Full Transcript

Welcome to Share the Word. What a joy it is as we continue to share the good news of the gospel around the world, chapter by chapter. Now our goal is to bring as many people to know and accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior before His second coming, which I believe should be soon. Paul. Second Peter chapter 3. What’s the holdup?

One of the most well-known stories in the Old Testament is the account of Noah and the Great Flood. It’s told about in Genesis chapters 6 through 8. According to the record there, a universal flood occurred that God caused to scrub the earth of the wicked civilization that had developed by Noah’s time, and to start all over again. Maybe you saw the movie. Do you really think that happened, Paul? Yes, I actually do.

Not exactly as the movie with Russell Crowe depicts it, but as Genesis tells it, yes, I do. Why? For me, it isn’t something to doubt because I’m a Christian, and Jesus confirmed the historicity of Noah and his family’s preservation through the flood as described in the Genesis account. And as a Christian, I believe the things that Jesus thought were true are true. Isn’t that pretty much the definition of a Christian? It was in His Olivet discourse, Matthew 24, that Jesus is recorded as saying, As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.

For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, right up to the day Noah entered the ark. And they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man, Jesus said. Do you realize that a lot of time and expense has been spent trying to locate and verify the physical remains of Noah’s Ark, massive floating refuge that he and his sons built over decades of time? It was well over 500 feet long, according to Genesis, around 85 feet wide, and at least 50 feet tall. I’ve recently seen reports, in fact, that right now there’s another team of scientists from three different universities studying a site in Turkey near the Iranian border because there’s a very large fossilized deposit in the shape of a boat high in the mountains there.

It’s known as the Durupinar Formation. It’s in the right geographical area where the ark settled after the waters receded, according to Genesis. And what’s more significant, it’s the right size. Will they be able to definitively prove anything? Who knows? It would be cool if they could, but my faith doesn’t stand or fall on what scientists think they can prove.

I’m taking the Bible’s word for this, Jesus’ word for this, because I trust them. By the way, if this subject interests you, there are organizations focused on the intersection of science and the Bible. One’s called Answers in Genesis, and another is called Creation Research Society. Check them out sometime. In this final chapter of his second letter, Peter is reminding those he considers his scattered flock of things the Word of God promises them. Listen.

I want you to remember what the holy prophets said long ago and what our Lord and Savior commanded through the apostles. I want to remind you that in the last days scoffers will come, mocking the truth and following their own desires. And they will say, What happened to the promise that Jesus is coming again? From before the times of our ancestors, everything has always remained the same. The world has always gone on and on since creation. The promise that Jesus is coming again.

People with a lot of time on their hands and fascination with details have counted around 300 references in the New Testament to Jesus coming again, his second coming, as we call it. And that’s just the New Testament. The Old Testament prophets have many more promises about the Messiah that didn’t get fulfilled at Jesus’ first coming 2,000 years ago, which I think means they will get fulfilled when he comes again. It’s a huge subject in the Bible. Jesus’ truthfulness hinges on it. All believers’ hopes for the future hinge on it too.

Already when Peter wrote this letter, people were wondering, What’s the holdup? It’s 65 A.D. It’s already been more than 30 years since the apostle said that Jesus ascended to heaven with a promise to return. Thirty years is a long time when you’re looking for a promise to be kept, especially a people reading this letter who had been displaced from their homes and were being threatened by physical persecution. Hadn’t Peter said in his first epistle to them just a short time before, The end of all things is near; therefore be alert and of sober mind and stay in prayer? And the apostle James similarly written, Be patient and stand firm, because the Lord’s coming is near.

And hadn’t the apostles John and Paul taught and written the same very things? They all did. So now the early Christians who were banking on that were beginning to wonder, and many of them were getting mocked over this. Where is this coming you’ve been promised? Ever since our ancestors died, everything just goes on and on as it always has. I’m glad Peter answered this because believers have been waiting a lot longer now than his first readers had, that’s for sure, and we need an answer that makes sense.

Which gets us back to Noah and Genesis. So, where is your Jesus? You’ve bought into a fantasy, you Christians. The world goes on and on, always will. Peter’s answer to that charge is, No, it hasn’t. The world hasn’t just gone on and on uniformly without divine interventions.

The big word for that idea is uniformitarianism, meaning natural laws and processes that we observe in our time have always operated in the same way and always will. That was an assumption in the first century. It’s still an assumption today by many who deny God. But Peter and the other authors of the New Testament say they’re wrong. Why do you think there’s something instead of nothing? It’s because God has intervened in the past.

God created everything we see. He designed all the physical laws and installed all the natural processes. By the way, some top scientists today admit that much. For example, Nobel Prize winner, physicist and radio astronomer Arno Penzias has expressed his view that the Big Bang’s theories implications, such as the universe being created suddenly and out of nothing, and with the delicate balance necessary for life on our planet, all this suggests, he realized, an underlying supernatural plan. Those are his words, underlying supernatural plan. He said, As a scientist, what we observe in the universe aligns with what I would expect to see if given only the Bible’s descriptions of origins in the book of Genesis.

