I've had the privilege over the last number of years of doing some writing for and Vick and Marie, thank you very much for those words. 52 years, you got married when Marie was 10. That's marvelous. You get to do the post script on what he says. I've never seen a husband or wife where the wife was a post script on what the husband said before. I've never seen that before. If you believe that. I started to say I've done some writing for this company Chicago called Living Stone Corporation. If you've ever seen life application, Bible's life application, study materials, that's Living Stone. And when I write for them, let's say here's the project. Here's what we need you to write. And here's a word limit. For a preacher, those are dirty words, word limit. This one's got to be 1200 words. This one's got to be 500. The hardest ones. The ones that have to be about 250 words or less. When you got a word limit like that. You're supposed to write about something that's really important. You've got to make every word count. You've got a deadline and a word limit. You've got to make it count. I'm telling you that this morning because the apostle Peter here, we're coming down to the end of the letter of second Peter. Peter knew his time was short. He didn't know how short, but he knew he didn't have much longer. He's got a few words left in this chapter. In the English language we have 474 words. In the Greek language you have 262. 262 words. That's because the Greek language is a lot more dense and compacted than the English language. Every Greek word we use, we have to use two or three words to translate. Peter had 262 words left. He made him count. Read from second Peter chapter 3, beginning of verse 1 through verse 10. I will tell you now this will be a two-part message. We'll read the whole passage this morning. I won't get to it all today. Dear friends, this is now my second letter to you. I've 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. The long ago by God's word the heavens existed 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 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. 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. We pray with Me. And fathers, we come to this part of the service where I get to proclaim your words to your people. My prayers that these would not simply be my words only but they would be your words, words of grace and truth. And that you would use my words Lord to speak graciously, persuasively and powerfully and clearly yes and truthfully of course, but that they would speak graciously. To these men and women who are here today. Lord that you would do this is my prayer in Jesus name. Amen. Well again as you can see this text is huge and it deals with huge issues so I'm going to take it in two parts. One this Sunday and one next. Peter says basically he's been dealing with all these false teachers all this time. He says enough dealing with false teachers. Now let me get back to the business of admonishing and instructing and exhorting Christians. These Christians that lived in this little area of Asia Minor. He's got some words for the Christians. He also has a few words for the scoffers. So let's see what those words are. A very few words he's got to make them count. The first word he gives us is a word of recognition. Recognition. You know recognize literally means you're breaking that recognize cognition thought to rethink about something that you've seen before. To recognize to recognize is to say I've seen this before. I've seen him or her before. I've heard those words before. I've heard that song before. I've been to this place before. I've had this experience before to recognize to recognize is to think about and remember something that we have seen or heard or experienced before. Dear friends he says 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 Lord and Savior through your apostles. He says I'm writing to remind you. I want you to recall. I want you to remember. I want a reaction of recognition. Our faith ladies and gentlemen is anchored in historical events. Real people, real events, real words, acts and facts. Is the motto of youth for Christ still geared to the times anchored to the rock. It was many, many moons ago when I was in it. Gear to the times anchored to the rock. That's a great motto. It's a good motto for the church as well. We are geared to the times but we're anchored to the rock. Peter says I want you to remember where you've come from. I want you to remember to recognize that my message is consistent with that of the Holy prophets. It's consistent with Jesus. It's consistent with the other apostles. My words speak to you of continuity and of unity. It's not some new message I dreamed up to tell you. Those of you who like musicals and fiddle on the roof, Reb Tevi saying tradition, tradition, the importance and the value of tradition. Peter says my words come to you out of the same tradition, that same living flowing stream of inspired truth that Elijah and Elijah drank from. Isaiah and Jeremiah and Micah and Malachi that they all drank from. It comes from the same living stream of inspired truth that the other apostles, Matthew and John and James and Paul. My words come to you from that same living stream that flows the words of living water that flow from Jesus himself. Peter says I want you to remember, I want you to recognize the truth when you see it. These reminders he says here that they're here to stimulate you to wholesome thinking. Man this is a loaded word. This word wholesome thinking is from one Greek word and it's de anoya, de anoya and that word basically means all mental faculties. Thinking, yes, and memory and imagination and feeling and understanding even desire. Now listen, if your Christianity is mindless or thoughtless, you're not dealing with the real thing. You have a kindergarten version of it. When you become a Christian, you