Day 2449 – Denunciation of False Teachers – A Warning to Skeptics and Sinners – 2 Peter 3:1-7

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Welcome to Day 2449 of Wisdom-Trek. Thank you for joining me.

This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom

Day 2449 – A Warning for Skeptics and Sinners – Daily Wisdom

Putnam Church Message – 08/18/2024 Anticipation of Christ’s Return – A Warning to Skeptics and Sinners- 2 Peter 3:1-7 Last week, we learned to keep your discernment high by Going to your Knees, Going to the Word, and Going to the Wise because Discernment is better caught than taught. We must stay close to those seasoned saints, the proven men and women overflowing with wisdom. Today’s passage is 2 Peter 3:1-7, on page 1896 of your Pew Bibles. Because of the complexities of the subject matter, I will read it from the NLT for clarity of flow. ¹ This is my second letter to you, dear friends, and in both of them I have tried to stimulate your wholesome thinking and refresh your memory. ² I want you to remember what the holy prophets said long ago and what our Lord and Savior commanded through your apostles. ³ Most importantly, I want to remind you that in the last days scoffers will come, mocking the truth and following their own desires. ⁴ They will say, “What happened to the promise that Jesus is coming again? From before the times of our ancestors, everything has remained the same since the world was first created.” ⁵ They deliberately forget that God made the heavens long ago by the word of his command, and he brought the earth out from the water and surrounded it with water. ⁶ Then he used the water to destroy the ancient world with a mighty flood. ⁷ And by the same word, the present heavens and earth have been stored up for fire. They are being kept for the day of judgment, when ungodly people will be destroyed. As the menacing clouds begin to break and Peter’s stormy condemnation of false teachers subsides, a beam of light pierces the gloominess. This great apostle decides it’s now time to inject a ray of hope into his otherwise frightening portrayal of the future. Though the threat of false teachers is real and imminent, he wants us to lift our eyes beyond the immediate landscape and see the bright horizon that is yet to come. It’s important to remember that between the rough period of false prophets and the coming restoration of creation, two unforgettable events intervene. Much of the evangelical teaching during the late 20^th century focused on a period of Great Tribulation, by which the present world and all its wickedness will be destroyed,| and then the return of Christ, by which a new era of righteousness will begin. We must be careful not to be too dogmatic about the events preceding Christ’s return to earth. The study of the ‘end times’ is called escatology, and views can vary widely on what will take place. We know Christ will return to earth at some point, judge those who have rejected Him, and remake the earth into a global Eden as he finalizes the Kingdom of God. Heaven and earth will be joined at that point, our dwelling place for all eternity. This leads to Peter’s finale in chapter 3. He further develops the issue of the end times,>which he mentioned several times in the first two chapters. In his final written words to the churches before his martyrdom, Peter answers, “How will all this end?” (1) He gives us a final warning: avoid worldly corruption and false teachers (3:11, 17-18). (2) He presents a last reminder: God’s testimony is trustworthy (3:1-2). (3) He proclaims a glorious promise: a new creation is coming in which righteousness dwells (3:13). After writing a torrential lecture against the despicable doctrines and practices of false teachers in chapter 2, I can imagine Peter taking a break to calm his Galilean fury. Standing up and taking a deep breath, he closes his eyes, reviews what he wrote in his first letter, and considers the ground he has already covered in this second. Then, with a bold resolve, he addresses his readers with a term of endearment, “dear friends” (agapêtos). The word hasn’t appeared in this letter since 1:17, but he will repeat it to the churches four more times in his final written words. Peter clearly states his purpose for writing this second letter: to stimulate your wholesome thinking and refresh your memory. (3:1) He writes to those already characterized by wholesome thinking, free from deception and corruption. They were “innocent” in thought and deed. But innocent doesn’t imply impervious. These believers needed to stay on the alert. ->This reminds me of the mood in the United States in the months following the horrific events of 9 /11. You remember. Fighters patrolled the skies. Police were on constant alert. Nobody dared ignore suspicious activity. And airline security was at its all-time peak. Everybody knew the threat of unexpected attack was real—and pervasive. It could come at any time, anywhere, from anybody. But as months and years separated Americans from those devastating events, the original vigilance cooled—then virtually chilled. Few people knew what threat level the Department of Homeland Security had set, and later on, most didn’t care. Countless grew tired of hearing about terrorist cells. And many grew weary of military actions against havens of terrorism worldwide. Though nobody wanted their country to be attacked again, few kept up the state of alert necessary to prevent it. Vigilance has waned. We’re back to business as usual. The same thing happened in Peter’s day concerning false teachers. Intellectually, they knew the dangers, risks, and