ourselves when it comes to our spiritual condition am I believing? Am I following? Am I a disciple? Am I a Christian? And if those things are foundation of faith in Christ, then we might be tempted to think that I could lose my salvation because I just might stop following Jesus. I might stop believing in him. But did you know the dominant descriptor used in the Bible is in Christ. It, along with in the Lord, is used 130 times in the New Testament to describe those who believe in Jesus. Why do I point that out? Because that phrase gets to essence of our spiritual condition. The essence is not our following Jesus, not our discipleship, not our believing, not our labeling ourselves as being Christian, not even our faith, but the new nature we have as people in Christ, our mystical union with Christ. Our union with Christ is by faith through grace, but the union, and not the faith, is the essence. And friends, that once you are in Christ, you are forever in Christ, you can never be taken out of Christ it will never change. Jesus will lose nothing of all that the Father has given him. You cannot lose your salvation, and it s so important to know that. Because if you didn t know that, how could you ever have any peace? Once you know that you re a sinner, and you must repent of your sins and trust in Christ to be saved from the wrath of God, how could you ever rest, ever have any peace, unless you knew that you could not lose your salvation? You d constantly wonder am I slipping away from him? Am I believing enough? Am I trusting enough? Am I repenting enough? Or am I losing him? But you don t have to worry about that once you are in Christ, nothing can remove you from him. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ [there it is], he is a new creation. The old has passed away [and it cannot come back]; behold, the new has come. 2 Corinthians 5:17. But I know for so many of us, that s not really the question. The question for so many of us isn t can I lose my salvation we know the answer to that question. Of course we can t. We ve had that drilled into our heads. The question is am I saved in the first place? How can I have the assurance of my salvation? Is that even possible? Do I really belong to Jesus? Is he really holding on to me? Third, how can we be sure we don t wind up like the false teachers (or, how can we have the assurance of our salvation)? Two things I want to show you: first, it is absolutely possible to be assured of your salvation. WCF: This certainty is not a bare conjectural [speculative] and probable persuasion grounded upon a fallible hope; but an infallible [cannot be challenged] assurance of faith What a promise! 2016 J.D. Shaw 6

7 Some of you know about or have read the book of Job in the Bible, and so you know all the horrible suffering he went through. If anyone had reason to think God had abandoned him or that God hated him, it was Job. But he says this in Job 19:25: For I know that my Redeemer lives You can know I wondered for a long-time is this just all a bunch of talk. No you can know. You can know with an infallible assurance that you belong to Jesus and that Jesus belongs to you. Second, actually being saved, objectively being in Christ, is not the same thing as being assured of your salvation, of subjectively knowing that you are in fact in Christ. This is an important distinction, but it s a distinction that has been lost in a lot of churches. What you ll hear a lot of professional religious types say is this: You can know that you know that you know that you re saved right now, that if you die tonight you will go to heaven. You can settle it right now. All you have to do is this. They ll say the way to immediate assurance is to do this thing. They ll tell you to do different things depending on what religious tradition they are from pray this prayer, walk this aisle, speak in tongues, get baptized, join the church, go on a mission trip, go through confirmation class. But they ll tell you that you can settle your Christianity once and for all right now by doing something, and the implication is that after you do this thing you won t have any doubts, you won t waver, you really shouldn t go through severe temptation anymore. And of course that s not true. Now maybe that person really did believe the gospel that night, maybe that person really is in Christ, but rarely will it be settled immediately, and indeed over the next several months or even years they will go through times of doubt and temptation and darkness when they aren t sure that they ve been saved. \ Being in Christ, begin saved, is objective it s something that happens to you. God does that, he makes you into a new creation. But assurance of salvation, personally knowing without a doubt that you are in Christ, is subjective it s something that happens in you, and there is no way you can guarantee it will come immediately in someone s life. WCF: This infallible assurance doth not so belong to the essence of faith, but that a true believer may wait long, and conflict with many difficulties before he be partaker of it Having the assurance of salvation takes time, takes work, takes grace, and will appear differently in just about everyone s life. Peter says to the people in his churches, people who have presumably been professing Christians for quite some time, Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election, for if you practice these qualities you will never fall. 2 Peter 1:10. He doesn t say you already have confirmed; you have the assurance of your salvation. No, he says, Be diligent to confirm; you re still working on it. So, how can we attain to the assurance of our salvation? Let me tell you what you don t do. You don t do what my wife and I both did when we were younger, when we were 2016 J.D. Shaw 7

