Stirring Reminder, Spoken Words, Second Coming - 2 Peter 3:1-7

Introduction

Peter has been intently focused on defending the church from false teachers. He has done so by building up the church in general knowledge of the truth, then by exposing the false teachers and false prophets directly. This constitutes chapter 1 and chapter 2. In chapter 3 Peter now begins to actually expose the false teaching itself, dealing with the exact content of the heresy that has been spread amongst the churches of Peter’s day.

With that being said, let’s jump in. We’ll work through this text verse by verse tonight.

Stirring Reminder - Verse 1

Let’s ask some questions of the text.

What audience is Peter addressing?

Peter is speaking to “the beloved.” Some translations might say dear friends. This term of endearment brings the focus back around in chapter 3 to the church. Just as the shepherd carries the rod to defend the sheep and the staff to guide them, so Peter here lays aside the rod he used to attack the false teachers in chapter 2 and takes up the staff once again to guide the flock in chapter 3. His tone moves from polemic in chapter 2 to poimenic in chapter 3, from the tone of an apologist to the tone of a pastor.

Peter says this is the second letter he is writing to them. What is the first?

The plain, natural, and sensible answer would be 1 Peter. But there is a surprising amount of debate on this matter. There are some scholars who believe, based on the parallel language of 3:1 and 1:13 that chapters 1 and 2 are one letter, and chapter 3 is a second letter. For whatever reason, these letters were stitched together at some point and have come down to us as an anthology rather than as a unified letter. There is no biblical or historical data to support this, as there has never been a time in the history of the church where 2 Peter has not been received as a single, unified letter. We therefore reject this view in favor of 2 Peter being a unified, single letter. “The second letter” therefore references back to 1 Peter.

Some have argued that there is little to no thematic and theological unity between 1 and 2 Peter, and therefore it would be difficult to classify 1 Peter as a letter which “stirs up the mind,” as Peter says here that his first letter does. Peter never claims that this is his purpose in 1 Peter, at least according to these critics.

But this shortchanges the emphases of both 1 and 2 Peter and fails to see the unity that is woven between the two. I think that when you look at these two letters as a whole, they fit together perfectly. Here’s why.

1 Peter’s whole goal was to encourage suffering believers to look to the second coming of Christ in glory as the fulfillment of their hope. Peter’s first exhortation back in 1 Peter 1:13 is:

1 Peter 1:13 LSB

Therefore, having girded your minds for action, being sober in spirit, fix your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

Peter wants these churches to fix their hope completely on the future grace to be poured out at the second coming of Christ.

2 Peter 3:4 tells us:

2 Peter 3:4 LSB

and saying, “Where is the promise of His coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all continues just as it was from the beginning of creation.”

What apparently has happened is that some time during the interim after Peter wrote his first letter, false teachers arose, teaching that there was no second coming. Peter writes his second letter, really, in direct compliance with his own command in 1 Peter 3:15

1 Peter 3:15 LSB

but sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and fear,

Peter therefore writes his second letter as a direct follow up to his first letter, writing specifically to deal with these false teachers who are saying that there is no second coming of Christ.

According to verse 1, what is Peter’s letter doing for the churches?

This letter is intended to stir up their minds by way of reminder. John Calvin says this:

Commentaries on the Catholic Epistles Chapter 3

By saying, I stir up your pure mind, he means the same as though he had said, “I wish to awaken you to a sincerity of mind.” And the words ought to be thus explained, “I stir up your mind that it may be pure and bright.” For the meaning is, that the minds of the godly become dim, and as it were contract rust, when admonitions cease. But we also hence learn, that men even endued with learning, become, in a manner, drowsy, except they are stirred up by constant warnings.

Peter’s goal is to fan the intellectual flames of his readers by reminding them of something, by stirring up their minds in such a way that the truth retains it’s freshness in their minds.

Spoken Words - Verse 2

What is Peter’s purpose in writing this reminder-letter?

That his readers should remember the words spoken beforehand.

How does Peter define these words?

They are the words of the holy prophets, the commands of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the testimony of the apostles.

