The Fury Waits
2 Peter 3:1-18
Cascades Fellowship CRC, JX MI
May 3, 2009
Series: Little Letters – The Forgotten Wisdom of the Bible
There is a play out there by Samuel Beckett called Waiting for Gadot. In the play, two derelicts sit and discuss rather mindlessly their deplorable condition while waiting for a person named Gadot – who, incidentally, never appears. Although considered one of the most important stage works of the 20th Century, the play is filled with notions about hopelessness and meaninglessness of existence. The characters talk openly of suicide and the entire play seems to push the viewer toward the idea that life is a cosmic accident and the thought of God is only there as a way to placate our troubled souls which are bored with the monotony of living. The play seems to encapsulate Beckett’s own existential angst expressed when he commented that “human life is the endurance and tolerance to ‘the boredom of living’ ‘replaced by the suffering of being.’ These phrases speak volumes of a philosophy born out of the harsh human realities” that are reflected in the play.
It is generally accepted that in the play God is portrayed as Gadot. The Gadot character – though he never makes it on to the stage and is somewhat of an enigma – still receives enough development through the dialogue that it is clear at whom Beckett is aiming his pen. There are hints at Gadot’s redeeming power, his infinite knowledge, his strange brand of justice. But the overall sense of the play is that even though the two main characters wait for Gadot, they really have no hope of his ever arriving – no hope of a real and personal relationship with Gadot. In other words, their lives are absurd because they spend it waiting for someone who will never come.
It seems to me that Samuel Becket must have been a bible scholar on some level, because the premise of his play mirrors almost precisely the problem the Apostle Peter was addressing in this third chapter of his 2nd epistle. Now, maybe I am giving too much credit to Beckett – perhaps he was just a skeptic asking the same questions that false teachers were asking 2000 years ago, give or take a decade or two. Nonetheless, the questions and doctrines he weaves into Waiting for Gadot seem to come straight from the mouths of those who were stirring up trouble – trouble the Apostle Peter felt he needed to spend his departing words on.
You will remember that when we began looking at 2nd Peter, we discovered that the apostle understood his days to be numbered – Christ had revealed to him that soon his labors would be over and he would depart to be with Christ. So Peter is focused on preparing the church to carry on the Gospel mission after he leaves. The apostolic witness was growing more scarce – that is, the actual witness of the apostles was dying out as they were being martyred. Already James the Greater – the son of Zebedee, Philip, Matthew, James the Lesser – the son of Alphaeus, Matthias – who replaced Judas, and Andrew, the brother of Peter, have been martyred for their faith. Mark- the Gospel writer – had also been killed. So the original witnesses to the life, death and resurrection of Jesus were a dying breed.
Now that’s not to say that the Gospel was fading from existence. Peter, Paul, and the other apostles had committed the Gospel to faithful men – trustworthy people who would accurately proclaim the message of salvation. But there were those who were not so scrupulous – men, of whom Paul said that their god was their own bellies, their own appetites – who misused the Gospel for their own ends. These were false teachers, proclaiming their own perversions under the guise of the Gospel.
It was these men that Peter was writing about.
In the first chapter, Peter calls for the church – that is us – to cling to the Gospel that we first received. He reminded us about the nature of salvation – that God has elected us for a purpose; to be effective and productive in our knowledge of Jesus Christ. In other words, that our character grows in reflecting the character of Jesus Christ; that we grow in grace and holiness. That the grace of God become so conspicuous in our lives we will be unable to deny him or blend into the fleshly, lustful culture that dominates our society. He wants us to make our calling and election sure – that is, obvious; lived out loud so that our lives shout, “I belong to Jesus.”
He then defends the Gospel he preached against those who would deny its power – who would deny the truth of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who would scoff at the ascension, who would say that talk of Jesus’ return is just a well-spun fairytale.
Have you ever heard anything more relevant in your life? You know, I have to chuckle sometimes at the mental gyrations some in the church go through to make the message of the Gospel more “relevant.” They poke around for some felt need and then dress the Gospel of Jesus Christ up as being aimed at that specific need. They substitute pop psychology terms to soften the blow, to dull the blade of the double-edged sword God has given his people – the Word of God. Instead of sin, or trespass, or iniquity, or rebellion they talk about mistakes, bad decisions and pathologies and addictions. Instead of wrath and punishment and justice and hell they talk about – well, nothing. They want only to speak of God as gracious and loving and the God of Second Chances. Instead of discipline, they talk about therapy, instead of discipleship, they talk about spirituality. And when you ask these churches for doctrinal standards, for theological or biblical positions, for what are their non-negotiables, they smile and babble about not wanting to be exclusive – you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. I don’t mean to be too pointed here, but flies tend implant their eggs in dead things.
The things that Peter was dealing with then are the same things we deal with today. Peter could have written this in 2009 and nothing would really need to be amended to make it current. We still have people asking, “Where is the promise of his coming?” Waiting for Gadot is just one example of this. Peter’s address to the church – to your life and mine as disciples of Jesus Christ – is just as relevant today as it was two thousand years ago, give or take a decade or two.
But we also need to remember what Peter said in chapter two of this epistle. In the second chapter, Peter offers a strong warning to those who would play fast and loose with the Gospel. God’s got a place reserved for you false teachers and it’s not a good place. Peter’s explanation of what lies in store for the false teacher is rather chilling – it is one of the hardest passages in Scripture to read because it makes it clear that God will not be mocked.
