Sermon: Scoffers Beware

Good evening friends.

We do not live by bread alone, but by the word that God has given us to guide our lives, fill our hearts with joy. And so we come to the reading, the preaching of that word tonight and we need God's blessing on us. So let's pray.

Heavenly Father, we cry out to you that you would plant us like the righteous person in Psalm one by streams of living water. We need the nourishment, the refreshment that comes for meditating on your word, and we ask that you would come and bring us what we so sorely need from your word tonight. We ask all this in the strong name of Christ. Amen. Let's turn in our Bibles to Philippians or not Philippians. That's what I was preaching this morning.

Second Peter chapter three. We're continuing in our our evening sermon series

through the book of second Peter,

and we will cover the first seven verses of this chapter. Second Peter chapter three.

Follow along in your bibles as I read this from God's word. This is now the second letter that I'm writing to you, beloved. In both of them, I'm stirring up your sincere mind by way of reminder that you should remember the predictions of the holy prophets and the commandment of the Lord and Savior through your apostles. Knowing this, first of all, that scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing following their own sinful desires.

They will say, where is the promise of his coming Forever Since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation. For they deliberately overlook this fact that the heavens existed long ago and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God, and that by means of these, the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished. But by the same word, the heavens

and earth that now exist are stored up for fire being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly, the grass withers and the flower fades. The word of our God will stand forever. Praise be to God. Amen. Well, in 11 days Many families will wake up on Christmas morning and before they rush to open their presents, we'll sit down together, open up the family Bible to Luke chapter two, or Matthew chapter one and two

and read the story of Jesus' birth together. It's a good tradition. I recommend it to you. I hope you do something like that on Christmas morning. But why dedicate time to that? We all know what the kids are most excited for. Why hold them back? Just let 'em go. Why take the time to read such a familiar story? Mom and dad could probably recite that from memory. Well, in a word we do that and many other things in our lives

because we need reminders. We need to remember, one biblical scholar has said in biblical thinking, reminders, grip the whole person so that we are possessed again by the gospel and its truth so that we are energized to live for the glory of God. One of the main purposes that two Peter was written is found a couple chapters earlier in chapter one, verse 13, where he says to his readers, I think it right as long as I am in this body to stir you up.

By way of reminder, you notice the resonance with our text here, the idea of a reminder and the idea that Peter wants to stir them up and stimulate them, encourage that, energize them to do something or other, he wants to remind them. In this text, Peter is addressing his beloved readers. You see that in verse one. He's writing a letter to his friends. He cares about them and he wants to remind them of something important.

Two things, actually, two important things in verse two, he wants him to remember the predictions and the commandment. Two things. Now, the commandment is probably meant to summarize all of Jesus' moral teaching. You see that it's a commandment that comes from the Lord and the Savior, which is Jesus. So what is Jesus' commandment it, it's a summary of of what Jesus taught his disciples, how he taught them to live. Peter's readers needed to keep a watch on their lives

to ensure that they're following Christ's law rather than their own sinful desires. And the other thing he wants to remind them of these predictions are meant to forewarn believers against scoffing false teachers whose arguments are plausible sounding and they need to be carefully countered or refuted. Believers can recognize these charlatans, these false teachers by their lives. They follow their own desires. It says in verse three, they're called scoffers.

So we can tell that they have a certain type of attitude to them that may give it away what they're after. So you can tell from their lives, but you'd also tell from their doctrine, which blatantly contradicts both the scripture and reason. So these two things that Peter wants to remind his beloved friends of the commandment, the predictions, those are the two points for our sermon tonight. What is it that Peter wants to remind them?

What is God reminding us of through this text tonight? First of all, the commandment, the commandment of the Lord and Savior through your apostles. Really what this is saying in context is that we are to live morally in light of the second coming. That's what he's addressing in this passage. Just to rewind for a second here, remember that there are false teachers that are being addressed in this letter, but until this point in the book, we haven't actually heard

what they were teaching, right? If we go all the way back to chapter one, Peter is exhorting his audience to live in a way, supplementing their faith with virtue, with knowledge, with self-control, steadfastness, godliness, brotherly affection, love exhort them to moral living. And then he says, I'm writing you these reminders. And then at the end of chapter one, how, what is the basis for our knowledge of God? It's the scriptures.

And then he moves to chapter two where he just he, he goes at it with the false teachers. He points out all of their immorality in the ways that they're living completely contrary to God's will for humans. But he hasn't actually gotten to the false teaching yet. That's what he's getting to now. And we see that the teaching that they were putting forth was a denial of the return of Christ and a final judgment. That's what they were teaching against.

