to 2 Peter chapter 3. I want to remind you as we begin
this new chapter that in the original, there were no chapter
divisions. There were no verses. And these things were added by
the translators to make it easier for you to follow. You know,
it would be hard if I just started quoting something out of Isaiah
and told you to turn to it and you wouldn't know where it was.
Isaiah is a pretty good sized book. And the Psalms and several
of the other books. So they added these things to
be helpful. It's helpful for me. to tell
you and for me to find it in my study and for you to follow
me in our studies. In chapter 3, the Apostle Peter
will continue to talk about unbelieving men. But he'll also, in this
chapter, give us some assurance of the power of Christ to save
His people in spite of these obvious obstacles, these false
prophets, and these scoffers, and that His coming is only prevented
by His own purpose to save His elect. And then Peter will close
this epistle to the churches with an exhortation that now
knowing these things, not being in the dark, not being ignorant,
but knowing these things that we'll walk accordingly, we'll
walk sober. understanding that we're living
in the last days. We're living in the end of the
world and have been since the coming of Christ. All right,
let's look at verse 1, 2 Peter chapter 3. The second epistle,
beloved, I now write unto you, in both which I stir up your
pure minds by way of remembrance, 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 Savior." Believers
are not stirred up by dreams and visions. That's not what
stirs their soul. Peter would stir these men up.
He mentioned that in his first epistle. He's going to stir them up, but
he knows that the believer is not stirred by dreams and visions
or by loud music or by songs, most of which is contrary to
the doctrine of Christ. Believers are stirred up by the
great and precious promises of Christ. You want to stir him
up, you talk about his Lord. You talk about His Master, you
talk about His Savior, you talk about the glory of God in His
accomplishments and in His person and in His work. That's what
stirs up believers. What would our election be without
His? What would our election be without
His? What would our calling be? without
His calling? What would our works be without
His works? What would our faith be without
His faith? And what would our love be without
His love? Now ungodly men are moved by
events and advents Ungodly men are moved by the changing of
powers, presidents, and kings. You can see it visibly in our
nation right now, how men are stirred by the changing of powers
and presidents and kings and nations. And God's people are
moved not by those things, but by a knowledge of their victorious
king, king of kings and Lord of lords, the blessed and only
potentate. He says that you, verse 2, might
be mindful of the words which were spoken before the holy prophets
and of the commandment of us, the apostles. Now let me tell you something.
Everything we know about the Lord Jesus Christ, we know by
the testimony of the Old Testament prophets. When these apostles
preached Christ and preached the gospel for the first time
on this earth, they preached having nothing but the Old Testament
scriptures. The New Testament wasn't written
yet. That's all they had. And every time our Lord did something,
it said he did that that the scriptures might be fulfilled.
He went here that the scriptures might be fulfilled. In Acts 10, verse 43, it says,
to Him give all the prophets witness. To Him. All the prophets? All the prophets.
To Him give all the prophets witness that through His name,
whosoever believeth in Him shall receive remission of sins. That
was their message. Turn with me to Romans 16. It's important to understand
that we have one Bible. One Bible. I've talked to men
before about their souls, and they said, now wait a minute,
that's the old Bible. No. We just have one Bible. Do we not? We just have one Bible. It might be old to you, but it
ain't old to God. It's made up of Old and New Testaments,
but we just have one Bible. It's important to understand
that. The Old Testament records by inspiration of the Spirit
the beginning of the world. There was no other way. Moses
was way down the line from the creation of the world. My soul,
he was generations away from the creation of the world. But
he wrote about it. How did he do that? How could
this man sit down with a pen and tell me about the fall of
Adam? He wasn't born yet. How could he tell me about his
lineage? How could he tell me about what
this world was before the flood and after the flood and why the
flood came and all of these? How could this man Moses do that?
