End of Life, End of Times: The Final End of All Things 2 Peter 3:1-13

The Temporary Universe and the Promise of God’s Word

We have been making our way through this three-month sermon series titled End of Life, End of Times. To this point, we have seen many of the major events of the end of the world. We have seen the final seven years predicted in the book of Daniel, the pre-tribulation rapture, the rise of the Antichrist and false prophets, and the wrath of God poured out on sinful, rebellious humanity.

We also saw the important place of Israel in the end times and why there will be a future 1 ,000-year reign of Christ on the earth. So as you can see, we are moving along through a large portion of future history.

And now we get to the very end. What the Bible tells us is that this universe is not going to be around forever. I was reading a story a few years back about a museum in Arizona that predicts what the Grand Canyon and the region surrounding it will look like thousands of years from now.

I was also watching another science documentary. And what they said is that if humanity doesn't first annihilate themselves, the world will officially be destroyed several billion years from now because the sun is going to run out of juice.

And of course, without the sun, humanity will perish forever. The people of this world are planning on being here for a while. There is no thought that we are close to the end, that we're moving towards a time when all creatures will meet their maker and will have to give an account.

If you think about it, this is why there is so much concern over things like global warming. Many secular scientists think that humanity is emitting large amounts of carbon in the atmosphere, and this causes the temperature to warm.

Their concern is that there will be excess melting that will put our planet underwater. And so sometimes you see these movies of these plans to find another planet that can support life because we're destroying this planet, and we need to find that planet before it's too late.

Of course, all of this is secularism. Any Christian should not be following these ideas. And this is why they are saying we need to do something. Now, how should Christians think about these things? Well, Genesis 8 .22 tells us that the world is going to continue until God is done with it.

This is what the Lord told Noah after the flood. He said, while the earth remains, see time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night shall not cease. What the promise tells us is that this earth will remain until God brings it to an end.

This place will not be destroyed by humanity, and it won't run out of juice because of the sun. As we will see today, there will be a future warming of the earth, but it's not going to come from humanity, but rather it's going to come from God, destroying this earth and this universe with fire, with the purpose of creating a new earth and a new universe.

So as we will see today, this universe that we live in is temporary. It has an expiration date. There is one place in the Bible that describes this end times calamity, this universe-wide calamity, and the clearest description of this is in 2 Peter 3.

So I encourage you at this time to turn there with me. We will be looking at verses 1 -13. 2 Peter 3 verses 1 -13. And here is our big idea this morning. God's biggest judgment for this creation is reserved for the very end.

God's biggest judgment for this creation is reserved for the very end. And we will see three facts the world must know. The first fact is this. Everything physical will be incinerated by fire, and we will see this in verses 1 -7.

It's interesting, as you watch the news, you're seeing a lot of gloom and doom right now, and you come to church and you get gloom and doom. And I say that this should encourage us, those Christians, okay?

Because our hope is in Christ, and with Him we are secure forever. And I hope too that as we see the sermon today, as we look at this text, that we cling all the more tightly to Him and not to this world.

We do not want to be sucked in with the desires and the direction of the world, but to seek after Christ and follow Him. So let's begin by reading verses 1 and 2. This is now the second letter that I am writing to you, beloved.

In both of them, I am stirring up your sincere mind by way of reminder that you should remember the predictions of the holy prophets and the commandment of the Lord and Savior through your apostles. So what we read in these verses is that the apostle Peter has written two letters.

1 Peter and right here, 2 Peter. In both of them, he has been reminding his readers in the church what they have been taught. Several decades would have passed since Jesus lived, died, and rose again, and then ascended to heaven.

The apostles were the ones who were given the primary task of passing on the teaching of Jesus to the masses. All of the letters in the New Testament were written to churches or to pastors of churches.

And this letter is no different. In 1 Peter 1 .1, we learn that Peter wrote this letter to churches in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia. These believers needed to be reminded about what Jesus accomplished at the cross for sinners and how to live as Christians in this world.