They say, where is the promise of his coming? He's not gonna come. He's not going to judge the world. And in response to that, Peter says, remember Jesus' commandment. He commanded you to live a certain way. The false teacher's doctrine of second coming, Christ's second coming, or or lack thereof, has led them to live following their own desires. Again as it says in verse three. And you can go back, review everything in in chapter two

about how they were living in a way that was completely contradictory to God's will.

In contrast to this, Peter says, how we understand history to go our understanding that Christ will return leads us to live in a certain way. Now, we've seen this already in in second Peter. There's a connection between doctrine and life, what you believe and how you live. It's very prominent, Peter makes the point. Saving knowledge of Christ leads to a changed life. It has to. And the payoff of this text is that a specific piece of knowledge, the fact

that Christ will return, that he will judge the living and the dead and all the world. That doctrine or that fact is inextricably linked with a certain type of life and behavior and outcome. It produces an upright and obedient life in those who know that they are accountable before God. If you know that, if you know that you stand and live before the face of God Coram, then you will know that you are required to live an obedient and upright life.

And the doctrine of the final judgment reminds us of this. There will be a reckoning for how we live our lives.

The Bible presents the final judgment as a crucial reason for our pursuit of righteousness. It doesn't sound particularly nice to us. It sounds pretty fearful. We don't like the idea of fearing God perhaps, but that's what this text is. That's the logic of this text that you will follow the commandments of Jesus if you understand that he's going to return and judge the world. Now, of course, we're not teaching works righteousness.

I'm not trying to say that. Throw out the gospel everyone try to be good enough so that you can stand on your own merits before Christ when he returns and say, I have been good enough. I deserve no condemnation. But again, as we've seen if, if, if it's true that we have been saved by Christ, our lives will reflect that in some way imp perfectly, yes, but there will be a transformed life. And so every human will be judged according to

how they lived, whether they followed God in his commandments or not. Now we have to address an objection to this text. Remember what I said earlier, the Bible presents the final judgment as a reason for us to live moral lives. So the fact that God is watching that he's keeping account and that he will judge is a reason that we ought to obey. People don't like that. There's a complaint that's often raised against this theology.

Whenever you have a person who stands up, who says morality has to come from some sort of law giver, some transcendent person who gives a law, and that we are moral because we're accountable to that law giver and someone else stands up and says that's not the case. They say it's it's perfectly possible. In fact, it's even likely that humans can be good on their own. They don't need a stern divine judge looking down from on

high to keep them in check. People will just figure out the right thing to do by themselves and they'll do it. If you believe in them, they will do it. There's a lot of that in Christmas movies I've been noticing recently because of the whole Santa keeping track of what's right and what's wrong, and there's the believe in Santa is usually the moral of the story. But then there's also this message, well believe in the goodness of people

that if you present them with a choice, they will choose what's right. And of course that's real works. Righteousness living for the approval of Santa Claus, working your way onto the nice list instead of the naughty list. We don't believe in that. We believe that there's an inner transformation that comes that saves us and gives us total acceptance before God, the ability to obey him because we are already clean in his sight

'cause he's already saved us and justified us. But people don't like this idea. They don't like the idea that Santa judges them. They certainly don't like the idea that God judges them and that he is the reason for our pursuit of morality because he will judge, because he will evaluate our lives. How do you respond to that complaint? Well, there's at least three responses. The first is biblical, which is that humans aren't good.

They say, well, we can be good without God. We don't need him. That's just not true. According to the Bible, we can't be good without God. We're not stuck between right and wrong. Just trying, hoping that we're gonna make the right decision that some people will, will eventually choose what's right. Humans are dead and lost in sin, slaves to sin desperately wicked at the core. And so when we look around and we see humans living decent upright lives,

that's not because they're really moral at heart. The Bible would say that's because of God's restraining grace in their lives, his mercy on them and his mercy to all who live in this world that things are not as bad as they could be. And he shows his mercy in his goodness, to the righteous and to the wicked, those who belong to him and those who don't. And part of that goodness is to keep things from becoming as bad as they are.

And so if, if there are those who don't trust in God who are able to do the right thing from time to time, that's not due to anything good in them, but only God's grace. And so when we hear a news story about someone who has done something so horrendously terrible that it turns your stomach, you shouldn't think that sinner is of some worse kind than I am, that that's a, that's especially depraved species of human. What we need to think is I could be there.

I could be in that position if it weren't for the grace of God restraining my own wickedness and my bent towards sin and toward evil. So that's one response we we are, we are un unable, we're helpless, we are sinners at heart. It's a biblical complain or a biblical response. Second is a philosophical response to the idea that people can be good without God. When an atheist says people can do what's right apart from God, he's neglecting to define what right means.

