Same As It Ever Was? - [2 Peter 3:1-7]

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Outright atheism, that is the denial of the existence of God, has become increasingly popular.
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It's kind of a fad these days to write a book about atheism. You know, the reasons why
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I hate God, something like that. Many, many books have been written by its ardent supporters, and they decry religions of all kinds, but especially
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Christianity. Foremost among these atheists is a man named
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Richard Dawkins. Dawkins, this is from Wikipedia, is a
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British ethologist. Who knows what an ethologist is? I thought maybe it had something to do with ethics.
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I was wrong. It's the study of animal behavior. He's also an evolutionary biologist and popular science author.
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He was formerly a professor for public understanding of science at Oxford University, and was a fellow at New College in Oxford.
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He came to prominence in 1976 with his book, The Selfish Gene, which popularized the gene -centered view of evolution.
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In 1982, he made a widely cited contribution to evolutionary biology.
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This is quite a mind. Dawkins is a prominent critic of creationism and intelligent design.
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In his 1986 book, The Blind Watchmaker, he argued against the watchmaker analogy.
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In other words, this idea that God is a watchmaker who kind of creates the watch, winds it up, and then just lets it go.
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But he argued against this because he didn't like the idea of a supernatural creator at all.
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So instead, he described the evolutionary processes as analogous to a blind watchmaker.
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A blind man makes a watch, which would be impossible. He has since written several popular science books, makes regular television and radio appearances, and he predominantly discusses these issues.
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As I mentioned, he's an atheist, secular humanist, skeptic, scientific rationalist, who has been widely referred to in the media as, this is so cute,
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Darwin's Rottweiler. That's what kind of advocate he is for evolution.
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In his 2006 book, The God Delusion, which was a bestseller, Dawkins contends that a supernatural creator almost certainly does not exist, and that faith qualifies as a delusion.
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You are deluded if you believe in God. You might say, well, why does
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Dawkins matter? Why does Darwinian evolution matter? Well, it only matters in this sense, and this is the prism through which we're going to look at it tonight.
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2 Corinthians 10, verse 5 reads this way, We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing, every lofty idea raised up against the knowledge of God.
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Why do these men, why do these ideas matter? Because they have infected and impacted the church, and we need to destroy them.
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Evolution, atheism, is it possible that they could have an impact on the church?
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Listen to these book titles that I pulled up off Amazon .com, and I'm sure there are many more like it.
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It's hard to believe. Why would anybody write these books? I can't figure it out. Saving Darwin. How to be a
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Christian and believe in evolution. Here's another one. Creation or evolution, do we have to choose?
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This is my personal favorite. Thank God for evolution. This book is described this way.
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The author reaches the peak of his effectiveness, the pinnacle of his effectiveness, when he provides specific calls to actions for his audience to meld, to bring together, flat -earth
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Christianity and evolutionary Christianity in both their personal problem -solving and in larger global challenges.
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These nuggets make the lengthy journey reading the book worthwhile, at least for those in the fields of science and religion wanting to foster new areas for dialogue beyond the current culture wars.
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In other words, if you want to get beyond this whole creation in the classroom, intelligent design, evolution, you really need to read this book and just kind of integrate these two ideas.
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In other words, the message of these Christians is that the
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Bible has had its day, and its day is long past. Only a
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Rube or a Simpleton would believe the Bible because it's scientifically inaccurate.
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It's outdated. I heard the man who wrote this book thank
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God for evolution. He was saying, you know, God revealed these truths to Moses and to David, but they really couldn't understand them.
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It's only been in the last couple of hundred years that God has revealed the truths of evolution. That's just sad.
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It's sad, but it's having a growing impact. If you interact with, you know, we live kind of in a little bit of a bubble here.
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For those of you who have lived outside of a Bible -teaching church, you'll recognize the truth of what
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I'm saying, that there are people out there who think they're Christians and who think that evolution can just kind of coexist with Christianity, that there's no problem there.