Peter laid that out in both 1 and 2 Peter. But he also reminds them about the future coming of Christ. In the first letter, he reminded them about the second coming of Christ in 1 Peter 5 .4 when he mentioned the chief shepherd appearing.

Peter, like all other New Testament writers, emphasized the future coming of Christ. It was their hope. And as Christians, it should be our hope as we live at this late point in history. We should live with constant expectancy that He could come at any time.

And this has been a huge stress of mine throughout this sermon series. If you get one thing from the sermon series, get this. Anticipate the Lord's return and in light of that, live accordingly. In this passage, we are looking at the fact that not only is the second of Christ coming, but also the very end of the universe.

It goes without saying that this is a very sobering passage. What Peter is specifically reminding his readers about is the predictions of the prophets in the Old Testament and the predictions carried on by the apostles in the New.

So, all the New Testaments predicted end times events and right here in our text, Peter is reminding his readers about this. As we are about to see and what he tells his readers and to future readers, us, is that He is still coming even though many in the world say that this is a fantasy.

Let's read verses three and four. This is very, very fascinating and very relevant to our day. Knowing this, first of all, that scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own sinful desires.

They will say, where is the promise of His coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation. Sound familiar? What the text tells us is that there will be scoffers.

A scoffer is one who mocks or makes fun of. You want to get made fun of in this world, if you want to get made fun of in this world, believe in the truth. If you want to be maligned, believe in the truth.

If you want to be rejected, believe in the truth. If you want to be accepted, believe in what is false. If you want to be loved by the world, then just do whatever they tell you to do. Unbelievers live in falsehood and they mock Christians all the time.

They're the enlightened ones. We're the ones who live in the dark ages. What this text says is that unbelievers mock the return of Christ. This text is talking about certain unbelievers. Not every unbeliever, not every unbeliever is militant, but there are lots of unbelievers who are.

Many unbelievers are just swept up into this world system, these worldly ideas. And we should have more compassion on those who are just ignorant, who've been swept into it. But others are more militant.

Others are more sophisticated. Others know better and they refuse the truth because they don't like it. And then they follow their deceit down another path. This text is talking about pagan false teachers, the elites of society.

Many of these in our society are found in academia, Hollywood, and the mainstream media. Those are the three power structures in our society. It doesn't matter who's president. It doesn't matter who's in Congress.

It doesn't matter who's on the Supreme Court. Academia, the media, and Hollywood determine the course of American culture. There are many atheists in our world that are particularly hostile. In 2011, there was a billboard in California created by atheists that said, The rapture, you know it's nonsense, 2 ,000 years of any day now.

So on the billboard, mocking Christians as they drive by. If you were to ask any secular scientist, academic, or the news media about the return of Christ,.

They would laugh.

And what they would say is what our text says in verse four. Where is the promise of His coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation.

Little do they know, in their foolishness, that they are fulfilling prophecy. Now when the text says that the fathers fell asleep, they are pointing to Old Testament biblical fathers.

Like Abraham.

And what the text is saying is that unbelievers say the world is going to continue the way it always has since its beginning. And we should not expect it to come to an abrupt end like Christians say it will.

Because they say this is not how things work. Especially in our day, these evolutionists. Everything just happened. Everything is just a process. There's really no story. There's no really beginning, middle, and end.

There's this process that we all find ourselves in and we all live through. And so there isn't judgment coming. There isn't the end of the world. There isn't the end of a story. And you wonder why we love stories so much.

It's because we're in one. Right, if we're all random, came about by random chance, do you think we would love Lord of the Rings? Do you think we would love Chronicles of Narnia? Do you think we would love Lord of the Flies or Charlotte's Web?

I mean, you name the story. Gulliver's Travels. I don't know, John, you like to read. You could fill in the blank. I'm not sure. I'm running out of ideas here of other stories. But you fill in your favorite story.

