Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / October 15, 2017 | Living At The End Of Time - Go Out With A Bang, Not A Whimper

Transcript

October 15, 2017 | Living At The End Of Time - Go Out With A Bang, Not A Whimper · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

0:00
SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
0:02
SPEAKER_00: Are we living at the end of time?
0:06
SPEAKER_00: Some of you think so.
0:09
SPEAKER_00: Some of you not so sure.
0:11
SPEAKER_00: 75% of uh of us think we are.
0:15
SPEAKER_00: Um good morning.
0:16
SPEAKER_00: This is uh Topeka Bible Church.
0:18
SPEAKER_00: Great to have you with us, especially if you're visiting.
0:22
SPEAKER_00: Nice to see you in the College Avenue building by faith.
0:26
SPEAKER_00: I can see you right now.
0:27
SPEAKER_00: So behave yourselves.
0:30
SPEAKER_00: Um this is gonna be, if you have a Bible, this is gonna be one time when you'll need a Bible or a cell phone to look up Second Peter chapter 2.
0:38
SPEAKER_00: This is not just a remote corner of the New Testament.
0:41
SPEAKER_00: This is a passage you probably almost certainly have never heard preached before.
0:45
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna preach the whole second chapter, all 22 verses of 2 Peter 2.
0:50
SPEAKER_00: Any chapter that ends with words about dogs returning to vomit and pigs going back into the mire.
0:56
SPEAKER_00: Now that's that's a blessed passage.
0:59
SPEAKER_00: So if you throw up a little in your mouth this morning, you're very biblical.
1:04
SPEAKER_00: So um this is gonna be interesting.
1:06
SPEAKER_00: It's about false teachers, it's about the end of time.
1:11
SPEAKER_00: It's not one of those happy-go-lucky positive mental attitude passages.
1:15
SPEAKER_00: So we'll have to do what we can to um.
1:18
SPEAKER_00: But it's really, I think you're gonna find that even though you may have never heard this passage preached before, even though it's on the surface it seems pretty nasty and negative, I think you'll find there's a lot of good application.
1:32
SPEAKER_00: All right, let's pray.
1:33
SPEAKER_00: Father, we're asking you for help this morning.
1:36
SPEAKER_00: This is really interesting.
1:38
SPEAKER_00: You you chose to include these words in the Holy Bible, and uh wow, uh uh you could have written a lot of other stuff, but this is this is a warning uh beware for the end of time, and we ask that we would hear it and take away something positive in Jesus' name.
1:55
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
1:58
unknown: T.
1:58
SPEAKER_00: S.
1:58
SPEAKER_00: Eliot was a Christian poet, uh, early part of the 20th century, and in 1925, one of his most famous poems he wrote was called The Hollow Men.
2:07
SPEAKER_00: Sounds a little bit like uh Carrie Livgren's Dust in the Wind, or like the movie The Matrix or the Book of Ecclesiastes.
2:15
SPEAKER_00: It begins with the words, we are the hollow men, we are the stuffed men leaning together, headpiece filled with straw.
2:26
SPEAKER_00: So it's a picture uh he is actually writing about sort of prophetically, about the end of the world.
2:33
SPEAKER_00: And he is saying what it's hard for us to believe, which is that all of those television talk shows we see and a lot of the movies we see and so forth are really no more than just straw.
2:42
SPEAKER_00: They seem to be rich and interesting, but there's not much meaning to them.
2:47
SPEAKER_00: And uh a lot of things that go on are hollow and just stuffed.
2:52
SPEAKER_00: He in fact includes in this wonderful, you know, he writes in such a way, T.
2:57
SPEAKER_00: S.
2:58
SPEAKER_00: Eliot did, that you sort of feel its uh word pictures.
3:01
SPEAKER_00: He continues, our dried voices, when we whisper together, are quiet and meaningless as wind and dry grass or rats' feet over broken glass in our dry cellar.
3:16
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that blessed?
3:18
SPEAKER_00: Doesn't that I I don't care who you are, I think that's great writing and great poetry.
3:24
SPEAKER_00: But the poem ends, it's not that long a poem, but it ends with the most famous words in the poem.
3:28
SPEAKER_00: This is the way the world ends.
3:30
SPEAKER_00: This is the way the world ends, this is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but a whimper.
3:36
SPEAKER_00: T.S.
3:37
SPEAKER_00: Eliot.
3:39
SPEAKER_00: Uh a Christian uh who uh very famous, and and he was writing there in a way that would strongly disagree with what you and I are constantly hearing.
3:51
SPEAKER_00: We're constantly being scared, I suppose, uh by magazines and by the media that the way the world's really gonna end is by a sudden nuclear warfare or by a solar flare that's going to envelop the earth or by a humongous uh uh you know earthquake or an asteroid collision or something, or even earlier on in my day it was the AIDS epidemic is gonna sweep over the world and we're gonna all be gone.
4:19
SPEAKER_00: But but T.S.
4:20
SPEAKER_00: Elliott is saying, well, you know what?
4:22
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it won't.
4:23
SPEAKER_00: Maybe the world will end with a whimper, not a bang, more like some of the apocalyptic, post-apocalyptic movies that you and I see.
4:33
SPEAKER_00: And one thing I can say for sure is I don't want to go out personally with a whimper.
4:38
SPEAKER_00: I want to go out with a bang.
