Confident of His Coming
II Peter 3:1-13
Maranatha - - come quickly, Lord Jesus.
Quickly, you say? What’s so quick about two thousand years? (The third millennium, by the way, started not so long ago!)
Come where? Do what? Would you really want Jesus to come? Why can’t he just stay where He is - - wherever that is!
The return of Jesus was meant to offer us hope and comfort. Today, instead, it sometimes seem to cause confusion and doubt. Religious teachers seem to be obsessed with predicting when Jesus will come. Our world really has very little place for such an idea and can do little more than make a joke of it.
Even if you do not share that mind-set, it is very easy to be influenced by it.
Have you ever caught yourself doubting that Jesus is coming again? The thought of the Son of God returning to end history just does not fit in smoothly with the spirit of our age. Perhaps we couldn’t fit it into our schedules!
I know the kinds of questions many modern people have about the return of Jesus. Even if Jesus did come, would the government actually shut down? And if it did, would we all starve tomorrow? Would the stock market be open even after Jesus came? More important, would the department stores still be open?
God has given us reminders of Jesus’ impending appearance. For example, the Lord’s Supper is a reminder that Jesus is coming again. As the Apostle Paul said, “For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.”
The claim that Jesus is coming again is a “make or break” point of the Christian faith.
God knows that we are surrounded by people who say, "Where is this ’coming’ He promised?" We have something at stake, and there are always doubters.
Confidence in the coming of Jesus was meant to give us hope, comfort, and encouragement - IF we understand what the Bible really says about it.
For people in our situation, Peter penned the word of God as it appears in II Peter 3:1-13. It is a word of reminder and a word of encouragement. In this section of scripture, Peter gives us three reasons why we can confidently hope for the second coming of Jesus.
First, we can confidently hope for the second coming of Jesus because of God’s former execution of world-wide judgment.
Those who sneer at the idea the Jesus is coming again have, according to Peter, "deliberately forgotten" two very important points.
The first of these is that God created the earth. This is such a key point of Christianity that it is not surprising that there is a lot of hostility to the idea of creation.
Carl Sagan’s PBS series and book COSMOS began with the statement, "The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be."
The hostility to the idea of creation comes up again in COSMOS when Sagan says, "In many cultures it is customary to answer that God created the universe out of nothing. But this is mere temporizing. If we wish courageously to pursue the question, we must, of course, ask where God comes from. And if we decide this to be unanswerable, why not save a step and decide that the origin of the universe is an unanswerable question? Or, if we say that God has always existed, why not save a step and conclude that the universe has always existed?"
One important answer to all this is that the universe does not look like something that has always been here. It contains some "strong hints" that it is not eternal -- hints that a scientist like Sagan could at least acknowledge, if he were willing to do so. But you do find people who are not just doubters, but who are openly hostile to the very idea of creation. The head of Physical Sciences Department at the university where I direct a campus ministry is so hostile to the idea of creation that he has made it his personal mission to ridicule the idea — he can’t even discuss the possibility in a rational manner. He keeps a file on “creationists” (I’m in it!) and he makes it his mission to “hunt us down” and try to “run us out of town.” Yes, the doubters are still very much with us!
The second point that Peter cites to reinforce our confidence in the second coming is a "pause" in history when God destroyed the world by the flood in the time of Noah. Although this was not the final judgement on the world, it was by far the greatest of God’s temporal, here-and-now, judgments which show that God is still in control of the world and all its affairs, including human affairs.
Perhaps you have heard people debate whether or not the flood of Noah was worldwide or local. Why anyone would care so much about an ancient flood? Here is one reason why: Peter cites the flood as a key event in human history that foreshadows the second coming of Jesus.
Peter’s cites the creation and the flood is to show the reasonableness of the claim that God has reserved a final judgment for the future. If God made this world, and flooded it once in a great judgment, the coming of Jesus is not such a wild idea after all. There will be a final "the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men." And this day is at the second coming of Jesus.
Peter is saying something like what Bill Cosby once said on his old TV show. When speaking to his son he said, “Don’t forget - I brought you into this world and I can take you out again!” (We told our boys the same thing whenever they contemplated misbehavior!)
We shouldn’t be surprised that God will judge the world again, one final time. We should also not be surprised that those who are not comfortable with the return of Jesus are also not comfortable with the idea of creation and the flood. These things, Peter says, are very definitely connected.
Because of God’s former execution of judgement as seen in the great flood, we can confidently hope for the second coming of Jesus.
Peter’s next point is that we can confidently hope for the second coming of Jesus because God is not bound by time.
Notice that part of the charge of the skeptics found in verse 4 goes, "Ever since our fathers died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation." This charge could be summarized by saying, "If Jesus is coming back, what’s taking Him so long?"
