Monthly Archive for July, 1998

2 Peter 3:8

Published on July 31, 1998 in 2 Peter. 0 Comments
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“But, beloved, do not forget this one thing, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day“

 The paragraph that extends from verse eight through verse thirteen sets before us the outcome of the coming of Christ. Scoffers say in verse four, “Where is the promise of His coming?” Their idea is that it has not happened so it must not be true.

But

Peter shifts his attention to Christians. Has God forgotten about His plan? It has been many years since this promise has been made. Christians should not get discouraged at God’s delay of executing His judgment. He is faithful to His promises even though they may take time. The wheels of God grind exceedingly slow but they grind exceedingly fine.

Beloved

Peter speaks to Christians with tenderness – “beloved.”

do not forget

Peter uses the word “forget” for the scoffers in verse five; now he uses the word for Christians. “Forget” means escape notice, to be hidden from, unnoticed. The Greek indicates that Peter’s readers are in the process of forgetting. These Christians allow certain skepticism about Christ’s return blunt the impact of His return on their lives. This passage says that that “forgetting” is culpable ignorance.

The scoffers “forgot” (v.5) but Christians are not to forget (1:9). Christians have a tendency to forget how the nature (essence) of God works. We get so caught up in finite way of doing things that we forget that God operates from a completely different viewpoint than we do.


Principle:

Forgetfulness has great negative impact on how we apply truth to experience.


Application:

Forgetfulness is a term of application. When we forget about who God is we cannot apply who God is to our lives.

How is it that people can learn and forget so quickly? How can people learn truth and proceed to quickly forget what they learned? There are a number of reasons for this. Some people never truly learned the principle in the first place. They are ignorant of the principle. In this case, application is not the issue, but they have not formed clear enough principles to apply truth to their experience.

In another situation people know the principles of God’s Word but they operate on false criteria such as emotion as their primary operating principle. We all have emotions but the point here is that we can use our emotions falsely. Emotions should be the result of principle rather than the cause of principle. If we live out principle, pertinent emotions should follow. Emotions get out of whack when we live inherently in emotions without principle.

Some people use emotion as the criterion of their soul. Eventually they base their whole evaluation of the Christian life on how they feel. This leads to psychological hedonism and keeps people from applying God’s truth to experience. Some people try to solve their problems by tantrums. They blow their cork and exhibit childish behavior. This is living by manipulation. Emotions rule in this situation. When this happens, we become slaves to emotions. This destroys the Christian life. We cannot absorb and apply God’s truth in this environment.

If we stay out of fellowship long enough, this will also destroy our capacity to apply God’s truth to experience. We eventually lose conscious awareness of God’s principles because we do not think that those principles work anymore. The longer we stay in this situation, the more deprived we get. This is one problem of “forgetting” in this verse.

Another problem that comes from “forgetting” is displaced orientation. When we fail to categorize God’s Word into proper principles for living, we live fragmented lives. We all need standards of conduct. Much Bible preaching today strictly revolves around inspiration and not teaching. No wonder people cannot apply truth to experience–they only see one issue at a time! They respond to one inspiration after another and not to the whole counsel of God. They fail to categorize God’s principles in order to structure their entire life around God’s philosophy of life.

Failure to orient to God’s Word as integral principles for living is like throwing all our clothes into one big pile. When we want to wear a certain combination, we must dig through the pile until we find things that match. By the time we do this spiritually, we may end in spiritual disaster. This is a problem of categorization of God’s Word for our lives. If we hang God’s principles into categories, we can sort out what we need at the time we need it. We no longer have to say, “I wonder where that principle can be found in the Bible for my life.”

Many people do not apply truth to their lives because other things distract them from the principles of the Word. Learning and applying principles to experience requires discipline. It does not come with casual Christianity. If we put learning God’s Word on the outer edge of the periphery of our lives, we will not live out the Bible in our lives.

2 Peter 3:7

Published on July 30, 1998 in 2 Peter. 0 Comments
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“But the heavens and the earth which are now preserved by the same word, are reserved for fire until the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men“

But the heavens and the earth which are now preserved

We get our word “thesaurus” from the Greek word for “preserved.” A thesaurus is a place of treasure. It is a place of storage. God stores the “heavens and earth” like a treasure. He put them on layaway.

The “heavens” here is the universe as we know it. God is in the process of preserving a world of people for judgment.

by the same word

The “same word” that caused creation and the flood will cause the last great conflagration. The latter catastrophe is as certain as the former.

are reserved for fire

Only three verses in the New Testament says that the world will be destroyed by fire (this verse and verses 10 and12).

