We’ll return to Philippians in the new year. For the 2-3 weeks between Thanksgiving and some advent sermons leading up to Christmas, we’ll examine the first 14 verses of 2 Peter 3.
This is now the second letter that I am writing to you, beloved. In both of them I am stirring up your sincere mind by way of reminder,
2 that you should remember the predictions of the holy prophets and the commandment of the Lord and Savior through your apostles,
3 knowing this first of all, that scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own sinful desires.
4 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.”
5 For they deliberately overlook this fact, that the heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God,
6 and that by means of these the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished.
7 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.
8 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.
9 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.
10 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.
11 Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness,
12 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!
13 But according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.
14 Therefore, beloved, since you are waiting for these, be diligent to be found by him without spot or blemish, and at peace.
The Lord will come again as he promised. Although it will sneak up like a thief (10), there is a coming Day of the Lord, when the Lord Jesus Christ will arrive again into the world. An unmistakable, disruptive arrival. He’ll be front and center in all reportage; then it will be impossible to ignore Jesus of Nazareth.
At His coming, and due to the power of His coming, the heavens will burn away, be dissolved. The powers that preside over and shape the world will be consumed by literal or metaphorical fire and then the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed for what they really are. At that time it’ll be clear what is valuable, what lasts.
What are we to do with this prediction? In the wake of telling us that all that governs and shapes this world will be burned up, you might expect calls for living a minimalistic lifestyle. Or living off the grid. Surely we’ll hear some warnings against materialism or shopping, especially purchasing a home – against any kind of rootedness.
But no. V.11 has the take-away: Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness,
In light of the coming fire: Live now in holiness and godliness.
Because those words are difficult to define we haven’t kept track of their meaning that well. But to be holy means to be ‘different’ because one is dedicated to God. And godly means to think and decide and act in reference to God.
So, in light of the coming inferno, we are to live differently and remember God.
That remains general. But in this passage are at least three instructions that help unpack what it means to live in holiness and godliness. Thankfully, they all start with “L.” Let’s look at those, starting with one today.
How should we live in light of the coming inferno?
1. Listen to the prophets and your apostles
Peter, an apostle, writes a second letter in which he again urges his readers to remember the predictions of the prophets and the commandments of Christ relayed via the apostles (2). Keep returning to what has been written. Yes, keep returning to the Word. You can’t get instructions at the start of the journey and remember them properly all the way through. You need to hear over and over the message of your apostles.
A holy and godly life is steeped in the Word.
Did you notice the “your apostles”? Meaning, these apostles are for you, their writings are your possession. Given to you! If you’ve read or seen the Fellowship of the Rings, you’ll recall that the travelers to Mordor are given precious instruments that will aid and protect them on their dangerous journey. That’s the prophets and apostles – gifts to the church as they travel through treacherous ways. You, upon whom the end of the ages have come, are given these writings.
You will need to become proficient in holy Scripture because, Peter says in v. 3, the last days are filled with scoffers. There will be convincing voices that insert mega-doubt into the Word of God. Where is the promise of his coming? Not that these scoffers necessarily say these exact words “where is the promise of his coming?” But that question gets to the heart of where they’re coming from. Christ isn’t returning, is he? I guess there is no final judgment. Listening to his apostles who are long dead whose writings are contained in a dusty book – – where has that gotten you?
Besides their casting doubt on God’s Word, the one descriptor Peter gives of the scoffers is that they follow their own sinful desires (3). That is, they lack patience with waiting for God’s promise to be fulfilled and instead are guided by their appetites and whatever else are the current compelling feelings. These desires are sinful, that is, those who follow them will come up short to being fully the human God intended.
Where is the promise of his coming? It’s a question, not a direct refutation. And because it’s framed as a question that requires a response it seems especially disturbing. Calls to mind an old query: “Did God really say, you shall not eat of any trees in the garden?…” The whole thrust of the question is intended to introduce doubt of God’s word. Then to put you on the defensive, your mind racing, thinking of something to say.
Hard questions:
Why are you Christians anti-gay? What does it matter who I sleep with? If God really wanted people to believe in him, and people are ready to believe in him, why does he keep hiding?
And behind these questions is the mega- question: You keep talking about this good, world-changing event that took place 2000 years ago, but isn’t the world as messed up as ever? All this isn’t going anywhere, is it?
Those voices of doubt are everywhere, there is no hiding from them. That doubt can become so strong as to be palpable; the people of God are vulnerable.
The way to safeguard yourself from this strain of doubt that runs through the earth is to be holy along this line: Cultivating a habit of a constant, repeated exposure to the messengers of God bringing the Word of God. Shielding you with truth, explanation, assurances, arguments, encouragements.
So, how to prepare for the coming world altering inferno? Not by prepping and building tunnels but by listening to the prophets and apostles. Yes, reading the Scripture privately. Yes, praying that those who teach you will do so skillfully.
You’re getting another sermon urging you to reading the Bible. You’ve heard that before; this is a reminder.
Read the Bible. Hear the Bible taught. Isolate and regulate the din that would drown out the messengers bringing the message.
