Which Is Worse? What Is Best?, Part 1

Today on Insight for Living from Bible teacher Chuck Swindoll. Grace is the freedom to obey Christ. It is never the freedom to do what you well please. It is freeing us from slavery to sin so that we are now able to obey Christ in all of the joy and beauty and delights He provides. Today we're looking at a series called Conquering Through Conflict. We're looking at 2 Peter chapter 2, and Chuck titled this portion of our study, Which is Worse?

What is Best? As I observe our 21st century world, I can't help but notice that most people have an avid interest in the supernatural. It seems that every blockbuster movie or hit television program has a magical or even mystical element to it. When I walk into bookstores, I see row after row of hardback volumes, sometimes entire sections, devoted to things like astrology, the New Age movement, angels, supernatural subjects, UFOs, and oddly even vampires. But what concerns me most is that these so-called sources for the supernatural often sit side by side with literature on world religions. That would include Christian books, devotionals, even Bibles. It's as if they're all possible options for connecting with the spiritual realm. Truth be told, we Christians need reassurance.

There's nothing wrong with that. With so many competing sources of truth screaming in our ears, we need recurring reminders that the Bible is more than the mere words of men and women, but what it is, the Word of God. In a world that has lost its way, in a culture shot through with spiritual confusion and erosion, how essential is a sure word from the Lord?

Without it, you and I would never know if we were on the right path. In our study of the letter of 2 Peter, the apostle has warned his readers to be discerning about false teachers. Oh, they look like the real article, but they are fake to the core. At the end of Peter's second chapter, he reveals the true nature of these frauds. Peter also reminds us how we can know the ultimate source of truth found in the Holy Scriptures. I'm reading today from 2 Peter 2, verse 20 through 3, verse 2. This is now, beloved, the second letter I'm writing to you in which I am stirring up your sincere mind by way of reminder, that you should remember the words spoken beforehand, by the holy prophets, and the commandment of the Lord and Savior, spoken by your apostles. You're listening to Insight for Living. To dig deeper into the Bible with Chuck Swindoll, be sure to download his Searching the Scriptures studies by going to insight.org slash studies. And now here's the message that Chuck titled, Which is Worse?

What is Best? If you have a Bible handy, locate 2 Peter chapter 2, where we have been for some time in our study of this wonderful small letter, small but powerful. We are sort of wrapping up the second chapter and we're moving into the first two verses of chapter 3. Interesting thing about exposition, you can't pick and choose, you take what's given you, and that seems to be the way God planned it. Just as we don't go to a book and read a chapter here and a line there and a page here and then toward the end another page, we start at the beginning, we work our way through it.

And that's the way it is in these letters of the New Testament and great gospel stories, as well as the wonderful narratives and prophecies of the Old Testament. Most of us could quote the words of Alfred Lord Tennyson, "'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all." Now that may be true for romance and love, but that is not true of knowledge and truth. It is not better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. When it comes to knowledge and truth, let's put it this way, it is not better to have known and apostatized than never to have known at all.

Did you know that? In other words, ignorance is better than apostasy. Never to have known the truth is better than those who have known it intellectually and apostatized and defected from it. That seems to be what these last three verses of chapter two and the first two verses of chapter three are all about.

A little word about the context because I want to talk first about which is worse. And I find that question answered in these last three verses, but let me give you a little background. The second chapter of 2 Peter is focusing on false teachers, people who traffic in religious things, but they are counterfeit. They look real, but they are false. They look like they have substance, but they're empty. They look free, but they are enslaved.

They sound like they're offering hope, but they're leading you to despair. Verse one of chapter two, false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will also be false teachers among you. And what will they do? They will secretly introduce destructive heresies. Note the word secretively.

It will not be overt. They will certainly not carry placards saying, warning, I present false teaching. No, it's secretly introducing heresies that are destructive.

Notice also that they secretly deny the master who bought them. And don't miss, especially in this study, that that action will bring swift destruction upon them. And then, with that, Peter launches into the most severe expose of counterfeit teachers you will find in all of his writings, certainly, and perhaps in all of the New Testament.

And we have taken our time to work our way through this. Such false teachers will face the consequences of their actions, their lies, and their deception. Drop down to verse 20. For if, after they, still referring to the false teachers, if after they have escaped the defilements of the world by the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and are overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first.

What does this mean? Well, false teachers have knowledge. In fact, you may be surprised to know they have knowledge about the Savior Jesus Christ.

And many of them can debate you under the table with facts, figures, statistics, and truth. They know intellectually about Jesus Christ. They use his words. They use his name.

They carry his book. They declare what he taught. But their knowledge is an academic knowledge. It isn't a saving knowledge.

True, the knowledge has its benefits. It helps them escape the defilements, or at least some of the defilements of the world. I think this word defilement is worth a bit of analysis. We have in our area of Los Angeles a great deal of smug, which is a kind of defilement, pollution, external pollution.

