Escaping the Corruption of Lust

We're going to be in Second Peter this morning. But before we get there, I wanted to mention an article that I came across a couple of weeks ago, I think it was on christianpost.com if I remember right. This is the title, Christians Battling Porn Amid COVID-19 Pandemic Need More Than Jesus, Josh McDowell says. And in that article, I just, I'm not going to read the whole article, but I just pulled a few quotes of his out of there. These are some of the things he says. When it comes to porn and most things in your life, you need more than Jesus. And oh, that irritates some Christians because they don't know the Bible. Don't hesitate to get professional help. He's referring to psychologists, of course. You need a professional person to walk you through this. That's what Josh McDowell says. Well, I'll tell you, I majored in psychology when I was in secular school. And, and I went to psychologists and I didn't get any help. I just didn't. So I'm not disposed to turn to the world's wisdom when I'm looking for help. I would prefer to go to someone like Peter. And, you know, he writes this epistle, the second epistle, perhaps just days. I mean, he says it in chapter one, verse 14, knowing that the laying aside of my earthly dwelling is imminent as also our Lord Jesus Christ has made clear to me. Wow. This man knows he's about to go to the cross, a Roman cross. So this is his last will and testament here, second Peter. This is a man who walked with Jesus 24 seven for three years plus. He saw Jesus cleanse lepers, heal the sick and drive demons out of people. He saw Jesus bring three people back to life. He saw him feed 5,000 people one time and 4,000 people another time with just a basket full of fish and bread. He saw Jesus transfigured into his glorious body. He saw Jesus resurrected after he had been crucified and he was baptized in the spirit on the day of Pentecost. And something so powerful happened in him that he went out and preached to Jerusalem and 3,000 people got radically, powerfully saved. He was so full of the Holy Spirit that people would just line up because if his shadow just touched them, went across them, they would be healed. All that happened within four years and then another 34 years of walking that out through many dangers, toils and snares. And so he's at the very end of his life here. And this is what he's got to share is what is in this second epistle and what stands out to me mostly about both of his epistles is what a rich knowledge of God he has, just like Nate just shared, a rich knowledge of God. Now he's been there for almost 2,000 years, right? And just, I love the way you said that, Nate. Just going ever, ever, ever into God to know him and yet being fully satisfied, but still hungering for more and never plumbing the depths completely of who this mighty God is and what we see here in the first chapter, if he would have, well, how do I say it? If he would have been a little more honest, can I say it that way? Or a little less humble, what he would have said is, this is my testimony right here. This is my testimony. This is what the Lord has done in me. So let's read these. I'm going to just read the first 11 verses here in 2 Peter 1. Simon Peter, a bondservant and apostle of Jesus Christ. To those who have received, there's that word I touched on last time, right? To those who have received a faith of the same kind as ours. Well, I like King James better there. A like precious faith. Wow. That's such a, just a rich way of saying it. By the righteousness of our God and savior, Jesus Christ, grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord, seeing that his divine power is granted to us, everything pertaining to life and godliness through the true knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and excellence for by these, he has granted to us his precious and magnificent promises. Let me just stop there for a second. That word magnificent in the new American standard, the new King James, or well, yeah, at least King James calls it exceedingly great promises. And that is actually more close to the literal meaning of the word because the word is megathesis and it's, it's it's a derivative of the word mega, mega in the Greek means great, but megathesis is a superlative word. It's a superlative of an adjective. So it's like great, but not just great, but super great. That's really what it literally means. Super great. And so magnificent, you know, the new American standard says magnificent. There's nothing wrong with it. It is true. They are magnificent promises. They're so magnificent. Why aren't we more excited about them? Because we have a thick layer of unbelief over us in this nation. I got one brother from Africa and I bet over in Africa, from what I hear, there isn't that thickness of unbelief that there's just more of a reality of God over there, but anyway, magnificent promises so that by them, you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust. Now, for this very reason, also applying all diligence in your faith, supply moral excellence and in your moral excellence, knowledge, and in your knowledge, self-control, and in your self-control, perseverance, and in your perseverance, godliness, and in your godliness, brotherly