WELCOME
PRAYER
WORD SET TO MUSIC
SILENCE
When we come back we’ll pick it up at verse 8.
2nd Peter 3.8-10
March 13th 2016
Meat
So Peter is bringing to remembrance to his faithful reader things he has said before and after explaining that the false teachers of his day are scoffing that Jesus is going to return, having forgotten that everything has NOT remained the same since the beginning of things (as they were maintaining) Peter begins to describe in greater detail some facts about what Jesus will bring with His second advent and says:
2nd Peter 3:8 But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.
9 The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
10 But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.
Okay, Peter says at verse 8
8 But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.
This is a “second consideration” by which the apostle meets the objection of scoffers against the teaching of the second coming of the Lord.
The scoffers objection was that much time had passed for his coming to have happened and that all things continue to remain as they were.
Peter here seems to be saying that what seems like a long time to us is not the same thing as a long time for God.
In other words human beings only have so much time, as measured by revolutions of the earth around the sun before we take our last breath but for God time does not hold the same grip.
Peter puts it this way:
8 But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.
Now many people read the first line of this phrase,
“That one day is with the Lord as a thousand years,” and stop there. I used to do it myself. But this is NOT the point of Peter nor is it a fact we can rely upon by itself.
Why? Because there is a follow-up line that negates this first one. What does it say? It says, AND . . .
“a thousand years as one day.”
These two lines together cancel each other out and essentially say that for God there is no time, again . . .
“that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.”
In other words Peter seems to be saying that as humans we cannot try and understand how God relates to time – he’s outside of it.
That being said, time (our time) is important to God and He does both recognize it and operate within time frames He has established. So to take a stance and say that “God doesn’t operate in time,” is incorrect. He has based a number of promises in and around earth time and it’s a cop out to suggest that just because time has no bearing on Him and His realm that it has no bearing on what, how, and when He will do things here.
I also think that Peter is suggesting that what God accomplishes in a day He could accomplish in a thousand years and what He takes a thousand years to accomplish He could chose to do in a day.
Once again, time does not limit Him.
For this reason I find all the arguments regarding time frames insidious.
There are people who claim that one day creation periods must be taken literally, and others who say they must be taken representationally.
I say who freaking cares. And I think Peter’s words here support this attitude. In other words it is just as ridiculous to suggest that God could NOT do what is described in a twenty-four hour period as to suggest that He needed a twenty four hour period to accomplish what it says was accomplished.
God could do whatever in the twinkling of an eye or he could take ten thousand years to create a grain of sand! Either direction we are missing the point so arguments one way or the next are really a waste of time, which we do have a limited amount of so why not move on to love? Peter adds (verse 9)
9 The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
I other words, if the Lord has promised to return, and it seems like a long period of time has passed, do not suppose that He has made this promise casually.
“The Lord is not slack concerning his promise,” the way some men count slackness. (Men like these scoffers he is talking about).
And we come to a major principle of scripture – waiting on the Lord patiently and trusting that He will see us through and fulfill the promises He has made.
It’s a core tenet of the Christian faith. Waiting on and trusting in the Lord and His timing. And it is played out time and time again in numerous biblical stories, right?
Noah and the ark and 120 years.
Moses and the COI in the wilderness 40 years.
Joseph waiting in a hole, in a prison cell.
Job and the loss of all things before the return of more.
God, His warnings and promises, man, time and the fulfillment. All predicated on faith and trust. And here the scoffers are claiming that God has been slack concerning His promises.
It’s interesting because the scoffers then, and the scoffers today, all tend to think of God failing to act as a sign of His failing rather than a sign of His love.
It appears however that the reasons the Lord does delay doing things is for our benefit . . . and not due to being slack or seeking our detriment! And it’s not just to test our metal – though this may be a by-product of delays.
Remember what Peter said back in 1st Peter 3:20 regarding God’s attitude toward the people in Noah’s day and age:
“. . . when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water.”
According to this passage God was being long-suffering toward the people on earth when he waited the 120 years.
Isaiah says in 30:18
“And therefore will the LORD wait, that he may be gracious unto you, and therefore will he be exalted, that he may have mercy upon you: for the LORD is a God of judgment: blessed are all they that wait for him.”
Part of the motive for His waiting seems to be mercy, as Ezekiel says
Ezekiel 18:23 Have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die? saith the Lord GOD: and not that he should return from his ways, and live?
Paul touches on the principle too, saying:
Romans 2:4 Or despisest thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering; not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance?
