Good evening, dear brothers and sisters.
I hope you know tonight, it is very clear in your heart that you are the beloved. First, you are the beloved of the Lord, and you are also my beloved.
Did you need to be reminded? Sometimes we need to be reminded, because we can lose sight of it. Sometimes we do not treat each other like we are the beloved of each other. But we are, and we need to enter into that in a fuller way.
Tonight, I want to do just something a little bit different. I was waiting for my brother Stephen and Brother Ed Miller to do this, but since they have not done it, then I am going to take the liberty tonight.
Normally, some of us have to borrow time at the end. Well, I am going to borrow some time in the beginning. That way it does not count against me, right?
I want us to look, just for a few moments, at some verses in Acts 3. I think it may be good if we had something of a backdrop to this matter of us being ready for our Lord’s return—some understanding of the issue of what is really taking place in this matter of our Lord’s return.
In Acts 3, we have Peter’s second sermon. He gave his first sermon on the day of Pentecost in Acts 2. Then, in Acts 3, beginning in verse 19:
Therefore repent and return,
so that your sins may be wiped away,
in order that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord;
and that He may send Jesus, the Christ appointed for you,
whom heaven must receive until the period of restoration of all things,
about which God spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets from ancient times.
Now, what I see here, my brothers and sisters, is that there is something our God is actively doing. That is, He is restoring all things.
In order for us to get some picture of this, we need to go all the way back to the beginning. I am going to try to do this quickly, because this is not the central thing I wanted for us to fellowship about tonight.
The Word of God begins, in Genesis 1:1, with a very simple statement:
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
We are not told how He did it. We are not told why He did it. We are not told how long it took Him to do it. It simply says that God created the heavens and the earth.
But something interesting is discovered in verse 2:
And the earth was formless and void, and darkness was on the face of the deep.
It seems to me that something very catastrophic occurred between verse 1 and verse 2 of Genesis 1.
It is difficult for me to accept that the God I have come to know in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ would create what is described for us in Genesis 1:2. I think it helps us understand, my dear brothers and sisters, what God is seeking to accomplish.
The more we come to know our God through the person of His Son and the person of the Holy Spirit, the more we begin to discover that He is absolutely perfect. Because He is absolutely perfect, in my estimation, He can only create something perfect. How could He ever create something that has any imperfection in it?
Since He is this kind of God, He cannot rest until everything in His universe is absolutely perfect.
Now, this can create some problems for us. But if we stop and think about it for a little while, and meditate on it, I think we will begin to rejoice. It means that our God, being a perfectionist, is not going to stop until you are perfect.
To me, dear brothers and sisters, this is glorious news. He is not going to allow us to remain the way we were when He found us, and He is not going to allow us to remain the way we are now, even after many years of knowing Him and seeking to follow Him.
Let me ask you a simple question tonight, all of us from the youngest to the oldest: Do you want to spend eternity the way you are tonight? I mean, never any hope of change—you are just going to go on being the same old self that you are now.
I hope you have a no answer to that. But our God is in the business of restoring all things.
What we have described in Genesis 1:2 is a situation that desperately needs restoration. What we find, I believe, is God going through a process of taking this chaotic situation and making it possible for a being called man to live on this planet.
He does this work of restoring it to a certain point. But then He says:
Let Us make man in Our own image, according to Our own likeness; and let them have dominion.
I think this is the key.
The reason God created man, in my understanding, was that man was to be God’s agent of recovery. God could not rest with what we have in Genesis 1:2. He had to find a way, and in His great wisdom He chose to create a being called man. This man was to be the agent God would use in the recovery of this situation.
But we are all aware of the sad story: the man whom God created disobeyed, and thus was disqualified from being that agent of recovery. But we worship our God tonight that He did not decide at that point to forget the whole process.
Even when He was judging the man, the woman, and the serpent, God spoke prophetically and said that something was going to happen:
The seed of the woman, His heel, will crush the head of the serpent.
Again, we have to be careful. We do not go back further and find out who is the culprit in this whole situation we have in Genesis 1:2. But I think safely we can say it is God’s arch-enemy, Lucifer, who became Satan.
So Adam failed. What was God to do? He brought judgment, but then He began to reveal Himself to human beings.
There was a man named Abram living in Ur of the Chaldees. He was an idol worshiper, and some people think he and his father were in the idol-making business—the most unlikely candidate to receive a revelation from God, the most unlikely person for the God of glory to reveal Himself to.
You would have thought the Lord would have found somebody who was not an idol worshiper, at least. But it just shows the grace of God and the mercy of God.
