Pastor Skip Heitzig guides us through First and Second Peter in the series Rock Solid.

Father, we . . . we're going cover a lot of spiritual and scriptural ground this morning in our text, and it is my prayer that you would help us to not only grasp with our minds, but appreciate with all of our lives the great work of service that you have done for the human race in sending your Son to be the payment for our sin, to guarantee us your heaven, and to defeat our enemy who would want nothing more than to drag us down to hell. Thank you for your love and how we celebrate that love, in Jesus' name, amen.

Hey, did you hear about that asteroid that came close to the earth on Wednesday? Yeah, I see a few yeses; I see a lot of like "huh?" There was an asteroid that came into our atmosphere at 2:30 p.m. Mountain Standard Time on Tues--on Wednesday, and it was the size of an airliner. It came relatively close to the earth, what some astronomers say was dangerously close to the earth. Had that thing actually hit the earth, it could have been catastrophic. Now, you didn't see it. In fact, you wouldn't have known about it unless those who had specialized equipment and could see it revealed it to you.

It's going on around you, you don't know about it unless somebody tells you about it. And so you read and you go, "Okay, that's true, that happened." Several years ago there was a scientist named Bruce Davidson who was on a research vessel out in the Pacific Ocean. He was lowered overboard in a one-man submarine called Deep Rover. He was doing research, and they lowered him in this little one-man submarine equipped with an acrylic shield and lights on the front of it to a depth of 1,500 feet below sea level, down to an area where the water is an inky black.

They wanted to find out what was down there. And as he was looking out of his little windshield, suddenly out of the shadows out of the darkness comes this semitransparent creature 120 feet in length, thousands of tentacles, dozens of stomachs, and appears before that research scientist. He had never seen anything like it or known something like that existed. As he keeps watching it, studying it with great interest, he's joined, this creature, by his friends. Others come and surround that one-man submarine and then they attacked and killed him--no. I'm just kidding. That was--that'd be a Hollywood ending. [laughter]

He survived quite nicely actually. But I'm making a point in all of this that there are things that go on around us that we are not aware of even though they are very real. Unless somebody saw it with specialized equipment, and then revealed it to us, we wouldn't know anything about it. So there's things happening around us that are unknown to us unless they're revealed. So it is in the spirit world. There's a whole other world going on around us that unless God would reveal it to us we wouldn't know anything about it.

And this text is one of those areas that takes us behind the veil. We live in a real world. In fact, one of the saying that people will often speak is, "Come on, man, get real. This is the real world." You're right. But there is another world, let's call it the really real world. As Paul the apostle said, "We do not look at the things which are seen, but the things which are unseen. For the things which are seen are temporary, while the things which are unseen are eternal," Second Corinthians 4. So in the real world, it's all the stuff we see; the really real world, all those things we do not see.

Last week if you were with us in First Peter, chapter 3, we noted that Peter is talking about suffering using Jesus as an example, of his crucifixion, his resurrection, his exaltation. But he does mention that between Jesus' death and his rising from the dead he preached a sermon. He visited somewhere, he went somewhere and made a proclamation. And then Peter moves on from that and draws it to a close. It's because of the fact that he mentions this strange ministry of Jesus Christ between his death and resurrection that makes this passage hard to understand, at least for us 2,000 years removed from it.

So, what we're going to do is comb over it again, but put on different glasses this time, and consider an invisible world with an invisible war. Let's go to verse 18 of First Peter, chapter 3, where Peter writes, "For Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive [in the Spirit or] by the Spirit, by whom he also went and preached to the spirits in prison, who formerly were disobedient, when once the Divine longsuffering waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight souls, were saved through water."

"There is also an antitype which now saves us--baptism (not the removal of the flesh, the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God), through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, angels and authorities and powers having been subject to him." Now, I want to make four statements based on that. There is a coexisting invisible world. Just consider the text that we read. In verse 18 Peter speaks of the flesh and spirit. Those are two different realms: flesh, that's the realm of what you see; spirit, that's the realm of what you don't see.

Flesh, that's the real world; spirit, that's the really real world. He speaks about heaven; you don't see it. He speaks about angels in verse 22; you don't see them. In verse 19 he also mentions, and we're gonna go back over this, "the spirits in prison." It's as if Peter for a moment with these words would take us behind the veil of the real world to see the really real world. You see, folks, there is a parallel universe, if you want to look at it that way, a real world of angelic beings both good and evil, demons and angels that are out there.