4:40
SPEAKER_00: Don't you want to go out with a bang, not a whimper, as I think Richard Harris used to say.
4:44
SPEAKER_00: And that's the title of my message.
4:46
SPEAKER_00: That's uh the title I've chosen for 2 Peter chapter 2.
4:50
SPEAKER_00: This fascinating and difficult chapter, go out with a bang, not a whimper.
4:55
SPEAKER_00: Because Peter himself, I think, is saying in this chapter that the world will not end with a bang so much as it will end with uh with rotten inside.
5:07
SPEAKER_00: Now let me stop for a minute and say that a couple of weeks ago when I began this series, I mentioned to you uh the question are we really living at the end of time?
5:16
SPEAKER_00: And we were talking about earthquakes, famines, hurricanes, and so forth, talking about the fact the Bible also predicts at the end of time a surge in moral disasters, I mean wars and rumors of wars.
5:27
SPEAKER_00: Let me, I told you that there, I have a list, a short list, I think nine or ten, I said.
5:31
SPEAKER_00: Let me give you the other seven reasons why I think the Bible would suggest we might be living at the end of time right now.
5:38
SPEAKER_00: Third and fourth one have to do with Israel, third and fourth, resurrection and return of Israel.
5:43
SPEAKER_00: Ezekiel 38 predicts the resurrection of Israel, uh, and the Old Testament talks about them returning.
5:50
SPEAKER_00: And in 1880, approximately, Israel started returning to the land, a lot of thousands of people.
5:55
SPEAKER_00: And of course, in 1948, after the Holocaust, the United Nations uh uh declared that Israel was now a state.
6:04
SPEAKER_00: And so since then there's been a big return.
6:07
SPEAKER_00: Uh, number four, Jews now in the land of Israel, vulnerable like never before.
6:13
SPEAKER_00: Few people talk about this, but it's actually the strongest indicator to me.
6:17
SPEAKER_00: Uh I said to someone uh the last week we're talking about this, I said, can you imagine?
6:24
SPEAKER_00: Can you imagine that Israel as we know it could last for another thousand years?
6:28
SPEAKER_00: People always used to say that even if Israel, even if the Jews are destroyed, let's say in Europe, as they were pretty much in the 1940s, 1930s, that still there are Jews in Russia and in America and South America and so forth.
6:41
SPEAKER_00: The problem is that now the majority of Jews have, for the first time, they're now living in Israel, and most of the self-identified Jews, the ones who have not intermarried, are living in Israel as well.
6:52
SPEAKER_00: I said to him, Can you imagine another thousand years and nothing happening from Iran or Iraq or no terrorist, you know?
7:01
SPEAKER_00: And he said, No, I can't imagine.
7:03
SPEAKER_00: I said, I can't imagine that either, which is why I think there's a better chance than ever that since the Lord will come back when Israel is under imminent danger of being eradicated, exterminated, that's a strong reason.
7:18
SPEAKER_00: Now, uh, I want to stop for a second since I talked about Jerusalem.
7:22
SPEAKER_00: Some of you will remember that a month and a half, two months ago, David Brickner was here, director of Jews for Jesus.
7:28
SPEAKER_00: And he mentioned that over the last 17 years, we or uh Jews for Jesus has been embarked on a uh program of going to every city in the world, all 50 cities, whatever, that have 25,000 Jews or more in a behold your God evangelistic public campaign.
7:45
SPEAKER_00: And it's saved Jerusalem, the most difficult city, for last, the city which where where Orthodox Jews will get very violent when this happens.
7:54
SPEAKER_00: And that's coming, the next and final uh outreach will be coming next May 2018.
8:00
SPEAKER_00: It'll be month-long, and they're asking for churches.
8:04
SPEAKER_00: They're not gonna allow Gentiles out in the street to witness that better just be Jews, but they need a lot of support because there's a nine-pronged outreach.
8:12
SPEAKER_00: There's a uh uh outreach to Jewish sports teams, there's an outreach to the homeless, there's an outreach to the to those caught in the sex traffic, there's an outreach to the Russian Jews, there's an outreach to, and so forth and so on, and and they could really use a lot of churches to help.
8:31
SPEAKER_00: And so David said, I hope Tipeka Bible Church, one of our main supporting churches, will help be one of those 50 churches.
8:38
SPEAKER_00: And so we are going to, in eight days from now, uh, over at Tony and Judy Plebeak's home, we're gonna have a meeting for all of you who are interested in going uh next May for a couple weeks over there to help with that campaign.
8:53
SPEAKER_00: So I just mentioned that uh if if if uh if you want to contact me or contact Tony and Judy between now and then, that'll be great.
9:02
SPEAKER_00: But I mention that because it has to do with Jerusalem.
9:04
SPEAKER_00: All right?
9:05
SPEAKER_00: End of advertisement.
9:06
SPEAKER_00: Number five, six, seven, eight, and nine.
9:09
SPEAKER_00: Signs in the star, in the sun, moon, and stars in the sky.
9:13
SPEAKER_00: A surge at the end of time, the Bible predicts, in the love of self, money, and pleasure.
9:18
SPEAKER_00: A surge in secularism, the love even of believers will grow cold.
9:23
SPEAKER_00: A surge in the persecution of Christians, and finally a surge in false teaching.
