Text today, 2 Peter 3, verses 1 through 7. So on page 1657, the Bible's in the seats. Last week, Ken reviewed for us all of 2 Peter chapter 2, which you'll remember focused almost entirely on false teachers. And then now in chapter 3, Peter returns to encouraging the faithful. So we're gonna read verses 1 through 7. This is now, beloved, the second letter that I'm writing to you in which I am stirring up your sincere mind by way of reminder that you should remember the words spoken beforehand by the holy prophets and the commandment of the Lord and Savior spoken by your apostles. Know this, first of all, that in the last days, mockers will come with their mocking, following after their own lusts and saying, where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all continues just as it was from the beginning of creation. For when they maintain this, it escapes their notice that by the word of God, the heavens existed long ago and the earth was formed out of water and by water through which the world at that time was destroyed, being flooded with water. But by his holy word, the present heavens and earth are being reserved for fire, kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men. Let's pray. Be with us in this service, Lord, by sending your spirit and using this as a means of grace to conform our hearts to the truth. We pray that the warnings of judgment we are going to talk about will be a frightening reality to both those in open rebellion as well as those that are in secret sin. Bring us to repentance where needed. Encourage us as believers where needed. Grow us in maturity as needed and bring us your grace. We likewise pray that you would bring yourself glory through all of these actions and we pray all this in Christ's name, amen. We are finally done with the direct exhortations against false teachers that we covered in Chapter 2, but we're not done yet with warnings about opposition that Christians will face. Peter's writing makes a clear pivot between chapters two and three. That's why there's a chapter break there. He just referenced that proverb about the dog returning to its vomit. And then he makes this pivot, this clear pivot in the beginning of chapter three saying, this is now the second letter that I've written to remind you. So he totally changes the subject here. Saying this is the second letter obviously means he has First Peter in mind as that first letter, which tells us he's writing to the same audience as First Peter, which that's going to be relevant for us next week. I'll bring that back up. But both letters essentially have the same purpose, according to him. It's the second letter that he's writing to remind them of the right teaching in both the Old Testament, as well as the teaching that they had heard from the apostles, which he tells them he got from Christ himself. It's the commandment of the Lord, as you heard from the apostles. So, apostolic teaching is the teaching of Jesus, and he's saying, pay attention to both of these. Reminders, such as these were meant to be, or were all the more important And that's to be expected. These letters were meant to be reminders, and it's all the more important that they get reminders because they're in this oral culture that depended more heavily on memorization and oral communication than books, because they didn't necessarily have books where everybody went home and read books of the Bible all the time. So they were more heavily dependent, and they needed those reminders more than we might today. As he begins to wrap it up in chapter three, he says, In chapter three, what he had said in chapter one, that he had written to remind them of these apostolic truths, and I don't mean that we don't need reminds, I'm just saying they were more dependent on them as a way of learning, so he tells them. The same thing that he said in chapter one, because he wrote this in chapter one, you'll remember this. Therefore, I will always be ready to remind you of these things, even though you already know them and have been established in the truth which is present in you. I consider it right, as long as I am in this earthly dwelling, to stir you up by way of reminder. This is the same thing he said in three, to stir up. your sincere mind by way of reminder, knowing that the laying aside of my earthly dwelling is imminent, as also our Lord Jesus Christ has made clear to me, and I will also be diligent that at any time after my departure, you will be able to call these things to mind." He wants them ingrained in their mind so they remember them. And we already had a sermon on remembering the gospel when we covered those verses in chapter 1, verses 12 through 15. So I don't want to just cover that same subject again. So we're not going to dwell on verses 1 and 2 quite as long. But I will remind you of that comment that we made, that when it comes to the Christian faith, those who do not remember the gospel are doomed to forsake it. And remember, this is more than simply recalling biblical facts. That's definitely part of it. It's not less than that, but it's more than that. And it includes that. But the idea is to think biblically and to dwell on biblical truth in such a way as to shape and influence and permanently