kindness, and in your brotherly kindness, love, for if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they render you neither useless nor unfruitful in the true knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For he who lacks these qualities is blind or short-sighted, having forgotten his purification from his former sins. Therefore, brethren, be all the more diligent to make certain about his calling and choosing you, for as long as you practice these things, you will never stumble, for in this way, the entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, will be abundantly supplied to you. Wow. I mean, if Peter were in a modern day literature class, he would flunk because that is very poor writing, but this is the word of God, and it is packed full, and God wants it this way because that is a minefield right there. You could spend the rest of your life digging deep, powerful truths out of that. It's not full of fluff like modern day books are. It's just pure truth and powerful truth at that. All right, so what we have here in these 11 verses is a conditional promise, and you know, there's conditional promises all throughout scripture. Actually, every promise in scripture, there's got to be hundreds of them at least, every one of them has a condition attached to them. If it's not explicitly stated, it's implied. There is a condition attached to every promise. And, but this one is a complex conditional promise. I'm going to put it to you that way, a complex conditional promise. So here it is. I'm going to just say it so you know what we're talking about here. If, I talked about the if-then principle in sexual idolatry, did I? Is that still in the book? I can't, these guys edit my stuff, you know, and I don't know what's left after they're done with it. So, if-then principle. If you will do your utmost to become intimately involved with God. If you will do your utmost to break away from the polluting atmosphere of this world, if you will do your utmost to add these seven virtues to your faith, then God will guarantee, through his mega promises, his super mega promises, that you will never stumble or fall away, that you will be provided with everything you need to live an abundant life, that you will share in the substance of God's character, that you will see clearly into the spiritual and eternal realm, that you will have a useful and fruit-filled life, that you will be afforded an abundant entrance into the eternal kingdom. Anybody in here like to appropriate the promises that are laid out here? So I'm going to go through all this here. I'm going to go through these three conditions, and then I'm going to go through these six promises. Okay. So number one, if you will do your utmost to become intimately involved with the Lord, and you see that in verses two, three, and eight, and I'm restating it, you know, from what it says, but it's talking about coming into and possessing a knowledge of Jesus Christ. And the word knowledge here, first of all, okay, knowledge, the typical word for knowledge in the Greek is gnosis, but there's another word that has a prefix to it, it's epinosus, and epinosus means a full, abounding knowledge. So you could put epi on the front of any Greek, you know, noun, and it just like fills it out. So what he's talking about here isn't just a, okay, knowing about the Lord. He's talking about a full knowledge, the kind of knowledge that sinks deeply into your heart and transforms your life. Five times in this short book, Peter talks about the importance of knowing God. 16 times the word knowledge is in this book, these three little chapters. So this is a major theme in second Peter, but this is something that's spoken of throughout scripture. I mean, Solomon talked about the knowledge of God being the beginning of understanding and Jesus equated it with eternal life. Paul said, I count all things to be lost in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ, but he also talked about those who claim to know God, but the way they actually live their lives was a denial to that claim, you know, thinking about our problems. Let me tell you something. You can spend the rest of your life going to a psychologist once a week and sitting there and he'll do nothing but talk all about you. Wow. Well, how awesome would that be? Right? I mean, for 50 minutes every week, you get to just tell him all about your dreams, your struggles, your feelings, and how this person hurts you and that person hurts you all, you know, just get it all out there, vent it all. And wow. And then leave your $125 at the desk right on your way out. And you know where that will take you nowhere. In fact, worse than nowhere, you will just find yourself going deeper and deeper into the quagmire of self, the very opposite direction where you need to go. No, you don't need to know more about you. You're a mess. What you need to know more about is that glorious and awesome and tremendous God. That's what you need to know. And you need to know it fully. You need to know it in your heart. It needs to be experientially known, not just known from a book or from reading some Bible studies or something. You've got to know the Lord. And you develop that kind of intimacy by seeking his face, by studying all about his character