2 Peter 3:4–6
This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors.
Good evening. I'm grateful for this opportunity to bring the Word of God to our church family. Thank you, Greg, for this invitation. Now, usually when people get assigned to preach the evening service, they are assigned one verse and are given 15 minutes. Tonight I have three verses, and I did the math, and that must mean I have 45 minutes to preach, right? The elders are shaking their head, so that's probably a no.
So before I run out of time, let me just jump straight into our text. We will look at 2 Peter chapter 3 this evening. It is on page 1019 on the Pew Bible, or you can find it in the front of your bulletin. 2 Peter chapter 3. In this letter, Peter has to respond to a lot of false teachings and false teachers who propagated a lot of destructive heresies.
They are those who live immoral lifestyles. And in the letter, Peter has to confront them and counter their false teachings. And in chapter 3, he will counter their false teachings about the second coming of Jesus. We will focus on 2 Peter chapter 3, verses 4 through 6. But for context, I will read the first 10 verses. That will help us to understand our text better. 2 Peter chapter 3, beginning in verse 1.
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 the way of reminder that you should remember the predictions of the holy prophets and the commandment of the Lord and Savior through your apostles. 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. 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. And that by means of these, the world was then existed, was diluted with water and perished. But by the same world, the heavens and earth that now exist are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly.
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 towards you. Not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. And then the heavens will be passed 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. We want to look at these verses 4, 5, and 6 in three parts. But the main idea of these verses is this. Jesus will return to judge sin. Jesus will return to judge sin. We will look at these texts in three parts.
First of all, we will see the ridicule. Secondly, we will see the rebuttal. And thirdly, we will see the responses. So the ridicule, the rebuttal, and the responses. Let's look first at the ridicule of the scoffers in verse 4. Jesus is coming back to church, but some people don't want to take Jesus seriously. We even have a voicemail of what they say. Look at verse 4. They will say, and here it is, where is the promise of his coming?
You see what they're doing there? they're mocking what Jesus say. They make fun of it. This is a question of unbelief. Jesus clearly say that he will return, but now they question that. They mock it. They make fun of it. They say, it ain't going to happen. He's not returning. Now, Jesus clearly say in the Bible that he will return. He doesn't tell us when, so I can't tell you when he will return either. You should know that I'm not a prophet.
my father is not a prophet so I'm not the son of a prophet and I'm a member at Third Avenue Baptist Church which is a non-profit organization so I can't tell you when Jesus will return but he will that's what he said he will return look at the second half of verse 4 listen to their reason why they say that look at the second half of verse 4 4 So now, they're explaining why they believe that.
For ever since the fathers, that is the patriarchs in the Old Testament, fell asleep. That is, ever since they died. All things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation. So what they are saying there, their point is that God never intervenes in history. That's what they're saying. God never, ever intervenes. The law of nature is all there is. Everything is the same from creation until now. So they wouldn't sing the last few verses of It is well with my soul.
When the song said, And Lord hates the day when the faith shall be sight, the clouds be rolled back as a scroll. And they would say, no, no, that don't happen. Things like that don't happen. They would deny that. So Jesus is coming back to church, But these four teachers, these scoffers, don't want to take him seriously. How does Peter respond to that? That leads us to our second point, the rebuttal, the rebuttal of Peter in verses 5 and 6.
Let me read verses 5 and 6 again. 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 was then assisted, was deluded with water and perished. But, and it didn't stop there. So what Peter is saying is that he pointed out two examples in history where God did intervene.
Two examples in there. In verse 5, he said, hey, how about creation? How about Genesis chapter 1? you guys read that? And then in verse 6 he's saying, how about the flood? How about the judgment? How about Genesis chapter 6? So Peter's point is that everything is not the same from creation until now. They are saying everything is the same, and Peter is saying everything is not the same. God does intervene in history, and Peter said, how do I know that? Because the Bible tells me so, because the Old Testament tells me so.
So these four teachers, not only they don't take Jesus seriously, but they also do not take the Bible seriously. Look at the first few words in verse 5. For they deliberately overlook. They deliberately overlook. So this is not ignorance. This is a willful rejection of what the Word of God says. They have taken a mental scissor and cut out the parts in the Bible that they don't like.
The parts about judgment. Genesis chapter 6. They have cut that off. They don't want it. They treat the Bible as a buffet. An all-you-can-eat buffet. They eat that what they want and they leave the rest. What they don't want, they leave it behind. So they don't take the Bible seriously. They have a very low view of the Bible. But Peter's point is that if you read the Bible at all, you will see there are plenty of examples where God does intervene.
