Don't Be Surprised

Turn with me in your Bibles to 2 Peter chapter 3. We'll be reading the first seven verses. 2 Peter 3, beginning with verse 1.

This is now the second letter that I am writing to you, beloved, in both of them. I'm 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, 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 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 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. Let's pray together. Father, grant us grace that by the power of your spirit we will comprehend what you would say to us tonight through your word. Give us clarity of thought, pure minds that receive truth and are not turned aside by the false teaching of this world.

Guide our thinking. Father, guide my lips. May Christ be exalted and you be glorified, your people built up in the faith.

We ask in Jesus' name, amen. You may be seated. It's a beautiful Sunday afternoon back in 1978. Our family was walking home from the bus stop there in San Jose, Costa Rica. We had been to morning worship up the mountain in Asiri, and we were turning home full of joy and gladness and came in to find the closets and the footlockers ransacked and the cash and cameras gone, and even the kitchen garbage had been dumped out on the floor and gone through. It was a shock. And yet the reality is we should not have been surprised. We knew that robbery was quite frequent in Costa Rica, happens often. And we were known to be gringos, and gringos are all rich, you know. But anyway, we, several years later, were back here in North Carolina and happened again. I was surprised.

I got home from work one afternoon and the back door being kicked in and computers were gone. But why is it that we're surprised when bad people do bad things? They're just doing what is natural for them. That's who we are outside of Christ. We're all children of wrath until we come to know Christ by God's grace. In our natural state, that's who we are.

We're dead in sin. And we get surprised by things like this. We get surprised by natural disasters. We get surprised by crime.

We get surprised by the fallenness of this broken world. But the coming of Christ should not surprise us. We should not be surprised by Christ's return. Paul wrote to the Thessalonians, but you are not in darkness, brothers, for that day to surprise you like a thief. We don't know when it's going to happen, but we know for certain that it is.

It is going to happen. And we must be watching and longing and looking and praying and staying awake. Just a short time ago, our pastor took us through Mark chapter 13. There the Lord says, Stay awake, for you do not know when the master of the house will come in the evening or at midnight or when the rooster crows or in the morning, lest he come suddenly and find you asleep.

And what I say to you, I say to all, stay awake. Paul, in writing to Timothy, spoke of the fact that he knew that his time was short, but he said, There's laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that day, and not only to me, but also to all who have loved his appearing. We are to be longing for, looking for, expecting the appearing of our Lord. So tonight, as we come to chapter three here in Second Peter, we come to a place where the apostle, first of all, gives a statement of his purpose, why he's writing as he's writing.

And then secondly, he gives us a warning. So let's look then first at verses one and two where we find the apostles purpose. In this closing chapter of his little epistle, Peter expresses, first of all, his pastoral care for the ones who will receive this letter. He calls them beloved. In fact, he so wants them to understand his care for them, his love for them.

He uses that term four times in this one chapter, calls them beloved. But he says in both this letter and the previous letter, his purpose is to stir up their sincere mind, their pure mind. He wants them to wake up, to be aroused from sleep, from apathy and lethargy. And if that was needed in the first century church, how much more is it needed today in the church in America?

The church here in Harrisburg, Grace Church, do we need to be aroused, to be waked up, to come out of sleep and be looking and longing and expecting the return of the Lord? Peter's concern was that the minds, the thinking of the believers to whom he was writing was not sincere, not pure. He was afraid that their minds had been adulterated in some way by the false teaching that he'd been speaking against in this letter.

He sought to foster sincere, pure minds that were untainted by the false teaching. I think that for most of us here tonight, our problem is not so much false teaching as it is just apathy. It's not that we are not thinking rightly.

I'm afraid the problem with us for the most part in relation to the second coming is we're not thinking at all. We don't live in expectation and being awake and alert and looking for that coming of the Lord. And so Peter purposed to stir up by reminding his readers of the truth.

We need to be aroused in the same way. We need to be reminded of the truth of God. First of all, he exhorts them to remember the prophecy, the predictions of the holy prophets.

