5. Speeding the Last Day

[0:00] If you have that chapter that we read open in front of you, and we're looking particularly, I suppose, this evening at verses 11 and following of 2 Peter chapter 3, which is all about speeding the last day.

[0:19] Speeding the last day. If ever a letter was more urgently relevant to us in the church today, more urgently relevant than 2 Peter, it would be hard to find, I think.

[0:36] But I suppose that's what we find when we dig deeply into the Bible. It always seems that the part that we're studying right now is the most urgently relevant of anywhere in the whole scriptures. Isn't that right? Well, of course, because, to use Peter's own words in his first letter, it is the living and abiding Word of God that we're studying together.

[0:57] That's what he calls it in 1 Peter 1 and 23. And it was that word, he says there in his first letter, it was through that word that we were born again.

[1:10] And it's that same word, he tells us in the first chapter of his second letter, that same word that is God's divine power granted to us so that we have all that we need for life and godliness.

[1:27] All through our whole lives, right from our new birth, and right up until the time when Jesus himself comes again. It's through his living Word, with its great and precious promises, says Peter, that we, the frail and failing human creatures that we are all around this church, just made out of dust.

[1:53] It's through that living Word that we will become, as Peter says, partakers in the divine nature. His power, his divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, that's what we're called to, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.

[2:31] We shall, says Peter, by his great grace and mercy, we shall share in the glory of God himself. Isn't that staggering?

[2:43] The glory that he says is to be revealed at the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ. That's what he focuses on so much in his first letter. The word of power that brings us to life is the same word of power that holds us and will bring us all the way to glory.

[3:03] Doesn't that give you assurance and confidence? It most certainly does to me. It's amazing. How we should cherish, then, this amazing word of God's truth.

[3:14] But, of course, the astonishing thing and the shocking thing is that right from the very start and right up into the present day in the church, there have been those who have not cherished the truth.

[3:29] But instead, as Peter says in chapter 3, verse 16, that we read, have despised God's truth, have twisted the scriptures. Not only, he says, to their own destruction, but as verse 17 says, carrying others also into lawlessness and into great error so that they too become utterly unstable in their faith and in danger of falling.

[3:53] Shocking, isn't it? But, says Peter, alas, it is true. It was then and it is today. And it is increasingly obvious, friends, in the churches of the Western world today that this is so.

[4:07] And alas, as we know only too well in our own denomination in the Church of Scotland. And the twin telltale signs that Peter points us to here in chapter 3 are also just as evident today.

[4:23] Such people and such teachers always, he says, are marked by two characteristics. First, they deny the authority of God's word. Well, at the very least, they play it right down. Chapter 3, verse 4.

[4:35] Where is the promise of his coming, they say? This great hope of the gospel that you Christians cling to, the coming again in glory and in judgment of the Lord Jesus Christ, it's never going to happen.

[4:48] You poor, poor, deluded Christians. Hanging on to these Bibles as though it was something for the modern day today. No, no, no, no.

[5:00] You can't possibly trust the Bible anymore that way. You can't possibly say the scriptures are the be-all and the end-all of the Christian church today. We live in the modern world.

[5:12] We live in the post-modern world. Don't be so ridiculous. They deny and play down the authority of God's word. That's the first thing. And secondly, along with it, verse 5, they deny the reality of God's wrath.

[5:27] They deliberately overlook, says Peter, the fact of God's judgment. Verses 5 to 7, his judgment in history, and he quotes here, right at the beginning in the flood, and even more importantly, God's judgment that will end history.

[5:46] His final and absolute judgment, verse 7. The heavens and earth that now exist are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly.

[5:58] That is what they deny, the authority of God's word and the reality of God's wrath. He will never judge. God will never judge anybody today and certainly not you and me. But, says verse 10, the day of the Lord will come like a thief.

[6:15] And as we saw last time, everything, everything will be exposed to a searing judgment by fire. Well, as I say, we're only too familiar with all of these features in the modern life of the church today.

[6:28] With the unbelief and rejection of the truth that is all around us, even within the church. The voices of the scoffers are loud and persistent today, just as they were in Peter's day then.

[6:41] And some of us have witnessed that just in this past week in our own general assembly. The absolute lowest point, the thing that sickened most people and indeed in one case made one of my colleagues go out and virtually be physically sick, was when a godly minister just retired stood up and asked the assembly after a very wishy-washy and equivocal report on singleness and how we were to encourage people to be chased sexually, he stood up and said, well, in the light of this very equivocal report, how are we as ministers to encourage our young people to remain pure before marriage?