Penzias got a Nobel Prize for proving scientifically that things had a beginning, that things have not always gone on and on uniformly forever, that our universe is not eternal. Peter also said, The scoffers in Noah’s generation did not take his warnings of the great flood seriously. Although he warned them for years that it would happen, they scoffed at the idea until God shut the door of the ark and the rain started falling. You know, apart from the sort of drastic judgment that God describes in Genesis, it’s hard to explain some things geologists find, like marine fossils high up in the mountains, a thousand miles away from any ocean. How could they have gotten there? Or creatures fossilized so quickly they were perfectly preserved, like squid fossilized with ink still in their ink sacs, or mammoths with undigested food in their stomach.

In Arizona, I’ve read about thousands of jellyfish found fossilized within beds of sandstone. These kinds of things had to happen extremely quickly, which fits the biblical description of that universal flood. It was caused not only by water from the sky, but massive upheavals from below the Earth’s surface. These conditions would have caused enormous flows of sediment capable of carrying away and burying the specimens I’ve described. Jellyfish fossils, for example, could not have formed naturally over long periods of time. That explains a lot of the corroborating evidence, especially from geology, that such an event as the universal flood did happen, and it’s the only good way to explain some of the anomalies found in the geological records.

Unbelievers can mock if they want, but solid evidence exists for both the creation of the universe out of nothing, as Genesis says, and for the catastrophic flood described in chapters 6, 7, and 8. Which makes me wonder, do those who mock and scoff at the idea of God supernaturally breaking into our world do so because they don’t believe there’s evidence it’s happened, or because they just do not want to believe it happened? Peter says they deliberately forget because they want to just follow their own desires. To believe what the Bible has told us about God’s interventions in the past would make it hard to ignore what it says is coming in the future, that is, the return of Jesus and all the events that follow. So they do not seriously want to entertain these possibilities. They deliberately disbelieve them.

Maybe the mocking is their attempt to stave off their own doubts. Peter’s reminder to these early Christians is that God has intervened in the past and that he will do so again because Jesus is coming back, just as he promised. Okay, but that still does not answer, What’s taking so long, Paul? What’s the holdup? I’m getting to that. But first, let me make a point that might change the way you think about this question.

See if you can follow me here. To say that something is going to happen soon and to say that something is near are not exactly the same thing. Soon implies a short time frame. Near is less a time indicator and more of a term of proximity, like close. What? Well, using James’ visual when he wrote that the Lord is near, even at the door, I picture Jesus just on the other side of a great door that separates our time from the next age, the age that will happen when Jesus comes back.

He’s that close, just behind the door. He could come through that door at any time. I think we’ve used the word imminent in the past for something that could happen at any time. Because he is near or close, that doesn’t necessarily mean, though, that he’s opening the door and coming through today or next week or next month or next year, does it? He could, because he’s close. But he also may not.

What if he’s waiting for something? What if he’s waiting for something to happen? Does that make sense? In verses 8 and 9, Peter gets to the big idea I hope we take away from this chapter. He writes there, But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: with the Lord, a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promises, some understand slowness.

Instead, he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. Stop and think about that. It takes us out of our norm because everything in our world is dictated by time, by the clock. Tick, tick, tick, tick. Some things coming up on our calendars, we are so anxious for, we wish we could speed time up to get there sooner. Like when you’re a kid, maybe it was getting your driver’s license, or later, maybe it was your wedding day or some other special event in your life.

But other things looming ahead of us on our calendars, we dread, and we wish we could slow time down because we don’t want to have to deal with them. Of course, wishes we might, we can neither speed up or slow down time. Tick, tick, tick, tick. Time marches on. However, Peter is saying, with God, none of that is so. Time is something he created for our world.

It does not control him or his world. That’s what Peter means by a day to us could be like a thousand years to him, or a thousand years to him like a single day for us. Looked at through that lens, the fact Jesus hasn’t returned yet has no bearing on whether he really will. He certainly will, because it’s a promise he made. If I go away, I will come again to take you to be with me, he promised his disciples. When this same Jesus you’ve seen taken up from you into heaven will come again in the same way, they were again promised at his ascension.

The New Testament is filled with those kind of promises, and ever since the generation that first read Peter’s words in this letter, Christ’s return has been near, and believers have been expecting it. It’s been imminent. It could have occurred at any point if God had said to his angels, Until the Son, now’s the time. But he’s held back. He’s delayed. Why?

