The purpose of this epistle and scoffing in the last days

We are in 2 Peter chapter 3, just beginning chapter 3, verses 1 through 7. Peter states the purpose of the epistle. and the fact that there's going to be scoffing in the last days. We're going to look at that today. He says in verse one, this is the second epistle, beloved, I now write to you in both which I stir up your pure minds by way of remembrance, and this is King James, that ye be mindful of the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets and the commandment of us the apostles of the lord and savior knowing this first that there shall come in the last days scoffers walking after their own lusts and saying where is the promise of this coming for since the fathers fell asleep all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation 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, whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished. verse seven, but 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.

So verse one, he clearly states the purpose of why he's writing second Peter, and that is to stir up remembrance in their minds and to cause them to remember the things that he wrote in the first epistle. There's some controversy which is odd that there's controversy saying that Peter didn't write the second epistle and I don't know how you know, people, men, commentators and things, and theologians could doubt that, being that he starts out verse three with, this is the second epistle. It's pretty obvious, and I think it's, I think it's just intellectualism kind of taking over in the theologian world. There should be no reason for it, but I just address that in point A there.

I think it was Kelly, or perhaps Constable, who said that the purpose of, or the theme of 1 Peter, the book of 1 Peter, is the government of the righteous, and how the believer was to act in the midst of persecution and suffering. and how he or she was to act in this present world. And if you think back to first Peter, that's kind of true.

He addresses husbands and wives and masters and slaves and children and parents and our relationship to the government that we're under. So it's the God's giving his judgment of righteous people. But in 2 Peter, and how it makes 1 Peter go together as a kind of dual books, proving that he wrote these two books, is in the 2 Peter, it's God's government of the unrighteous, the unrighteous men. And in chapter 2, we see that a lot, him addressing false teachers. The government of the unrighteous and the divine retribution that will befall them.

The word for stir up, Peter's trying to stir up in their minds, that's the Greek word you see, digero, and it's to rouse from sleep or to kind of jostle awake from sleep. And it's kind of interesting that it's the same word that was used when the apostles jostled or roused Christ, Jesus Christ, on the boat. on the boat in Galilee, I don't know if I spelled Galilee there correctly, during that storm that he calmed. And then he rebuked the storm, calmed the sea, but he was roused from his sleep. And I don't know, I wouldn't wanna be the guy who had to rouse the son of God from a nice deep sleep. That could be dangerous. I'm sure that Jesus deserved that little, that sleep there.

The word peer, I want to stir up your peer minds by way of remembrance. The word peer is in the King James. New American Standard has sincere, your sincere minds. But peer in the Greek is elekranes. which is derived from hile, or the word for sun, and then the other word that makes up elikrnes, is to judge, so to judge by the sun, or to sun judge, and you think of rays of the sun, heating the heat from the sun and the light is a good way to judge things and in ancient use they they used to have pots that they would hold them up to the sun to make sure they weren't cracked and then fixed with wax and then painted over you could see those cracks in the sun and that word sincere is interesting because it's from the Latin word I think it's sine sera, sine sera, or without wax. I remember Vern talked on that word a bit in one of the, perhaps in this passage or another passage of Paul's. So I think it's sine sera is the, which makes up sincere. So that's kind of interesting. Verse two. So, Andrew, why do you think he needs to use the word pure here?

Oh, because, uh, yeah, that's a good question. I think because he wants his believers to have this, to judge, to have this clear-minded thought about scripture and what he's telling them. He's contrasting that, I think, to, if you go back to chapter 2, and, uh, the minds of those, the minds of the false teachers, right? And they had unrighteous minds and impure minds, impure thoughts about God's things. And I think that's why he sticks in that word pure. What do you think about that? I'm not sure I think that it does imply two natures and that the if he's writing to believers, the idea that they could be persuaded by other philosophies or or, you know, spiritual ideas. So I think that It's just a reminder that we have pure minds in the nature of the Lord Jesus Christ, but in fact, in the flesh, we can be misled. So, yeah, I think your answer was good. I just wanted to see what you thought. Yeah, great point, great question.

Verse two, that ye be mindful of the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets and the commandment of us apostles of the Lord and Savior. That word mindful, big in this day and age, isn't it? I mean, schools are teaching mindfulness, at least up here, where I am. Everyone has a class on mindfulness. be mindful of things, so that's interesting.