Through Abraham, God began to do something to bring into being a whole nation of people. What was their main responsibility? They were to be a light to all the nations. They were to be the people God could use to continue this work of recovery, so that His government would be a reality among them and, through them, continue this work of recovery.
We all know the story: failure after failure after failure. It almost looks like nothing is ever going to get done. But remember God’s promise: the seed of the woman.
The prophets continued to speak of Him in the Old Testament. What we discover is that God the Son, the eternal Son of God, became a human being.
The incarnation, in my estimation, is the greatest event that has ever happened in human history. Through the Son of God becoming a human being, there is now Somebody able to do something about this seemingly hopeless situation.
He came here. He lived an absolutely perfect life. He was crucified. He was buried. He was raised from the dead, and then He ascended back to the right hand of the Father, seated in the highest position in the universe.
All authority in heaven and earth has been given to Him. He has the name that is above every other name. He has power and authority far above all principalities and powers.
As Peter tells us, heaven has received Him until the restoration of all things. From His exalted position, our Lord Jesus continues to do this work of recovering God’s universe—this planet upon which we live.
I shared this with some brothers and sisters last Sunday afternoon. It is interesting to me, brothers and sisters, because we live in a big universe.
I read an article in a magazine a few months ago. They told us there is a new telescope—not the Hubble—a new telescope that can see 600,000,000,000,000 miles. Can you believe it?
As far as we can tell from reading the Scriptures, my reading has led me to conclude that of all the places in this big universe, the earth is the only place that is a problem. God’s focus is on the earth.
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” and the earth was formless and void. Here we find ourselves living on this planet, whirling around in the universe like a little speck of dust by comparison to the other planets. Yet it seems like this is where the heart of God is focused.
Why? Because it is not what He wants it to be, and the people living on it are not what He wants them to be. So He sends His Son, and He does this great work of salvation and redemption, making it possible not only for the people who live on this planet to be redeemed, but for this earth to be redeemed.
Our Lord Jesus has gone there, and He is going to rule until He puts all of His enemies under His feet. Then our Lord is going to return.
I am so grateful that my brother Stephen went into some detail today about some of the events and how it is all going to take place. But, brothers and sisters, why should we be ready for the coming of our Lord? Because it is the climax of all of God’s redemptive work.
My burden is for us to fellowship about what Peter says in his second letter. So, turn with me to 2 Peter 3.
I breathed a great sigh of relief when my brother this morning read from Matthew 24, and another sigh of relief this afternoon when Brother Ed Miller said he was going to speak from Revelation. I had feared they were going to take the same verses I had in my heart.
We want to read the entire chapter of 2 Peter 3, have a prayer, and then continue our fellowship.
This is now, beloved, the second letter I am writing to you, in which I am stirring up your sincere mind by way of reminder,
that you should remember the words spoken beforehand by the holy prophets, and the commandment of the Lord and Savior spoken by your apostles.Know this first of all, that in the last days mockers will come with their mocking, following after their own lusts, and saying, “Where is the promise of His coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all continues just as it was from the beginning of creation.”
For when they maintain this, it escapes their notice that by the word of God the heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and by water, through which the world at that time was destroyed, being flooded with water.
But by His word the present heavens and earth are being reserved for fire, kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.
But do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved: that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day.
The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.
But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat, and the earth and its works will be burned up.
Since all these things are to be destroyed in this way, what sort of people ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness, looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be destroyed by burning, and the elements will melt with intense heat?
But according to His promise we are looking for new heavens and a new earth, in which righteousness dwells.
Therefore, beloved, since you look for these things, be diligent to be found by Him in peace, spotless and blameless, and regard the patience of our Lord as salvation; just as also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given him, wrote to you, as also in all his letters, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which the untaught and unstable distort, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures, to their own destruction.
You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, be on your guard so that you are not carried away by the error of unprincipled men and fall from your own steadfastness, but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
To Him be the glory, both now and to the day of eternity. Amen.
Let us pray.
Lord, it is difficult to find the right words to say to You what is in our heart. Lord, You know us. You have those eyes with which You can see into the depths of our being. You know how ready we are for Your coming back.
Our cry to You tonight is that You will be merciful to us, and that, Lord, You will take into consideration where we are and do something in us that will better prepare us for this event of Your return.
Lord, we ask You tonight to continue to speak to us about this matter of being ready for Your coming. We thank You that we have a copy of Your written Word. How we bless You that You, in Your mercy, have provided this for us.
We thank You for the blessed Holy Spirit, the One whom You and the Father have sent to be our Helper, to open our blind eyes and even to touch them a second or third—or however many times necessary—for us to be able to see more clearly the revelation that has come through You.
We want to humble our hearts before You tonight and ask You, Lord, to speak in ways where all of us can be encouraged in this matter of being ready for Your return. Be merciful, and we ask it in Your name. Amen.