[7:20] And that was met with a prominent minister standing up, regaling the general assembly with tales of his own exploits sexually long before he was married, to the sound of laughter and rounds of applause from the delegates, the commissioners of our general assembly.

[7:37] The absolute lowest point, sniping, snide, scoffing, right at the very heart of an institution of the Christian church.

[7:51] Now, if you think Peter and his writing from 2,000 years ago is not relevant in the light of that, then you better just go home and have a barbecue now. But I think it's very relevant.

[8:05] God's voice may be almost drowned out in our midst, but, says Peter, it is not crushed and it is still there, even if it's quiet, even if it is seemingly crowded out by the scoffing of our contemporary world and in the church.

[8:21] No, says Peter, God's voice is still there and it can still be heard. And it says very, very clearly to those who think like that, like the scoffer, you are making a colossal error if that is what you think, if you believe the scoffer.

[8:43] Look at verse 10 again. Verse 10 is as true as any other verse in the whole of the Bible. And it echoes the words of Jesus himself many, many times.

[8:55] We saw that last Sunday evening repeatedly. And you will be found to be an absolute fool, says Peter, if you fail to pay heed to that warning. That day is coming, a day of exposure, a day when everything will be revealed.

[9:12] And so that is a day, says Peter, that you cannot afford not to be ready for. It will come like a thief. You do not know when God will come calling for you or indeed for this whole world.

[9:24] You must be ready all the time. But how then, as Christian people, how are we to be ready for that day? That's our question this evening.

[9:35] It's right there in verse 11. I'm sure you can see it. Peter says, since all these things are to be thus dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be? There's no question mark in the ESV, the NIV has a question mark.

[9:48] It is a question, really. It's a key question. How are we to react as Christian people, both to the reality of what God tells us about that future of this world that is to come, and also as Christian people, to the denials of all of that, by the scoffers, by those who say, no, no, this will never happen.

[10:08] How are we to react? What kind of people ought we to be? Well, we're not to react, says Peter, by panicking, either about the truth of God's coming judgment, or indeed, about the gross error of those who deny that coming judgment.

[10:24] It's very easy, of course, to be depressed about the state of the church. Very easy in our particular church. I was saying to somebody just recently that my presbytery papers were lying out on the table one day, and my wife Rebecca picked them up and was reading through them, and she just looked at me and said, this is utterly depressing, this is just a story of decline and death.

[10:45] And I said, absolutely, why do you think I'm so miserable every time I come back on a Tuesday night from presbytery? It is utterly depressing. At the General Assembly this year, I don't think I've ever felt so depressed and dispirited, and indeed utterly ashamed of being part of our denomination.

[11:08] But you see, that is not how Peter tells us we are to react. We are not to be panicked, not to just be depressed and cast down. No, nor are we to react by pandering to the false teaching, just giving up on the truth, entering into some kind of dialogue with those who would preach gross error, as though somehow dialogue and journeying on in conversations was ever going to get us anywhere back close to the truth of God.

[11:38] Of course it isn't. Naive and foolish to even think so, and some evangelicals, I'm afraid, are living in a total fairyland of absolute folly, if that's what they think.

[11:50] Somebody sent to me an article this week called Death by Dialogue, cataloguing the way that in a particular American denomination, this whole issue had gone exactly the same way.

[12:00] It could have been written this week about our own situation. No, we're not to be depressed and despair and panic as to what's going on and not know what to do, neither are we to pander and say, well, we must go with the flow, we must start to try and make something of this because this is the only way there is now.

[12:21] No, here Peter points us to clear things, three clear things indeed, that we must do always, regardless of what is going on in the church all around about us.

[12:32] Three things. Not passive things, all supremely active things. And that's very, very important. We are to be active as believing Christian people in the midst of a church being overtaken by error and false teaching.

[12:51] God tells us the future. He tells us that he has it planned. He tells us that he is absolutely sovereign, but never ever does he therefore tell us that we are to just be passive.

[13:03] The way to sit back and say, well, God is sovereign, he will do it all, we must just sit here and do nothing. No, never ever does the Bible do that. Always, by contrast, it tells us quite the reverse.

[13:15] God is sovereign and therefore, you are to be active, knowing that the hand of God is with his people. And that's exceptionally clear here in these verses of 2nd Peter.