He did it by inspiration of God. That's how he did it. He tells about the beginning
of the world, the fall of man in the garden, the beginning
of both false and true religion. the destruction of the old world,
the giving of the law, the forming of the nation Israel, and throughout
its 39 books, a continual prophecy concerning the coming Redeemer.
Now look here in Romans 16, verse 25. Now to him that is of power to
establish you according to my gospel, and the preaching of
Jesus Christ according to the revelation of the mystery which
was kept secret since the world began. But now is made manifest,"
now watch this, "...and by the Scriptures of the prophets,"
that's Old Testament, "...according to the commandment of the everlasting
God, made known to all nations for the obedience of faith."
The Old Testament weaves a garment, Brother Mahan said one time,
that'll just fit one man. It'll just fit one man. the Lord
Jesus Christ. And after the death of Christ,
the disciples were disheartened. You remember the story. They
took Him and they thought, this is the Messiah. This is the One
who is going to come and establish this earthly kingdom of Israel.
And He is going to reign in the place of David, His father. And
He is going to set up His throne. And He is going to have dominion
over all the nations. and he's going to bless Israel.
But that's not what happened. What happened was he was despised
and rejected. He was sold out by his own nation
and kindred, sold out by his own religion, taken and put on
a cross and crucified. And they watched him, and they
took him down, and they put him in a tomb. He was dead. And they rolled that big stone
up against that cave, and here it is. Now they're walking around.
They're walking around all sad. We did everything we did for
nothing. We believed this stuff for nothing. He was a great man,
but he wasn't who we thought he was, and they're just sad.
And then here comes some women, said, we've been down to the
tomb. Stones roll back. He's gone. And an angel told
us that he was raised from the dead. And they went, yeah, right. Yeah. And here's this stranger. And
they're walking along this road to Emmaus. And they're talking
to each other and sad and all this stuff. And this stranger
comes up to them, which is Christ. And he hides himself from them,
and he says, what kind of conversation are
you all having, and why are you so sad? Well, they said, where
have you been? Everybody here knows what's taking
place. You just now come. You're totally
ignorant of all this stuff that's taking place. And they started telling him
about this Jesus of Nazareth. And they said, we thought, we
thought, This was Him. And we're so disappointed and
sad that it wasn't. You know what our Lord said to
them? Old fools and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets,
the Old Testament, testified about Him. Ought not He to suffer? Isn't that what they said? Ought
not He to suffer? die on that cross and enter into
His glory. And our Lord went back to the
books of Moses, the first five books of the Old Testament, and
all the prophets. And He preached to them those
things that these men witnessed concerning Himself. And then
when He vanished out of their sight, they gathered together
that evening and they said, oh, didn't our hearts burn within
us as He opened unto us The seed of the woman is the
virgin born son of God. That lamb on Abel's altar was
a picture of the coming lamb of God. That ark of Noah was
a picture of Christ into whose hands God trusted all that he
would preserve from his judgment. Melchizedek, who met Abraham
after the battle of the kings, was Christ, our high priest.
He is the altar, He is the mercy seat, He is the blood, He is
the scapegoat, He is the city of refuge, and on and on it goes
throughout the prophets. He is the way through the sea. Now, be mindful, Peter said,
be mindful of the words which were spoken before the holy prophets. Don't ignore those things. Be
mindful of those things. Don't ignore the Old Testament.