Could we say that it is God’s goodness in extending life – even when it seems like he should step in and end it, or wipe us all out?
Could it be that where we think it merciful to end life that God extends it as a means to bring the heart and mind of those who are suffering – or those who are witnessing the suffering – around to the place He wants them to be?
Years ago I wrote a play called, Jack Kevorkian, please, that touched on the idea or euthanasia – its merits and detriments.
Humanistically we may tend to think of God as sleeping on the job when it comes to either taking or extending life but in the end I would suggest we have to learn to trust in Him in all things and lean not to our own understanding.
1st Timothy 2:4 says something interesting about God. It says, speaking of Him:
“Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth.”
This seems to be the perspective of God in delaying His coming then in the early church. “He will have all men to be saved.”
Interestingly enough, this was not the end result, and more than a million were NOT saved from utter miserable destruction.
Does this make 1st Timothy 2:4 wrong?
Not when we look at the Greek. Because the term for “who WILL have all men be saved” is THEL-O – which means this is God’s desire, his permissive will, His longing, but not his demanded will or way.
“He would certainly like or desire that all would be saved”, but this does not mean it will be the case.
However here, in 2nd Peter, we are given another insight as Peter says:
9 The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
Again, Peter is telling his audience that God’s delay is evidence of His longsuffering to “us-ward”
“not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.”
How are we to interpret this last line, that God is “not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.”
Does it mean the same thing as 1st Timothy 2:4? That it is God’s “permissive desire” that all would be saved but that doesn’t mean all would be?
First of all, when it says that God is not willing that any should perish, it is NOT, NOT, NOT the same Greek term used in 1st Timothy where it says that it is God’s will that all would be saved.
Again that word is Thel-o and means it is his desire. But here, in 2nd Peter 3: 8, where it says God is . . .
“not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.”
The Word is “BOOL-OM-AHEE” and it means this is God’s expressed will, meaning it is something that WILL happen, and it’s not just His desire.
From this we can say that where God would like all to be saved (all obviously are not) but it is God’s expressed, emphatic, sovereign will that NONE will perish but that all should come to repentence,”
And this we CAN count on.
So in terms of doing all He can to keep people from dying in their sin, and bringing them to repentance, God delays His coming, and/or His bringing us to the end of our lives here, not “having any pleasure in the fact that the wicked die in their sin” and are therefore NOT saved from afterlife loss.
But Peter tells us right here that God expressedly will not let any person perish but will bring all of them to repentance.
So while all are NOT save, NONE will perish and ALL will repent.
At this point it seems important to try and understand then what Peter means by perish, in that it is God’s sovereign will that NONE will perish but that all should come to repentance.”
Typically, and under the hand of most preaching today, the term perish is interpreted to mean “destroyed” “utterly destroyed,” etc.
And it CAN mean this. But it can also mean to be marred, to die, to suffer loss.
The Greek term is “ap-ol’-loo-mee” and there are places where it is translated to mean all of these things.
So we could say that God is not willing that any would be marred, that any would die, that any would suffer loss, or that any would be destroyed.
Because we are not speaking of God’s permissive will here BUT HIS expressed will, meaning what is spoken of will NOT happen, I think we know that perish, in this case, means be utterly destroyed.
Will God save all of us? No. Some will suffer but they will not completely perish.
Why? Because it is also God’s expressed (BOOL AM-AHEE) will that all would come to . . . repentance.
Applying it to our context here, all of the apostles have been warning that Jesus is going to return, and their world was about to come to an end.
The apostles were sent to preach that the day was at hand and it was time for all to turn to the Messiah and be spared – be saved!
Was it God’s desire that all be saved from the end destruction headed their way? Yes. It was His desire – but this would not be a reality.
Most would not be saved.
But this does not mean that those who were not saved would perish in the sense of being absolutely wiped out from existence.
We know this from out text today because it is God’s sovereign will “that NONE will perish but that all should come to repentance.”
So, they did suffer and they were NOT saved from the horrors, but not one of them perished (in the sense of the word of being wiped out) and not only that we also know that “ALL of them ultimately came to repentance.”
This was God’s expressed will.
So this was the way it was for the people of the Apostolic age. When Jesus was coming back, as Revelation says, with his reward in His hand.
And that age and His return has been wrapped up.
But to apply it to us, and our day, I would suggest that we are speaking of the very same principles but instead of on a national level with the Nation of Israel we are talking about an individual level.