It seems to me, brothers and sisters, that at the end of the Word of God in the New Testament, there are a number of books that refer to this matter of the return of our Lord Jesus.
We have Paul’s letters to the Thessalonians, the letter to the Hebrews, James’s letter, 1 Peter, 2 Peter, Jude, and also the book of Revelation. If we read them carefully, I think we will discover that the issue in virtually all of them was primarily that of being spiritually ready for the return of our Lord Jesus Christ.
When the writer of Hebrews is finishing his letter, he gives us a unique description of what he has written. He calls it a word of exhortation.
Looking at this letter to the Hebrews, it seems to me there are two aspects to this matter of exhortation. On one side, he feels a necessity to seriously warn his readers about the dangers they are facing. Yet, on the other hand, he has very strong encouragement to continue in a certain way.
I think we find some element of that in all of these letters we have mentioned, and I think it is true here in Peter’s second letter.
Peter says at the beginning of this chapter:
Beloved, this is the second letter I am writing to you, in which I am stirring up your sincere mind by way of reminder.
He has already written one letter to them, but he now knows that his death is imminent. The Lord has already told him that he is going to die. He is going to cease being here.
He feels in his heart that he wants to write another letter to these ones he refers to as his beloved, because he loves them very deeply. He wants to say whatever he can say to both warn them and encourage them.
When we stop to think about, meditate on, and share together about this matter of being spiritually ready, we probably need to face the reality that we need to be exhorted. We need to face the real dangers we face as the Lord’s people in our own generation.
There are lessons we can learn from what happened in previous generations. Some people have done some very weird things, thinking our Lord Jesus was coming back.
Some dressed up in white clothes, sold their homes, climbed up into trees, and did all kinds of unusual things. A few years ago, here in the United States, I heard of a group of Christians who, convinced the Lord Jesus was going to come back, went out and maxed out all their credit cards, thinking they would never have to pay them.
That sounds weird, but these are some of the crazy things God’s people do when they are faced with this kind of thing. Down through the years, people have even set dates.
I remember 1988. Anybody read the book 88 Reasons He’s Coming Back in 1988? I want my money back. It did not happen.
But we continue somehow to think that this is a way to go, when I think the Word of God would clearly help us see that there are dangers we need to face and decisions we need to make if we are going to be ready for our Lord’s coming back.
These are serious matters—things you and I need to be informed about, things in which we need to know the working of the Holy Spirit in our lives so that we can make discernments about what is happening.
We are living in the last days. As our brother Stephen said, it is not just the last days; it may be the last second. We are living in the end of the end of the end.
We have our own particular challenges facing us, but I think we can find the right kind of help in some of the things Peter says to those to whom he was writing in the first century.
Let us look first of all at 2 Peter 3:3:
Know this first of all, that in the last days mockers will come with their mocking, following after their own lusts, and saying, “Where is the promise of His coming?”
There are always those who somehow conclude that God has made one big mistake—that He has made promises He has either chosen not to fulfill or promises He cannot fulfill. So they become mockers. They mock God, they mock what God has said, and they mock the Word of God.
Peter says we need to be aware of these people. We do not need to be blind to it. This does not mean you have to argue with them or try to convince them otherwise. But you do not receive what they have to say.
You learn to discern that when these kinds of people are doing these things, it is time for you to turn off your hearing aid and not listen to what they have to say. If you continue to listen to them, in all probability it will have some influence on you.
You will begin to question: Why is it taking so long? When we read Matthew’s account, for example, it seems like something that is going to happen very quickly. But that is because of our limited understanding, brothers and sisters, and because of the way we look at things.
We expect God simply to say there is a particular day and it is going to happen on that day. He has not chosen to do it that way.
If you knew the exact day and time the Lord was going to return, and let us say it was going to be five years from now, what would you do in that five-year period? Oh, I know what you would do. You would get very busy. You would buy two or three new Bibles in different translations. You would start reading. You would spend more time in prayer than you ever prayed before. You would visit your brothers and sisters and take care of people. Is that what you would do?
Probably not. You would probably figure out a way to do some very enjoyable things for four years and 357 days.
The Lord knows us, brothers and sisters. Not only that, we would not have to trust Him. We would not have to have confidence in Him.
God does not do things in a mechanical way. He does them in an organic, living way. He has His own way of doing things.
As we discovered this morning from our brother, not even the angels in heaven—not the Son of Man—knows when this time is. This is reserved for God the Father Himself, and He has not chosen to tell us.
We need to bow the knee and accept that He knows the best way to do it. As we discover, it really is a manifestation of the mercy and compassion of God. He is not willing for any to perish, but is giving more people opportunity, even giving you and me opportunity to be better prepared.