[13:28] Peter, what kind of people ought we to be? Well, first, says Peter, we are to be people of active purity.

[13:40] And how vital that is for today's church. Peter is saying to us that holiness is vital. And he's telling us that holiness will not come to us by default.

[13:52] Did you know that? Have you ever thought that? No, says Peter, we need diligence in pursuing lives of holiness and godliness. Look at his logic in verse 11.

[14:04] Since, says Peter, this sinful world is to be destroyed and judged, and since, verse 14, we are waiting for these, he says, that is, verse 13, waiting for a new heaven and new earth in which only righteousness dwells, then, verse 14, be diligent, he says, to be found in him without spot or blemish and at peace.

[14:31] Do you see what he's saying? The new world, the new heavens and the earth, is a place where there can be no spot or blemish, no imperfections, no sin and no corruption. And therefore, says Peter, we as Christian people must be becoming people who are fit for that environment, spotless and without blemish for the day of Jesus Christ.

[14:56] That stands to reason, doesn't it? Any sane person who is going to emigrate from this country and go and live in another country will prepare for that future, won't they?

[15:07] They'll learn the language, they'll try to research the culture, they'll want to find out how everything works, how it is that you go about buying a house, how it is that you get a mortgage, how it is that you engage a lawyer, how it is you find jobs, how the tax system works, what the pensions are like, what the schools are like for your children, how you understand the laws, what the climate's like, how you're going to get the right kind of clothes, all of these things are perfectly natural things that you will do if you're going to go and live in another country.

[15:39] And Peter's saying to us here that we're on our way to a new home, and it's a place where only holiness and goodness and peace reigns. It's not a place where spots and blemishes of sin and filth can ever be.

[15:56] And so, says Peter, since that is so, we are to live now in actively counter-cultural lives, lives without spot and without blemish.

[16:10] Not allowing ourselves to be admired in the muck and the filth of this world's destructive thinking, because we don't really belong here anymore. Notice the words that he used there when he says be diligent to be found without spot or blemish.

[16:27] Look back at chapter 2, verse 13. See what he says about those who are spreading falsehood in the church. They, he says, are spots and blemishes, reveling in their deceptions while they feast with you.

[16:45] That is, you see, they feast with you. They claim to be the same as you, Christian believers. They claim to drink the same cup of Christ. But you see what he says in verse 14?

[16:58] Their eyes are full of adultery, they're insatiable for sin, their hearts are trained in greed, deliberate. They're accursed children.

[17:09] Well, you see what Peter's saying, you people are the absolute reverse of that. Not spots and blemishes, but spotless and without blemish.

[17:22] And that's got to be active. That is not going to happen to you and to me just by accident, just by sitting back and hoping for the best. See, if all around us in our world is dirt and filth, then we're unlikely to be able to be clean unless we actively keep ourselves clean.

[17:43] Just stands to reason. Well, around us in society is talk about sex and self-gratification. It's very hard not to become so used to that we just take it for granted.

[17:54] We just accept it. We begin to follow it. And that is what's all around us today. It used to be, for example, when I was young that people talked about top-shelf magazines.

[18:08] As far as I can see now, that sort of thing is on every shelf. Not just men's magazines, it's women's magazines, even teenage magazines that are obsessed by these kind of unhealthy things, obsessed with sex.

[18:22] Or he talks about being trained in greed, not thus naturally greedy, but trained in it, he says. Well, hasn't our culture become one that's trained in greed and consumption and consumerism?

[18:36] That is the reality that we are seeing blowing up in our face big time in the world at the moment, is it not? We're shocked at the moment by the greed of our politicians that's all over the newspapers and the news, but it's hardly unique.

[18:50] It's rather unfair, isn't it? To just point the finger at them. And notice in chapter 2, verse 14, how when these kind of values infect the church, it is so easy for them to spread and be damaging.

[19:05] Do you see? They entice, he says, unsteady souls. Look down to verse 18. They entice by sensual passions of the flesh those who are barely escaping from those who live in error.

[19:21] Those who are barely escaping. They entice, the vulnerable, the weak, the new Christian, the young Christian, those who are not really very well taught, not very sure, not very well grounded in their faith, and therefore vulnerable to the persuasive teaching of those who say, indulge your sensual passions, indulge your greed, indulge your self-worship, and everything will be alright.