In other words, God wants all – everyone – to be saved from after-life loss. It is His desires that all would come to repentance here and now and enjoy a relationship with Him here and immediately after our individual exists from this world.
This is His desired will. And so we share Jesus with all people, hoping that they will have ears to hear, eyes to see, hearts to feel and that they will repent, and turn, and be healed and free from the chains that hold them bound.
But this is obviously not the case and most exit this world having rejected the call of God upon them. And so where He desires all would be saved from afterlife sorrows and loss, those desires will not be met (due to our freewill choices).
However, that’s the unfortunate side to the story. There is a fortunate side – one where God’s will is expressedly given and one where He will get His way.
And that is it is His will “that none should perish but that ALL – ALL, would come to repentance.”
The word “come to” repentance is
“KHOR-EO and it can mean “to be in,” to give,” “to enter, to hold, to go, contain, have or receive.”
In other words, we come to it, we receive it, we hold or enter into it.
When? During (or after) NOT being saved. And I would affirm (but cannot prove only support) that for us it looks like this:
Those who believe and receive Christ here by faith will exit this world, having been saved from afterlife loss, will be judged for their faith and love, and will immediately receive their resurrected bodies commensurate with the mercy, grace, and love of God.
This will be their eternal reward.
And those who die without faith in Christ will not be saved from suffering loss, and will experience a resurrection commensurate with God’s justice and mercy, but none will perish and all – all will come to repentance.
Take it how you will.
Now at verse ten Peter continues and now speaks specifically about the Day of the Lord and says some things that have been used by dispensationalists and/or futurists to support their stance that this is yet in the future:
10 But, (Peter writes)
the day of the Lord
will come as a thief in the night;
in the which the heavens shall pass away
with a great noise,
and the elements shall melt
with fervent heat,
the earth also
and the works that are therein
shall be burned up.
Nine points that need to be covered.
First, the day of the Lord Jesus.
I think it’s pretty obvious that since Jesus has already been born in the flesh, that He has resurrected, and that He has ascended, that this speaks to the Day of His return which He describes fully in Matthew 24.
Amazingly enough, those who do not want to believe that He has returned but admit that Peter was speaking about the end of the that age and His coming with destruction to Jerusalem suggest that there are two applications to this phrase, Day of the Lord.
The first is His return to them there and the second is His return to the world at large.
Proving that Peter is speaking of Jesus return he adds that He “will come as a thief in the night.”
Paul wrote to the believers at Thessalonica in the fifth chapter of 1st Thessalonians:
1 But of the times and the seasons, brethren, ye have no need that I write unto you.
2 For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night.
3 For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape.
4 But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief.
5 Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness.
6 Therefore let us not sleep, as do others; but let us watch and be sober.
This line, as a thief in the night is another way of saying what Jesus said Himself in Matthew 25:13
“Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh.”
And now Peter adds a line that biblical literalists love to take, well, literally:
“In the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise.”
Now, let me speak to this and start a point where biblical literalists need to be put in check.
Are we to take this line literally? That “the heavens shall pass away with a great noise?”
Doesn’t God live in the heavens? I mean if we are going to be literal let’s be literal. So should we believe that when Jesus returns as a thief in the night that God is going to lose His house?
“Oh, no, no, no it doesn’t mean that!” comes the reply.
“But that is what it SAYS!” comes my retort.
So we have to then decide what this line actually means and since we know that the very heavens (since its plural it is speaking of heaven’s entirely) will not pass away, it must mean something else.
Does it mean that the universe, with a vastness expanding faster than we can conceive, a wondrous work, all the planets, all the stars, all the suns and the trillions of galaxies are going to pass away?
In my early years and believing in the dispensational view of things this is what I was taught! That God was going to take the Universe and roll it up like a scroll and destroy it in the fervent heat of ultra mega nuclear flame.
No longer.
Part of the solution to this question comes from a study of Isaiah 51:16 which says:
“But I am the LORD thy God, that divided the sea, whose waves roared: The LORD of hosts is his name. And I have put my words in thy mouth, and I have covered thee in the shadow of mine hand, that I may plant the heavens, and lay the foundations of the earth, and say unto Zion, Thou art my people.”
Here that God planted a special heaven and laid a special foundation of the earth for the nation of Israel. So we know that when Peter is describing “the heaven’s passing away with a great noise” (and also that the elements of the earth will melt” that Peter was speaking of the special heaven and earth God established for the Nation of Israel.