transform our thinking and behavior. That's what he means by that reminder, so that you're knowing it. It's ingrained in you. Notice, too, how he unites all of biblical revelation as Christian revelation. It's all for us. We don't decouple the Old Testament from the New Testament, as some people have advocated. We don't look at the words of Jesus alone. We're not red-letter Christians, as if those carry more weight than the other apostolic teaching. We don't ignore anything in the Bible. We use the entire book. We use Genesis to Revelation to preach the whole counsel of God. We interpret the old in light of the new, and then we interpret the difficult or the ambiguous texts using the clear and the straightforward texts. Like Peter said, we should remember the words spoken beforehand by the holy prophets and the commandment of the Lord and Savior spoken by your apostles. We take both. It's all the same. It's all Christian revelation. All of revelation is Christian. It's one continuous story united with one purpose and one ethical model of obedience to God's law. And then we see that unity. from the prophets, whose words he tells us to remember. He begins to warn about mockers who are going to come, scoffers who are going to come, casting doubt on the coming day of the Lord, which Peter tells us will be a day of judgment and destruction, and that the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire. And that's not some new revelation unique to the new covenant. That is what the prophets had said for hundreds of years prior. He said, pay attention to the teachings of the holy prophets, and that's what they said, too. So let's remember now the words spoken beforehand by the holy prophets. Malachi 4, 1 through 3, for behold, the day is coming, burning like a furnace, and all the arrogant and every evildoer will be shaft, and the day that is coming will set them ablaze, says the Lord of hosts. So it will leave them neither root nor branch. But for you who fear my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings, and you will go forth and skip about like calves from the stall. You will tread down the wicked, for they will be ashes under the soles of your feet on the day which I am preparing, says the Lord of hosts. And also in Isaiah 66 verses 15 through 16, he said, Behold, the Lord will come in fire and his chariots like the whirlwind to render his anger with fury and his rebuke with flames of fire. For the Lord will execute judgment by fire and by his sword on all flesh and those slain by the Lord will be many. So we see there judgment by fire, it's a coming due of for the evildoers, God coming in anger and wrath and judgment. It's not some New Testament thing exclusively. This is what the prophet said. Even the Jewish historian, Josephus, recorded in the first century this Jewish belief that he actually claimed was from Adam, the world would be destroyed one time by water and one time by fire. I don't want to say I was skeptical of that, but I read that and I was like, ah, that surprises me. And I went and I looked it up. It's true. So Josephus says that they learned this from Adam. that the world's gonna be destroyed one time by water, one time by fire. Who knows if that part about Adam is true or not, that's, I don't know, it doesn't matter. But judgment by fire was clear in the prophets. All of Revelation has been heralding the day of the Lord, as it's called, the day of judgment, and it's going to be this epic occasion. It's gonna be awful and terrifying for evildoers, but it's gonna be joyous and rewarding for Christians. It's going to be severe. It's probably gonna be somewhat somber to witness to a degree, yet at the same time, we're gonna see this realization of everything that we've hoped for in Christ. It is the next event on the redemptive historical timeline. That's the next thing that's gonna happen, is God's return, Christ's return in judgment. And it's no secret. We don't know the day or the hour, obviously, but its surety, the fact that it's happening, is not kept hidden. There's no mystery about whether or not it's going to happen. We'll be surprised when it happens, but not that it is happening. The return of Christ is referenced in some fashion in every New Testament book except for two, the two shortest ones with the narrowest scope, Philemon and 3 John. But from Matthew to Revelation, that's decades worth of writing, Jesus' return is reiterated time and time again. It is the consistent apostolic testimony. And not one of them had anything other than an unwavering confidence it would happen. They didn't know when, but they knew it would happen. Simply put, anticipating the return of Christ is a mark of a Christian. In spite of that, overwhelming testimony from not only a dead man who came back to life, who said he was going to return, Jesus, but also from his followers, not only that, there's going to be those that mock the idea. There's going to be scoffers. Peter said in verse 3, know this first of all, that in the last day, mockers or scoffers will come with their mocking. Remember that last days, that's that category of time between Christ's first and second coming, that whole block of time. We don't know how long it's going to be. It's