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I would invite you to open your Bibles to 2 Peter 3. We've been working our way through 2
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Peter. Peter's been discussing false teachers, and now we come to chapter 3 this evening, and Peter writes this.
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This is now, beloved, the second letter I am writing to you in which I am stirring up your sincere mind by way of reminder that you should remember the words spoken beforehand by the holy prophets and the commandment of the
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Lord and Savior spoken by your apostles. Know this, first of all, that in the last days mockers will come with their mocking, following after their own lusts and saying, where is the promise of his coming?
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For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all continues just as it was from the beginning of creation, for when they maintain this, it escapes their notice that by the word of God, the heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and by water, through which the world at that time was destroyed, being flooded with water.
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But by his word, the present heavens and earth are being reserved, kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.
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Now, this evening, I'm going to draw your attention to five, and we've done this. We've lab tested these.
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These are five lab tested truths, so that you will see what lies ahead of you, what lies in front of us in terms of the world that we live in, so that you'll know how you should respond.
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Our passage tonight tells us that God's judgment is coming and that the responses of unbelievers should neither discourage nor surprise you.
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Now, up to this point in 2 Peter, we know that Peter wrote this letter to warn his readers about the coming false teachers.
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He said that they were going to come, that they were definitely going to infiltrate the church, and he told us in great detail about their character, and he told us in great detail about their motivations.
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Last Sunday evening, I asked four questions about false teachers. Number one, can false teachers provide spiritual satisfaction?
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The answer was no. They are clouds without water.
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They are mirages. Second, should believers give false teachers the benefit of the doubt? Again, the answer is no.
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Third, can false teachers provide spiritual help? No. Fourth, is there any hope for false teachers?
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The text seems to lean heavily on the no side, but God can do as He pleases. But tonight,
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I want to bring these lab tested truths to you, talking about not just false teachers, but unbelievers in general, and what would
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Peter say to us today about them. Number one, and this is an interesting one, because he said this earlier in 2
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Peter, you need to be reminded repeatedly. Look at verse one. This is now, beloved, the second letter
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I am writing to you, in which I am stirring up your sincere mind by way of reminder.
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It has been well said that men more frequently require to be reminded than informed.
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And I don't just mean men, the male species. I think we all need to be reminded more than informed.
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We don't always learn things. We need to be reminded of what we already know. Now, I have a pop quiz for you tonight.
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How many inscripturated letters did Peter write? All of them.
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Every letter that he wrote that says Peter is one of those. Yes, two. How do
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I know that? Because I can see 1 Peter and 2 Peter. It's brilliant. But it's also likely in our text here, he says, this is now, beloved.
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It's likely that this now means that he didn't, there wasn't a long period of time in between the two letters.
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He was like, this is a follow -up letter. You know what? My first letter was to encourage you in times of trouble and tribulation.
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And now I'm going to write you, and here's a different specific kind of tribulation that is going to come.
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And notice again that he refers to the recipients of his letter as beloved. Like any man in the ministry, any shepherd of the flock of God, there was an affection for his readers.
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What kind of a pastor or elder would be indifferent to the flock that he guides?
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How much more, Peter? In this chapter alone, he'll use this term, beloved, four times.
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And he does so, he repeats it over and over again. Why? Because he doesn't have any other words to use? No, because he really, really loves them.
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He cares for them. He wants to say that. And notice also that he wants to stir them up.
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He wants to wake them up. He wants to make them aware of the danger that they might not otherwise see.
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And this is Peter's ongoing mission. 2 Peter 1 .13, he wrote this,
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I consider it right, as long as I am in this earthly dwelling, to stir you up by way of reminder.
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The same phrase. It is the right thing for a man of God, someone who stands in the pulpit, to remind you of the things you already know.
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And you say, well, why do we need to be reminded of these things? Well, let me give you this challenge. This is your homework.
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Pastor Dave didn't give any homework this week, so I get to. And I wrote it down so I wouldn't forget it.