Are you ready tonight? Are you ready for Him to come back tonight? Be careful. This is the kind of question we have to be careful how we answer.
You remember John 21. Peter decided to go fishing and took some of his friends with him. They fished all night and caught nothing. The Lord showed up on the beach and told them to throw out the net on the other side, and they got this big catch of fish.
Then they discovered it was the Lord. Peter jumped out of the boat and ran to the beach. The Lord had breakfast prepared for them.
While they were eating, the Lord did something very interesting to me. Of all the ones, He spoke to Peter and said:
Simon, son of John, do you love Me?
How would you have answered that question, being Peter? Only a matter of days earlier, he had denied that he ever knew Him. He was going to be very, very careful about the answer he gave.
I suggest to us, dear brothers and sisters, that we be careful about the answer we give to this question: Are you ready? In reality, only the Lord knows if we are ready.
One thing we need to learn is to have discernment about people who make light of, or mock, this whole matter of the Lord’s return because it seems to be taking so long. People come up with their own suggestions about what is happening.
In 2 Peter 3:8, Peter has something else to say:
But do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years is like one day.
This can help us put the whole matter into perspective. How long has it been since our Lord Jesus was exalted to the throne, to the right hand of the Father? How many days? According to the Lord’s counting, two days. But for us, it is two thousand years.
We have to learn to adjust our thinking, because it is God Himself who is determining when this is all going to take place. He is doing it because He is in a position to see the whole situation.
However you look at this matter of the Lord’s return—whether it is a matter of the bride being made ready—who decides that the bride is ready? Somebody has to make that decision.
Or if we think in terms of the New Jerusalem, who decides? Where is the person who does the inspection and says, “Okay, finished. You can come down now, out of heaven”? Who makes that decision, brothers and sisters?
It is not left up to us, and I do not think it is just something mechanical. I think it is something organic. There is something God has to do in the lives of His people, and even in this world in which we live, that determines when this time comes.
Do not let this escape your notice. Do not forget. Do not overlook the fact that God’s way of counting is different from ours, so that you do not somehow fall into the trap of thinking the Lord is slow about His promises or that He does not keep His promises faithfully the way we think He should.
Our Lord wants this to happen much more than we do. He is longing for His bride. He wants very much for her to be made ready.
I remember at least twenty-five years ago, we went to a wedding up on Long Island, New York. Brother Stephen was asked to speak at that wedding. He reminded us how sometimes the bridegroom has to wait for the bride, but he said, “Two thousand years waiting—that is a little much.”
We are time-bound and time-conscious. Everything in our thinking is somehow related to time. We get all of this working in our own thinking, and it escapes our notice that with God, this is not the way it is.
Here we are living at the very end, whatever that means. I am not even going to speculate. I have no idea. But here we are living at the very end, and we have some choices to make.
We need to do some very serious thinking. As Peter says, “I am here to stir up your sincere mind.” This is not just something you can take or leave. This is something you need to ponder. What if it happens and you are not ready?
So far, it has not happened, and so again there is a warning. Are you afraid of warnings, brothers and sisters? Does this matter of warnings somehow upset you? It should not.
Think of the alternative. It is like driving down the road and somehow a bridge has collapsed, and nobody has put out a sign that says, “Warning: bridge out.”
It is the mercy of our God that He provides a warning for us. That is why, when you read the letter to the Hebrews, he does not hesitate. It is real. It is happening to people’s lives.
It is happening to us too, brothers and sisters. There are things going on in our everyday living that, if we do not learn to deal with them properly, will affect us in such a way that we will not be ready.
It can happen to anybody. Some of you—I know almost all of you here tonight—you know somebody who had a wonderful experience with the living Christ, came to know Him as Savior and Lord, but where are they today? Some are not even walking with Him.
What happened? Somehow they got captured. They got overtaken. They did not discover what was provided for them so that they could become overcomers, rather than be overcome by the situation.
Why do we think that somehow this cannot happen to us? Who are we that somehow we can escape this kind of thing? We are all vulnerable. We need to take the warnings and receive the encouragements so that we are ready for this matter of our Lord’s return.
Let us look at verse 9:
The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.
This is something working very deeply in the heart of our God. It is not an easy thing, brothers and sisters, at least in my estimation, for us to comprehend the mercy and deep compassion of God.
You remember the Old Testament prophet Jonah. First of all, he did not want to go to Nineveh because he knew what kind of people lived there. He wanted nothing to do with that.
But after he went, the Lord had to put him through some experiences to convince him that it was the right thing to do. He went to Nineveh and began to preach. Do you know what happened? The people obeyed, and Jonah got upset.