spoken of figuratively as a thousand years, just meaning a long time, not literally a thousand years. But this entire period we are now in, we are going to see these scoffers coming from It started in the first century, too. It started immediately. And it continues today. Celsus, for example, was a well-known mocker in the second century, very early church. His only surviving work is actually found in Christian sources that quoted him in order to refute him. And there have been many Celsuses or, I don't know, Celsi, however you want to pluralize that. There's been many of these kind of guys in every generation since then. They are mockers who mock. Verse three literally says, scoffers in their scoffing, which might sound a little funny. It's kind of a Semitic idiom to emphasize their scoffing, to say scoffers in their scoffing. It wouldn't be all that different than if maybe you were trying to insult a rival football team and you called them losing losers, like that double emphasis of the action and the name of the person. It's an intentionally irregular way of speaking to put the emphasis on the action that they're doing. So this is not some like mere scoff. It's more than just responding to that idea with like a psh or a pff, you know, those sounds that we used to make to our parents when we were disrespectful teenagers and they would say something, we'd just be like pff, you know, that sort of thing. It's more than that. In these last days, they're going to, their mocking is going to be more aggressive. They're gonna be, disrespectfully attempting to dissuade you from believing in Christ's return by saying, where's the promise of his coming? We know that your Bible says he's coming back. Where's the promise of his coming? Ever since the fathers fell asleep, all continues just as it was from the beginning. It's never been any different. It's the same, and you say he's coming back. Where is he? That's the content of their mockery. This type of question, is inherently disrespectful and faithless. It has kind of like this, well, let's see it then type attitude towards God's word. He said, he said, he's going to do it. Let's see it. Where is it? Huh? Where is it? That sort of mockery. These same types of questions are cited in the prophets when they're pronouncing judgment against various people. Jeremiah 17, 15. Look, they keep saying to me, where is the word of the Lord? Let it come now. So they used to do it back then, too. Like, oh, well, God said he's going to judge us for this evil. Where is he? Huh? Where is he at? Let's see it. Malachi 2, 17. You have wearied the Lord with your words, yet you say, how have we wearied him? And that you say, everyone who does evil is good in the sight of the Lord, and he delights in them, or where is the God of justice? You can sense it. You can sense the sarcasm and the challenge in those types of questions, the way that it's asked. In fact, it's not really a question. I mean, it's formed as a question, but it's really an accusation. It's calling God a liar. It's no different than a childlike response to a bold claim of prove it. We've all said that growing up to somebody. Some kid says, oh, I can do such and such and prove it. Let's see it. We say that from a position of disbelief. We're trying to call somebody's bluff when we say that kind of thing. The Lord does not look kindly on those that cast doubt on doing what he says that he's gonna do. And then they attempt to put him to the test through mockery as if they can like prompt him to do the thing that he said he's gonna do through mockery. Almost like a reverse psychology kind of thing. He's not bluffing. He's coming back. And his not yet having done so is of course not proof that he will not in the future. That's not how it works. That's pretty much the scoffer's whole argument here. They take the fact that Christ hasn't returned and they use that. That's their evidence that he's never going to return. They attempt to rub it in our face then. This seems like such, this is such an ignorant boast to me. It'd be like if a runner was bragging that he's going to win a marathon because he sprinted the first mile. And then he's completely ignorant of how long the race is, yet that doesn't stop him from turning around and then yelling at all the runners behind him, boasting to them, oh, you're never going to beat me in this race. Never once in this race have you run a mile faster than I have. We're in the first mile. What? You used up all your energy. It doesn't make any sense. In his foolish mind, that first mile is evidence that every single mile after that, he's going to run it faster. It's basically what these last day scoffers are doing. It's clearly a logically fallible argument. The past is not a guarantee of what the future will be like. Just because something has never happened doesn't mean it's never going to happen. That's not how the world works. The argument that Mount St. Helens will never erupt, because it had never erupted before, probably seemed true all the way up until May 18, 1980, when it blew up and killed people. And there were warning signs it was going to go off. They were warning, because there was little earthquakes. There were signs that it might, and people