Be Hopeful

Introduction

Good morning church, it is great to see you all again... from this perspective anyway. As I had a couple of weeks of vacation, I experienced the service online two Sundays ago and then last Sunday I got to sit out among you all. And as much as I appreciate the hard work of the team that makes streaming our services a possibility for when we need it, it is a poor substitute for being here in person as I so enjoyed doing that last week.

So I would encourage anyone out there who enjoys listening online to come over and join us in person because you are missing out on the best parts of Friendship Church.

But what a blessing to be able to sit under the teaching of two of our newest Overseers. Both Tim and Theodore did such a great job of bringing us a teaching from the book of 2 Peter. I cannot say enough about how encouraging it was to hear their hearts for you and for God’s Word in each of their teachings. I know that they both put a great deal of effort into it and they did such a great job so thank you men for doing what God has both called and equipped you to do. You both demonstrated that Overseer quality of being “able to teach”.

And when they told me that they were on preaching from 2 Peter handling the first two chapters my O.C.D. tendencies flared up because the book only has 3 chapters and how could we just leave that one hanging out there… so in response to both my weakness and the strength of this final chapter I decided to jump into their series and finish this last chapter.

Be Confident: Tim Harding

So in case you missed out on their teaching, Tim began by introducing us to the author and context of the book. It was written by the Apostle Peter and while we don’t know exactly who he wrote the letter to, we know that they were Christians and from the topics he addresses we can deduce that they were begin to waver in their faith in Jesus. So Peter reminds them to “Be Confident”, to stand firm in the foundation of their faith in Jesus and then to grow in goodness, knowledge, self-control, perseverance, godliness, mutual affection and above all that agape’ love!

Be Aware: Theodore Schnoor

And then last week Theodore unpacked for us what Peter was saying was the most dangerous threat to the growth of these believers… the presence of false teachers in their midst. Teachers who were twisting God’s Word to make it agree with things that they wanted it to say instead of what it actually did say. And Theodore rightly pointed out that these false teachings are so easy to drift into that we are still in a battle against them today. So Peter’s admonition to “Be Aware” is just as much for us today as it was for God’s people way back then.

Tension

And now here in the third and final chapter in 2 Peter and I am charged with the Apostle Peter’s charge to “Be Hopeful”

And one of the difficult things about teaching on this word is that we hear it in our daily lives on a regular basis but not in the way that Bible uses it. We say things like “I hope it doesn’t rain again today” or something even more ridiculous like “I hope the Packers win the Superbowl next year”. Being a Chicago Bears fan myself, I see no hope of that. But that is the light weight way that we use the word, something close to “wishful thinking” like that would be nice but I am not betting on it.

Biblical hope is a much stronger idea, especially when talking about being “full of hope” or “hopeful”. This “hope” is so weighty that it causes you to make changes in your life, to adjust your life in light of the fact that this is going to happen. That is the kind of “hope” that the Apostle Peter it trying to awaken or re-awaken in his readers. So he gives us several ways in which we can and should adjust our lives in accordance with this weighty, life changing hope.

So open up your Bibles with me to 2 Peter chapter 3, it’s on page 1019 in the Bible’s in the chairs. I will pray and we will dive into these needed life adjustments together.

Truth

2 Peter 3:1 (ESV)

This is now the second letter that I am writing to you, beloved.

We will see today that 4 times in this chapter Peter addresses his fellow believers with the word “be-love-ed”. Some of your translations may say “dear friend” which is the right direction, but I don’t think goes far enough. I imagine those translators went that direction because we typically reserve words like “beloved” for romantic love, but that is not the Greek Word used here. This is a form of the word “agape” the Biblical Greek word for Christian love.

It is the word ἀγαπητός (agapetos) which is the “vocative” form which means that the noun is identified by what it does. It helps me to think about it through the lens of “vocation”. This high love, this agape love, is not just how the Apostle Peter feels toward these fellow believers, but also how God feels about them. So when he says “Beloved” it is this connective word with God and all of God’s children.

And since Peter uses this “beloved” identifier four times in this chapter, we will use it in each of our themes for today. So back to the first verse where it says...

2 Peter 3:1 (ESV)

This is now the second letter that I am writing to you, beloved. In both of them I am stirring up your sincere mind by way of reminder,

Our first theme is...