in scripture, as we just heard, and by interacting with him in prayer, that's how you get to know him. That's how you come into this kind of intimate relationship with the Lord. And the promise here is if you will pursue the Lord like that with all your heart, with all diligence, the Lord will absolutely definitely meet you halfway and bring with him a tremendous supply of blessings into that relationship. That'd be all right, wouldn't it? All right. Number two, the second condition, if you will do your utmost to break away from the polluting atmosphere of this world. You see that in verse four. And the Greek term here for pollution or corruption, I mean, is phethora. And phethora is a word that, excuse me, we have, okay, this is one of those situations where the Greek doesn't line up exactly with the English, but the Greek means the same thing. It means corruption or destruction. And we have two different words, but it's actually the one word in the Greek that describes both of those phenomenons. Now I'm going to be a little bit graphic here. I'm asking you all to forgive me, anyone with a sensitive nature. Let me just tell you what I'm talking about. Phethora is what happens to a corpse. I've, I listen to audio books and I like to listen to different kinds of subjects because I like to learn. I like to learn about stuff. And so I've listened to a couple of books on forensic pathology and it's really interesting to me what happens to a person's body when he dies. And one of the books is called No Stone Unturned. And it's about this group of people that they made it their whole thing. They're all forensic pathologists and their specialty is to find people that have been murdered and their bodies have been buried or whatever. Really exciting subject. And so they talked a lot about that. And what happens in the body is that when oxygen quits being pumped through the system, okay, immediately your cells die. The cell, all your cells in your body just die without that oxygen intake. And as soon as the cell dies, it starts breaking down. And there's a process that happens with a corpse over time. You know, I mean, I don't want to get into all the detail, but there's rigor mortis and, and, and stuff like that. And this is the tough part to, but I got to say it. Okay. So close your ears if you're sensitive. But after a period of time, the body starts to liquefy. It's a putrefaction. Is that the right way to say that? Is it? TJ is vigorously nodding his head. Since he's an ex-cop, we know that he knows about these things. You know, and as part of that, there's actually flies. There's two, from what I understand, there's two kinds of flies and I can't remember their names, but they are so super sensitized to the odor of this death that they can, from a mile away, if I remember right, they can smell it and they find that corpse and they go to it and they lay their eggs in it. And their eggs hatch. Close your ears again. This gets really bad. And the maggots, that's what the eggs are. The maggots come alive and they eat that flesh and that's how they survive. That, I'm sorry, but I had to tell it like it is. Okay. Praise God for Pastor Steve will tell us the truth. That is a picture of the spiritual process that sets into a human being when he starts giving over to lust. That's what the Lord sees. You want to know why the Lord confronts you about lust, why he warns you and admonishes you about lust. You don't think it's a big deal, but the Lord does, because this is what he's watching occurring in your soul. Now, fathorid is the word that the Greeks used to describe the corruption, you know, the corruption, destruction. Are you getting how the two work together now? The corpse is being destroyed by these processes. This corrupting process that's going on. And that's what happens in a soul is what Peter's talking about. But there's also another one, another term. He used it in chapter two when he had horrible chat. Well, no, no chapter of the Bible is horrible, but the subject is. False teachers of the end times. And he's talking about how they are so overwhelmed and overcome and given over to lust and corruption. And so when it's talking about multiple people, it's the term miasmos. That's a Greek term, miasmos. And that's another one of those words that has been transliterated into Greek from Greek into English, and it's the word miasma and miasma, you know, back in the old English days, a few hundred years ago, when there'd be this mist coming up off of a bog in England or something. And they would say, they would call it a miasma. And they believed that, you know, there was dead bodies in there. And that mist that was coming up was noxious fumes that would so disorient you and confuse you that you would never find your way out, and it would be poisoning you at the same time. Now, that's all, you know, old wives tales, but it is true spiritually. And that's the word that Peter used to describe aggregate corruption, corruption that's occurring in a group of people. Now, when I was in Bible school, 300 years ago, Kathy and I, we used to hang out with this couple that was also in school with me, and they were from San Francisco. And one weekend, we got the bright idea to drive to San Francisco to, you know, because we were