9:28
SPEAKER_00: Those are the things that that that by that Jesus said would signal the end of time.
9:36
SPEAKER_00: And I mentioned them in that order, ending with surge in false teaching, because we have now come to the place in the Bible, in the New Testament, where as there's a longer passage about this than perhaps anywhere else.
9:50
SPEAKER_00: An entire chapter that tells us where Peter says the world had false teachers then, and there will be false teachers, a surge in them at the end of time.
9:59
SPEAKER_00: The chapter begins this way There were also false prophets in Israel.
10:03
SPEAKER_00: Uh he's just barely said, by the way, you know the second, I we can promise the second coming will happen, he said at the end of chapter one, for two reasons.
10:12
SPEAKER_00: Number one, I was there for the preview, the preview being the transfiguration, it was a preview.
10:17
SPEAKER_00: And number two, he said, all of the prophets agree about this.
10:21
SPEAKER_00: There's no disagreement if you look at the interpretation, he says, all the prophets agree Christ will come back as the conquering king.
10:28
SPEAKER_00: And now he just says, but you know what?
10:30
SPEAKER_00: Even back then when the prophet said this, there were false prophets.
10:34
SPEAKER_00: And there's going to be false teachers today among you.
10:38
SPEAKER_00: This is not a surprise to you if you read the Bible at all.
10:41
SPEAKER_00: You know that there's a lot of predictions in the New Testament about false teachers at the end of time.
10:48
SPEAKER_00: Jesus said, for instance, in the Sermon on the Mount, beware, watch out for false teachers who come to you dressed as sheep, but on the inside they are devouring wolves, Matthew 7, 15.
11:00
SPEAKER_00: Paul, in one of his only sermon to a church, to uh to elders, said to the Ephesian elders in Acts 20, beware of false teachers.
11:11
SPEAKER_00: Grievous wolves enter in among you.
11:13
SPEAKER_00: And now we come, Peter says in chapter 2, I need to ask you to beware of false teachers.
11:22
SPEAKER_00: And so I'm gonna go through this really quickly, all 22 verses.
11:25
SPEAKER_00: I won't read them all, but he's gonna talk about in verses 1 through 3, their coming, who they are, and 4 through 17, their doom, where they're going and why they deserve to go there.
11:37
SPEAKER_00: And 18 through 22, they're victims or their succors, people like you and me, who's falling for it.
11:43
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
11:44
SPEAKER_00: Now, make no mistake, these false teachers are not Christians.
11:49
SPEAKER_00: He says these people in this chapter are springs without water and mists driven by a storm.
11:55
SPEAKER_00: Blackest darkness is reserved for them.
11:58
SPEAKER_00: They're going to hell.
12:00
SPEAKER_00: God hates false teachers far worse than anything else.
12:04
SPEAKER_00: Remember, Jesus said it would be better for false teachers who mislead young people.
12:09
SPEAKER_00: It would be better for false teachers that they just had an anchor around their ankles and they got thrown in the Sea of Galilee.
12:16
SPEAKER_00: So that just shows you what the Lord feels when some sweet kid, age 18, comes out of a little rural Kansas town and believes what her parents have told her and what she learned at her Methodist church, and then goes away to college or university or whatever, and hears from a professor, her freshman year, that all of that stuff is poppycock and balderdash and legend and myth, and loses her loses whatever faith she has.
12:45
SPEAKER_00: That really ticks God off.
12:48
SPEAKER_00: Okay, really makes him mad.
12:50
SPEAKER_00: And so that's why he says, Got no patience for false teachers who take advantage of younger people and and and mess up their lives.
12:58
SPEAKER_00: So that's what this chapter is about.
13:01
SPEAKER_00: Okay, he starts off in verse 1 there were also false prophets among the people of Israel, just as there will be among you.
13:07
SPEAKER_00: They'll secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them.
13:14
SPEAKER_00: Stop right there.
13:16
SPEAKER_00: You say, hold it.
13:18
SPEAKER_00: Jesus Christ died for these people, these false teachers.
13:23
SPEAKER_00: He bought them, he redeemed them.
13:25
SPEAKER_00: This verse is one of about five in the New Testament that make it impossible for me to agree with a certain view.
13:33
SPEAKER_00: There's a certain view that certain strong Calvinists hold, which is that Jesus Christ only died for the chosen, the elect.
13:40
SPEAKER_00: And I understand why they want to believe that, because it makes God seem a little weak, doesn't it?
13:48
SPEAKER_00: If he's gonna send Jesus to die for the whole world, but the whole world isn't gonna believe it, it's like he wasted his effort on millions of people.
13:56
SPEAKER_00: Why isn't he so so it's easier to say he only died for those who would believe in him?
14:02
SPEAKER_00: It's called limited atonement or particular redemption.
14:06
SPEAKER_00: And when somebody is talking to me about that, a good Calvinist friend of mine, I'll say, you know what makes great logical sense, and it makes great theological sense.
14:15
SPEAKER_00: I say my only problem with it is the Bible.
14:19
SPEAKER_00: I say 2 Peter chapter 2, verse 1, 1 John 2, 2, and three other verses just really make it impossible for me to agree with you that Jesus Christ only died for the chosen.
14:30
SPEAKER_00: Now that's extra.
14:31
SPEAKER_00: That was a little theological stuff, and two or three of you will care about that.