We love stories because we're in one. We're in the story of life. And all of you are characters in this story. You all have a purpose. And yet, if you believe in random chance and evolution, there is no purpose.

As I allude to above, the secular world believes that things are going to continue as they are from one generation to the next. The unbelieving crowd that says this are a mixed bag, but all of them have one thing in common.

Now, some of them believe in God, but they don't believe in future judgment. They don't believe that most of the world is on their way to hell. A lot of people who believe in God say that, you know what, Hitler, yeah, he's in hell, but 95 of the world are pretty good people and we're all gonna go to heaven together.

That's not what the Bible teaches. Jesus says the path is narrow. The path is broad for the world because so many people are on that path. Now, scripture teaches that there are no atheists, that there are no agnostics.

And by the way, before atheism, it was deism. Deism was the belief that God set the world up and it ran like a watch, but he doesn't really care about his creation. So in other words, this was attractive to people because that meant no judgment, right?

If God sets it up and lets it run, then I can live however I want without anticipating that anything bad is going to happen to me in the future. This is what Romans 121 says. For although they knew God, and think about atheists, think about deists, think about agnostics.

For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened. In Romans 121 and in the end of verse three in our passage, we see what the root issue is for these unbelievers who do not believe in the one true God.

The root issue is this, hardness of heart and sinful desire. It's sin. People do not want there to be a God who is judge since people love their sin. If there is no judge, then they can keep on sinning.

So they reject the God of the Bible who is described as a God of justice, who will not let any sin go unpunished. He sees everything. So if he really is there, then I can't do what I want, what my sinful heart wants.

Do not be fooled by intellectuals in our society. They try to make it look like they are the thinking ones,.

The smart ones.

And those of us who believe in the Bible are the ignorant ones. But in fact, it's the opposite. We've gotten to the point in our world where whatever they say, believe the opposite. Because pretty much everything that's coming out is false.

It's remarkable as we see this play out before our eyes. And there's a motivation here. People love their sin. They want what they want when they want it. And God says that He's going to bring judgment for our sins.

And He sent Jesus to die on the cross so that we could be rescued. And one thing I must emphasize here is the devil plays into this because the devil convinces people that following God is joyless and following sin is joyful.

When in fact, it's the opposite. Sin leads to misery. Following the Lord leads to forever joy, fullness of joy. And think about all these gifts that we get to enjoy in our life. Good drink, good food, family, beautiful scenery,.

Whatever it might be.

All of these things are pleasures from God that we get to enjoy. And if we go outside the boundaries, that's where problems happen. But if we stay within the boundaries that He's given us, we get to enjoy them without any consequences.

The elites in the secular world are blind and they are the ones who mock those who believe that Christ is coming back. And as you endure their mocking, in the end, you will be vindicated. We must always keep in mind the big picture.

Think about how incredible this passage is. What Peter is saying to his readers is that in the near future, people are going to mock. And in the far off future, our time, people are still mocking. This happens in every generation.

They're just different names that show up. So whenever you hear someone mocking the return of Christ, realize that this is prophecy being fulfilled in your midst and hold tightly to your faith in the reality that Jesus truly is coming back.

Now in verse five, Peter points out their folly and really what he points out is their rejection of history. What these people take part in, it's known as revisionist history. Revisionist history means is that they don't tell history how it really happened.

They tell it how they want it to happen. But let's read verses five and six. For they, okay, these false teachers, they deliberately overlook this fact that the heavens existed long ago and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God.

And that by means of these,.

The world that then existed was deluged with water and perished. So Peter, in his argument here, he looks at the past. And what he does is he points to the creation account. He says that the heavens existed long ago and so did the earth when God created it.

And then he wrote the same water that God put on the earth when he created it is the same water that destroyed the earth through the flood. The flood is a historical event. I heard one pastor recently say that on, or at the Grand Canyon, do you know that they find seashells at the Grand Canyon?