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Remember, I want you to remember, every good and godly thing you've ever heard, every scripture you've ever read, every doctrine you've ever learned, and every biblical sermon you've ever heard.
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That's all you have to do this week. Oh, and constantly apply them. That's this week's homework.
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We need to be reminded of the things we already know. We need to have them brought front and center to our minds.
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And how much more when Peter says, I know this danger is coming to the church, and I want you guys to be ready for it.
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I want you to be standing, as it were, with your rifles ready, when these false teachers come in.
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That doesn't mean we should shoot them, by the way. But Peter makes an appeal, look in our text again, to his reader's sincere mind.
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What does he mean? The concept of a sincere mind means that it has no, a sincere mind has no hidden motives, no agenda.
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It has no pretense. It is a pure mind. It is, you know, at that moment when you are saved, when you are so in love with Christ, that's the kind of mind he's talking about.
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The kind of mind that we should have all the time. The basic concept is that they're not, just think about the contrast between what he's been saying about these false teachers, the judgment that awaits them, and their motivation, their greed, and their lust, and all these things, all these secret motivations that they have.
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And then he says, I appeal to your sincere minds. He says, you guys aren't like them.
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You're different. You haven't bought into their lies. Peter is confident that they will listen to him because they sincerely care about the truth.
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Peter was going to press some truth, something his readers already knew, to their minds again.
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They knew it, but they needed to be reminded. They needed to be reminded of it so that they would have it, as it were, in their toolbox.
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So you need to be reminded. Lab -tested truth number two. You need to be pointed to Scripture, primarily.
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I thought it was great this morning when Peggy Bellwood said that, you know, when you're talking to somebody and they're struggling with something, you need to point them back to the
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Word. And I thought, that's exactly right. She could probably, you know, wax eloquently about that.
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But look again at verse two. That you, this is the purpose, that you should remember.
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He's going to remind them why. So that you should remember the words spoken beforehand by the holy prophets and the commandment of the
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Lord and Savior spoken by your apostles. We've established that Peter cared deeply for his readers, that he was bound and determined to remind them of the things that they already knew.
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I guess it's hard to remind somebody of something they don't already know. But he had a definite purpose. He had a plan.
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He had a goal. And now we see what his goal was. He wants them to remember to have, as it were, emblazoned, imprinted on their minds, the words of the
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Old Testament. Look at that. The words spoken beforehand. We'll get to the
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Old Testament part in a minute. But the words spoken beforehand, it's interesting, because it indicates that the words of the
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Old Testament had a permanent impact. Spoken is in the perfect tense. And I love the perfect tense, because it's really not all that common, but it's been coming up a lot here in 2
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Peter. But it is a one -time act. So one time and done, but then with ongoing consequences.
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It's like when you get saved, you are saved. And then you're always saved. And so when these words were spoken, it was a one -time act, and they have ongoing power.
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That's the idea. Continuing authority and impact.
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They have no expiration date, as it were. That's pretty significant when you think about it, because what do you most often hear if you're talking to someone who is an evolutionist?
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Old Testament was fine for its day, but now that we're not ignorant anymore, Peter says no.
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The word of God stands forever. The word of the prophets, the holy prophets, stands forever.
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And I just mentioned that they were spoken by holy prophets. Men set apart for the work of God by the
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Spirit of God. Again, think about the contrast. Chapter 2, these false teachers that he's been railing against.
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He says these unholy men, these dogs, these swine that go back to their own vomit, that go back to washing themselves in the mud.
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Now we have these holy men of God, these set -apart men, who said these things with a power that continues.
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You need to be pointed to the Old Testament. That's what he's talking about. These words of the prophet that were spoken.
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And also to the New Testament. I think that's the logical end, the logical conclusion of what he says there.
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And the commandment of the Lord and Savior spoken by your apostles. Well, what did the
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Savior speak about? What were his commands? What is the whole
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New Testament doing? It's expounding and expanding on the teachings of the
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Lord Jesus Christ. We think about the Great Commission. What did he say? Go out and baptize a lot of people?
