This passage is about the Day of the Lord. That’s the title the HCSB translators gave it. (All of you know that the titles that go with each of the passages in our various Bible translations were not in the original manuscripts, but were added by the translators as they thought appropriate, right?) The Day of the Lord is the day of judgment and the day of salvation—salvation for those who fear the Lord, judgment for those who have rejected him. The prophet Malachi called it the “great and awesome Day of the Lord. That’s what the HCSB says. Some translations say “the great and terrible Day of the Lord” or “the great and dreadful Day of the Lord” or “the great and fearful Day of the Lord”. In other words, it’s serious! It’s a scary thing—especially for those who have rejected the Lord. (And remember, there is no in between. You either accept the Lord or you reject the Lord.) Peter wrote this letter (really, it’s a sermon) to remind his readers (and that includes us) of all the things that they had been taught—the things that were really important—because he was expecting to die in the near future.

So as we read the passage, remember as always that we are reading the word of God. And especially remember that these things that the apostle Peter wrote about—that he was being guided by the Holy Spirit to write about—are the things that he considered most important. We need to pay attention. So pay attention.

Also, as always, I’m reminding you to read your Bibles every day. The apostle Peter knew it was important for his readers to hear the message over again even though, according to what he wrote, they had already heard it and knew it. We need to have the word of God on a continuing basis.

¹Dear friends, this is now the second letter I’ve written you; in both, I awaken your pure understanding with a reminder, ²so that you can remember the words previously spoken by the holy prophets, and the commandment of our Lord and Savior given through your apostles. ³First, be aware of this: scoffers will come in the last days to scoff, following their own lusts, ⁴saying, “Where is the promise of His coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they have been since the beginning of creation.” ⁵They willfully ignore this: long ago the heavens and the earth existed out of water and through water by the word of God. ⁶Through these the world of that time perished when it was flooded by water. ⁷But by the same word the present heavens and earth are held in store for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.

⁸Dear friends, don’t let this one thing escape you: with the Lord one day is like 1,000 years, and 1,000 years like one day. ⁹The Lord does not delay His promise, as some understand delay, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance.

¹⁰But the Day of the Lord will come like a thief; on that day the heavens will pass away with a loud noise, the elements will burn and be dissolved, and the earth and the works on it will be disclosed. ¹¹Since all these things are to be destroyed in this way, it is clear what sort of people you should be in holy conduct and godliness ¹²as you wait for and earnestly desire the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be on fire and be dissolved, and the elements will melt with the heat. ¹³But based on His promise, we wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness will dwell. (2 Peter~3:1-13)

“Dean friends” is literally “loved ones” or simply, “beloved”. And I think that we should understand this as much more than just a way of speaking—a formality. Peter is really trying to express that he loves the people he is writing to—that he is writing to them out of love, not just out of duty—and not only that, but that he is writing to people who are loved by God. This letter is for us, too. Do you believe that you are loved by God? God loved the world by sending his one and only Son so that whoever believes in him will not perish, but have eternal life through him.

Peter had also written an earlier letter—1 Peter. Now he is writing again (“This is now the second letter I’ve written”). It’s to remind his readers, including us, of what we need to remember and to know—what we need to have burned into our hearts and minds (and in this part of the message, it’s about the great and dreadful “Day of the Lord”: “Dear friends, this is now the second letter I’ve written you; in both, I awaken your pure understanding with a reminder, so that you can remember the words previously spoken by the holy prophets, and the commandment of our Lord and Savior given through your apostles.”

The “prophets” are the Old Testament prophets. These are the people who had to be tested. If they prophesied that something was going to happen and it didn’t, they were to be put to death as false prophets. If they prophesied something and even if it did happen but they were advocating worshipping false gods, they were to be put to death. If a prophet spoke to you and warned you and said, “Thus saith the Lord,” God was speaking to you and you were held accountable for what he said. This is about the Day of the Lord. I counted nine Old Testament prophets who used the expression “The Day of the Lord”. Here are some examples:

Joel 2:1, 2a: Blow the horn in Zion; sound the alarm on My holy mountain! Let all the residents of the land tremble, for the Day of the Lord is coming; in fact, it is near—a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and dense overcast, like the dawn spreading over the mountains;

Amos 5:18, 19: Woe to you who long for the Day of the Lord! What will the Day of the Lord be for you? It will be darkness and not light. It will be like a man who flees from a lion only to have a bear confront him. He goes home and rests his hand against the wall only to have a snake bite him.