He went over and sat down under a gourd—or whatever the Bible calls it. You know what I am talking about. A worm came and started eating it, and Jonah got so upset because he was being protected from the sun by this plant.
He could care less that there were thousands and thousands of Ninevites who would have been judged severely by God.
There is something deeply at work in the heart of our God in terms of compassion. Maybe somehow, if more of it got worked into our lives, we would find more patience regarding what the Lord is doing in other people’s lives and in our own lives.
That same compassion and mercy are extended to us. We need to say, “Amen, Lord. We are not trying to force You to do anything.” We need to realize that He is full of mercy.
Verse 10:
But the day of the Lord will come.
I want to emphasize that. I know Peter, in writing this, was not probably putting the emphasis there, but I want to put it there: The Lord will come.
Do you hear what I am saying, brothers and sisters? He will come. You and I cannot prevent it from happening. Our not being ready is not going to prevent it from happening.
It may be that God will take us into consideration and manifest mercy, but the fact is, it is going to occur. It may very well happen in our lifetime.
This ought to awaken us in the right kind of way—not that we go out and do some crazy things, but that we become awakened in our spirit, that we learn how to watch and pray.
We need to have a waiting heart, so that we prevent ourselves from getting so attached to things that it begins to impact our ability to watch and wait.
Notice what Peter says:
The day of the Lord will come like a thief.
Our brother said this morning that He does not blow a trumpet, but I also do not think He rings the doorbell.
Recently, in our house in Brazil, somebody broke into our house at eleven o’clock in the morning and stole my computer. He did not ring the doorbell. He climbed over a wall, broke into the house, stole a computer, and climbed back over the wall. Nobody knew that he did it.
We need to take this warning. It is going to happen at a time when you do not expect it to happen. We want to overcome the feeling of not knowing by having somebody tell us when it is going to happen—eighty-eight reasons in ’88.
We like somebody to tell us. But the Word of God clearly tells us it is going to be like a thief. It is like a woman who is going to give birth to a child. It could happen today, but it may take ten or twelve more days.
It is not something that is in cement. It is something flexible. But it is going to happen. It is going to happen at a time when most people are not ready for it to happen—like a thief in the night.
We need to be aware so that we take precautions, that we do not go on living life the same old way we have been living it. We take the necessary precaution.
The Holy Spirit has been sent here to be our Helper. In the Gospel of John, when our Lord Jesus began to tell His disciples about the Holy Spirit who was going to be sent, He gave Him a name: allon Paraklēton—another Helper of the same kind as our Lord Jesus.
We know that God has a name: Father. We know that the Son has a name: Jesus Christ. Now we know that the Holy Spirit has a name: another Helper of the same kind as our Lord Jesus.
He has been sent here, and what is His mission? To take all that there is in Christ and make it available to every one of His dear children. That is one of His major missions in life.
Do you think somehow He would not fulfill His responsibility to try to keep you and me prepared and ready for the Lord’s coming back? I do not think so, my brothers and sisters. We need to learn to be much more sensitive to His working.
I do not know why these things come back to my mind, but I am going to trust that it is the Lord. When I moved to Long Island, New York, in 1970, we started having meetings with a group of young people.
Before we arrived, a young man who was working with young people had built this contraption. He built a box about this wide and about this high, with metal strips going down the center. The farther down you went, the closer the strips got together.
He took another object, and when you touched the metal pieces, it made all different kinds of sounds—a doorbell, a buzzer, something else to scare you. The closer you got to the bottom, the closer the strips became. You wanted to get all the way to the bottom without touching the metal strips so there would not be any sound.
Do you know, dear brothers and sisters, that the blessed Holy Spirit has been sent to dwell inside of us? He has come to sensitize us to the things going on in our lives that we need to be careful about. We need to accept His warnings.
The Lord will come like a thief. What Peter goes on to say is something we would probably rather not have in the Word of God:
The heavens will pass away with a roar,
and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat,
and the earth and its works will be burned up.
Probably that is not your favorite verse in the Bible, right? It is there, though, brothers and sisters. This is part of the Lord’s coming back.
If you only see that side of it, you can get very discouraged. But remember what we looked at in Acts 3. What is our God doing? He is restoring all things.
Restoring it to what? The way it was originally, before there was any assault on the throne of God, before Satan ever tried to take over the rulership of the universe.
That is the kind of God we have. The God revealed in our Lord Jesus Christ is the God who wants it perfect. He wants everything in His universe, including you and me and this earth upon which we live, to be fully and totally restored to His standard—not ours.
What is going to happen in His judgment? He is going to burn this one up. The heavens and the earth are going to be destroyed.
