A New Day

2 Peter 3

1 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, 2 that you should remember the predictions of the holy prophets and the commandment of the Lord and Savior through your apostles, 3 knowing this first of all, that scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own sinful desires. 4 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.” 5 For they 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, 6 and that by means of these the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished. 7 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. 8 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. 9 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. 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. 11 Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, 12 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! 13 But according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.

The promise of the new day....in the life of the believer.

The question proposed by unbelievers.

Our answer is found by faith in the all knowing God.

All things are equally near and present to His view; the distance of a thousand years before the occurrence of an event is no more to Him than would be the interval of a day

all time is equally powerless with God to affect him. A day does not make any particular change in us that we can notice. As a day seems to make no change with us, so, but far more truthfully, a thousand years make no change with God. Ages roll on, but He abides the same as when the waves break themselves against the rock, but the rock stands fast forever.

Spurgeon, Charles. 2014. Spurgeon Commentary: 2 Peter. Edited by Elliot Ritzema and Carrie Sinclair Wolcott. Spurgeon Commentary Series. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.

we place a lot of stock in the present age when in fact it is now beginning to dissolve; everything is in the process of dissolution. God is close upon us; can you not hear His footfall? Christ is returning; He is on his journey now.

Spurgeon, Charles. 2014. Spurgeon Commentary: 2 Peter. Edited by Elliot Ritzema and Carrie Sinclair Wolcott. Spurgeon Commentary Series. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.

Our answer is a standard of holiness.

A true love of God must begin with a delight in his holiness, and not with a delight in any other attribute; for no other attribute is truly lovely without this.

Jonathan Edwards

We must be a people who see the beauty of the holiness of God. True regeneration begins when the Holy Spirit illuminates the depravity of our sin and the blinding beauty of his holiness.

John 3:19 And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. 20 For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. 21 But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.”.

Our answer creates lives spent in constant expectation.

We miss the advance of the Gospel when we fail to live a life of expectation. This lack of faith and habit of sin often flies under the radar of many believers.

Final Words/Game plan14 Therefore, beloved, since you are waiting for these, be diligent to be found by him without spot or blemish, and at peace. 15 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, 16 as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. 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. 17 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. 18 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.