But the things spoken before by the holy prophets, Peter is on this theme of calling up the words of the Old Testament prophets and the fact that what they wrote is true and verified. And he proved that out by putting in his account of the transfiguration on the mount. that he witnessed, and James and John witnessed, and that God the Father, not only did He glorify Christ and He was transfigured before their eyes, but He included in there Moses and Elijah. So there's this thought that All of this is confirmed by God the Father. And all what was written before, all of prophecy before, and what Peter is teaching now is scripture. And then I just included 2 Peter 1, 16 through 21 here. That scene of the transfiguration, I won't read it all, but there it is.

Later on, chapter three, and we'll get to that, but he includes Paul in the apostles who have apostolic, and whose words are scripture, whose letters are scripture. And he says in 2 Peter 3, 15, and regard the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given him, broke to you. So the purpose of the epistle then, the second Peter, is to recall to mind all of the things that Peter has spoken in the first book and the things he told them in chapter two, stirring up their remembrance of these things in a pure mind. uh... and also he gives a purpose clause in uh... second peter verse one three four if we remember that that god has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness through the true knowledge of him who called us by his great glory and excellence precious and magnificent promises so he's going to want them to remember those precious and magnificent promises uh... that you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped corruption that is in the world by lust. So they've escaped the corruption of the world by lust, and that's an important tie-in to what we have here, because we have in verse 3, knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers walking after their own lusts. So they escaped the lusts in that verse in chapter 1, verse 3 and 4, and now these scoffers are walking in the lust.

I want to address the time frame that Peter has in chapter 3 versus what time frame he was in chapter 2. And it's kind of an easy thing, but in chapter two, he was addressing the false teachers, and likely they were scoffers too, about the efficacy of Jesus Christ's cross. But that was in the present day. He's addressing his believers in the present day. and this chapter three now we're on we're on the last days he's switched now to in the last days there will be scoffers um and last the word last is is interesting it's um uh it's eschatos so and if you think of eschatology uh and days that's last days and that's the study of last days but we'll get more on that last day uh phrase in a minute I just threw this in to think about, but how accurate was Peter's prophetic word about there being scoffers appearing in the last days?

I think he was very accurate because we could say we're in the last days now, and I think we are, and there's plenty of scoffing going around in the world. In fact, there's nothing but scoffing about the things of the Bible and creation and the Word of God.

The phrase, following after their own lust, the word for lust is epithumia, and it's a desire and a craving. And I have the question, uh... that i don't answer but just to think about is this uh... and this kind of ties into what you're saying bob perhaps is this uh... lost fleshly is it fleshly or is it spiritual lust and i think it's spiritual lust if there's such a thing For example, Christendom's embracing of global warming and the social justice gospel and things like that, this all making its way into the Christendom, into the broader church at large, who kind of divert from teaching doctrinal things and bring in these things of the world.

And that's, I think that's lust. I think that's spiritual lust. Yeah, I think, Andrew, I agree wholeheartedly with you there. I think that concept is needing to be taught and preached, and we really need to put the spiritual thermometer to the world in which we live, where God is basically absent.

The other thing is I think lust, as I've looked at that closely too, it could be any kind of lust. I mean, we think of it as sexual lust, but in fact it goes far beyond that. yeah and i think it could uh be lust of the mind and and just um when you uh you know the the definition is a desire or craving so if you're craving other spiritual things um well andrew isn't the basic word does the word for desire for lust yeah right mm-hmm yeah so that that opens it up to you know Desires, and men have all kinds of desires, you know, godly desires and ungodly desires. So, as Bob said, it's the whole range of... you can have a desire to be, you know, whatever, you know. Yeah, and intellectual desires and all that stuff, I think.

And we saw from chapter two that these men were living, they could have, on the surface they were living godly lives, right? So they might have not been experiencing the fleshly, or projecting the fleshly lust, but yeah, I think that spiritual lust is something that we have to consider. when he says when these people these scoffers say where is the promise of his coming um this has uh this has an assumption that these scoffers know scripture they know that uh in in prophecy in the times that there was going to be a second coming from the messiah they know it but then they use that as a bludgeon or an argument against believers in the return of Christ.

Sort of, yeah, and that's a form of mocking, to use that as a bludgeon to bludgeon people who believe in the second coming of Christ. It's similar to when at the cross, these people said, hey, Jesus can't save himself, he's the king of Israel, he's the son of God, why don't you come off that cross? And then we'll believe in you. from Matthew 27, that's scoffing, isn't it? That's mocking.

And then I just included this verse, this few verses in Acts chapter 13, therefore take heed that the things spoken of in the prophets may not come upon you. behold you scoffers and marvel and perish for I am accomplishing a work in your days a work which you will never believe though someone that should describe it to you so there's a verse on scoffers in the taken from the Old Testament I think it's from Isaiah that he's quoting Paul quoting in Acts there okay on to verse 4 And we're saying, yeah, where is the promise of coming?