threats. And they had kept themselves pure and undefiled. But they needed a reminder, a wake-up call—something to stir them up and sound the alarm again. Peter knew the first waves of deception had come—and his readers had maintained their sincerity. But a tidal wave of truth-twisters was about to arrive, and they needed to brace themselves for the devastating blow. -3:1-2 —Bulletin Insert Peter spells out precisely what he wants his readers to keep at the forefront of their minds in light of the lingering threat of false teachers. First, we should remember the words spoken beforehand by the prophets (3:2). This includes all of the Old Testament writings. With this statement, Peter returns to the topic he introduced in 1:19-21. There, he urged his readers to “pay close attention” to the prophetic word “like a lamp shining in a dark place” (1:19). That shining lamp had been lit by the Holy Spirit, who moved the authors of Scripture to compose—without error—God’s written and inspired Word. We are told that these prophetic writings looked forward to the coming of Christ. Christ Himself said, You search the Scriptures because you think they give you eternal life. But the Scriptures point to me! (John 5:39). In fact, the writings of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms all point ahead to Jesus Christ (Luke 24:27,44; John 1:45; Acts 28:23; Rom. 1:1-4; 1 Cor. 15:3-4). Second, we should remember the commands given by the Savior (3:2). Most of these words come to us through the written Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Jesus called His hearers first and foremost to a belief in Him as equal to the Father: Don’t let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, and trust also in me. (John 14:1). Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me. (John 14:6). Jesus also reiterated the Old Testament command, ‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’(Matt. 22:37). He also commanded horizontal love for both our neighbors in general (Matt. 22:39) and fellow believers in particular (John 13:34). Third, implied in Peter’s reminder is a call to remember the teaching of the apostles (2 Pet. 3:2). The apostolic doctrine formed the firm foundation of the church, of which Christ is the cornerstone (Eph. 2:20). So, their ministry was not to point to themselves, but back to Christ’s person, work, and words. At the same time, Jesus’ own words point forward to His second coming, when His work will be fulfilled, and His glorious person will be universally revealed. Peter’s brief statement in 3:2 encompasses the entire canon of the Old and New Testaments—the prophets, Jesus, and the apostles. No other source of truth has the power to give us lasting stability and constant assurance. After this strong reminder for the godly to stand firm on the teachings of Scripture as the foundation for their faith, Peter offers a series of sober warnings to the ungodly. In 3:3-7, he first communicates something to know about the present (3:3-4), something to remember about the past (3:5-6), and something to count on in the future (3:7). -3:3-4 — First, Peter informs us of something to know about the present. He wrote that in the last days, scoffers will come, mocking the truth and following their desires. (3:3). From Peter’s perspective, this statement was prophetic>near the end of his earthly life. Yes, false prophets had already begun challenging the apostles and offering their own counterfeit Christ. Many believers had already abandoned the faith, led astray by heresy,>lust,>or greed. But Peter had in mind a different class of contrarian —those who would reject the faith by mocking, teasing, and poking fun at its claims. Those mentioned in Chapter 2 were the false believers who claimed to be believers but were not. Those described in Chapter 3 are the cynical scoffers who make fun of the faith from the outside. Sometimes, these categories overlap, but they are often two distinct forces to be reckoned with. Though Peter cast this warning about mockers as a prophecy, within a few years, the first wave of these mockers had already begun to arrive on the scene. It may be that Jude’s brief letter, written just a few years later, quoted Peter’s prophecy as already coming to pass: ¹⁷ But you, my dear friends, must remember what the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ predicted. ¹⁸ They told you that in the last times there would be scoffers whose purpose in life is to satisfy their ungodly desires. ¹⁹ These people are the ones who are creating divisions among you. They follow their natural instincts because they do not have God’s Spirit in them. (Jude 1:17-19) Beginning in the first century and continuing to our day, cynics have come and gone. Their shrill mockery and accusing fingers pointing at Christianity draw a lot of attention. The sum of these scoffers is_; to paraphrase Peter, they continually try to get us to question God just like The Satan did in the Garden, “How in the world can you believe this stuff? Do you think Jesus is going to come back? He lived, taught, and died. That’s it. And everything stays just the same. Nothing’s changed! History keeps plodding along just as it has for thousands of years.” Today, scoffers like this have loud voices. They write popular and intellectual books, travel the talk show circuits, and influence the minds of the masses. The details may be new, and favorable media coverage has undoubtedly increased, but the fundamental tone and intention mirror the scoffers of Peter’s day. As the wise king Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes, Nothing