Think about where the Grand Canyon is located, far from the ocean. How in the world would seashells get there other than that the whole thing at one point was covered by water? Remarkable to think about.

People find things all the time far inland that only are found in the sea. That's just one evidence that the flood really happened. We wouldn't have all these lakes here if the flood didn't happen. Because you know how the lakes came about?

The flood happened, it completely changed the climate. And eventually the Ice Age happens because of the flood. And of course, all this ice is built up and they form this heavy weight on the ground that forms these lakes.

Whether it's the Great Lakes or whether it's the lakes in Wisconsin or whether it's the lakes in Minnesota, this comes from the Ice Age which was caused by the flood. We see evidence of it all around us.

If one does not properly understand the past, then one won't properly understand the future. Every good historian knows that history repeats itself. This is why it is important to study history. If you study the history of the Bible, which is the most reliable history, then what you know from the early pages of the Bible is that God destroyed this world because of the wickedness of mankind.

If God destroyed the earth before because of mankind's wickedness, then it follows that He is going to destroy mankind again. But He's holding off, right? He's calling people to repent. And we already saw that in this sermon series, when He pours out His righteous wrath on the earth during the final seven-year tribulation.

So this has already happened at this future point in history. But He's gonna do it at the very end, and it's gonna be the greatest destruction of all. More is coming. He will once again destroy this polluted world that came about because of mankind's sin, as verse seven tells us.

But by the same word, the heavens and earth that now exist are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly. So what Peter tells us is that the same word that created the heavens and the earth and the same word that destroyed the earth through a global flood, where only eight people survived, is the same word from God that is going to destroy this universe.

So God first destroys the earth with water. And after the millennium is over, He's gonna destroy the universe with fire. Now, what we saw during the final seven-year tribulation is that the destruction on the earth is going to be very great, but it will not be so great that God will be done with it.

What we saw the last two Sundays is that there will be a future millennium where Christ will reign on the earth. And what we can imagine is that early on in the millennium, the earth is gonna be built back up again after all of the destruction that happened.

But then once the thousand years is over, then God is gonna pour out the floodgates of His wrath again. And what we learn as far back as the Old Testament is that there will be a new creation. In Isaiah 65, 17, the Lord says, "'He will create new heavens and a new earth.'".

Now, there is a debate about whether the future universe will be restored or recreated. My understanding would be that the word create means God is going to create it, not restore it, as Isaiah 65, 17 tells us.

But not only that, verse seven of 2 Peter 3 tells us that this place is going to blow up. This is going to happen at the very end after the millennium at the day of judgment, when God is going to destroy the ungodly as the end of verse seven tells us.

And it is my understanding that this future judgment described in Revelation 20, verses 11 through 15, is going to take place right after the universe is destroyed. And that sermon we will look at next Sunday.

This is what verse 11 of Revelation 20 says, "'I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. "'From his presence, earth and sky fled away "'and no place was found for them.'". So the Apostle Paul in his vision in Revelation saw the destruction of the universe and then the judgment that followed.

Now, in our text, we must understand is that God's future destruction of the universe is not a violation of the covenant that he made with Noah when he destroyed the earth through a flood. In Genesis 9, 11, what the Lord told Noah is that I will never destroy the earth with water again.

Okay, with water. That's the promise. But he's going to destroy it through a different means. He's gonna destroy it through fire. Not long ago, I read a very interesting book. The book is called The Accidental President.

The book is about a common man, Harry Truman, who becomes president. He didn't want the presidency. It kind of just happened and he found himself in that position. And in the book, Truman is faced with a choice that no president before him faced.

He had the choice of dropping an atomic bomb on two cities in Japan. And of course, we know the story from history that the two cities were Hiroshima and Nagasaki. What scientists discovered during this time in history is that if you ripped atoms apart from a chain reaction, a huge explosion would take place.

