Article 6 (2 Peter 3)

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2 Peter 3

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Dear friends, this is now my second letter to you. I have written both of them as reminders to stimulate you towholesome thinking.

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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.

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Above all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evildesires.

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They will say, "Where is this 'coming' he promised? Ever since our ancestors died, everything goes on as ithas since the beginning of creation."

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But they deliberately forget that long ago by God's word the heavens came into being and the earth was formed out of water and by water.

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By these waters also the world of that time was delugedand destroyed.

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By the same word the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly.

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But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years arelike a day.

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The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you,not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.

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But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will bedestroyed by fire, and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare.

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Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy andgodly lives

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as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming. That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat.

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But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward toa new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness dwells.

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So then, dear friends, since you are looking forward to this, make every effort to be found spotless, blameless andat peace with him.

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Bear in mind that our Lord's patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote youwith the wisdom that God gave him.

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He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. Hisletters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.

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Therefore, dear friends, since you have been forewarned, be on your guard so that you may not be carried away bythe error of the lawless and fall from your secure position.

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But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord andSavior Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and forever! Amen.

Brothers and sisters in Christ,I don’t know if you’ve experienced this but a lot of people have.Having a night where you just can’t sleep. You ever have one of those.Maybe you’re just too excited about what’s going to happen thenext day. The adrenaline is coursing through your body – and eventhough you close your eyes your mind is going “oh boy oh boy oh boy…”Or maybe it’s stress – thinking about the day you just had – something that didn’t go well. Something that’s bugging you. Adecision you made is haunting you and you’re replaying it in your mind.Or maybe it was something a little simpler – you thought thecoffee was decaf – it wasn’t – and there you are.

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Lying awake – there in the dark – but you just can’t sleep.I don’t know about you – but if you’ve experienced this unwantedall-nighter then you’ve also probably noticed that time movesincredibly slow at night. Sometimes when I can’t sleep I findmyself staring at the clock trying to will the thing to move…Have you ever noticed that?I don’t know if it’s the result of brain chemistry, or it’s the lack of things distracting us from experiencing every second fully, or somecombination of these things but morning takes an awful long timeto come when you can’t sleep.

I. And sometimes you wonder if morning is ever going tocome…

I put it like this because it’s really a good analogy to what weexperience in life.We look to our contemporary testimony and what we notice is thatit describes the world – using the Biblical language – as a worldwhich is presently dark.This, of course, is a spiritual metaphor which describes the presence of sin in the world. Light and dark – good and evil. Andso to say that the world is a dark place makes sense. I don’t need toillustrate this too much – if we open the newspaper tomorrowmorning we know it.So we’ve got this dark place – this sinful world – and here we arein it. We’re alive – we’re not asleep. And as we exist in this nightwe experience all these things – all these different emotions thatare going on.

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There’s some excitement. There’s some heartache. All these thingsthat keep us occupied, distracted, worried as we continue throughthe hours of the night.And for some of us who are here in this dark world – we arewaiting. Looking at the clock and hoping that it would move alittle faster so that we might reach the day a little bit sooner.That’s the Christian perspective. Here we are waiting – sometimesexpecting – sometimes hoping – sometimes groaning for – againthe confession tells us what the Bible says over and over again – the day of the Lord.We are a people who are awake in the night and waiting for morning.But what if the day never comes – what if the morning never breaks…isn’t that a fair question?I mean we stare at the clock and it keeps turning and turning. Nowhere we are 2,000 years after Jesus Christ died and rose again…and tomorrow the Chronicle-Herald is probably going to tell us it’sstill dark outside.Maybe he’s not coming…2 Peter chapter 3 beginning at verse 3…this is the question that Peter is taking on –

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Above all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers willcome, scoffing and following their own evil desires.

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They willsay, "Where is this 'coming' he promised? Ever since our ancestorsdied, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation."Critics, skeptics, scoffers – they’re out there – they say – youChristians are kind of sad…kind of pathetic…

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