Telling the Truth

Guest (Male): Every passing moment brings us one step closer to the day of the Lord. How should that shape the way we live? Today, Stuart Briscoe brings you an encouraging message on how to make the most of the time God has given you. That's coming up in just a moment, but first.

Today's culture is a revolving door of ever-shifting views and beliefs. That's why it's so important to test new ideas against the timeless truth of Scripture. It's the best defense against the world's confusion. We want to help ground you in the foundations of your faith by sending you Stuart Briscoe's six-message series on the book of 2 Peter: "Six Things We Must Never Forget."

The "Six Things We Must Never Forget" series is our thanks for your gift to help keep "Telling the Truth" going strong, sharing life-giving teaching from Stuart and Jill with more people all over the world. So request your copy when you give today and get help staying grounded in truth in today's shifting culture. Call 1-800-889-5388. That's 1-800-889-5388. Or you can give online at tellingthetruth.org. Now, here's Stuart with his message, "God Is Still God and Firmly in Control."

Stuart Briscoe: As we turn once again to Peter's second epistle and today, the third chapter. While you're finding the place in your Bible, let me just remind you that Peter wrote this epistle because he was very much concerned that the believers in his day had a tendency to forget some of the basic things. One of the reasons that there was a tendency that they might forget them was that many false teachers had arrived in the community of believers and were confusing the believers on the issues of what was true and what was false.

He was particularly concerned about what the teachers or the false teachers were saying about the day of the Lord or the end of the world. He addresses this subject very, very forthrightly as we will see as I read to you from 2 Peter chapter three, verse one: "Dear friends, this is now my second letter to you. I have written both of them as reminders to stimulate you to wholesome thinking. 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. First of all, you must understand that in the last days, scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires.

They will say, 'Where is this coming he promised? Ever since our fathers died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation.' But they deliberately forget that long ago by God's word the heavens existed and the earth was formed out of water and with water. By water also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed. By the same word the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.

But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord, a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare," or burned up.

"Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives 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. But in keeping with his promise, we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness."

Now, I think you'll agree with me that that is a pretty straightforward, strong passage of Scripture. You'll notice that Peter has written this, as he says, in order to stimulate you to wholesome thinking. So, let's be encouraged. Nobody ever died of thinking. Some people seem to be a little afraid of it, but we should not be afraid of thinking. We should not be afraid of thinking through what God has revealed in His word.

It is very important that we should understand this. Psychologists have been helpful in getting some of us in touch with our feelings—particularly the British. But I think perhaps the pendulum has swung too far in some areas. One gets the impression in some aspects of the church that people are more interested in feeling their experiences than they are in thinking through the truth. Now, there's certainly a place for feeling, there's certainly a place for experience, but undergirding it all, there has to be the proclamation of truth and careful thinking through—or as Peter would put it, stimulation to wholesome thinking.

There are three things that I believe he wants us to think about here. Number one: God is still God and firmly committed to His promises. God is still God and firmly committed to His promises. You'll notice that Peter starts off by saying, "I want you to recall the words spoken in the past by the holy prophets and the commands given by our Lord and Savior through your apostles." These commands and these promises, these things that God outlined, all had to do with His objectives. God has clearly outlined His objectives for this world in which we live.

He did this first of all through the prophets, and there are many places where you can turn in the prophets and find passages that talk about an eventual event that is called in the Old Testament, and also in the New Testament, the day of the Lord. The day of the Lord was understood to be a time when God would bring everything to a final accounting. That this final accounting would be a time of tremendous blessing for some and a time of tremendous judgment for others. The day of the Lord would separate, if you like, the sheep from the goats, which is a biblical expression as well.

The day of the Lord would be God's final reckoning, and all over the Old Testament you'll find allusions to this. This is what Peter is saying. He's saying, "I want to stimulate you to wholesome thinking about God's objectives clearly outlined for us in the prophets." Let me give you an example from Zephaniah. Don't bother turning to it because we'll be through by the time you find it, probably, because it's a very small book, very rarely read. But this is what it says: "The great day of the Lord is near—near and coming quickly. Listen! The cry on the day of the Lord will be bitter, the shouting of the warrior there.