ignored them. Some people died. That's what the scoffers argument amounts to. It's proven. Christ has never returned before. It's like, well, yeah, it's only gonna happen once. It's not gonna, there's only one return. It's not like we should have multiple returns of Christ to point to this evidence of, look how he continuously returned. That doesn't make any sense. So Peter sees right through this argument. He sees all the holes of it. And he says in verse five and six, For when they maintain this, that is when they maintain that scoffing challenge, it escapes their notice that by the word of God, the heavens existed long ago and the earth was formed out of water and by water through which the world at that time was destroyed, being flooded with water. So he simply cites evidence proving their logic wrong. He calls creation as a witness against them and God's claim that he was going to flood the world to judge them, he calls that as a witness. God said he was gonna do that and did he do it? Yeah, he did it. Yes, there has never been a worldwide flood before. You know that in Noah's day, there had never been a worldwide flood. And he sat and he preached repentance for a hundred years, and he warned of this flood. And you know there were scoffers who came, and they're scoffing, saying, where is the promise of this flood, Noah? You've been saying this for years, Noah, and nothing has happened. Where is the promise of this flood? You're a fool, Noah. You keep making provisions for this supposed threat from God. You spend all your time building that big, dumb ark with your sons, like you actually have revelation from God, like you know what's coming. But everything continues just as it always has since the beginning of creation. There's no flood that's come. Those mockers looked right while they mocked, while they scoffed at that threat until that day when the rain started. And it kept coming, and the floods, the oceans of the depths were opened up, and that water starts rising, and they're like, oh. You know, they're silenced. They're exposed as the fools that they are. So in the last days, they're going to look like they're right. They do get to claim evidence that Christ is never eternal, yeah. But they're willfully ignorant of who God has revealed himself to be. The NASB says it escapes their notice when they say that, when they make that claim. Almost like they forgot the past. But it's a willful, intentional ignorance. It's not just like, oh yeah, I forgot about that. It's willful, it's an intentional thing to forget that, to ignore it. They don't want to think about the history that disproves their scoffing. God has shown himself to be a promise-keeping God. When he says he's going to judge, then he's going to judge. He's done it in the past. He's shown himself to be the creator. He's shown himself to be worthy of worship. It is by his word that the heavens existed long ago and the earth was formed out of water. There's no shortage of evidence for anyone to trust what he has said. The truth of God and his invisible attributes have been clearly seen. We have the evidence of it, then the scoffers are without excuses, just like Romans 1. Paul called creation as witness, and Peter calls creation and the past history as witness. The scoffers are like an ostrich that sticks its head in the sand in a vain attempt to ignore danger. As if they can't see it, then it must not be real. It can't actually hurt them. Which, by the way, ostriches don't do that, but the imagery is still relevant. Peter's example of Creation and the flood disprove the still popular uniformitarian worldview. That is the errant belief that the past has always been just like the present. So we can know what the past was like by looking at the present. And then the future will always be just like it is now. Therefore, we'll know what the future is like by looking at now. Because it's always been uniform. And then they say we live in this closed, naturalistic system of cause and effect where there's no divine intervention into it. Cause and effect has always been this basic, materialistic, scientifically explained process. It's always been that way. It's always going to be that way. This is the worldview used to make claims that modern science has disproved the Bible. It's all based on uniformitarian assumptions, that the world has always been this uniformitarian way of working. That's how things are supposedly now proof of how things were in the past. That's the idea behind it. Uniformitarianism undergirds the so-called scientific argument about the age of the universe, the age of the earth, and for some Christians, even the length of the creation days. That's the worldview that's undermining it. As if natural physical laws are somehow capable of disproving supernatural events. And it's no coincidence that everyone who holds to uniformitarianism also denies Christ came into flesh as a God-man. They're anti-Christ. They deny Christ came in the flesh. They deny he rose from the dead. They deny humans were specially created by God. None of those are even conceptually possible in that worldview. But creation and the Noahic flood and the incarnation really disprove the entire uniformitarian view of history. Obviously, There's