2 Peter 3 – The End of Time: Part 5 — A ‘Time With God’ Audio Devotion

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Dear friends, this is now my second letter to you. I have written both of them as reminders to stimulate you to wholesome thinking. I want you to recall the words spoken in the past by the holy prophets and the command given by our Lord and Saviour through your apostles.

2 Peter 3:1-2

Transcript

Good Friday morning. As you head into this day, remember God is there. He’s real. He’s involved in your life, and His Word, the Bible, is just full of truth for life, not just truth for some theologian’s brain somewhere in a seminary somewhere.

No truth for your life today. God wants to affect and impact your life. That’s what it means to be a Christian. We know God. We love God. God’s involved in our lives, and it makes life so awesome to walk in step with God and His Holy Spirit in our lives.

Well, today we’re looking at 2 Peter chapter 3 in the Bible, and all this week we’ve been looking at this chapter that talks about the fact that Jesus Christ will return to this world one day, not as a suffering saviour who’s going to die on the cross for our sins, but this time as God, the Son, the ruler of the universe, who is going to hold this world accountable for the way that we have responded to Him and dealt with the things in our life.

Well, people say, I don’t know if that’s going to happen. That’s what Peter says in this chapter. It seems like he’s never coming back.

And Peter says, Well, it may seem like that, but that’s just because he’s waiting and giving more and more people a chance to turn their lives around and respond to him. He loves them. He doesn’t want them to face judgement. He wants them to face forgiveness, grace, mercy, and love.

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But if people will not respond to that, then they will face judgement.

He closes off his chapter like this.

But according to his promise, he’s just talked about the fact that God has promised to come back and hold this world accountable, to destroy all things. But there’s also another promise. According to His promise, we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. When God first made this world, it was perfect, beautiful and awesome. And we lived in it in a beautiful relationship with God. But when that first man and woman pushed God away out of their lives, this universe became broken both in the natural level and the spiritual level, and people’s hearts and lives became broken. So it became natural for them to hurt one another, to live for themselves, and we find the repercussions of that reverberating through our lives today, don’t we.

But when God comes back and He judges this world and He separates out those who have responded to Him and had their lives made new from those who haven’t, He’s going to make new heavens and a new earth, not broken and fallen, a beautiful place for us to live in.

And Peter goes on to say, therefore, beloved, since you are waiting for these things, be diligent to be found by Him without spot or blemish and at peace, and count the patience of our Lord, the fact he’s taking so long to come back. Count it as salvation because He’s waiting to give more people a chance to be saved.

The last verse of the chapter then says, but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and saviour Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity.

So as you continue in this waiting time before Jesus comes back, don’t just sit back and say, Well, there’s nothing I can do then. No, grow in the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. Become a person who is so aware of Jesus’ grace in your life that it overflows from you, and you are a person of grace.

A person who isn’t negative towards everyone around you, holding them accountable for the way that they’ve been treating you, but a person who shows grace to those around you. Grow also in your knowledge of the Lord, your personal knowledge of this person that means so much to you. Focus in on showing God’s grace to those around you and on knowing Him better.

I’m John North.

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