Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] So tonight we are talking about 2 Peter 3.
[00:00:09] And as we'll see in 2nd Peter 3, some things take time.
[00:00:16] You know, this is a life lesson that we all learn at some point, probably many points, many points of reminder over and over and over again. Yes, that's right. We learn this consistently. We need to learn it and be reminded.
[00:00:32] There are many examples I could come up with, but one that comes to mind is a time when I remember. This is whenever I make cold brewed coffee, which I do enjoy doing. I like the process, but it requires planning.
[00:00:51] It's not as easy, although it's not necessarily easy to wake up in the morning and make coffee fresh.
[00:00:58] But you got a plan in advance. It's got to sit for maybe 12 to 24 hours.
[00:01:04] And this requires patience, lots of patience in other ways. You know, in sports we learn patience, especially if we have to work really hard over years to see the sort of playing time or performance quality that we want.
[00:01:20] In times of suffering, we often have to wait it out and persevere, as oftentimes there's nothing we can do.
[00:01:28] That too requires patience.
[00:01:31] As you want freedom and autonomy. As teenagers, you have to be patient until it is actually time for you to have such freedom and autonomy, you know, and preferably you have enough patience even to wait until your frontal lobe is fully formed before you make any too serious decision. So you guess you gotta wait till you're 25. Some of your volunteers aren't even 25. So it takes a long time. Takes patience.
[00:01:59] We need patience.
[00:02:01] And we can look to and trust in God who is patient.
[00:02:05] And frankly, his patience is nothing like ours.
[00:02:09] We can try to emulate it, but it's just different.
[00:02:12] The endurance of God's patience is not bound to time.
[00:02:17] You think of patience as waiting long enough.
[00:02:20] God doesn't think of it that way because for Him, a thousand years is like one day.
[00:02:27] And he does not sit in time, you know, waiting 14 hours for coffee to be ready. His patience is just different.
[00:02:35] It's just other than it is holier than our patience.
[00:02:41] And I think that's the heart of chapter three is wrestling with the patience of God. There's a lot of other stuff we'll talk about, but that is kind of at the core.
[00:02:50] In two Peter, we're taught its main theme.
[00:02:53] False teachers will be proven wrong by Scripture and destroyed when the Lord returns. And as a reminder, if the false teachers are right that the Lord is not returning and there is no judgment, then it doesn't matter how they live.
[00:03:07] Peter clearly has a problem with that. He tells those who have obtained faith in Christ to confirm that faith by living holy lives. And they can do this by remembering the Word, which also helps us to see the errors and heresies of false teachers, who again will be utterly destroyed.
[00:03:24] And they will be destroyed by the very doctrine that they teach is false.
[00:03:28] The Return of the Lord Jesus Christ and that brings us to chapter three, that is a large topic of this chapter. So the main idea of 2 Peter 3 is that God is patient, but Christ will return to judge, therefore trust Christ and be holy. God is patient, but Christ will return to judge, therefore trust Christ and be holy.
[00:03:55] We're going to read 2 Peter 3 now.
[00:04:00] This is now the second letter that I am writing to you, beloved, and both of them I am stirring up your sincere mind by way of reminder that you should remember the predictions of the holy prophets and the commandment of the Lord and Savior through your apostles.
[00:04:15] Knowing this first of all, that scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own sinful desires, they will say, where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation.
[00:04:32] For they deliberately overlooked this fact that the heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God, and that by means of these the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished. But by the same word the heavens and earth that now exist are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly.
[00:04:57] But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.
[00:05:14] But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed, since all these things are thus to be dissolved. What sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved, and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn?
[00:05:40] But according to his promise, we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.
[00:05:46] Therefore, beloved, since you are waiting for these Be diligent to be found by him without spot or blemish, and at peace, and count the patience of our Lord as salvation.
[00:05:57] Just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you, according to the wisdom given him, as he does in all his letters, when he speaks in them of these matters.
[00:06:05] There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction as they do the other Scriptures.
[00:06:13] You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, take care that you are not carried away with the error of lawless people and lose your own stability, but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. To him be the glory, both now and to the day of eternity. Amen.
[00:06:30] God is patient. We see that right kind of in the center of there.
[00:06:37] In Second Peter, we see that God is patient. Christ will come at the proper time, and he will come soon, suddenly soon, but soon to God cannot be assumed to be the same as what we would call soon.
[00:06:56] For he is an eternal being. He is set outside of time.