Beloved…be mindful (2 Peter 3:1-7)

We all need reminders of things, especially important things, so the first adjustment that these “beloved” people are to do is to have their “minds” stirred up with this “re-mind-er”. And what are they to be mindful about...

2 Peter 3:2–4 (ESV)

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.”

One of the essential aspects of the message of the Gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ, is that everything has forever changed because of what Jesus has done for us. And that was easier to see when Jesus was here on the earth. In the height of his ministry he was challenging the religious leaders, declaring the arrival of the Kingdom of God and proving it’s presence through his dynamic teachings and incredible miracles. And the capstone of it all was when he rose from the dead and showed himself to hundreds of people. They knew that this was going to change everything...

But Peter is writing these letters many years after Jesus ascended into heave and promised to return and the people are getting impatient. They thought it would happen in short order, but years have gone by, decades even... and still Jesus has not returned and so in their impatience the people began to wonder if maybe they heard things wrong.

Because the promise of the coming Messiah was thee event that God’s people had been waiting for generations to happen…and now they have been left waiting on the promises of God once again.

So Peter is trying to encourage them by having them be mindful of the predictions of the holy prophets and how they came true in Christ Jesus, and then the commandment of the Lord and Savior about what to do while they wait for his return… to go into all the world and preach the Gospel!

But then their are the scoffers, there are always scoffers. These scoffers have risen up claiming that… yeah nothing has really changed, nothing really ever does...

Unlike the word “hope”, scoffer is not really a word that we use much in our daily lives but it basically means someone who treats lightly something that should be taken very seriously.

One of the best examples of a scoffer is Homer Simpson, who I bring up only as a negative example because in every way they wrote this cartoon character to be a scoffer. He took lightly the serious role he was given as a husband, father, neighbor, friend and even employee... as he bumbled through the work day at the controls of a nuclear power plant of all places.

And even though everything seemed to work out fine for Homer at the end of each episode... that only happens in cartoons. In real life there are serious consequences for taking serious things lightly.

And just like the false teachers that Theodore talked about last week, we hear the voices of these same scoffers in our day.

“Religion is always trying to scare people with that judgement day stuff. It will never happen. Everything has been the same since the beginning of time and nothing is going to change. What goes around comes around and you don’t need to adjust your life in preparation for anything beyond this life, just do what makes you happy and everything will work out fine....Doh!”

The message of the scoffers is still heard today, sometimes it is even heard in Churches who at times are more committed to the idea of “saving our planet” from some sort of future ecological disaster then they are the saving of souls from a future day of judgement.

So to remind these believers of the seriousness behind this promise of Jesus’ return and the judgement that will come with it for those who have ignored it, Peter offers this argument. He says:

2 Peter 3:5–7 (ESV)

For they (the scoffers) deliberately overlook 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 these 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.

So what is Peter talking about here? Well, these “scoffers” mock the promises that God gave for the future because they have forgotten the past. They claim that nothing has changed since the beginning of time, but what they really mean is just that they have not observed any significant changes in their short little lifetime.

Because the Bible clearly records an event that has drastically changed the world that we live in and that even was when God saved just one family when he judged the entire world with a flood. And of course we have “scoffers” today who deny or downplay the historicity of the Biblical record of the flood, but the Apostle Peter doesn’t.

Instead he uses this “fact” to demonstrate how God delivers on his promises of salvation in the case of Noah and his family, and of judgement in the case of the rest of the World. In other words, there is historical precedence for trusting in God’s promises when it comes to salvation from judgement, but scoffers “deliberately” overlook the facts that don’t fit with the narrative that they are trying to sell.

And how familiar does that ring for us today? When our lifestyle contradicts the Word of God then we are forced to either make changes to our lifestyle or make changes to the Word of God. Scoffers choose the latter, treating these serious things too lightly.

So Peter warns, Beloved…be mindful… secondly we are told...

Beloved…be not ignorant (2 Peter 3:8-10)

Now of course this goes hand in hand with being mindful, but after Peter warns us about the scoffers “deliberately overlooking” the facts, he calls us to not to overlook something...

2 Peter 3:8–9(ESV)

But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.

What a needed reminder for us to consider how God is not limited like we are. Because God is looking for a personal relationship with us, sometimes we can mistakenly forget that God is not a person. As created persons, we are locked inside of time and space, but our creator God exists outside of those limitations.

So God, in his “Godness” can look down at the timeline of all all history and sees it all happening at the very same time.

This is why nothing surprises him.

