Now our scripture reading this evening is taken from the second epistle of Peter and chapter 3. 2 Peter chapter 3. 2 Peter is written to the Lord's people. It seems to be written late in Peter's life as he is looking towards his inevitable and the martyrdom. He knows that he will suffer because the Lord told him he would. And he writes to remind Christians and encourage them concerning the hope that is within us. So, 2 Peter chapter 3. Beloved, I now write to you this second epistle. both of which I stir up your pure minds by way of reminder, that you may be mindful of the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets and of the commandment of us, the apostles of the Lord and Saviour. knowing this first, that scoffers will come in the last days, walking up according to their own lusts, and saying, where is the promise of his coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation. For this they willfully forget, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of water and in the water, by which the world that then existed perished, being flooded with water. But the heavens and the earth, which are now preserved by the same word, are reserved for fire until the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men. But, beloved, do not forget this one thing. that with the Lord one day is a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some count slackness, but is long-suffering toward us, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. The day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, in which the heavens will pass away with a great noise, and the elements will melt with fervent heat. Both the earth and the works that are in it will be burned up. Therefore, since all these things will be dissolved, what manner of persons ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness? Looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be dissolved being on fire, and the elements will melt with fervent heat. Nevertheless, we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, in which righteousness dwells. Therefore, beloved, looking forward to these things, be diligent to be found by him in peace, without spot and blameless, and consider that the long-suffering of our Lord is salvation. As also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given to him, has written to you, as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things in which are some things hard to understand, which untaught and unstable people twist to their own destruction, as they do also the rest of the scriptures. You therefore, beloved, since you know this beforehand, beware lest you also fall from your own steadfastness, being led away with the error of the wicked, but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory both now and for ever. Amen. And may God bless the reading of His Holy Word. Our text this evening is found in the chapters we read, 2 Peter chapter 3 and verse 9. The Lord is not slack concerning his promise as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish, but all should come to repentance. We're here on the first Sunday in Advent and as is traditional we look forward to the second coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. This great doctrine of the Second Advent has been one that has seen both eclipse in terms of teaching in the church and unfortunately a great deal of imbalance either an absolute obsession with it, or this idea that we should perhaps not talk about it very much. I remember a good number of years ago, now before I became the pastor here, visiting a church down in Surrey for a lecture, an evening lecture, on this topic of the Second Coming. And in the course of the lecture, the speaker noted that when he was a lad, there'd been a lot of talk about the Second Advent and there was very little in evangelical churches today. And of course, being me after this lecture, I suggested that possibly the reason was imbalance in the past, people getting not only speaking out an awful lot, but more thinking that what we have to do is speculate about the exact details. I mean, there's a lot of, sadly, unfortunately, many churches today that will separate from other people. And there are many Christians sadly who separate from other people on the basis not of whether they affirm or deny the Second Coming, but on details. Will there be a Millennium? What's the Millennium mean? Will the Tribulation be before or after the Rapture? Will there be a Rapture of the Saints etc. etc. etc. And the reality is that what we affirm is Christ is coming. And he is coming visibly, physically and gloriously. And that is the blessed hope of the church. That's what we look to. Now Peter here, as I said, introduced in the reading, when he is writing this epistle, he is coming towards the end of his life. He says in chapter 1 and verse 14, knowing that shortly I must put off my tent, just as our Lord Jesus Christ showed me, that is, shortly I am going to die. And we know that his death was a martyrdom, he was put to death. bearing witness for the Lord Jesus. And as he considers his fast-approaching martyrdom, he is to be executed, he writes to stir up the people, to remind them, to be mindful, he says, of the words which were spoken before by the Holy Prophets and of the commandment of us, the Apostles, of the Lord and Saviour. How are we to think and behave because of the Second Advent? Well, first of all, Peter deals with the question of an apparent, at least, delay. Secondly, he speaks of the day itself. And thirdly, of the diligence that the Lord's people are to show in light of that day. The delay, the day, and the diligence. And first he speaks of the apparent delay. Already there are people coming and they are saying, where is the promise of His coming? Now, the date of this epistle, as with all the writings of the New Testament, the exact date has to be inferred from the contents. And it's sometime before 6970 AD. So if our Lord is executed, is crucified, risen, ascended in around about 30-33-35 AD, then it has been not quite 40 years yet. And already there are people saying, where is the promise of his