in Sacramento, and to drive to San Francisco, do some sightseeing or whatever. And I remember, well, I'll never forget it. We were just coming over the hill right before you get to the Bay Bridge, and you can see the city, you know. And it was one of those things where I've had this happen a number of times down through the years in different ways. It's not exactly a vision, but it's what I would call a sight. And I got a sight when I looked at the city, the skyline of the city there, San Francisco, it was like there was a black cloud over it. And at the time, I just thought of it in terms of, and I said to them immediately, you know, they didn't see it. They were all carnal, and I'm a spiritual man. But I said, man, I can see the demonic realm, this demonic covering over that city. Well, I think it was this thing that Peter's talking about, the corruption, the aggregate corruption of a million people, given over to the worst kind of licentiousness and debauchery imaginable in that city. And the Lord just for an instant gave me a sight into the spiritual realm of what he sees. So what Peter is saying, if you'll do your utmost to break away from that corrupting atmosphere, that's part of the promise. I mean, that's one of the conditions to what he's going to promise us. All right, and the third thing is this. If you will do your utmost to add these seven virtues to your faith, and these virtues found in verses five through seven, faith is the foundation, OK? That is the foundation. Nothing happens until you have true, saving faith, not the dead faith like Nate mentioned. Because there's some, I could just sit down and cry thinking about the multitudes of professing Christians that don't really have real faith. They have religion, but they don't have real faith. But when you have real faith, it creates a foundation. And on that foundation, the Lord begins to do a work in your soul. He begins to transform you, to change you into something different. And I've said, you know, I have a little formula that I've said here a few times over the years. We initiate and God empowers. We initiate and God empowers. Now, you could say, well, God put it in you to initiate. OK, fine, I'm not going to debate that point, whatever. But you have a choice. You have a free will. You can decide, OK? You must be able to, because Peter is saying right here, applying all diligence. That's for you to decide to do. God's not going to make you apply diligence. The choice is yours. You can have as much of God as you want. What a tremendous system God laid down for us in Christianity. He doesn't just arbitrarily pick out a few. OK, you're going to be spiritual giants and you're going to be losers. You're not even going to heaven. You're all going to hell. No, I'm sorry, I can't buy into that. I just can't. That's not what Scripture says. But anyway, we initiate God empowers. And, you know, you look through this list here of seven attributes or whatever. Let me just go through them. We strive toward moral excellence. We do the best we can. And as we're striving, God gives us the power to live it out. You can't do it on your own, but you've got to try. I've got one Pentecostal over here who keeps nodding his head. Thank you, Josh. I appreciate that. We strive to know more about the things of God. And God gives us revelations like the one I just described to you. But it doesn't have to be just that. It can be revelations in the Word. Have you ever picked up the Bible and you read something and say, wow, I never saw that before. I've read that a thousand. Has that happened to you? That's the Lord. It doesn't happen unless you initiate. Pick up the Bible and read it, as Chuck just said. We initiate. We strive to know more about the things of God. And God opens our minds and gives us revelations. We strive to control our natural impulses. You have to try. You have to fight. You have to struggle against those carnal desires. But as you do, God will empower you to say no to ungodly desires. We do our best to endure trials, and God carries us through. We do our best to live godly lives, and he shares his holiness with us. We do our best to treat others with kindness, and God supplies his kindness. We do our best to love other people, sacrificially even, and God lives out his love through us. We initiate, God empowers. And he's saying, if you will live your life this way, meaning all three of these conditions, if you will live your life this way, then he gives the following super mega promises. And there's six of them. Let's go through them. This is the good part, right? Made it through the hard part. This is the good part. Number one, then God will guarantee that you will never stumble or fall away. Is that what it says in verse 10? Is this just like my exaggerating or anything? What's it say there in verse 10? For as long as you practice these things, you will never stumble. That word practice is describing lifestyle. It's describing the way you do life, the choices you make, the way you carry yourself Monday through Saturday. Okay, we know how godly you are on Sunday in church, but what about Monday through Saturday? If you will apply these principles to your daily life, you will not stumble or fall away. Number two, if you'll do these things, then God