This is a question that has been asked not only by skeptics, but by believers who have assumed that Jesus would return very quickly. It seems that some of Jesus’ contemporaries thought He would return within their lifetimes.
That idea has been with us throughout history, it seems. Christopher Columbus thought that his discoveries were part of God’s plan for the end times, since he followed Augustine in thinking that the world would come to an end 7,000 years after its beginning, which by the reckoning in Columbus’ time meant that there were only 155 years left! What they don’t teach you at school anymore it that Columbus saw his exploration as part of the wrap-up of history leading to the return of Jesus.
Notice what Peter says about the relationship of God and chronology.
First, God is not bound by time in the same way we are. To God "a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like a day."
We are creatures of time, but God is Creator of all - even of what we call “time.” The time of His coming was not even known to the incarnate Son of God, let alone to the sons of Adam!
On top of all this, God has a very definite purpose for what seems to us to be a delay.
Peter says that God is not slow -- He is patient. It is amazing what God will do even for the rebels of this world. He waits for them to come over to His side, to repent. The delay which one person can use to doubt or complain can cause someone else to rejoice. Aren’t you glad God waited until you turned to Him? Would it really be so bad if he waited for your friend or family member who has not yet turned to Him?
Sometimes my wife and I will discuss current political figures. Some of them have demonstrated a real contempt for Godliness in recent years. It can drive you to think you would like to see God something big, obvious, and dramatic in the way of judgement on such people. It can drive you to long for a lightening bolt shot at certain people. You can find yourself praying as you watch the evening news, “God, there is the target, now: ready, aim, FIRE! Amen.” But one day as we talked about current events I said, “What would be even better would be to see that person repent.” Wouldn’t it? How amazing it is to see a modern-day Zacchaeus, someone who has publically done great evil, turn to God with sincerity. It might not be as good for special effects as a lightening bolt or its equivalent, but in many ways it is much more dramatic. A rebellious heart that turns back to God is an astounding sight to behold.
It is so pleasing to God that He is willing to wait, and wait, and wait for more and more hearts to turn back to Him. God is not slow, He is patient. God has a good reason for waiting - He is waiting for more beautiful blossoms of repentance to appear in the garden of human hearts.
So because God is not bound by time, we can confidently hope for the second coming of Jesus.
Finally, we should confidently hope for the coming of Jesus because His coming will not be preceded by definite signs.
Look again at the claim of the doubters in verse 4, "everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation."
Another implication of this is "if He is coming back, what sign can we see that will prove it?"
Peter says (in verse 10) that the coming of Jesus (that is, "the Day of the Lord") will be "like a thief." The point of this comparison is that a thief comes without warning, without a definite sign -- without a sign of any kind, in fact. An issue of Reader’s Digest from the summer of ’92 contained an article by a former burglar giving tips on how to avoid being victimized by his kind.
It perhaps goes without saying that burglars strive to do nothing that would even make their victims suspicious: no warning phone calls (Rrrriiiig. Click. “Hello. Mr. Orndorff, this is the thief. I’d like to make an appointment to rob your house at 2:00 am tomorrow morning. All I ask is that you be asleep, or even better, don’t be home.”) No signs in the victims front yards warning of an impending robbery (“This house is scheduled to be robbed next week while you are on vacation.”) No web site you can check for thieves’ schedules. (No “thieves.com” where you can search a database where thieves have indexed theft schedules, neighborhoods, and houses to be robbed.)
Get the idea? No hints of any kind!
It is interesting, is it not, that so many Christians spend so much time predicting when the coming of Jesus will occur. A few years ago I was on a Christian radio talk show to discuss politics. As we were leaving the studio, we met the fellow who was coming in to do the show after us. He had heard us discussing political problems and remarked that the "New World Order" surely indicated that the coming of Jesus was near. When he made his claim about "the New World Order" showing that the coming of Jesus was imminent, I couldn’t help responding, "Jesus Himself said He did not know the time of His coming -- and I never try to out-guess Him!"
Do you ever check out the “clearance” section of books at Christian bookstores? If you do, you will notice this phenomenon: every time the is a problem in the Middle East, the will be a battery of books about “the signs of the times” and predictions that Jesus will be back within a few months. Then, about three to five years after the event, the books are marked WAY down for quick sale — usually in the “88 cents” section.
Someone sends me a little monthly magazine entitled Lamplighter. The June, 1998 edition had an article entitled “Recognizing the Signs of the Times.” It is interesting because it propagates so many of the typical mistakes on this subject. For example, it confuses the “Israel” of Old Testament prophecy, which is really the church of Jesus Christ, with the modern nation-state of Israel.