We dealt with that. And I wanna address this phrase, all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation. Let me go back here, okay. Essentially. Oh, yeah, I want to address this. So they're saying, where's the promise of his coming? You know, since Abraham and Isaac and Jacob have died, all things continue as they were since the beginning, nothing's happening. and there's no Christ coming for the second time or the Messiah coming. So that argument has a pretty valid point, doesn't it? Because here they were, 1,000, 1,500 years later, wondering when all this was going to happen.

It is a valid point. So it's a valid argument, but it's wrong. And it has a kernel of prophecy to it, in that there's this thing called the theory of uniformitarianism. And we'll look at that. What that is, is two men in the late 18th century, James Hutton and Charles Lyell, He was a Scottish farmer and naturalist, Hutton was, and he observed the world around him and became convinced that natural processes such as mountain building and erosion occurred slowly over time through geologic forces that had been at work since the Earth was formed. And he eventually turned these observations and ideas into this principle called uniformitarianism. So that just all figure this slow incremental.

And then what happened was Charles Darwin came along. Charles Darwin was a fan of this and he made that a central tenet in his theory of evolution. So evolution lit the world on fire in the late 19th century. Darwin's book on the origin of species and means of natural selection. And here's the full title, Or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life. He published that in 1859.

And I just made a note how terrible and satanic and racist that title is. that title is, isn't it? Why aren't there, why aren't people banning that book? Because that's terrible, it's just satan, it's garbage, is what I'm saying. So, and you never hear about it.

In fact, Darwinism crept into, not only from natural science, but it's crept into, all the social sciences are Darwinism now. The whole world is steeped in it. It's just really amazing. It's just Satanism. So what Peter was perceiving back then has become a worldwide dogma and it has been since the 1800s. And it's in that phrase, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. Uniformitarianism.

Interesting to note that the Big Bang Theory was the brainchild of a Catholic priest, Georgius Lemaitre. He was in the Vatican and he came up with that theory. The Big Bang Theory comes from this ball of wax called Christendom, which you know, might not have anything to do with scripture at all. And it's, I don't know if that guy got reprimanded by the Pope at the time, probably not, but there you go.

Interesting stuff. Yeah. Andrew, isn't it interesting, all these, man has all his theories that, and they always are focused on, on uh... counteracting what god says in his word they're always contrary to that it's you know their idea but it's always contrary to what scripture lays out they want to have some other idea that supposedly drives the world or or explains what happened to the world outside of god's word they won't except god's word so they create something counter to that yeah yeah uh... and and it comes from the church itself doesn't not that i think it's but uh...

This church that will remain in the tribulation, the remaining church, the ecumenical church, it's really amazing. So in a sense, Starwood's playing out in the church, the big church, right? Not the true church, but the big church. I mean, look at the Pope endorsing same-sex marriage, right?

I mean, what's that all about, anyway? Yeah, yeah, and all these, oh, and especially, and his directives on global warming, and he makes a lot of those, and that sort of, it's just the, the flavor of the day is what they're kind of chasing there. whatever, you know. It's a sick world system, Andrew. Come quickly, Lord Jesus, please come, right?

Yeah, I was thinking that, you know, all week, that exact same thing. Let's look at this phrase, the last days. So we'll highlight that. And There we go. This comes from our buddy, Louis Sperry Schaeffer. Last days is an extensive body of scripture devoted to the last days of the church. Or there's an extensive body of scripture devoted to that phrase, the last days of the church. Within the present age, the last days is within the present age, but it occurs at the end of the present age.

It's pre-tribulational in some ways, but some ways preparatory for the Great Tribulation. And it's characterized by men departing from the faith. We see that in 1 Timothy 4, 1 through 3. It's a manifestation of characterizations that belong to unregenerate men, but is under the profession of a form of godliness. The last days The indication from those scriptures that Chaffer puts in parentheses there, the indication from those is that they deny the power of the blood of Christ.

The leaders in these forms of righteousness will be unregenerate men from whom nothing more spiritual than this could proceed. uh... and morse passages in the last bullet point there you could look those up they all have the characteristics uh... didn't denial of god denial of christ denial of christ return and that's kind of what we're dealing with in this second peter passage at denial of sound doctrine and we've been discussing that on the side between us this morning denial of the separated life, denial of Christian liberty, denial of morals, and denial of authority. And that's from Luce Barry Schaeffer. Got that from that book, Things to Come, by Pentecost. Okay, on to verse five.

