Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Are You Prepared for Jesus's Return? | New Testament | 2 Peter 3

Episode Date: February 27, 2023

When you think about the return of Jesus, it makes you take your faith more seriously. So can you be ready for Jesus's return? Why hasn't he returned yet? Keith uses 2 Peter 3 to discuss these questions and more in today's episode. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Join the TMBT community in reading the entire New Testament in one year. Get your FREE reading plan here. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter@TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: 2 Peter 3

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. In college, I had a few pass-fail classes. These are classes you didn't get a traditional grade in, but instead were either graded as a pass or a fail. So the goal, or at least my goal, was to do the least amount of work possible that would earn me a passing grade.

When you know you're going to get a traditional grade, that applies to your GPA, then it sharpens your focus. You work harder. You pay attention. You do the homework. But when you know that your grade really isn't going to matter, it's really not going to count against your GPA, well, you get a little lazy. When you think about the return of Jesus and that you one day will have to stand before him and give an account of your life, well, it makes you take your faith more seriously. You see, if you don't ever think that Jesus will return, if you don't think you'll ever have to stand before him. It's hard to be serious and sober about living for him. Second Peter three is all about the return of Jesus. In this chapter, Peter tells us that Jesus will return, why it's taking

him so long to return, and how we should live until he returns. So let's just dive in in verse three. Peter writes, above 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 ancestors died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation. Peter says that there will be scoffers who deny that Jesus will return.

They say that God is kind of like the boy who cried wolf. Remember the boy that kept saying a wolf had come to attack the sheep when it really hadn't? Well, it's kind of like when God says that he will come, he will return, but so far he hasn't. But in the story of the boy who cried wolf, when the wolf really does come, no one believes the boy. Peter is saying that one day

Jesus will return, and he's asking us if we'll be ready. Peter says that these scoffers, the ones who deny that Jesus will return, that what they're really doing is following their own evil desires. In other words, they deny that Christ will return

because they don't want to be held accountable for their sin. Here's verse 5. 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. By these waters 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 the ungodly. Peter says, look, these scoffers, they deliberately overlooked and intentionally, blinded themselves to God's promise that he will return. They did that because they didn't want it to be

true. Peter compares the return of Jesus to the flood in Genesis 6. There we read that God had warned the people that the rains were coming, the floods were coming, but the people didn't believe him, and so they didn't build an arc, and therefore they were wiped out when the rain did come. Here God warns us. He warns all of us that Jesus is going to return, but most people ignore him to their own peril. But remember that Peter said that this is a deliberate forgetting. In other words, they want to forget because they don't want to be held accountable. Thomas Nagel is a prominent atheist philosopher. He teaches at New York University. And he has this book, which I think is kind of ironically titled, The Last Word. And in it, he writes this. He said,

I want atheism to be true. And I am made uneasy by the fact. fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn't just that I don't believe in God. It's that I hope there is no God. I don't want there to be a God. I don't want the universe to be like that. Do you hear what he's saying? Why doesn't he want there to be a God? Well, because he doesn't want to be accountable to God. So what he's saying is that his atheism is partly shaped based on arguments. Of course, that's true. But it's largely shaped by his desire to live the way he wants to live. Another atheist, or maybe he's better known as an agnostic, is a guy named Aldous Huxley. He wrote the book Brave New World. And he once asked,

is the universe possessed a value and meaning? So in other words, does the universe have any meaning in it? And he says this in response to his own question. He said, I took for granted that there was no meaning in the universe. And I had motives for not wanting the world to have a meaning. So when he says, I have motives, what that means is I was motivated by my desire to live for me, to do my own thing, to follow my own desires, and therefore I said the universe doesn't have meaning. There is no purpose behind it. There is no God that I will eventually be held accountable by. In the next section of 2nd Peter 3, Peter explains why Jesus hasn't returned yet. He starts with this in verse 8. He says, 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. So the first reason that Jesus hasn't returned yet is because God isn't like us. God's timing is not like our timing. We start thinking, look, it's been 2,000 years since Jesus rose and ascended. Maybe he's not coming back. Peter says that we need to remember that God isn't like us. He's eternal and we are finite. Therefore, we have a different relationship. with time. Remember when you were young and you thought Christmas would never come, every day moved so slowly as you look forward to opening your presents. Now, your parents probably thought Christmas came too quickly, probably because they didn't have all their shopping done, but also because an adult's perspective on time is really different than a young kid. Well, God's perspective on

time is very different than ours. We're like the young kid, waiting for the return of Jesus, wondering if it'll ever happen. But to God, a day is like a thousand years and a thousand years like a day. He is not operating according to our schedule. Then in verse 9, Peter tells us the second reason Jesus hasn't returned yet. And it's this, Jesus is patient. Here's verse 9. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise as some understands slowness.