Because Peter says he’s patient. That’s Peter’s answer. When Jesus returns for his church, for believers, what comes after that is a time of judgment on the rest. And Peter says God does not want to see anyone perish, so he’s been extending the time, allowing more opportunity for people to repent and believe the gospel so they can be saved. Have you ever thought about the fact that if the prayers of those persecuted Christians in the first century for Christ to return had been answered, or the prayers of Christians for Christ’s return at any point prior to our generation had been answered, then you and I would never have had the opportunity to be a part of the wonderful things God has in store for his eternal family. We’d miss out on all of that.

So I’m glad he’s held off. And honestly, I hope he will hold off just a little longer until the people that I love the most who are still unbelievers come to faith in Christ. I certainly don’t want to see any of them perish. I want to be sure that all the people that I love, and as many more as I can influence, will turn to the Savior while there is still opportunity, while Jesus is still delaying his return. But at some point, at some point, the door of the ark of safety will be shut, just as it finally did in Noah’s day, and then judgment will begin to fall. Peter’s not trying to lay out an eschatological timeline in this section.

He’s just reminding his readers of this big two-part outline. There’s now, while God delays, while the invitation to trust Christ is still open, but there’s also coming a sudden end to that, a time when this age, this whole world, are done away with. Here’s how he put it. The Lord is not slow about keeping his promise regarding his return. He’s delaying out of patience so more can respond to the gospel. But, Peter says, the day of the Lord will come like a thief.

That means suddenly, unexpectedly. The heavens will disappear with a roar. The elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare. Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought we be? Peter asks. We ought to live holy and godly lives as we look forward to the day of God and speed its coming.

That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, with elements melting in the heat. But in keeping with his promise, we, that is Christians, are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth where righteousness will dwell. When God ultimately does intervene again, this time it will be to end the world as we’ve known it, Peter says. He’s using terms here that Old Testament prophets like Amos and Joel used. The day of the Lord. It will be to burn it all down, as we’d say.

When he describes sounds like massive nuclear explosions, the heavenly bodies being destroyed by fire, with the roar or crackle of a fire, it literally says, and the elements melting in the heat. The universe as we know it will be destroyed and dissolved by some kind of explosion of intense heat at God’s command, just as quickly as it came into existence at God’s command in the beginning. And after that, He will make a new heaven and new earth, Peter says, one marked by righteousness, not sin and disorder like the world we’re in now. And if we are a part of God’s eternal family, that’s where we’re going to spend eternity. I am fascinated by a line in verse 12. Listen.

You ought to live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming. Not the first part about living out our faith as we wait for Jesus’ return. Margie explained very well what that means a couple lessons ago. But the second part, which is a very literal translation, could render, as you are looking for and hastening its coming. Hastening, speeding it up, speeding up Christ’s coming? I’ve often wondered, does God have a time fixed in His mind or marked on a calendar in heaven when Jesus is going to come through the door, His second coming will occur?

Or is it possible that He doesn’t, that the delay we’ve been talking about is rather tied to how many people He wants to be saved, to the occupancy permit in heaven, we could say. I’ve also thought of this in relation to something the apostle Paul wrote in Romans 11 about the full number of Gentiles needing to come in before the next phase of God’s plan can commence. I don’t know for sure. It’s just a thought. It’s just a suggestion. But if we can do anything to speed up Jesus’ return, hasten Jesus’ return, as Peter says, it would be to fulfill the Great Commission, to be as effective as we can be at sharing the gospel and leading as many people as we can to repent and believe into Jesus Christ.

If my theory has any merit, the sooner the full number comes into the family of God, the sooner Jesus will return. In that way, we may hasten the day. As we contemplate all this, the obvious and pressing question is, is the return of Christ something you’re seriously waiting for, anxious for, or is it something uncomfortable to think about because you’re not sure what will happen next for you? If you’re in that second situation, no different than in Noah’s day, when the door of the ark is still opened while Christ’s return is still on hold, I’d encourage you to turn toward God and accept Jesus as your Savior. A heart made right with God through faith in Christ is the only way to be ready for what comes next. To those of us who are already believers, Peter’s final challenge is to keep growing in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

One way you can do that is by continuing to listen to God’s Word, chapter by chapter on Share the Word podcast, and stay in a good local church that is opening the Bible and teaching it honestly. You’ll grow in grace and knowledge as you listen, believe, and apply its truths. Thanks for listening to Share the Word podcast, and please join us in fulfilling the Great Commission by sharing it with other people. Maranatha. Great subject. But I couldn’t help but wonder about those who aren’t sure what will happen next.

Wouldn’t the only reason you would be anxious is for fear that Jesus and the second coming are real, and you’re afraid that you’re making a mistake? I’ve got an idea. Type in info at sharetheword.org and send us your question, and let’s talk. The evidence is overwhelming. Artifacts are constantly being found that verify the validity of the events of the Bible, and yet it breaks my heart to think that there are those who Satan has convinced that it’s better to be apart from God. Don’t fall for those lies.

Keep listening, learning, and remember, we’re here to help.