Just like you didn't know about the asteroid, you didn't see it, or you wouldn't have known about those creatures unless somebody saw and revealed it to you, so it is with this world. We open our Bibles and we discover that 34 books in the Bible, 34 out of 66 books speak about angelic beings: 17 in the Old Testament; 17 in the New Testament. The word "angel" appears 103 times in the Old Testament, 165 times in the New Testament, very, very real. "Angels" the Greek word aggelos, means a messenger. It could actually refer to any messenger, even human, but typically the word aggelos speaks of spirit beings, a special class of being.

What is an angel? An angel is a noncorporeal spirit being. How's that for a definition? Like that word, noncorporeal? In other words, it's a being without a corpus, without a body. It's an unembodied real being that is spirit. In Hebrews, chapter 1, angels were called "ministering spirits who are sent to minister to those of us who inherit salvation." Because they don't have a body, they don't have the restrictions of a human body. They are not subject to decay, and they are therefore invisible most of the time. On some occasions, to suit God's purposes, they are made visible or they can assume human form, and we see that in the Scripture as well.

We know that they are great in number, because when Jesus was born "a multitude of the heavenly host" were over Bethlehem singing praise. How many angels are there? Well, we don't know, although I find it interesting that in the 1100s one particular theologian by the name of Albertus Magnus was very precise with the number of angels, saying that there were 399,920,004 [laughter] angels. Don't ask me how or why. When we get to the book of Revelation, John sees the throne of God and he says, "I saw myriads of angels," listen to this, "ten thousand times ten thousand, plus thousands of thousands."

So, well over 100 million angels were recorded in that scene alone. By the way, do you know that you may have met an angel? You might say, "Nah, I would have recognized an angel, the halo and the wings would have given it away; the long flowing robes, dead ringer for an angel." Not so, that's all mythology. The Bible says be careful, the book of Hebrews says, how you minister to different people, strangers: "Show hospitality to strangers, for some have entertained angels without recognizing it." It's a beautiful thought: somebody that you run into could be an angel.

Satan began as an angel. Two Old Testament passages describe him quite in depth: Ezekiel 28, Isaiah 14. In Ezekiel passage it says he's called "the anointed cherub who covers" or who guards. He was some kind of guardian being. And many scholars presume he was a guardian over God's throne, a very powerful, beautiful, wise, and influential being who fell from that position. And that's important you understand that because some people say, "Why would God create such a wicked person or being?" He didn't. He created something very good with a will of its own, and Satan usurped God's authority, acted on his own will, and he fell.

Jesus said, "I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven." And when Satan fell, he took a bunch of his buddies with him, a lot of his evil friends. They all fell as well. They joined the coup. The Bible indicates in Revelation as many as a third of the angelic hosts fell in that rebellion with Satan. And when they fell, they became a highly organized network that have actual rankings and titles. And they would have to be to get any work done effectively. Paul gives us insight into that in Ephesians, chapter 6. He says, "We do not wrestle with flesh and blood, or struggle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, powers, rulers, authorities, spiritual forces of evil in heavenly realms."

Those are all rankings of angelic beings. We're hinted at that in verse 22 of our text. Notice that "Jesus ascended into heaven at right hand of God, angels and authorities and powers having been made subject to him." So there is a coexisting invisible world the Bible reveals to us. You wouldn't know about it, you would never see it, and you wouldn't know unless it was told to you, revealed in Scripture. Second thing to notice in our text: there's a conflict in the invisible world, a conflict. In verse 19, "Jesus went and preached to spirits in"--where?--"in prison."

There's some group of spirits that are incarcerated in some prison somewhere. Ever since the fall there has been an ongoing conflict. Let me restate that: ever since the fall of Lucifer, that fall. Ever since that fall there has been an ongoing cosmic conflict between the angelic forces of good and evil. One day Daniel got a peek behind that curtain. He was praying, and as he was praying an angel came from heaven and in human form appeared to Daniel and said, "Daniel, from the day you started praying I was dispatched to give you some insight and revelation into the future."

"But it took me twenty-one days to get here, Daniel, because on the way I had to fight a spirit prince of Persia. It took me twenty-one days to withstand him. But I'm here, I'm giving you revelation." And then at the end he says, "We gotta go back and fight the prince of Persia and the prince of Greece, and Michael the angel has to come and help me." And I think Daniel's going, "Wha-what? What was that about?" He got insight into that invisible war that is going on in areas where we don't see. And I've always been fascinated be that passage because the angel said, "I fight the prince of Persia," as if to imply that demons, by Satan, are actually assigned geographical regions.

