Wait Well

Good morning. It is good to see many of our members back and a number of guests. We are thankful to have you. It's always discouraging to have to usher folks over to the fellowship hall. Thank you for your patience and kindness and being willing to do so. We're thankful that you've joined us and we're thankful that we can spread out in this unusual time. uh with with covid and wanting to make sure we're worshiping safely uh we're continuing really from the the winter retreat and we want to make sure there was good context for those of you who didn't participate uh i got a confession i'm feeling old this morning um heart full from uh the the bible study and and and encouragement with the the young men and women who participated but a body who needed one more night of sleep in his own bed, so. This morning we're looking at 2 Peter. We're taking a bit of a pause here just briefly from Luke. We finish that early childhood of Jesus before he turns into his adult ministry. And to wrap up the retreat and to hopefully bless all of you with the basic message of Peter, we're gonna look at the ending, which really captures the primary points. If you think of this one topic this morning, I want to put it under the heading of righteousness or justice. This speaks to us where we are in our culture. I believe that a right assessment of today's culture is that justice is a primary, if not the concern. We hear about justice, the demand of justice, the need for justice. Interestingly, justice was the chief virtue of post-modernity. One of the main actors, the main proponents of post-modernity was Jacques Derrida. He was born in Algeria and he saw the injustices among the people. And as a way of seeking a resolution to all the injustices, he came up with the method of deconstruction. We need to deconstruct politics. We need to deconstruct institutions. We need to deconstruct thought, art. We need to deconstruct language. A significant shift takes place there. Language no longer is focused on truth. Language is something we use to get power or to dismantle injustice. The concern is that truth is removed from justice. And that was his idea. Today, we should all give a clear sigh and say, ideas have consequences. We need to have a desire for justice, church. We worship a God who is just and right. We should have a desire for truth. We as Christians should be promoting what true justice is according to what God has said. Interesting, as we look at that as a chief or primary focus of our own culture, 20 years ago the key word was tolerance. Amazing how quickly that changed. We go from tolerance to justice. We go from the most misquoted and misinterpreted text of Jesus 20 years ago that you should not judge, to judge. The concern if we have justice without truth is that there's no longer a measure for justice. We just start beating people with our own stick. Today I have good news. God desires God has promised, God will execute perfect, absolute justice. That's what we're looking at this morning. It's a promise, it's a big, bold promise. God will execute perfect justice. This is something we need to hear. If you're an atheist, You need to hear some kind of promise. You have to have some hope that there's a justice. Otherwise, this world of the suffering of the wrong just feels meaningless. God, in his word, sees the problem, and he provides the resolution. If you're looking at our text, 2 Peter 3, there are some key truths. Jesus will return and execute judgment. Jesus will return and establish righteousness. The patience of the Lord is salvation. There's a promise of judgment. There's a promise of righteousness. And I want you to see, church, one of the key commands, wait. Wait. What appears to us to be a long time for God to provide justice, we're called to wait. If you're taking notes, I'm gonna try to order the sermon into four main points. Promise, judgment, righteousness, patience. Promise, judgment, righteousness, patience. Let me read our text again. I'll just be preaching from 11 through 18. Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, that is the heavens and the earth, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, the cause of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved, and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn? But according to his promise, we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. Therefore, beloved, since you are waiting for these, be diligent to be found by him without spot or blemish and at peace and count the patience of our Lord as salvation. Just as our beloved brother also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, as he does in all his letters when he speaks to In them, of these matters, there are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do other scriptures. You, therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, take care that you are not carried away with the air of lawless people and lose your own stability, but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. him be glory, both now and to the day of eternity. Amen. Ben read before his prayer, really the opening declaration of 2 Peter, verse 3, his divine power, chapter 1, verse 3, his divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness. And if we were to continue through that, you'd see that it's Granted in knowledge and through knowledge and knowledge of him We are a people who live by promise the Old Testament was promised New Testament fulfillment If we're to consider all the