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Well, yeah, but that wasn't the real issue. It was make disciples. Teach them to do all that I have commanded.
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That's what he does. That's what he commanded. And that's what the apostles did, was carry this out.
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So certainly I think the logical conclusion is ultimately that the New Testament would be included in this too.
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Now, why do you need the truths of the Old Testament and the New Testament brought to your minds repeatedly? What is the best?
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Is it best to maybe get a disease and then see if there's a cure? Let's just kind of go out and see if we can get the
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H1N1 virus and then see what happens. I mean, let's put it this way. If there was a shot, and they'll probably come up with one, and it'll be worse than the disease.
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But have you ever had a flu shot? I had one when I was in the Army, and I think they always gave it to you on a
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Friday afternoon because they knew what would happen. This is completely free. But they give it to you on a Friday afternoon, and then the next thing
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I know, it's like Sunday afternoon because you're out of it. I mean, you are like, you know, you've got a fever and all that.
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It's pretty bad. But typically speaking, you don't want to get sick.
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And so an antidote or a preventative, an inoculation is better than to get the disease.
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If you want to prevent false doctrine from coming in, you have to know good doctrine.
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You have to be ready for bad doctrine. How do you do that? By knowing the inerrant book that God himself preserved for us.
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Study the truth. Know the truth. Be so steeped in it, so saturated in it that you figuratively reek of it, that you smell of it, that it just pours out of you.
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Walk around the church going, hey, that guy smells like Bible. But you need to be reminded repeatedly, and you need to be pointed to scripture primarily.
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Our third lab -tested truth, unbelievers mock God to varying degrees.
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That's true. But listen to verse three. Know this, first of all, that in the last days mockers will come with their mocking.
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Well, what else would mockers do but come with their mocking? Why does he even say that? Because he's emphasizing in,
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I'm getting a little bit ahead of myself, but in Hebrew, in the Hebrew mind, how did you emphasize something?
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By repeating it. Holy, holy, holy. And here it's mockers with their mocking. He's emphasizing how characteristic mocking is of these men.
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If you think about it, and we said this sort of thing before, that Satan does not need to invent something new.
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He just puts a new package on it. His methods, I guess you could say, they evolve a little bit.
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Did unbelievers, think about it, did unbelievers mock Noah when he prophesied of coming judgment in a flood?
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I think they probably did. Listen to what Martin Lloyd -Jones says. You know, here's
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Noah out preaching for 120 years and getting this ark ready and everybody coming around going, what are you doing?
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He says this. What was the response? Well, we can imagine that the world at that time thought it was the greatest joke they had ever heard.
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They thought this man was a lunatic. They scoffed at him, this idea that the world was going to be drowned.
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Why? Because it never even rained. Listen to this. This is how he describes the mockers in that day.
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Look at the stability of creation, they said. And you're going to tell us that all of this is going to be destroyed in a world that had never seen so much as a drop of rain.
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There seemed to be great comfort to be drawn in the fact that everything was the same as it had always been.
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Another question. Did unbelievers mock the Lord Jesus Christ during his ministry? Did they question him?
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Who is this Jesus? Isn't this just the son of Joseph and Mary?
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How about on the cross? If you're the son of God, why don't you get off that cross?
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This is what unbelievers do, they mock. In the last days, the last days which we are,
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I believe, now in, and it certainly marks the church age, but I think especially, most profoundly, what he's talking about is as we get closer and closer to the end, that mockers are going to increase, that they're going to dominate the
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Amazon sales, that we're going to see book after book after book telling you why you don't need to believe in God, and why you're stupid if you do.
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That's what's going to mark the last days. And Peter wanted his readers, you, to know that mockers will come with their mocking, and they will mock, and mock, and mock.