will guarantee that you will be provided with everything you need to live an abundant life. Verse three, I'm sorry, Josh McDowell. I may be irritated with you, but it's not because I don't know my Bible. I've spent thousands and thousands of hours studying and weeping over the scriptures. I know what the word of God says and that's where my hope lies. Not in some psychology book. Not someone who's been trained in methodology from the world, from godless men, atheists even. The founders of psychology were all atheists. No, I'm sorry. I believe what the word of God says. He has given us everything we need to live a victorious life. In this sin-filled, devil-infested world, we can live victoriously. You just heard two testimonies about it this morning. And I believe that's why the Lord prompted those stories to come forth. We can live a victorious life. We can walk with the Lord. I think, wasn't Adam here, was it last week? Two weeks ago. Adam Gardner. My mind went blank. I couldn't think of his last name. Oh, wait, man, I'm getting old. The guy is a homicide investigator living in one of the big cities of this nation. Every day, his life is filled with the results of violence and just the darkest darkness. And yet, every morning, first thing, he's up with the Lord down in his basement, spends two hours worshiping, praising God in the word of God, living victoriously. Don't tell me you can't make it. If he can make it, anyone can make it. God is extremely generous. Did you get that from that Bible study I left for you the other day? Friday night, you got it, right? Anybody read it? Sure, you read it because it says God gives, right? What if it was said God demands? It would all went in the trash can probably. It's a great study. Yeah, God gives. What a great Bible study to do. Just go through Scripture and see all that he gives, all that he offers. He's so generous. He's so magnanimous. And what does he give? He gives us life. He gives us life, everything pertaining to life and godliness, everything we need. And this word life here, this isn't the word, there's two Greek words for life. Psyche is, you know, the animation of any being, any creature, any dog, cat, human, whatever, that's psyche, that's that kind of life. This is zoe. Zoe is, you see the term eternal life, and that's, people tend to think that's all they see is eternal life. Oh yeah, eternal life, I get to go to heaven. No, yeah, eternal is the duration, but life is the quality. Zoe means a life in God. It's a spiritual life. It's a life filled with wonder of the Lord, the beauty of God. Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the zoe, the life of God. He said, I am the resurrection and the zoe, the life of God. I am the bread of zoe. He said, for the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to zoe, and there are few who find it, but many find the way to fithorah, destruction, corruption. Actually, I don't think that was fithorah in there, but it is destruction, different term. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have zoe, the life of God, and have it abundantly. I'm sorry, Mr. McDowell, that that doesn't describe your life. I'm sorry for you. Verse three, I mean, number three, then God will guarantee that you will share in the substance of his character. Verse four, so that we might become partakers of the divine nature, man. In some way that we can't comprehend, we can share. It comes from the word koine, which is where we get koinonia, you know, fellowship. It's a sharing. It's a partaking. It's participating in. This is Galatians 2.20. I have been crucified with Christ and is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. That's what it is saying, what Peter is saying to partake of the divine nature. Christ living in me. This is 2 Corinthians 4.7, but we have this treasure in earthen vessels. Yes, we are earthen vessels. We're corrupted. We are all those things, but if you have the Lord in you, if he's indwelling you, if you're full of the Holy Spirit, it's a treasure inside of you so that the surpassing greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves. There is no glory that should go to any man of God or woman of God. None of us should be glorying except in the Lord. Because we have zippo, zero, nothing in ourselves outside of the Lord. This is 1 Corinthians 3.16. Don't you know that you are a temple of God? A temple of God? You know, to me, to be born again means that the seed of the living God has been implanted in the soil of your heart, and it comes forth. When a plant is properly cared for, it's going to grow and grow and increase and maybe even multiply, but it's definitely going to bear fruit, isn't it? Studying this concept, being a partaker of the divine nature, I read what all the scholars say, and they get into these elaborate explanations and all that kind of stuff, and I've worked my way through it, and I try to get a little bit here and there out of it and stuff. But I came across something C. H. Spurgeon said, and I actually don't have exactly what he said, but I kind of wrote the gist of it down. It's just very simple, and to me, it was the best thing that described it. He said, God is love. We take on his loving attitude towards others. God is truth. We take on honesty and a