Sermon Tone Analysis

Intro

I wanted to open this morning by giving you some highlights from the trip last week.

For those of you who didn’t know, Shawn and Natlie and I and Joelle Parker and Shannon Hord — all of us piled into two vans and drove Tuesday to Cincinatti and came back yesterday.

We went to see the Ark Encounter and Creation Museum, but in the evenings we helped out at Lakota Hill Baptist Church in West Chester, OH.

We helped them with their VBS for four nights.

So, some highlights.

Really, these will be thing we have learned about each other, about ourselves, and about God.

Some of this we learned the hard way.

We learned that a 6.5 hour drive according to Apple Maps can easily become a 10 hour drive when you have small children and Shawn.

We learned that some people are scared being in the passenger seat no matter who’s behind the wheel.

We learned that Wendy’s is a restaurant for “old people” - and in this case “old” means 35 and up.

We learned that my son’s new word is “chicken.”

You ask him how he is or what he’s doing later today or how he feels, he’ll just say “chicken.”

At least he did on the trip.

He’s definitely a teenager - no doubt about it.

We learned that you can steal Shawn’s hat off his head and stick it in your bookbag and he won’t ask for it back, like ever.

I finally found it at the bottom of my bag 24 hours later and had forgotten it was there.

We learned that when you’re staying in an air BNB that was built just 20 years after the Civil War ended, you’re 20% less likely to die if you wear tennis shoes that really grip the wood.

We learned that my daughter cannot travel with too many accessories.

Some of us learned that God has called us to work with children!

We learned something about God’s greatness.

After all, that’s the point of the ark, isn’t it?

The point of the ark is that God destroyed the world for its wickedness but that He showed one family mercy.

We learned that being shown mercy by God, like with Noah, we are freed up to live lives of worship.

The building of the ark was an act of worship.

By building the ark, Noah and his family demonstrated that they really believed God would do what He said He would do; in other words, He was faithul and His word could be trusted.

By building the ark, Noah and his family demonstrated that they really trusted in God’s protection, that He would preserve them through the flood, that He was a God both able and willing to save them from His own wrath.

In other words, by building the ark, Noah and his family demonstrated not only their own obedience, but also that they saw God as worthy of worship — even an act of worship as seemingly out of place as buildjng an ark in the hot desert with no clouds on the horizon.

But what about the rest of us?

God doesn’t have us building an ark.

Can we still live lives of worship even though we’re ordinary people living ordinary lives?

Love One Another Earnestly

The first thing Peter does is he reminds us that history is coming to an end.

In verse 7 he writes “The end of all things is near.”

The day on which Jesus Christ returns for judgment rather than salvation, the day on which God will judge the secrets of men by Christ Jesus, the day on which the dead — young and old — will be raised — the day on which the Lord of history brings human history to a close — the end of this age and the beginning of the next — that day is near, Peter says.

The end of all things?

The second coming of Christ

The resurrection of the dead

The judgment of all people

The defeat of Satan

The destruction of this world

The creation of the new heaven and earth

Even non-Christians seem to have a sense that we are headed toward the culmination of history.

How many movies in the last 25 years have been post-apocalyptic, dystopian movies?

Since the late 1990s we’ve seen movies like War of the Worlds, Hunger Games, 2012, Deep Impact, Armageddon.

I’m not saying the creators of these movies believe Christian doctrine.

I’m saying that human beings in general seem to have an increasing sense that things cannot continue inevitably as they now are.

And for non-believers, this realization, this sense that history is headed toward an end point, must be a very unsettling feeling.

How will it all end, right?

But for believers, it’s an opportunity to live with a new sense of purpose.

This is what Peter says.

Look again at verse 7: “The end of all things is near.”

That’s the reality.

Now he tells us to live a certain way in light of that reality.

“The end of all things is near” — and look at this — “therefore” — in other words, because the end of all things is near, live a certain way.

How? “Therefore, be self-controlled and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers.”

When I was in college I was part of a Christian group my first year.

And an older guy who was a student brought in a long piece of paper, like 10 feet long, and he had written down this detailed timeline about when every single event described in the book of Revelation would take place.

His thing was that January 1, 2000 would be the day Christ returned.

In 2010, there were billboards along I-40 announcing the return of Christ on May 18. Obviously neither of those took place.

The NT does not tell us when Jesus will return.

The NT in fact discourages us from being preoccupied with end-times events in terms of where or when and how.

What the NT does encourage us to do? Overwhelmingly the Bible emphasizes that because Jesus’ return is coming, we are to focus not on timelines or charts but on being a certain kind of person.

“What sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness,” Peter asks his readers in his second letter, “waiting for and hastening the coming day of God?” (2Pet.

3:11-12 ESV).

Here Peter says the proper way to live in view of the imminend end of all things is to be sober-minded, self-controlled.

Be sober-minded, Peter says.

Keep your head about you.

Understand the time in which you’re living.

Have a mature and godly understanding of current events.

Apparently some Christians during this time were sort of doing nothing or doing anything they wanted.

After all, they thought, if the return of Christ is imminent, and if I’m saved and forgiven, then I can live it up.

No, Jesus says; No, the apostles say; be sober-minded, be self-controlled.

You can easily see why this would be important.

Be self-controlled, Peter says.

Be careful not to be found in open sin when Jesus returns.

Discipline yourself to do the things that matter because the time is short.

You can’t do this without self-control.

Imagine Great Britain in spring of 1940.

The Nazis are marching west across Europe.

From Chekoslavakia to Belgium to France, the German army has overtaken every nation they’ve invaded almost without breaking a sweat.

Great Britain is next.

If Great Britain falls, Europe falls.

Can you imagine how trivial a lot of the things we focus on must seem when you’re in that situation?

The citizens of Great Britian had to collect themselves, prepare themselves for hard times, muster their endurance, and push through.

What are the things you engage in that would suddenly seem trivial or even wrong if you were to learn that you have just a few weeks or days left?

What are the habits you indulge in that you would not want to be found doing when Christ returns?

Thinking this way is what it means to live in light of the end.

[Loving in light of the end (slide)]

Love one another deeply (NIV)

Keep fervent in your love for one another (NASB)

Maintain constant love for one another (NRSV)

So Peter instructs us to be sober-minded and self-controlled, and then he gives us three ways that being sober-minded and self-controlled look like.

The first, he says, is “love one another earnestly.”

Living a life of worship in light of the end of all things begins with love.

As the end draws near, we might increasingly be tempted to take care of our own.

Why be generous if resources are in short supply?

Don’t fall into that line of thinking, Peter says.

Our Christian responsibilities do not change as circumstances change.

We are still called to love one another.