So if the prince of Persia was that bad, what do you think the prince of Hollywood is like? or San Francisco? or Las Vegas, Nevada? or Albuquerque, New Mexico? or Amsterdam? or whatever? The spirit world. One of the first rules in warfare is you gotta know who your enemy is. Not only that, but you need to know how your enemy works. The Bible says, "We are not ignorant of his devices." I don't know if that's true of all of us: "We're not ignorant of his devices." Back in World War II one of our generals General George S. Patton was fighting the German forces of Erwin Rommel, General Rommel.

And it was in North Africa, and as the battle went on these two generals got close enough so that Patton could actually yell out to General Rommel. And he said, "Rommel, I read your book! I read your book!" What he was referring to was a book that the German general Erwin Rommel had authored entitled Infantry Attacks where Rommel details his wartime strategy. And our general is saying, "I read your book!" So he knew what was coming, knew what to expect, and planned his countermove accordingly, and he won the battle. Well, Satan didn't author a book, but God did.

And in the Book God lets the cat out of the bag, reveals what his plans are for the future, and if you think strategically for a moment, Satan would have taken every bit of that information and mounted a counterattack so that he, not God, would win. Now, let's put that lens on and view Scripture. You ready? Let me take you back through a few Scriptures. You don't have to turn to them, but I want you to follow me now. Back in Genesis, chapter 3, after Satan caused the fall of mankind in enticing Adam and Eve to do what they did, then God made a promise and said to Satan, "I'm going to put enmity between you and the woman, between your seed, your offspring and her offspring."

And he," that is, her offspring; he, whoever he is, eventually a "he" will come, and "he is going to bruise your head, and you [Satan] will bruise his heel." In other words, "He is going to have a minor setback; you're going to have a major blow. His heel will be affected; your head will be crushed." Now, if I were to make you a promise, I would never do this by the way, but let's just say before the service I came up, gave you a hug, shook your hand, and said, "Hey, listen, after the service I'm going to crush your head. [laughter] God bless you, have a nice day."

If you were even remotely believing that I was going to do that, you would want more information. And then you would strategize a countermove based upon the information you receive. So Satan gets a promise: "You're going down! You're going to be crushed!" So what does he do? Well, in Genesis, chapter 4, I believe it's Satan that inspired Cain to kill Abel. Abel was righteous before God. God received his worship. Cain kills Abel. Abel is now dead. Cain becomes cursed. They're out of the picture. Satan probably wiped his brow and said, "Whew! I just averted the One who's going to crush my head," thinking maybe that's the one.

God raises up another line through Seth. Time goes on, we come to Genesis, chapter 6. Satan inspires such a wickedness on the earth, such violence that the race becomes unredeemable, and God decides, "I'm going to destroy the entire population of planet earth," except for eight people who are kept alive on an ark. And they repopulate the earth, and a new civilization emerges. And then Abraham comes, and Isaac comes, and Jacob comes, and we come to Genesis 27. And I believe it was Satan that inspired Esau to want to kill Jacob, because Jacob was the promised seed that the Scripture speaks about.

We come then to Exodus, chapter 1, and the Pharaoh in Egypt has this crazy rule that every Hebrew male child should be killed. That's radical. He says, "If it's a girl, let it live; if it's a boy, kill it, throw it in the Nile and let it drown." Why? I think he was an agent of Satan trying to destroy the Jews through whom the Seed, the Messiah, would come. We keep going in the Bible where we read passages like the book of First Samuel where King Saul wants to kill David. Why David? David's the royal line. God promised all of his hope would be found in the seed, in the offspring of King David.

We keep following history and we come to this really crazy passage. In fact, if you've read it you probably passed over it and not even noticed the fine print. There was a king named Ahaziah who died. When Ahaziah died, his mother Athaliah, this is Second Kings 11 or Second Chronicles, chapter 22, Athaliah, she decides, listen to this, to put to death all of the royal heirs in Judah. All the royal heirs? If all the royal heirs are killed, David has no offspring and the promise that God made to David for the Messiah can't happen. All of them are killed except one.

One little baby named Joash still nursing is hidden until he's seven years old and he emerges as the king and the lineage continues. And this stuff happens throughout the Old Testament until we get to the New Testament and Jesus is born in Bethlehem. So what does Herod say? "All those baby boys in Bethlehem, kill them all!" What's that about? It's a satanic attempt to destroy the Seed. Jesus emerges, grows up, Satan takes him to the pinnacle of the temple and says, "You know, you ought to jump down," quoting a Scripture out of context, hoping that Jesus would jump and perhaps end his life.

We come to the gospel of Luke, chapter 4, Jesus is in the synagogue of Nazareth, proclaims himself to be God's chosen One. They take him to the brow of the hill in which the city is built and they want to thrust him over. And this happens throughout the Bible, because it's attack, counterattack; attack, countermeasure. It's an invisible war and it's all framed, by the way, in the last book of the Bible. You know, my teacher used to say, "All the answers are in the back of the book." And thus it is in the book of Revelation.