[00:07:00] But Christ will return to judge, and the judgment will be swift and thorough. Therefore, trust Christ and be holy. Since the judgment is real, unlike what the false teachers believe, it does matter in whom we believe, how we live. So put your faith in Christ and live godly lives, confirming your faith.
[00:07:21] Point number one is that God will destroy.
[00:07:26] So we see if we're kind of going back to the beginning of the chapter in verse one, that Peter actually acknowledges that this is his second letter to them. And as he said in chapter one, he wants to stir them up by reminding them of the truth of God's Word to combat the false teachers who denied the second coming and the subsequent judgment of Christ, we need to remember what the prophets and what the Lord Jesus have said in the Word.
[00:07:52] So this is where we see evidence of Christ's return and coming judgment. It's in the Word. The prophets predicted it. Christ spoke of it.
[00:08:01] Even other scriptures like what Paul has written talk about it.
[00:08:06] So then verse three is a reminder that scoffers, which those are just those who scoff and laugh and mock and ridicule the Christian faith, scoffers are coming and will continue to come.
[00:08:19] They still come. And they will again continue to come.
[00:08:23] They do not believe the Word, even though they might claim to. That's important to know. Not all scoffers are obvious scoffers.
[00:08:30] They might claim to believe the Word, but their teachings say otherwise.
[00:08:36] For the scoffers or the false teachers in this context, here's what they say. Verse 4.
[00:08:42] Where is the promise of his coming for ever since the Fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation.
[00:08:50] So to paraphrase this a little bit, to maybe make it sound a little more realistic to you, they might say, oh, are you sure your Savior is coming again?
[00:08:59] It's been a long time.
[00:09:02] The prophets died, the apostles have died, and two millennia of Church history has passed. Where is he? I thought he was coming soon.
[00:09:11] So this is how scoffers and haters of the Christian faith spoke at the time.
[00:09:16] But let's think about again how they might sound today.
[00:09:20] They might object to the second coming of Christ, but they might say other things, like your Bible is loaded with errors and contradictions. They might say, Jesus was just a good guy, not God.
[00:09:33] They might say, why would we need saving? People are basically good. There's just some evil people.
[00:09:39] Others might say, your God sounds like a bigot. Why would you believe in a God like that?
[00:09:46] Well, there are responses to all of these, and it would in your best interest to learn how to respond to such objections. That's not the point of what we're talking about tonight. These are just the sorts of things scoffers might say today.
[00:10:00] Again, the Word and history answers all of those questions.
[00:10:05] So just as a side point, if you can't think of something or if you have encountered that, or if it's new, please ask someone how you could respond.
[00:10:14] But for Peter's purposes, he responds to the false teachers by drawing from the Bible.
[00:10:20] They're objecting to the Word, but he is going to draw examples from the Bible, specifically parts of the Bible that to them that they're obviously ignoring.
[00:10:30] So in verse 5, he says that they overlook the Bible in which they supposedly believe. They say all things have continued the same way since creation.
[00:10:40] And what they mean when they say all things are continuing as they have, what they mean to say is that God has not intervened in the world.
[00:10:49] He's been and will be absent. And if he's been and is absent, why would he now intervene? If he's done nothing since creation, why should we believe he's going to come in here and judge?
[00:11:02] That's their objection.
[00:11:05] So Peter goes to creation, where the scoffers go, which is Genesis 1, and he points out that God having initially created the heavens and the earth, Genesis 1:2, he looks and sees that the earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.
[00:11:26] And then on the second day of Creation. He moved the waters in the air to create and separate the sky from the sea. And on the third day, he separated the waters so that there would be dry land, so a world that was covered in water he made livable. So he intervened.
[00:11:47] And not only did God intervene in creation, but Peter says he would also later deluge the world with water.
[00:11:54] Here's referring to the flood.
[00:11:57] So as God subsided the waters that there might be land for us to live on, he also flooded the earth again. So God does intervene, and he intervenes to judge. Therefore, it only makes sense to know that God can and and will intervene again to judge all things, as Christ has promised. So the scoffers are just wrong about history, wrong about the Bible.
[00:12:20] And in the day of judgment, it won't be a flood that destroys, as Peter makes clear, it will be fire.
[00:12:27] If you are happily living in your sin, and if you think that you don't need God, then I pray this reality of a future judgment would hit you like a ton of bricks, because it is real and it is coming soon, and it is serious and intense.