a significant degree of uniformity in the universe. God has ordained a uniform operation of natural causes. We understand that. But at the same time, he intervenes into his creation. And that's against uniformitarianism. He intervenes into his creation, sometimes miraculously, by disregarding natural laws, walking on water, for instance, raising the dead. And sometimes he interjects and intervenes. Providentially, he orchestrates everything to be specifically making something happen. That's also God-orchestrated. The biblical worldview is that of catastrophism. Catastrophism. That is, the natural order has had major, sudden, unusual events. Catastrophes that result in significant changes. They are events that overturn the previous order. That's what the word catastrophe literally means. It's an overturning of the previous order. We think of them as destructive cataclysmic events, which they can be. The flood, obviously destructive cataclysmic events. It redefined the whole earth from its topography, its geography, the atmosphere, The whole natural order was overturned. Nature itself was changed after the flood. The earth was an entirely different place. And the way the world is now cannot be used to understand the way that the world was before the flood because it's different. That catastrophe changed the world in the way that nature was. So you can't just take the way it was now and say it was exactly like that before the flood too. No, there was a catastrophe that marked a difference. It's not uniform. We rightly see that as a destructive cataclysm. But at the same time, creation itself was technically a catastrophe too. It wasn't a tragic catastrophe, but it wasn't overturning of how nature or reality worked. because God overturned nothingness. And that nothingness would have only continued eternally as nothing, because that's the nature of nothingness, if we could say it that way. I mean, nothing has a nature. Nothingness doesn't necessarily have a nature because it's nothing, right? But nothing remains nothing until it's overturned. And God overturned it by speaking matter-energy Time, space into being. He overturned the nothingness. That's a catastrophe. And the incarnation was likewise a type of catastrophe. Never before had a virgin conceived a child. Never before had there been a God-man. That had never happened. Well, God the Son had certainly manifested himself as a man in the past. He had never united his divine nature with a human nature in one person. That had never happened. And the fact that it never happened, you can't use as an argument that it never will happen because it did. He overturned the natural order to do so. He overturned it with every miracle that he performed was an overturning. Every one of those was a catastrophe. He overturned it on Easter morning when he brought his beaten bloody body back to life and walked out of the tomb a living, breathing man again. That was a catastrophe that had implications for the entire world. It changed everything. The world before that and after that can't be thought of as exactly the same. Not that there's necessarily all these natural implications from it, like the flood, but there's spiritual implications that are different. The world is different. And what's more, God the Spirit overturns the natural order every time he saves a sinner. Every time a believer comes to faith, it's a miraculous catastrophe. In the spiritual realm, it's a catastrophe. Their old heart of stone is removed. They're given a heart of flesh. There's a natural change that wouldn't have occurred. If God did not intervene and interfere in that person's life, then they would persist in their unbelief and their mockery. Their natures cannot change themselves just as a leopard cannot change its spots and an Ethiopian cannot change its skin. That's a catastrophe. Their natures are different. You can't think of that person as the same as if there's a uniformity of the person because they have a different nature at the point of regeneration, being born again. A catastrophe has occurred, a good one. Sinners being changed to saints is a good catastrophe. Grace produces good catastrophes. God set the world in motion, but he doesn't avoid interacting with it. So uniformitarianism is false. It's fundamentally unchristian. And it fuels scoffers who come with their scoffing. They're fueled by that. Their argument is based on that. Humans are just bad at this. We are bad at this. We have a loose grasp of history. We have a very narrow scope. We think of everything as like these blinders. We're not looking in the future and in the past. We have a very narrow scope when we look at the way things are now. We're just kind of bad at this. We have a hard time conceptualizing that things will ever be different than they are now, or that they ever were different in the past. Even now, honestly, when I think about Christ potentially returning, I see myself reacting in shock. I expect it and I hope for it, but I know for a fact that I'm going to be blown away by the fact that it's actually finally happening. I mean, how do you not? I don't mean that so much in the sense of, oh, wow, I'm surprised that it's actually true, but just in the sense that