Waiting For The Coming Day of the Lord

2 Peter 3:5-13

⁵ For they (the scoffers) 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.

In today's passage, we come to the conclusion of the section dealing with "scoffers". The lie that they are propagating is that there is no God, and they back up there claim by saying things like, "show me the proof that there is a God." The radical atheists are coming "out of the closet" these days and Christians must be prepared to deal with these scoffers. Thankfully we have the Word of God to aid us in keeping the proper attitude toward those that would oppose the truths that we believe. We are not told how to respond to those that would scoff, but rather we are given insight into how they are coming up with their error. This approach hopefully causes us to have compassion for their utter lostness. We are told in this somewhat difficult to interpret section (verse 5-7) that they are deliberately choosing to ignore their conscience that is somehow revealing to them that God exists, he is not afraid to bring judgement down on the planet, and that He will do it again. And when it comes it's going to be really bad for the ungodly.

We are reminded in vs.8-10 that even though it seems like a long time to us, God's judgement is coming quickly; However, He is exercising patience with His creation in the mean time.

Verse 9 is a special glimpse into the heart of God. We see here part of God's personality! He has desires! and they are that everyone would come to a state of repentance from sin. MYSTERY ALERT! This verse does not say that God is powerless to save everyone, he could if He so chose, but He didn't. There is a mystery here that is difficult to resolve in our limited minds. Because of other teachings in scripture, we must conclude that because God is a perfectly righteous judge, there must be punishment for sin.

Peter makes an interesting transition here in verse 10-11. Here we run across the classic verse that says that "the Lord will come like a thief". That doesn't sound very reverent to compare God to a thief, but the meaning is clear. God isn't coming back to steal stuff, He's coming back when we least expect it. It's an illustration about mode, not motive. This leads us right into an application in verse 11.

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...

Peter here says that since God is going to judge the world by fire when we least expect it, we should be living holy, godly lives in eager expectation of Christs return. I'm not sure I think about that very often. This challenged me.

Only one paragraph remains in this letter. I promised last time that Peter would give us a comforting message. At first read, this section of scripture reveals the most frightening thing in all of the bible; That judgement is coming and everything is going to be incinerated by fire. Well, we get a little taste of that message in verse 13.

¹³ But according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.

This should comfort us as Christians, because we will be with Christ in that new heaven and new earth, and we won't have to deal with scoffers anymore. Amen to that!