Opening Illustration: Finding old, moldy drinks in my house.  I think the concept of “refreshing” or “to refresh” is quite understood in our culture.  That terminology is used often.  Just think about how common it is in the IT world.  “Reload your browser”  “Refresh your app”  “Have you tried turning it off and turning back on again?”  It’s all over the home renovation shows.  “Refresh your kitchen”  “Reinvigorate your bathroom”.  Our minds have been conditioned to constantly look for something new.  We are in a such a fast changing culture, that if anything stays the same for any period of time, it’s almost as stays the same for any significant amount of time, then we quickly dismiss it as irrelevant.  We have a cup problem in my house…I find cups and glasses everywhere.  The bigger problem is that some of them still contain some form of liquid.  And the worst is when it’s milk.  I recently found a cup in the garage that had been strategically placed a shelf that wasn’t really noticeable.  And do you know what was in that cup?!  Well, it used to be milk.  It was part butter and part science experiment gone wrong!  

How many of you would very quickly move on to another social media influencer if your favorite Instagram-er only posted one time a day?  I don’t know if we fully realize how much we’ve been trained to demand something “new and fresh”.  The problem with that is when it comes to affect how we view the Bible.  Or how we view the hand of God in creation.  Opponents of Christianity constantly point to their perspective that they don’t see the hand of God.  Opponents constantly point to the idea that if God isn’t moving in a way that they expect, then God must not be present or God must not be real.  The expectation is that for something to be real it has to be constantly evolving.  Time Magazine put this thought process in 1966 with their now iconic cover - Is God Dead?   There are some fundamental reasons why this kind of thinking is wrong.  And that’s what we see today.  Today, Peter writes about this kind of thinking in his letter.  It’s nothing new to our culture.  And he lets us know how we keep the right kind of thinking.  Here’s what we’ll see today:  Refresh your mind to be confident in the never-changing promise that Jesus is coming back.  We are continuing our current sermon series: Grow in Grace.  Go ahead and open up your Bibles to 2 Peter.  As a reminder, we understanding what it means to grow in our knowledge of Jesus and grow in grace.  Let’s jump into the final chapter of this letter.  Read 2 Peter 3:1-10.  Peter starts repeats a familiar theme in this letter with verses 1 and 2.  This time, with a slight variation.  Here’s where we start today:  Get your mind ready for Jesus’ return.

1) Get your mind ready for Jesus’ return. (vs. 1-2)  Peter has a repeated theme in his two letters and he tells us that in verse 1:  ¹ This is my second letter to you, dear friends, and in both of them I have tried to stimulate your wholesome thinking and refresh your memory.  I like how Peter goes back to the term “dear friends”.  If you remember from last week, it was the perfect Mother’s Day message where we saw Peter use phrases like:  Unthinking animals - Dried up springs - Like a dog returning to its vomit.  Just some solid, uplifting terms about false prophets.  But Peter does a quick change of tone, well, because now, he’s talking to the people in the church.  He calls them “dear friends”.  Peter is not afraid to tell his original audience the truth and challenge them, but he’s also going to show how much he cares for them.  It’s such a good example of truth should be bathed in love.  What is Peter saying to his “dear friends”?  He’s reminding them to cling to their precious faith.  He’s reminding them to fill their minds every day with God’s Word.  He’s reminding them that if they want to live in the promises of God, they have to let their minds dwell on the Word of God.  I like how one pastor put it:  “It is impossible for us to think wholesomely unless we are thinking biblically. And it is difficult for us to think biblically unless we’re studying our Bibles.” – Alistair Begg.  And it’s not just remembering, but it’s intentionally stirring your mind.  The NLT puts it “stimulate your wholesome thinking”.

Verse one is a reminder, but verse 2 adds one more piece to the reminder.  ² I want you to remember what the holy prophets said long ago and what our Lord and Savior commanded through your apostles.  The question that immediately comes to mind when reading verse 2 is “what did the prophets say?”  Peter is referring to the prophecies that Jesus is coming back again.  It’s possible that Peter had Malachi 4 on his mind: ¹The Lord of Heaven’s Armies says, “The day of judgment is coming, burning like a furnace. On that day the arrogant and the wicked will be burned up like straw. They will be consumed—roots, branches, and all. ² “But for you who fear my name, the Sun of Righteousness will rise with healing in his wings. And you will go free, leaping with joy like calves let out to pasture.  As we fill our minds everyday with God’s truth, we should be stirring our minds towards eternity.  Do you remember back to 1 Peter?  Do you remember what Peter called us?  We are exiles. We are sojourners. We are temporary residents of this world. When we lose sight of where we are going, we‘ll start tripping over our own feet.  Peter tells us to keep stirring; to keep refreshing our minds that Jesus is coming back.  Why? Because Jesus said He would come back.  And that truth – that promise – changes the way we live our lives.  Let’s look at the promise before we look at how it changes the way we live.  Here’s what we see next:  Jesus is really coming back again (because He promised He would).

2) Jesus is really coming back again (because He promised He would). (vs. 3-7)  Peter goes back to the false teachers for a few verses.  Look at what he writes starting in verse 3:  ³ Most importantly, I want to remind you that in the last days scoffers will come, mocking the truth and following their own desires.  This is a summary of what we saw last week.  But then in verse 4, Peter tells about a specific teaching of these false teachers.  ⁴ They will say, “What happened to the promise that Jesus is coming again? From before the times of our ancestors, everything has remained the same since the world was first created.”  In biblical times (and every century following), false teachers would try to lure people away from the faith by making them doubt the active hand of God.  And it still happens today.  For us today, this is one of the biggest arguments for people who reject the second coming of Jesus.  There are those who look at the unchanging laws of nature and use them to say, “Look, the sun rose today, just like it has done for thousands (or millions) of years. The sun will set later today, just like it always has. The seasons always change. What makes you think that is going to change or stop?”  “If historical science shows us that things really don’t change that much, then why on earth would I believe that Jesus is going to come back and change all of it?” 