14:35
SPEAKER_00: But that's that's just just needs to be said.
14:38
SPEAKER_00: And then he continues many will follow their sensuality.
14:43
SPEAKER_00: Wow, he's never mentioned sensuality in this book before, and because of them the way of the truth will be maligned, and in their greed, the greed of these false teachers, they'll exploit you with false words.
14:55
SPEAKER_00: Their judgment from long ago is not idle, their destruction is not asleep.
15:00
SPEAKER_00: So who are these people he's talking about?
15:04
SPEAKER_00: Well, he's now identified them in verse two and three as saying a certain thing and living a certain way.
15:11
SPEAKER_00: There's a verbal thing, a verbal identifier and a moral identifier.
15:15
SPEAKER_00: Verbally, we learned this in chapter one, they say, Jesus returned?
15:24
SPEAKER_00: Ridiculous.
15:25
SPEAKER_00: Are you kidding?
15:26
SPEAKER_00: That's an old wives' tale told to religious women to keep them subservient and to children, to keep them obedient, to scare them with a future.
15:37
SPEAKER_00: But there's also a moral component we learned in verses two and three, and that is sensuality.
15:42
SPEAKER_00: They live this sensual life, they live La Vita Loka, they live in such a way that their way of resisting temptation is to give in to it.
15:51
SPEAKER_00: This is what they live, this is what they encourage.
15:55
SPEAKER_00: And so I ask myself, as you should, who says these two things today?
16:00
SPEAKER_00: What group of people is there that says, A, theologically or doctrinally, Jesus isn't returning, and B, you should indulge whatever you feel, your passions, and not stifle them.
16:16
SPEAKER_00: Who believes that?
16:18
SPEAKER_00: Who says that today?
16:19
SPEAKER_00: You go, yeah, uh-huh, just about everybody cool.
16:23
SPEAKER_00: Am I right?
16:24
SPEAKER_00: Just about everybody cool.
16:26
SPEAKER_00: By that I mean television personalities, Hollywood movie makers, the movies, and many college and university professors would say both of these things.
16:38
SPEAKER_00: They would say verbally, as we read last week on one website, the ten most ridiculous things people believe, they would say, more than half of Americans believe the, include the word stupid, prophecies of the book of Revelation, including the stupid idea that Jesus will return to take the faithful.
16:59
SPEAKER_00: Meanwhile, we atheists pray that the faithful are right and that they will disappear and get out of the way of humanity's progress.
17:06
SPEAKER_00: I don't care who you are, I think that's funny.
17:08
SPEAKER_00: So, verbally and morally, morally, I mean, I'm kidding.
17:14
SPEAKER_00: I mean, all of the cool people would say with Oscar Wilde, the only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
17:21
SPEAKER_00: Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself.
17:26
SPEAKER_00: You poor, poor baby.
17:27
SPEAKER_00: You know, Oscar Wilde, you say I can resist anything but temptation.
17:30
SPEAKER_00: And he's and he's funny, and he was a funny writer.
17:33
SPEAKER_00: Or Robert Heinlein, famous uh writer, if you're like me, you've read some of his science fiction, yield to temptation because it may not pass your way again.
17:42
SPEAKER_00: Grab it! Gusto.
17:44
SPEAKER_00: It's no wonder that uh Washburn sociology textbook, uh basic sociology textbook a couple years ago, not they still use this one, said in its ethics and morality chapter, began the chapter with these words today, there's a general corrosion of religious commitment.
17:59
SPEAKER_00: There are no standards of right and wrong anymore.
18:02
SPEAKER_00: The religious beliefs that have been the bedrocks of Christian faith for nearly two millennia are on their way out.
18:08
SPEAKER_00: This may very well be the dawn of a post-Christian era.
18:12
SPEAKER_00: Now, I think I think that's right, even though I didn't like the snarky sort of uh, we're glad that this is happening attitude between the words.
18:21
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, there's a lot of truth to that.
18:25
SPEAKER_00: That's what's happening today, that's what's popular, that's who they are.
18:29
SPEAKER_00: And so now we move to four through 17, where we find out what their doom is.
18:34
SPEAKER_00: And basically their doom is spelled in four letters, H-E-L-L.
18:38
SPEAKER_00: Sorry about that, but uh we have three examples right away, parallel examples in verses four through nine that he gives, comparisons.
18:49
SPEAKER_00: First example is the angels who sinned before time, secondly, the ancient world in the days of Noah, and third, Sodom and Gomorrah.
18:56
SPEAKER_00: He says, For if God didn't spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to pits of darkness reserved for judgment, and two, if he didn't spare the ancient world but preserved Noah, preacher of righteousness with seven others, when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly, three, if he condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to destruction by reducing them to ashes, having made them an example to those who would live ungodly lives thereafter, and if he rescued righteous Lot, oppressed by the sensual conduct of unprincipled, but see what it is every time there is someone that God totally disgusted by and condemns, and then he saves the righteous, or the we'd say the believers, Noah Lot and the righteous angels, he concludes, therefore it's clear the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from temptation and to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment, and especially those who indulge the flesh in its corrupt desires and despise authority.
19:50
SPEAKER_00: By the way, this is another little theological extra.
19:53
SPEAKER_00: If you happen to believe in a pre-tribulational rapture, that is, that Christians, true Christians, will be taken by the Lord to come in the air and he'll take us out before the great tribulation.