He intervened in creation, subprime the waters to make the sky, to give life. He intervened to give life. And then in Genesis chapter 6, he intervened to bring judgment on sin. So Peter is saying that Jesus is coming back. How does he know that? Because the Bible tells him so. So far we've seen the ridicule of the scoffers, the rebuttal of Peter, and now that leads us to our last and final points, our responses.
How should we respond to the fact that Jesus is coming back to judge sins? Let me mention three responses. First of all, we should read our Bible. We should know our Bible well. Where does Peter go when he addresses the four teachers? He goes straight to the Bible. He goes to the Old Testament to counter and refuse all the four teachings there. And so should we. So should we. People who are experts at detecting counterfeit money, they spend a lot of time studying the real one.
And that gives them a good foundation to understand and to detect and identify the fake one. We should do the same with the Bible. The culture is ever-changing. It's hard to keep up with it, but if you know your Bible well enough, you're going to be able to detect what's the nonsense in the culture. Know your Bible. Read it. Study it well. I know some of us, we may have the tendency to read a lot of books, but we don't spend a lot of time in our Bible.
Some pastor has given this advice. Visit many good books, but live in the Bible. Visit many good books, but live in the Bible. Yes, the B-I-B-L-E is the book, the book, that is for me. Some of you, I know some of you use Kindle. Well, I don't have a song for that. Maybe the K-I-N-D-L-E is the book that is for me, something like that. But in light of Jesus coming, we should know it was well so that we would respond, be able to respond to all the false teachings in the culture.
But secondly, we should rejoice in His coming. We should rejoice at Jesus' second coming. We should remind ourselves of that. If you are a Christian, Jesus' second coming is good news. It's wonderful news because when He comes back, He will make all things new. He will right all wrong. He will rule the world with justice. No more election. Yay! No more trip to the doctor. He will make all things new.
He will bring our best life. Our best life is not here now, but it is then. It will happen when the Lord Jesus comes back. Now, if we are honest, many of us tend to think more about the first coming than the second coming. And rightly so, we think about Jesus' first coming when he comes to earth, live the perfect life we should have lived, and die the death we should have died, and rose again for our sin. And we think a lot about that, and there's nothing wrong with that.
But our tendency seems to be we look backwards more than we look forward. And we should do both. We need a new balance. I'm not talking about shoe, I'm talking about a balanced approach here. We need a new balance. We should look backward and forward. We should do both. There are a couple of ways that you can try to remind yourself of Jesus' second coming. So for me, when I back out of my driveway, I use the gear shift and I put it on reverse.
And the R there, when I look at the R, I said, Jesus is coming back. Jesus will return. Or when I watch ESPN, and especially during sports season, the commercial break goes on, and you see a black screen, and they will say, what is it? We'll be right back. We'll be right back. And I would make a mental edit in my head and say, Jesus will be right back. Jesus will be right back. But the point here is that you should find some routines in your life and use those to help you remember some biblical truths.
That's what you should do. So as Christians, we should rejoice in the second coming. We should long for it. We should pray for it. We should desire it. We should say with the Apostle John, even now, come, Lord Jesus. So Jesus will come back, so we should read the Bible. We should rejoice in his coming. And lastly, we should run to Jesus. We should run to him. And this is especially true if you are not a Christian. Yes, Jesus promised that he will come back to judge sin.
But you know what? Until then, he also promised if you come to him, he will forgive you your sins. He will make you new. He will make you whole. And then you will escape the final judgment. You will be saved and be delivered from your sin. Put your faith and hope in Jesus. Don't be like these scoffers who take his delay as reason for their mocking and unbelief. Don't waste this gift of time.
Run to Jesus. Come to him. So, so far, we look at 2 Peter 3, verses 4 to 6, and we learn that the main idea is Jesus will return to judge sin. Yes, we've seen the ridicule of the scoffer, the rebuttals of Peter, and how we should response us. We should read our Bible, we should rejoice in the second coming, and we should run to Jesus before time runs out. If you're not a believer, we pray and urge that you would do that.
Come to Jesus before time runs out. Or as the scriptures say, today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your heart. Jesus is calling you to come to him, to leave your sin behind and to come to him and have life. I love this song, this old song called Softly and Tenderly. It goes something like that. Softly and tenderly, Jesus is calling, calling for you and for me. See on the portals he's waiting and watching, watching for you and for me.
Come home, come home, come home. Ye who are weary, come home. Let us go to the Lord in prayer. Father, we pray that you would lead many who have strayed from you to come home. We pray that those who do not know you would come to know you. And for those of us who have known you, we pray that you would help us to yearn for your second coming.
Even now, come, Lord Jesus. We pray all of this in Christ's name. Amen.