How do you know if this person can do what's right and what's wrong? Great, but who decides who's to say what, right and what wrong is? Yes, many non-religious people do live in a way that is good, that is right in some sense. But who's to say where that comes from? Where does that conception of morality come from without some kind of law and therefore a law giver? It's theoretically impossible to tell what the difference

between right and wrong is in any absolute sense. Now, some people see this clearly. They say, well actually that's true. And so what we need to do is construct some sort of basis for culturally dependent right and wrong. So that really we are the ones who decide what's right and wrong and then we hold ourselves accountable. And that could work perhaps for a while. Morality, that's relative. We all just sort of get along the best as we can.

But that problem, it just pushes it further back. That answer to the problem, whether we as humans have the authority to construct our own morality is not actually the issue here. It's not just where does the law come from, but it's why should we obey it at all? If the law is there, great. If you say, I ought to behave a certain way, but why should I obey a certain way? Why should anyone obey that moral code? If someone rebels against your laws that you made, on

what basis do you hold them accountable? Why should he be punished? You see the problem here, if there's not an absolute moral code, sort of an unbiased observer who can say this is what's right and what's wrong, morality of any relative type simply becomes a matter of, Mike makes right? Literally the strongest person with the loudest voice and the most people on their side defines what's right. And whoever holds the biggest stick,

whoever has the most power, gets to punish the people who do what they don't want them to do. And that's obviously wrong. We look at situations like that and say, that's an abuse of power. They're transgressing some sort of transcendent moral code. But on what basis do we do that? If morality is simply relative and culturally embedded, A last objection is historical. You can see that in this passage right here, right?

Where does the immorality of the false teachers come from? Why are they immoral? Because they've rejected certain doctrines. So someone might say, again, their complaint is, man can be good apart from God. Right Here we have a counter example to that. We have people saying, we don't need to fear God, therefore let's do whatever we want. We don't have to obey. We can follow our own desires wherever they lead because we have no fear

of Christ's return in a final judgment. So at least in this case, some non-believers we're making the logical connection. If I'm not accountable to anyone, then I can do whatever I please. I can live however I want. And there's more examples of this from history. Some of you may have read the book, brave New World by Aldis Huxley. And he said this in an essay for myself as no doubt for most of my contemporaries, my philosophy

was essentially an instrument of liberation. The liberation we desired was simultaneously liberation from a certain political and economic system. And listen to this, what else does he want? Liberation from liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to that morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom. We objected to the political and economic system because it was unjust, but we objected to that moral system

and we constructed a philosophy that allowed us to ignore it because we wanted freedom in this part of our lives. He says there was one admirably, simple method of confusing the Christians and at the same time justifying ourselves in our revolt. We could deny that the world had any meaning whatsoever. Very honest, very I I appreciate Huxley's honesty there. He's, he's admitting openly that his denial of a transcendent meaning to the world,

it didn't just give him an excuse to follow his own desires. That was actually the reason that he pursued that philosophy to begin with. He wanted to believe a certain way because it gave him license to live a certain way.

We could pilot more examples throughout the 20th century. Many of the most horrendous civil human rights abuses were committed at the behest of explicitly atheist governments in Russia and China and Cambodia and other places.

As the Russian author Dostoevsky wrote in one of his novels, if God does not exist, everything's permitted whatever we want. So biblically, philosophically, historically, the idea of accountability to God as the law giver is far more acceptable than the alternative in this world. Many will scoff, they will laugh at you. They will laugh at the idea of a final judgment, that Christ will come on the clouds and separate the sheep from the goats.

When we say we obey God because we believe that he sees our hearts and he expects us to follow his commandments, they'll cry out how absurd. But their scoffing is unfounded. Friends, you don't need to fear it. It's contradicted by the Bible, by reason, by history. And so it's, it's drifts away in the wind. It's it's smoke, it's chaff. It's nothing to fear. However, furthermore, I should say Peter wants us to see that these taunts, the laughter of these mocking people

is not even a surprising thing to encounter. That leads us to point number two, the predictions of the holy prophets.

Peter was writing this letter not to the scoffers, but to Christians. He knew that some of these people, his beloved ones, they were shaken in their faith because of the scoffers that they had found and heard from. And they were wondering, are God's promises gonna come true? Is he really going to return? Is his word really dependable for me? And the main danger for that group of people? And you may find yourself in that group, sometimes

the scoffing shakes you, destabilizes you and demoralizes you. The main danger is that the scoffing would lead Christians astray and it would shake the foundations of their faith. Well, what Peter says in first Peter chapter four is this, beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you as though something strange were happening to you. You gotta love Peter's realism. Just why the sky's not falling.

