Sermon Tone Analysis

In the Last Days...

When you look at the statement, “In the Last Days...”, What thoughts does it bring up?

In 2 Timothy 3, Paul said,

In the last days, there will be terrible times.

Jesus talks about the Day of the Lord.

Times are going to get tough, but let’s not forget this about the last days.

Peter quotes Joel 2

Over the next three weeks, were going to endeavour to look at why it’s so important to live lives that are pleasing to God, why it’s so important to be ready to meet the Lord, and why we need to be alert, and not deceived.

1.

I want to stimulate your wholesome thinking and refresh your memory

Peter wanted nothing more than to see his church family walking with God, growing in their faith, and being ready for Jesus’ Second Coming.

We need to be reminded while it is still called today what Peter wrote,

and in 2 Peter 1:3-4

In the books of 1 & 2 Peter, Peter does a lot of encouraging, admonishing, and warning.

I believe that he does this because there is so much at stake.

If we wander back to the life that we have been set free from, we can lose everything.

Peter was fighting for people’s eternities, and he knew that after he was gone, corrupt people would come and try to undo everything that he had taught and preached.

We need to hold on tightly to the hope that we profess.

Let’s not be swayed by the cunning words of others.

2. I want you to remember God’s word...

As Moses was coming to the end of his earthly life, he wanted to make sure that each family in Israel kept God’s word at the center of their lives.

This is what he said,

There is an old saying of Dwight L Moody that goes like this, “The Bible will keep you from sin, and sin will keep you from the Bible.”

The Psalmist wrote,

Peter gave this warning

3.

In the Last days scoffers will come...

Peter was warning about people that would come and mock the claims of Jesus Himself.

Often when we look at history, we think that our generation was worse than the previous generations, and in a lot of cases, that’s true.

We look at our society and we can see that many people have bought into the lie that there is no God, and if there is how can we know that there are not many gods.

A mocker or sceptic, isn’t on the hot seat.

They can scoff or make accusations and they might say, “Prove that there is a god.

Prove that there’s life after death.

How do you know that Jesus died for your sins?”

When you say, “The Bible says...”

They might say, “I don’t believe the Bible…How can you prove that the Bible is true?”

In the last days scoffers will come...

Satan can us hatred, persecution, and ridicule against God’s children.

You may be accused of being intellectually challenged for believing an ancient book, but

Christ is still the power of God unto salvation.

They will say

4. What happened to the promise that Jesus is coming again?

Maybe somebody has asked that?

Or

“If Jesus is real, why hasn’t He come back already?”

Look at the scientific evidence of how the world started, how can you believe that God created the world?

What about natural selection?

It’s obvious that we came from monkeys, look at the genetic similarities.

They just didn’t have the science and the technology that we have today to know where we came from.

We have a choice that we need to make.

We can either believe those who mock God or we can choose to believe God and His word.

Listen to what Jesus said about what will happen after the Great Tribulation,

We live in a society that has become largely humanistic.

Many believe that there is nothing beyond this life.

They might say that we need to be inclusive.

All faiths are equal and there is nothing absolute.

Jesus didn’t give us that option.

C.S Lewis wrote this in Mere Christianity:

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him [that is, Christ]: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’

That is the one thing we must not say.

A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher.

He would either be a lunatic–on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg–or else he would be the Devil of Hell.

You must make your choice.

Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse….

You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God.

But let us not come up with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher.

He has not left that open to us.

He did not intend to.”

We can choose to believe in human wisdom such as theories of evolution or we can choose to believe that Jesus is God and that one day He will return.

If we choose to believe that God did not create the Heavens and the earth, we must also choose to believe that Jesus did not die on the cross for our sins.

As Christians, this should cause us great angst.

In 1 Corinthians 1, Paul said,

5.

They deliberately forget that God made the heavens long ago...

Most scientists would agree that everything thing exists by chance.

We live in a world where only the strongest survive.

If you disagree, you are non-sensical.

Many will laugh and jeer at you because of your blind faith to believe in God.

It takes more faith to believe that there is no one to design what we see than to believe that there is an all-powerful designer.

I think that this is the real reason

How can you believe that God will punish humans?

Inn his Autobiography, written in 1876 when he was 67, Charles Darwin said:

“I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so the plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my Father, Brother and almost all my best friends, will be everlastingly punished.

And this is a damnable doctrine.”

(Moore)

If we believe that the Bible is true, this means that we must receive Jesus’ sacrifice for our sins to receive everlasting life.

If we are not willing to believe the Bible, it brings comfort that there is nothing after this life.

It’s impossible to have both.

Our hope is this

God made a way for each of us to receive His grace and His mercy.

In Christ, each of us can have access to this.

We can come at any time.

You can know the God of the universe and draw near to Him because of what Jesus did.

This should give us great hope that He cares for us.

Let’s pray!