What Peter is doing here is establishing a threefold foundation of authority for the church. Christ, the prophets, and the apostles. Again Peter speaks in Spirit-inspired unison with Paul:

Ephesians 2:19–22 LSB

So then you are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God’s household, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the corner stone, in whom the whole building, being joined together, is growing into a holy sanctuary in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit.

What Peter is doing, now for the second time in this letter, is removing the grounds of authority in his message from himself, and establishing it in the authority of Christ and Christ’s words, bolstered and supported by the words of all the apostles and prophets. Simply put, if the church is to ward off false teaching, she must again and again be reminded of the truth. By disciplined, systematic, rigorous ingestion and explanation of the Scriptures, the church will avoid, expose, and foil the wiles of false teachers.

Again I return to one of my repeated exhortations to you as a church: read the Word of God deeply and broadly. The most surefire antidote to false teaching is a commitment to a thorough knowledge of the whole counsel of God. And this is not a commitment for pastors and scholars only. This is a commitment for every Christian.

Second Coming - Verses 3-7

In verse 3, Peter tells us why he is reminding the churches and us of the words spoken beforehand by the prophets and apostles and Christ Himself.

Why does Peter issue this reminder?

Because mockers will come in the last days.

What do the mockers do?

Three things:

Mock

Follow after their lusts

Deny the promise of the second coming

Mocking

These false teachers come in and ridicule, deny, and otherwise slander the truth. Peter uses one word twice here in rapid succession to summarize the point he made back in 2 Peter 2:1-3

2 Peter 2:1–3 LSB

But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will also be false teachers among you, who will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing swift destruction upon themselves. And many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of the truth will be maligned. And in their greed they will exploit you with false words, their judgment from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep.

and continuing on in 2 Peter 2:10-14

2 Peter 2:10–14 LSB

and especially those who go after the flesh in its corrupt lust and despise authority. Daring, self-willed, they do not tremble when they blaspheme glorious ones, whereas angels who are greater in strength and power do not bring a reviling judgment against them before the Lord. But these, like unreasoning animals, born as creatures of instinct to be captured and killed, blaspheming where they have no knowledge, will in the destruction of those creatures also be destroyed, suffering unrighteousness as the wages of their unrighteousness, considering it a pleasure to revel in the daytime—they are stains and blemishes, reveling in their deceptions, as they feast with you, having eyes full of adultery and unceasing sin, enticing unstable souls, having a heart trained in greed—they are accursed children.

Peter effectively summarizes his description of the false teachers in chapter 2 with just this one statement in chapter 3: they are mockers who mock. We can see here the plethora of language Peter uses to convey this idea. They malign the truth, they despise authority, they blaspheme glory, they revel in deception.

What we see here then, at least for Peter, is that false teachers have an authority problem. They take issue with the words spoken beforehand by the apostles and prophets, they take issue with the eyewitness accounts of Christ’s majesty, and they take issue with the prophecies given by men moved by the Holy Spirit to speak from God. To sum up, the primary problem with false teachers is that they refuse to take God at His Word, they refuse to believe and confess sound doctrine, they refuse to accept the Bible as authoritative. They question the Word of God, they critique the Word of God, they place themselves above the Word of God as judge over it.

Let’s draw some things out here.

Judit, will you turn to Genesis 3 and read verse 1 for me?

Genesis 3:1 LSB

Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which Yahweh God had made. And he said to the woman, “Indeed, has God said, ‘You shall not eat from any tree of the garden’?”

Who was the first person to question the Word of God?

Satan himself.

You all might ask why my teeth are perpetually bared in defense of the Scriptures and the Word of God. This is why. The first attack against God’s people and against sound doctrine was not about the Trinity. It was not about the deity of Christ. It was not about the unity of essence in the Godhead. No, the first attack on sound doctrine, the first heresy, coming directly from the mouth of Satan himself, is a Bibliological heresy. It is an attack on the Word of God. “Did God really say?”

Friends, every heresy that exists starts here. Did God really say?

Did God really say that Jesus, the Son of God, is true God of true God, light from light eternal, begotten, not created, of the same divine essence as the Father? Arianism questions the Scriptures on this point.

Did God really say that man is justified by faith alone? The Roman Catholic Church questions the Scriptures on this point.