For they are, 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. And again, this is from the King James, so it's a little, it's a little, it's a little strange, the wording. I went with the King James, I think, because of one word, I probably should have went with the New American Standard like I usually do. But when he says, for this, and the this is them, the scoffers asking, where's the promise of Christ's coming? All things continue as they were since the beginning.

For this, they are willingly ignorant that by the word of God, he created the water from water. So that willingly ignorant, or you could say it's willfully ignorant, and it's wilfully ignorant of the spontaneous God-spoken creation. The creation account is written in scripture, it's recorded by Moses, and it's interesting to note, again, I made this point before, but Moses was present at that transfiguration on the mount that Peter spoke of in chapter one. So he is, you know, Moses is the genuine article as far as scripture is concerned. He was inspired by the Holy Spirit. God spoke by his words to heavens and earth into existence by the word of his power.

That phrase, willingly ignorant, that willingly is a fellow, which is to be resolved to something, to be determined, to be desirous to be ignorant. It's a strengthened word from the alternate word that's closely related to it. Hereo is to choose. Hereo is to choose.

So I summed it up as you take delight in or pleasure, take pleasure in choosing not to know that God formed the heavens and the earth by his word. um and in the darby translation of of this verse he has through their own willfulness is how he translates that um a popular phrase today the politics is plausible deniability right so if you have a a guy who runs a certain government agency, and the agency is corrupt. He's got people below him who are doing corrupt things, but Congress calls this guy, the top guy, in to talk to him about this corruption. And he said, I didn't know it was happening. I had no knowledge of all this, all my subordinates doing all these bad things. And that's plausible deniability.

Let's deal with this phrase, the earth standing out of the water and in the water. But more clearly it's stated in the New American Standard, and the earth was formed out of water and by water. From Genesis 1, God says that the earth was formless and void, and the darkness was over the surface of the deep. And that's from Genesis 1. You have the surface of the deep and you think water, right? Surface of water has a connotation of a surface of water.

And then in verses 6 and 7 of Genesis 1, God separated the waters from the water, the waters from the waters. God made the expanse, he says, and separated the waters which were below the expanse from the waters which were above the expanse. And it was so. So he spoke this and he separated these waters and that's what Peter's saying there in verse 5.

The creationists, especially Henry Morris and things, came up with this theory, it's a good theory, that there was a canopy of water above the earth, that the atmosphere had this water, almost a river of water up there, which was pretty thick, and that was the thing that rained down at the flood. So you could see that whatever water on the surface of the earth was separated by this canopy above the earth.

And that could be true. It could also be that, where is that? Let's see. I have one more point there, oh yeah. If you think of the earth being 70% water, which it is now, I don't know what it was back then, but the atmosphere, clouds are water too. So he could have just taken the surface of the deep and separated somehow to make this other part lighter, because the atmosphere is basically water. Water from water is my take on it.

Let's deal with this phrase from verse 6, whereby the world that was then being overflowed with water perished. And that's obviously related to Noah's flood. So the flood came suddenly, and judgment came suddenly in the time of Noah. The New American Standard has, through which the world was destroyed, through a flood. And Constable says that through which is a relative plural pronoun, so there's two things involved.

God used water to destroy the world, and his word, so he spoke it, and it was destroyed. He commanded the flood to happen. So there's two conflicting viewpoints here is the mockers uniformitarian view that all things move along at a glacial place, pace, and things remain unchanged for ages. And then the second viewpoint is God's viewpoint or scriptural viewpoint, which is expressed through his word and that God uses suddenness and catastrophic means He did that by creating the earth into existence quickly, and then he flooded it, he destroyed it, basically reformed it. A lot of catastrophic things happening in the flood, you know, formation of mountains, canyons, cliffs, things like that. So those are the two viewpoints that we have, a mocker's uniformitarianism and God's viewpoint.

Jesus himself in Matthew 24 puts some flesh on the bones of this verse six, whereby the world that was then being overflowed with water perished. He says in Matthew 24, for the coming of the Son of Man will be just like the days of Noah, for as in those days before the flood, they were eating and drinking and marrying and giving in marriage until the day that Noah entered the ark. And they did not understand, there's that ignorance, right? They did not understand until the flood came and took them all away. So will be the coming of the son of man.

There'll be two men in the field and one will be taken and one will be left. Two women will be grinding at the mill and one will be taken and one will be left. Okay, verse seven, but 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. So we have a new way of judgment.