8 kids, before we met each other, to try to feel good about our salvation. Every day, for months or maybe years, we d pray, God, I m not sure if I ve prayed to receive Christ yet. But if I haven t, I m doing it now. I m not sure in the past if my prayers were sincere enough, if my belief was strong enough, I m not sure if I m pleasing enough to you, but if not, Father, please, right now, make me a Christian. Don t do that, because when you do that you re looking to yourself to find the assurance of your salvation, and that never works. Don t look to your good works to see if you are in Christ, don t look to the spiritual fruit in your life, don t look to your prayers or how sincerely you pray, don t look to your struggles with sin to see if you re saved. Don t look to yourself at all. Now, should you have fruit if you re in Christ? Absolutely! Should you over time struggle less with certain sins if you re in Christ? Yes! But never look at yourself to try to find assurance; that never works. There will always be areas where you need to grow and sins you need to repent of, and so you ll always wonder, Am I really good enough? Do I really believe? Would someone in Christ really act like this? If you look to yourself, you will feel like you re on trial every day, and it will be a disaster. Don t look to yourself to find the assurance of salvation, but look to Christ! Fix your eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of your faith! Look at Jesus in his life fulfilling the law of God, pleasing God as your substitute, obeying God in your place because you could not. Look at Jesus on the cross and know that he s there, dying in your place for your sins. Look at Jesus, out of the tomb on that first Easter Sunday, in his glorified body, proof that God accepted his sacrifice on your behalf. Look at Jesus and know, no matter how you feel about yourself right this minute, how crummy you think you are right now, how full of doubts you are right now, Jesus has no doubts about you. He thinks you re wonderful. Whatever else the false teachers were doing, they weren t looking to Christ. The false teachers were looking to themselves. Remember Matthew 7:22? They said, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name? They did not say, Lord, we were looking to you! We were trusting in you! If they had, they wouldn t have been false teachers. I ve had the occasion to counsel a lot of people over the years on this point. I ve had people come to me and wonder whether or not they are a Christian, and it is always because they are looking at themselves, and they are thinking, There s no way I can be a Christian. There s no way a Christian would sin like I do. There s no way a Christian would be as mean to his wife as I am. There s no way a Christian would be as jealous of other people s success like I am. There s no way; a Christian wouldn t feel like I do. But then I ll talk to the person, and I know they believe in Jesus. And so I ll ask them, Are you an atheist? No! Are you a Muslim? Of course not! Do you think Jesus is able to save you? Yes. Do you think Jesus did die on the cross to save sinners? Yes. Do you want to belong to Jesus? Yes! And then I ll say, Friend, I don t give a rip how you feel about yourself right now you are in Christ! Someone not in 2016 J.D. Shaw 8

9 Christ would not want so badly to feel like they are in Christ! Stop looking at yourself, and start looking to him. Practically, how will this play out? I hope if you are a member of Grace Bible Church, you are doing evangelism. You are, as you have the opportunity, tell other people the gospel of Jesus Christ. Especially your children the number one evangelistic opportunity you have, parents, is with your kids. And say someone does say to you, You know, I ve been thinking about this gospel message, and I think I believe it now. I think I am a sinner, and I really do think Jesus had to die to save me from my sins. I believe. I hope this happens all the time at our church. What should you do when that happens? You should celebrate, you should rejoice, and be thankful! But also be clear that this is not the end, but that it s the beginning. This is just the beginning of the lifelong process of discipleship, of following Jesus. There will be emotional ups and downs, there will be doubts, and that s normal that s okay. This is especially true with your children. At some point in the future they will doubt whether they are in Christ. It almost certainly will happen when they hit middle school! But when it does, you can tell them, Hey, this is normal, but I ll be here, and the church will be here, to pray for you, to encourage you. Just keep looking to Jesus, and one day you will know that you know him, you will have the infallible assurance of your salvation. Make your house a place where your kids know you are constantly looking to Jesus, and your kids will, too. Fanny Crosby taught us to sing: Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine; oh, what a foretaste of glory divine. My prayer is that all of us at Grace Bible Church can sing that song not out of hope, but out of experience. Amen J.D. Shaw 9