But he also offers some helpful hints on identifying those who teach false doctrine. Those too preoccupied with me, with mine, with what we get rather than what we give; those who emphasize material wealth, who revel in their freedom to play on the edges of sin, who look too much like the world – who want the life of the flesh and Jesus too – these we should beware of. If they justify a lifestyle choice that Scripture speaks against, run the other way. If they use their freedom as license, even if it is to attract others to Jesus, beware. As James 4.4 says, “You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.”
I know this is hard stuff, but let’s remember we receive these words not as the ruminations of a doomed apostle, but as God’s message to his church. We dare not ignore it or even worse, explain it away. For those who want to take the edge off the Gospel – to blunt or remove its “cringe factor” please take warning; God has something to say about that and it is not encouraging. It is frightening – sometimes the fear of the Lord is exactly that because he is huge, he is awesome, he is powerful and he is holy. Don’t ever forget who you’re dealing with – just because he is gracious doesn’t mean we can deal with him as anything less than the Lord, God Almighty.
Apparently, this is what happened with these false teachers – they neglected to remember who they were dealing with and Peter wants to keep us from making the same mistake.
Dear friends, this is now my second letter to you. I have written both of them as reminders to stimulate you to wholesome thinking. 2 I want you to recall the words spoken in the past by the holy prophets and the command given by our Lord and Savior through your apostles.
Peter then warns us that the scoffers will come, mocking our faith and calling for empirical evidence; “So where is God now? Why hasn’t Jesus returned? Did he forget?” You know what I find really fascinating about the mockers that Peter talks about? They sound like evolutionists. Seriously, look what they say. “Oh come on, Peter. The world continues to spin just like it did on the first day of creation. Nothing has changed since Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The Messiah’s not coming.” It’s like they completely ignore that God came in the flesh of a little baby names Jesus. That he lived among us and that he died on the cross of suffering.
Maybe that’s the case – I don’t know. Maybe these false teachers reject any notion of Jesus being the Messiah and so they just can’t buy into his coming again.
Like the evolutionists, the scoffers think that history is going nowhere – that there isn’t a plan, a goal or purpose in mind. But where the scoffers believed that history is circular – it repeats itself over and over – the evolutionists believe history is totally random, a product of accidents and circumstances. Yet, neither believe that Jesus is coming back – why? Because he hasn’t done it yet.
Funny how even circular reasoning sounds logical to the person trying to squash that innate need we have for God, who try to fight against that urge to worship the Creator.
I love how Peter answers their question. First, he points out that those who ask the question forget that God has already visited his wrath upon the earth once before – in the flood. People were scoffing then too and what did it get them?
Second, he acknowledges – by implication – that some of us may be asking the same question, “Why doesn’t Jesus come?”
But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. 9 The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.
Now there are some who have tried to make eschatological hay out of this by doing all kinds of weird calculations to establish dates and times using the formula of a thousand years for a day. But that’s not Peter’s point here. He’s not trying to give us the calculus equation for figuring out God’s timetable. Notice he not only says a day is thousand years, but also a thousand years is a day. In other words, we cannot impose our sense of time upon God. If God does not answer our prayer – our way – within 24 hours, it does not make God faithless and a liar, it makes us impatient and rebellious. God is faithful and never fails in responding to his children.
There is a reason, Peter says, that God seems to be taking his time. It’s not that God is being slow, he’s being gracious. God is waiting until all the elect are gathered in. The fury waits until all God’s sheep are in the fold.
As a Reformed Christian who believes God elects us to salvation – that we are chosen before the foundation of the world according to God’s good pleasure – one might think that I would be bothered by a verse that says God “…does not want anyone to perish, but everyone come to repentance.” That I might even avoid it. But those who claim that this verse weighs against a doctrine of predestination neglect one thing – the antecedent to the word “anyone.”
The key to understanding what Peter is talking about here really comes in the phrase just before, “He is patient toward you….” This is the antecedent – the subject – that defines the “anyone” whom God does not want to perish. So who is Peter talking about when he says God is patient toward you? It’s the people he’s writing the letter to – the church; us. So who is it that God does not want to perish – the church, his elect, us. God is patient toward us, who he chose before the foundation of the world, not wanting to lose any. His patience is evidence not only of his grace, but of his sovereignty and faithfulness as well. God is patient with us, waiting to gather in the full number of the elect. It is for us that the fury waits.
So the question for us is – what do we do with this incredible grace that God has given us? We know that God’s wrath will not be withheld forever, so how do we live in the meantime? Peter’s answer is do everything we can to hasten the day. How?
First by living holy and godly lives – lives that demonstrate the power of God and reflect his holy character; victory over sin, joy and peace in adversity. Our anticipation of Christ’s return should light a fire under us and create in us godly activity, which leads to the second way in which we hasten the day – sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ with others to gather in the elect.
For reasons we cannot know because God did not reveal this to us, he has chosen to call his elect from every nation tribe and tongue through the proclamation of the Gospel. Jesus said that when he is lifted up he draws all men to himself. But that proclamation isn’t always through telling the story of Jesus Christ or even your own testimony. It is also done in our everyday actions, in the way we do our jobs, in the way we relate to others. It is done when as a church we care for the weak and vulnerable. It’s done when we love each other the way Christ loved us. It is done when we speak to the surrounding culture about what is right and true and godly. In word and deed we proclaim the Gospel or we hide it under a bushel.
Beloved of God, we face a skeptical world out there – one that mocks our belief in a Savior and who thinks that life will go on ad nauseum without any change or goal. “Where is the promise of his coming?” they ask? When they ask, our job is to tell them the truth, to love them by giving them the Gospel message in Word and deed.
i. Sauder, Diane “MonkeyNotes Free Online Study Guide Book Notes Summary for . . . Waiting For Godot by Samuel Beckett 1948.” PinkMonkey.com 1997. 5 May 2009,