20:05
SPEAKER_00: I've told you I lean toward that view.
20:07
SPEAKER_00: This would be a passage that supports that because both Noah and Lot, remember, were removed before the fire, before the judgment fell.
20:16
SPEAKER_00: So there's an illustration here of that.
20:18
SPEAKER_00: It's not my purpose to talk about that today.
20:20
SPEAKER_00: That's extra.
20:22
SPEAKER_00: So we have in verses four through nine where they're going, and the answer is that false teachers are going down, down, down.
20:31
SPEAKER_00: Verses 10 through 17 reiterates why they deserve to go there.
20:35
SPEAKER_00: I'm not going to read all the verses, but it's it's pretty blunt, guys.
20:40
SPEAKER_00: They count it a pleasure to revel in the daytime.
20:45
SPEAKER_00: They are stains and blemishes, they revel in their deceptions, they carouse with you, they have eyes full of adultery that never cease from sin and so forth.
20:51
SPEAKER_00: We're talking about out and out immorality.
20:53
SPEAKER_00: You can't help thinking, I know as you sit here, if you follow the news, can't help thinking of a famous Hollywood, maybe one of the most powerful tier three people in Hollywood, who now has been exposed by the New York Times of all newspapers two weeks ago for his incredible uh, you know, sexual uh, you know, how how he would uh how he would sort of manipulate and almost force young actresses to to to to you know in into sexual liaison.
21:22
SPEAKER_00: Harvey Weinstein is his name.
21:24
SPEAKER_00: But but the issue that you suddenly realize is the hypocrisy of Hollywood for all these decades, because they've all known about it, and yet they moralistically preach to us at all times.
21:37
SPEAKER_00: And even this week, Harvey Weinstein, you know, the all of these perverts like Harvey Weinstein, Trump.
21:43
SPEAKER_00: And you go, there are people you could pick, Roger Ailes and others.
21:47
SPEAKER_00: Why pick Trump since since we don't have any evidence that he actually did this?
21:51
SPEAKER_00: He just talks about it.
21:52
SPEAKER_00: But but anyway, I mean you have this hypocrisy, but you have this whole world that in this day of sex.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: Corruption that we're reading about in 2 Peter 2, and false teachers are taking part in it and pushing it, right?
22:11
SPEAKER_00: I mean we like to think, by the way, if you're Republican, I think it's only the Democrats that do this stuff, and Democrats like it's only the Republicans that do this stuff.
22:18
SPEAKER_00: And if you're Calvinist, you like think it's only Arminians that do this stuff.
22:20
SPEAKER_00: And if you're Arminian, you like, oh, it's only Calvinists.
22:23
SPEAKER_00: Guess what?
22:23
SPEAKER_00: This is about as democratic as you can get.
22:25
SPEAKER_00: There are people on all sides of the fence that do this.
22:28
SPEAKER_00: There are all kinds of people that commit sexual shenanigans and embarrass their friends.
22:35
SPEAKER_00: And if you're Christian, you embarrass God.
22:37
SPEAKER_00: And that's what this is about.
22:39
SPEAKER_00: The false teachers do this and they plug it.
22:44
SPEAKER_00: And the conclusion is as a result, black as darkness is reserved for them.
22:48
SPEAKER_00: And that's both who they are, who they are.
22:52
SPEAKER_00: They are people who morally live like you know sensuality and verbally mock the idea of the second coming.
23:01
SPEAKER_00: Their doom is sure.
23:04
SPEAKER_00: Now we get to the point that really applies to you and me.
23:08
SPEAKER_00: They're victims, they're suckers.
23:10
SPEAKER_00: Who's falling for it?
23:11
SPEAKER_00: Last five verses of the chapter, chapter 2, 18 through 22.
23:16
SPEAKER_00: These false teachers arrogantly use nonsense to seduce people, oftentimes young people, by appealing to their sexual desires, especially to sexual freedom.
23:30
SPEAKER_00: And I go, yeah, I lived in the late 60s.
23:33
SPEAKER_00: 50 years ago.
23:34
SPEAKER_00: It was 50 years ago, really almost this year, that sexual freedom came to the West.
23:41
SPEAKER_00: They seduce people who've just escaped.
23:51
SPEAKER_00: They promise these people freedom while they themselves are slaves to corruption.
23:57
SPEAKER_00: I couldn't help thinking, since I grew up in the era basically of Hugh Hefner, Hugh Hefner of Playboy fame.
24:03
SPEAKER_00: If you haven't heard of him, good.
24:05
SPEAKER_00: But anyway, Hugh Hefner died not long ago.
24:09
SPEAKER_00: He probably single-handedly is responsible for bringing the porn culture and the sexual sexual looseness culture to the West more than almost anyone else.
24:22
SPEAKER_00: And as I read this last phrase this week, they themselves are slaves to corruption.
24:27
SPEAKER_00: You cannot help thinking of what Hugh Hefner looked like when he died.
24:33
SPEAKER_00: Of the story.
24:50
SPEAKER_00: Shell of a man living in pajamas all day, surrounded by girls who were old enough to be his granddaughters.
24:56
SPEAKER_00: It's just an just a sick, pathetic shell of a man.
25:00
SPEAKER_00: And you say, you know what?
25:02
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he promised freedom, but he he revealed.