Listen to this warfare, he says, John says, "I saw a sign in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun and the moon and the twelve stars." We know that to be an image of Israel from Genesis 37. I saw that, and then he said, "I looked and I saw a large red dragon with seven heads and ten horns. His tail dragged down a third of the stars, which he threw to the earth. He stood before the woman as she was about to give birth to her male child to devour the baby as soon as it was born."

Satan the dragon has always wanted to kill any offspring and, if necessary, all of the Jews to prevent the Messiah from coming so that the promise could not be fulfilled. Look at it this way, here's the premise, let's think strategically: if God's plan of redemption requires the existence of a nation and the continuance of the nation, if you can destroy that nation, you can defeat God. If you destroy the nation of the Jews, you can keep God from fulfilling all the promises he made to the Jews, so just destroy the nation.

That was tried on several occasions, even in the Old Testament book of Esther when Haman put out an edict to kill all of the Jews in the kingdom. Hitler--"Kill all of the Jews," keep God from fulfilling his promises. So, there's a coexisting invisible world; there's a conflict in the invisible world; number three, there are convicts in the invisible world. Verse 19, I draw your attention to that phrase, "spirits in prison." Let's get at that. Prison? What is that? If you know your Bible, you know Revelation 9 calls this prison "the bottomless pit," "the abyss," the Greek word abussos.

It is the realm of fallen spirits. And it's such a place, something happened that these spirits are kept or incarcerated there, something really bad they did to cause them to be there. So much so that other demons do not want to go there. Remember in Luke, chapter 4 [Matthew 8], the man who was demon possessed from Gedara sees Jesus, and he begs Jesus, "Whatever you do, don't throw us into the abyss [abussos], don't put us there." In fact, the demons say, "What are you doing here? Have you come to destroy us before the time? Don't throw us into the abyss."

What time? Revelation says all the demons, including the devil, will be incarcerated in the abyss, the bottomless pit for a thousand years. So it's like the demons are saying, "Are you off schedule here? You're way before the time. Don't throw us into that abyss." So, who are these spirits and why are they there? And what did they do to get put there? Let me give you a couple of texts. You can write them down, look at them later, if you please. One is found in the book of Jude, the other is found in the book of Second Peter.

Jude writes in that one-chapter book, verse 6 and 7, "The angels who did not keep their proper domain, but left their own abode, he reserved an everlasting chains for darkness for the judgment of that great day," and he goes on to mention the time of Noah in the next verse. Second Peter chapter 2 verse 4, "For if God did not spare the angels when they sinned, but sent them to hell, putting them into gloomy dungeons to be held for judgment." There's some group of demons that have been incarcerated at some point and it's identified by Jude, by Peter, and here by Peter at "the time of Noah."

So if you remember back in Genesis, chapter 6, the whole Noah-flood thing, it says, "In those days mankind began to multiply on the face of the earth, and the sons of God saw the daughters of men, that they were beautiful, attractive, fair; and they took them as wives, whomever they wished." And this weird offspring was a result. And violence filled the earth and this race of people, it was so bad, God's only solution was to destroy planet earth. Now, real briefly, "the sons of God saw the daughters of men"; what is that all about?

Okay, hold on to your seat belt. "Sons of God" is a Hebrew term when it was written originally: benei ha'elohim. "Sons of God," is an Old Testament term for angelic beings. Why are they called "sons of God?" Because they're a direct creation of God, a one-on-one creation. "Sons of God saw the daughters of men." According to the oldest Jewish interpretations and the earliest church fathers these were fallen angels that acted so wickedly they overstepped their boundaries of their realm, left the spirit realm, and entered the human realm to cohabitate with women.

You're immediately saying, "Uh, ah, that's not possible, is it? That's not possible." It is possible if these demons, to get these women, possessed men: demon-possessed humans attaching themselves to other humans who are women. Demon possession is very common in the New Testament; it certainly could have happened in the Old Testament. So these demon-possessed men could have seen these women in some attractive, but perversely attractive, lascivious way that produced a generation of children that were unredeemable. Why else would God destroy the entire world?

So much so that not even 120 years of Noah's preaching caused one person to turn and repent except Noah's family. Now just imagine that. You know how long Noah was in the ark when the flood happened? One year. You know how long it took to build the ark? One hundred twenty years, which shows us that the ark wasn't just about saving him, but also about preaching to the world. Talk about longsuffering. "It takes me 120 years to build a boat I'm going to be in for a year?" That's a lot of preaching. He was "a preacher of righteousness" the Bible said.