That day will be a day of wrath, a day of distress and anguish, a day of trouble and ruin, a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and blackness, a day of trumpet and battle cry against the fortified cities and against the corner towers. I will bring distress on the people and they will walk like blind men because they have sinned against the Lord." Now, that is sort of a sample of the kind of things that the Old Testament prophets were warning the people about concerning the day of the Lord.

You may say, "Well, you know, these wild-eyed prophets, they used to go around frightening everybody to death. We don't need to worry too much about them." Well, notice what Peter says: "I want you to recall the words spoken in the past by the holy prophets and the command given by our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ." Now, he's coupling what the prophets said here with what Jesus said. Now, you'll remember of course that when Jesus was talking to His disciples immediately prior to His crucifixion, He said, "Now, I'm going away, but don't worry, I'm going to prepare a place for you. Don't let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God, so just trust me."

He said, "I'm going to prepare a place for you," and then He made this tremendous statement: "And if I go away, I will come again. If I go away, I will come again." Now, you may remember of course that when Jesus did ascend into heaven, the disciples were watching Him disappear, and the angel said to them, "Why are you standing looking into heaven? This same Jesus whom you have seen going into heaven will come again in a similar fashion." Of course, the teaching of Jesus was very, very straightforward on this—that He was going to go away and that He would come again.

Paul, writing to Timothy, said this: "There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of pleasure, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God—having a form of godliness but denying its power." Does that sound like today's newspaper? Well, how did Paul describe that? He said, "There'll be terrible times in the last days."

So what did the prophets tell us? What did Jesus tell us? What did the apostles tell us? They told us that one day the day of the Lord will come. And leading up to the day of the Lord—that day of ultimate judgment and ultimate blessing—will be what are known as the last days. Now, the question that people will quite often ask me is, "Do you believe we are living in the last days?" And the answer of course is, yes. Yes, of course we're living in the last days. In fact, the last days we know began certainly at the day of Pentecost, so we've been living in the last days for 2,000 years, give or take a year or two.

So that doesn't satisfy them. Then they say, "Are we living in the last of the last days? Are we living in the last of the last days?" And I say, "I have absolutely no idea," and I'll let you into a secret: neither does anybody else. Nobody else knows. Now, there are some people who spend a tremendous amount of time and energy figuring out when Jesus will come, and I have good news for you: whenever they've figured out when He will come, of one thing you can be sure—He won't. For He promised that He would come at such a time as we don't expect Him.

In other words, He will come like a thief in the night. Now, there's a very real sense, of course, in which for 2,000 years all that Jesus said would happen in the last days has been happening. So there's a very real sense in which He could come at absolutely any time. But all you need to be concerned about is this: He'll come when He's good and ready, and you make sure you're good and ready. I just wanted to stimulate you to some wholesome thinking about His objectives. All right, now let's talk about the objections of these scoffers.

These are the false teachers and the people who follow the false teaching. These are the people who are saying in effect, "Look, don't worry about this day of the Lord nonsense. Don't get yourself all worked up about that. And don't get yourself thinking about this return of Jesus and all that kind of stuff. You don't need to worry about that." And the reason for it is this: Jesus said He would return, right? The answer of course would be in Peter's time, "Yeah, that's exactly what He said." "Well, He hasn't come, has He?" "Well, no." "Well, that's a little embarrassing, isn't it?" "Well, frankly, yes." "Well, don't worry about it. He said He would come, He hasn't, He won't. He said He would, He hasn't, He won't."

"So don't worry about all that stuff, that just doesn't count at all." Now, does this resonate with you? Would you say that it is quite possible that there are some people in our society today who don't take seriously this idea that there will be a final day of accounting, there will be a final day of judgment, and that Christ will return and will establish His eternal kingdom? Are there any people who would scoff at that idea in your circle of influence? And I would be very surprised if the answer is, "Yes, of course, there are many people like that."