[00:12:47] But if you're in Christ, and especially if you're discouraged and you struggle to see God's work in your life and in the world, but you want to hear from him. You love Christ, you want to follow him, then think about this statement.
[00:13:03] God is active in the world.
[00:13:07] God is active in the world.
[00:13:09] He is not aloof. He is not absent.
[00:13:13] He is at work. He intervenes constantly, even aside from the future intervention of Christ's coming.
[00:13:20] But he does intervene both to judge and to save. He intervenes to comfort. And you can trust that Christ, the Son of God, he came to save. He is coming again to judge. But he came initially to save. And he humbled himself and put on human flesh.
[00:13:38] Far from being aloof and absent, because the triune God is love, and he overflows with love by the Son coming as a servant in human flesh. That is the natural outworking of who God is.
[00:13:54] He's a God who loves, and he's a God who pours out his love in creation and in salvation.
[00:14:00] God, above, comes below to be near to you, to understand you, to sympathize with you, to love you and to redeem you.
[00:14:10] This is the God that the scoffers think doesn't intervene.
[00:14:14] We know otherwise. There's no greater or loving God than Christ Jesus.
[00:14:22] And that brings us then to another fundamental truth about God, which is point number two. God is patient.
[00:14:30] God is patient.
[00:14:34] So look again at verse 8.
[00:14:39] But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord, one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day.
[00:14:48] The reason that God has such patience is because God is eternal.
[00:14:54] That's why.
[00:14:55] Now, I'm sure you've thought at some point about God's eternality, but I want you to challenge you to think about it a little bit longer than maybe you have in the past.
[00:15:04] God is eternal.
[00:15:06] And, you know, sometimes we think of it as if for God, time goes all the way back and all the way forward. We have to kind of picture a timeline. I don't know that I can say that that's absolutely not true. But I think it's different.
[00:15:19] I think God is outside of time.
[00:15:23] It's hard for us to conceive this, but I don't think he's bound by time at all. I don't think he moves through time like us. He does not experience a succession of seconds because he created the succession of seconds.
[00:15:38] The best way that I can think to picture this is Matthew McConaughey in Interstellar, which is an imperfect image. If you don't know, I'm sorry, but if you do, you can kind of see him floating around through like, all the strings and whatever else.
[00:15:52] He can kind of interact at different points in time from the same location.
[00:15:59] That is somewhat, a little bit maybe like how God sees time, he can interact with it. Now, he's not flipping around and looking through, like, different strings and pushing books off shelves or whatever else.
[00:16:12] But it's maybe a helpful picture of eternality.
[00:16:17] But because of God's eternality, it can truly be said to him, there is no essential difference between one year and 1,000 years. There's no difference, though. To us, that's a massive amount of time, right?
[00:16:31] We can all fathom a year.
[00:16:33] None of us can fathom a thousand years.
[00:16:36] God knows many more years than that.
[00:16:40] To illustrate this further, I am used to sitting still for well over an hour. I don't know if you guys feel like you can sit still for an hour. You have classes, maybe you struggle a little bit, but maybe you can.
[00:16:52] And even at a previous church that I've been a member of, our church services were two to two and a half hours long, at least with a 65 minute sermon. So I can sit still.
[00:17:03] I can sit still.
[00:17:05] But can my toddler, for her two minutes might as well be two hours.
[00:17:11] She can't sit still. It's not her fault. She just can't do it.
[00:17:16] God's eternality means he can and does wait for a far longer time than we can even comprehend.
[00:17:23] And he does that to fulfill his promises.
[00:17:26] So when the Bible says that Jesus is returning soon, we need to wonder what soon means to God, not what soon means to you.
[00:17:35] Therefore, though it seems like God has taken a long time to fulfill these promises that Peter's writing about 2,000 years ago, it feels like he's slow. You know, we've waited so long for his return, but he's not slow in reality.
[00:17:50] We just perceive that it is slow, but he's not slow.
[00:17:55] So when you're tempted to struggle with waiting for God to work in your life, for God to send His Son back and to relieve you, then you should actually take that moment and marvel at God's eternity, that he is patient, that though this feels like forever to you, it's not. God's not taking too long.
[00:18:17] How he relates to time is a strong reminder that God is far different and far greater than us.
[00:18:24] And another truth is equally true. It means that for him, patience is far more lasting than ours can ever be.
[00:18:31] My patience runs out all the time. God's never does.
[00:18:37] His waiting, as Peter tells us, is actually a grace.
[00:18:41] It is a wonderful grace. He is giving ample opportunity for people to repent of their sins, to trust in Christ, and to be saved.