[19:49] But it's reprehensible, isn't it? When leaders in churches find somebody struggling to escape, as Peter says, from their life of sin, instead of encouraging them to battle on and to struggle on, instead of standing with them and helping them as a brother or sister, they say to them, don't struggle.

[20:10] You can get rid of your struggle right now. We'll affirm you, even if you don't struggle. You don't really need to repent, not really sin. It's just an old fashioned view that.

[20:24] That is absolutely reprehensible. That's like having somebody in your church who is a recovering alcoholic, and you saying to them, look, let's go out and have a drink together after the service.

[20:36] I'll buy you one or two, it won't do you any harm at all. Come on, just one. And when they say to you, no, I can't do that, I've got a real problem there, I'm really struggling to stay on the wagon, and you say, oh, never mind, come on, just one or two, that'll be fine.

[20:53] We would rightly scorn and despise somebody who did that, would we not? But that's what these teachers do, says Peter.

[21:04] And you see, all of us, Peter is saying, all of us are hardwired for sin, and especially for sensuality.

[21:16] All of us have an orientation for sin. It's one of the preposterous things that some of the liberal clerics have been saying, that it's ridiculous to try and make that distinction between somebody's sexual orientation and sexual practice, as though to have an orientation means that you must absolutely indulge that practice.

[21:36] I haven't heard anybody on the television saying, well, all our politicians have a greediness orientation, so it's perfectly all right, let them indulge, it would be absolutely wrong to tell them to stop. Have you heard anybody in the newspaper suggesting that? Don't think so.

[21:48] Oh, well, I've got an orientation that helps me to swear like a trooper all the time, so that's what I must do all the time. Or to steal, or to cheat on my wife, or to anything else. See, all of us have an orientation towards sin.

[22:05] And because if you live in a muddy field, you're going to get splashed a lot, you're going to get spotted with filth very, very easily, you have to be diligent, says Peter, to protect yourself.

[22:18] Be diligent to be found in him without spot or blemish, says verse 14. Be people of active purity.

[22:28] That means that you've got to be people of absolute realism, too, doesn't it? You've got to know what your own weaknesses are, and you've got to be determined not to be enticed by them.

[22:43] Why do I have a filter on my internet connection? Well, I'll tell you why. Because if I didn't, I would very likely follow my own orientation far, far too easily and indulge myself in looking at all kinds of things on the internet that would be very easy for me to look at that I shouldn't.

[23:03] That's why I've got a filter on my internet. Because I'm not a fool. Because I know my heart. Why do I have a separate bank account that I deposit on the first day of the month, all the giving that I want to give to the Lord's work?

[23:19] Because I know that if I don't do that, near the end of the month, I might just want to borrow a little bit more from the Lord than I ought to and perhaps forget to pay it back. That's why. Now, you might not have that problem, but I bet you've got some problems.

[23:35] And Peter says we must be diligent to strive to be found in him without spot or blemish. I can't do that very easily on my own, and I suspect that if you're like me, you probably can't either.

[23:49] Which will be the reason, I imagine, that the Lord Jesus decided to invent the church, not a lot of little hermit cells where we all live on our own and never meet with any other Christians. I think if I lived like that, I would find things very, very difficult.

[24:04] And my chances of being in a life of holiness and godliness, virtually zero. Might be different for you, but I doubt it. But that's why God has put us in the church, and he has said to us to encourage one another, to hold one another to account.

[24:18] That's the only way that I can live a life of blamelessness, and of holiness, and of godliness. In fact, it's rather easy for me, because I have to stand up here every week and be exposed publicly.

[24:33] And it wouldn't take you very, very long at all, I think, to rumble me and discover if I was living a life of total sham. But we all need to have regular exposure like that to one another, don't we?

[24:45] I'm not saying you have to confess everything all the time and be bleating out in public all your sins and everything you're doing. But there is a sense, isn't there, which real Christian fellowship means we have to hold one another to account.

[24:58] We need friends who are honest with us. We need somebody who will say to us, brother, you're doing too much of that. You need to hold back. Or sister, I think that is not wise for you.

[25:08] It's not helping you. If you don't have anybody in your life who will do that to you and for you, you're in great danger of ending up falling and tripping up and getting into all sorts of a mess.

[25:25] Unless you are very different from every other human being I've ever met. We are to be people, says Peter, of active purity. Be diligent to be found in him without spot or blemish.

[25:40] Second, he said, we are to be people of active patience. And his point here is that mission won't happen by itself either. We need to be active, says Peter, in proclaiming the gospel.