under the sun is truly new. This condition of mockers challenging the claim that a day of reckoning is at hand describes our day quite well. -3:5-6 — Second, Peter tells us something to remember from the past (3:5-6). Peter says that when these mockers maintain that Jesus will never return to transform this world through judgment and restoration, they forget that God has done this sort of thing before. The camp of scoffers who volley insults and snide remarks at the Christian faith almost inevitably reject two bedrock foundations of a Christian view of history: creation out of nothing and a global flood. A summary statement in 3:5 reminds us that God not only created the earth’s atmosphere (“heavens”) by separating water from water but also formed the inhabitable world ages ago by separating water from land. Genesis 1:6-10 describes both acts: ⁶ Then God said, “Let there be a space between the waters, to separate the waters of the heavens from the waters of the earth.” ⁷ And that is what happened. God made this space to separate the waters of the earth from the waters of the heavens. ⁸ God called the space “sky.” And evening passed and morning came, marking the second day. ⁹ Then God said, “Let the waters beneath the sky flow together into one place, so dry ground may appear.” And that is what happened. ¹⁰ God called the dry ground “land” and the waters “seas.” And God saw that it was good. That was the original creation of heaven and earth. And this is the kind of special creative act of God| that atheists, materialists, and other skeptics openly reject. Peter says this about the scoffers: They deliberately forget that God made the heavens long ago by the word of his command. (3:5)This is not simply a matter of having never heard that God ordered everything. Instead, they come up with all sorts of theories and reasons to push the notion of a sovereign Creator out of their minds. They banish Genesis 1 into the myth or an antiquated worldview, favoring a process of astronomical and geological evolution over billions of years. Peter emphasizes God’s acts of separating the water in the creation of the sky>and>earth because the judgment of the earth by the flood that followed at the time of Noah reversed that separation. The world at that time—that is, the world originally created in Genesis 1—was destroyed by those very same waters. This judgment by flood is described in Genesis 7:11-12: ¹¹ When Noah was 600 years old, on the seventeenth day of the second month, all the underground waters erupted from the earth, and the rain fell in mighty torrents from the sky. ¹² The rain continued to fall for forty days and forty nights. I find it interesting that the same people who reject the evidence of God’s design and creation of the world also reject the evidence of a global flood. They look at the same geological evidence and read the same ancient accounts of floods found in almost every ancient culture worldwide. Still, they conclude that it’s all just legend or myth, or at most, an exaggerated account of a local calamity like a tsunami or hurricane. But Peter makes it perfectly clear that the flood remade the original earth. The new order of things that remained after the floodwaters subsided |dramatically differed from the former world of wickedness. Peter’s point is that just as God catastrophically intervened with water during the Flood thousands of years ago, he would one day intervene again—but next time with fire, which means the purging or purification of that which is evil. A point of context here: just as the earth was remade by water during the flood, it will be purified or refined by fire in the coming days. This does not mean it will be literally destroyed, but once again, it will be remade in preparation for God’s kingdom. — 3:7 — Third, Peter points to something to count on in the future—the coming judgment of the present world order (3:7). Peter says that the present And by the same word, the present heavens and earth have been stored up for fire. (3:7) This fire will come in the form of judgment on that day when God judges the world and the works of ungodly people. This will undoubtedly include the false teachers of Chapter 2 and the scoffers of Chapter 3. It corresponds with Peter’s repeated warnings of coming judgment, in which the wicked will perish, and the righteous will be saved. What comes after the judgment (purification) by fire? Peter will address this topic in 3:13: “New heavens and a new earth” will rise from the purification of the present order. Just as the world of Genesis 1 had been restored after the judgment by water, the present heavens and earth will be judged and restored after the purification. We can chart Peter’s understanding of the various phases of the world in three distinct periods of “heaven and earth”—before the Flood, after the Flood, and after the fire. It is interesting to note that in Chapter 2, when Peter referred to biblical illustrations of God rescuing the righteous and judging the wicked, he used the examples of the flood of Noah and the fire of Sodom and Gomorrah. These correspond to Peter’s reference to the past judgment by flood and the coming judgment by flame. Peter even said that God made the people of Sodom and Gomorrah: “He made them an example of what will happen to ungodly people.” (2:6). Peter’s message couldn’t be more clear: Regardless of the way things appear day in and day out, despite the mockery of scoffers poking fun at the idea of Christ’s return and the coming judgments, in the end, God wins! (Poster) APPLICATION: 2 PETER 3:1-7 Rethinking the Return of Christ Yes, critics...