[00:18:51] If you have a loved one that is not a believer, I trust that you're thankful for extra time for God to work on that person's heart.
[00:19:00] Now, this is interesting, right? Because God wills kind of a couple things simultaneously. He wills that all would be saved, and at the same time, we know he's promising judgment on those who will not be saved.
[00:19:14] We should remember as we think about this, that we all deserve that judgment for sin.
[00:19:20] But God can both want and desire and promise to judge the wicked, and also want and desire people to reach repentance.
[00:19:29] God is complex in this way.
[00:19:32] For example, we can go to another part of Scripture to see this. Lamentations 3 33. 331 33.
[00:19:40] You can flip there or you can just write it down. I'll read it. Lamentations 3:31 33 says, for the Lord will not cast off forever, for though he cause grief, he will have compassion according to the abundance of his steadfast love.
[00:19:55] For he does not afflict from his heart or grieve the children of men.
[00:20:01] God does not send affliction or judgment from his heart, is what Jeremiah says here.
[00:20:08] Yet he certainly does send judgment.
[00:20:11] After all, that is why Lamentations was written, because God did send judgment on Israel.
[00:20:17] But Jeremiah in Lamentations is, I think, coming to grips with how God both desires all to be saved and also how he desires to punish the guilty.
[00:20:27] He's kind of working through that. And he concludes and says, God does not judge or afflict from his heart.
[00:20:36] This is how we can say that God desires all to be saved, yet know that he hasn't failed to save anyone. God has not failed in any of his works.
[00:20:48] And this compassion of God to save that all should reach repentance, it results in patience.
[00:20:56] Patience for you to reach repentance.
[00:21:01] So students, repent of your sins, turn from them, and trust in Christ.
[00:21:07] Yes, God is patient, but no, you don't actually have forever.
[00:21:14] Peter is quick, after talking about God's patience, to also say in verse 10, the day of the Lord will come like a thief.
[00:21:21] It will be a shock, it will be sudden. He has chosen to not have his patience last forever.
[00:21:29] So is God waiting on you to reach repentance?
[00:21:34] Consider tonight if you've truly turned from your sins and trusted in Christ for salvation. Have you actually obtained faith? And is your faith confirmed through your holiness?
[00:21:45] Which then brings us to Peter's next point. In this passage, he returns to the theme of holiness.
[00:21:52] And so consider your ways. Point number three is that God expects holiness.
[00:21:57] God expects holiness, so he's patient, but he does expect holiness. So look at verse 11, which says, since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness?
[00:22:14] So be holy now, because all of this will burn.
[00:22:20] Be holy now, because all of this will burn. It is all temporary.
[00:22:25] Do you think of this world as temporary? And even if you do, do you live like it is?
[00:22:34] Back in high school for me, I was. This is cringy of me, I think, but I was a very typical ball is life type of kid.
[00:22:44] My world revolved around basketball. It really did.
[00:22:48] I played year round. I traveled as far as South Carolina, to Houston, to Vegas, to la. I traveled everywhere. I played against guys like Trae Young. I played against coaches like Penny Hardaway. You know, some of you basketball fans will know who these people are.
[00:23:04] Now, I'm not implying that you cannot play club sports. I don't think that. But I think we need to check our hearts first before we do stuff like this. Because I realized the state of my heart when it came to my athletic abilities.
[00:23:18] When I destroyed my knee in college, I blew it up, basically playing intramural basketball. And even though I had voluntarily given up competitive basketball, it Was like my identity was taken from me. It was gone. I didn't know who I was.
[00:23:33] My stock value crashed suddenly when I couldn't run real fast or jump real high anymore.
[00:23:42] Is there anything in your life which, if you lost it, you would have an identity crisis?
[00:23:50] Think about that. Is there anything in your life which, if you lost it, you would have an identity crisis?
[00:23:57] I think Peter is here to tell you students, that too, will burn. Whatever that is, it will burn too.
[00:24:05] Your holiness, however, will be magnified if you're in Christ.
[00:24:10] A new heaven, a new earth will be made by God, and it will be filled with righteousness.
[00:24:16] And if you want to be there, you need Christ's righteousness, which you can only receive through faith, not basketball or academics or marching band or whatever else.
[00:24:29] Therefore, be diligent to be blameless.
[00:24:35] Blamelessness is yours through Christ.
[00:24:38] So don't just toss it aside.