I want to tell you something about those people. If you read carefully what Peter says here, he says that there will be scoffing and following their own evil desires. There'll be scoffing and following their own evil desires. Now, let me suggest something to you. Sometimes people will think through a situation, arrive at an intellectual conviction, take it to its moral conclusion, and live accordingly. In other words, "This is what I believe, and because this is what I believe, this is how I behave." And that's great when people do that.

Let me suggest to you that sometimes it works exactly the opposite way around. "This is how I behave. The reason I behave like this is because I want to behave like this. Oh, and by the way, I don't worry about behaving this way because I want to behave this way, because I have rationalized my position. So I am now perfectly comfortable. I'm doing what I want, and I feel good about doing what I want, and I no longer worry about the things that I feel good about because I have rationalized the way I used to think about them." And I would submit to you that in all probability, there are more people operating that way than the other way.

The scoffers were certainly working like that. They were scoffing about this idea of the day of the Lord and Christ returning because they were following their own evil desires. Now, this is how it worked: If in Peter's day you believed in the day of the Lord, and you believed in a final judgment, and you believed that Christ was going to return, I tell you what: you lived making sure you didn't have your hand in the cookie jar when Jesus came. But now some other folks have come along and they said, "Oh, the heck with it. I don't want to live like that. There's all kinds of stuff I want to do. There's all kind of junk I want to get into. I've got my own desires and I've got my own passions, and the heck with it, I'm going to do it anyway."

And then do you know what they would do? After they decided they were going to live this way, behave this way, then they'd have to go back to the drawing board and redo their theology. And that is what happens when people follow their own evil desires and become scoffers. Watch it. I can give you lots of examples of this. It is not uncommon to have people come for counseling. We're glad when people come for counsel, we do all that we can do to help. One thing I've observed is this: some people come for counseling—that's what they call it—but they don't come for counseling. They've already decided what they're going to do; they come for endorsement.

Okay, now I don't think I'm letting any secrets out here. You've probably done it yourself. They don't come for counsel; they come for endorsement. Sometimes you'll find that not only have they come for endorsement of what they have already decided to do, but they have already decided to do that which is flatly contradictory to what they profess to believe. But they want endorsement of it. And when you point out, "I cannot possibly endorse what you've decided to do because it is flatly contradictory to what you profess to believe," they say, and then they reorganize their beliefs—restructure their believing.

So for instance, somebody doesn't want to be married to this guy they're married to anymore. Now they had all the world to choose from, they chose him, and they've regretted it ever since. And now there's a neighbor moved in, and he is far superior in every dimension to this clown that they've got themselves stuck with. And they've become very attracted to this guy, and he has become very attracted to them, and so there's a little bit going on the side here, and they're getting into stuff they have no business getting into. And so now she has decided that she's going to divorce her husband on the hope that she can marry this guy.

And when you ask her about it, she says this: "Well, you see, God wants me to be happy, and I'm very unhappy with this man, but I could be happy with him. Now then, if God wants me to be happy and He knows I'm unhappy and He knows why I'm unhappy, obviously He'd want me out of this unhappy situation and He knows where I could be happy. And if God wants me to be happy, guess what? That's where He wants me to be." What are they doing? What are they doing? They're arriving at an intellectual position driven by their own sinful desires.

And that was what was happening in Peter's day. And so Peter says to them, "Now watch out for these folks. They will not only scoff at the idea of ultimate judgment, but they are simply being driven by their own evil desires." And in addition to that, he says something else: "You also need to know that these people are deliberately forgetting some things." Now, you can forget some things just because you're forgetful, but sometimes you can forget things deliberately. They were deliberately forgetting that their theory that God does not intervene and God will not intervene was clearly wrong because they were carefully forgetting the historical record of the interventions that God had made in human history.