This was known as fission. And it's interesting that what scientists learned is that when you study the sun, what's happening in the sun is it's called fusion. The atoms are pushed together. Either way, whether it's fission, they're pulled apart, or fusion, pushed together, what happens is that large amounts of energy are released and an explosion comes.

And so when these bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it was nothing the world had ever seen before. And so all of the universe is made of atoms. So God is gonna have no problem blowing this place up in the end through this process that we saw from history.

So this present earth will be destroyed by fire and then God will create a universe that has not been polluted by sin and never will be. So God's biggest judgment for this creation is reserved for the very end.

The Day of the Lord and the Delay of Judgment

And the first fact we must know is that everything physical will be incinerated by fire. The second fact we must know is this, the day of reckoning has been delayed for his people's sake. The day of reckoning has been delayed for his people's sake.

And we'll see this in verses eight through 10. Now we get to the part of the passage that sees the return of Christ and the end of the universe from God's eternal perspective. Let's read this together.

But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years is one day. The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise, as some count slowness, but is patient towards you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.

But the day of the Lord will come like a thief and then the heavens will pass away with a roar and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed.

So what verse eight tells us is that God sees all history equally vividly. A day is as a thousand years and a thousand years is as a day. While what we experience is the slow progress of time. As we have already seen in this sermon, the wicked say, why has it been so long?

You said he was gonna come back. You said Christ was gonna come back and why has it been so long? The fact that so much time has gone by must mean that Christ's return will never come and that they will avoid judgment.

That's what these false teachers are saying. But Peter reminds his readers that for God, who is timeless, it is not as though he has been waiting as his people have throughout history. What verse nine tells us is that God is not slow to fulfill his promises.

His promises are a done deal and it's just a matter of time.

Now, if you've ever wondered.

Why God lets this earth go as it is, it is not because he has forgotten about his promises, as I just mentioned, and it's not because he is lazy and just hasn't gotten to it. Like we would say, I'm gonna get to that project at home.

And your spouse is thinking, when are you gonna get to it? And it keeps dragging on. I mean, Brianna can tell you about this. That's probably because of laziness. But with God, it's not that way. There's a reason it hasn't come yet.

There's a reason the end hasn't come. What Peter tells us in verse nine and 10 is that God is patient with you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. Now, what we know from Scripture is that there will be many people who perish and are sent to hell.

The focus of this passage is not on God's patience with unbelievers. Now, it is true that in one sense, God is patient with them from the standpoint that he gives many people who will never be saved a full life.

But the you of this passage is focused on believers. So God's patience is toward those who will come to faith in Christ. He is patient toward the elect. And once the fullness of the elect are gathered from every point in history, that is when Christ will return to the earth.

At that point, then the day of the Lord, which in Scripture always refers to God's judgment, will take place. And that is why the day of the Lord will come like a thief. When thieves break into places, they don't do it in the middle of the day where someone is going to see them.

They do it at night because it's a surprise. The Apostle Paul describes this day of the Lord as a surprise to unbelievers in 1 Thessalonians 5, verses two through four. Let's read this. Listen to this here.

You yourselves are fully aware that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. While people are sane, there is peace and security, then sudden destruction will come upon them as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman and they will not escape.

But you are not in darkness, brothers, for that day to surprise you like a thief. So this scoffing that comes from the unbelieving world who say these predictions about the end of the world in Scripture are not going to come to pass.

How long will they be?

And it will be too late for them. And they will be forever under the judgment of God. But as Christians, we are not surprised by the end. We are anticipating that it is going to come and we live with hope that it will come.

The day of the Lord takes place during the seven-year tribulation at Christ's second coming, or this time of God's judgment, and after His 1 ,000-year reign as He destroys the universe. This is this final piece of judgment on His first creation.

This judgment of the ungodly. So as you can see, the day of the Lord happens in phases. And this is just one of those phases. And what verse 10 tells us is that the whole universe will be blown up when it says the heavens will pass away like a roar.