Did God really say that He created the universe in 6 chronological, twenty-four hour days? Theistic evolutionism and day-age theory question the Scriptures on this point.

Did God really say that He is eternal and unchanging and that His decrees will stand forever? Process theology questions the Scriptures on this point.

Did God really say that He does not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man? Feminist theology and egalitarianism question the Scriptures on this point.

Did God really say that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God? Pelagianism questions the Scriptures on this point.

Did God really say that salvation does not depend upon man who wills or man who runs, but on God, who has mercy? Arminianism questions the Scriptures on this point.

Lest you think that these false teachings are distant or non-threatening, let me tell you this: I know people personally who fit in each of the categories I just described. People who have asked the question “Did God really say?” when confronted with the truth of Scripture.

Peter is pitting the true church, built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, with Christ Jesus as her cornerstone, with the cults of the false teachers.

Peter is pitting orthodoxy, from the Greek ortho meaning right or straight, and doxa meaning opinion or interpretation, against heterodoxy, from hetero meaning different or opposite, and doxa again meaning opinion or interpretation.

To put it as simply as possible, Peter is pitting truth against lies, and he is putting his full apostolic weight on the side of the truth in order to defend the church and cripple the false teachers and the cults.

But not only is Peter concerned with the mocking, ridiculing, slandering, and reviling of the truth, he is also concerned with the moral and ethical implications of such offenses against the truth, which leads to his second point here described as following after their own lusts.

Following after their own lusts

The second major characteristic of a false teacher here is that they follow after their own lusts. You might say they pursue their own desires. These false teachers are eminently selfish, self-centered, and narcissistic. This is the real driving factor in their false teaching. In the end, false teachers twist the truth not simply for it’s own sake, but rather they twist it to support, validate, and justify wanton pursuit of their fleshly lusts.

As we have said before, there is an inextricable connection between false teaching and immoral behavior.

Just as Peter used the word mockery to summarize the false teaching, he now uses the phrase following after their lusts to summarize their immoral behavior.

If you backtrack back to 2 Peter 2:14 you can see Peter’s more detailed description.

2 Peter 2:14 LSB

having eyes full of adultery and unceasing sin, enticing unstable souls, having a heart trained in greed—they are accursed children.

What do these false teachers lust after then? To put it simply, sex, power, and money.

And they will twist the Scriptures to get everyone to believe their message so that they can feed into this lifestyle.

These people are truly wicked and truly despicable. They are wolves in sheep’s clothing, con artists that deceive the masses by defrauding the Word of God, and they do all of this in pursuit of their lusts, their desires, their pleasures.

Peter now ceases with the generalizations and names exactly what the false doctrine is that these fraudsters are peddling.

Denying the promise of the second coming

Peter gets specific with exactly what it is that these false teachers are denying.

At the outset here it’s important to note something from a pastoral perspective. Peter doesn’t hesitate to name and describe the false teaching that’s at play. We certainly affirm with Peter elsewhere that the most effective defense against false teaching is a true, vibrant, growing knowledge of the truth. But that does not prevent Peter from actually discussing the false teaching at hand, and discussing why it’s false.

Many folks out there today will say “Well, we don’t want to talk too much about false teaching because that might cause people to go astray.” Ignorance is bliss, as they say, until you wander right into a patch of false teaching without even knowing it, because you were ignorant of it’s existence and unaware of just how close it lurked to your own life and existence.

It’s like poison ivy. In a bramble patch it’s not going to be easy to avoid the poison ivy unless you know what you’re looking for. So also, it’s not going to be easy to avoid specific false doctrines and false teachers unless you know what you’re looking for. This is why naming false doctrines and naming false teachers publicly is a critical part of the ministry of the faithful pastor. An unwillingness to name false teachers in the name of unity or humility or peace or anything else is really just theological and pastoral cowardice. False teaching and false teachers must be publicly identified and publicly rebuked, and the flock of God must be publicly warned to ignore these false teachers and remove their support from them.

For Peter then, it’s important to name the false teaching to ensure the church is clear on what it is rebuking, repudiating, and denying.

So what is it exactly then? Rebuking, repudiating, and denying the teaching that Jesus will not return in power and judgment.