“Reserved” means kept. God keeps heaven and earth for a future judgment. God is great at making reservations. He has made a reservation for the unjust unto the Day of Judgment. Peter predicts a future conflagration.

until the Day of Judgment and perdition of ungodly men

God judged the earth in a universal judgment by the flood. He has another cataclysmic and universal judgment coming to the world, a judgment by fire. This will be a conflagration of incredible magnitude. This fire is a fire of cosmological purging.

“Then Death and Hades were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. And anyone not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the lake of fire” (Revelation 20:14-15).


Principle:

God has made a reservation for those who do not come to Christ.


Application:

The final termination of the world will be an awful devastation. No one will escape. It will be a universal judgment except for those who come to Christ as their Savior. To see the world as we know it destroyed is not pleasant. No single person will escape; there will be place to flee. This will be most awful judgment yet.

2 Peter 3:6

Published on July 29, 1998 in 2 Peter. 0 Comments
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“By which the world that then existed perished, being flooded with water“

by which

The word “which” is neuter plural and refers to two sources of flood waters. Water came from the skies and from below ground (Genesis 7:11; 8:2).

world that then existed perished, being flooded with water

The “world” here is the world of people. The Flood destroyed all inhabitants of the world except those on the ark. The whole state of things then existing perished.

We get our English word “catastrophe” from the Greek word for “flooded” (katakluzw). It is not all that clear whether this is the flood of creation or the flood of Noah’s day. Whether Peter refers to the judgment of Noah’s day or to pre-Adam judgment is conjecture. The important thing is that we realize that there was a catastrophe in the past.


Principle:

The stability of the world depends entirely on God’s will.


Application:

God has sovereignly passed judgment on the world. He is ultimately in control of the universe. Our universe is not random, but God carefully and providentially manages it. He, at times, chooses to intervene into the universe.

2 Peter 3:5b

Published on July 28, 1998 in 2 Peter. 0 Comments
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“For this they willfully forget: that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of water and in the water…”

(This devotional is out of the norm in that we deal here with some scientific and philosophical issues of evolution and creation.)

that by the word of God the heavens were of old

God created by His “word.” Ten times in the first chapter of the first book of the Bible we read, “And God said.” God created the world by His “word.” He did not use the process of evolution but spoke the universe into existence. Creation “by the word” is what we call special creation. God created the world ex nihilo (out of nothing).

“By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, And all the host of them by the breath of His mouth” (Psalm 33:6).

“By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible” (Hebrews 11:3).

and the earth standing out of water and in the water

On the third day of creation, the earth emerged from the water (Genesis 1:9-10). The Bible submits a cosmology of the universe in this passage. Cosmos is order; the opposite of chaos. God is a God of order. He, therefore, made creation a place of order and system.

Biblical cosmology is the opposite of uniformitarianism which attributes the origin and development of all things in the cosmos to innate laws and processes eternally resident therein, with neither beginning nor end. Biblical cosmology presents the destiny of the cosmos in terms of the creating, and sustaining of the universe by a transcendent yet immanent and personal God. God reveals the origin and nature of the universe primarily in the Bible, not in creation itself.


Principle:

All present processes of creation are basically processes of conservation and disintegration, not processes of creation and integration


Application:

Uniformitarianism will be the philosophy of “latter day” thinking. Without the principle of uniformitarianism there would barely be a science of geology. This flies in the face of special, instantaneous creation.

Catastrophism holds that one or more catastrophes had an influence on shaping geological formations. Catastrophism is a fighting word among present day evolutionists. Geology suffers from great want of scientific data. Some evidence contradicts uniformitarianism such a pollen grains in Pre-Cambrian rock in the Grand Canyon.

Present processes from the viewpoint of Scripture are the process of providence, of sustaining, upholding and preserving (Colossians 1:17; Hebrews 1:3; 2 Peter 3:7) rather than the process of evolution. The basic structure of cosmic law (energy and entropy) supports creation. Energy is the capacity of a system to accomplish something. Entropy is a state of randomness and disorder.

The first law of thermodynamics is the conservation of mass-energy. Nothing is now being created but all things are in the process of preservation. The first law testifies that the beginning of the cosmos could never have been accomplished within present processes, none of which are creative processes.