We should expect these things. Christ promised us that they would happen. And in the same way Peter says here, beloved, do not be surprised at the scoffers and their scoffing and their assertions against God's truth as though we're strange to find such people in the world. It's not strange, it's utterly expected because of the predictions of the holy prophets. The scoffers are wrong to rail against God, but it's utterly unsurprising that they do.

So it's not something that should shock us. We should fully expect to encounter people like this. So Peter's writing to say, don't be alarmed by these wolves in sheep's clothing. We've known for a long time that they were gonna show up. In fact, they were predicted by the prophets. A matter of biblical record. Jeremiah 1715, behold they say to me, where is the word of the Lord? Let it come. Jeremiah dealt with scoffers. Malachi two 17.

You have weed the Lord with your words. But you say, how have we weed him by saying, everyone who does evil is good in the sight of the Lord and he delights in them or by asking, where is the God of justice? Scoffers in the days of Malachi or in the Psalms, as with a deadly wound in my bones, my adversaries taunt me or they scoff against me. You could translate that word while they say to me all the day long, where is your God?

Psalm 69, zeal for your house has consumed me. And the reproaches of those who reproach, you have fallen on me. The scoffing that they scoff toward you have fallen on me. That Psalm, Psalm 69 is applied twice in the New Testament to Christ. In John chapter two talks about his zeal for God's house. But then the part about reproaches is in Romans 15, Christ is the one against whom the scoffing is primarily directed, not us.

He is the one against whom the scoffers are taking aim and his word, the word of Christ is full of these predictions and just the reality that there will be enemies of God and his truth in the world. And even amongst God's people at times the New Testament writers as well, they knew about scoffers and they wrote about them too. One Timothy four, I love how clear this is. Now, this spirit expressly says that in later times,

some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared or listen to the crystal clear logic of one John two 18 children is the last hour. And as you have heard that antichrist is coming. So now many antichrist have come. Therefore we know that it is the last hour. How do we know that we're living in this age of the world?

Because there's scoffers, because there's false teachers in our midst later thankfully it says that they go out from us and it becomes apparent that these fall teachers are who they are. God is protecting his church. He's separating even now in some ways at times, the goats and the sheep. But we see here not only that the scoffers are predicted and we know that they'll be in our midst. And so we shouldn't be surprised or afraid or alarmed,

but it actually confirms our confidence in God's word when they appear, because God predicted that these people would come. The appearance of the scoffers is closely related to Christ's second coming. How do we know that we live in the last days? Because the antichrist have come. The false teachers, the false prophets, the scoffers have come. So rather than being persuaded or shaken by their arguments, we should be all the more sure

in our confession of Christ's return. So we don't need to be worried. We don't need to be surprised.

But is that how comforting is that really to just say, scarfers are here, but you know what? We knew they'd show up, so just try to ignore them. That's not what Peter does. He says, oh, I'm gonna, I'm gonna take it head on. And the rest of this passage is him pointing out how they're wrong and how what they're saying is false. He answers the scoffers. He doesn't just say, well, you're here and there's nothing I can do about it.

He says, let me point out why this teaching is false

uses a threefold argument against these opponents. And it's in verses five, six and seven, each of the three points that he makes. Verses uh, verse five says, they deliberately overlook this fact that the heavens existed long ago and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God. So what is the contention of the false teachers in verse four? They're saying, we don't need to fear a second coming.

We don't need to believe in such things because we believe in a uniform history. All things are continuing as they have been. All things are the same since when, since the fathers fell asleep, since the beginning of the world, from the beginning of creation, all things are continuing as they were. There's no change. Therefore we don't have to fear that there's gonna be some catastrophic event where Christ appears because that doesn't happen.

And when we look at history and Peter points out you false prophets scoffers, you agree that creation is a thing which is kind of a big deal. God formed the heavens and the earth. That's an intervention. That is God powerfully reaching down and making a change in the course of what goes on. And so that's one way that they have failed to see that God is indeed active and that he does intervene. He doesn't simply step back

and watch things unfold by appealing to the creation. These opponents were actually agreeing that there was a beginning, a time when God had acted. So that's point number one. They fail that test. Point number two is in verse six, God has created the world. And then it says, by means of these, namely by means of water and by the word of God. These things, two things by means of these, the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished.

Peter's favorite Bible story is Noah and the Ark. It's all over. First Peter and second Peter, he loves talking about it. And here he goes again. He says, what are you talking about? God doesn't judge. He's not gonna judge the world. He already did. He did it once in an extremely visible public and catastrophic way. He's already done it. So on what basis do you say that's not gonna happen again? Because it could and it did happen once.