Because the common misunderstandings tend to be more spectacular, many Christians misunderstand what the Bible says about Jesus’ coming. It is really not nearly as complicated as many would make it. Look at the illustrations Jesus gave about His coming in Matthew 24. He said His coming would be:
Like lightning. CRASH --BOOM. Instantaneous: there it is with no warning.
Like the days of Noah. People go on about the business of life (eating, drinking, family like, etc.) until -- suddenly -- the flood is upon them!
So the continuance of things as usual need not cause us to loose our confidence in the second coming of Jesus. There will be no particular sings to prove that His coming is about to occur, contrary to most televangelists and many Christian paperback writers. It could be any time, "may be morning or may be noon, may be distant or may be soon" as the song says.
It has become a regular occurrence for someone in the Christian world to predict when Jesus will return. I guess it makes good news hype for religious people. My guess is that Jesus will never show up on any date predicted by anyone -- that will be God’s way of making fools out of those incessant "predictors of Jesus coming" people.
There is one point of "radio preacher" mythology that you ought to be on guard against in this regard: the myth that "the last days" is in the future. Notice that in verse three of our text, Peter mentions "the last days" as future. But notice that by verse 5, Peter is speaking of people in the "last days" in present tense. Peter’s colleague John makes this very clear in I John 2:18 when he says, "it is the last hour." It has been the "last days" since the time of the apostles, so it being the last days is no clue as to when Jesus will return.
If there are no signs, He is right on schedule, because it is a schedule for which there are no signs! Since there will be no definite signs which precede His return, we can confidently hope for the second coming of Jesus.
Peter has some lessons to draw from all of this, which he gets to in verses 11-13. Remember, the teaching of the Bible is meant to make us think and live differently. We can’t truly live differently if we don’t understand that teaching, but also, we don’t really understand that teaching if it doesn’t move us to live differently!
For one thing, Peter says, knowing that Jesus is coming again should move us away from what we now call "materialism."
Some Christians push the idea that we should have no concern at all for material possessions. Some Christians have made a second career out of flying around the world in the comfort of a jet airliner telling people they should have no regard for possessions. Basically, what we call "capitalism" comes from what the Bible teaches about property and possessions.
But Jesus did teach that material possessions cannot be on the top of our priority list. Our culture has a particular problem with this when we get obsessed with having things. Although one fellow quipped that "If you can’t take it with you then I’m not going" it is still the case that this world is temporary, whether we acknowledge it or not! In our list of priorities, “things” must be on the list somewhere. But if “things” come at the top of the list, or even in the first several items on the list, we need a new list!
Here is another point for us. We ought to live "holy and godly lives" says Peter. It is too bad that some have associated this with some form of prudishness. Peter did not say that we should live "grim and humorless lives." It is true that Christians should live life in a way that differs from the world because we are supposed to have goals that differ from those of the world - - but Christianity is definitely NOT the NFL, that is, the “No Fun League.” But this needs to be said - - when an examination of the beliefs, lives, and activities of Christians are hard to distinguish from those of non-Christians - and they very often ARE hard to distinguish these days - our faith is nearly worthless. Are you in any way “conspicuously Christian?” Do the unbelievers where you work and play even know you are a Christian? And if not, why not?
Finally, Peter reminds us, we are looking forward to that "new heavens and new earth, the home of righteousness."
Hard as this is to keep in mind sometimes, believers will not always be struggling with and surrounded by sin. In the end it will be done away with by the omnipotent hand of God. In fact, the theme of the Book of Revelation is just that -- we can resist evil with confident hope in ultimate victory.
In Matthew 24:35 Jesus paints a word picture of a servant. This servant has have been placed in charge of the household until the master returns. But managing households is not always easy and not always fun. Why should the servant manage well? Because the master will return. If the servant loves the master, then he will want to please him by being found faithfully performing his duty. You are, you know, that servant. What are you doing?
You are a Christian living in a less than hospitable world. Living the way Jesus wants us to live is not always easy, but the promise of Jesus in Revelation 22:20, "Yes, I am coming soon" is meant to encourage us to be faithful.
Peter has taught us three reasons why we can confidently hope for the coming of Jesus:
1. God created the world, and He has judged the world once before in the great flood. He will do it again in the final judgement at Christ’s return.
2. God is not bound by time, so that Jesus’ coming is on schedule, though that schedule is unknown to us.
3. God will give no definite signs of Jesus coming. He is coming without further announcement, and we need to be ready.
So then, dear friends, since you are looking forward to this, make every effort to be found spotless, blameless and at peace with him. Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation . . . be on your guard so that you may not be carried away by the error of lawless men and fall from your secure position. But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and forever! Amen. (NIV, 2 Peter, selections from 3:14 -18)