Read it. Remember it. Contemplate on it. Remember those things which were
spoken before by the Holy Prophet, and you remember what I preached
to you and these other apostles. The New Testament's written by
the apostles. He's hand-chosen men to be witnesses
of his life and death, of his gospel, of his accomplished redemption,
and of his glorious reign in heaven. My friend, the Bible is the greatest
book ever written, and probably one of the most ignored by people
in this world. It's the greatest book ever written. Sixty-six books written over
thousands of years by men of all ages, backgrounds in education,
doctors and slaves and fishermen and tax collectors and shepherds
and on it go. Old men, young men, even a converted
Pharisee. Yet it's without flaw, it's without
contradiction, it's without error. And it tells one story from beginning
to end, the story of redemption in Christ. Only a fool would deny this book
to be the word of God. Now, he said, you be mindful
of those things. Be mindful of those. When people
jump up and say things, you think back on what these men said about
our Lord and what they established. All right, let's go back to our
text now, 2 Peter 3, verse 3. Knowing this first, that in these last days that
there shall come, in these last days, scoffers walking after
their own lust, that is, promoting their own visions, justifying
their own experiences. fulfilling their evil ambitions,
walking after their own lust, and saying, where is the promise
of His coming? You've been talking about His
coming for 6,000 years. Where is His coming? Where is His coming? For since
the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were
from the beginning of creation. It's been a long time since Adam
fell in the garden, hasn't it? Huh? It's been a long time since
Christ gave that promise of the woman's seed. In fact, when she
buried her first son, she said, I've begotten the man. She thought
that was him. It's been a long time since Adam fell
in the garden and a long time since the ark came to rest on
Mount Ararat. Where is the fulfillment of the
promise? Now, there are several things
I want you to see here. First of all, I want you to see
the ignorance of these men. Now, Peter just told us to be
mindful of these old prophets and mindful of the New Testament
when he talked about himself and these other apostles. You
be mindful of those things. But he said, scoffers are going
to come. Scoffers are going to come. And I want you to know,
first of all, that these unbelieving men were ignorant of the Word
of God. Totally ignorant of the Word
of God. A fellow told me one time, he said,
it's not God's will that any should perish. I said, that's
not what the Scripture says. Scripture said His long-suffering
to us were not willing that any should perish. That's a big difference. God does all He wills to do.
If it's not God's will for anybody to perish, nobody's going to
perish. But I know it's His will because men do. But it's not
His will for any man to perish, none of His elect. Ungodly men
are ignorant of the Word of God. All they've ever heard is lies
and rhetoric of false religion. All they've ever heard is about
man's free will, about God's willingness to compromise, about
God's willingness to come down and to get down on man's level
and do all these things like men do. Their heads have been
filled with concepts of a God who's frustrated, changeable,
willing to compromise, willing to overlook sin. A God who's
vested the outcome of all His eternal purpose. to fallen men. That's all they've ever heard.
They've never heard anything else. A God that can only do what you
let him do. He can only go where he's invited.
He can't go nowhere else. Huh? I remember my daughter one
time flew up in my face and said something and run in her room
and slammed the door. I took the door clear off the
hinges. You think God can't open that
door if he wants in? He's coming in, I'm telling you.
He's God. I ain't nobody. He's God. He's
coming in. But that's not what they've heard.
They've heard he can only go where he's invited. He can only
enter when the door is open. Now, hear what I'm going to tell
you, and this is the point Peter's making here. Only an ignorant
man could consider the biblical history of the world and say
all things are continued the same from the creation of the
world. They have? You mean Adam didn't
fall? Huh? Oh well, I was ignorant
of that. You mean God didn't look down
from heaven? and see that the wickedness of men was great in
the earth, and say that every imagination of the thoughts of
his heart is only evil continually, that he would destroy the world
with a flood, but Noah found grace, and Isaac... Well, I was
ignorant of that. Yeah, you're ignorant of all
of it. Ignorant of all of it. All things have continued the
same since... Oh, no, they haven't. Oh, no,
they haven't. God has intervened. God become
a man. The Word was made flesh and dwelt
among us. He come into this world. He lived. He died. He raised from the dead
and He reigns in glory. All things have not gone the
same since the beginning of creation. But that's the way scoffers,
that's the way false prophets operate. They operate on their
assumptions and on their lies and on all the rhetoric they've
been fed since they're six years old. Only an ignorant man could
consider the biblical history of this world and say all things
continue the same from the beginning of creation. Such a statement
denies the fall of Adam, denies the curse of Cain. especially
ignorant of the flood of Noah. Look here in 2 Peter 3 verse
5. For this they willingly are ignorant
of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the
earth standing out of the water and in the water. God created
the heavens and the earth. Did He not? He created the heavens
and the earth. And the earth, in the earth,
he gathered all the waters where he saw fit and ordered their
flow throughout all the earth. And he said, here shall thy proud
waves come and no further. He ordered the waters. He pinned
up the waters. He divided the waters. And he
ordered the waters and caused them to flow and water throughout
the whole earth. There's an undeniable order in
creation that testifies of His eternal power in Godhead. You
can't go out here and look at creation and not see an order,
not see a power way above ours that's controlling and ordering
and preserving all things. Paul said, the invisible things
of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen being
understood by the things that are made. even His eternal power
and Godhead, so that men are without excuse. The reason why this planet, or
for that matter, our whole solar system doesn't self-destruct
is the preserving hand of God. He has a purpose in creation.