promises made to Israel God gave them great promises of who he is and what he would do and how he would help them and Israel was supposed to be obedient to be a witness to the world with those promises But what did Israel do? Instead of clinging to those promises, as a people of faith, they boasted of their circumcision. Instead of the people who spoke of and declared the promises of the one true God, they worshiped all other kinds of gods. Church, we need to realize that there's a warning there for us, because yes, Jesus has come as the fulfillment. We are a promised people. We can look back and see that the promise God made has been fulfilled, Jesus has come, He was born of a virgin. He died on the cross for our sin. He rose again. Then he ascended. While he was with his disciples, he made a promise. When I leave you, when I ascend, when I sit down on my throne, I'll send you the Holy Spirit. That promise was fulfilled. We see it in Acts. We now live in that promised age where the Holy Spirit is now with us, indwelling us, empowering us to live the lives of godliness and holiness. And we're still a people waiting for a promise. Christ will leave that throne. He will come back. He will execute perfect judgment. He will bring about a righteousness. In chapter one of 2 Peter, he talks about how the certainty of his message is built upon the eyewitness account of what he heard and saw. He even saw Jesus in his glory in the transfiguration. And then he speaks to clearly, the prophetic word is certain. We can be certain. The God who makes these promises makes them so that we can know him. He doesn't want us to be a guessing people, a confused people. He's a God who wants to communicate clearly so that we know who he is and what we should expect of him. We have promises. The one clear here, verse 11, he will come back and there will be judgment. Verse 13, the word promise is even captured there. We are promised a new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. Now as we think about promise, we're thinking about the word of God, we're thinking about the revelation of God, we're thinking about what God has said, and here I want to just drop down and think about this kind of parenthetical statement we hear about Paul. This is interesting because the first apostle, the apostle who preaches the first sermon at least, he's now going to talk about the untimely born apostle in an interesting way. Just as, there's a comparison, Just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters, there are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, so they do with other scriptures. There's a few simple statements he's making here that are helpful about Paul. Peter is clear that he and Paul are proclaiming the same message. There's one Jesus, lots of apostles, lots of letters. One Jesus, one message. Second, Peter acknowledges that Paul says hard things. That's kind of comforting in a funny way. You ever read something from Paul and think, what is he saying? That's hard to understand. Peter had the same experience. Third, Peter is accusing false teachers of twisting what Paul says. And finally, that last phrase, as they do the other scriptures, he's implying, he's asserting, Paul has written scripture. Paul has written prophetic word that's certain. This is pretty amazing in that here in the first age of the church with the first apostles and the first pastors, they're already recognizing Peter and Paul and others are writing authoritative scripture like Moses. They're recognizing that new words are being written for our benefit. Scripture is not merely man-made. It's the product of God. The Holy Spirit carried these men along to produce the exact words we need to have so that we believe. Now you have to remember, Peter and Paul didn't always agree. It was a bit of a disagreement. There had to be a council. Peter was wrong. He wasn't wrong in what he wrote. He was wrong in the way he was conducting himself because he wasn't going to eat with Gentiles against the gospel, and he was corrected. What he's saying here is that they all agree in what they write. I also want to just play around here for a moment about what are the hard things? What is hard to understand? And I want to approach this because most folks, or a lot of folks I've heard trying to understand what this is, is they like to go to Romans 9 to 11. The hard to understand thing must be election. I don't think that's what he's referring to, even though I also would say that's not the easiest thing to understand. He's saying the hard things are being twisted for their own destruction. Now the problem of those who are twisting scripture, they're twisting them to the end of their own sensuality. They're twisting scripture to excuse sin. They're twisting scripture to say it's okay if I live however I want to, grace abounds. I don't think you do that with Romans 9 to 11. That's only something you would do to Romans 6 to 7. That's exactly what Paul's concerned someone might do. Romans 5 says, where sin abounds, grace abounds. He then proposes that, well, what if? Well, why don't we then just say, well, why don't I sin more that grace would abound? And Paul says, no, are you kidding me? Don't you know? You've died with Christ. You've risen with Christ. Consider yourself dead to sin and alive in Jesus Christ. Present your members to the righteousness of Christ. There's two ways we fall off of the way. Legalism, thinking we have something to boast in. Licentious, thinking that grace is an excuse to