God Given Chances (Part B)

You don't have to agree with every single thing. I used to believe, when I first became a Christian, I believed everything I was told by people that I trusted. And then in time I began to question some of those things, and I don't agree with that. But I didn't stop loving the others, or they weren't heretics or anything like that. We just differed on application sometimes, interpretation, but we were always together on the essentials. Still are.

So it's okay. This is Cross-Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the book of 2 Peter. Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross-Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching.

Today, Pastor Rick will continue taking us through 2 Peter chapter 3, and his message called, God Given Chances. Well, sincere in our English language comes from the Latin, and there it means without wax. But there's a connection. There's a correlation between this Greek word for tested by the heat of the sun, and this Latin word meaning without wax. So if you were a dealer in pottery or statues, and someone came into your shop and wanted to purchase a statue, but you knew there was a crack in that statue, and so you plugged the crack with wax, and did a pretty good job, so that someone could come into your shop and they could look at this vase or this statue that had maybe a nose chipped off, and you put it back on with this wax to hold it, and they can't even tell. They take it home, if you were a dishonest dealer of course, and you put it in the garden of your villa, and out in the sun it sits, and that sun begins to beat on that vase or that statue, and that wax melts, and then you realize you've been had, you've been took. And so that became part of the language, so that when the honest dealers would sell a statue, they would say, it's without wax, it's sincere, it's pure, there's nothing corrupted here. So the Greek and the Latin come together, because those thoughts are what influence the language of the ancients when they put their language into action. And so the correlation is this, when Peter says, in both of which I stir up your genuine mind, your pure thoughts, that side of you that is influenced by God and not by self or the world or Satan, God wants his people to have honest minds, not self-deceptive minds attempting to hide sin, or be more merciful than God.

And that's not uncommon with people. That Old Testament stuff about, you know, thou shalt not lie, and all, that's too hard. I'm going to soften it some.

No. You know, I got to speak a little while ago to some first graders outside the church, and I started off by saying, the apostle Paul suffered for the gospel. One of the little girls, who incidentally must have had a boot on one of her legs, must have had some injury, of course. She says, what does suffer mean? Now you know when you deal with kids like that in a group, you never know what's coming. And I was ready for not knowing what was coming, so I was ready to run out the room at any moment.

I don't know the answer by. So how do I answer the little girl without terrorizing all of them? Suffering, my dear, you're going to find out, because for the rest of your life, you're going to feel pain.

When you don't see it coming, it's going to be physical, emotional. What do you say to them? You can't corrupt their innocent minds. Well, you know, you let somebody else do it. But you still have to answer without lying, without taking them in the wrong direction.

They've got to get a dose of the truth. So I told them, go ask your mother when you get home. No. I gave a short, quick answer, but I was saying to myself, I got a lot more to say about this little girl. Stick around.

When I'm in my 90s, come see me. You and I can swap notes. Well, verse two, we go on. He says that you may be mindful of the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets and of the commandment of us, the apostles of the Lord and Savior. He says here that you may be mindful of the words which were spoken by the holy prophets. That's Old Testament scripture.

That's the messianic prophecies. The prophets didn't see the church. God didn't need to show them that, so he didn't show it to them. But he did show them the Christ who bought the church with his blood. He showed them the Jesus whom we love.

And Peter points this out here. He gives the writings of the apostles equal ground with the writings of the prophets. In other words, he says that what we write to you is scripture. It is the word of God. It is every bit equal to what Isaiah wrote and Jeremiah wrote and all the rest of them.

And that we better not lose sight of. Peter will get this again in verse 16. There he will say Paul's writings is equal with the prophets. It is scripture.

And there's no way around that, honestly. Verse three, he says, knowing this verse, the scoffers will come in the last days walking according to their own lusts. And it's okay to beat them up.

No, we laugh at that. But you know, the false church has done just that. In Christ's name, they have committed so much debauchery. Well, this knowing this verse that scoffers will come, he's saying, Peter's saying, come on, grow up, guys, in case you're not there.