coming? Already there are scoffers, people saying, well you said that Christ is coming back, where is he? Where is he, they asked. And we find that again today. There is an apparent delay. The Church, of course, the Lord Jesus himself says, no one knows the day or the hour of the second coming. So therefore, the Church cannot know whether it will be in our lifetime or not. And so it was in the first century. That's why, even when the Apostle Paul writes, writing to Thessalonians, he speaks of we who are alive at his coming. Why does he do that? Well, because no one knows the day or the hour, even the Apostles as they wrote the Scriptures. And therefore, if no one knows the day or the hour, then it had to be that the Apostles thought, well, it's possible that we will still be alive at the time. Now here we are, the best part of 2,000 years later. And still, of course, the scoffers are there. Mockers are a fact. But Peter explains what the actual problem with the mockers is. They are walking according to their own lusts. That's their real problem. It's not an intellectual problem. It's not a doctrinal problem. It is a moral problem. They do not want the Bible to be true. Because if it is, then they are going to have to do something about it. They're going to have to act on the truth, if the truth is presented to them. Now who are these scoffers? Who are these mockers? It's very likely that they are the people whom he speaks of in chapter 2 as false prophets. They are people, false teachers, who claim to be Christian teachers. And yet their teaching is immoral teaching. They are libertines. They have, Peter says, chapter 2 verse 15, they have forsaken the right way and gone astray following the way of Balaam the son of Baal who loved the wages of unrighteousness. And again, verse 18, he says that they speak great swelling words of emptiness. They allure through the lusts of the flesh, through lewdness, the ones who have actually escaped from those who live in error. While they promise them liberty, they themselves are slaves of corruption. For by whom a person is overcome, by him also he is brought into bondage. These are people who speak of the freedom to sin. Now, biblically there is no such thing as a freedom to sin because freedom and sin are opposites. To speak biblically of a freedom to sin is the same as to speak of a married bachelor. A man is either married or he is a bachelor. A man is either free or he is a slave to sin. He cannot be a free slave. not in the sense of being free and a slave at the same time, as it comes as far as sin is concerned. and they are brought into bondage, bondage to their own lusts, their own desires, their sinful desires. And while we may think of all kinds of things, the primary desire he seems to be thinking of here is the wages of unrighteousness. They are into money. False teachers are normally all about money, in one sense or another. And so they are saying, Christ is not coming, it doesn't matter how we behave. And what is their reasoning for this? Where is the promise? It is coming, for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation. They were historical uniformitarians, to use a technical term. Uniformitarianism is the idea that the way things are now is the way things have always been. And all the processes of the world have always acted the same way that they do now. And yet this is fundamentally false. This is wrong. This is not actually how things are at all. Because the reality is that, fundamentally, God has done spectacular things in the past, and God will do spectacular things in the future. But, Peter says, these people suffer from amnesia. Now, it's one thing when somebody loses their memory, they can't remember something important, and they want to. It's a dreadful thing when someone suffers from dementia and their memory is going. But these people want to lose their memories. There are things that they don't want to remember. They willfully forget about the flood in the days of Noah. They willfully forget that the Bible doesn't say that everything has continued as it is from the day of creation, but that there was that great judgment when God flooded the earth and only Noah and his family and the animals within the ark survived. world that then existed perished being flooded with water. And since God has judged in this spectacular worldwide way in the past, why is it ridiculous and impossible that he should judge so in the future? And then again they are thinking in purely human terms. But beloved, verse 8, do not forget this one thing, that with the Lord one day is a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. He's referencing here of course Psalm 90. And the point is that time is not the same thing to God as it is to us. There is to God no difference between a day and a millennium. God is not affected by time. God is not in time. God works his works in, as it were, an eternal now. And therefore to think in terms of time as we think in terms of time. I mean a thousand years for us is a very long time. There have not been that many in the history of creation. You think of what happened a thousand years ago from our present age. Here we are 2023 and a thousand years ago in England Well, the Norman Conquest hadn't happened yet a thousand years ago. Here, the potteries didn't exist. I mean, 300 years ago, really, the potteries were just getting going. There's no building in the whole area here that existed a thousand years ago. It's a very long time for people, but not for God. God, then, is not slack. He's not uncertain. It's not that God has decided to have a long lion or something. I say that with the best reverence here, but rather the point is that these people think that God is like us. But He's not. He is not slack. He's not delaying because he's lazy or not ready yet, but he is long-suffering. He is patient, he is gracious. Long-suffering is one of those attributes of God that he announced to Moses when he passed before him. He is long-suffering toward us. Now, us here means his people. He has started the epistle telling us that it is to those who have obtained like precious faith with us by the