The Willfully Ignorant Ignore God's Creative Work

PASTORAL PRAYER

Father, here before you and before one another we freely and gladly declare that we love you. We love you for being the God you are. You’re a God of love. You’re a God of mercy. You’re a God of truth. You’re a God of justice. You’re a God of absolute perfection. Father, we love you for loving us before the foundation of the world, and loving us so much that you sent your Son—your only Son—so we could be in relationship with you, so we could be your children—sons and daughters of God. Father, you gave what cost you most for our benefit. And we thank you. Jesus, we thank you for loving your Father and loving us and for your willingness to be sent on our behalf. Thank you that you were willing to leave the Father’s side, to lay aside your glory, to take on flesh, to enter into this broken world, to take our sin upon yourself, and to pay the penalty for it. Thank you that you loved us even to the laying down of your life. Jesus, you gave what cost you most for our benefit. And we thank you. Spirit, we thank you for loving the Father and the Son and for loving us. We thank you for your willingness to be sent as the Spirit of God to dwell within your people, to stir us to life so we can respond to the message of the gospel, and for empowering us so we can grow more and more holy, more and more like Jesus Christ. Holy Spirit, thank you that you are bringing to completion this great work of sanctification. Father, Son, Holy Spirit, Almighty God, triune God, we give you thanks and praise and glory. Of course we confess that we have sinned against you. We have not loved you with our whole hearts. We have not loved our neighbour as ourselves. So we ask, “Have mercy.” With hearts bowed low before you we ask, “Have mercy on us.” God, thank you for the assurance that if we confess our sins, you are faithful to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. So let us receive that forgiveness now, let us believe that we really have been forgiven, and let us live like it’s true. Let us live in freedom, freedom from captivity to sin and freedom to a life of holiness and purity. Father, we ask that as a church we would know your blessings. We pray that we would see clear evidence that you are at work here. Let us see that evidence in the ways we relate to one another. I pray that we would be a people marked by an obvious, sacrificial love for one another. I pray that we would hold loosely instead of tightly to those things that you’ve given to us, remembering that each is a gift from you—our time, our money, our homes, our possessions. I pray that we would always be both willing and ready to share with those in need, to be a blessing to them. Let us not love only in our thoughts and our words, but in our actions. Help us to be imitators of Jesus Christ in the way that he loved us. Father, let us see clear evidence that you are at work not only in the way we relate to one another, but also in the way we relate to others who do not know you—people in this neighbourhood, people in our classes or offices, people in our families. We pray that we would live before them in such a way that they see our good works and give glory to you. We pray that we would not only live a Christian life before them, but speak the Christian gospel to them so they, too, would call upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved. We ask that you would add to our number, week by week, those who are being saved. If we are to live in these ways, we will need to be filled with your Word. We will need to know it and obey it. So as we prepare to open it and read it and hear it preached to us, we ask that we would listen humbly and attentively, that we would listen expectantly and prayerfully. Use it to both confront and comfort us, to call us away from sin and toward holiness. We pray that we would be changed by your Word. That is our desire. That is our prayer. In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.

INTRODUCTION

Continuing in our study in 2 Peter 3, we are picking up where we left off in verse 4.

In verses 1-3, Peter gave his readers 3 Things To Remember In The Last Days:

Predictions Of The Holy Prophets God used men to warn His people concerning judgment that was going to come on them; and salvation that would come through the Messiah.

Commands Given Through The Apostles God used men to inform people that Jesus is the Messiah, who took the penalty of our sins, and they need to repent and believe in Jesus because one day He will return and judge mankind.

The Presence Of Scoffers Despite God’s efforts to reach humanity with the truth of His Word, there will be people who are doubters and hostile towards the message of the Bible, and particularly to the message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

All three of these reminders are tied together in one reality: God’s purpose will be accomplished despite man’s efforts to thwart it.

Isaiah 46:8–11 NASB95

Remember this, and be assured; Recall it to mind, you transgressors. Remember the former things long past, For I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is no one like Me, Declaring the end from the beginning, And from ancient times things which have not been done, Saying, ‘My purpose will be established, And I will accomplish all My good pleasure’; Calling a bird of prey from the east, The man of My purpose from a far country. Truly I have spoken; truly I will bring it to pass. I have planned it, surely I will do it.

There is an old proverb that says, “Ignorance is bliss.”

The core of this belief is the less you know, the less you are held accountable to

You can’t be worried about what is going to happen; You won’t be disappointed when it does

Unfortunately, for those who hold to that teaching, it will not hold up in the final judgment, which Peter is going to address in the next few verses as he deals with The Willfully Ignorant.

Read 2 Peter 3:1-7

The Willfully Ignorant Ignore God’s Creative Work

v. 5

The debate surrounding origins science has been intense for some time, and has really picked up over the past 15 years or so.

Ken Ham vs Bill Nye - February 2014

Ham vs Nye 2 - July 2016 (informal)

Mankind wants to know the important questions that the origins issue addresses, namely:

Where did we come from?

Why are we here?