You're going to incur these things. Those of you that have doctrinal differences, grow up. As long as they're not essential points, the deity of Christ, for instance, you don't have to agree with every single thing. I used to believe, when I first became a Christian, I believed everything I was told by people that I trusted. And then in time, I began to say, question some of those things. I don't agree with that. But I didn't stop loving the others. They weren't heretics or anything like that. We just differed on application sometimes, interpretation. But we were always together on the essentials.

Still are. So it's okay. So I'm just pointing out, grow up with that.

Don't be so child, you hurt me, you don't agree with me, it's the end of the world. Sneers of the fooled and the fools, two different types of fools. There are those that are fooled, and that's why they are fools. Then there are those that are just fools, because they choose to be. They do this willfully, as Peter will point out. So there are honest scoffers. They don't know any better. But when you begin to address their scoffings, they submit to facts, to truth, to reason. They don't have their minds already made up.

They're just repeating either something they've heard or speaking from ignorance. I had a cousin, and I'm sharing the gospel with my aunt who came to Christ, and he walks in the room and he scoffs. And I turned and I said a few things to him, and he became a believer. Amen.

And right now, he's with the Lord. So there are those scoffers that are filled with ridicule. These are the ones that the Bible has really very little patience with. They have been exposed to the truth and they've rejected it. Well, let's take a proverb. A scoffer does not love one who corrects him, nor will he go to the wise. You know someone who always makes bad decisions?

No matter what, you put them anywhere. They're going to make the wrong decision. They're going to be good people that probably you family members this way. You might be that way. Not all of you at once.

That would be too much for me. But we come across folks that just always make the wrong spouse, the wrong school, the wrong job, the wrong response. Everything is always wrong. And when you correct them, they turn on you. Well, that's where love covers a multitude of sins and hiding works well for them. But the scoffer does not love the one who corrects him.

Okay, again, two levels of that. One relatively innocent. You know, a family member that is good, loves the Lord even, but still kind of hard-headed.

And then there's the one that's malicious. Isaiah 5, 9. Isaiah, of course, having to deal with this all the time. You know that first chapter of Isaiah, God said, I don't want to hear about your religion. Just keep your sacrifices. You're fake.

It's fake religion. And I don't want my name any part of it, bringing me these junk sacrifices. You don't even mean it. Now, of course, that's not paraphrase. That's literal.

No, it's paraphrase. You just read Isaiah chapter 1, and you'll find God appeals to them in the midst of that. He says, come, let's reason. Your sins, they're red. They're blood red. I can make them clean. I can wash them away. I can make you clean by washing your sins away. God can't make the sins clean.

But he can make the sinner clean. Anyhow, Isaiah 5, he says, Isaiah the prophet, speaking about the prophets, let him, Isaiah is speaking, he's saying what the scoffers are saying. And the scoffers say this, let him, that is God, make speed and hasten his work that we may see it and let the counsel of the Holy One of Israel draw near and come that we may know it. In the context of Isaiah chapter 5, he's talking about those who are mocking God's prophets and mocking the prophecies that go with them. And so when Peter comes along, he's not telling us anything that the scriptures not already given to us and dealt with, but he is stirring them up. He's saying to us, look, you should know these things.

And if you don't, I'm here to remind you. I'm doing my duty as an apostle. So this world flooded, we live in a world flooded by a defiant culture that has Satan as its coach and the demons, its quarterbacks, and it is running the plays of hell on earth. And again, it's flooded with this, this planet. So few people have any care for the gospel. That's where we come in, incidentally. That's not where we go out. When we say, I wish I could be raptured now, God says, no, but I have work for you to do.

That would be escaping the assignment. I need you to stay there. The world doesn't need another liar. The world needs someone who could bring a bucket of truth into their life, just like it happened to you. So convinced against Christ, for whatever reasons, they side with Satan, whether they know it or not. And they hope to discredit the truth. They hope to discredit the church. They hope to discredit the people of God. Just trying to escape the sense of judgment that is upon them. They are eager to destroy the notion that the Bible is trustworthy, it is full of integrity, and they do to each other what Satan did to Eve. Destroy that sense of trustworthiness and integrity of God's word and God's person.

