God’s Word for You

2 Peter 3:3-7 As then, so now

by Pastor Timothy Smith on Saturday, August 13, 2022

3 First of all, understand that scoffers will come in the last days with their mocking, following their own sinful desires. 4 They will say, “Where is this promised coming of his? For ever since our fathers fell asleep, everything continues as it did from the beginning of creation.”

Here Peter addresses an argument from opponents who scoff and deny Christ by attaching themselves to one prophecy the Lord made, which was that he would return. Jesus had said: “The master will come on a day when the servant does not expect him and at an hour he is not aware of” (Matthew 24:50). And again, when he was talking about John, he asked, “If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you?” (John 21:22, 21:23). He did not mean that John would live until the Last Day, but that even if he wanted John to stay alive that long, it was not a matter for Peter to judge. He was saying, in part, that he would certainly return one day, the Last Day.

And again, James reminded the First Council of the prophecy of Amos: “I will return and rebuild David’s fallen tent. I will restore its ruins, and build it as it used to be” (Acts 15:16; Amos 9:11). But men in Peter’s time and wicked men in our own time (such as Rudolph Bultmann), said the same thing: Since the end of the world (and the second coming of Christ) hasn’t come already, it probably won’t. Peter dashes this kind of existential nonsense to pieces like old pottery.

5 They overlook this fact on purpose, that the heavens came into existence long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God, 6 and that by means of these waters the world as it was then was flooded with water and perished. 7 But by the same word the heavens and earth as they are now are reserved for fire, kept for the day of judgment and the destruction of the ungodly.

The fact of the Great Flood is ignored by these unbelievers because it proves that their scoffing is unfounded, unwise, and irrational. God has indeed judged the world since the creation of the world, in the Flood. Their very words, “Where is this ‘coming’ he promised?” were the same things Noah’s contemporaries shouted at him: “Where is this ‘flood’ you’ve promised?” And just as they were swept away and drowned by the waters of their judgment, so also the wicked will be swept away and be horribly burned and destroyed by the fires of the End, when God will bring an end to all of his creation and judge it. Then they will suffer another fire, an eternal one, that will keep on burning, scalding, searing, melting, and hurting their flesh, memory, mind, and spirit for all eternity.

The earlier world was different in many ways. People lived much longer. Adam himself lived nearly a thousand years (Genesis 5:5), and Eve was fertile and gave birth to baby after baby for more than a hundred years, and perhaps much longer than that (Genesis 5:3). The climate must have been very different (perhaps a hint about this is found in Genesis 2:6). Some men grew enormously large and strong (Genesis 6:4) so that they were dubbed the Nephilim, “the ones who fall” upon others. Perhaps this growth was repeated after the flood among some tribes, or perhaps a sprig of their family entered into Noah’s through one of his daughters-in-law. The ferocity of unbelief and the murderous acts of such unbelievers swayed many people into unbelief or forms of pagan heathenism, until only a single family of believers remained. Moses tells the story in about six parts:

1. Corruption, the unbelief of the whole world (Genesis 6:1-12)
2. Command, God’s design for a ship to save a few (Genesis 6:13-7:4)
3. Compliance, Noah’s obedient building just as God had commanded him (Genesis 7:5-10)
4. Catastrophe, The coming of the flood and the ruin of the world (Genesis 7:11-24)
5. Calends (the “first of the month”),  the end of the flood on the first day of the tenth month (Genesis 8:1-14)
6. Covenant, God’s promise never again to destroy the world with water, and the sign of the rainbow (Genesis 8:15-22)

What happened then, which we can and should remember, study, and take to heart, will happen again so suddenly that no one will have time even to think about what is happening.

Be watchful, and pray for the people around you and all the people of the world. The Lord will return, suddenly, without warning. “No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father (Mark 13:32). What will the condition of your soul be like on that day, in that moment, when the Lord examines your life?

You, you who trust in Jesus, “rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven.”

In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith

 

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