Peter’s description of the content of the mockery is in keeping with the pattern of the Old Testament. We already saw that Peter draws a connection between the false teachers of his day and the false prophets of Israel’s history, and he continuest that pattern here, though in a more subtle fashion. Time prevents us from looking at all the examples in the Old Testament of this pattern of language being used: Where is Yahweh? Where is the promise? Where are all these things? And for Peter he articulates it in the same way: where is the promise of His coming?

So how do these false teachers justify the claim that the second coming is a farce? According to verse 4, they assert that the second coming is a farce because, since the fathers fell asleep, all continues just as it was from the beginning of creation. Tom Schreiner explains it like this:

1, 2 Peter, Jude 1. Scoffers Doubt the Coming Day (3:1–7)

They argued that since the death of the patriarchs, God had not intervened in the world. Indeed, from the beginning of creation the world has progressed with an order and regularity that forbids us to look for something dramatic like a future coming of Christ. We can add another thought to the previous one. If Christ will not come in the future, neither will there be a future judgment.

The false teachers are doing something nefarious here, and this is what false teachers do, and this is why they are so abundantly dangerous. These false teachers are using the same rhetorical methodology to prove their point as Peter does. Throughout his two letters, Peter often refers directly or alludes back to the Old Testament, to Israel’s history, and to the history of the world to prove his points. We’ve seen that time and time again. These false teachers use the same logic here. They look to God’s past operation in the world to make the assumption that God will continue such operation mechanically and rigidly until the end of time. What they are saying is this: God has not intervened in a dramatic way since the death of the patriarchs, so why would we expect Him to intervene in a dramatic way in the future?

And as Tom Schreiner said, the real rub here lies in the implication: if there is no second coming, there is no judgment. Christ cannot return to judge the world if He will not return at all.

It’s important here to pause and take a small theological detour to ensure we understand what is meant by “His coming.”

Peter helps us tremendously with this definition down in verse 10. Someone ready 2 Peter 3:10 for me.

2 Peter 3:10 LSB

But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat, and the earth and its works will be found out.

What is that phrase there? The day of the Lord. Now the day of the Lord is a well-attested future event that is prophesied throughout the Scriptures. I want to take a moment to briefly consider some of the main passages that deal with the day of the Lord so that we can fully understand why these false teachers are so eager to reject it and why Peter is so eager to ensure that the church does not reject it.

Zephaniah 1:7–18 LSB

Be silent before Lord Yahweh! For the day of Yahweh is near, For Yahweh has prepared a sacrifice; He has set apart His guests. “Then it will be on the day of Yahweh’s sacrifice That I will punish the princes, the king’s sons, And all who clothe themselves with foreign garments. “And I will punish on that day all who leap on the temple threshold, Who fill the house of their Lord with violence and deceit. “And it will be in that day,” declares Yahweh, “That there will be the sound of a cry from the Fish Gate And a wail from the Second Quarter And a great destruction from the hills. “Wail, O inhabitants of the Mortar, For all the people of Canaan will be silenced; All who weigh out silver will be cut off. “And it will be at that time That I will search Jerusalem with lamps, And I will punish the men Who are stagnant in spirit, Who say in their hearts, ‘Yahweh will not do good or evil!’ “And it will be that their wealth will become spoil And their houses desolate; Indeed, they will build houses but not inhabit them, And plant vineyards but not drink their wine.” Near is the great day of Yahweh, Near and coming very quickly; O the sound, the day of Yahweh! In it the mighty man cries out bitterly. A day of fury is that day, A day of trouble and distress, A day of destruction and desolation, A day of darkness and thick darkness, A day of clouds and dense gloom, A day of trumpet and loud shouting Against the fortified cities And the high corner towers. I will bring distress on men So that they will walk like the blind Because they have sinned against Yahweh; And their blood will be poured out like dust And their flesh like dung. Neither their silver nor their gold Will be able to deliver them On the day of the fury of Yahweh; And all the earth will be devoured In the fire of His jealousy, For He will make a complete destruction, Indeed a terrifying one, Of all the inhabitants of the earth.