These all sound terrible—scary, terrifying! They are warnings of things to come. Some of these warnings are for the nation of Israel; some are for all the world—and there are some places where the prophets don’t use the expression, “The Day of the Lord” but they are talking about the same thing. There are some good things promised for those who repent, too. But I will save them until next week. For this week, let’s learn to fear the Lord.

Verses 1 and 2 in today’s passage say, “Dear friends, this is now the second letter I’ve written you; in both, I awaken your pure understanding with a reminder, so that you can remember the words previously spoken by the holy prophets, and the commandment of our Lord and Savior given through your apostles.”

In addition to the words spoken by the Old Testament prophets, Peter wants us to remember the commandment given by the Lord Jesus through the apostles (of which Peter is one). The apostles speak by the authority of Jesus—by the authority of God, just as the Old Testament prophets did. Jesus is the word of God who became flesh (John 1:14). He is without beginning of days or end of life (Heb. 7:3). He is before all things, and by Him all things hold together. (Col. 1:17) He is God who came in the flesh. He is our Lord and he is our Savior. All the things Jesus spoke to the apostles were his commandment. Commandments are not suggestions (as they say). They are things that the God of creations says that we are required to do.

And, by the way, I pointed out that the Old Testament prophets spoke with the authority of God. They were accountable before God for what they said and those who heard them were also accountable before God for what they heard. Since the apostles also spoke with the authority of God and we are accountable for what we hear when we read what they have said. (And don’t think you can say, “So it’s better if we don’t read the Bible.” If you say that, well, it’s already too late.)

Let’s look at verses 3 and 4: “First, be aware of this: scoffers will come in the last days to scoff, following their own lusts, saying, ‘Where is the promise of His coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they have been since the beginning of creation.’”

Most of 2 Peter is about false teachers.. These scoffers are false teachers. They plant doubts in our hearts. Satan the devil can use them very effectively. Their words are destructive. Peter is warning us so that we will be on our guard. What the scoffers are casting doubt on is the truth of the word of God. The Old Testaments prophets said that the Day of the Lord was coming. Jesus said that he would return and that he would judge the world. The scoffers say that nothing ever changes and nothing ever will. They are false teachers. (And we know that there are outspoken atheists today. But there are also those in the liberal denominations that say that Jesus is not coming back—that there is no Day of the Lord.)

Satan the devil uses doubt very effectively. The apostle Paul when he was talking about putting on the full armor of God told us to “take the shield of faith, and with it you will be able to extinguish the flaming arrows of the evil one.” (Eph.~6:16) The “evil one” is the devil, of course. But what are the flaming arrows? One time I asked a group what they though the flaming arrows represented. They said they represented doubt.

I was reminded of a story the physicist Stephan Hawking told in his book A Brief History of Time. According to the story, a scientist was giving an astronomy lecture. When he was finish a little old lady told him that he had it all wrong—the earth was really resting on the back of a large tortoise. The lecturer smiled and replied, “And what is the tortoise standing on.” The woman responded, “You think your so clever young man. But it’s turtles all the way down.” The point was, of course, that the idea of the earth resting on an infinite stack of turtles is ridiculous.

But then, what about the idea that the Creator of the universe sent his Son whom he loved and through whom he created all things (including each of us), to be tortured to death so that we would not have to be tortured to death. Does that not sound ridiculous? Satan the devil loves to tell you it does. You have to read all the Bible for it to make sense. And if you are attacked by the flaming arrows, you have to remind yourself of what you have read—you have to take up the shield of faith. “Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ.” (Rom.~10:17 –~NIV) Read the Bible.

There was a former member of this church. I hadn’t seen him for a while. But an e-mail that he had written to some others was circulated around. He had rejected Christ. He cited a book about evolution that he said was very convincing. He also talked about the question of how a loving God could allow so much evil to continue in his creation (and he gave some graphic examples). He said that he had enjoyed the fellowship of the people he was writing to, but had concluded that was no God.

Of course, a convincing book about evolution doesn’t prove there is no God (although I don’t believe the theory of evolution is compatible with the Bible and I do believe that the theory of evolution is scientifically impossible). But, I bought the book and read it. It wasn’t at all convincing. To sum it up, the author started with the assumption that evolution was the only possible explanation for the existence of life and then attempted to present a scenario by which it might have come about. The author, in fact, started with the assumption that there is no God. “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God’” (Psalm 14:1 – NIV)

I was talking to my son Joe. He said about this person who had rejected Christ that it had nothing to do with arguments about evolution or about God’s permitting evil, and everything to do with wanting to do what you wanted to do and not having to be accountable to a supreme judge. I think that’s true. What do you think?

Let’s look at verses 5 and 6: “They willfully ignore this: long ago the heavens and the earth existed out of water and through water by the word of God. Through these the world of that time perished when it was flooded by water.”