Are we ready, brothers and sisters? Why do we need to consider this? Because some of us are very much attached to the things of this world.
Probably most of us in this room tonight would admit that we do not spend enough time reading the Word of God. We do not spend enough time seeking the Lord and praying for others. We do not spend enough time trying to care for our brothers and sisters.
What is the one reason we give? “I do not have the time.” Why? Because you have made a commitment. You signed on the dotted line. You committed yourself to something that belonged to this world, in all probability.
It is occupying your time, your energy, and your heart in such a way that, even though we know there are certain things we should be doing, we do not have time.
There are just not enough hours in the day—especially those of you who live here in the Northeast. As I said to a group of brothers and sisters on Sunday, some of you would like to have twenty-eight hours in a day. One brother said, “No, we need thirty-six hours in a day.”
Why is it this way, brothers and sisters? Is this part of what God is permitting to happen in order to awaken us, to get us ready? We need to take the warning. We need to see what is happening to us.
They tell this story about frogs: if you take a frog and put him in a pan of hot water, he will immediately try to jump out. But if you put him in cold water and turn the heat up slowly, he is dead and does not know it.
This is the world’s way with us. Be serious with yourself tonight before the Lord. How many things do you have in your life that you do not really need?
Why did you buy them if you did not need them? Because the world told you that you needed them. You saw it on a big sign or on television. Somehow somebody convinced you that you needed it.
So you went out and bought it, and now you have to work more to pay for the thing you did not need.
There was a brother who came from Africa, I guess it was, to Chicago many years ago. He was ministering the Word of God. It was Monday morning, and there was nothing to do, so the sister in the home asked, “Would you like to go down and visit one of our big department stores in Chicago?”
He went down there and walked through the store. When he came home, the sister asked him, “What do you think?” He said, “I think you have a lot of things I do not need.”
Do you ever get that feeling when you walk into a Super Walmart? They have so many things you do not need, but they try to convince you that you do.
A number of years ago, I decided I was going to simplify my life. Do you know how hard that is, brothers and sisters? We sold basically everything in a yard sale. But guess what? Somehow it came back—not the same things, but some of the same kinds of things.
Have you tried simplifying? It is very difficult, because somehow this whole matter of possessions gives us a false sense of security, and we buy into it.
We spend hard-earned money, which we spend many hours earning. That accounts for the fact that we do not have time to read our Bibles and do the other things we know are important for us to do.
Brothers and sisters, I wish for a few months we all wore neon signs on our foreheads saying, “It is all going to burn.” Just to remind each other.
Because we forget. I guarantee you, before the middle of next week, this truth that God has set forth in His Word—that everything is going to burn—you will have forgotten about it.
It is good for us to hear what Peter has to say. Look at verse 11:
Since all these things are to be destroyed in this way, what sort of people ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness?
What kind of people? If you stop to think that all of this is going to be burned up, what kind of people ought we to be?
First of all, as Peter says in his first letter, we need to be holy as God is holy. That means not just our character. The Lord willing, we will talk more about that tomorrow.
God definitely wants us to be holy in terms of our character. He wants us to be like Himself. But He also wants us to be holy in the way we live our lives.
How do we live in this present situation? I know I am getting old, my hair is turning gray, and I am always thinking back on what it was like in the forties and fifties. Do you know what I have decided? It is never going to get that way again.
It is just not going to happen, brothers and sisters. It is almost like God is putting us in a pressure cooker. Things are happening much faster, with greater intensity, than they have ever happened before.
Today, most of you cannot live without a cell phone. In the forties, there was life without a cell phone. I was in Brazil a few weeks ago, and one brother had one in each pocket.
You see what the world is doing to you? It is buying you. It is buying up your time. Even now, you cannot get away from it. I even heard one going off in the meeting.
I am trying not to be critical, but we need to be awakened, brothers and sisters, to what we are allowing to happen to us. It is taking over. It is ruling us.
The thing is, we can end up spending our lives building something that is going to go up in smoke.
Some people are convinced that the responsibility of Christians is to make this world a better place in which to live.
I guarantee you, dear brothers and sisters, that wherever there is a real testimony to the Lord Jesus Christ—if He is the living life of that testimony—it will have an impact on the community. You can go places where there is no testimony, and you can definitely see the results.
But it is not our calling from God to make this place a better place. We are to be the salt and the light, not the Savior. We are not to deliver it.
Some believers in our own country think the kingdom of God and American democracy are the same thing. Can I say to us tonight, and you not throw rocks at me, that the kingdom of God has nothing to do with American democracy?
The kingdom of God is the kingdom of God. It is an eternal kingdom. It has nothing to do with what is going on in this world. But we, as the church, are to be a place where this kingdom can be manifested, where the world can look at it and see it.