sin. The wonderful message is that yes, where sin abounds, grace abounds. and His grace to forgive us, but His grace to restore us to godliness, to keep us from sin. It's important that we see there are promises of God where sin abounds, grace abounds. That's a promise. Well, there's also a promise that He has given us everything we need for life and godliness. That's a promise. These promises need to direct what we think about, what we talk about, how we live. Now, everyone here, Christian, non-Christian, we all have some promise we trust. We all have something we're certain in. We all are living with some kind of certainty that if I put this effort in, I will receive this payback. We all have something that we think has made a promise that it will be satisfying or fulfilling. What Peter wants to be clear about, There's nothing more certain than the promises of God, that he saves you, that he gives you all you need for godliness, and that we can trust his word. Notice the, earlier we would see that there are false teachers that are twisting these things. There really are two ways to approach scripture. There's one where we'll just look at it and try to twist it so that it fits our heart, The other way is to read it so that it detangles our heart. There's a reality there. Either the scriptures need to be twisted so that they suit our lives or scripture speaks with a balm of clarity and healing and detangles the twisted knot of sin in our own heart. Take and read with confidence. We can trust these promises. Our second point, from verses 11 and 12, there is a promised judgment. Since all these things are to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming day of God? There's a constant reference to the day of the Lord, the day of God, this last day of his return. Notice what happens on that day. Because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved. And the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn. They're dissolved by burning flames. He makes a comparison earlier where Noah, the flood of Noah, God poured forth the waters that destroyed all the earth, minus one family and the animals just to bring back a creation. God was de-creating his earth to bring about a new creation. with water that was stored up. Then he says, but in the same way, fire is being kept to destroy all the ungodly. This is supposed to be a declaration that gives believers hope and peace. The first response is, this is good news. Is God this angry God who's waiting to punish everyone? Absolutely not. He's a righteous God who desires to seek righteousness. He's a righteous God who's patient for salvation. But here is good news, because every evil action, every evil deed, every evil word will receive perfect justice. without some understanding that there's a judgment and a real justice for evil, this world feels meaningless. It's a promise of peace. All the sin, all the troubles, it will receive its due reward. Notice there verse 12. we're gonna be waiting for and hastening. The idea of hastening is that we're trying to make it happen quicker, it's that we're desiring it, we're longing for it, we're hoping for this day. Christian, is there a waiting for the day of justice? Is there a frustration that this world is so full of chaos and confusion that we say, come Lord Jesus, come quickly because justice needs to happen? There's something freeing about that. If we believe that promise and wait for that promise, we don't feel the need to avenge ourselves. As Paul commands us in Romans 12, don't avenge yourself. God is the perfect one who will bring justice. He vindicates his own name and his own people. Are we waiting expectantly for this judgment, knowing God will bring it about? And if so, are we actually asking this very important question from verse 11? What sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness? Ought. What kind of people ought we to be? There's an imperative, there's a command. Who should we be if we're waiting and waiting and expecting this promise? Remember last week we looked at Jesus, his first recorded words as a 12 year old. I must be about my father's business. Here's the same way. What must we do? What ought we to do? If you're not a believer though, ought. You ought to believe in Jesus. You must. Your only hope in life and in death, as we sang earlier, is to believe in Jesus. We have sinned against God, all of us. We have refused him what he truly deserves, and that is worship and obedience. And he has only one response if we remain in our sin and obedience, and it's judgment. We're hopeless on our own. We cannot cleanse ourselves. We cannot wash ourselves. We cannot make ourselves righteous. A righteous, perfect God cannot be in the presence of our wicked rebellion. It's a problem. It's a problem we can't solve. It's a problem God solved. The Father sent his Son, Jesus Christ, to be like us in every way. Jesus lived a life we have refused to live, so that when he died on that cross, He took our punishment for the sin that we committed. If you believe in Jesus and you recognize your sin, you are no longer going to be counted guilty of that sin because Jesus is counted guilty of that sin. You can be forgiven. You can be freed of that judgment. If you reject him, you remain under that judgment. Believer, what ought you to do? Believing in Jesus means we think about the kind of life we're going to live. Look at the exhortation. What sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness? Again, let's go back to 2 Peter 