The God of Wrath and Rescue, Part 2

Most people go through life without a true sense of their mortality, until of course, they come face to face with something that forces an outcome. One step in the wrong direction could lead to a serious accident. At any moment, we're only a few heartbeats away from danger. Today, on Insight for Living, Chuck Swindoll brings a Biblical reminder that life is fragile, but our lives have eternal consequences.

In fact, every day we make decisions that yield life-giving results or life-taking results. Chuck titled his sobering message, The God of Wrath and Rescue. The judging of the wicked. And now follow along the teaching of Peter as he describes the impact of eternity on those who teach falsely. Verse 4, 2 Peter 2.4. If God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell, and committed them to pits of darkness reserved for judgment, and if I may add, if God did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a preacher of righteousness, with seven others, when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly. Verse 9, then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from temptation, that's his compassion, and he knows how to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment. That is his wrath. I want you to see in this passage that God has both sides, and both will be in full force when eternity dawns.

Spend a few minutes back on verse 4 with me. God has not spared the angels when they sinned. It is believed by many of us that when Lucifer fell from his exalted position as the archangel of God, the highest of all created beings, that he took with him a third of the heavenly host.

God stepped in and judged those angelic beings who had cohabited with humanity, and he has reserved them in a place called here hell. Verse 5, and God did not spare, notice the same reference, verse 4 did not spare angels, verse 5 did not spare the ancient world. He promises Noah that there will be a flood, build an ark for the rescue of those who are righteous, and in the process of time you preach righteousness.

And those who rejected the Lord that Noah had preached were taken in the flood. Now just as God did that on behalf of the angels that sin, verse 4, and the unbelievers in the days of Noah, verse 5, so he will do that in the future against false teachers, verse 9. Then in light of that, the Lord knows how to rescue the godly, and also to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment. What will he do with the false teachers? He will keep the unrighteous under punishment and reserve them for the day of judgment.

May I interject here some information that might be new to some of you, it might be very familiar to others. It is my understanding from the scriptures that when a person lives on this earth and hears of the Lord Jesus Christ and rejects Christ, deliberately turns his heart against the gospel of Jesus Christ's death and resurrection. And that person dies in a state of unbelief. At the time of death, a couple of phenomenal things occur. First of all, there is a separation between the body and the soul of that individual.

The body we place in a casket, a funeral service is held, the casket is put in the ground, and then the body remains there in that decaying form and awaits the resurrection. However, the soul of that same individual, who is an unbeliever when he dies, is placed in Hades. Hades, the place in the netherworld where there is the awaiting of the ultimate lake of fire.

While in the place of Hades, or as it is frequently translated, hell, there is a time of desperate existence. There is no clearer picture of it than what our Lord taught in Luke 16. If you'll hold here and go back, it is really worth the brief scriptural excursion to see it. Luke 16, 23 to 31. The scene is not a happy one, as I said earlier, but it is a vivid and it is a true one.

False teachers will never teach passages like this. Luke 16, 23. And in Hades, he lifted up his eyes, being in torments.

Watch closely. It is a picture of a man who lived on earth, though rich, he lived as an unbeliever, and when he dies, he is placed in Hades. It is called, a synonym, a place of torment.

It is also a place of memory. He saw Abraham far away and Lazarus in his bosom, and he cried out and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me and send Lazarus, that's the believing poor man he knew during life, send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool off my tongue for I'm in agony in this flame. Abraham said, child, remember that during your life you received your good things, and likewise Lazarus, bad things, but now he is being comforted here. Lazarus is obviously in the place of bliss, and you are in agony. Notice again, torment, flame, agony. These are the words of Jesus. And besides all this, please observe that Hades is a permanent place.

It is inescapable. Unlike the teaching of some, there is no purgatory. There is no in between place.

There is no sleep where people pray you out of this torment. He states, Jesus states, remember during your life, these things were true. Besides this, verse 26, there is a great chasm between us and you.

It is fixed. In order that those who wish to come over from here to you may not be able, and that none may cross over from there to us. And he said, now he's speaking again from Hades, then I beg you, father, that you send him to my father's house. I beg you, Abraham, to send a messenger to my family that's still on earth, for I have five brothers, that he may warn them lest they also come to this place of torment. Abraham said, they have Moses and the prophets, meaning they have the word of God, the scriptures.

Let your brothers hear them. But he said, no, father Abraham, if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent. Ah, the answer is eloquent. He said to him, if they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded if someone rises from the dead. You know what that tells me? There's a lot of things, but it tells me the power of the word of God. It is more powerful and more convincing than someone who comes fresh from the flames of Hades and tells you of the torment.