don't check your brain out there in the lobby. You bring it in here with you. This place, this faith will engage your deepest thoughts. It's simple enough for a child to understand it. It's deep enough to challenge the greatest intellects of all time. You've heard me say this before and if I knew who said it, I would credit him. The Bible is a stream in which children can wade and elephants can swim. It's simple enough that a child can grasp the basics of the gospel but it's deep enough and profound enough that it challenges the greatest intellects of all time. Many of the greatest minds in history have been passionately devoted to following Jesus from Azeroth. Just a cursory skimming through history, Saul of Tarsus that we know is the Apostle Paul, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Isaac Newton, yes, that Isaac Newton, John Knox, and Jonathan Edwards plays pascal and then closer to our time in the last century. The great Russian writers and thinkers of Fiodor Dostoevsky and Leo Tolstoy and even Alexander Solzhenitsyn who's with us still God bless him. Francis Schaeffer and others, these are some of the greatest minds in history and they have given their minds to understand the depths of truth from the scriptures. If your Christianity is mindless or thoughtless, it's not a full, robust Christianity. Jesus said we would love God with our hearts, our souls, and our minds. His name is Francis Collins meaning to you. Is there a ring of bell with you at all? Dr. Francis Collins is the head of the Human Genome Project. Six years ago, almost exactly six years ago, the Human Genome Project finished what many considered to be one of the greatest scientific accomplishments of all time. They finished mapping the human DNA code. Three billion letters long, your DNA is made up of four letters and in various combinations they are what make you you as distinct from somebody else. And the human genome is what makes us humans as opposed to chimps or chubabas or chameleons. I can't think of another CH animal. You think of one for me okay? Tita, there you go, thank you, thank you. I knew I was out there just checking you guys. The Human Genome Project, now that we've mapped the Human DNA, it was great promise for curing diseases that were previously incurable and solving medical problems. We previously had no way to solve. Well, Francis Collins is the head of the Human Genome Project. Let me just tell you a little bit about him. He was raised in a rural setting home school until the age of 14, when for various reasons he had to go to a public high school, graduated at 16, went to the University of Virginia, graduated from there, went on to Yale and did a PhD in physical chemistry by the time he was 22, then he decided he needed to go to medical school so went to the University of North Carolina. And while he was in medical school, in his third year treating people, many of whom were poor, dealing with overwhelming catastrophic illnesses, very painful and often incurable. Dr. Collins was struck by the fact that so many of these people who had so little seemingly to be thankful for confronted their illnesses and their symptoms with such courage and even good cheer. And one older lady who had a very painful heart condition, one older lady witnessed to Dr. Collins of her faith in Jesus, and then she asked him a very simple question, what is it that you believe? And his worst of her were, you know, I'm really not sure. And that set him to thinking as a scientist, as a man of science who should pursue evidence that he needed to apply the same rigorous study, the same rigorous techniques and methodologies to deciding whether or not there was a God. And his study, his reflection, let him to believe that it is much more likely that there is a God than that there is not. And the house of cards of his pseudo-intellectual agnosticism began to crumble and then fall apart. And he walked out of that house of cards as a believer in God. And then at the end of the book, he's written called the language of God. He tells you that not only that, he also came to the point, hiking in the mountains one day. And he decided that Jesus of Nazareth was God incarnate, and that he should give him his heart, his soul, and his mind. And in an interview, I saw it not too long ago. The interviewer said, read a quote from Francis Crick, one of the guys who discovered DNA, and he said, other than Francis Collins, he said, I don't know of a single other scientist, reputable scientist who believes in God. And Dr. Collins, very gracious, he said, well, he needs to get out more. There are a lot of us. Here is a man of incredible IQ, who's first of all decided that it's much more reasonably there is a God, and then also that God came to earth as Jesus of Nazareth. Don't leave your brain out there. Bring it in here and engage it. We need it. Apply it. Scripture says, we have the mind of Christ, our calling us to activate and engage the mind of Christ. If your Christianity is mindless and thoughtless, it's not a real full robust Christianity, but by the same token. I said, you don't check your brain at the door. Let me also say to my Presbyterian brothers and sisters, don't leave your heart and your emotions out there either. If your Christianity is mindless and thoughtless, it's not a full robust Christianity, but if it's emotionless and passionless, it is not a full robust Christianity either. It's a plastic, a stainless steel. It's a sanitized version of Christianity. It's sort of a virtual Christianity, but it's not the real thing. The same Jesus who said we love God with our soul and our mind, he started up by saying with your heart, and by that he meant all the emotional aspects that make us human beings. We in the reformed faith, we have a strong tendency to intellectualize our faith. I understand that. The reformed faith invites that. That's marvelous, but we