'Sporting themselves,' dead to see it

According to Albert Barnes’ Notes commentary (circa 1830s), II Peter 2:13 references a “sacred festival” where the attendees celebrated “with licentious feelings, giving free indulgence to their corrupt desires by gazing on the females who were assembled with them.”

The verse reads: [13] And shall receive the reward of unrighteousness, as they that count it pleasure to riot in the day time. Spots they are and blemishes, sporting themselves with their own deceivings while they feast with you;

The next verse: [14] Having eyes full of adultery, and that cannot cease from sin; beguiling unstable souls: an heart they have exercised with covetous practices; cursed children:

“When it says, ‘Having eyes of adultery,’ that’s the depths of sin’s dominion. I’ve said to you time and time again through the years that sin starts on the inside," reminds Richard Jordan. "People get mad at sin and say, ‘We don’t smoke, we don’t chew, we don’t hang with the folks that do,’ and they’re always dealing with externals, but sin always begins inside. It isn’t what you put into your body that defiles you.

“Mark 7: [21] For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders,

[22] Thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness:

[23] All these evil things come from within, and defile the man. 

“That’s why that verse in II Peter says they have a heart they’ve exercised with covetous practices. You know where the defilement comes? In Luke 6, he talks about ‘an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is evil: for of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaketh.’ It comes from a sin nature.”

“They wind up in the ‘last days’ under the ministry of the Antichrist, who rides to power riding the whore from Revelation 17. These people are right in there with him. They’re a part of this polluted religious system that promotes, through the false prophet, the activity of the Antichrist and they wind up with the judgment of that, and in the midst of that judgment don’t even understand. Still deceived, still dead to see it, sporting themselves, reveling, while they feast with you.

“That’s a great modern word--sporting. What do you do in a sports car? Do you try to be real inconspicuous? No. you’re out cutting the rug, trying to call attention to yourself.

“When he says of them in verse 13, “spots they are and blemishes,” the other time spot’s used in I Peter 1, he writes, ‘But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot.’

“These people are the exact opposite of Jesus Christ. James 1:27 says, ‘Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.’

“That issue of spots has to do with a sore spot, literally, that comes up on their body for having taken ‘the mark of the beast.’ Revelation 16 describes it as a running sore like leprosy. In Revelation 3 it says, ‘Thou hast a few names even in Sardis which have not defiled their garments; and they shall walk with me in white: for they are worthy.’ "

(new article tomorrow)