Why don’t you read the Word of God? What makes reading the Bible frustrating for you?
I am often freshly struck with the discouraging observation that there are few people on this planet who care about the details of God’s word. There are religious people; there are professing Christians. There are not a few people who enjoy certain phrases or inspiring slogans in the Bible. There are some people who bring their questions into the Bible: why is there evil? How old is the earth?
But how seldom one comes across someone is who listening to the Word! Who is allowing the Bible to both raise the questions and then provide the answers! An attentive listener, willing to be led where God is taking them! An explorer! A dogged tracker!
We have conferences and Christian self-help books and internet presence and Christian comedians and Christian bands and some cool Christian lingo. What we have less and less of is knowledge of Scripture.
Brothers and sisters, let me say that again: the number of attentive Bible readers is small and shrinking. The number of Bible readers is small and shrinking. In fact, there are a growing number of people struggling to read, period. As people of the Book, this should alarm us. There is no holiness without literacy.
When I was very young I didn’t like reading. My mom assigned me to read a book called “The Borrowers.” I was given a deadline. The deadline came and I gave my mom the happy news that I had read it and thoroughly enjoyed it. She then asked me for the sketch of the plot. I had no idea what was in that book! My dad then applied the board of learning to the seat of education. I was then handed the book to read again. I read it… and enjoyed it. Then I read the other books in the series. From that time I’ve loved reading. One addendum: to love reading doesn’t mean that sometimes, perhaps often, I have to buckle down to pay attention and finish a book.
All that to say that an enjoyment of reading can come out from a dislike of reading. And why am I bringing this up? Because Christians are readers. We’ve been given a book! More fundamental than that we’re people of good deeds…we are readers. Much more than being people who get emotional…we are readers.
We’ve been given a book. It’s crucial that we become good readers, that our vocabulary expands, that we push reading onto our children. If we don’t enjoy reading, if we haven’t cultivated a facility for reading, we need to repent. That repentance might look like borrowing a John Grisham book from your local library and working your way through that. Anything to become more adept at and interested in reading.
Brothers and sisters, it’s true: people can use their education to be proud, to look down at those who don’t have education. And yet still it’s crucial that we become educated…that we get better at reading. We must learn how to follow a train of thought. Look down at v. 15ff
There is nothing virtuous or charming about being a bumpkin, even a good ol’ boy country bumpkin. We who live in rural areas, who are surrounded by outdoor activities, whose livelihoods might take us away from books and reading…we’ll have to work even harder at being excellent readers!
Here’s some encouragement for my American brothers and sisters: our forefathers who were far busier than we, who lived much closer to bare survival, who were daily out in the fields…somehow knew the Scriptures much better than we. To document this, read Mark Noll’s America’s Book: The Rise and Decline of a Bible Civilization. You don’t have go to college, be an intellectual, work in an office etc to become a skilled bible interpreter.
Jesus says “Come unto me who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you.” His yoke will include reading! And some of the weariness he will lift you from is ignorance!
There’s a little novel by George Macdonald entitled “Salted with Fire.” In the story there’s a certain soutar, the Scottish word for a shoemaker:
“The soutar, especially while at his work, was always trying ‘to get’ as he said, ‘into his Lord’s company,’ – now endeavoring, perhaps, to understand some saying of his, or now, it might be, to discover his reason for saying it just then and there. Often, also, he would be pondering why he allowed this or that to take place in the world, for it was his house, where he was always present and always at work…First, foremost, and deepest of all, he positively and absolutely believed in the man whose history he found in the Gospel: that is, he believed not only that such a man once was, and that every word he then spoke was true, but he believed that the man was still in the world, and that every word he then spoke, had always been, still was, and always would be true. Therefore he also believed … that the chief end of his conscious life must be to live in His presence, and keep his affections ever, afresh and constantly, turning toward him in hope and aspiration. Hence every day he felt afresh that he too was living in the house of God, among the things of the father of Jesus.”
Brothers and sisters, can we use this appeal to holiness to recall us to an attentiveness to the word of God. Let me adjust a sentence of John Piper: “One of the great uses of Twitter and Facebook will be to prove at the Last Day that [a patient hearing of the Word] was not from lack of time.” Yes, patient. Much, most of the Bible is difficult to understand, and you’ll have to mull it over, to – like a hen over eggs – to brood over the words.
In doing that you’re confronted with the real problems: your sleepiness, your distractedness, your failure to understand the most basic things, that you are not rich toward God…
1. Read systematically through books of the Bible. Don’t use the “Daily Bread” unless you’re following the Bible in a Year plan at the bottom of the page. Skipping around from one passage to another won’t help you grasp the big picture of the Bible.
2. Aim to read at least one chapter/day.
3. Buy a study Bible. But don’t read the notes right away…try to figure out the passage for yourself first.
4. Once/week read a longer section of Scripture.
5. Gather with the church every week. If you’re traveling find a Bible-preaching church to attend. Don’t miss gathering on a Sunday.
6. Ask your pastor questions about the text. Email me. Text me.
Not where we’re coming from but where we’re going. Not arrival, but trajectory.
Ok, we’ll pick this up next week.
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