2 Peter 2:4-5: And Seven Others

For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but sent them to hell, putting them in chains of darkness to be held for judgment; if he did not spare the ancient world when he brought the flood on its ungodly people, but protected Noah, a preacher of righteousness, and seven others;

2 Peter 2:4-5 (NIV)

And Seven Others

The boat yard in January is the cheapest walk in town. Forty hulls up on jack stands, shrink wrapped in white, ladders still leaning where the owners left them in October. A woman walks the rows on her lunch break because the lot’s empty and nobody speaks to her there. She quit a job in June that she should have quit four years earlier, and she still drives past the building on Thursdays. She says it’s the fastest way across town.

The people getting this letter are being warned about what’s headed for them. There will be false teachers among you, Peter says, introducing destructive heresies in secret and denying the Lord who bought them. In their greed these teachers will exploit you with fabricated stories, and many will follow their depraved conduct and drag the way of truth down with them. The letter reaches these people before any of it lands on them.

To a church in front of that, Peter brings up old cases. God didn’t spare angels when they sinned. God didn’t spare the ancient world when he brought the flood on its ungodly people. He condemned Sodom and Gomorrah by burning them to ashes and made them an example of what’s coming to the ungodly. Hard lines, all three, and not one of them is pointed at the congregation he’s writing to. He’s telling people who are about to be worked over who’s actually in danger here.

There’s a rescue inside two of them. God protected Noah, a preacher of righteousness, and seven others, and he rescued Lot, a righteous man who was distressed by the conduct around him. Noah gets a description. The seven get counted, and that’s all Peter says about them, how many there were and that the protecting reached them. Given the choice, I’d have had Peter spend a sentence on each of those seven. Eight people came through the flood. He draws his conclusion from the whole picture: the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials and to hold the unrighteous for punishment on the day of judgment.

He wanted them holding that sentence while somebody got paid for lying to them about God.

She walks to the end of the yard where the hulls stop and turns around, because past that it’s fence. The wind comes off the water on the way back. She’s got eleven minutes and she uses all of them.