Wednesday, July 27, 2016
2nd Peter ~ Warning against False Teachers (ch. 2)
2 Peter 2 NLT
1 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.
2 Many will follow their evil teaching
and shameful immorality. And because of these teachers, the way of truth will
be slandered.
3 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.
4 For God did not spare even the angels
who sinned. He threw them into hell, in gloomy pits of darkness, where they are
being held until the day of judgment.
5 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.
6Later, God condemned the cities of Sodom
and Gomorrah and turned them into heaps of ashes. He made them an example of
what will happen to ungodly people.
7 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.
8 Yes, Lot was a righteous man who was
tormented in his soul by the wickedness he saw and heard day after day.
9 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.
10He 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.
11 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.
12 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.
13 Their destruction is their reward for
the harm they have done. They love to indulge in evil pleasures in broad
daylight. They are a disgrace and a stain among you. They delight in deception
even as they eat with you in your fellowship meals.
14 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.
15They have wandered off the right road and
followed the footsteps of Balaam son of Beor, who loved to earn money by doing
wrong.
16 But Balaam was stopped from his mad
course when his donkey rebuked him with a human voice.
17 These people are as useless as
dried-up springs or as mist blown away by the wind. They are doomed to blackest
darkness.
18 They brag about themselves with
empty, foolish boasting. With an appeal to twisted sexual desires, they lure
back into sin those who have barely escaped from a lifestyle of deception.
19 They promise freedom, but they
themselves are slaves of sin and corruption. For you are a slave to whatever
controls you.
20 And when people escape from the
wickedness of the world by knowing our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and then
get tangled up and enslaved by sin again, they are worse off than before.
21 It would be better if they had never
known the way to righteousness than to know it and then reject the command they
were given to live a holy life.
22 They prove the
truth of this proverb: “A dog returns to its vomit.” And another says, “A
washed pig returns to the mud.”
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