love for the truth. God is good. We become increasingly good to others. God is holy. We partake of his holiness. I mean, that really describes it simply. It really is that simple. That is what God is. All of those things and so much more. And we can be partakers. We can share in the substance of his character. Okay, number four. If you will do these things with all diligence, then God will guarantee that you will see clearly into the spiritual and eternal realm. Verse nine. And I'm saying it in a positive way, but it was expressed in a negative way. He's saying those who don't are blind or short-sighted. But I'm saying blind or short-sighted to me means just when you're full of yourself, that's all you see. You go through life. All you can see is what I want, the way I want things, how people think of me, how people see me. It's all me, me, me. It's just a self-life. You're just, your inner world is just full of you. And of course, if that's the case, then you're going to be blind and short-sighted. You're not going to be able to see outside. And you certainly won't be able to see heaven, the eternal realm. But the Lord is saying if you will live this way as a practice, as a way of life, then I guarantee you that you will see into the spiritual realm and the eternal realm, and you will see it clearly. It'll become part of the vision that drives you in life. Number five, then God will guarantee that you will have a useful, fruit-filled life, verse eight, which again, I turned into a positive. You know, dear ones, one day you and I are going to stand before the Lord. We are definitely going to stand before the Lord. I talked about that a couple months ago, right? We will stand before the Lord. And all that you are going to have to present to him is your life and the way you lived it, what came out of it. Was it all about you, or was it, do you have fruit to share? Is there something, did something come out of your life that was a true blessing to other people, that affected people's lives, affected their souls, affected their eternal destinies? I was thinking, when I was putting these notes together, I was thinking of Dustin Renz. Um, did you guys, like, watch his testimony recently? Yeah? This side says yes, this side is totally unconvinced. Dustin Renz is a picture, as far as I'm concerned, of what should happen to every single man who goes through this program. This man was nuts. I mean, he just was, he was nuts. He was as bad as I was at one time. He was just, wow, he was, he was just out there, okay, dressing in women's clothing, and, you know, man, he was gone. And he came here, and he did a 180, and he got radically turned around. I don't know if I'd say he got saved here, or whatever, whatever with that, but he radically turned around, and he started going with all his heart. He, he lived this, applying with all diligence. That, that describes Dustin Renz and the way he went out of this place. I don't know how many years ago that was. You guys know? Maybe 10 years? 2011, so almost 10 years. And he is on fire for the Lord, and God is using his life. And there's been many, really, there's been many who have left here, and the Lord has used them, and they are doing tremendous things all over the world. There's one guy running a Bible college in India. There's, well, yeah, I'm just not able to think of them all. People in Thailand, people in Germany, people in South America, just everywhere. There's no reason that can't describe you. No reason that can't describe you. Not necessarily that you are going to go into, you know, ministry, but that your life can turn around radically. You can have a regular job like Adam Gardner. He's not in ministry, but his life, God uses his life. Number six, then God will guarantee that you will be afforded an abundant entrance into the kingdom, the eternal kingdom. You know, Paul talks about those who are shipwrecked, and their faith is shipwrecked. Maybe they were heading towards the harbor, and something happened, some doubt that the enemy kept putting in there, or some sin they started giving over to, and before you know it, their faith has crashed on the rocks. But what Peter's calling us to is something different. There's a harbor off ahead, and you know what I want to believe about you guys is that by the time you get there, your ship will be heavily laden. You know, I think of one of those old Spanish galleons that just loaded with all kinds of riches that have come back from plundering the Aztecs and stuff, but that kind of thing, you know, where the ship is coming into the harbor, not empty, not just barely squeaking over the finish line, but coming into the harbor full, because God has blessed that life. So these are the six super mega promises that the Lord makes right just this little section here. There's many promises in Scripture, but this is the ones here. And they're all true, but the inverse is just as true, and I need to say it. So here's the inverse. For those of you from Kentucky, I'll explain that. It means the opposite. Okay, one guy got a good kick out of that. Probably everyone else is from Kentucky, and I'll be strung up. I'm from California, and I never want to go back there again. Trust me, I love Kentucky. Anyway, if you will not become intimately