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And what is a mocker? What does it mean to make a mockery of something, to make fun of it? It goes beyond just mere doubt, and really it's the ultimate, you know, it's a scoffer.
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You know, Psalm 1 says, do not sit in the seat of scoffers. Well, we understand what a scoffer is, what a mocker is.
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We understand why we wouldn't want to sit in their seat. A mocker is precisely the opposite of a believer.
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Instead of a growing reverence for the person and the nature of God, just a marvel and an awe at all that he's done, they just ignore it, or worse yet, they even say, he didn't do anything.
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The universe is its own God. The universe is what it is by accident or by some unseen force that we don't know anything about, but it's certainly not a
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God. And this mocking is the ultimate hardening effect of sin, year after year and decade after decade of sin, as we will see.
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What is their motivation? What is the motivation of these mockers? Why would anybody want to do that? Because, look again at verse 3, following after their own lusts.
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They've got, like, radar for sin. This is what they live for. What would cause someone, anyone, even an unbeliever to mock
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God? I mean, you know, what if on the off chance there is a God, you at least wouldn't want to make fun of him. That might make things worse.
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But Peter tells us it is their own lusts, their own sinful desires to satisfy their perversions.
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Listen to what, this is from the biography of Dawkins in Wikipedia. Listen to this.
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By his mid -teens, Dawkins realized Darwinism was a better explanation of the universe and felt the customs of the
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Church of England, he was raised in Anglican, were absurd, and here's the part, and had more to do with dictating morals than with God.
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More to tell you with what not to do than they did with God. If you get rid of God, you can do whatever you want.
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If you're not going to be accountable to him, if there is no judgment to come, if you reject
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God in that way, then you are free in your own mind to take whatever moral stance you want.
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Anything goes. And the moral life of these mockers is on an ever -quickening spiral into the depths of sin.
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They are driven by their lusts. They are living out what Paul describes in Romans 1.
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God gave them over, God gave them over, God gave them over. It's from depth to depth to depth.
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They just keep digging. That is the life of a mocker, controlled by their lusts.
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What is the claim of mockers? Look at verse 4, and saying,
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Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all continues just as it was from the beginning of creation.
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Listen to this little exchange. It might sound like I'm just picking on Richard Dawkins tonight, and that's because I am.
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Because he's probably the poster boy for this whole movement right now. This was a
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Q &A that he did for a newspaper over in Britain. Now can you imagine a newspaper here in the United States doing a
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Q &A with John MacArthur, R .C. Sproul, John Piper? Not like this.
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Question. What do you think happened to the body of Jesus? And how does that tally?
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That's British. How does that tally? How does that add up with the accounts of the resurrection?
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What happened to the body of Jesus? This is what Dawkins says. Presumably what happened to Jesus was what happens to all of us when we die.
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We decompose. Accounts of Jesus' resurrection and his ascension are about as well documented as Jack and the
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Beanstalk. It is difficult.
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I mean, even from a logical perspective, it is difficult to understand that kind of statement.
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If one reads not only the New Testament, but one understands history so that one can see what happened to the disciples as a result of following this man that Dawkins says obviously decomposed, logically there's just a hole there that you could drive pretty much a tank division through.
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This is a big problem. But this is the massive intellect of Richard Dawkins at work.
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This is what scoffers do. This is what mockers do. And you can't mock much more than that.
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If he denies, if mockers deny the resurrection of Christ for which there is ample proof, then why would one worry about his return?
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If one denies his ascension, then one might rightly discount his promise to return.
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And surely all the promises of his apostles that he would do so. The New Testament is filled with the idea of Jesus' coming back.
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In fact, I was reading this week, logically I was reading it this week, let me see if I can remember now,
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Galatians 2 and 3 John, and I think there's one other small book where it doesn't specifically refer to the second coming in the
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New Testament. Unbelievers mock the promise of the return of Christ.
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That's what that whole idea is. Where is the promise of his coming? Listen to what
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Jesus said. In fact, go ahead and turn to Luke 17. Luke 17, we're going to look at that for a moment.