3. His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness. He's given us all we need to do what we're supposed to do. He's a good God. If we go back to chapter one, let's just walk through what it might look like to be that, fulfill that ought. What does it look like to have lives of holiness and godliness? After that command, look at verse five of chapter one. For this very reason, make every effort. An ought requires effort. to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. Notice there, in order to fulfill the ought of godliness, it's gonna require our effort. He makes the point even more clear. Verse eight, in order to not be unfruitful and ineffective, make sure you practice these things. Verse 10, be diligent to confirm your calling, practicing these qualities. The Christian life isn't meant to be this casual coasting to one day see Jesus in here, you're forgiven, come on in. No, he saved us from the corruption so we could no longer live in it. We've escaped it, we need to remember we're called to now live in his godliness. It's not just forgiveness, it's transformation. To be transformed means there's effort, diligence, practice. Here's the one great promise we have in scripture. If you practice who God promises he wants you to become, it'll be effective. What are you practicing and what kind of promise is there that it'll actually work? What kind of risk do we regularly take? Are you taking God in His word that if you practice what He says, it'll actually have an effective, fruitful work in you? What a promise. Practice helps us become who Christ has saved us to be. Make every effort, be diligent, practice. There are numerous directions that will take us away from God. It's so easy to find one. The way is broad and easy. There's one toward him. It's Christ, and he says it's straight and narrow. Don't twist the word to find some excuse to think it's more broad and easy than it's supposed to be. The main point of Peter. He's going to come and He's going to judge all wickedness. That's why we ought to seek to live lives of holiness and godliness. Not that we're going to earn our way out of it, but if we've been saved, we're going to be found by Him, living that life of godliness. There are two judgments, and we need to be aware of this. This can be a little confusing. There's two judgments. The first is the judgment, are you in Christ or are you not? And that's where you must believe in Jesus. And when you stand before the Father and all your sins are before you, the Son will come and say, no, Father, this one is mine. I paid his penalty. He is with me and we get to go into eternity. And then we stand before Christ. It's called the Bema Seat. And there we give an account of how we were stewards. of the grace and the Holy Spirit and the word and the duty and the stewardship that God gave us. It was a simple passage that speaks to this, 1 Corinthians 3. If the work that anyone has built, I'm in 1 Corinthians 3 verse 14. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone's work is burned up, he will suffer loss though he himself will be saved. But only as through fire. There's a judgment of all wickedness. There's a judgment of all wickedness. What in our lives is going to withstand the day of judgment when we stand before Christ? And what will be burned up by his fire? There's two things we might hear that day. Well done. We're to live a life of holiness and godliness, longing to hear, because he's promised, we could hear, well done. But here, the promise is a warning. You don't want to hear, what were you doing with the life I purchased with my precious blood? Third point, the promise of righteousness. Notice the contrast. There's a promise that there will be a judgment. We are to be obedient. There's an oughtness to the life of holiness and godliness. And now verse 13, but according to his promise, we're waiting for a new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. We can turn over to Revelation. 21 and 22 and see a little bit more about what this means. What is it that a new heavens and a new earth where righteousness grows? What does that look like? We get a little bit of a more clear picture. What's unique about that new heavens and a new earth is what's missing. It's what's missing. In the new heavens and new earth, there's no sin. There's no death. There's no tears. There's no mourning, there's no crying, there's no sickness, there's no lies. Also, from Revelation 21-8, there's no cowards, there's no murderers, there's no sexually immoral, there's no sorcerers, there's no idolaters, there's no liars. The one thing we should be really longing for with the coming of Christ is that we'll get to worship him without sin. We get to worship Him without sin tainting our hearts, confusing our minds, distracting us. I long for the day we can actually all fit in this room together, we get to sing loudly together. But more so, when we get together with all the church, of all the ages, of all the nations, and sing without sin, tainting our hearts and our tongues. Revelation 22 also tells us there's no sun, there's no moon, because there's no need for it. Christ is the light. There's no temple because the whole place is a worship gathering where he shines his light and we rejoice greatly. God created this world good and ordered. We rebelled and brought disorder and sin. We now live in this glorious ruin and we are supposed to be longing for the new heavens, new earth because there'll be a glorious righteousness. Notice