The second law of thermodynamics is that entropy of a system must increase without the injection of intelligence. This is what we call a “closed system.” A closed system is isolated from external sources or ordering energy. The system, however, may be enlarged to any arbitrary size, even to that of the cosmos itself in so far as the actual scientific evidence goes. Systems tend to become disorganized approaching a maximum state of disorder or “death.” If the universe was indefinitely old, it would have already reached this state of maximum entropy. Since the cosmos is still far from dead, it must have had a beginning. The present, conservative, processes of the cosmos could not have accomplished that beginning.

Summary: All present processes are basically processes of conservation and disintegration, not processes of creation and integration.

The presupposition of natural science that our universe is an infinitely closed cosmology (all reality is declared to be within this realm of energy and matter) defined its own reality. However, this is not science at all but is philosophy at its core.

To postulate creative processes that scientists cannot prove by the scientific method is just as metaphysical as to postulate a creator. The failure of uniformitarianism to establish its presuppositions scientifically has led to physics making way for metaphysics in science. To postulate creative processes that cannot be proven by the scientific method must now be as metaphysical as to postulate a creator.

2 Peter 3:5

Published on July 27, 1998 in 2 Peter. 0 Comments
Read Introduction to 2 Peter

“For this they willfully forget: that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of water and in the water…”

Peter now answers the objections of the scoffers. First, he turns to the principle of catastrophism.

For this they willfully forget:

Scoffers want to deliberately forget that God created the world. They choose to conveniently forget the actions of God. They cannot bear the idea of the reality of who God is and what He has done in their mind. God’s truth passes unnoticed by them.

The phrase “this they willfully forget” is literally “this escapes them.” These people do not want to know truth because they purposely shut down their volition toward God’s truth. They shut their eyes to the facts. The world is not eternally stable. Things are not forever the same. Cataclysms can come.

God’s truth is hidden from them due to their own will. Peter’s condemnation of evolutionary and uniformitarian cosmology of “latter day” intellectualism centers on the principle of catastrophism. The evidence of this is so clear to him that to deny it is “willful ignorance” on the part of those who reject it.

Many scoffers shut their eyes to the facts. They cannot face the facts of God’s Word. Their ignorance is culpable. Any other idea than uniformitarianism is strange to them. That is why catastrophism escapes their thinking.


Principle:

Negative volition continues to plague people today.


Application:

People negative to God are not open to truth about God. They do not know because they do not want to know. This is willful ignorance.

Some people do not want to believe the Bible. They study everything they can find that assaults the validity of Christianity. These people are negative in their volition toward God and His Word. It is one thing to be ignorant of the Bible but it is another thing to be “willingly” ignorant of it.

2 Peter 3:4

Published on July 26, 1998 in 2 Peter. 0 Comments
Read Introduction to 2 Peter

“…and saying, ‘Where is the promise of His coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation‘”

and saying,

Mockers make the following claim.

Where is the promise of His coming? For since the fathers fell asleep,

These skeptics ridicule the promise of Christ’s coming. This word “promise” means a gracious promise, a promise with no strings attached. This promise does not depend on what we do but on what Jesus’ did for us.

Skeptics make the argument that since the promise of His coming has not been fulfilled, God does not keep His Word. The return of Christ is at the core of Christianity. If there is no future for Christianity, no heaven, and no presence with God, then what is the point of our faith? Since there are about 345 verses in the Old Testament that set forth the Second Coming, this is quite an attack on the veracity of God’s promise.

The argument of these false teachers is that we live in a stable universe. We cannot expect such events as the Second Coming of Christ. Mockers not only ridicule the veracity of God’s promise but the graciousness of His promise.

all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation

The word “continue” means to continue throughout, i.e., without interruption. These scoffers maintain that nothing changes. God does not intervene into creation. Creation goes on the same year after year. Deists declare that God made the world and then went off never to connect to it again. They claim that God is not interested in the world. He is so tied up in celestial red tape that He does not have time for us.

Today we call the claim that “all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation” uniformitarianism. Uniformitarianism means that the present cosmos is simply a reflection of the patterns of the past. This philosophy precludes God’s incursion into time and space and postulates a universe run by natural laws.


Principle:

God cares about the details of our life.


Application:

This particular attack on Christianity is an attack on the character of God. It says that God does not keep His promises. He has blind apathy toward His creatures.

Weak minds and wicked motives will seize on the idea that Christianity is a dilution. If there is no future accountability, there is no hope. There is no sense of awe of God or of facing Him in eternity.

God declares that He is a personal God who is so involved in our lives that He counts the hairs upon our heads (with some of us that may not be much of a problem). He knows each tear we shed.