righteousness of our God and Saviour Jesus Christ. He is long-suffering toward his people. If he had come back, if Christ had come back earlier, none of us would be here. But he is long-suffering, not willing that any of his people should perish. that all should come to repentance. God is not slack. God is merciful. and the apparent delay then is because of the mercy and the grace and the long-suffering of God. But secondly he speaks of the day because if there is that delay to our eyes, not to God's of course, the day is still coming, the day of the Lord will come. It will come and it will come unexpectedly. Every year there's some nutcase somewhere who says, well it's going to be this year. And what they say, sometimes you have these people have these enormous sets of calculations based on the Great Pyramid of Giza or the king lists of Assyria, or the Babylonian Talmud or something, or all combined and then half a dozen other things as well. That's pretty much what the Jehovah's Witnesses predictions were based on. Or, you know how somebody just had this idea pops into their head, well I think it's going to be the year that Arsenal win the FA Cup, or England wins the World Cup. And I wish I was making that sort of thing up. That does happen. I've just translated an American idea into British idiom for us. And the response at every point to these people is, what part of no one knows the day or the hour do you not understand? What's wrong with that? Christ says no one knows the day or the hour, so throw away your calculations. and think seriously about the date, will come as a thief in the night. The thief makes sure that nobody knows when he's coming. Thieves do not, as a rule, outside of fiction, send cards to their intended victim saying, dear sir, at such and such a date, at such and such a time, I intend to burgle your house. No, the thief makes sure that he is there when no one expects him. And then he strikes. And therefore, this language as a thief in the night is unexpected. But when it happens, everybody will know. The heavens will pass away with a great noise, and the elements will melt with fervent heat. Both the earth and the work that's in it will be burned up. This is not something that you might not notice. This is not something that happens quietly. And this is not a metaphor, this is a straightforward description. The whole universe, the heavens and the earth, that's the universe to a Jewish man like Peter. The whole universe is going to be melted. Melted down and recast like a cracked bell. It is going to be final. Nobody is going to escape. except those that God preserves. And nobody is going to be able to hide away somewhere. This isn't a nuclear holocaust even. Nobody is going to be able to hide away. There is no survival guide apart from this belief on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved in that great day. Christ is coming. and when he comes this present age will end spectacularly. The heavens will be dissolved being on fire and the elements will melt with fervent heat. Well then it's sure, it's certain, it's unexpected. What then are we to do? Well first of all as Christians we are to be looking forward to it. Looking forward and hastening the coming of the day of God. That is to say, if we could make it happen earlier, we'd do our best. And within the processes that God has set up, God works by means, remember. That's why we pray. That's why we evangelise, God works by means. And one of those means of hastening that day is the missionary work, the preaching of the Gospel, hastening the coming of the day of God. Because that day is a wonderful day. That is the day that the Christian looks forward to when we shall see our Saviour as he is, for we will be like him. It's that day when We will be done with all the effects of sin. Those who are alive on that day will be changed. The bodies will have this corruptible must put on incorruptible. And those who have died, their bodies will be raised again and united with their souls forever. And then we shall be forever with the Lord, to be with him forever, looking forward because Christ is coming. And we look for a new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. Our expectation is a future that is unlike the present in that way. In this present earth, unrighteousness dwells. This present universe is corrupted by sin, by the fall. But in that future, there is no sin. Righteousness dwells there, and all has been renewed. And if we appreciate the beauty of the present creation as we do, then the new creation shall be more beautiful, more wonderful, more glorious. And so we come thirdly to that point of diligence. How then should we live if Christ is coming? How should we live? What manner of persons ought you to be? Well, if we are looking to live in a world that is all righteousness, a world where there is no sin, then we want to be righteous people in holy conduct and godliness. being diligent to be found by Him in peace. Now that peace, first of all, is the peace of God, peace with God. Because true peace isn't, first of all, a matter of an inward feeling, is it? And it's certainly not about peace with people who are outside Christ. Now, absolutely we want the Church to dwell in peace. But first of all, peace with God, being justified by faith, we have peace with God, to be found by Him in peace, without spot and blame. Is Peter teaching here some sort of perfectionism? Certainly not. Rather his point is that if we are in Christ, if we are believers, then we are in Christ without spot and blameless for since our Saviour stands between in garments dyed with blood, tis He instead of I is seen when I draw nigh to God. It's Christ's righteousness and He is the one who is our peace. But we are to seek to live righteously We are to seek the follow after him. We are not to be like these Scotters walking according to their own lusts whose lives are all about libertinism, plunging themselves in wickedness as if there is no judgement, as if there is no second advent. but rather to be diligent to be found by him in peace, be diligent to make our calling and election sure, to be certain