the promise leads to another expectation. Because there's going to be a judgment, consider who you ought to be. Because there's a promise of a righteousness, look at verse 14. Therefore, beloved, church, Christian, since you are waiting for these things, there's an assumption, you're longing for these things, you're waiting. Be diligent to be found by him without spot or blemish and at peace. Because we're longing for that righteousness, we're not just pursuing lives of holiness, we're doing that because of the fear of judgment or the concern of judgment, where we're also living a life trying to keep ourselves from being stained with blemish, because it's a righteous dwelling. We're longing for this. It sounds very much like the bridal picture in Ephesians 5. Jesus washed his bride. She's now without blemish, without spot. The concern is if Christ were to cleanse us as his church, to be his bride, are we going to go and, while we're in the mud, wearing the wedding dress? Having been so perfectly loved by the most loving bridegroom, are we going to go and play the whore with other gods? The warning is to keep ourselves ready in righteousness for the one who's going to give us a dwelling of righteousness. Our last point. Patience is salvation. At some level, we could be using that to refer to ourselves if we're patiently waiting, if we're waiting, longing. It's our own salvation. We're waiting for that salvation, but it's actually It's the Lord's patience we're speaking of. Verse 15. The patience of the Lord is salvation. It may seem slow to us, but the Lord is still doing a work to save. The Lord is still doing a work that more would believe. The Lord is still doing a work that we would be more transformed. The patience. What we might see is too long. The Lord's patience is for salvation. Notice how that is God's desire. That is what determines God's timing. It's our salvation. If we back out, there's a promise of judgment. Who you ought to be, verses 11 and 12. There's a promise of righteousness. Be diligent to be found without blemish, verses 13 and 14. There's two motivations. There's judgment, there's righteousness. There's the stick, there's the carrot. There's two ways to live. Godly, unstained, or stained and ungodly. What should we do in the patience of the Lord? Wait. Wait. We see this in verse 12 and verse 13, and it's really the key word that's captured all of chapter three. Wait. Everyone's favorite thing to do, wait. And notice it's not a waiting like you're in line to be called up. No, you're waiting in an expectancy that calls for an obedience. You're waiting knowing this isn't the way it's always going to be, and it's not even the way it's supposed to be. Wait. If you were with us in the book of Luke, we saw two really unique figures a couple weeks ago, Simeon and Anna. When Jesus is taken to the temple, Simeon, it makes it very clear, he was waiting for the consolation of the Lord. He was waiting for God to fulfill the promise. And then he saw Jesus, and he got to take that baby, and he got to declare, this is the salvation of the Lord. At the same time, Anna, a prophetess, comes up, who was waiting for the redemption of Israel. They were waiting. And one of the keys to how they're awaiting is they're praying. If you want to wait well, if you want to wait well, it's praying. It's the power of our own lives to endure and persevere. It's the power of what God has given us to align ourselves with his word. Are we prayerfully waiting? If you're frustrated with the way the world's going right now, if you're frustrated with the way this country's going, your community, your HOA, whatever it may be, there's temptation. Let's take it by the horns and let's fix it. We live in a glorious ruin. There's things we should seek to fix. There's things we should seek to end. We should be praying and seeking as best as we can to end abortion, the murder of innocent life. The most powerful tool we have against that kind of evil and every evil is prayer. Be of good courage. Wait. Look at these last instructions as we consider waiting. You therefore, he's given promises. Jesus is coming back, there'll be judgment. Jesus is coming back, there'll be righteousness. You therefore, beloved church, Knowing this beforehand, you've heard this, we've declared it to you, this is certain. Take care, be careful, watch out that you're not carried away with the error of lawless people and lose your own stability. God has promised certainty in our calling. God has promised certainty in his word. God has promised us certainty in his will. It should bring stability if we start Going wayward. If we start forgetting, we lose our stability. Christians, very important, we are constantly remembering, being reminded, and reminding others that this world is not the way it's supposed to be. This world is full of evil. This world, the church will have scoffers, there'll be liars, there's gonna be turmoil, tribulation, God is in control. God has made promises. God is going to do a work of restoration. Be careful, verse 18, but grow in the grace and the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. Again, his divine power has granted to us everything, all things that pertain to life and godliness. Grow. Pursue the knowledge He's given us. Pursue the hope He's given us. Increase in the knowledge of God. Increase in the grace of God. Increase in our godliness because it's what God's promised. To Him be the glory both now and the day of eternity. Amen. Will you pray with me?