And through his lifestyle and through his words he got the message of judgment out, the warning. No one responded. And so God sent a flood and judged the earth. Meanwhile, took those demons that had caused such havoc and incarcerated them in this prison. These are the wicked of the wicked, the worst of the worst. A few years ago I was in Scotland, I went to a prison to do some ministry. And after I did sort of some general population ministry in jail, the warden said, [speaks in Scottish accent] "Now we're gonna take ya to the worst place." I said, pardon me?"

He said, "We have a prison in our prison where the ten worst criminals, most of them mass murderers, in Scotland are kept. We're gonna let you hang out with them for a couple hours." I thought, "Oh, wonderful." [laughter] And it really was great ministry, but they were considered the worst of the worst. Now the fact that Peter mentions this but does not give any detail, and the fact that we have to go into such detail shows that his original audience was far more familiar with it than we are. You'll grant that. So, perhaps, by the time the crucifixion rolled around, these demons thought that God had lost and they had won.

They're about to be very shocked, about to be very surprised. Here's what I want you to see: these are powerful demons, so much so that they have to be incarcerated. But that's my point: God being more powerful incarcerates them. God is all-powerful and holds the boundaries of what is allowable and not. And if a line is crossed, you're in jail, do not pass go, do not collect 200 dollars. I remember when I was dabbling in the occult before I was saved, this is one thing that really tipped me over the edge in a good way. I was dabbling in some very, very powerful experiences, and I really joyed the empowerment that I felt because of those demonic experiences.

But one day the thought struck me: "If there's this much power on the wrong side, on the dark side, on the bad side, if there really is a God who created this other thing, there's so much more power on the right side." And there is. These powerful demons were incarcerated by God. We have just a couple moments to finish up, so let me give you the fourth statement. There was a conquest in the invisible world. Something happened, verse 22, "He has gone into heaven," Jesus after his resurrection ascended into heaven, "and is at the right hand of God"--notice--"angels, and authorities and powers having been made subject to him."

Jesus went and he proclaimed, he preached, verse 19. See the word he "preached" to the spirits in prison? He preached something. The word is kérussó, means make a proclamation. Not preach in terms of evangelism preach, like, "Hey, you know what? You have an opportunity now to get out of the hell if you just pray this prayer." None of that. Peter would have used the word euaggelizó, evangelism. But he used the word kérussó, to herald something, to make an announcement. A herald was somebody that came with dispatch to a town to make an announcement, or after the war was won, make a proclamation of victory.

So after all of the attempts failed, and Jesus was crucified, and they were probably just wiping their hands, thinking, "Finally, he's gone," they were disappointed. And the disappointment came the day the resurrected living Christ came and proclaimed victory to them. "War's over, boys, you lost. You lost." I want to close with a scary thought, and then a good thought. These demons incarcerated in the abyss will one day be released. Revelation says the abyss was opened and demons come out and so pervert the earth that Jesus said, "As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be in the time of the coming of the Son of Man."

They're going to be released for a period of time during the great tribulation before they get reincarcerated with the devil and all of his angels again during those end times. But here's what I want you to know, because you're going, "Great, I feel so encouraged by this." One-third of the angels fell. One-third of the original heavenly hosts are demons and they hate you and you're in their crosshairs. If one-third fell, it means how many did not fall? Tell me. Two-thirds did not fall, which tells me Satan is way outnumbered, and all of his demons way outnumbered by the good guys.

So instead of saying, "There's devils, there's demons, I bind this, I bind that," why don't you just say, "Two-thirds are on my side and Jesus is living inside of me and 'greater is he that is in me than he that is in the world.' This could be a cakewalk." [applause] Well, there's actually way more that I have to say, but just don't have the time to say it. So I want you to walk away encouraged that you are on the winning team and you have stepped out of darkness into light. And what that means, yes, you have seen into the really real world, but as you and I walk in the real world, keep in mind whose side you're on.

And so, Father, we concluded our service today, our preaching ministry and worship ministry with this thought: that these demons as powerful as they once were are incarcerated by the living God. And just as Satan needed permission in the book of Job to do anything at all to your servants, Satan is under tight wraps and control. Lord, we take refuge in that, we thank you for that. And we thank you for the living God that empowers us daily to have victory over his temptations, over his suggestions, and over behaviors that do not glorify you. Strengthen us, Father, this week to live in the light of your return. It's in Jesus' name we pray, amen.

For more resources from Calvary Albuquerque and Skip Heitzig visit calvaryabq.org.