And of course, Satan pulled that off. Jesus said this, the thief does not come except to steal and to kill and to destroy. I have come that they may have life and that more abundantly. A lot of life. And unfortunately, we live, it's hard. It's hard. I don't care how hard, how much you serve the Lord, you're going to come to places where you feel like you don't serve. For example, there's always that flesh that will protest everything, that will try to dictate the pace. Well, if you serve God like you should, you'd be doing this and you'd be doing that.

Well, God has no problem getting me to those places. I don't need my flesh to dictate to me anything about God, and I have to learn how to make it stop being effective. He says, walking according to their own lusts. Well, the scoffers, because they enjoy their lifestyles and despise God's condemnation on such lifestyles, they sneer at righteousness.

To them, it's no big deal to have a litter of children with five different women and have these children grow up. This is something that only the church really, true church, can address with any degree of hope. I mean, others, you can have moralists that don't receive Christ and they can point out the flaws of that kind of behavior, but they can't give that eternal hope.

They cannot tie it into God, and therefore, it is left undone. And what does it profit a man if he gains the world, loses his soul? How many of you think you could read that verse one time and never remember it again? When you read that verse, what does it profit a man if he gains the world, loses his soul, you never forget it.

It is that, it cuts that deep into all of us. Verse four, Peter speaking about the scoffers, this is what they're saying, he says, in saying, where is the promise of his coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation. These are defiant taunts, the taunts of the wicked, permitted by God for one lifetime. Scoffers are permitted an entire lifetime to scoff at God or figure it out with what he has left here for us. And so, Solomon who says, everything's just so silly, this life is just such a waste, vanity of vanities, what's the use? Well, he answers that in the end, but he got clobbered so hard by his own carnal appetites that he was dragged to write a book that we have to debate at times whether it even belongs in the Bible.

It does belong there, no question about, well, no question for me, it shouldn't be for you either. But some haven't come to that level of understanding, but either way, Ecclesiastes 8, because the sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil. Because God does not snuff out the wicked instantly, people think they can get away with it.

They do, they think that. Paul said this to the Thessalonians, for they say, peace and safety, then suddenly destruction comes upon them as labor pains upon a pregnant woman and they shall not escape. We're going to keep hitting that part as we move through this section this morning with other scriptures, because they got it from Christ, of course. Every true word applied in scripture comes from God. Are there false words applied in scripture?

Yeah. When we hear the devil speak, for example. When we hear the unbelievers that are anti-Christ speak, yeah, so in that sense they are recorded, not endorsed. He says, for since the fathers fell asleep. That's figuratively. The fathers figuratively, their ancestors, but fell asleep not taking a nap, but they've died.

It's a euphemism. So they're setting the timetable before God. They said, well, we are measuring this by our ancestors. They've been looking for the coming of God.

He's not showed up yet. So therefore, they claim that something cannot happen because it has not happened. Well, that's true with some things, but that's not true with all things. And you'd be very careful to apply that to all things. You'd be foolish to apply that to all things.

Just for right out the starting gate, you have not perfect knowledge. You don't know what's happened before everywhere. You go through a drought, for example. You know it's raining somewhere on the earth.

If you live out somewhere in the desert, it's raining for sure somewhere. Well, he says, all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation. It is to the scoffer, especially the one that is the fool, scoffer, that has no intention of being saved. What might be, not against their will, but against their awareness, they might not know it's coming. My mom said to me as a little boy on the kitchen floor, if God calls you to the pastorate, you have no choice but to go. And I in my heart said, he's not telling me what to do. As a little kid, playing with little toys on the floor.

My mom's cooking and stuff. So you got an idea. I wasn't nine years old, sitting on the floor.

He'd trip over me. I was a little tyke. But I remember this. I know now it was her will that I would become a pastor. And here I am. She was right.

The only time she was ever right that I would admit. But the world thinks, the scoff, the scoff, and I was an ignorant scoffer as a little kid. But there are those fools today whom we're here to reach and not to mock. To them, it is inconceivable, even ridiculous, that the continuity of history should be disturbed by God.