It is really a foolish was of thinking. For those who hold to this kind of thinking, our culture is actually destroying the notion that there is any type of objectivism.  We are watching our culture take what has been universally accepted as objective, as science, as known data, and now say it’s all subjective. It doesn’t matter that scientists have for years shown and proven for years there are universally accepted facts. People are now saying those laws are no longer applicable to me. Peter had his own rebuttal in verses 5 through 7: First, Peter says that people just ignore the fact that God made the world and the laws of nature. God is the one who created the world and sustains the world. Look at verse 5:  ⁵ They deliberately forget that God made the heavens long ago by the word of his command, and he brought the earth out from the water and surrounded it with water.  The fact that the sun rises and sets everyday is because of God, not because He’s not there!  Secondly, Peter points to the past where by one act of God, the laws of nature were temporarily disrupted.  ⁶ Then he used the water to destroy the ancient world with a mighty flood.  God has changed things up because He is in control. Here’s what those two verses mean: ⁷ And by the same word, the present heavens and earth have been stored up for fire. They are being kept for the day of judgment, when ungodly people will be destroyed.  If God used water in the past for judgment, God can use fire in the future for judgment. 

Here’s what this means for us:  Don’t dismiss the promise that Jesus is coming back.  You can’t ignore the reality of Jesus’ coming back to complete His redemptive plan. What did Jesus say over and over again before He went to the cross? Well, He said a lot, but what specifically about dying on the cross? “I’ll be back”  This reminds me of one my kids in the past when the question was thrown out in Kids Ministry about Jesus’ final words before He died.  And the correct answer is “It is finished.”  But my kid went straight Terminator mode and confidently declared that Jesus’ final words were “I’ll be back!” It’s not the exact answer, but it was still true. Jesus said that He would rise from the dead three days later. And what did He do? He rose three days later. What did Jesus also say He would do? He would come a second time to complete the redemptive plan. That means we all must be confident in the never-changing promise that Jesus is coming back. We must refresh our minds consistently so that we remain confident in this promise that never changes.  When we do that, it puts our minds in the right place so that don’t mistake Jesus’ timing as time to live for yourself.  And that’s what we see in verse 8 through 10:  Don’t mistake Jesus’ timing as time to live for yourself.

3) Don’t mistake Jesus’ timing as time to live for yourself. (vs. 8-10)  These final three verses of our passage today are for both the false teachers and for followers of Christ.  Peter reminds us in verse 8 that God doesn’t work on our calendars and clocks.  Look at verse 8:  ⁸ But you must not forget this one thing, dear friends: A day is like a thousand years to the Lord, and a thousand years is like a day.  Illustration: Sitting Through a Dance Recital.  The best way I can articulate this is when you sit through a dance recital.  There may be 30 dances that take place and only one of them is your kid or grandkid. And when you are sitting through the 29 other dances, it feel like someone has pushed pause on the clock. It just seems like it never ends. But when your child is on the stage, it’s the most amazing few minutes that just fly by.  When it comes to the time of all of the dances, what you are feeling is a complete opposite feeling to someone else in the room because they don’t want to sit through your child’s dance just like you don’t want to sit through their child’s dance. Our clocks and calendars don’t work like God’s clocks and calendars. Here’s why having that understanding of time matters: Look at verse 9: ⁹ The Lord isn’t really being slow about his promise, as some people think. No, he is being patient for your sake. He does not want anyone to be destroyed, but wants everyone to repent. God is waiting because He wants more people to believe in Him. Ironically, God is waiting so that people will repent. But the very people that God is waiting on to repent are using His patience to say He’s not coming back. God loves saving people. And He’s patiently waiting, for now.  

For now, because God’s patience will end.  ¹⁰ But the day of the Lord will come as unexpectedly as a thief. Then the heavens will pass away with a terrible noise, and the very elements themselves will disappear in fire, and the earth and everything on it will be found to deserve judgment.  There is a day coming when Jesus will return. And when that day comes, everything is set. Your life, your soul, it’s all locked in on what you believe about Jesus. There are no second chances. It’s a heavy reality, but it’s still reality. The day of Lord brings finality, but it also brings eternity. This life isn’t as good as it gets. What God brings in will be so beautiful and peaceful and just the most amazing thing you could ever imagine. If you don’t know Jesus as your Savior and Lord. If you haven’t surrendered your soul to Him. If you haven’t began a personal relationship with Him. Don’t play the time-game. Don’t mistake Jesus’ timing as time to live for yourself. GOSPEL PRESENTATION.  

I close with this challenge.  Plan out your years as if Jesus isn’t coming back tomorrow. Live out today as if Jesus is coming back tomorrow. I’ve said this before and I think it’s the best way to live in God’s timing. It’s the best way to refresh your mind to be confident in the never-changing promise that Jesus is coming back. Make yearly plans. Seek God’s will for your life on a yearly or longer basis. But then live each day out as if Jesus is coming back tomorrow. When you plan well, you can live out the day fully. What kind of church would we be if we planned out our years for Jesus and lived out our days for Jesus to the hilt?  What kind of impact would that have to those around us?  What kind of impact would that have to let others know about the hope of Jesus?  Let’s be that for ourselves, for our families, for our church, for our community, and for the world.  Go this week, refresh your minds and be confident that Jesus is coming back.  Let’s pray.

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