[25:53] I wonder if you can see that three times in verses 12 to 14 this word waiting occurs. Verse 12, waiting for and hastening the coming day of God. Verse 13, waiting for the new heavens and the earth.

[26:07] Verse 14, waiting for these. We are to be people of patience, says Peter, not impatience. Now impatience in the Christian life is the root of so many follies.

[26:21] I was mentioning that this morning too. Impatience, a desire to find full salvation now, to think you can have it now. You cannot have it now. Read these verses again from Peter.

[26:32] Three times he says, we're waiting for that. It's not yet. It hasn't come. It won't come until Jesus comes. That's what the liberal gospel forgets completely. Thinks that the world can be transformed without the recreation of the heavens and the earth that comes only when Jesus returns.

[26:52] The liberal gospel thinks that all of that can be done now. That if only government did this or that or the next thing or if only Christians protested enough or marched enough or did this or whatever it was, that somehow at last we could have the kingdom of God here on earth.

[27:06] No, says Peter, we're waiting. Waiting for that in the recreation of the heavens and the earth. If you think like that at best you're living in a fantasy world that will end in utter disappointment and at worse you'll be heading for totalitarianism.

[27:26] That's what communism promised. That's what fascism promised. A utopia here on earth by political means. It ended in absolute horror as every human invention does.

[27:39] Pentecostal theology makes very much the same mistake in a different way. It wants health and healing and prosperity now. And again, that can lead you into utter self-deception and ultimately it will lead you into self-despair.

[27:55] Because Peter says we are waiting three times. Waiting for the new heavens and the new earth where the Lord Jesus comes. comes only in the great regeneration with Jesus that these things will be true.

[28:12] As it is true that only when the Lord Jesus comes to remake this world and to remake our bodies and minds only then will all of our personal struggles be behind us also.

[28:23] Whatever those struggles are in our lives. Until that day the mark of the Christian believer is one who is struggling who is swimming against the tide of the world the flesh and the devil not swimming along carried by its current.

[28:38] It's the most foundational definition of what it means to be a Christian believer in scripture. One in whom God has placed struggle. Genesis 3.15 I will place enmity between your seed and the serpent says God.

[28:56] Until God puts that struggle within you you are just like the world. And whenever you have given up on that struggle once again you have joined the world.

[29:10] No, we are to be patient says Peter but not passively patient. We are to be people of active patience. What do I mean?

[29:21] Well, verse 12 you see speaks about waiting for and hastening that day. Do you see that? How are we to do that? Well, verse 15 has the answer.

[29:33] We are to count the patience of our Lord as salvation. That is, we are to grasp what all this time of waiting is actually for.

[29:44] We saw that when we looked back at verse 9 didn't we? He delays for the sake of mission. He is not slow as some people count slowness but is patient.

[29:56] He doesn't want anyone to perish. He wants all to come to repentance. And Peter goes on to say that Paul is always talking about this in his letters and indeed he is. For example, in Romans when he says that the great rejection of the Messiah by Israel, by the Jews, by his own kin is nevertheless that which opens the door of salvation to the Gentile world.

[30:18] This is the day of salvation says Paul. And what an encouragement that is even in his own personal anguish about God's message to the Jews seeming to be rejected, the perplexity of all that he had expected and the wonder of God apparently not going according to plan.

[30:37] And God says it is the very vehicle through which I am bringing salvation to the world. And you see Peter is saying this is the day of salvation.

[30:51] The patience of our Lord is salvation and we are to count it as that. We have got a part to play in that. So you see if you long for peace in this world, for justice, for the oppressed, for the end of poverty and wars, for the end of cruelty, the end of crime, then we are to speed the coming of that day.

[31:16] If we long for health and for healing to all of those who so badly need it, if we long for the end of a struggle with our sin, if we long for the end of death and its bereavement and its misery, then speed its coming, says Peter.

[31:31] How? By seeing why Jesus delays. By seeing that he is patient for the sake of salvation. That he has a program for mission to be fulfilled in this world before he comes.

[31:44] And we are part of that. And we are to be people of active patience, people of mission, proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ all through the world. And again, that is not going to happen by default.

[31:59] It is not going to happen by just sitting and saying, well, we will wait patiently for Jesus to come. No, it is to be active patience, seizing the day of mission and hastening his coming, says Peter.