this is the thing that we have waited for for so long, and it's finally here. It's actually here. And how do you not react in shock at that, even with anticipation of it? It's like a bride on her wedding day. You think about it so long, your whole life, and it's finally there. It almost feels surreal. It's too much to even take in. There's a reason scripture uses that imagery, a bride waiting for her bridegroom. So don't let the scoffing of the world dissuade you from confidence in the Lord's return. That's what they want to happen with their scoffing. They want to dissuade you. They want you to feel stupid and fall for the lie that Jesus is not returning yesterday and the day before that means he's not gonna return today or the day after that or ever. That's what they want you to think. Their scoffing says he's never coming back. He's a liar, so deny him. Deny the faith, he's never coming back. Can't you see that? He was not Lord. He was not God in the flesh. He was not raised from the dead. His death meant nothing. Yes, there was a historical figure, Jesus, and yes, he was crucified, but it meant nothing. He didn't actually do anything for you. Just deny him. Look at the past. He's not coming back. That's it. That's what they're saying. They ignore the evidence to the contrary. They believe silly lies, and then they waste their time trying to convince others. I've never understood this fact. We see atheists and progressives seeking to change our minds, and primarily through mockery, through their scoffing. We obviously have reason to seek to convince them. We have a justification for it, to convince them of the truth, but why do they ever waste their time trying to convince us of their lie? That has never made sense to me. Why waste their time? The only thing that I can think of is that they cannot have the self-indulgent world they want as quickly as they want it with us in the way, slowing down the so-called progressiveness of society, the progress of culture and society. They can't have it that way because we're slowing things down. That's basically what Peter is saying when he writes in verse three that the scoffers follow after their own lusts. Another translation, the NET has it as being propelled by their own evil desires, which I think is a little bit clearer. It explains it a little bit more. Propelled by their evil desires. Remember what we said about those that deny the clear evidence of God in Christ. We've talked about this. Remember that. They don't want it to be real. They don't want to be under his authority because of what it would mean for the morality of their actions. They realize that. They're not stupider than us. They realize if God is real, if Christ was the God-man, if all those stories are true, that means I am without excuse and that I am going to be judged. They know that. And they don't want it to be real because they don't want to be judged because the sin that they engage in is desirable to them. They refuse to admit the reality of future accountability. for the life that they're gonna lead, or that they do lead, so they suppress the truth and unrighteousness. They ignore the history, they ignore the fact of creation and the flood, and they mock those who seek righteousness through Christ. Their own wicked lifestyle motivates their attack on the Christian faith. Immorality, their own lust, and it doesn't just necessarily mean sexual lust, but all their desires, their own wicked desires are their motivating factor. That's where it's coming from. So they seek our apostasy through that scoffing. They're seeking our apostasy. They urge us to deny him. I know they have no way of understanding this, but I just want to tell them, like, I can't. Like, it's not even up to me. I couldn't deny the reality of God that he has revealed any more than I can deny two plus two equals four. Like I can literally say the words, but I can't literally change my mind. It has to be true. My head and my heart cannot be convinced otherwise. There's no evidence to portray that could literally change my mind. I don't have the ability to change it. Stop wasting your time with your scoffing. It's not in my hands. Because, and here's the part they're not going to understand, as the Heidelberg Catechism says, we are not our own. We belong, body and mind and soul, to the faithful Savior, Jesus Christ. Take it up with Him. His Spirit guards my faith. I didn't create this faith. I'm using it, but I didn't create it. It's not my option to get rid of it. It'd be like if you were standing at the line in the bank and a robber comes in and he's wearing a ski mask and he's waving his gun around and he points it in your face and he's like demanding that you go open the vault and give him your money that's in there. And you just want to tell him, well. I can't open the vault. I'm not a banker. I don't know how to open the vault. Yeah, that's my money in there and I can use it, but I don't know how to open the vault and give it to you. It's not up to me. I don't have the keys. I gave that money to the bank for safekeeping. They're doing a pretty good job. I gave it to them for that purpose. I can't open the vault. That's the way it is with our faith. So don't lose your confidence in your