This passage from Zephaniah is the most stark and graphic of the multitude of passages that deal with the day of the Lord. We don’t have time to look at Obadiah 15, Amos 5, the entire book of Joel, Ezekiel 30, Isaiah 2, Isaiah 13, or Matthew 24, but all these passages carry the same theme. There will be a future day of judgment and reckoning in which God will descend upon earth in His wrath and destroy His enemies eternally, with everlasting destruction.

It becomes clear then that these false teachers target the day of the Lord and the promise of Christ’s coming because they want, at all costs, to avoid the judgement and wrath and destruction that is coming on that day. And they deceive themselves by saying that God has not intervened in this dramatic a fashion since the death of the patriarchs, so why should we believe that God will intervene in final judgment in the future?

Peter makes the case in verses 5-7.

Peter refutes these false teachers here in two ways, and the two refutations are woven together through the three verses.

The first argument Peter makes concerns the word of God, we might call it the decretive word of God, the way that God decrees certain things to take place.

He asserts that the word of God is what created the world, it is what brought forth the global Flood of Noah’s day, and it is what perpetually sustains the world up until this very moment.

Therefore, the order that the false teachers observed and argued from is not order unto itself, but is a derivative order, an order that comes forth from God Himself. He is the one who, by His decree, establishes and maintains the order of the world. Listen to John Piper:

Sermons from John Piper (1980–1989) Where is the Promise of His Appearing?

The first thing the false teachers ignore is that the world was made by God and that its order hangs on his word. If they were willing to think about this, they would realize that the course of natural events is no more locked into one pattern than God is. If God is free to speak a new word, then nature is free to change. We need to guard ourselves against the pseudo-scientific notion that nature is a law unto itself. It is not. The laws of nature are the tireless whisperings of the Almighty. And if he should choose to raise his voice, the cataclysm will come.

The second argument is this: God has, in fact, intervened in history in cataclysmic ways. First, the creation narrative itself demonstrates the disruptive power of God. Things did not proceed as they had after God began speaking space and time and matter into existence where and when and how it did not exist before. Then again God intervened at the flood, not positively and creatively but negatively and destructively.

Peter asserts then that to deny the day of the Lord is to deny that God is able to do that which He did at the first: destroy the entire world and then create it new again. This creation-flood record in verses 5-6 forms a chiastic bookend with verses 12-13. God creates, then destroys with water, then destroys with fire, then creates again.

These false teachers then are willfully ignorant of God’s work of creation and judgment in the past so that they can justify a denial of His ability and intent to judge and create in the future, and this is all to support their present pursuit of their fleshly lusts. They will ignore and mock the word of God, the prophecies of God, the decrees of God, and the works of God in order to sustain a wicked lifestyle.

Listen to John Piper again:

Sermons from John Piper (1980–1989) Where is the Promise of His Appearing?

God brought judgment on the world in the flood of Noah’s day with a great upheaval in the natural flow of events. God has shown, therefore, that he can and will alter the course of history in judgment. In the past he did it with water. In the future it will be with fire at the coming of Jesus Christ. If the false teachers were not so blinded by their own desire (v. 4), they could see that it is utter folly to deny the future cataclysm of Christ’s coming just because the course of the world has been so constant for so long.

Conclusion

We have two layers of takeaways here then.

The first layer concerns false teaching in general, and I think we can take away several things from this layer:

Embrace repeated reminders of the truth.

Give repeated reminders of the truth.

Commit yourself to the Scriptures and to the historic confessions of the church.

Familiarize yourself with false teaching for the purpose of watchfulness.

The second layer of takeaways has to do with the second coming itself. I will simply whet your appetite for what Pastor Scott will open up for us next week:

Take heart in the fact that God is not slow about His promises.

Conduct yourselves in holiness and Godliness in view of the coming day of the Lord.

Rest in the hope of the new creation, where righteousness dwells.

False teachers will come. They will attack and oppress the true church. But God will have the victory in the end. All evil, including false teachers, will bow the knee to Christ, whether willingly now, or by compulsion in the end. Both the word of God and the works of God testify to this fact. So take heart, my friends. Gird up your loins with the truth and prepare for the battle, knowing that the war has already been won.