Sermon Tone Analysis

“According to His Promise”

If you have your bibles, please turn with me to the book of 2 Peter.

Today’s passage will be in chapter 3 and we will focus on verses 10–13.

To help us hear this passage in context, let’s read from verse 8 down to verse 13.

PRAY

We are weak and frail.

We come this morning from a busy work week.

Spirit, come and exalt Christ in our midst.

Cast our minds upon Your Word and show us Christ.

Fill me with You power to powerfully explain Your Word I also ask that You would bring about conviction of sin and spur us towards holy living.

ILLUSTRATION

March 12, 2015

That was the day that Chloe and I started dating.

Many of you who have known Chloe and I for a while might remember that time.

But a date that you may not know is March 10, 2015.

That was the day that I asked Chloe’s father, Scottie, for permission to date his daughter.

I asked him if we could meet at Dairy Queen and we did that evening.

After the usual small talk, I explained to him my feelings towards his daughter, my views concerning dating, my future goals, and what was happening in my life at the time.

I also did something else.

I gave him a promise.

I told him that I would only date for a year and a half.

My intention to date Chloe was just that…intentional!

I knew that within a year and a half I would have either known that I wanted to marry Chloe and therefore ask for her hand in marriage or I would have known that marriage probably wasn’t the best thing for us and I would have ended the relationship.

The next year, on March 12, 2016, I asked Chloe to marry me.

July 2, 2016, we were married.The promise was kept!

But while we were dating, Chloe and I lived according to the promise that I first made to her father, and subsequently, to her.

All of our dating was lived in view of one day being married.

The promise made Chloe and I live in such a way that many couples around our age do not.

The promise made us live intentional—In everything that we did, we looked forward towards marriage.

The promise also gave us security—Chloe and I both knew that each other was serious and that brought about an abiding comfort.

Peter, in a similar way, is encouraging these Christians by calling them to remember God’s promises that the false teachers deliberately rejected.

You remember them?

Peter throughout the letter has been dealing with false teachers over a number of issues.

In chapter 2, we find that:

They denied Christ (2.1)

They advocated immoral living (2.2, 14, 18) They were filled with greed (2.3, 14–15) They blaspheme about matters that they are ignorant (2.12)

And in chapter 3, we find that these false teachers even denied the second coming of Christ and the final judgment.

Hunter preached last week concerning the first portion of chapter 3 and we leaned that these false teachers deliberately overlook the creation of the world and God’s previous judgment concerning the flood.

In verse 8, Peter reminds these Christians that this is not the case and to remember the predictions of the holy prophets and the commandment of the Lord through the apostles.

Specifically, Peter tells us not to overlook this one fact that God’s timing is not our timing.

We learned last week that God’s patience is not to be considered as God acting slowly.

But rather, God is intentionally delaying future judgment desiring that all would reach repentance and that none would perish.

What an incredible attribute of God!

He is so merciful!

But this is not an argument against final judgment, but an argument for His delay.

Peter tells us very boldly now that God will keep his promise of final judgment.

Let’s look into the text for today starting in verse 10.

God’s Promise of Future Judgment (10–12)

This verse comes right after Peter’s treatment of God’s timing and His character.

Although God is mercifully delaying future judgment, desiring that all would reach repentance, He will not delay forever.

Lest we think that Peter’s words mean that God will hold out forever, Peter rightly considers the doctrine of God’s future judgment.

“But the day of the Lord will come.”

Paul warns of people taking advantage of God’s patience in :

We are never to take lightly God’s actions.

He is the Sovereign over the whole universe!

To presume on God’s patience and live however we want like these false teachers were doing is foolish!

We must worship and praise God for Who He is!

We can’t pick and choose what we like about God and cling to those attributes alone.

We must cling to God’s love!

But we must remember His wrath and hatred towards sin.

We need this promise of final judgement.

But what exactly is the day of the Lord?

Lets look at some OT passages concerning the day of the Lord:

In Peter’s sermon at Pentecost, he quotes

In , we read:

zephaniah 1:14

Finally, we see in ,

malachi 3:2, 4:1-2

The day of the Lord therefore is a coming day of judgment where God will destroy the heavens and the earth,

judge the wicked,

vindicate His name, and

rescue His people.

This is God’s promise that He has made throughout all of Scripture.

Next we see that this great day will come like a thief.

Perhaps Peter read this in Paul’s writings.

Paul writes in 2 Thessalonians 5.2 that, “for you yourselves are fully aware that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.”

Or perhaps he recalled that Jesus used this language.

Jesus says in :

matthew 24

Chloe and I have never had our house broken into, nor do I recall my family ever being robbed growing up, but last fall, Chloe and I had one of our debit cards stolen.

We were at a Sonic about to purchase food, and then our card was declined.

I looked online to see what might be the issue only to discover that hundreds of dollars were stolen!

Thieves never give notice to when they are going to steal.

That’s Jesus’ point.

The coming of the Son of Man, The Day of the Lord, will come like a thief.

It will come (the very first word in the sentence is this verb—Peter is sure that God will make good on this promise!), but we will not know the day or the hour in which it comes.

Now Peter begins to describe some aspects of that day.Peter does not fully paint a picture of what will happen in that day, but his main goal is to show us that this climax of history will happen.

To quote Micheal Green at this point, he writes that “Peter’s language is not entirely clear in detail, which is hardly surprising.

He is using the language of the apocalyptic in the attempt to describe the indescribable.”

This is true.

There are several phrases and words in this passage that are very uncommon or only occur in this passage throughout the NT.

Peter describes three aspects of this Day of the Lord:

The heavens will pass away with a roar.

Peter describes that the Heavens will pass away with a roar.

This word for roar is incredibly colorful.

It can refer to the “swish” of an arrow in the air, the hiss of a serpent, the rumbling of thunder, the crackle of a fire, or the rushing of many waters.

The word itself is an onomatopoeia—a word that sounds like what it is describing.

The words swish, hiss, and roar are clearly onomatopoeias in our language.

The word in Greek is pronounced ῥοιζηδόν—do you hear the rushing sound that it makes?

It tells me that Peter is not only trying to capture our mind by giving us information concerning this great and awesome day of the Lord, but that he is also trying to capture our hearts.