That is a good rendering of miasma, which is the word translated here, defilements. Because of even academic knowledge, it has helped them to escape some of the extreme defilements externally that the world would bring. However, their teaching, which is grace to an extreme, we've looked at that, their teaching winds up bringing a snare to them, and their last state becomes worse for them than the first. Remember this, whenever a person goes overboard in any area of teaching, it comes back to entangle that person. How often we have sighed hearing again of a pastor who begins to teach grace, and teaches it to such an extreme that he begins to live loosely. And he hides behind the teaching of grace, I call it grace gone to seed, he hides behind such extremities or extreme teachings of liberty and unrestrained grace that before long he falls into the very trap that grace was designed to preserve him from. Grace is the freedom to obey Christ.

It is never the freedom to do what you well please. It is freeing us from slavery to sin so that we are now able to obey Christ in all of the joy and beauty and delights he provides. Before grace captured us, we were enslaved to sin. Once grace came, we were freed now to obey. No longer to be held captive. Notice how he says it, the last state has become worse than the first.

They go from bad to worse. That brings up a question, a question in anyone's mind. Is it better to have at least had knowledge of Christ and to have mouthed his teachings than not to know them at all?

You may be surprised, the answer is no. Verse 21 says that, it would be better for them not to have known the way of righteousness than having known it to turn away from it, from the holy commandment delivered to them. Ignorance, I repeat, is better than defection.

Ignorance is better than apostatizing. Then Peter uses a couple of examples that are extremely vivid. He goes to the animal world and he chooses the dog and the hog. It isn't pleasant, it is disgusting, what verse 22 says, but it is nevertheless true. It has happened to them, the false teachers, who revert back to false living. It has happened to them, according to the true proverb, a dog returns to its own vomit and a sow after washing returns to wallowing in the mire.

I won't spend too long on this because you can take only so much of these word pictures. But the dog is a good example. In our day, a dog is a pampered pet. I have seen people treat dogs better than they would their neighbors. Some talk to dogs as though they are human. They give them wonderful care, they feed them well, they groom them carefully, they of course give them the best of care, and yet in actuality, sorry if this is offensive to you, a dog is a dog.

Sounds like something Yogi Berra would say, doesn't it? A dog has a dog's nature. It conducts itself as a dog and one of its disgusting habits is to eat its own vomit. You can clean up a dog and it still gets dirty.

You can wash it and shampoo its hair. It still goes to places where it wishes to go and if it gets sick and throws up, it will come back to it and eat it because the dog's nature is to do that. The hog is even worse. Pigs like slop. They live in places that are disgusting. They prefer the mire, the pig pen.

It stinks. It is unclean. That's the way it is to us because we are not pigs. If we were pigs, it wouldn't be disgusting. But whatever you may do to a pig, take it in, enjoy it, clean it up, pin a little pink ribbon on its ear, polish its hoofs. Do pigs have hoofs? Yes.

Polish its little hoofs and let it go and it will make a beeline for the pig pen because the pig's nature is to go back to the mire. So it is with false teachers. They may dress up. They may play the part.

They may even look and sound the part, but the fact is they have the nature of an unbeliever. Extremely important for us to remember, the externals do not tell the truth about the internals and the dog and the hog illustrate both. Question is why is it worse?

And I would ask that if I were you. Why is ignorance better than apostasy? Why does he say it would be better for them not to have known the way of truth than to have known it and turned away from it? I've come up with three reasons.

I've found these nowhere else. It occurred to me while thinking about these answers to that question, these things, it seems to me, make sense. First, because the one who is ignorant can be taught and one to the Lord, but the one who knows is less teachable and not as open.

If you question that, let me ask you a question. Ever tried to unlearn something that was false? You had been taught it, you had believed it, and with all your heart you had embraced it only to discover later on in life that's wrong. And now you're faced with the hard task of unlearning false teaching.

It is all you can do to break thinking like that. It would have been better for you not to have known at all that information than to have learned it and then have to turn away from it. Now, you have no excess baggage to get rid of if you're ignorant. You are not set in your ways, your ways of thinking and living if you're ignorant.

That's the first thing I can think of. Second is this, the ignorant are not as influential as the learned. Those who are teachers influence other people in false teaching.

Those who are ignorant do not have a following. It's better not to have known, not to have hypocritically impacted others' lives than to have done all of the above. Third, in the final judgment, I am convinced there will be less punishment for the ignorant than for the learned who apostatized.

Now, some of you are looking at me like you can't really mean that, and I really do. Let me show you from Luke chapter 12, the end of a parable, why I say that. Luke chapter 12, and this is a tough point for some. I know many evangelicals have a position regarding eternal punishment that is this. Regardless of the reason, if a person goes to hell, all people are punished the same.

It is burning in the lake of fire forever and ever. It is as hot and it is painful and it is horrible for the person who never heard and died as it is for the one who heard repeatedly, over and over, and rejected it. Or in this case, who became a false teacher, apostatized. Let me show you from Luke 12, 47. It's been in the slave master context of this parable, and he wraps it up by saying, as our Lord does, and that slave who knew his master's will and did not get ready or act in accord with his will shall receive many lashes. But the one who did not know it, this is ignorance, he didn't even know the master's will, and committed deeds worthy of a flogging will receive but few. And from everyone who has been given, much shall much be required.