To them, they can't, these things are just going to go on the way they are. God is not going to interfere. Some of them say, well, there is no God. Or they just make up some rendering of God that is always tiny.

It's always a small, itsy bitsy God that comes out of hell's teachings and coachings. They can't believe that God will overrule mankind with the coming of Jesus Christ. And Peter is saying, here they are, scoffing, saying, where's the promise of his coming? You've been talking this Christian rapture stuff, all this time. Where's it coming? Well, let's just tell God he needs to do it now to satisfy you.

Jeremiah, he dealt with this, 1715. That's not the year, it's the verse. Indeed, they say to me, where is the word of Yahweh?

Let it come now. There's nothing new. So Peter could easily have countered, and he probably did when he dealt with these scoffers.

You know what? The other prophets had to deal with the same mockings. And it was just as vain and silly then as it is now. What right has anyone to demand that God fulfill prophecy or do anything in their lifetime? Well, when they say, well, again, if you have a tiny God, then he has no rights.

You have the rights. That's the thing about idolatry. You possess the rights to the God you created. You assign to him what you believe.

And if someone else did it and you join that bandwagon, it's the same thing. As opposed to those who receive revelation from God that is backed up by prophecy as we have, no one else has got it. Verse five, he continues, Peter talking to the Christians about the scoffers who include false teachers but not only false teachers. He says, for this they willfully forget that by the word of God the heavens were of old and the earth standing out of water and in the water by which the world then existed, perished, being flooded with water.

Very wet two verses for us. Where he says, for this they willfully forget. Literally, it is this escapes them by their own will.

In the Greek, it's closer rendering. It's free will gone wrong. You have free will to make your choices. You can make wrong choices.

You can't choose the consequences of your choices. That belongs to God. It's called judgment. There's a judgment of the righteous.

There's a judgment of the unrighteous. Of course, Peter is talking about the activity of the third day where God separated the waters from the land. The global judgment of the flood that he is also talking about is a template from God that there is a greater judgment that God does interfere, that he is given a precedence, that catastrophes can come from his hand.

In verse six, by which the world then that existed, perished, being flooded with water. Well, things don't continue as they were from the beginning, and the geological record is loaded with observed evidence. When I say observed evidence, you can look at rocks with geological record.

You can look at the rocks, the strata. If you can find Immanuel Velikovsky's book, Worlds in Collisions and Earths in Upheavals, two different books, if you can find those books, they're out of print, there you have apparently an unbeliever examining the geological record globally and asking questions that only the Bible can answer. And of course, the world that he lived in, and he was a scholar, the world rejected his premise because they want to believe that God doesn't exist. We even have a group that exists solely to prove that what they don't believe doesn't exist. I mean, it's like, let's create a group, maybe we can have a ministry here, the anti-fairy ministry, or like an atheist, but it's a fairy.

Well, no, no, that's not right. Where we, you got that. I don't want any fairies. Where we live to prove that fairies don't exist. Tooth fairies, for example. Could you imagine something as sane as that?

We rent a building, pay all that rent. Well, this evening's meeting, brothers, is we're going to discuss the non-existent wings of a tooth fairy. Or how does such a little thing carry a quarter? You know, so just keep going on with this.

You know, what if you have an alarm system and the fairy comes in and nobody's home? It's just too many questions. So I know, so the atheists and they're very serious about proving what they don't believe exists.

No, I don't think there's anybody else like this on earth. That's all we have time for on today's edition of Cross Reference Radio. You've been listening to Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville in Virginia, as he teaches through the book of Second Peter. If you'd like to listen to more messages from this series, or if you'd like more information about this program, please visit our website, crossreferenceradio.com. We also encourage you to subscribe to our podcast so you'll never have to miss a program. Just search for Cross Reference Radio in iTunes, Google Play Music, or your favorite podcast app. What a great way to keep God's word with you wherever you go. We hope you'll tune in again next time as Pastor Rick continues studying through the scriptures, right here on Cross Reference Radio.