25:05
SPEAKER_00: Now if you're a Hugh Hefner fan, you shouldn't be.
25:08
SPEAKER_00: So but but he himself was an absolute slave to corruption.
25:14
SPEAKER_00: That's what this passage says.
25:15
SPEAKER_00: So why would you listen to him about sexual freedom?
25:20
SPEAKER_00: Now I now we've gotten into talking about the victims, talking about Christians who've escaped and get sucked back in.
25:28
SPEAKER_00: I have two principles for you.
25:30
SPEAKER_00: Number one, principle.
25:32
SPEAKER_00: Christians can fall.
25:37
SPEAKER_00: Now I've heard it said even at this pulpit.
25:39
SPEAKER_00: If you're a real Christian, you can't fall.
25:41
SPEAKER_00: Or that you, if you fall, you won't fall, you can't fall very far.
25:44
SPEAKER_00: Or you can slip, but you can't fall.
25:46
SPEAKER_00: Or you can fall for a day, but you can't fall for a week.
25:48
SPEAKER_00: Fall for a week, but you can't fall for a month.
25:50
SPEAKER_00: You might be able to fall for a month, but you can't fall for a year.
25:52
SPEAKER_00: You know, there's always these limits on Christians falling, and I confess to you, I do not find this represented at all in the Bible.
25:59
SPEAKER_00: In the Bible, which tells us about David and his adultery and murder and Peter and where Paul in Acts chapter 20 is saying, false teachers like wolves will come among you and they will lead astray, even your leaders, even some of your elders.
26:10
SPEAKER_00: I I it just seems to me folly.
26:13
SPEAKER_00: And when you're a pastor and you start to work with people, then you see some people who you say are more spiritual than I am who fall.
26:22
SPEAKER_00: And the fact of the matter is you need to learn that Christians, Christians, even grown-up Christians, who have escaped the corruption in the world, who have climbed their way out of the muck and the mire of the world, can still be seduced and can still fall.
26:35
SPEAKER_00: When I was young, when I was 10, 12 years old, my hero, even more than my dad, I confess, was a man named Tom.
26:42
SPEAKER_00: A guy named Tom had been in the Vietnam War.
26:45
SPEAKER_00: And he'd come out and he was in the military police, and we admired him because he was so strong, he was short, and he was strong, and he was cool and he was funny, and he'd had P A T S D and he'd become an alcoholic and he'd been on Skid Row in Portland, but then he'd he'd come uh to our church and he'd gotten amazingly saved, and he was cool, and he was he was a semi-pro baseball player.
27:02
SPEAKER_00: So he'd take me and my brother, we'd travel around to his games and so forth, and he was so funny.
27:06
SPEAKER_00: And if we begged him, he'd tell us how he killed people, you know, when he was in Vietnam, you know, how he'd uh how you know break their neck and so forth.
27:13
SPEAKER_00: And my dad and mom would have killed him if they'd ever found out he he did this.
27:18
SPEAKER_00: And so Steve and I would practice on each other later.
27:20
SPEAKER_00: And uh and so but this guy was so amazing, and so he decided he wanted to learn more about the Bible, and so he went to my dad's Bible school, my mom's school of the Bible, and he studied under my father, studied under other people, and after four years he graduated, and now he had a Bible degree, and he took the little church to become a pastor, took a little church in downtown Portland, a church full of addicts and other things, just a few people, and that church, because of his personality, because of how cool he was and everything, I was not surprised to find that this church grew.
27:50
SPEAKER_00: It grew with downtown Portland kind of people, and it grew, and then finally it was bursting at the seams.
27:56
SPEAKER_00: But you couldn't grow a church like that, so he started another church, and and he he pastored both of those churches, and that church began to burst at the seams, and so he started a third and a fourth and a fifth and a sixth church, and now he was becoming very well known.
28:10
SPEAKER_00: And I had moved on to Wheaton College, but I was so proud of my friend Tom, my hero Tom, because now he was the best-known conservative Baptist denomination pastor on the West Coast, and and he was speaking at major conferences and they were flying him around and so forth, and so I was utterly horrified and shocked to hear that somewhere along the way he lost sight of what he'd been saved from and what was what was awaiting him in the future, the glory of Christ's return, and somehow he'd he not only had an affair with his secretary, but he'd left his beautiful wife and three little children, so cute.
28:49
SPEAKER_00: I love those kids, three little children, and and just started living with her and the churches had started falling apart, and of course his life had started falling apart, and and all of this stuff.
29:00
SPEAKER_00: It was just absolutely horrifying.
29:03
SPEAKER_00: Someone that much of a Christian leader, not much of a hero.
29:08
SPEAKER_00: If I'd been 13 instead of 18 or 19 or 20 when I heard about this, I don't know what it would have done to me, because it was absolutely horrifying.
29:17
SPEAKER_00: Now I will just cut to the end and tell you that after several years, that life fell apart, and he came back, and he came back to his wife, and she graciously received him, but he was a broken man, and then shortly after that, when he was only, you know, in his late 30s, early 40s, the Lord just took him.
29:33
SPEAKER_00: I mean, he suddenly died in very weird circumstances.
29:36
SPEAKER_00: But but my point is simply this about my friend Tom that if Tom can fall, anybody can fall, that anybody can fall.
