Continuing: How many people know what they know about the LORD because they have been “good” Christians, and gone to church? How many think they know because they have read all the new books “good” men who are “good Christians” have written? How many because they follow TV preachers, or attend conferences, and know they are “good” men who wouldn’t mislead them? The truth is you are the most likely to be the deceived and part of the great age ending deception. I could go on to ask all the same questions of the secularly educated, and end telling of their also most likely being ignorantly part or the same spiritually wicked rebellion.
This takes us to the LORD’s message today to those not defiled by these corrupted ways of fallen man. Psalms 119 ends telling of those being taught and led by the LORD Himself. This is the point men fail to understand in these messages; I don’t know any of this because I have been taught it by following some man, or taught it to myself. Each and every time it is The LORD giving me His words to write, as He leads me into His great depths of knowledge, revealing its parts when He determines we need to hear them, to be revealed to any who will freely eat and drink with me.
Friends, I am nothing more than the donkey the LORD has chosen and prepared to ride upon into Jerusalem.
Psalms 119
144 The righteousness of your testimonies is everlasting: give me understanding, and I shall live.
145 I cried with my whole heart; hear me, O LORD: I will keep your statutes.
146 I cried unto you; save me, and I shall keep your testimonies.
147 I prevented the dawning of the morning, and cried: I hoped in your word.
148 Mine eyes prevent the night watches, that I might meditate in your word.
149 Hear my voice according unto your loving-kindness: O LORD, quicken me according to your judgment.
150 They draw nigh that follow after mischief: they are far from your law.
151 You are near, O LORD; and all your commandments are truth.
152 Concerning your testimonies, I have known of old that you have founded them forever.
153 Consider my affliction, and deliver me: for I do not forget your law.
154 Plead my cause, and deliver me: quicken me according to your word.
155 Salvation is far from the wicked: for they seek not your statutes.
156 Great are your tender mercies, O LORD: quicken me according to your judgments.
157 Many are my persecutors and mine enemies; yet do I not decline from your testimonies.
158 I beheld the transgressors, and was grieved; because they kept not your word.
159 Consider how I love your precepts: quicken me, O LORD, according to your loving-kindness.
160 Your word is true from the beginning: and every one of your righteous judgments endures forever.
161 Princes have persecuted me without a cause: but my heart [thoughts of reason] stands in awe of your word.
162 I rejoice at your word, as one that finds great spoil.
163 I hate and abhor lying: but your law do I love.
164 Seven times a day do I praise you because of your righteous judgments.
165 Great peace have they which love your law: and nothing shall offend them.
166 LORD, I have hoped for your salvation, and done your commandments.
167 My soul has kept your testimonies; and I love them exceedingly.
168 I have kept your precepts and your testimonies: for all my ways are before you.
169 Let my cry come near before you, O LORD: give me understanding according to your word.
170 Let my supplication come before you: deliver me according to your word.
171 My lips shall utter praise, when you have taught me your statutes.
172 My tongue shall speak of your word: for all your commandments are righteousness.
173 Let your hand help me; for I have chosen your precepts.
174 I have longed for your salvation, O LORD; and your law is my delight.
175 Let my soul live, and it shall praise you; and let your judgments help me.
176 I have gone astray like a lost sheep; seek your servant; for I do not forget your commandments.
Those teaching their own ways, they and their ways being the tares, known to be their own if they aren’t in agreement with these words of the LORD written here, are seen as such as they (both) grow into their fullness in time.
2 Peter 2 begins by telling of the men Peter had just described ending chapter 1. As we have studied in the past: therein we read of God’s words not coming by being loosed by men in times they choose; but rather the word is carried along and born by the Holy Spirit as God decides to loose them. Then 2 Peter 2 begin with telling us of these false teachers that will also be among us, and they will privily bring in (by their own imaginations create) damnable heresies. The point of this exposition is to tell us these men will even deny the LORD that bought them. This is telling us these false prophets will be teaching what opposes the teaching that is truly born of the Holy Spirit. Peter defines it by saying they will be speaking and teaching that the truth, coming from the LORD they have denied, is evil. (Blasphemy is opposition and vilification of the good the LORD is doing, men doing it out of arrogance and pride to keep their corrupted ways from yielding right-of-way to the LORD’s.)
This explanation is what ends in chapter 3 by telling of these corrupted ways as the “elements” (stoicheion): the principles upon which these men rely to create their own ways – their heresies. These are what causes the figurative fires that burn, grown from their flawed reasoning, and also their evident failure now grown from corrupted seeds being why their principles melt away, ending the age of corruption.
As we have seen the same Greek word stoicheion is rendered “rudiments” twice in Colossians 2 to tell of “the rudiments of the world” as the things we must overcome to be able to accept the things of the LORD. It tells of these same men (type) by saying in verse 8: “Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.”
This in total is what Peter ends with by telling of these false teachers wrestling with the Scriptures to their own destruction.
2 Peter 1
16 For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our LORD Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty.
17 For he received from God the Father honor and glory, when there came such a voice to him from the excellent glory, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.
18 And this voice which came from heaven we heard, when we were with him in the holy mount.
19 We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto you do well that you take heed, as unto a light that shines in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts:
20 Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation.
21 For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.
2 Peter 2
1 But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the LORD that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction.
2 And many shall follow their pernicious ways; by reason of whom the way of truth shall be evil spoken of.
3 And through covetousness shall they with feigned words make merchandise of you: whose judgment now of a long time lingers not, and their damnation slumbers not.