Well, if you actually look at the word of God, you will see back in Genesis chapter one that when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was formless and empty. The surface was covered with water. On the third day of creation, God gathered the water together and made the dry land appear. (The earth existed out of water and through water.) God also created plants. He went on and created fish and birds and animals—and finally man, male and female, in his own image.

And if you read Genesis chapters 6, 7 and 8, you will see that God brought about a flood where he destroyed all the birds, all the animals and all the people—except for Noah and his family and pairs of each of the animals. (The world of that time perished when it was flooded by water. I talked about it a couple of weeks ago.) Anyway, the obvious point is that things have not always gone on as have been from the beginning of creation. And that we shouldn’t expect them to go on in the future either.

But look at verse 5 again. It says, “They willfully ignore this...” Even though the scoffers have heard these things, they have chosen to ignore them. They acknowledge that there was a point of creation, but have chosen to ignore that fact and say that everything keeps going on the same. (And, it appears that they had also chosen to ignore another very important change. Do you know what it was? God came into the world as a man—as one of us. He sent Jesus to redeem us from sin and death, and not just to redeem us, but to redeem his entire creation. It has not been completed, yet. The scoffers say that it never will be, either.)

Do you remember my son Joe’s comment—that it has nothing to do with arguments about evolution or about God’s permitting evil, and everything to do with wanting to do what you want to do and not having to be accountable to a supreme judge? I think that applies to the scoffers that Peter is warning us about here, too.

Look at verse 7: “But by the same word the present heavens and earth are held in store for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.” The world of Noah’s day was destroyed by a flood. It was destroyed because of the wickedness and evil that was in the world at that time. The Lord said that he would never destroy the world by a flood again. But, nevertheless, things will not just go on as they have been. The world will be destroyed by fire in the future—and ungodly men will be judged and destroyed! Ungodly men (and women) will be judged and destroyed!

You know, people want to believe that God is a loving God who will put up with all of our sin. (And he says that he is a loving and merciful God who does forgive sin and wickedness and rebellion. But he doesn’t ignore sin. The reason he forgives our sin is that Jesus paid the price for it. We read the Old Testament and see how God wiped out whole nations. We see the evil that is going on in the world today—and you know what? We have all been part of it. But what we really want (our sinful flesh, anyway) is a God that spoils us like a grandmother—that laughs off our sin. We want to make God be the way we want him to be instead of the way he really is.

There was a sect—a cult—in the early church that believed that the God of the Old Testament was a different God from the God of the New Testament—that he was an inferior and vengeful God, but that the God of the New Testament was a loving and forgiving God. These people even edited the New Testament to make it agree with their ideas. The God of the New Testament is a loving and forgiving God, but he is also vengeful against those who reject him. He is the same God as the God of the Old Testament. He forgives, but he does not compromise.

There are people today that say that all you have to do is believe and you will be saved. That’s absolutely true. But the implication is that if you believe, you can do anything you want and still be saved. And you know what? That’s absolutely true, too.

But consider this. James, the Lord’s brother, says, “Faith without works is dead.” He says, “What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith, but does not have works? Can his faith save him? (“Works” is what you do, by the way, as opposed to what you say you believe.) And James says, “But someone will say, ‘You have faith, and I have works.’ Show me your faith without works, and I will show you faith from my works. You believe that God is one; you do well. The demons also believe—and they shudder. (James~2:18-19) The point is that if you really have faith, your works will show it. If you really have faith, what you do will show it. Do your actions show that you have faith?

Verses 8 and 9 in today’s passage say, “Dear friends, don’t let this one thing escape you: with the Lord one day is like 1,000 years, and 1,000 years like one day. The Lord does not delay His promise, as some understand delay, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance.” It’s good news that the Lord does not want any to perish but wants all to come to repentance. “Repentance” means to change your mind—really your mindset, your entire way of thinking. It means to change how you think about God and how you think about your relationship to him. I said that if you believe, you can do anything you want. If you change your thinking (repent), you will also change what you want to do. That’s the fundamental idea of repentance.

Well, Peter is writing to the church (including us) assuming that we are all believers. He’s warning us about the scoffers. This is a lot like Jesus’s warning about persecutions: “If they persecuted me, they will persecute you.” (John 15:20) If you weren’t warned about persecutions, you would be tempted to doubt and think something was terribly wrong (and Satan the devil would certainly encourage you to do so). And if we weren’t warned about scoffers, we would also be tempted to doubt—to doubt God truth and love and faithfulness. Our weapon is the word of God. Let’s have it written on our hearts.