I. Our text shows that God's severity on sin is an awful fact. St. Peter points (1) to the vengeance He executed on the sinning angels. Every argument which can be applied against the ultimate punishment of men applies with equal force against the punishment of the sinful angels. (2) To the destruction that fell upon the old world. It has been computed that the population of the world at that time was as great as now, owing to the longevity of the race; and yet the waters rose until the eight who rode in the Ark were the sole remnant of a world that God had made. (3) To the destruction of the cities of the plain. There were eight saved from the Flood; but in the case of the cities of the plain only four were rescued, and out of the four one was turned into a pillar of salt because she looked back.
II. This particular act of severity mentioned in our text is to be an example for all ages. This is not to be shelved as a bit of past history. It is customary to describe the views of future punishment held by most of us as mediæval, and to declare that our ideas are mainly gleaned from what monks wrote and said and from pictures to be found in old galleries. I have never yet seen any picture from hand of mediæval artist half so dreadful as some of the descriptions that fell from our Lord's lips. Neither Paul nor Peter, nor any of the Apostles, ever uttered such words as leaped from the lips of the Man of sorrows. When God smites Judah, it is that Israel should take warning; and He who hurled the angels from heaven to hell, and drowned the world, and destroyed Sodom and Gomorrha, has power still to smite.
A. G. Brown, Penny Pulpit,New Series, No. 1004.
References: 2 Peter 2:8. Homiletic Quarterly,vol. ii., p. 546. 2 Peter 2:15. J. Edmunds, Sixty Sermons,p. 189. 2 Peter 2:17. J. P. Hutchinson, Christian World Pulpit,vol. vii., p. 92.