indeed that we are his and he is ours. This is, of course, what he's already said in Chapter 1, when he says, therefore, brethren, be even more diligent to make your call and election sure, that is, to be assured of your own call and election. How are we certain of these things? Well, it's possible, sadly all too possible, for people to be too inward-looking, to look in ourselves, but if we look at ourselves only, We find ourselves with the Apostle saying in me that is in my flesh there dwells no good thing. Rather it's looking to Jesus, looking unto him, putting our trust in him and asking about him. He is the One. He is the One in whom we are called, in whom we are chosen, in whom we live. He is our peace. He is our sanctification. And then we are to remember the Word of God. Think upon the Word of God. Consider that the long-suffering of our Lord is salvation. Give thanks for His patience toward us. not just when we were unbelievers before we came to Christ, but His patience with us day by day. And by looking to Him we become more like Him. The long-suffering of our Lord is salvation. And we think upon the Holy Scriptures. We find in this chapter Peter speaks of the Apostle Paul and Paul's epistles and how we approach the Bible. Our beloved brother Paul has written to you, he says, according to the wisdom given to him. And Paul's epistles generally have a very straightforward structure. There is the doctrinal part, this is what we believe this is what we must believe, and then we have the ethical part, this is therefore how we must live, just as Peter has said here, we believe that Christ is coming again, therefore this is how we should live. And reading the Bible is a matter of a certain amount of effort Because he says in his epistles there are some things hard to understand. Only some things. It's not that Paul's epistles are all difficult to understand. There are some things that are hard to understand. And what do we do when we come across something in the Bible that we have trouble understanding? Well, what we should do is we should pray about it, and we should study the rest of the Bible to see, is it touched on somewhere else? Is there something else in the Bible that might help us to understand this? We have today, and we're spoiled for choice really, with Bible study tools. We can ask the question, do these words appear elsewhere in the Bible and how are they used there? But there are some people who Peter refers to as those who are untaught and unstable. They are untaught and primarily here it's they are untaught by God. But secondly that they are not submitting themselves to the teaching of the Apostles. They're not listening to the apostolic teaching, but they've got their own ideas. And we find that when people bring their own ideas to the Bible, rather than letting the Bible be the Bible, what they do is they twist it to their own destruction. Now the word translated twist here can be used in Greek to mean what is done to someone on the rack. If you've ever been to the Tower of London you see the rack there and it's this frame with these rollers And what they do is they strap a man with his hands one side and his feet the other, tie them to the rollers or chain them up, and then they turn these rollers on a ratchet to stretch the man's body out. What a picture that is! We're trying to make him longer than he already is. It's very much the picture is as with the Greek story of Procrustes and his bed. Procrustes, so the story goes, had a bed that would fit everybody. That's what he said. The reality was that he'd take people to his bed and if they were too short, he would stretch them. And if they were too long, he would chop their legs off. And that's what people do to the Bible. They take the Bible to their own ideas, their own bed, if you will, and they say, well, I'm going to stretch it if it won't fit, and chop bits off if they don't fit in to my scheme. There are some people who abuse this language and say don't put God in the box. What they mean is don't listen to the Bible. But there are people who generally do want to put God in their box. There are the rationalists. The rationalist says, well I can't understand, I can't wrap my head around God being one God in three persons and three persons in one God, so I'm going to deny that and be a Unitarian. Well, my dear rationalist, if you could fit your head around God, your head would be larger than God, and large as your head may be, it is not that large. Or again, you have the Bizarre mystic. Oh, I had a dream. I have this idea. I think God is like this. We do not care what you think God is like. How has God revealed himself? Untaught and unstable people don't listen to God, but themselves. And they twist the scriptures to their own destruction. But we are to approach it rightly. to listen to the apostolic teaching, to seek to be rooted and grounded in it, so that amidst all the upsets of this present evil age, we can stand upon the rock, and the rock that is Christ. and to grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. To go back to that metaphor of being rooted and grounded. A tree is rooted and grounded that it may grow, and that growth is both upward and downward, that has deep roots that cannot be shaken. And it is growth in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Christ himself is the centre. All revolves around him, the one whom we know is coming. And growing in that grace and knowledge, we grow also in our looking for him. and are living under him, a diligent man to live in the light of his coming, for Christ is coming. That promise, that word is true. The fact that there have been the best part of 2,000 years since the Ascension doesn't shake us, but rather makes us wander at the long suffering of God. He is born with the world so long we would not have done that he is born with the world so long because of his grace his mercy and the day is coming and so we live expectantly and we live looking unto Jesus reading the scriptures that we may be rooted and grounded and built in him, and may he in all things be glorified. For Christ is coming, even so, come Lord Jesus.