29:44
SPEAKER_00: That's the point here, that no matter how far you've grown, you can still fall.
29:50
SPEAKER_00: And those of you who lived in Topeka for a while can name some Christian leaders here in Topeka who have.
29:56
SPEAKER_00: Or every year, there's some well-known Christian leader in this country.
30:00
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes I know that leader pretty well, and I'm horrified to find out that they too have fallen and their megachurch, you know, sort of crumbles or something, because this is a true principle.
30:12
SPEAKER_00: It's silly to say that Christians can't fall.
30:16
SPEAKER_00: It's silly to say that mature Christians can't fall, because that can happen.
30:21
SPEAKER_00: And Peter ends this way.
30:23
SPEAKER_00: He says, Listen, I want you to know that after, if after they have escaped the defilements of the world by the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, here he's speaking about the saving knowledge, epignosis, the key word in Peter.
30:37
SPEAKER_00: He's talking about the saving knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
30:41
SPEAKER_00: They've trusted in him, and that that tie to the world has been broken.
30:46
SPEAKER_00: If they are again entangled in these defilements and are overcome, the last state, get this, has become worse for them than the first.
30:57
SPEAKER_00: And that leads me to my second principle.
31:00
SPEAKER_00: It is worse in some ways, it is worse to have climbed and fallen than never to have climbed at all.
31:10
SPEAKER_00: Notice the picture of the Christian life that we're often given in the Bible is that you trust Jesus Christ as your Savior, and then, as 2 Peter 1 says, then you realize that God has given you everything that you need for a life of godliness, a wardrobe you can call it, or whatever it is.
31:26
SPEAKER_00: You know, a ladder to climb, you have all of these virtues, and you decide that instead of staying mature, that you're going to grow.
31:32
SPEAKER_00: And you start to grow in the Christian life.
31:34
SPEAKER_00: You start to climb the mountain, and then the mountain gets tougher, but you're headed.
31:39
SPEAKER_00: You're headed to the upward way, you're headed to Christ's likeness, you're pressing on the upward way.
31:44
SPEAKER_00: You sing new heights I'm gaining every day.
31:47
SPEAKER_00: Still praying as I'm onward bound.
31:49
SPEAKER_00: Lord, plant my feet on higher ground.
31:52
SPEAKER_00: Lord, lift me up and let me stand by faith on heaven's table land, a higher plane than I have found, Lord.
31:59
SPEAKER_00: Plant my feet on higher ground.
32:01
SPEAKER_00: And so you climb and you sing and you get more and more mature in Christ.
32:06
SPEAKER_00: And so you know, you know logically that it's true that if you fall at that point, it's far worse than if you'd stayed down at the bottom of the mountain that stayed immature.
32:18
SPEAKER_00: Not that you'd never become a Christian, that's a different issue.
32:21
SPEAKER_00: We're talking here about growing in Christ.
32:25
SPEAKER_00: And if you grow in Christ and you become mature, you become a Christian leader.
32:30
SPEAKER_00: For you to fall at that point is worse in some ways.
32:34
SPEAKER_00: In fact, it's worse in many ways.
32:35
SPEAKER_00: It's worse for your family, isn't it?
32:37
SPEAKER_00: It's much worse for your family for you to be a Christian hero, a Christian leader, and much worse for your children.
32:44
SPEAKER_00: Those Christian leaders who fall, you look at their children five years later.
32:48
SPEAKER_00: How few of their children are still following the Lord because of that hypocrisy.
32:53
SPEAKER_00: If they'd never grown, if they'd stayed immature, it would have been far better.
32:57
SPEAKER_00: How worse for the name of Jesus Christ and the reputation of Christianity it is.
33:04
SPEAKER_00: It's far worse for God and Christianity, for you to be a Christian leader and fall.
33:10
SPEAKER_00: And it's worse in some ways for you as well, because oftentimes what happens is if you had been caught in this and escaped the lusts of the world and then groan, and then you fall.
33:22
SPEAKER_00: Then you oftentimes you see it almost invariably you fall, and now it's your life is worse than it was.
33:29
SPEAKER_00: Your immorality is worse than it was even before you were Christian.
33:36
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's worse.
33:38
SPEAKER_00: And oftentimes, in fact, almost always, it's more painful.
33:41
SPEAKER_00: You talk to Christian leaders who've fallen.
33:44
SPEAKER_00: It's sad as they talk about the pain and the agony of having lost their family and lost their church and lost their reputation.
33:53
SPEAKER_00: Much better for you to only have climbed a few stairs at most and to have fallen than to have climbed up to the top of the ladder, let's say, and fallen.
34:03
SPEAKER_00: It can be absolutely fatal for you to have climbed and become a great Christian leader or an elder and then fallen.
34:12
SPEAKER_00: And that's why Peter says it would be better for them not to have even known the way of righteousness.
34:19
SPEAKER_00: Not Jesus' cross salvation, but the way of right, the path of righteousness, than having known that path to turn away from the holy commandment handed on to them.
34:30
SPEAKER_00: And then he ends with that.
34:32
SPEAKER_00: Our favorite verse, our favorite verse, what the true proverb, he says, uh says has happened to them.
34:39
SPEAKER_00: The dog returns to its own vomit.
34:43
SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry, that's in the Bible.
34:45
SPEAKER_00: It's in the Bible.