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This idea of the last days and what it's going to be like.
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Luke 17 verse 26. The Lord says,
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And just as it happened in the days of Noah, so it will also be in the days of the
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Son of Man. They were eating, they were drinking, they were marrying, they were being given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all.
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It was the same as happened in the days of Lot. They were eating, they were drinking, they were buying, they were selling, they were planting, they were building.
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But on the day that Lot went out from Sodom, it rained fire and brimstone from heaven and destroyed them all.
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It will be just the same on the day that the Son of Man is revealed. When Jesus Christ comes back, people are just going to be going about their business like it's no big deal.
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Selling, buying, getting married, making all their plans. And Jesus is going to come back and change things.
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But these people are not going to be concerned about the judgment of God. They're not going to be thinking about that.
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He hasn't judged us yet. It hasn't happened yet. You know, the flood hasn't come yet. The fire and brimstone haven't come yet.
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You know, maybe God doesn't really care. Maybe our sin isn't really that big of a deal. Turn back to 2
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Peter. Right there in verse 4 where it says, where, when they ask that question, where?
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Where is the promise of his coming? Again, more mockery. They want evidence.
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In fact, they don't just want evidence. They demand evidence of the second coming of Jesus Christ. And of course,
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I think there's always that implication that if you just provide the evidence, if you just prove to them that Jesus is coming, but what do we hear out of Dawkins?
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He's denying the resurrection. He has no reason for that. To be fair, if he was to go throughout all of history and bring forward whatever evidence he wanted to bring forward for the lack of a resurrection, what evidence would he have?
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None is the answer. Absolutely none. But he just dismisses it.
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Why? Because he's driven by one thing. And that is a desire not to be judged.
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A desire to just exercise his intellect and prove to himself that God does not exist.
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So he dismisses it. He mocks it. Scoffers view the promise of his coming as a farce.
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A bit of Jack and the Beanstalk, as it were. But they're not done making sport of the truth.
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They go on to say, for ever since the fathers fell asleep, when the fathers died, way back when, all continues just as it was from the beginning of creation.
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Listen, generations have come, generations have gone. My grandfather, great -grandfather, great -great -grandfather, they've all died and nothing has changed.
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The Lord has not returned. In essence, they're saying, Don't you realize, don't you foolish
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Christians realize that you have been had? You've been fooled. You bought into a lie.
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They believe in something called uniformitarianism. Things are always the same.
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They have been, they always will be. All time and all measurable aspects of the universe move and exist in exactly the same way as they always have.
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Listen again to Dawkins. For the first half of geological time, our ancestors were bacteria.
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That should motivate you to a good moral life. Your ancestors were bacteria. Most creatures still are bacteria, and each one of our trillions of cells is a colony of bacteria.
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And the part I just want to focus on here is this. For the first half of our geological time, or geological time, our ancestors were bacteria.
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How does he know that? How does he know that for the first half of our existence, from the time we left the little slime pool till now, half of that time, our ancestors were bacteria?
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How does he know? He couldn't know.
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But it seems to fit with what he knows now. And that's one of the remarkable things
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I find about science. When you talk with them and you just say, well, you know, if you were to go to someone 2 ,000 years ago, if you could go back in time, and you were to say to them, if you were to tell them all the scientific advances that we've made now, if you were to talk to the most profound scientific mind 2 ,000 years ago, do you think they'd go, well, that's really not that surprising.
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I was right on the verge of that anyway. You know, this whole splitting the atom thing, we just, we were almost there.
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No. And so if the Lord carries 2 ,000 more years, which I doubt, but even a scientist today, if he were to project 2 ,000 years into the future, he would have to agree that what we know now will be minuscule compared to what they'll know then.
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That what we know about the earth and the universe now is nothing compared to what they will know then.
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So how could he know what was going on billions of years ago?