[32:12] No matter what is going on in the church, whether it is false teaching, as Peter says, whether it is awful things, just like it was in Peter's day, our chief focus is to be the same. It is to be active, wholehearted zeal for the gospel of Jesus Christ.

[32:28] Count the patience of our Lord as salvation. That is how we act to speed his coming. People of active purity, people of active patience, and thirdly, says Peter, we are to be people of active progress.

[32:48] He is saying to us here the same thing, that maturity as Christian people also will not come by default. Verse 18, we have to grow, he says, in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

[33:02] Christian maturity, he says, comes as we know personally more and more of the Lord Jesus Christ, as we grow in our personal knowledge of the Saviour.

[33:15] How does that happen? Well, if you remember back to chapter 1, verse 5, he said there that if you add to your faith godliness, if you strive to add to it virtue and self-control and affection and so on, then he says, in chapter 1, verse 8, then you'll grow in your knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.

[33:36] You'll not be ineffective or unfruitful in that knowledge. It's quite simple really. He's saying that if we live ever near the Lord Jesus Christ, we'll get to know him better and better and better.

[33:51] I've said this before. Before Edward Lobb moved up to Glasgow, I knew him. Met him several times. We'd talk quite a lot. But I didn't know him as I know him now.

[34:03] I knew he kept chickens, but I'd never actually held his chickens. I didn't know he was a fanatic about chickens. I'd never tasted his lovely eggs, had I, Edward? But I know him now. He lives near me.

[34:15] We speak. We do things together. That's how you get to know somebody. You get to know their ways. You get to know their words. That's what fosters a relationship.

[34:28] You get to know what somebody's likes are and their dislikes. You get to know what they cherish, what they think is unimportant. And much more than that, as you get to know all these things about them, you get to know them personally.

[34:43] It's the way it is in a marriage relationship or any other relationship. It's how the relationship grows. You live near one another. You spend time. You talk.

[34:54] You share. And so it is with the Lord Jesus Christ. Peter says in chapter 1 that he's given us his words, his grave and precious promises, and that they are all that we need to grow in our knowledge of him.

[35:10] And here, at the end of the letter, in chapter 3 verse 16, again he's speaking about knowing the scriptures, not twisting them, but knowing them so that we will grow, as verse 18 says, in the knowledge of our Lord and our Saviour.

[35:30] There's a lot more, of course, to knowing the Lord Jesus Christ than just knowing the Bible, but there is not less than that. It's possible to be an expert on the text of the Bible and not to know the Lord Jesus Christ at all.

[35:45] That is indeed possible. But the reverse is not possible. You cannot know the Lord Jesus Christ deeply without knowing the scriptures deeply and well.

[35:58] That is utterly impossible. Because this is the word that he has given us. All that we need to grow in him, these are, if you like, the love letters that he has placed in our hands to read and to cherish and to draw our hearts out that we might know him and love him as he loved us.

[36:20] You can't know the Lord Jesus without knowing the scriptures and that's so, so important. It means that if a person doesn't know the Bible, if a home and a family doesn't cherish the Bible, or if a church fellowship doesn't teach the Bible constantly and faithfully, then Christ will not be well known in that person's life, that home and family life, or in that church.

[36:53] It's as simple as that. There will not be real growth in grace and the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. people will not be progressing to maturity in Jesus Christ.

[37:10] And so Peter says we must be people of active progress, growing daily despite all things and the grace and the knowledge of our Lord and Savior.

[37:24] Friends, Peter is reminding us that we are heading for a new home, for a new heavens and a new earth, which is the home of righteousness. It's the place that we belong and we're going to belong to forever and ever and ever when Jesus our Lord comes.

[37:43] That's where we're going. That's what we're being prepared for now. And as William Still once said, God doesn't want a heaven full of spiritual pygmies, infants, immature believers.

[38:04] No. He wants grown-ups. He wants those who are fruitful, who have grown in the knowledge of the grace of his dear Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.

[38:18] So if we're to be people like that, what kind of people ought we to be? People active in purity, striving to be without spot and blemish.

[38:32] People active in patience, striving to proclaim the day of salvation to this whole world while it is still the day of salvation. People active in progress, striving to know our Lord and Savior more and more and to reflect more and more of his grace and his love in our lives personally and as a church.

[38:54] that says Peter, that's how we're to spend these last days. And if we do, he says, that's how we'll speed that very last day, the day that we long for.

[39:14] Well, let's pray together. Lord, help us as we long for that day.