And when it's done, He'll burn it up. It was God's sovereign decree
that separated the land from the waters and kept them separated
so the earth could be inhabitable. 2 Peter 3, 6, whereby the world
that then was being overflowed with water perished. Climatologists
would write this off to global warming. That's where this happens
every so many million years. Some kind of natural cycle of
events. They won't accept the fact that
God orders all things and worketh all things after the council.
of his own will, scalpers, ignorant of God, ignorant of God's person
and purpose and power, writing things off to bad luck. That's
what our cancer doctor told Kathy. She said, you sure are a lucky
woman. She said, no, I don't believe
that. I don't believe that. And yet, scoffers would say,
all things continue on the same since the beginning. God sent that old man into the
Deluvian world, a man who found grace in his eyes, and he preached
the righteousness of God to him for a hundred and twenty years.
And a handful heard him. And he saved them. And at the end of that time,
the door of mercy and grace was shut up to the world. Every living
thing that was not in the ark was destroyed by the deluge.
And He loosed those waters stored in the earth and under the earth
and over the earth. And nothing outside the ark survived. Nothing. Verse 6, whereby the world that
then was being overflowed with water perished, but the heavens
and the earth which are now. Here's the other thing they're
ignorant of. They were ignorant of that and they're ignorant
of this. That the heavens and the earth which are now by the
same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the
day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men. All things have not continued
the same. A Bible was written. We're not
left to the ignorance of this world and to the influence of
ungodly religion. We have a Bible. We have the
Word of God. Next time you sit in there and
you listen to this man and this man appears to be a scoffer or
he appears to be a false prophet, open the Bible and check him
out. See if what he's saying is according
to the Word of God. You know what our Lord said?
He said, if they speak not according to this book, what's the problem? There's no light in them. There's
no light in them. Oh, my soul. A Bible's been written,
ambassadors sent, salvation pictured and typed and illustrated, salvation
manifested in the Son of God, taking to himself the flesh and
blood of a man. We have his life, we have his
death, his resurrection, and his present reign in glory. We
have holy witnesses of God to plainly set the gospel before
us and faithful ministers to preach it to us. But what's even
more is the judgment of God upon evil men to an almost epidemic
proportion. We look at things like when that
big hurricane came down and hit New Orleans, and we see those
things, or that big tsunami that hit overseas. And we see that
tremendous loss of life, and we can't help but think about
the judgment of God on those people. But God's judgment by
far, far, far greater range is not seen in those things. It
is seen in those things, but it's seen on a much greater scale
by men and women who do not believe. He that believeth not the sun
shall not see light, But the wrath of God abideth. All men who are dead in trespasses
and sins, cursed in their walk and their ways, they're called
in Ephesians 2, 3, by nature, children of wrath. Of wrath. Children of wrath. Oh, may the
Lord have compassion on us gathered here today, reveal to us the
glory of God in the face of His Son, Jesus Christ, and reveal
it in us for Christ's sake. Amen.