So Peter says, "Now look, let's be clear about this. Let's be clear about it. God has outlined His objectives. These are the objections that you'll get from these people, but you have an obligation." And this is your obligation: to be stimulated to wholesome thinking. Have you taken the time out to think through what Scripture says about the day of the Lord and the return of Christ? Have you taken time to think through what your own position is concerning ultimate, eventual evaluation of all things by our holy and righteous God?

Guest (Male): More teaching from Stuart and Jill Briscoe is coming up, so stay with us. Did you know you can find more life-giving content from the Briscoes at tellingthetruth.org and on the "Telling the Truth" app? There, you can sign up for daily devotionals, watch videos, read blogs, and access a variety of other resources to help you experience life. And while you're there, you can also request this month's featured resource as thanks for your gift of support to help share the abundant life Jesus offers with more people around the world. Visit us online or download the app today and experience life with "Telling the Truth." Now, let's return to today's message on "Telling the Truth."

Stuart Briscoe: Nobody else knows. Now, there are some people who spend a tremendous amount of time and energy figuring out when Jesus will come, and I have good news for you: whenever they've figured out when He will come, of one thing you can be sure—He won't. For He promised that He would come at such a time as we don't expect Him. In other words, He will come like a thief in the night. Now, there's a very real sense, of course, in which for 2,000 years all that Jesus said would happen in the last days has been happening. So there's a very real sense in which He could come at absolutely any time. But all you need to be concerned about is this: He'll come when He's good and ready, and you make sure you're good and ready. I just wanted to stimulate you to some wholesome thinking.

Guest (Male): Would you remind us again Stuart, what the coming day of the Lord should motivate us to do as believers?

Stuart Briscoe: Well, I think something better than me reminding you would be to remind you of what Peter actually said about this. In 2 Peter chapter three—you should read the chapter—he talks about the fact that the day of the Lord will come, even though in Peter's day there were some people mocking. They said, "Ah, this day of the Lord is not going to happen. Where is the promise of Christ's coming? All this kind of stuff. It's a lot of malarkey," or whatever the first-century equivalent to malarkey was.

But the apostle Peter goes on to say, "Look, the day of the Lord will come, and the heavens and the earth will be destroyed, et cetera, et cetera, and God will create new heavens and new earth." And then he says, "With all this in mind, what sort of people ought we to be?" And he gives the answer himself—typical preacher—asks a question because he knows the answer himself. What sort of people ought we to be? We ought to be people who live holy and godly lives as we look forward to the day of God and speed its coming. Holy lives—that is talking about the fact that we are committed to the Lord and His purposes. Godly—that is, we are seeking to reflect something of His character. Looking forward means that we have a sense of objective, and speeding its coming means that we're actively serving and bringing about the purposes of God. That's the kind of motivation that comes from the day of the Lord.

Guest (Male): Thanks for listening to "Telling the Truth" today. We're so glad you've joined us and we pray this message has helped you experience more of the abundant life Jesus promises.

Today's culture is a revolving door of ever-shifting views and beliefs. That's why it's so important to test new ideas against the timeless truth of Scripture. It's the best defense against the world's confusion. We want to help ground you in the foundations of your faith by sending you Stuart Briscoe's six-message series on the book of 2 Peter: "Six Things We Must Never Forget." This series will anchor you in six time-tested truths from God's Word so you can stand strong in your beliefs as you remember the deep spiritual truths that are foundational to your faith.

The "Six Things We Must Never Forget" series is our thanks for your gift to help keep "Telling the Truth" going strong, sharing life-giving teaching from Stuart and Jill with more people all over the world. So request your copy when you give today and get help staying grounded in truth in today's shifting culture. Call 1-800-889-5388. That's 1-800-889-5388. Or you can give online at tellingthetruth.org. Thanks for listening today. Be sure to come back again tomorrow for more biblical encouragement and teaching from the Briscoes. Experience life next time on "Telling the Truth."