also have a mistrust of our emotions, of our affective sides, even to the point where we look down on the expressions of emotion. We are, and again, I understand that. I'm not a person who wears my heart on my sleeve and goes around being very emotive. We're just not the people, when the church has a party, we're not the ones who close the place down, stand on the table top, dance with the lampshade on our heads and sing at the top of our heads. The bombar, whatever other hymn comes to mind, I have no idea where that image just came from, but you get the idea. We're not those people, and that's okay. I have no interest whatsoever. In chief, emotionalism, I have wore emotional manipulation, artificial emotion, but real genuine heartfelt gut-level emotion and affect, passion, absolutely. You don't dare leave that at the door of this place either. Folks, I don't care, honest. I don't care if you're the kinds who shout amen and praise the Lord and make it plain. No helping, Lord, we've been through this before, okay. No helping, Lord. I don't care if you do that. With Doug, I'd like for us to be able to clap a little better as a bunch, but you know we're rhythmically challenged. I get it, it's okay. It doesn't matter to me whether you're the person that closes your eyes and sues, I don't care personally, but that you feel free to bring your emotions into this place and express yourself, honestly, with genuine emotion and affect. That's the clear teaching of scripture, folks. You say, well, yeah, that's your opinion. Let me give you another opinion from a guy who's a pretty good brain, pretty good reformed voice, Jonathan Edwards. 250 years ago, exactly 250 years ago. Jonathan Edwards wrote a book called The Religious Affections. Let me read you just a paragraph or two from the lit, and when he says affections, that's how we use that word the way we would, he used that word the way we would use the word emotion. So this would be the religious emotions if you will. Jonathan Edwards, if you've ever studied him at all, he's caricatures this solemn and dower and scowling, fire and brimstone breathing puritan preacher, sinners in the hands of an angry God. He wrote it and he preached it. But listen to what he says. Now look, the wording here's a little dense, but stay with me. It's worth it. For although to true religion, there must indeed be something else besides affection, yet true religion consists so much in the affections that there can be no true religion without them. He who has no religious affection is in a state of spiritual death and his holy destitute of the powerful quickening, saving influences of the spirit of God upon his heart. Because there is no true religion where there is nothing else but affection, so there is no true religion where there is no religious affection. As on the one hand, there must be light in the understanding, as well as an affected fervent heart, where there is heat without light, there can be nothing divine or heavenly in that heart. On the other hand, where there is a kind of light without heat, a head stored with notions and speculations with a cold and unaffected heart. There can be nothing divine in that light. That knowledge is no true spiritual knowledge of divine things. If the great things of religion are rightly understood, they will affect the heart. The head and heart together, folks, the soul of head and heart and will, you bring it in here and you'll plie it and you engage it in your Christian walk. It's big enough, it's steep enough, it's strong enough, bring it all together and lay it before the Lord. The definition Peter says, I want to remind you, I want you to recall, I want you to remember, I want to stimulate your minds to hold some thinking. I want to stimulate your hearts to more and greater devotion to Jesus as Lord. And then I'm just going to begin on this second word that Peter has for us. We'll continue this next week. The second word is prediction. Prediction. I really wanted to use the word premonition because it goes better with recognition and then we'll get into admonition. I wanted to use premonition but it's not accurate. Prediction is prophetic and I'll never sacrifice clarity for you guys at the altar of cuteness. Prediction, Peter says, Yogi Berra says it's tough to make predictions especially about the future. Listen to what Peter says. Verse 3, first of all, you must understand that in the last days, scoffers will come scoffing and following their own evil desires in the last days. Are we in the last days? Yes, we are. We are in the last days. Here's the rest of the both. We've been in the last days ever since Mary gave birth to her firstborn child, a son, wrapped him in swadding clothes and laid him in a manger. We've been in the last days ever since. Are we, are the events that are going on in Israel? I sound like Donald Rumsfeld doing my own press conference. He asked the questions and he answers them. Are we in the last days? Yes, we are. Are the events that are going on right now in Israel and Lebanon and Syria and Palestine, maybe Iran? Are they a precursor to the final battles? Is there about to be the end? I don't think so. Could be. Jesus come back whenever he and the father say it's time. But I don't think this is it. If I'm wrong, okay, I'm ready, are you ready? But I don't believe this is it. Jesus will return when the father says go, but it won't be because Lebanon or Syria or Iran or anybody else doesn't think stupid. They will not force his hand. In the last days, scoffers will come scoffing and following their own evil desires. When Peter talks to you about scoffers and scoffing, let me contrast that with good nature, good-hearted laughter. Laughter is one of God's great gifts to us as human beings. Laughter is one of the best lubricants to guarding us the irritations of daily life, to keep our internal machinery from overheating and breaking