Instead, he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. God is patient with us. that Jesus hasn't returned yet is because he's merciful to us. There was a preacher in England, a guy named Martin Lloyd Jones, very famous preacher. Was that his heyday in the mid-20th century? And there was a businessman in his congregation named William Thomas. So this guy, William Thomas, he was a salesman. He sold fish door to door.

And one day after work, he went down to a local bar and he was having a beer with his friends when he overheard a conversation. The man next to him said, yes, I was there last Sunday night, and the preacher said nobody was hopeless. He said there was hope for everybody. So William Thomas is sitting there having a drink, listening into this conversation at the table next to him, and they're talking about God and church and the Bible and grace and that there's hope for everyone. And he said all of a sudden he was kind of completely sobered. In other words, he thought to himself, if there's hope for everybody, well, that means there's hope for me.

So William Thomas in his head, he decides I'm going to go to that church and see if what that man says is true. Is there really hope for me? So the next Sunday, he walked up to the church gate and he stood there for a few minutes. But then he started to get nervous and he turned around and went back home. The next week he went up on Sunday evening to go to the church service. And when he got there, he heard they were already singing and he thought, well, I'm late. I can't go in late. So he went back home.

then the next Sunday evening came and William Thomas there went up to the gate and he's wondering should I go in and somebody walked by and said, hey, are you coming in? Come sit with me. So that night, William Thomas, he went into the church. He sang the songs and he listened to Martin Lloyd Jones preach and he heard the gospel that there was hope for him in Jesus and he believed in Christ and began to follow him from that moment on for the rest of his life. Well now imagine what it would have been like for William Thomas if Jesus had returned one of those Sundays after he had come to the church but left and gone back home without ever entering? What would it have been like if William Thomas hadn't been given an opportunity to walk inside the church and to hear about Jesus?

What would it been like for you if Jesus returned before you were ready to believe? I mean, how many times did you have an opportunity to believe in Jesus and to obey and follow him, but you resisted or you needed more time to think about it. Don't you see that Jesus is delaying his coming, giving all of us an opportunity to repent and follow him? But whenever Jesus does come, 2 Peter 3 tells us he will come like a thief. Here's verse 10, 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 done in it will be laid bare.

thief doesn't announce themselves. They don't tell you when they're coming, right? I mean, just think of Japan when they attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941. They didn't send over a telegram saying, hey, we're on our way. We're coming to invade you. No. In fact, did you know that an army radar operators saw the Japanese planes appear on his radar? But he didn't have a category for Japan attacking Pearl Harbor. So he just assumed that the radar was malfunctioning and picking up birds instead of planes. Well, it turns out that those Japanese bombers were only 50 minutes away. And once they hit Pearl Harbor, they destroyed eight battleships, three light cruisers, 220 planes, 2,300 men were killed. The American military was caught totally unaware and unprepared.

So it will be when Jesus returns, right? I mean, he is going to come like a thief. It will surprise us. that's fine but I hope we're not unprepared finally verse 11 since everything will be destroyed in this way what kind of people ought you to be in other words since Jesus is coming and we will have to give an account to him how should we live between now and that moment

and here's what Peter says as he finishes out that verse you ought to live holy and godly lives as you wait eagerly for the day of God to come with our eyes fixed on Jesus, knowing that he will return, we live lives that are holy, which just means to be set apart, and godly, which means that we reflect God's character. Jesus, we look forward to your coming, and we pray for grace that we might follow you faithfully until that day. Amen. Hey, thanks for listening. If you want to go deeper, sign up for the 10-minute Bible Talk newsletter.

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