4 For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment;
5 And spared not the old world, but saved Noah the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly;
6 And turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah into ashes condemned them with an overthrow, making them an ensample unto those that after should live ungodly;
7 And delivered just Lot, vexed with the filthy conversation of the wicked:
8 (For that righteous man dwelling among them, in seeing and hearing, vexed his righteous soul from day to day with their unlawful deeds;)
9 The LORD knows how to deliver the godly out of temptations, and to reserve the unjust unto the day of judgment to be punished:
10 But chiefly them that walk after the flesh in the lust of uncleanness, and despise government. Presumptuous are they, self-willed, they are not afraid to speak evil of dignities.
11 Whereas angels, which are greater in power and might, bring not railing accusation against them before the LORD.
12 But these, as natural brute beasts, made to be taken and destroyed, speak evil of the things that they understand not; and shall utterly perish in their own corruption;
13 And shall receive the reward of unrighteousness, as they that count it pleasure to riot in the day time. Spots they are and blemishes, sporting themselves with their own deceiving while they feast with you;
14 Having eyes full of adultery, and that cannot cease from sin; beguiling unstable souls: an heart they have exercised with covetous practices; cursed children:
15 Which have forsaken the right way, and are gone astray, following the way of Balaam the son of Bosor, who loved the wages of unrighteousness;
16 But was rebuked for his iniquity: by a voiceless donkey speaking with man’s voice forbidding the madness of the false prophet.
17 These are wells without water, clouds that are carried with a tempest; to whom the mist of darkness is reserved for ever.
18 For when they speak great swelling words of vanity, they allure through the lusts of the flesh, through much wantonness, those that were clean escaped from them who live in error.
19 While they promise them liberty, they themselves are the servants of corruption: for of whom a man is overcome, of the same is he brought in bondage.
20 For if after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the LORD and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein, and overcome, the latter end is worse with them than the beginning.
21 For it had been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than, after they have known it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered unto them.
22 But it is happened unto them according to the true proverb, The dog is turned to his own vomit again; and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire.
2 Peter 3
1 This second epistle, beloved, I now write unto you; in both which I stir up your pure minds by way of remembrance:
2 That you may be mindful of the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets, and of the commandment of us the apostles of the LORD and Savior:
3 Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts,
4 And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.
5 For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water:
6 Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished:
7 But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.
8 But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the LORD as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.
9 The LORD is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
10 But the day of the LORD will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.
11 Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought you to be in all holy conversation and godliness,
12 Looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat?
13 Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwells righteousness [equity and truth].
14 Wherefore, beloved, seeing that you look for such things, be diligent that you may be found of him in peace, without spot, and blameless.
15 And account that the longsuffering of our LORD is salvation; even as our beloved brother Paul also according to the wisdom given unto him has written unto you;
16 As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction.
17 You therefore, beloved, seeing you know these things before, beware lest you also, being led away with the error of the wicked, fall from your own steadfastness.
18 But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our LORD and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and for ever. Amen.
When the LORD tells us the parable of the good and the bad seed He also explains the time by telling of it as the whole lump being corrupted, and as the grown mustard tree. The tares are told of as leaven, as corrupt ideas, fully worked in and the lump risen readied for the oven – the fires; the good seed as the smallest of all but grown into the place where all the men of the earth gather, as is wheat into a barn.
Matthew 13
30 Let both grow together until the harvest: and in the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather you together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them: but gather the wheat into my barn.
31 Another parable put he forth unto them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and sowed in his field:
32 Which indeed is the least of all seeds: but when it is grown, it is the greatest among herbs, and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof.
33 Another parable spoke he unto them; The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened.
34 All these things spoke Jesus unto the multitude in parables; and without a parable spoke he not unto them:
35 That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying, I will open my mouth in parables; I will utter things which have been kept secret from the foundation of the world.
36 Then Jesus sent the multitude away, and went into the house: and his disciples came unto him, saying, Declare unto us the parable of the tares of the field.
37 He answered and said unto them, He that sows the good seed is the Son of man;
38 The field is the world; the good seed are the children of the kingdom; but the tares are the children of the wicked one;
39 The enemy that sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the world; and the reapers are the angels.
40 As therefore the tares are gathered and burned in the fire; so shall it be in the end of this world.
41 The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity;
42 And shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.
43 Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Who has ears to hear, let him hear.
44 Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto treasure hid in a field; the which when a man has found, he hides, and for joy thereof goes and sells all that he has, and buys that field.
45 Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a merchant man, seeking goodly pearls:
46 Who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had, and bought it.
47 Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a net, that was cast into the sea, and gathered of every kind:
48 Which, when it was full, they drew to shore, and sat down, and gathered the good into vessels, but cast the bad away.
49 So shall it be at the end of the world: the angels shall come forth, and sever the wicked from among the just,
50 And shall cast them into the furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.
51 Jesus said unto them, Have you understood all these things? They say unto him, Yea, LORD.
52 Then said he unto them, Therefore every scribe which is instructed unto the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is an householder, which brings forth out of his treasure things new and old.
53 And it came to pass, that when Jesus had finished these parables, he departed thence.
54 And when he was come into his own country, he taught them in their synagogue, insomuch that they were astonished, and said, Whence has this man this wisdom, and these mighty works?
55 Is not this the carpenter’s son? is not his mother called Mary? and his brethren, James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas?
56 And his sisters, are they not all with us? Whence then has this man all these things?
57 And they were offended in him. But Jesus said unto them, A prophet is not without honor, save in his own country, and in his own house.
58 And he did not many mighty works there because of their unbelief.