So when Peter says:
“But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up,” we know it is not the natural world that was going to go, but the world of that age – the age of those who refused the Messiah who were in Jerusalem and part of the heavens and earth that God gave to them as referenced in Isaiah 51:16.
Heavens passing away is a huge Hebraism for the oilonomea of God, for that age and that time.
In verse 29 of Matthew 24 Jesus says:
29 Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken:
Now, futurists love this passage because they don’t believe such things have happened yet and it gives them some things to seek in the heavens as signs that Jesus is on His way.
Before explaining this verse I want you to read a passage to you from scripture and then I want you to ask yourself,
“Exactly what are these words describing?” Ready?
“For the stars of heaven and the constellations thereof shall not give their light: the sun shall be darkened in his going forth, and the moon shall not cause her light to shine.”
What is this passage describing? First of all it is from Isaiah 13 and secondly it is Isaiah’s description of the destruction of Babylon!
Are we to believe that at the destruction of Babylon that the stars of heaven would not give their light and that the sun would be darkened? And the moon would CAUSE her light not to shine?
Its figurative speech, something for which the Hebrews were known for using.
How about another?
“Then the moon shall be confounded, and the sun ashamed, when the LORD of hosts shall reign in mount Zion, and in Jerusalem, and before his ancients gloriously.”
What is being described? The destruction of Tyre (as described by Isaiah in Isaiah 24:23)!
Again, it is VERY apocalyptic language and sounds literal but its not.
It’s figurative.
Check this one out:
“And all the host of heaven shall be dissolved, and the heavens shall be rolled together as a scroll: and all their host shall fall down, as the leaf falleth off from the vine, and as a falling fig from the fig tree.”
Where is this written and what is it describing? The slaughter in Bozrah and Idumea written in Isaiah 34:4!
I’m doing this to show how these passages certainly sound like a description of the end of the world, don’t they?
They certainly describe things that once they have occurred that the whole world would have recognized them and would speak of them even till this day, right?
Hardly.
When was the last time you heard of someone talking about the “slaughter in Bozrah and Idumea” where “all the host of heaven was dissolved,” and “the heavens were then rolled together as a scroll?”
The point (again) is the Hebrew writers were renown for describing “God’s visiting hand of judgment upon them” in these very descriptive figurative ways. To take literary license and apply them literally to our day is a mistake.
On the Mount of Olives Jesus simply follows suit (since He authored the words Isaiah used to describe these Old Testament judgments) by speaking in a way and with language that those to whom He was sent (the House of Israel) would understand.
The imagery Jesus used to answer His disciples questions should not be taken any more literally than we would take Isaiah 34:4!
So when Peter says:
“But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up,”
We could summarize this language in a different way and not be wrong by saying:
“an inexpressible calamity” is going to fall on Jerusalem so great that it will be akin to the heavens passing away and the earth also with all the works of Man – the buildings, the temple, the houses therein will be destroyed by fire.
Where Peter says:
“and the elements shall melt with fervent heat”
Let’s turn to the Greek because upon closer examination the view I am proposing is supported in so doing.
First of all, the Greek word translated to elements here in the King James is:
“STOI-KHI’-ON”
When I think of elements today I think of everything from physical properties to chemical elements of a physical property.
But “STOI-KHI’-ON” is the neuter of a presumed derivative of the base of “STOI-KAY-O” and it best means “something orderly in arrangement,” (or by implication) a serial constituent, a proposition, a principle, a rudiment,” and not necessarily physical elements.
In my opinion this is speaking of the Law, principles upon which the Nation of Israel were based. They were about to melt with fervent heat.
I make this opinion off the fact that the very same Greek word (“STOI-KHI’-ON”) is used in
Hebrews 5:12 where the writer chides his reader and says:
“For when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again which be the first principles (STOI-KHI-ON) of the oracles of God; and are become such as have need of milk, and not of strong meat.”
In other words what is melting with fervent heat are all the principles and orders of this former oikonomea (or economy) known as the oilonomea of the nation of Israel.
In heaven and on earth.
I could provide more supports for this argument, pointing out that in other passages in the King James the word is translated as rudiments, a word that means the minute parts or portions of which things are composed.
But I won’t.
And then when Peter says that these principles or rudiments will “melt with fervent heat the word for melt is LU-O which can mean melt but can also mean “to loosen, loose, break apart, and dissolve.”
All words as applicable to principles and rudiments as they are to actual elements.
You decide.
And with that we’ll stop there today.
Q and A
Sorrow the Play.
