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I want to welcome you back for day four of our look through 2nd Peter chapter 3.
Peter is telling us all through 2nd Peter about how to have the kind of faith
that will last. And one of the keys to that that we're seeing this week is
looking forward and not backward, looking forward with hope.

First he's told us to realize that scoffers will come about this. So don't let
that bother you and keep you from looking forward because God is patient. God
can be trusted to keep his promise.

You keep hanging on to that. Scoffers will come and now he turns to the truth
that Jesus will come to the promise that God will keep. In verse 10, "But the
day of the Lord will come as unexpectedly as a thief.

Then the heavens will pass away with a terrible noise and the very elements
themselves will disappear in fire and the earth and everything on it will be
found to deserve judgment. " He says here Jesus will come. Now this is not the
picture of 1st Thessalonians, the rapture that Paul talks about what will happen
to believers.

This is the picture of what will happen to this earth, this world system, this
place where evil resides. He's going to do away with it. Of course it has to be
done away with.

Now God's not going to do away with us. Human beings last forever either in
relationship with God in heaven or separated from God in hell. We last forever.

He's going to do away with this world because it is an evil place. This day will
come, he says, like a thief. It will come unexpectedly.

But he also says it will come with a roar, with a fire. It will come obviously.
Jesus comes unexpectedly but he does not come quietly.

All will see at the second coming of Christ and all will change. All on this
earth, he says, will deserve judgment because the way of this earth is a way of
selfishness. It deserves to be judged.

It deserves to be done away with and it will be one day. All evil will be done
away with. One day God will close the books on this evil world and begin the
eternity of a perfect heaven and earth.

And that is what I'm looking forward to. That's what you're looking forward to.
When he talks about it he says it's the day of God.

This day of a new heaven, a new earth, a day of a world that's filled with God's
righteousness. Now how do you do that? How do you look forward to that?

In the way you think, the songs that you sing, well that's part of it. But the
primary way in the New Testament you and I are told to look forward to Jesus'
second coming is by how we live. You look forward to the second coming of Christ
by how you live.

Verse 11 to 14, Peter writes, "Since everything around us is going to be
destroyed like this, what holy and godly lives you should have. Looking forward
to the day of God and hurrying it along. On that day he will set the heavens on
fire and the elements will melt away in the flames.

But we are looking forward to the new heavens and new earth he has promised, a
world filled with God's righteousness. And so, dear friends, while you're
waiting for these things to happen, make every effort to be found living
peaceful lives that are pure and blameless in his sight. " Peter's very clear
here.

You look forward by how you live. Now he talks again here about the heavens on
fire, the elements melting. That can be scary to some people.

It's only scary if you're holding on to the world system that we have now, if
you're holding on to what we have now, and it's not something I want to hold on
to. The pain, the suffering, the hurt that's in this world, I'm glad that it's
going to be done away with. I'm glad that God's creating a new heaven and a new
earth as he has promised.

And so Peter says, "Since you know what you're looking at now isn't going to
last, why would you live for that? Live for what's going to happen. Live holy
lives.

When you see where this world is headed, that should cause you to lessen your
grip on the worldly. The truth of the second coming, it shows us that this world
is a shaky place. And if the instability of the world is all that you see,
you've missed the point and you'll just feel fearful about this.

That's not the point. We also need to see, Peter says, "I want you to see that
the new heaven, the new earth, that is a solid place, unshakable, a place you
can trust in. " I want you to listen again with me to verses 11 and 12.

There are three words at the end of these verses that are a real surprise. He
writes, "Since everything around us is going to be destroyed like this, what
holy and godly lives you should live, looking forward to the day of God and
hurrying it along. " Those three words, hurrying it along.

Another version says, "You need to speed its coming. " What do you think that
means? Is the Bible saying that you can do something that moves the time of the
coming of Jesus Christ closer?

It absolutely is. We speed its coming. We hurry it along somehow.

The way that the church witnesses for Christ in some way speeds the coming of
Christ. The way that you live a holy life for Christ and are an example so that
people can come to know Christ, in some way that speeds the coming of Christ.
Because he's not going to come and tell everyone who is meant to know him has
crossed that line and knows him.

And you and I are his witnesses. I'm the one who are bringing people to Christ.
So he says, "Live holy lives.