This is why He knows what is going to happen.

This is why he is always right on time but never... in... a... hurry

As people, we get impatient because we don’t know what is going to happen next so we figure we have better “get’r done while the gett’n’s good” but God’s plan can weave ever moment together in light of each subsequent moment to accomplish His intended ends. And the end goal for God’s plan is that his children would all “reach repentance”.

The word “reach” in “reach repentance” is the Greek word χωρέω (choreo) which means literally to make room for. God is the one who calls us to repentance, so He is patiently waiting for us to make room for this in our hearts. He is patiently waiting for our response… but He won’t wait forever...

2 Peter 3:10

But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed.

Like the judgement of the flood in Noah’s day, the Day of the Lord will come when no one is expecting it. Like a “thief in the night”. This is not Peters idea, but how he heard Jesus describe this events as recorded in Matthew 24.

And in the previous chapter, Peter calls Noah a “preacher” or “herald of righteousness” which leads us to believe that in the something like 120 years in which Noah was building a boat out in the middle of the wilderness his neighbors had some questions. And he answered those questions with a call to repentance, a call to turn from the “corrupt” and “violent” lives that they were living and follow God’s design for His world.

But no one except Noah and his family “made room” for the repentance and so they all perished in the flood. But God promised to never again destroy the earth... with water. So Peter tells us that this next time, the judgement of God will come with a cleansing fire.

APPLICATION

This should cause us to pause. To consider how we can better adjust our lives in light of this hope. The hope demonstrated by the salvation that God gave Noah against the backdrop of the water judgment of the rest of the world and the hope that we have for salvation against the backdrop of the judgement of fire.

And so thirdly, Peter admonishes the...

Beloved…[to] be diligent (2 Peter 3:11-14)

2 Peter 3:11–13 (ESV)

Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved, and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn!

But according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.

It is this promise that we who believe have put all our hope in, a promise of a complete doing away with the former things that were corrupted by sin and experiencing a “new heaven and a new earth”.

By God’s grace I have never experienced a fire that took my entire house, but like many of us I have heard stories of those who have. It is a devastating experience as you stand their hopelessly watching everything you have worked so hard for go up in smoke.

And as devastating as that experience is with all of the loss and hopelessness associated with it..this day will be even more devastating than that. For Peter says that the things of earth will all just dissolve away.

All of Man’s great houses

All of Man’s great cities.

All of Man’s great inventions.

All of Man’s great achievements...

... will be brought to nothing on that day when “...the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed.” and it is in that state that we will stand before the throne of God to give account for our lives.

This should give us all pause, because it is easy to invest much of our lives in the things of this earth. To build our lesser kingdoms of comfort and convenience, ease and entertainment. Mostly because we have a view of the future that does not include these events. We have forgotten these “facts” and are living for things that will not survive on this day.

That is why Peter says...

2 Peter 3:14 (ESV)

Therefore, beloved, since you are waiting for these, be diligent to be found by him without spot or blemish, and at peace.

This is the righteousness that Noah preached about and that Jesus called the people to then and now. To be without spot or blemish in our striving for holiness and godliness and ultimately to be at peace!

And we know that peace with God is only found through putting our faith and trust in Jesus Christ and what He has done for us on the cross. The scoffers say that nothing has changed, but what they mean is that they can’t see the change.

But we know the change.

We live in the change.

We testify to the change.

Still, we need to be reminded of such things. And so Peter closes his letter with a further reminder for the...

Beloved…[to] be reminded (2 Peter 3:14-18)

Peter ends his letter by walking us back through all the things that he has shared in this letter and that Tim and Theodore taught us from over the past two weeks. See if you can find them here…

2 Peter 3:15–18 (ESV)

And count the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters.

This week: Be Hopeful

There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures. You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, take care that you are not carried away with the error of lawless people and lose your own stability.

Last week: Be Aware

But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity. Amen.

First week: Be Confident!

Gospel Application

I will close this morning with the words of Jesus as He described the day when He will return to save those who have put their faith and trust in him. It is found in Matthew 24 starting in verse 36 where it says:

Matthew 24:36–39 (ESV)

“But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only. For as were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, and they were unaware until the flood came and swept them all away, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.

Landing

In light of the hope found in this promise of Jesus, what adjustments do you need to make in how you are living your life? Let’s pray into that together as we prepare ourselves for the “Lord’s Supper”.