down. Conking out. That's from the Greek conco, in case you're wondering what I got there. Laughter, especially where we'll laugh at ourselves. He who laughs at himself has a never-ending source of amusement. If we can laugh, especially the laugh at ourselves, it's so healthy. Charles hadn't spurred in the Prince of Preachers of Great Britain in the 19th century. Master of the pulpit. Marvelous wit in some of his elders took him to task one time, bringing so much leaven in the pulpit. His response was, if only you knew how much I restrained myself, you would commend me. We're funny, folks. We're funny. I know what I look like up here. You know what you look like out there? We're funny. It's all right to laugh. Norman Cousins, this is about 40 years ago, came down with a very painful, debilitating, incurable illness. In the hospital, they told him they had no cure for it. He checked himself out. He remembered the impact that negative emotions have on your health. So when home, he prescribed his own treatment of renting movies by the Marx brothers, and old reruns of candid camera. And he laughed himself well, folks. His disease reversed itself, and finally he was pronounced cured, disease-free. And after he published his findings in the New England Journal of Medicine, he received over 3,000 letters from physicians saying, out of boy, what a go? Laughter, folks. It's one of God's great gifts to man. It's a sign of mental health that we can laugh, especially at ourselves. He's got scoffers and scoffers. What Peter has in mind here are not people who laugh genuinely good nature. He has in mind here the people who laugh derisively to shame and humiliate others. I had to ask my kids for this one. You watch the Simpsons. You know the name of the kid that's the bully and he laughs at everybody and everything, even if he doesn't know why he's laughing. What's his name? I want to see where the Simpsons watchers weren't here. Okay. Yeah, Nelson, the bully. He laughs at everybody and everything, and he doesn't even know why. He just laughs. That's it. Got some Simpsons watchers in here. Listen, you don't get references to Jonathan Edwards and the Simpsons and just any sermon here. Okay? I hope you know how hard I'm working up here. Following their own evil desires. What this is about? Who's going to be in charge? Who's desires? Are we going to follow? Let me ask you a very pointed question. Have you done anything this week or not done anything this week? Against your own inclinations simply because you follow Jesus is Lord. Have you done or not done anything this week simply in obedience to the Lordship of Christ? You didn't feel like it didn't want to, but you did it just because you're a Christian. If you haven't, this between you and God, I got to ask you, who's will? Who's will you following? No, Christy is not all Christianity is not all about pain and suffering and denial and deprivation. I know of a Presbyterian pastor who carries a car around with him and says in case of accident, don't call anybody. I'm a Presbyterian. I was born to suffer. No, that's not what I'm talking about. All pain and suffering and denial and deprivation, but if we never sacrifice anything for the cause of Christ, I got to ask. Who's will? Are we following? They will say, where's this coming he promised? Ever since our fathers died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation. You know, the Jews did that a couple of times in the Older Testament. They sort of called God's hand. Isaiah 5 verse 19, Isaiah says, woe to those who say, let God hurry, let him hasten his work so that we may see it, let it approach, let the plan of the Holy One of Israel come so that we may know it. They saw it. They got to know it real well a few years after that when the Assyrians invaded, took them off into captivity. They did Jeremiah too, a couple hundred years later. Jeremiah, they keep saying to me, where is the word of the Lord? Let it now be fulfilled, mocking and scoffing. It was fulfilled. A few years after that when the Babylonians came, took them off into captivity. God doesn't bluff, folks. God unbluff. He doesn't say you better not or else and there's no or else. They will say, where is this coming promised? Ever since our fathers died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation. You know, one of the major differences between, just broadly speaking, the so-called eastern religions of Hinduism and Buddhism and all their offshoots, and the so-called western religions of Judaism, Christianity, Islam. You know, one of the major differences is, eastern religions of you time as an endless repetitive cycle, birth, life, death, reincarnation, birth, life, death, reincarnation, and it goes on and on until someday you just get off the wheel of karma and you cease to exist. You attain Nirvana, the place of nothingness. That's the eastern view of time and life. In the western view, no, there is a beginning and there is a period between the beginning and the end and there's a definite end. This place started at a definite point. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth and there'll be a definite end. When God says, that's it. That's all time is up. Which view of life do you think causes people to invest more in making a meaningful life? Historian Thomas K. Hill wrote a book. The gifts of the Jews, how a tribe of desert nomads, changed the way everyone thinks and feels. And in that book, he says that our concepts of time and progress, history, and even our notion of what it means to be human, we owe to the Bible and to the God of the Bible. From Genesis onward, this is K. Hill writing. From Genesis onward, the Bible presents us with a new way of thinking about and experiencing reality. K. Hill says, before Abraham, the world had no concept of history as we think of it. Everything was just part of the great cycle of seasons. One following after another, an endless and meaningless series of repetitions. The idea of progress from past to future did not exist. When Moses wrote Genesis, he said it was the first time anyone had written a history that introduced and included a true sense of time and accurate ideas. The Old Testament writings represent, he said, the first attempt to get facts, genealogies and chronologies right and short. History as we know it today. Peter says, but they deliberately forget. Long ago, by God's word, the heavens existed and the earth was formed out of water and by water. What does Peter mean by that? We can't really unpack it. In fact, Travis, I'm going to skip that passage in Genesis. Don't put it on the screen. We'll maybe come back to it next week. Peter doesn't tell us and we must not speculate too much. He knew what he meant. The people he was writing to must have known because he doesn't unpack it. I don't think Peter is making here a statement about cosmology or origins. I think he's making a statement about the laws of physics. But he is talking about how, in the beginning, when God created water, he bought the land out of the water and separated the water from the seas. And he talks about Noah and how God destroyed that world by water, but he called out a few of his own. And Peter's message is learn a lesson from the days of Noah. Noah's contemporaries thought he was crazy too. And there were scoffers in scoffing. What are you doing building a big boat out here in the middle of nowhere where it's never rained before? What are you crazy? And they scoffed and they mocked and they laughed until the rains fell. And then they wish they hadn't. Folks and messages for us. If you were in the court of the scoffer and the mocker and the skeptic, I want you to know, I understand you. You're looking at a recovering skeptic. I don't believe anything that anybody tells me without looking to see if it's true first, it's my nature. It's my fallen nature. You're looking at and you're listening to a recovering skeptic, but the time comes as it did for Francis Collins. As it does for the mockers and the scoffers, the Peter writes about time comes for all of us to say, no more time. Time is up. The word count is over. No more time for any more words, no more time for delays. God does not bluff. He warns of judgment. So it doesn't have to execute judgment, but judgment does come. Why does Peter talk about judgment so much? Because he knew his time was short. He didn't want his friends to face judgment unaware. So he warned him and he warned him almost with his last breath. Get ready. Get ready. Peter knows this time's short. He's got a few words. He's got to make him count. So there's a word here of recognition. There's a word here of prediction. There's a word finally of comfort. Just as Noah saw that rainbow. There's a word here of comfort. Let me finish this morning by recounting something that a missionary Gregory Fisher wrote. He was a county experience he had teaching in West Africa. What will he say when he shouts? Gregory Fisher says, the question took me by surprise. I learned the students at the West Africa Bible College asked some very astute and piercing questions. But this one caught me by surprise. Then the student continued, reverend. First, that's only in 4 verse 16 says, Christ will descend from heaven with a loud command. I would like to know what that command will be. Greg Fisher says I wanted to leave the question unanswered and just tell him that the scripture doesn't tell us exactly. We shouldn't speculate too much. Then he goes on to say, but my mind wandered to an encounter I had earlier in the day with a refugee from the Liberian Civil War. The man high school principal told me how he was apprehended by two men death squad after several hours of terror as the men described how they would torture and kill him. He narrowed the escape after hiding in the bush for two days. He was able to find his family and escape to a neighboring country with the escape cost him dearly two of his children lost their lives. Start cruelty unleashed on an unsuspecting undeserving population that touched me deeply. Pastor Fisher says, I also saw flashback to the beggars that I pass each morning on my way to the office. Every day I see how poverty destroys dignity. Rob's men are the best of what it means to be human and sometimes substitutes the worst of what it means to be an animal. I am haunted by the vacant eyes of people who've lost all hope. Reverend, you have not given me an answer. What will he say? Student asked again. Enough. He will shout enough when he returns. Enough suffering, enough starvation, enough terror, enough death, enough indignity, enough lives trapped in homelessness, enough sickness and disease, enough time, enough. You're worried about what's going on in the world today. You wonder if there's really justice. Peter's word to them to us. Judgment comes. Take comfort. There's an answer for judgment in the cross of Christ. Let's pray together. Father, we thank you that you care enough about us, that you warn us of judgment to come so that we don't have to face the judgment to come. We thank you that that judgment was already poured out on your son when the wrath of God was poured out on a man and the wrath of men was poured out on God. And Jesus suffered in our place and took upon himself the penalty that our sins deserve and he faced the consequences for the curse of the covenant in our place. Lord, that we would live lives this day, mindful of what you've done for us. We would live lives of recognition for all you've done, of optimism who look forward, of compassion as we look around, and of hope as we get ready for that day. I pray in Jesus' name, amen. Now receive the benediction. Go now on the love of God the Father, the grace and mercy of God the Son, the fellowship and companionship of God the Holy Spirit, and live the life, amen.