" If you think that no one cares about your character, it goes unnoticed. You're
wrong. Your character in some way impacts God's timetable for eternity.

That's how important it is. That's what forward-looking faith does for you. The
reminder here is the purpose of prophetic truth.

The purpose of prophetic truth is not speculation, but motivation. I know we
speculate sometimes about when the rapture is going to come and the millennium
and what it exactly means when it says, "Every eye will see him. " I understand
the speculation about that.

And it's okay on one level to do that. But if that's all we do, it's a sin to
talk about these truths of Jesus' second coming with just intellectual
curiosity. Because the Bible so clearly tells us again and again and again that
this truth has to affect the way that you live.

Sometimes we need to move off the program committee for the second coming of
Christ and get on the welcoming committee, welcoming Jesus' coming again,
instead of trying to figure out how it's going to happen, all the details,
rejoice in the fact that it's going to happen and let that change the way you
live your life today. Hurry it along. Now, in practical ways, what does that
mean?

What does it mean to hurry along the second coming of Christ? Well, in the
second coming, he's going to create a new heaven and a new earth. That's where
we're going to live for all eternity.

So in one sense, it means that you start now to live the truth of heaven in your
life. You live forward. You live towards that truth of who you're going to be.

So in what you pray, Jesus taught us to pray that things would be done on earth
as they are in heaven. You look forward to that eternity of perfection and you
pray now with that in mind. That's what it means to hurry it along.

You also do it in what you do. You live holy lives now as we're going to live
holy lives in heaven. Peter's saying, since you're going to live this way for
all eternity, why not start now?

Why waste any time? Why waste one more minute living for what's not going to
last? Start now to live the holy life that you're going to live for all
eternity.

In what you pray, in what you do, also in what you say. You point to God now as
you will in heaven. You're going to glorify God for all eternity in heaven.

Glorify him in your life today. It will glorify God. It will also potentially
bring somebody closer to faith in Christ.

Peter begins to talk about that in verse 15. In verses 15 and 16 he says this,
"And remember, the Lord's patience gives people time to be saved. This is what
our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you with the wisdom that God gave him,
speaking of these things in all of his letters.

Some of his comments are hard to understand, and those who are ignorant and
unstable have twisted his letters to mean something quite different, just as
they do with the other parts of scripture, and this will result in their
destruction. " So Peter has a quick word here about false teachers who are
twisting what the apostle Paul wrote. This is a fascinating comment where you
have Peter talking about the writings of Paul.

Also, did you pick up on the fact that as Peter writes about these writings, he
calls them scripture? He says they twist them just as they do the other parts of
scripture. So here, even at the very beginning, Peter is recognizing that the
way that God worked through the life of Paul in writing that letter, it is
scripture.

And he says that he and Paul agree. Well, obviously, the Holy Spirit is also
writing through Peter here, so they obviously agree because the Holy Spirit is
never going to disagree with himself. They agree that God's patience is there to
give people time to be saved.

Now, if God is waiting for more to be saved, and he's asking you and I to work
to hurry along the return of Christ, the most obvious thing we can do to hurry
along this return of Christ is to be involved in his work of bringing people to
himself. So how can you do that today? That person that you prayed for
yesterday, if you were listening yesterday, how can you keep praying for that
person?

And then how could you take the next step of courage and say, Lord, not only am
I praying for them, I'm also praying for an opportunity that you might use me in
their life to say something, to invite them to church, to invite them to know
you, to invite them to the truth, to be a witness, tell God you're scared, but
ask him to use you, because that's one of the ways that we speed its coming,
that we hurry along the coming of Jesus Christ. Lord Jesus, as we pray, we ask
that you help us to live forward-looking lives. In what we pray, in what we do,
in what we say, help us to live forward, to look forward to the truth of heaven.

Lord, this person that we're concerned about, that we want to see come to know
you, Lord, we pray that you'll speak to them, and we pray a bold prayer that
somehow you might work out a circumstance that you'd use us to speak to them,
that they would say something, they would ask something, that a circumstance
would come up where we could give them a word of faith that would lead them
towards you. We ask this in Jesus' name, amen. Join us tomorrow.

We're going to end our study of this book of 2 Peter with Peter's encouragement
for you to grow in your faith.