[00:24:40] Seek to actually live a blameless life, a life where no one can credibly accuse you of wrong. Be diligent in this.
[00:24:50] Also, be at peace. We see in these final verses, be at peace.
[00:24:57] In this context, Peter recognizes that social and political pressures are all over the readers of this letter.
[00:25:05] Lots of external pressures from the world, lots of them.
[00:25:10] Now, maybe you older students especially might get this, maybe others, but it'll become more and more real as you get older. But our world, our political world, can affect us.
[00:25:22] It can affect how we live and how we think and how we feel. And I think it affects us in two main ways that I think we should watch out for.
[00:25:30] One way is that it can radicalize you, or it can jade you. It can numb you. It can demoralize you.
[00:25:40] Students, I want to say we should not be radicalized by anything. Even if someone calls you a radical, for very normal Christian beliefs, we should not be actually radicalized.
[00:25:50] But I want to focus on this other side. You know, are you cynical about the world? Maybe especially about social issues or political issues?
[00:25:59] Now, to be cynical means you believe that people are motivated just by self interest. And that causes you to have a bleak, pessimistic and distrustful outlook on the world.
[00:26:12] It's not hard to get there.
[00:26:15] I think it's really easy to get there, to a place of being cynical towards the world.
[00:26:20] But students, the reason I'm talking about this, it's not because I enjoy politics. The reason I'm talking about this is because that's not being at peace.
[00:26:29] Being radicalized or being a cynic is not being at peace.
[00:26:35] It's not.
[00:26:37] You can have Internal peace in the world, even if there's no external peace in the world, you can have peace internally, no matter what is going on in the world, socially or politically.
[00:26:51] If you aren't totally satisfied and happy in the Lord Jesus Christ, well, then you can have faith in him and you can have peace.
[00:27:01] You can be satisfied and happy in Christ.
[00:27:04] Faith in Christ brings to peace the war that sin wages against God. And that then is the end of the most important conflict in your lives.
[00:27:16] So rather than becoming cynical and withdrawing completely from the world, be at peace internally by the Spirit and spread the love of Christ and the truth of the Gospel to a political and social world that needs those things.
[00:27:33] And we do that best when we are at peace and happy in the Lord.
[00:27:38] Now, a final way to live in this world, that this world that has an expiration date to find a way to live, we need to know the truth.
[00:27:46] We need to know the truth, and as we've discussed, false doctrine and false teachers and how they're dangerous and how the Lord will bring them to an end. But in the meantime, what do we do? In the meantime, he has given us his holy Word.
[00:28:01] Peter's brought this up, remember, in the first chapter, by way of reminder, he's reminding them of the importance of the Word.
[00:28:10] Peter says in verses 15 and 17 here that the Lord is patient, remembering that he is desiring that all should come to repentance.
[00:28:20] So the point is, don't let anyone twist the words of Scripture.
[00:28:27] Peter here references some of Paul's writings that they twist, which, by the way, he does refer to Paul's writings as inspired Scripture.
[00:28:36] But their twisting leads to destruction.
[00:28:40] It is harming themselves.
[00:28:42] So, students, walk in the truth. Love the truth. And if you do so, you will verse 18 grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
[00:28:53] So know that God is coming to judge the living and the dead. But if you have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and His perfect works of righteousness, then you have no need to fear.
[00:29:05] And in fact, God is patient to have waited even this long.
[00:29:09] So don't delay any longer, but repent of your sin and believe while you can, and then share the Gospel with your family and friends while you still can.
[00:29:20] The mighty God is eternal and he is patient, but he will not wait forever.
[00:29:26] Therefore, be holy and blameless and be at peace in Christ, remembering that God is patient, but Christ will return to judge. Therefore trust Christ and be holy. Let's pray.
[00:29:41] Father, we thank you for your word and for the truth that you are patient. Oh, God, we do not deserve such patience. We rather deserve the judgment that you have been withholding. Lord, we praise you that you are a patient and loving God.
[00:29:56] Lord, we pray that you would work in the hearts of those who have not believed that they would turn from their sins and trust in you tonight that they would stop delaying. Lord, again embolden us to proclaim the gospel with the lost while we still can.
[00:30:11] Lord, we know and trust that your son is coming. And if we're in Christ, we long to see that day. We hope in it.
[00:30:18] But, Lord, we know it's a dreadful reality for much of the world. And again, we pray that you would raise up laborers, that we would even become those laborers that can go to the world and proclaim the gospel to the lost. We pray all of this in Christ's name. Amen.