salvation. When you see that gun being waved in your face, the mockery, the scoffing, when you hear that from the mocking mockers, God has promised to judge the world. And he's promised to preserve your faith that that is true. He's promised to return. The silencing of scoffers is coming. It's as sure as creation itself. It's as sure as the flood was a reality, for both were ordained by the same word of God. By the word of God, the world was created. By the word of God, that flood came. By the word of God, Christ is returning. It's absolutely sure. We know these scoffers will come. The word of God tells us that the scoffers are going to come. So when we hear them making these claims, we should never think, well, what if they're right? We should instead be thinking, oh, hey, this is exactly what scripture told us would happen. And they're saying exactly what scripture said they would say. It's just another, it should strengthen our faith when we see mocking mockers, because it's just another correct biblical prediction along with hundreds of others. We have this bank of provable facts that were predicted and we see coming true. And when they mock us and they say these things, it's like, yeah, we've been waiting for you. Welcome. Check, scoffing scoffers. The last thing I wanna mention as I close is actually a reminder of something that I said. Well, I didn't really dwell on it too long, but that is grace produces good catastrophes. There's a word for good catastrophes that we don't really use, it's eucatastrophe. Just means good catastrophe, but not really part of our lexicon. But it overturns the natural orders of sinners continuing in sin. Grace does that. And had we not received grace, we would have remained unbelievers and scoffers. Such were some of us. Such were all of us. Which means that while we absolutely have an undying hope in the return of Christ, the promise of his coming, we also have a hope regarding those that arrogantly scoff at the idea of it. The scoffers who come in there scoffing. We still have hope for them. I know most of us have friends or family that have nothing but scorn for the facts that we heard about today. They would scoff at the idea of Christ returning and are absolute confidence that that's going to happen. They're going to, you guys are morons. Many of them probably voiced their ignorance with a less than respectful attitude, I'm guessing. It gives us no joy to contemplate their judgment with fire. Or using imagery of Malachi, their being tread down and their ashes under the soles of our feet. That's going to happen. That is not the catastrophe that we wish upon them. We wish for a catastrophe, a good catastrophe for them. The same one that we have experienced. We wish for them to be born again. And just because they do not believe today, does not mean that they will never believe. Uniformitarianism is wrong about the world, and it's wrong about our souls. It's wrong about the spiritual state of things. The past is not always like the future. Paul persecuting the church today doesn't mean he's going to persecute it tomorrow, because in between those two, he's going to travel to Damascus, he's going to be knocked off his horse, and he's going to be converted. In eucatastrophe, he's going to be changed. You can't judge Paul's future by his past at that point. Uniformitarianism is false. So do not be anxious over the souls of your unbelieving friends and family. Simply hope and pray for God to interfere in their lives with an eucatastrophe in the way that he has in ours, to turn them from sinner to saint, the way that he has us. God is a promise-keeping God. He interferes with his creation in the natural world, and he interferes with his creatures in their personal lives. God silences mocking, but he does it both through judgment and through grace. So let's pray that for their souls. Amen and amen. Let's pray. Our great and awesome God, who brought the heavens and earth into existence long ago by the word of your mouth, we praise you today for interjecting yourself into this world. We worship you for your creation, it testifies to your power. We worship you for your judgment in the flood, it testifies to your holiness. We worship you for the incarnation and resurrection, it testifies to your justice. And we worship you for your spirit's work of regeneration, it testifies of your mercy. Specifically, your mercy on your people. Through this work, you have silenced our fears, our self-righteousness, and yes, even our mocking, such were some of us. We pray for our friends and family who continue in their unbelief and their mockery that are going to face judgment by fire if they do not turn in repentance. We beg you that you would silence them with your grace and not by your judgment. It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God. We know that you are just, to bring fires of judgment on this world, and we dare not question you about that, but you are compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in mercy. Employ us to testify and to display that mercy to the world, even while they scoff at the idea that they need that mercy. Thank you for Jesus Christ who makes mercy possible. We pray all of these things in his name, amen.