2 Peter 3:3

Published on July 25, 1998 in 2 Peter. 0 Comments
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“Knowing this first: that scoffers will come in the last days, walking according to their own lusts…”

Peter presents the attack of these scoffers against Christianity in verses three and four.

knowing this first:

Invariably what God commands us to know, we do not know (1:20). We are to put priority on knowing the nature of scoffers in the last days. To protect ourselves against apostasy, we need to know some things.

that scoffers will come in the last days

Scoffers in this context are apostate teachers who deny the Lord Jesus (2:1) and His Second Coming (2:3). The “last days” are the period of time before the Second Advent of the Lord Jesus. These are the “last days” of the church before Jesus comes back for the church.

walking according to their own lusts

“Walking” means to go from one place to another. Evidently these false teachers will be very evangelistic with their false doctrine.

The scoffers of the “last days” will attack Christianity in a special way. They will attack it by drawing the church into immorality. This is a powerful motivation. There is a close connection between their apostasy and their immoral living. This immoral living is generated from their viewpoint.


Principle:

False teachers try to intimidate Christians from their convictions.


Application:

False teachers will come with ridicule. They will make fun of those who hold to truth and deride the doctrine of the church. By this they hope to intimidate Christians.

2 Peter 3:2b

Published on July 24, 1998 in 2 Peter. 0 Comments
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“…that you may be mindful of the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets, and of the commandment of us, the apostles of the Lord and Savior…”

which were spoken before by the holy prophet

“Holy prophets” are Old Testament prophets whose writings the Holy Spirit inspired as the Word of God.

The Bible will do us little good if we do not come to it with a reverent mind. It is a holy [set apart] book delivered by holy prophets. The Bible will do us good if we hold it in reverence. Your attitude towards the Word will determine whether you apply it to your life.

and of the commandment of us

A “commandment” is an injunction, charge or precept. These commands are precepts of the authors of the New Testament.

the apostles of the Lord and Savior

The “apostles of the Lord and Savior” are the authors of the New Testament. Peter links Old and New Testament writers of Scriptures showing the unity of both testaments. The unity of Scripture has a pattern — “the Lord and Savior.”


Principle:

Saturate your mind with Scripture.


Application:

We never outgrow the tendency of sin until God promotes us to glory. As the hymn says, “Prone to wander, Lord I feel it.” However, when we put the Bible in our minds, it deters sin. We will not be sinless, but we will sin less.

“Your word I have hidden in my heart,
That I might not sin against You!” (Psalm 119:11).

Unless we are one hundred per cent sold on the Bible as the infallible, inerrant, unalterable Word from the living God, it will be of little use to us. We will not use it effectively in our lives. If we have not previously programmed our minds with the Word, nothing will come out. We cannot use what we do not have. Some people wonder why Christianity does not work. No wonder! They do not apply the Bible as God intended.

God gives us the mental furniture to think thoughts after Him. Innumerable benefits come to us when we think God’s thoughts. The good is often the enemy of the best. We clutter our minds with things that are good but not with the best. We litter our minds with the mediocre. These things are neither vulgar nor coarse, but they are not the best. The very best is to know God by the Word of God. The greatest deterrent to falling into sin is the knowledge of principles of the Word and the application of them to experience. This is God’s mode for safeguarding His own from sliding into sin.

It is not enough to know God’s principles, we must apply those principles to our heart.

“And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart” (Deuteronomy 6:6).

“Therefore you shall lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul, and bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes” (Deuteronomy 11:18).

“Your words were found, and I ate them,
And Your word was to me the joy and rejoicing of my heart;
For I am called by Your name,
O Lord God of hosts” (Jeremiah 15:16).

“But His word was in my heart like a burning fire
Shut up in my bones;
I was weary of holding it back,
And I could not” (Jeremiah 20:9).

Meditate on God’s Word.

“This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success” (Joshua 1:8).

“But his delight is in the law of the Lord,
And in His law he meditates day and night” (Psalm 1:2).

Let the Word “abide” in you.

“If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you” (John 15:7).

“Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord” (Colossians 3:16).

“I have written to you, fathers,
Because you have known Him who is from the beginning.
I have written to you, young men,
Because you are strong, and the word of God abides in you,
And you have overcome the wicked one” (1 John 2:14).