Like the first readers of this letter, we too need to remember to be reminded of what has been declared in God's word. Let me just remind you of a few of the predictions of the holy prophets. And by the way, he clarifies, he says, these are the holy prophets I'm talking about, not the false prophets that are evident even in our day.

But the holy prophets of old did predict coming judgment. The psalmist in Psalm 50, the mighty one, God the Lord speaks and summons the earth from the rising of the sun to its setting. Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God shines forth. Our God comes. He does not keep silence before him as a devouring fire around him, a mighty tempest. He calls to the heavens above and to the earth that he may judge his people.

Then Isaiah so often points to this. He says, for the stars of the heavens and their constellations will not give their light. The sun will be dark at its rising.

The moon will not shed its light. I will punish the world for its evil and the wicked for their iniquity. I will put an end to the pomp of the arrogant and lay low the pompous pride of the ruthless.

I will make people more rare than fine gold and mankind than the gold of Ophir. Therefore, I will make the heavens tremble and the earth will be shaken out of its place at the wrath of the Lord of hosts in the day of his fierce anger. And again, later on, Isaiah says the earth is utterly broken.

You think the earth is utterly broken. The earth is split apart. The earth is violently shaken. The earth staggers like a drunken man.

It sways like a hut. Its transgression lies heavy upon it and it falls and will not rise again. On that day, the Lord will punish the host of heaven in heaven and the kings of the earth on the earth. They will be gathered together as prisoners in a pit.

They will be shut up in a prison and after many days, they will be punished. Then the moon will be confounded and the sun ashamed for the Lord of hosts reigns on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem and his glory will be before his elders. Then in Micah, a little short prophecy, he says, and the mountains will melt under him. At the valleys will split open like wax before the fire, like waters poured down a steep place.

The last book of the Old Testament, Malachi. Malachi says, For behold, the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble. The day that is coming shall set them ablaze, says the Lord of hosts, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch. But for you who fear my name, the son of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings.

You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall. You start reading about the coming judgment and it really gets kind of heavy, doesn't it? But there's always that promise that the Lord will come for his people. The coming of Christ is also predicted by these holy prophets of old. Behold, a day is coming for the Lord, when the spoil taken from you will be divided in your midst. For I will gather all the nations against Jerusalem to battle, and the city shall be taken and the houses plundered and the women raped.

Half of the city shall go out into exile, but the rest of the people shall not be cut off from the city. Then the Lord will go out and fight against those nations, as when he fights on a day of battle. On that day his feet shall stand on the Mount of Olives that lies before Jerusalem on the east. And the Mount of Olives shall be split in two from east to west by a very wide valley, so that one half of the mount shall move northward and the other half southward. And you shall flee to the valley of my mountains, for the valley of the mountains shall reach to Azo.

And you shall flee as you fled from the earthquake in the days of a Ziah king of Judah. Then the Lord my God will come and all the holy ones with him. On that day there shall be no light, cold, or frost, and there shall be a unique day which is known to the Lord, neither day nor night, but at evening there shall be light. On that day living water shall flow out of Jerusalem, half of them to the eastern sea and half of them to the western sea.

It shall continue in summer as in winter. And the Lord will be keen over all the earth. On that day the Lord will be one and his name one. Not only does Peter encourage us to remember the words of the old prophets, the predictions, but we are also to remember the commandments of the Lord and Savior given through his apostles. But you must remember, beloved, the predictions of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Jude put it that way. John MacArthur has pointed out that the apostles in the New Testament, in the 260 chapters of the New Testament, they referenced the second coming 300 times. In fact, every New Testament book, with exception of Galatians, Philemon, and 2 and 3 John, every other book references the second coming of our Lord.

Just a few reminders. In Acts, the first chapter, the disciples had seen the Lord in his resurrected glory ascending into heaven. And they're just standing there with their mouths gaped open. And it says that two men stood by them in white robes and said, Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus who was taken up from you into heaven will come in the same way you saw him go into heaven.