So that's point number two in verse six. And verse seven is the last point. By the same word, God's word, the heavens and the earth that now exist are being stored up or or are stored up for fire being kept until the day of judgment. So God created the world, judged it through the flood and has promised in his word that he's going to judge it by fire this time. 'cause we know that he promised he would not send another

flood to destroy the world. He said nothing about fire. And so God has promised in other places, and we can look at predictions from the prophets. There's one in Malachi for instance, where it talks about God using fire to judge this world.

So again, we have Peter saying, don't be afraid of the scoffers. We know that they're here and you can refute their arguments. You can do it. They're wrong and you can show how they're wrong. Interestingly, even by their own logic, they're wrong, right? The idea of creation, which they acknowledge proves that they're the premise of their argument is faulty, that it's not true. So Christians don't need to be afraid of these arguments.

They're fully expected and they can be defeated. Christians don't need to fear scoffers. There is, however, a group that does need to be afraid to those who scoff and willfully ignore God's revelation. This text is issuing a solemn warning, an indirect warning, but a warning nonetheless. And the main danger for this group is that they would succeed at closing their eyes to what God has said and that they would continue

to be kept for the day of judgment. Do you notice in verse five, the positively frightening way that verse five begins? Look at the adverb that he uses. They deliberately overlook this fact deliberately, willfully on purpose. The chilling thought that human hearts are so naturally inclined to ignore and to overcome God's truth if they can, that they look for ways to deliberately ignore or misinterpret the truth about God, the world themselves.

And the chilling part is that they're successful in it. They succeed in shutting their eyes. Sometimes God opens eyes that have willfully chosen blindness. Sometimes he soften hearts softens them that have done all that they could to, to armor and shield themselves against his truth. Some of you are trophies of God's grace and you can tell a testimony about how hardened you were to God and his word until he intervened in your life,

until he reached down on an individual level. And like Paul, the scales fell from your eyes. You could see the truth and it was glorious. Sometimes God does that, sometimes he doesn't. Sometimes people succeed in their desire to overlook God's facts and their belief that the judgment will never come, does not exempt them from it. It will not save them. Verse seven says that there's a keeping for judgment, a storing up of the world until God chooses

to render his verdict. As Roman two five. Romans two five says, because of your hard and imp penitent heart, you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath. When God's righteous judgment will be revealed, the chilling, chilling thought

reminds me of Psalm two. I'm gonna close with this. Why do the nations rage and the people's plot and vain, the kings of the earth set themselves deliberately and they take counsel together against the Lord and against his anointed saying, let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us. Let's cast off their morality. He who sits in the heavens laughs the Lord holds them in derision. Then he will speak to them in his wrath

and terrify them in his fury saying, as for me, I have set my king on Zion, my holy hill. I will tell of the decree the Lord said to me, you are my son today. I have begotten you ask of me and I'll make the nations your heritage and the ends of the earth your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel. Now therefore, oh kings, be wise, be warned over rulers of the earth.

Serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the son lest he be angry and you perish in the way for his wrath is quickly kindled. Blessed our all who take refuge in him. Notice verse four on the theme of scoffing that we have seen clearly tonight in this text, verse four says that the Lord who sits in heaven laughs at human unbelief that he scoffs rebellious humans may scoff for now against God and his truth.

But God's disdain is infinitely more sobering today. There may be snarky atheists on Reddit when Twitter scoring cheap shots against religion, sharing memes that mock the idea of accountability to God and his creation. But tomorrow they'll be facing that God and his laughter, unlike theirs will be completely and totally justified. But as for us, we don't need to rage against people like this. We don't need to start wars in the comment section.

We need to pray. Proverbs 3 34 says, toward the scorners, he is scornful. But to the humble he gives favor. Let's pray that God would open the eyes of scorners and scoffers. Let's patiently persuade them with the truth of the Bible and sound arguments. Whenever we have opportunity to do so, let's remain humble knowing that we we'd be just as hardhearted as them if it weren't for the grace of God. And as Peter wrote to remind us, let's remember

that these scoffers may come, but those who stand in the solid rock of God's word have no need to fear their mockery. Right

Christ, you are our prophet and our priest, and you are our king. We see your glory in your grace and your mercy toward us, and we see it in your righteousness that you will have the last laugh. No one will triumph over you and over your justice. Help us to rejoice in you with trembling and take refuge in you always and to have mercy on the mocks and the scoffers. We pray that you would bring many of them into your fold and your church.

In Christ's name we pray, amen.