It is to be the fullness of Him and, through this, to manifest His fullness in the universe. So we have a part to play. But, dear brothers and sisters, we need to walk carefully.
As Brother Watchman Nee says, these things of the world—we need to be careful. We need to hold them lightly. This means in every area.
I understand that when Brother Nee wrote the book Love Not the World and spoke those messages, it created some problems for some believers. I can understand why.
We become convinced that some of the good things that happen in the world are synonymous with being Christian. My dear, dear brothers and sisters, we have no right to put the name of our Lord Jesus Christ on anything that does not have its origin in Him.
May we be delivered from doing things in our own strength and wisdom and then putting His name all over them. It causes us to be deceived, brothers and sisters.
We think somehow that this will make the world better. It is all going to burn, brothers and sisters.
In light of this, what kind of people are we supposed to be? You need to cry out to the Lord: “I want to be a holy person. I want to be a godly person. I want my life to demonstrate the reality that I love my God.”
I want to demonstrate it by the way I live my life. You should be able to look at the life of a believer and know there is love for God in that person—not because they go around talking about it all the time or wear pins, but because their life ought to be evidence that there is a genuine love, respect, and concern for God and for the things of God.
Part of our response to all of this is what Peter says in verse 12:
Looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God,
because of which the heavens will be destroyed by burning,
and the elements will melt with intense heat.
There is not total agreement among those who have studied this verse carefully about what it means to be “looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God.”
Can we do something as God’s people? Is there something we can do in cooperation with God to hasten the day when the Lord comes back?
In reality, when you look at it in this verse, it is hastening the burning. It is hastening the destruction, because part of the Lord’s return is to destroy all that has anything to do with the enemy and all that has had something to do with this system. It is all going to be burned up because it is not of God.
I do not want to sound spiritual, but, brothers and sisters, our God cannot rest until everything in His universe measures up to His standard and is filled with the beauty of God that we see revealed in the person of our Lord Jesus Christ.
We have to guard our hearts so that we do not let these kinds of things come in and influence us in such a way that we start thinking differently.
But look at verse 13:
But according to His promise we are looking for new heavens and a new earth, in which righteousness dwells.
Oh, brothers and sisters, can you imagine tonight? Just try to think with me. Imagine with me a world in which everything is righteous according to God’s standard of righteousness.
It is hard for us even to imagine because we live in just the opposite. We do not have a good example to help us think about what would happen in such a world.
Think about a new heaven and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. Righteousness lives there. It influences everything. The righteousness of God means everything is exactly the way He wants it. There is not one thing out of order.
I do not know what your concept of heaven is, but, my dear brothers and sisters, to be in a state of being where time is gone, and we are in the presence of a holy, righteous God, and there is absolutely nothing wrong—everything is absolutely perfect—this is what God has for us.
This is what is linked to this matter of the return of our Lord Jesus. It is not just a matter of Him coming back for us. We are included in it, but it is something bigger, and it is more important for God.
He cannot rest because He is a holy, righteous God, and He cannot rest when unholiness and unrighteousness still exist in His universe.
This is our hope. I hope this is your hope too: that you look forward to it, that you are anticipating it, that it is your dream and aspiration to be part of that new heaven and new earth in which righteousness dwells.
Verse 14 says:
Therefore, beloved, since you look for these things, be diligent to be found by Him in peace, spotless and blameless, and regard the patience of our Lord as salvation.
The word diligence is another word you and I need to give thought to in light of this matter of being spiritually ready.
The fact is, spiritually, brothers and sisters, many of us are lazy. Sorry. I wish I did not have to say that.
But we spend very little time getting ready. There is no way to become a spiritual person if we are not willing to be diligent people.
We need to be people who learn how to be disciplined. The more that happens in this world, it seems that discipline is being eroded away, even among us as God’s people.
This idea of being disciplined and diligent, of being about the business put in our hands, has somehow been undermined. It needs to be regained.
We need to be diligent, about the business God has given us to do—being good stewards of the manifold grace of God.
When we were singing this hymn tonight about the gifts God has given us, every one of you who is a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ has been given a gift by the Holy Spirit.
Our brother was talking this morning about the judgment seat. I wish we could avoid asking these kinds of questions or making these kinds of comments, but the reality is that you have an appointment with Him, and you cannot cancel the appointment.
You have to go before Him. By yourself, you have to stand there and give an account of what you have done with what you have been given.
You need to become diligent in using what God has been so merciful and faithful to give you. You can be one hundred percent sure that the Holy Spirit is there to help you be diligent and disciplined in this matter.
I want us to conclude with verse 17:
You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, be on your guard so that you are not carried away by the error of unprincipled men and fall from your own steadfastness.