Because it is the word of God that the spirit of God ignites in a heart to convince an individual of the reality of hell. Back to 2 Peter chapter 2. Let me finish the story, the truth of the life in the other world. The soul goes to be in Hades, and I understand that that soul remains there in a state of some kind of torment described in Luke 16 that we just read until there is the final resurrection, the resurrection of the body where the soul lifts from Hades and joins the body in a glorified state in the sense that it has changed in its whole molecular structure so that it can endure eternity.

Nobody on this earth can. The human body is continually in a process of dying, but at the resurrection the body will be changed so that it can endure eternity. The soul will be joined with the body of the unbeliever and those individuals who died without Christ will stand before the Lord God.

The scene again is not a happy one, but it is vivid. Revelation chapter 20, and again turn please, verses 11 to 15. Revelation 20, 11 to 15.

This is the final judgment. I saw a great white throne and him who set upon it from whose presence earth and heaven fled away and no place was found for them. Notice there is no longer earth or heaven as we know it today. I saw the dead, small and great, great and small, standing before the throne. The books were opened, another book was opened which is the book of life and the dead were judged from the things which were written in the books according to their deeds. The sea gave up the dead which were in it. Death and Hades gave up the dead which were in them. They were judged, every one of them according to their deeds. And death and Hades, notice now the ultimate, were thrown into the lake of fire.

This is the second death, the lake of fire. And if anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire. I'm responsible as a minister of the gospel to tell the truth as I understand scripture teaching.

I'm not responsible to tell people what they want to hear or to soften the hard truth of passages like we just read. You need to understand that without the Lord Jesus Christ in your life, that is the future you face. Throughout your life you have opportunities to respond to Christ. You never know what day will be your last.

This might be near it, this very day. As we turn back to 2 Peter 2, let me assure you that if you die without Jesus Christ, you die with no further hope beyond the grave than what we have just seen portrayed in scripture. This is the judgment side of our God and he must be true to his word.

He will keep it precisely as he has stated. Now let me talk now about the rescuing of the righteous. Remember we saw in Lamentations that God is a God of faithfulness and God of compassion? Will you observe back in verse 5 and then on into verse 6 and 7 how he preserves Noah and he protects Lot? In the midst of these unbelieving settings, he slips his hand into the ranks of humanity and out of compassion. He protects those who are his own. Verse 5, while he did not spare the ancient world, he preserved Noah, a preacher of righteousness with seven others. It's a familiar story to Christians. When the flood came, Noah and the seven of his family were locked inside.

God shut the door and preserved them from the judgment that came on the world. There's another scene. It's the scene of Sodom and Gomorrah, verse 6. And 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 thereafter, and if he rescued Lot, oppressed by the sensual conduct of unprincipled men, for by what he saw and heard, that righteous man, while living among them, felt his righteous soul tormented day after day with their lawless deeds, then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from temptation. This is a great passage of scripture that tells us of Lot's rescue. One time when you have an extra moment, take the time to read Genesis 19.

You'll never forget the scene. In fact, if you go all the way back to Genesis 13, you will find Lot, as he is portrayed, as a nephew of Uncle Abraham. And Lot is given the choice of where he would wish to live, and he looks over the plain of Shinar, and he decides that he will live in the valley cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. And he moves there.

He moves his family there. The story of Sodom is notorious. It was there that there was rampant homosexuality. It was there the Sodomites met and engaged in their heinous acts against the name of the living God, and it is there of all places Lot chooses to rear his family.

It's like living in a moral cesspool, and Lot began to smell like it and think like it, and he began even to act like them, though he is described in chapter 2 of 2 Peter as righteous. He no longer blushed. He was no longer shocked. I came across a wonderful statement from a British writer, James Moffat, in my study. Moffat says, Our great security against sin lies in being shocked at it.

Wonderful statement. It still shocks you, doesn't it? Still at times makes you blush, doesn't it? On occasion, you still have to close your eyes, don't you?

Or shut your ears. You're still that pure, aren't you? You see, Lot had lost his sensitivity, and even when God sent an angel of deliverance and warned Lot that he had to get out of town and get his family out, you know his sons-in-laws scoffed at him. They thought he was jesting. They never heard their father-in-law speak with such seriousness about spiritual things. They weren't about to leave. And I read in Genesis 19 16 that Lot hesitated.

There's a lot to say about that. So the angel seized his hand and the hand of his wife and the hands of his daughters, and the scripture says, For the compassion of the Lord was upon him, and they brought him out and put him outside the city. Did you get the word? Compassion. The word means to spare, to have compassion on another. That's what Peter is saying in verse 9. The Lord knows how to rescue the godly from scenes like that. And I can say to you, you can rest assured as a child of God, he knows how to rescue you from scenes like that. You might be a little shaky in your faith, and you might live under the false impression that somehow God in his judging of this earth, and one wonders how much longer it will be before he does, that God might overlook you as a righteous child of his, and as he sweeps many into eternity, he will do the same with you.