Before it was the flood. God used the flood to judge the world, but now he's gonna use fire in the end times. That reserved for, that word for reserved or kept in store is thesaurus, which is to gather and store up, store up the earth for the time of judgment or accumulate. A thesaurus, a book, the book, the thesaurus stores up and gathers synonyms and antonyms for future reference, doesn't, that's where we get our English word for thesaurus. Again, the only reason that the heavens and earth exist now in their present stability, and may I sit calm, it's relatively calm now, is by God's word. He holds all things together, and when he gives the word, they will end.

Let's look at this phrase, the day of judgment, in verse seven, also referred to as the day of the Lord in verse 10, which we'll get to. It's called the day of God, the day of God in verse 12, and we'll give it some definition context. And Ironside describes it this way, when at the last day of grace is ended, and the day of the Lord will succeed it, The day of the Lord follows the rapture. It will be the time when the judgments of God are poured out upon the earth. It includes the descent of the Lord or the second coming with his saints to execute judgment on his foes and to take possession of the kingdom and to reign in righteousness for 1,000 years. And Schofield describes the Day of Jehovah in the Old Testament as a lengthened period of time beginning with the coming of the Lord in glory and ending with the purgation of the heavens and the earth by fire, preparatory for the new heavens and the new earth.

And then he gives the scripture references there. That day, or the great day, those two phrases are used more than 70 times in the Old Testament. But I want to point out that what Schofield says, that the day of the Lord, or the day of God, or the day of judgment, begins with the second coming.

And I have question marks there, and is that right? And as my dear old dad used to say, he used to say, if you want to be right, go this, go with this, go this route. And that route is to agree with the iron side version of it, that the day of the Lord begins at the rapture, because then judgment will occur during the tribulation. And Pentecost is the same mind. So is Volverd from the old-school Dallas Theological Seminary. So just a little highlight there on Schofield's Definition and I just put in a picture here. I have it Bracketed there in yellow.

That's what we're talking about the day of the Lord being it begins at the rapture perhaps just a nanosecond before it when the den Christ are raised and it continues through the tribulation and I have some of the the Left I left this from the old chart, but the some of the resurrections in there Then we have the thousand year millennial kingdom still the day of the lord and then it goes To the great white throne judgment there at the end um, and then the resurrection of the dead to face uh judgment um, and then He's going to destroy the heavens and the earth by fire, and we'll get to that later in Peter, this book of 2 Peter. And then the new heavens and the new earth, all the part of the day of the Lord is what we're talking about here. And he'll come as a thief, and we'll get to that in a few verses here in 2 Peter. So the characteristics of the Day of the Lord are well summarized by Zephaniah here.

And that is, I won't read the whole thing, you can read it for yourself, but the Lord has prepared a sacrifice. There will be a sound of a cry. There'll be wailing from the second quarter, he says. Loud crash from the hills. Near is the great day of the Lord, and coming very quickly. Listen, the day of the Lord.

In it, the warrior cries out bitterly. It's a day of wrath. It's a day of trouble and distress. It's a day of destruction and desolation. It's a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness. And there's another passage from Isaiah, there's another wail, there's another destruction there, there's pains and anguishes, there's fire and burning anger.

And the last phrase there in Isaiah 13, he will exterminate its sinners from it. And if you look up at that asterisk in verse seven of 2 Peter 3, He's, Peter says, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition or destruction of ungodly men. So you see that symmetry there. That agreement between Peter and Isaiah is the destruction or the extermination of sinners. It's a great and terrible day. And that's it. But final thoughts here.

A final word from William Kelly. And he says that such a view is according to the Spirit of Scripture may be made plain by new creation as applied by the Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians verse 17. So if anyone be in Christ, there is new creation. Yet it is but the risen life in the soul. And then he ends by the part I highlighted here. Only when we are changed into conformity to the body of Christ's glory will it be fulfilled in its entirety.

And you may be thinking, well, that has nothing to do with second Peter, does it? But it's from William Kelly's book on 2 Peter. And the interesting thing is why I threw that in here is because there's a note at the end of the book that says, this is left unfinished by the author's death. And he covered through verse 7, and then he went to be with the Lord.

So I I wanted to include that literal final word, final thought from William Kelly. Isn't that beautiful? I mean, how would you like to write that last sentence highlighted and then breathe your last breath, huh? Kind of interesting. I just threw that in there at the end. So that wraps it up.

Well, let's close in prayer first. Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for these words in 2 Peter, and we just pray that you'll come quickly, that we'll be raptured and we'll be with you for eternity. We thank you for that promise. In Jesus' name, amen.