As I read these letters of Peter, what strikes home in my heart is his concern that when his beloved ones read these letters, somehow they will be encouraged to become steadfast and unmovable.
This seems to be his concern: to be standing, to be faithful, to be doing what you have responsibility to do when the Lord comes.
Let us go back to Matthew 24. Sometimes we think this matter of getting ready means we need to go find a quiet place on top of a mountain, where there is no distraction, and just sit there waiting for the Lord to come back.
But look at what He says in Matthew 24:45-47:
Who then is the faithful and sensible slave whom his master put in charge of his household to give them their food at the proper time?
Blessed is that slave whom his master finds so doing when he comes.
Truly I say to you that he will put him in charge of all his possessions.
It is in the midst of us being busy doing things, but having our focus in the right place, having our priorities established, and being about the things that result in us being ready for the Lord to come.
When can He come? Anytime. Would it not be wonderful? I hope you can say amen. I have to be careful, but I want to be able to say amen if it happened while we were here fellowshipping about His coming back.
First of all, we need to be on guard. There is a lot of stuff going on out there. A lot of things are being taught by unprincipled men—errors, things that are wrong, taking the Word of God and making it say something it does not say.
I want to ask you a very simple question tonight: In what way is your God honored or glorified by you being deceived by what somebody says?
Why are we deceived? That is something maybe we can fellowship about another time. But sometimes we are deceived because we are not diligent. We are not well grounded in the Word of God.
We have not learned to hear the registrations of the Holy Spirit—His warnings, His checks. If our spirit is really alive with the Spirit of God and we are sensitive to Him, then He will alert us to these kinds of things.
But sometimes something is happening—maybe a distraction, maybe something else—and you cannot hear. Or you just ignore it. Whatever.
Peter does not want us to fall away, be carried away, become weakened and vulnerable, and be taken advantage of.
We mentioned at the beginning that, in this matter of exhortation, there is warning on one side, but on the other side there is strong encouragement.
Notice what Peter says in verse 18:
But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
I do not want to simplify things, but I think this is Peter’s culmination—the way he concludes the whole thing. This is what we need to do on the positive side. Rather than being carried away, we grow.
There needs to be an increase of the life and character of our Lord Jesus Christ taking place in us.
The last couple of days, I have had this thought in my heart about Galatians 4, where Paul says:
I am in travail again for you until Christ be formed in you.
Then, in Romans 12:
Be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed.
And then Romans 8: those whom He foreknew, He predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son.
Formed, transformed, and conformed. If somehow this can take place in our lives, I think it will stand us in good stead in terms of being able to resist and overcome the things that will make us unready.
On the positive side, by our growing, we can be better equipped and more ready for our Lord’s coming back. We can join that statement at the end of Revelation:
Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.
And mean it—not just for some religious reason, but because it is something that is in our hearts.
First of all, we need to take the warnings the Word of God gives us. It is His mercy. Do not think somehow that we can escape the difficulties. Every one of us can be taken advantage of. Something can happen in our lives so that we are not as prepared as we need to be for the Lord’s return.
We need to see that and then make the adjustment. That is what it means to repent. It means you see you are doing something that is not good for you, and you make an inward decision that results in changing what you are doing—your actions.
If we can do that, I think we can be better assured that when our Lord returns and we stand in His presence, He can say to us:
Well done, good and faithful servants.
You were faithful in little things;
I will make you rulers.
Oh, dear brothers and sisters, if we have been doing things that hinder our being ready, let us take the mercy of God and the grace of God and change it.
Then let us begin to do the positive side of things. This is what we will fellowship about, Lord willing, tomorrow night: growing in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Let us pray together.
Lord Jesus, it causes great encouragement in our hearts when we know that You have come here to this planet, have lived an absolutely perfect life, and have accomplished so great a salvation.
This salvation includes not only our forgiveness and transformation, but also the bringing into being of a new heaven and a new earth.
Lord, we realize, if we understand Your Word, that You are there at the Father’s right hand, ruling until You make all of Your enemies to sit beneath Your feet.
Lord, here we are on this planet. You love us with an everlasting love, from which nothing can separate us. Yet, Lord, You have called us to be co-workers with You in this great work of building Your church.
Lord, we want to be a people whom You find faithful and ready for Your return.
Beloved Lord, You know us perfectly. You know the areas of our lives where we need to take warnings seriously, the adjustments we need to make, and the things we need to do in order to grow in the grace and knowledge of Yourself.
Lord, hear our cry tonight. Begin to arrange circumstances in our lives so that we can make these kinds of decisions that will make us better prepared for Your return. We ask it in Your name. Amen.