34:46
SPEAKER_00: Peter, I think, is saying, I throw up a little in my mouth every time I think about these Christians.
34:54
SPEAKER_00: And the sow, after washing herself, returns to wallow in the mire.
35:00
SPEAKER_00: I told you it was a little bit of a sad.
35:04
SPEAKER_00: Let me tell you though, so how here's a question.
35:07
SPEAKER_00: How do you keep yourself from it if mature Christians who are better better Christians than you and I fall?
35:13
SPEAKER_00: How can we keep ourselves from it?
35:14
SPEAKER_00: How can we keep those we love, our children, from it, our loved ones?
35:18
SPEAKER_00: When we see right now, one of your Christian friends, at least one, is is considering things that they shouldn't be considering.
35:27
SPEAKER_00: How do you help them?
35:28
SPEAKER_00: In this book, you know what the answer is going to be.
35:31
SPEAKER_00: It's going to have something to do with the second coming of Jesus Christ.
35:36
SPEAKER_00: So I'll tell you a story.
35:37
SPEAKER_00: It's a story that's similar to the story many of you have had about learning to drive.
35:42
SPEAKER_00: When I was uh first time my dad allowed me behind the wheel to teach me how to drive, I was nervous.
35:54
SPEAKER_00: And and having never driven before, you know, I was staring very hard at the road.
36:01
SPEAKER_00: And yet I would find that I would be about to go over the center line, you know, that white line.
36:08
SPEAKER_00: And so I would then correct just before I'd go into oncoming traffic and I'd twist it, and then I'd go over to the gravel and almost go off the embankment, and I was veering back and I was veering forth, and it was horrible.
36:21
SPEAKER_00: And my dad is swinging back and forth on the seat and by saying, He says, son, he says, you'll drive a lot straighter.
36:30
SPEAKER_00: He says, if you will look further down the road.
36:33
SPEAKER_00: A lot of you had that happen to you, didn't you?
36:35
SPEAKER_00: Your dad or your mom said this exactly the same thing to you.
36:39
SPEAKER_00: Or if you or if you used a tractor and cut furrows on the farm, I can guarantee that's what Dad said to you.
36:46
SPEAKER_00: Look at the end, because if you look right in front of you, you're not gonna drive a straight path.
36:52
SPEAKER_00: And Peter says that in this book.
36:55
SPEAKER_00: He says, if you want to continue to grow, if you want to climb a straight path and get to where you want to go, you need to look further down the road.
37:02
SPEAKER_00: You need to look at the return of Jesus Christ.
37:05
SPEAKER_00: You need to think about that moment when he comes back in the air.
37:08
SPEAKER_00: You need to not lose sight of that because if you lose sight of that and you start looking at the stuff around you, you might get attracted by the stuff around you, by the lust and the corruption and the mire and the muck.
37:20
SPEAKER_00: But instead keep your eyes focused on Jesus Christ, who waits there, who's coming and waiting there to say to you, Well done, good and faithful servant.
37:31
SPEAKER_00: T.S.
37:32
SPEAKER_00: Eliot ended his poem with the words, This is the way the world ends.
37:37
SPEAKER_00: This is the way the world ends.
37:39
SPEAKER_00: This is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but a whimper.
37:43
SPEAKER_00: And Peter says, you know, there's a lot of truth to that.
37:46
SPEAKER_00: The world is gonna end not with a nuclear explosion or with a solar flare, but it's gonna end rotten on the inside.
37:55
SPEAKER_00: It's gonna end with a whimper.
37:58
SPEAKER_00: Don't you be like the world, don't you end with a whimper.
38:03
SPEAKER_00: Friends, uh Topeka Bible church.
38:07
SPEAKER_00: Let's go out with a bang, not a whimper.
38:09
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
38:11
SPEAKER_00: Chapter one reminds us of how to go out with a bang.
38:16
SPEAKER_00: Chapter one, verse 11, dear brothers and sisters, work hard to prove to everyone that you really are among those God has called and chosen.
38:25
SPEAKER_00: Do these things, and here we go.
38:28
SPEAKER_00: You'll never fall away, and then God will give you a grand entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
38:39
SPEAKER_00: Let's live to make a bang at the end to make a grand entrance.
38:47
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
38:50
SPEAKER_00: Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for the sad reminder of reality in our world.
38:56
SPEAKER_00: It's so mucky and it's so messy, and we are so radical.
39:03
SPEAKER_00: Countercultural.
39:04
SPEAKER_00: What we believe and the way we act go cuts so directly against the direction of our culture, we feel out of it and weird at times.
39:13
SPEAKER_00: And at times we feel like it's right to make fun of us.
39:18
SPEAKER_00: Then we read this and we find you predicted this all along, that this is the way the world would end.
39:27
SPEAKER_00: We don't want to end that way ourselves.
39:29
SPEAKER_00: I pray for my friends here and their friends and their children and their parents and their loved ones, Heavenly Father, that we would look forward to the day when your Son Jesus Christ would return and that we would hear his well done.
39:48
SPEAKER_00: For his sake, we pray.
39:51
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
39:53
SPEAKER_00: If you'd like to talk to somebody about anything that I've shared, come up afterwards to this side of the auditorium and uh blessing, Sandy.
40:02
SPEAKER_00: We'll be glad to pray with you.
40:03
SPEAKER_00: You're just meeting.