2 Peter 3:2

Published on July 23, 1998 in 2 Peter. 0 Comments
Read Introduction to 2 Peter

“…that you may be mindful of the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets, and of the commandment of us, the apostles of the Lord and Savior…”

that you may be mindful

Peter repeatedly reminds his people to remember. His readers need to remind themselves of something important. “Call this to your mind.” “Put your mind full of the Old Testament and New Testament.” Our thoughts wander. Our imagination tends to run away into territory of temptation. Therefore, we need to focus our mind on the Word of God.

of the words

The Bible is verbally inspired. Inspiration carries more than the thoughts of God, it conveys the very words of God. This means that these words have no errors. There is no book on earth like the Bible.

The word here for “words” is the spoken word, a saying, or speech.


Principle:

Storing God’s Word in our minds means that we build the Word of God into our lives.


Application:

If we memorize Scripture, God will be our divine Ally. One of the most effective means of growth in my life is the memory of Scripture. I memorize Scripture that deals with my temptations and failures. It is not enough to memorize a verse; we must understand the principle behind the verse. When temptation comes, take that principle and apply it to your situation. The right verse will come upon the television of your soul at the right time.

If we attempt to bear testimony to Jesus Christ, a verse will come to mind that is right for the situation. Stock the shelves of your mind with the Word. The Holy Spirit will enable you to do it. Do not fear that you cannot do it. Take God’s word seriously. He will bless you for it.

If we are going to memorize Scripture, we must have a system. Let me offer you a simple method for memorizing Scripture. Write a verse on one side of a 3×5 card with the verse address on the other side [memorizing a verse without the address is like having a friend and not knowing his or her phone number]. Do not attempt to memorize the verse for the first half of the day. Just read it over when stopping at a light, for example. Think about the meaning of the verse. Try to form a principle behind the verse. It is much easier to memorize if we understand the meaning, otherwise, we just memorize words. That is why most people fear memorizing. Memorizing dead words does not help anybody. Moreover, memorize pertinent verses to your life. Do not memorize random verses that do not relate to your daily experience. If you memorize relevant Scripture, you will increase your spiritual firepower.

2 Peter 3:1d

Published on July 22, 1998 in 2 Peter. 0 Comments
Read Introduction to 2 Peter

“Beloved, I now write to you this second epistle (in both of which I stir up your pure minds by way of reminder)…”

by way of reminder

Note the emphasis on remembering in this second epistle of Peter: 2 Peter 1:12,13,15. This is the purpose of the epistle.

The phrase “by way of reminder” has to do with the application of truth to our experience. God’s Word is worth repeating. All good things in life are worth repeating. If that is true of life in general, how much more is it of God’s Word. We cannot get through the Christian life with one shot from God’s Word.What we really want to know is what we can apply to any experience of life. We need truth for times of success. We need truth in times of trouble. When we go to sleep at the switch of knowing God’s Word, we will enter deep spiritual trouble.

The word “remind” comes from two words: under and remember. The word “under” carries the idea of authority conveying the idea of to remember our true authority [under] which is the Word of God. Christians are to put to mind, bring to remembrance the truth Peter taught them in his epistles. This truth deals with the application of truth to experience.

Repetition is important to teaching God’s Word. Truth needs to be inculcated into our way of thinking, our attitudes. One shot at truth will not give us the stability we need against the forces of Satan.

“For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept, Line upon line, line upon line, Here a little, there a little” (Isaiah 28:10).


Principle:

We need to know God’s Word so thoroughly that we cannot forget it in time of temptation and suffering.


Application:

There is a tendency to ignore God’s Word in times of success. When we go to sleep at the switch spiritually, then things fall apart and we wonder why. This is the reason we should apply truth consistently to our experience.

Most people apply truth when things go wrong. That is usually too late. We need to be prepared before the crisis comes. God’s truth needs implanting into our minds before we enter the pressure cooker. God wants us to use God’s Word for more than suffering. He wants us to use it for life. We base our capacity to love God on our knowledge of God, not on subjective thinking.

We cannot recall what we have not learned; we cannot apply what we do not know. Application depends on recalling the right truth at the right moment. The principle is that we need to know God’s Word so thoroughly that we cannot forget it. We know more than we ever live. Our primary need is not new truth, but to live out the truth that we have. Harry Ironside speaking of the doctrinal teaching said, “If it’s new, it’s not true; and if it’s true, it’s not new.” Many people are always on the outlook for something new. They do not appreciate the truth that they possess. They do not appropriate truth that they have. We must remind ourselves of what we know.

It is important to learn biblical truth and to apply it to our experience. Our capacity to love God, love others, enjoy life, operate on a scale of values, all revolve around knowing and applying truth to our experience.

We need to know truth in order to recall truth. Application of truth depends on remembering God’s truth at the time we need it in our experience.