No, you can tell from this passage that if he can preserve Noah, verse 5, and if he can rescue Lot, verse 7, verse 9 assures you he knows how to rescue you as well. But the secret is that you are rightly related to Jesus Christ. That's the secret.

That you know absolutely beyond the shadow of a doubt that your life is firmly resting in the finished work of Christ on the cross. Let me give you two facts to remember. I've said a whole lot of things this evening that might make you wonder about even more.

I wish we had more time. Two facts that are extremely basic, that are extremely basic, but they will give you peace or they will keep you under such duress, you'll have to do something about it. First is this. God's compassion will result in the rescue of all believers. God's compassion will result in the rescue of all believers. No way will he forget one of his children, not even those who are carnal, not even those of us who have a faithless track record.

That's all of us, isn't it? He isn't looking for perfection when he sends his final angel. He's looking for forgiven hearts. He's looking for people who have found their refuge in Christ's death on their behalf.

Here's the second and it's tough news to tell you, but I must. God's judgment will result in the punishment of all unbelievers. There is no way that one soul who dies without Christ will miss the hereafter.

No way. And God's judgment which is as faithful as his compassion, his judgment will result in the punishment of all unbelievers. I read something beautiful years ago.

Never forget it. The Christian's judgment is behind him. The non-Christian's judgment is ahead of him. You and I as Christians will not go to heaven because we have been perfect specimens of humanity. No, it's because the judgment that Christ bore on our behalf at the cross became the sufficient payment for sin and we, linked with Christ, identify with that judgment and our judgment is past.

The penalty has been paid. The life hereafter is secure. If I am in Christ, I am as safe as Christ. But without that, as a non-Christian, I face the judgment we just read in Revelation as well as in the Gospel of Luke. The Christian's judgment is behind him. The non-Christian's judgment is ahead of him.

I want to put it this way as I close. I am not envious of any one of you. There is not a person on earth that I'm envious of. But I think you'll understand what I mean when I say I am jealous for all of you. I'm jealous with a godly jealousy. I'm jealous that you not take lightly the things you just heard. I'm jealous that you realize that your last breath will end it all as far as opportunity is concerned to deal with the claims of Jesus Christ.

I'm jealous especially for this flock that we are in Christ and our security is in the cross that no one thinks because I attend a church that's exciting and growing and full of vitality and youth and a great future that somehow it will sort of wash over me and I will just sort of gather up the goodness of the other people and God will smile on my faithful attendance or my sincerity. You personally must come to Christ on your own. You personally must change your mind concerning the Lord Jesus and give him your life.

You personally. Let's bow our heads together. If you are a Christian, I'd like for you to pray. Pray for those who do not know the Lord Jesus. For those who face the kind of awesome future we've just seen in scripture. For those who must answer to God if they die in their present condition for their lost estate. Pray that this very moment they will give their lives to Christ.

Now let me speak to you who are without Christ. God so loved you that he gave his one and only son that if you believe in him, you will never perish, never perish, but have everlasting life. I offer you at this moment a gift that comes to you freely. It costs Christ his life, but it comes to you now freely and I invite you to take it. To act by faith on the truth of the good news of Christ.

Once you do that, this very moment give him your heart, give him your life. Our Father, I thank you for your spirits working and I thank you that you use the truth of your word to make issues clear, to cut through the fog of popular false teaching and to bring us face to face with the reality of heaven and hell, of belief and unbelief, of righteousness and unrighteousness. Thank you for Jesus Christ who loved us and in loving us gave himself for us. At this moment I pray for those who need to make this decision that it will be made soon before it is everlastingly too late. And I pray this by faith in the power and the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Amen. Insight for Living provides a free daily devotional that comes directly to your inbox. This is one of our most popular resources. Readers tell us how much they enjoy spending a few minutes every day refreshing their soul with devotional thoughts from Chuck. To sign up for the free daily devotional, go to insight.org slash devo and then let me give a big thank you to all of those who generously support Insight for Living.

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I'm Bill Meyer, inviting you to join us next time when Chuck Swindoll continues our study called Conquering Through Conflict on Insight for Living. The preceding message, The God of Wrath and Rescue, was copyrighted in 1989, 1990, 2011, and 2023. And the sound recording was copyrighted in 2023 by Charles R. Swindoll, Inc. All rights are reserved worldwide. Duplication of copyrighted material for commercial use is strictly prohibited.