He's coming again. But there's something for us to do rather than just stand and gaze away. While we're here waiting, expecting, looking, longing, we're to be busy about the commission that we've been given. Then again, on the day of Pentecost, Peter said, Repent, therefore, and turn back that your sins may be blotted out, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus, whom heaven must receive until the time for restoring all things about which God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets long ago. One very familiar passage, probably the most familiar passage concerning the coming of our Lord, Paul's letter to the Thessalonians. Do not want you to be uninformed, brethren. I can hardly get away from the King James.

Don't want you to be ignorant. Don't be uninformed about those who are asleep that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with a voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will always be with the Lord.

Therefore, encourage one another with these words. Paul wrote to Timothy, Charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, and by his appearing and his kingdom. And then in Hebrews, we all know Hebrews 9, 27, Just as it is appointed for man once to die, and after that comes judgment.

We don't go and read the rest of it. So Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin, but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him. He's coming again. And just as Peter purposed to wake up the first century believers, so we need to be aroused. He needs to arouse us to remember the predictions of the prophets and the commandments of the Lord through the apostles. So tonight, even as we celebrate the Lord's Supper in a few moments, we will show forth the Lord's death until he comes.

We're looking forward to his coming again. It's a reminder. Peter not only gives us a reminder, he gives us a warning. He warns in verse 3 that scoffers will scoff.

The scoffers will be scoffing. The false teachers will scoff at the second coming because it has yet to be fulfilled. And so they will ask, where is the promise of his coming? Ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation. The problem is they trust their reason rather than revelation.

And that really is our problem, isn't it? Martin Lloyd-Jones wrote this about this section. He says, this whole matter is fundamentally and finally a matter of faith and a matter of acceptance of the teaching of scripture. The Bible asks me to believe things which to the natural mind often seem to be quite ridiculous. You either base your whole outlook upon human reason and understanding or else you frankly say, I believe this to be the word of God and because this is taught in the word of God, I accept it.

It is essentially a matter of acceptance of revelation and submission to the authority of the word of God. So Peter says in these last times, they're going to be those who will scoff and mock the idea of the second coming. But he says, knowing that this is what really is going to be is of first importance. It is a primary importance.

Knowing this first of all, not first in chronological order, but first as primary importance. The false teachers deny the second coming because it doesn't fit what they want, how they want things to be. If Christ is not coming again, if there's no second coming, if there's no day of judgment, no day of the Lord, then we can live a life of indulging our own sinful desires. So Peter warns that the false teachers will scoff at the truth and will reject the word of God. Look at verse five. He says, they deliberately overlook this fact. They deliberately overlook this fact. The King James puts it like this, for this they willingly are ignorant of.

They choose not to know, not to receive, not to understand. The apostles, on the other hand, and throughout the New Testament, treat the Old Testament account as factual, as being true in everything that it declares. Even the Lord himself spoke of these things as actual fact.

What are the Old Testament facts that Peter points us to with regard to the certainty of Christ's second coming? First of all, there's the fact of creation. In the biblical worldview, creation is assumed to be factual. It's just accepted as truth. The very opening sentence of the whole Bible states that unequivocally, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

I had a pastor down in Florida for a time, and he used to point to this often. He'd say, if you believe that, all the rest is easy. In the beginning, God created, and we either receive this by faith or we reject it. Either it is the word of God or it's not, and there are only those two options. We either receive it as fact, believe it because God says it, or we reject the word of God. The second fact that Peter points us to is the fact of the flood.

That is one, of course, that has been, throughout the history of the church, has been mocked and never more so than in the last 150 years or so, with liberalism and the rise of trusting in empirical science, whatever that means, because it changes constantly. But this is a fact according to God's word. The Lord himself spoke of the flood as historical fact and connected it to his second coming. He said, for as were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. And while there is ample evidence for the flood, we don't believe in the flood because we find evidence for it.

