II Peter 2:4-10

We will stop there for a minute. So we read here that our holy God cannot tolerate sin. He is a righteous judge. Psalm 11:7 and 146:8 declare, "For the Lord is righteous, He loves righteousness"; "The Lord loves the righteous." We could add Psalm 5:12, "For you, O Lord, will bless the righteous." or Psalm 34:15 (we actually see this repeated in I Peter 3), "The eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and His ears are open to their cry."

In II Peter 2:5, God saved only Noah, the preacher of righteousness, and his family from the Flood. And we see the Greek noun here, it is Strong's 1343. It is a bit of a doozy. dikaiosuné, translated righteousness all 92 times in the New King James. It is from an underlying adjective that means righteous. It is the underlying adjective version is Strong's 1342. dikaios, meaning righteous, upright, just, innocent, thoughtless, and guiltless. And we see these same words used in Revelation 15:3; 16:5 and 7; and 19:2 to describe our very great God: "Just and true are Your ways"; "You are righteous, O Lord. . . . True and righteous are Your judgments"; "For true and righteous are His judgments" those scriptures read.

Now, despite some of the most disturbing scriptures in Genesis 19, we read here in II Peter 2:7 that God delivered righteous Lot, who was oppressed by the filthy conduct of the wicked. And again, we see the underlying Greek adjective form for righteous here, Strong's 1342 dikaios is used twice. It is used twice to describe Lot. The same word in Revelation describing God as righteous is used to describe Lot. I found that troublesome at first, I have got to tell you.

Lot was actually oppressed and afflicted with the evil that surrounded him we read here. He was a righteous man, verse 8 tells us, dwelling among the evil. He was actually tormented daily by their lawless deeds, and the use of the word torment here should bring a significant description on Lot's pain. It is the same word we see in Revelation 9:5 and 14:10. I will read those. Same word here for torment.

In this section on God's righteous judgment, we learn only the righteous Judge knows how to deliver His people from sin. It is not something we can do for each other. God will bring His righteous judgment and punishment on the unjust in His due time, and His judgment will be especially hard, brethren, on any that despise or reject or despise in any way, authority. "No pride, no problem." Judgment is coming on anyone that speaks evil of those in charge.

II Peter 2:9-11

These two passages speak of false teachers, human teachers, and apostates, and both of these apostles describe them as very rash and taking rights and liberties that do not belong to them. That is, he says specifically "they despise authority." As a matter of fact, they are very full of pride and they want to be the authority. But they despise others who are a legitimate authority. So, what he says here, especially Peter says that they do not defer or respect those who are more powerful or who rightly hold a higher office or a higher position.

By the way, just as an off-handed thing, these dignitaries that it talks about, "they speak evil of dignitaries," is the word doxa in Greek, and it means "glorious ones." So they are people or beings who command recognition, respect, or honor. A term that we have used in recent times, and I mean the last few centuries, is by calling someone who is in a high office, your excellency. So the dignitaries are an excellency in terms of position or power.

Now the example that these two give, Peter and Jude, is of angels, and most specifically in Jude, the archangel Michael, who though he is powerful in his own right, he seems to be right at the top of angelic leadership, but he did not speak evil of even the Devil when they contended over the body of Moses, as it says, but he treated Satan with proper respect, deferring to the Lord to rebuke him. Righteous angels are humble. They do not go outside of their sphere of authority at all. And they treat those of high authority with great honor.

This section also verifies that angels are greater in power and might than humans. These two passages also cover things like their great intelligence and knowledge and understanding. Although in I Peter 1, verse 12,