involved with God, if you will not break away from the polluting atmosphere of this world, if you will not do your utmost to add these seven virtues to your fate, then you will stumble and probably even fall away. Your spiritual life will be powerless and stale. You will live your life under the tyranny of self. You will be blind to the spiritual realm and too short-sighted to see the eternal. You will have a useless, fruitless life. You will barely make it into the eternal kingdom, if at all. All right, so I'm going to wrap up now, and I'm going to circle back to the title of the message, which I never even told you what it is, did I? Would you like to know? That was pretty pathetic. Would you like to know the title? Thank you. Escaping the Corruption of Lust. This is like one more, you know, I've done a number of messages about overcoming lust and so on, and so this is a different look at it. But what really stuck with me on this is the word escape. Escape. Escape means to be able to get out of a dangerous situation, right? I've been in dangerous situations actually quite a few times in my life, and I know what it means to escape. But really, you know, the best story in the Bible I can think of is when the angels came to Lot, remember that? Judgment was about to fall in an overwhelming way on this cesspool of sin and corruption, this putrefying spiritual miasma. And there's Lot with his family right in the middle of it, and these two angelic beings come to him, and you know what they said? Escape. Escape. Escape for your life. Do not look behind you and do not stay anywhere in the valley. Escape to the mountains or you will be swept away. And that's what I want to say to you guys. Escape this corruption. Escape it. Run from it. Flee from it. Do the things that you've heard me describe this morning. Flee from the wrath to come because I'm telling you judgment is coming to this earth. It's already here. We're seeing some of it this year. But I suspect it's going to get worse and worse. Escape. Flee for your life while you can. You'll never have a better opportunity than in this place where you've been taken out of that miasma and put into a place with a pure and clean atmosphere. Man, why aren't you doing everything and everything you possibly can to apply all diligence to add these things? This is all we're trying to bring you men into. We don't have some agenda, some weird agenda, we're not some cult or something. We are just trying to lead you into God to have him in a real way. That is the message that comes forth from this pulpit. Have God in a real way. Walk with him in a real way. Come to know him in a real way. Allow him to do his work inside your soul to purge it of all the corruption and the garbage that you have put into it. Allow him to do that work inside you and do it with all diligence. And if you will, according to what Peter said days before he died, there are a multitude. I've just covered six, but there are a multitude, a multitude of super mega promises for you. And it's God's desire, his passion to give you all that he's got. And it really just boils down to do you even care? If you care, you'll apply all diligence. If you just want to do church, this probably isn't the place for you because we're not about doing church here. We're not about being PC, politically correct. We're serious here about being right with God and seeking his face with all our hearts. Lord, I thank you for choosing Peter. Simon is the one you chose, but he became Peter, a rock for the church, a rock of faith. Yeah, a little rock. You're the big rock, Jesus. We know that. But you transformed this man over 38 years, a 38-year period from the time he met you and collapsed in tremendous repentance in that boat when his eyes were open and he saw the Lord and he said, depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man. But that's just what you wanted to hear from him. And that's just exactly what you want to hear from these men is that same kind of heart piercing cry, that awareness of what we are and what you are. We're a mass of putrefying, liquefying corruption, and we've done it to ourselves. But you are holy. You are pure. And if only we'll turn to you with our whole hearts, you will touch us. You will give us life. You will give us the power to overcome. You will give us a new way of living. And as we go on, we will be healed, just like the lepers. And I pray, Lord, for every single man, every person in here, our visitors, too. We all are in great need, Lord, great need for your touch, for your grace, for your sustenance. Help us, Lord. Help us. Help those with tiny faith, Lord. Help them. Help them, Lord. Come to them now, convict of sin. Show them their hearts, Lord, that they might truly see, get past the plain church thing, and actually have the eyes of their hearts opened up to see what they've done to you and to what they've done with their loved ones and other people. Show them, Lord, make it real to them so that they can come into that tremendous repentance that Peter experienced. He escaped the corruption that is in this world through lust. He escaped it, and he showed us the way out. Do that for others, I pray today, Lord. In the name of Jesus, amen. 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