We believe the flood because God says so, and we receive his word by faith. So the point Peter is making is not that we should see signs of the second coming and start setting times and dates and that kind of thing, but that we should be convinced and convicted of the certainty of his coming, that we should live then in the light of that truth, that our day should be guided by the fact that we expect the Lord. He will come. He will come to judge, quicken the dead, and he will come as certainly as God created, as certainly as the flood is a fact. So this time, the heavens, the earth that now exists, will not be deluged with flood and water again, but he says there in verse 6 that they are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly. One more thing that I want us to note is seen in the last phrase of verse 5 and the first phrase of verse 7. He says that these things are by the word of God in verse 5, and then verse 7 he says, and by the same word. The heavens and the earth were created by the word of God.

You remember the opening verses of John's gospel. In the beginning was the word. The word was with God. The word was God. All things were created by him. There's not anything that was made that was not made by the word of God. There, of course, it's pointing to that word of God that became flesh and dwelt among us, but we go back into the first chapter of Genesis, and over and over again we read, and God said, let there be, and it was.

Let there be, and it was. That's how he created it. The heavens and the earth were created by the word of God, and they are kept by that same word until the day of judgment and the destruction of the ungodly. You remember in the opening verses of Hebrews, it's put like this that when he says that in the old days, the fathers were spoken to by the prophets, but in these last days, he has spoken to us through his son. He's appointed him to be heir of all things, and it was through him that he created, and then he says this, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. You know, we have this crazy idea that has come to us in mythology of this man with the world on his shoulders and holding up the world.

God holds up the entire universe by his word, the word of his power. You know, we could go on and on as we look at the details of this passage, but let me close by calling attention once again to the apostles' purpose. His purpose is to stir up our mind by way of reminder. What do we take away from this?

How would it change us in the coming days and weeks? What is it that we need to remember to be reminded of? I would suggest two main things in application of this passage to us today. First of all, you need to settle the question of the word of God. It needs to be settled in your mind and heart. Psalm 119 verse 89 says, Forever, O Lord, thy word is settled in heaven. It's established.

It's settled. And Jesus said, For verily I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass through the law, till all be fulfilled. What he's declared about his coming again in judgment and to save his people and to reign forever, it will be fulfilled.

Not one jot, not one tittle will go from his word. Allow me just a moment of personal testimony. I grew up in a fairly typical church that had very little theology. I heard the gospel. I was taught the way of Christ, and yet there was not a lot of real instruction when it comes to theological thinking, biblical thinking.

I went off to school and sat under some Yale graduates who would say things like this, Oh, I believe in the virgin birth, but not because the Bible says so. And I was taught to take the Bible apart into things that were authentic and things that were not. And for years I struggled.

I had no foundation. And over time the Lord brought me to a place where I came before him and said, I don't understand all the difficulties. I can't explain all the problems, but I believe this is your word and I'm going to stake my life on it. And you know, God gave me a peace and assurance that I'd never known.

I've been a Christian for almost 20 years. You have to settle the question of the word. Is it truly your final authority? The word of God is the word of God, and we must ground our life in it. As Psalmist put it this way on one occasion, the words of the Lord are pure words like silver refined in a furnace on the ground, purified seven times.

Settle the question of the authority of God's word and live by it. And then the second thing I would encourage you to do is to remember the end of the story. Revelation chapter 20. Death and hell were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. And if anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.

Of course, those whose names are written won't experience the second death. Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.

He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away. Remember the end of the story. And don't listen to the scoffers. In this letter, Peter said, Make your calling and election sure. Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election. If you practice these qualities, you will never fall, for in this way there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. There's an old song. There's a message written in the Word of God for me. My Savior put it there to ease my load of care.

I read, Let not your heart be troubled. I will come again, that with me you may be throughout eternity. The Christ I love is coming soon. It may be morning, night, or noon.

My lamps are lit. I'll watch and pray. It may be today.

It may be today. Amen. Let's pray. Father, wake us up. Keep us alert. Keep us looking, longing, loving, the appearing of our Lord and Savior. And in the meantime, Lord, grant us grace to walk in obedience, joyfully receiving your gifts that are so abundant even in this life, but longing for that day when we will be forever with the Lord. We ask in his precious name. Amen.