The heavens refers to the whole universe, including earth. The earth, of course, is suspended in this universe. So this includes the earth and everything surrounding it when it says the heavens. Then it says the heavenly bodies will be burned up.

That is referring to all the matter in the universe. As I mentioned, atoms have the capability of exploding. And so everything is just gonna explode at the very end. And at the end of verse 10, there is a special focus on the earth.

And it's always interesting, right? The earth is such a small piece of the universe. It's a dot. And yet that's where all the action is. It's because this is where God's image bears live. This is where the story is happening in the universe.

It's happening on planet earth. And so the focus here is on the earth. And it says the earth will be consumed and the evil works that are done in it are the reason for the entire universe needing to be replaced.

The sin of humanity polluted the whole universe. Even the stars in the heavens and the planets have in some way been polluted. They in some way are decayed. And that's because of sin. When Adam and Eve sinned, God cursed the ground as Genesis 3 .17 says.

And Romans 8 verses 20 and 21 says, the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.

The creation will be set free first when it is destroyed and then when it is recreated. So God's biggest judgment for this creation is reserved for the very end. And the second fact that we must understand is that the day of reckoning has been delayed for his people's sake.

Living in Holiness and Hope Before the New Creation

We have one final fact here this morning and this point is shorter than the others. And this is the third fact. Having this knowledge is intended to have an enormous impact on your life. Okay, so as we ponder the future destruction of the universe, this is intended for each of us to have an enormous impact on our life.

In verses 11 through 13, we will see this. So what Peter tells his audience is that the future day of God and specifically the future destruction of the universe should impact the way you live every day.

Verses 11 through 13. Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn.

But according to his promise, we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. So what Peter is telling his readers and us is that the future fact of the destruction should change you for the better.

And this is what I've stressed throughout the sermon series, right? This anticipation of the end should change us. It should make us look more like Jesus Christ if you knew Christ were coming next week, it would make you very careful how you live.

You wouldn't binge watch TV. You would be careful about the language that you use. You would be kind to people. You would speak the truth to people.

You would pray.

You would read your Bible. You would long to have fellowship with other believers. You would evangelize your lost neighbor. You wouldn't care what the world thinks because the world is passing away. I once heard that a seminary class, a preaching class went out to a cemetery and the preaching professor told his future preachers, he said, when you preach, you're preaching to dying people.

Everyone in this graveyard was once alive and now they're dead and their fate forever has been determined. So when you preach, remember that you are a dying man preaching to dying people. That's a quote from a man by the name of E .M. Bounds from a couple hundred years ago.

So in other words, don't be afraid what people think. You're all going to die and God is going to do right in the end, right? Nobody should own us. We should be free to speak the whole counsel of God, right?

And I trust that you will come back next week because the sovereignty of God says that his people will listen and they will come.

And they will hear.

I'm so concerned. I didn't put this in my sermon, but I'm so concerned that pastors are afraid of what their people are going to think. We don't want to offend anyone because they might think of something and my job is to preach to you the whole counsel of God.

It doesn't matter what you think, right? But it is for your benefit and I hope that the Holy Spirit will show everyone that. And by God's grace, I've seen that in this church and that's been exciting.

Now, the fact that Christ is returning and the fact that this universe is temporary is intended to be a spark plug in your walk with the Lord. And if you are listening to this and you do not have a relationship with Christ, this future is meant to lead you to Christ.

And so I invite you to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. He went to the cross to die for your sins. He arose again victoriously and he is the only hope you have to be delivered from the judgment of God.

When Jesus went to the cross, he faced the judgment for you. So as believers, we don't have to fear what is coming in the future. The day of the Lord, we do not have to fear it, but we can live in hope because the end is good for believers.

This earth will be a place of the past. And it's interesting, some of the heroes of history are not gonna be heroes of history in the books of heaven. And people who have been long forgotten or no one ever even knew existed, those people will be remembered because the Lord watches history much differently than the world does.