If you look closely at those two questions [repeat them], you will notice one glaring fact: they are not scientific in nature.

One is a historically based question… Where did we come from?…

Scientists have attempted to contribute to answering this question, but...

The reality is that no empirical science can contribute to the answer without making massive assumptions about the unobservable past.

The other question… Why are we here?… is an existential question seeking to know the purpose in our lives

And when you introduce the scientific attempts to answer the previous question, particularly the massive assumptions about the unobservable past, you are led to the logical conclusion that there is no purpose in our existence.

Yet, as we see here in verse 5, there is an answer to the first question that will ultimately lead to answering the second question.

Read 2 Peter 3:5

Where did we come from?

God

Why are we here?

God

Psalm 33:6 LSB

By the word of Yahweh the heavens were made, And by the breath of His mouth all their host.

Yahweh is the One who brought the heavens, earth, and all that is in them into existence… by the breath of His mouth!

There is no Big Bang cosmology

There is no deep time considerations

There is only the instantaneous, supernatural, miraculous Word of God that has brought all things into existence

Genesis 1:1 ESV

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

This is a great summary verse for what takes place in the next 30 verses of the first chapter of the Bible.

Genesis = beginning

The book of Genesis provides the account for the beginnings of many important matters in world history.

The ultimate beginning of all beginnings is that God created the heavens and the earth.

This truth is one of the most mocked, ridiculed, and compromised teachings in the Bible.

But it is also one of the most straight forward, clear teachings in Scripture

Why is this teaching so attacked?

Authority and Accountability

In order to truly believe that God created the heavens and the earth, you have to be willing to admit that there is a higher being with a higher standard that your own

And if He has a higher standard than your own, then you can bet that you will have to answer for not living up to that standard.

And that is exactly what is revealed to us in Scripture

Hebrews 9:27 ESV

it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment

NOTE:

Up to this point in our study this morning, we have dealt with the first two reminders from Peter from last week:

Remember the Predictions Of The Holy Prophets (OT) Remember the Commands Given Through Your Apostles (NT)

As it relates to the scoffers pertaining to this truth, we need to revisit verse 4.

Read 2 Peter 3:4

The statement, ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation, is a statement that points to uniformitarianism, which is one of the most popular responses of the world to the truth of the Word of God.

Uniformitarianism: a geological principle stating that the same natural processes and laws that operate in the present have also operated in the past and will continue to do so in the future

“the present is the key to the past.” 

This means that geological features we see today, like mountains, valleys, and canyons, were formed by the same slow, gradual processes we observe today, such as erosion, sedimentation, and volcanic activity, over vast periods of time. 

What do we know of today that is based heavily on the idea of uniformitarianism? Evolution

We think of uniformitarianism as being a fairly recent construct established and refined by guys like Charles Lyell, Charles Darwin, and Stephen Jay Gould.

The fact is that it is an established philosophy right here in 2 Peter 3.

all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation

These scoffers deny that God has, or does, supernaturally intervene in ways that are contrary to our measurable scientific observations.

Thus, by logical deduction, they would also have to deny:

Creation in 6 literal days in Genesis 1

A global flood during Noah’s day in Genesis 6-8

The parting of the Red Sea in Exodus 14

The sun standing still in Joshua 10

The shadow on the stairs moving back in 2 Kings 20

And there are many more miracles that can be named, which fly in the face of modern scientific thought.

None are more important than the resurrection of Jesus Christ

Peter has already made the claim about false teachers in 2 Peter 2:1, they will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them...

These false teachers… these scoffers… have ulterior motives to their philosophical foundation.

Namely, they want to free themselves from accountability to a moral law.

Aldous Huxley, grandson of Thomas Huxley (“Darwin’s bulldog”), in his Ends and Means (1937).

I had motives for not wanting the world to have a meaning; consequently assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption. The philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with a problem in pure metaphysics. He is also concerned to prove that there is no valid reason why he should personally not do as he wants to do, or why his friends should not seize political power and govern in the way that they find most advantageous to themselves… For myself, as no doubt for most of my contemporaries, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation. The liberation we desired was simultaneously a liberation from a certain political and economic system and a liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom.

Evolution did not come about because of science; it came about because of a desire for liberation.

It is not produced by people who have come to it purely from the intellectual.

It is produced by people who want:

no meaning to culture

no meaning to behavior

no judgment

no accountability

no God

so they could live any way they want to live.

It’s a moral issue, not an intellectual issue.

This is what is being propagated in our society and in our schools

The desire of people to suppress the truth of creation being taught,

The desire to remove a sense of being held accountable to a higher power.

But the reality, as revealed by God, is clear:

He has created us in His image and for His purpose (Genesis 1-2)

We have sinned against and offended our Holy, Creator God (Genesis 3; Isaiah 6; Romans 3)

Because of our transgression against Him, we will be held accountable when we stand before Him in judgment (Hebrews 9)

Yet, because of His great mercy and love for us, He sent His only Son, Jesus, to pay the penalty for our sin and offer the opportunity to be forgiven (Romans 5-6)

Acts 17:30–31 ESV

The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.