And to whom they entrusted much of him, they will ask all the more. Now I don't know what you do with that parable, at least the conclusion of that parable, but I find there degrees of punishment. Yes, I believe all lost will spend eternity without God, yes. However, I can't help but reserve the, to have the same reservations that our Lord seems to suggest here. For the one who does not know, I do not believe there will be to that person the same degree and measure of judgment as will fall upon the person who, let's say lives in these United States, who hears over television and radio and thousands of pulpits across our land, books across the states, as many as you may wish will hear the gospel again and again and again and will not receive it. That is the one who will receive, in the words of Jesus, many lashes, but the one who has not known will receive few. Back to 2 Peter chapter 3. Now you can kind of chew on those things. That's the kind of stuff you can think about when you have snack after Sunday service, just kind of think, you know, I believe in degrees of punishment.

That's the kind of stuff you mess around with in seminary, you know. It won't make a lot of difference in your life, but you can kind of turn it over in your mind. Now, in verse 1 and verse 2 of 2 Peter 3, Peter turns to the reason he wrote the book, and this answers the question, what is best? We looked at which is worse. It is worse to have known and rejected than not to have known at all.

Here, what is best? Now why did Peter write the letter? This is now, beloved, the second letter I am writing to you, in which I am stirring up your sincere mind by way of reminder.

Ready for this? He wrote them this letter to stimulate wholesome thinking. He wrote to those people who had sincere minds, pure and free from deception.

He must have loved to write that. Having written an entire chapter on the downside of life, those false teachers, he looked at his readership and he said, my beloved, I write to you stirring up your pure minds, sincere minds. Isn't it wonderful to be in a ministry where you are affirmed rather than skinned alive? If you have ever been in a ministry where you are beaten as sheep, you know what it feels like to leave with your tail between your legs, bleeding and broken and down.

I think Peter would have been one who ministered a message of affirmation. He tells his readers, you have sincere minds. You know, we tend to live on the standard of those who are the people we respect. And if our teachers are constantly putting us down, we begin to live down lives.

If our teachers believe in us and affirm us and encourage us, we want to reach higher and do better. I'm caught up on this word sincere, which is otherwise rendered pure minds. Years ago, let me give you a little background. Unscrupulous potters would take their wares to the street and display their jugs and vases there in the streets. And wise buyers would come and would take that piece of pottery and hold it up to the sun and turn it as they look and hoping not to find cracks that unscrupulous potters would have covered with wax. And once they, it was called sun judging, sun judging, they would hold up this piece of pottery to the sun and they would look for the cracks that the bright light of the sun would reveal.

It would cut right through the wax. I write to you whom I could lift up before the sun and find there is no wax, no hidden cracks, no deception. You are pieces of pottery that the Lord is working on and you have pure minds.

You are sincere to the core. You are listening to Insight for Living. Chuck Swindoll is teaching from 1 Peter chapter 2.

And there's still much more to discover in Peter's dynamic letter, so we urge you to keep listening. If you'd like to learn more about this ministry, visit us online at insightworld.org. In addition to Chuck's teaching, I want to draw your attention to a brand new book from a previous edition of Insight for Living. In addition to Chuck's teaching, I want to draw your attention to a brand new book from a preacher and colleague that Chuck deeply respects. His name is Jonathan Murphy. If you've watched the online church services at Stonebriar Community Church where Chuck serves as senior pastor, you've likely seen Jonathan preach.

He's a regular guest speaker when Chuck is away. Jonathan wrote an enriching book called Authentic Influencer, The Barnabas Way of Shaping Lives for Jesus. This wonderful book is for anyone who's serious about being a godly encourager in the lives of others. You can purchase a copy by going to insight.org slash store or ask for the book when you call us.

If you're listening in the United States, call 800-772-8888. Again, this brand new book from Jonathan Murphy is called Authentic Influencer, The Barnabas Way of Shaping Lives for Jesus. Well, we are deeply grateful for those who've stepped forward during this season to support Insight for Living. You might have no idea how your gift truly makes an impact, but we sure do. Every day we hear from grateful listeners at all points around the globe, and they tell us how God is using Insight for Living to stimulate their love for God and their walk with Him. Because of your support, Chuck's teaching is now translated into eight languages, helping others grasp the enormity of God's love for them. So thank you for joining us in an all-out effort to make disciples of Jesus Christ in all 195 countries of the world. To give a donation right now, go to insight.org. You can also call us. If you're listening in the United States, call 800-772-8888, or again, go to insight.org. . I'm Bill Meyer, inviting you to join us when Chuck continues his series from 2 Peter, next time on Insight for Living. The preceding message, Which is Worse, What is Best, was copyrighted in 1989, 1990, and 2011, and the sound recording was copyrighted in 2011 by Charles R. Swindoll, Inc. All rights are reserved worldwide. Duplication of copyrighted material for commercial use