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The way they measure this, of course, is they kind of estimate how old something is, and then they,
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I mean, it's like you set up the parameters, and then you give a test that proves the parameters you were suggesting in the first place were right.
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It's not all that scientific to me, but this is basically the method they use.
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Unbelievers mock God. They scoff at his commands. They scoff at the very idea that the
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Son of God will physically return to earth. Fourth lab -tested truth.
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Unbelievers suppress the truth. They suppress the truth, they hold it down. Listen to verse 5, and it just sounds so kind of nice and passive.
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For when they maintain this, when they say these things about where's the promise of his coming, when they maintain this, it escapes their notice.
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Well, that doesn't sound so bad, right? They just didn't notice something. Listen to this definition of having something escape their notice.
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Failing to remain aware of the significance of something. And when it's followed by a
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Greek word, it shows that they were ignorant with a purpose, that they were ignorant on purpose, that there was a reason that it escaped their notice.
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It wasn't because they didn't know. It's because they're willfully editing the truth out.
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Intellectually, they know these things, but they're too sophisticated, too smart, too intellectually superior to fall for such simplicity, such jack -in -the -beanstalk simplicity.
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Beyond that, they have no wish to be accountable to a moral God, as we're going to see later.
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That does not interest them. So they do what?
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They suppress the truth. Specifically, they suppress the truth of creation. Again, look at verse 5.
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For when they maintain this, it escapes their notice. What does? That by the word of God, the heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and by water.
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Unbelievers suppress the truth revealed in Scripture about creation. Why would they do that?
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Why would they do that? Genesis 1 .1 says that in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
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Created the heavens and the earth. No doubt about that. Everybody would have known that.
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So why do they do that? Unbelievers do the same thing today. They either reject the
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Bible entirely, or they have kind of a Swiss cheese sort of Bible, where you hold it up. If you held it up to the light, it would just have all kinds of holes.
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You know, you go, what's with the holes? Well, we just took out all the parts that had to do with the greatness and the power of God.
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You know, those things that couldn't really happen anyway. Thomas Jefferson literally removed parts of the
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Bible, the parts he didn't like, because they didn't involve a passive God, the cosmic watchmaker that he wanted.
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But Genesis could not be clearer, and Peter restates it here. God created the heavens and the earth. In Genesis 1, verses 2 to 7,
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I'm going to just read verses 2 and 6 and 7, describes creation this way.
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The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the
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Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters. Genesis 1, 1, he created the heavens and the earth.
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Here we, in Genesis 1, 2, the Spirit of God is moving over the surface of the waters, over the surface of the earth.
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It was formless and void, but there was water there. Verse 6, then
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God said, let there be an expanse in the midst of the water, let there be a space in the midst of this water, and let it separate the waters from the waters.
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He made the expanse. Verse 7, God made the expanse, separated the waters which were below the expanse from the waters which were above the expanse, and it was so.
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And listen, and the earth was formed out of water and by water. It's kind of familiar.
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The earth was shaped by the force of this water. All the water was taken into two places, into a canopy above the earth, and into a storehouse beneath it.
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And that's what he would use to flood the earth with later. But these scoffers, those who don't believe in God, come in a few different shapes.
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I call one group the outright scoffers. The fact that some life, or the fact that life evolved, here's another
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Dawkins quote, the fact that life evolved out of nearly nothing, some 10 billion years after the universe evolved out of literally nothing, is a fact so staggering that I would be mad to attempt words to do it justice.
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Why do you suppose that is? Why do you suppose that a brilliant man like Dr. Dawkins doesn't want to try to explain how something came out of literally nothing?
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I'd like to hear it. I think it would be pretty interesting. But this is the madness of people who mock the idea of God.
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There are also subtle or Christian so -called scoffers, scoffers within the church.
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One of the things that really triggered it was evolution in itself. Before, say, 1860, 1870, nobody would have doubted the literal truth of the
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Bible and called themselves a Christian. But then other terms came about and started in Germany, as most bad things do.
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But they believed the essence or the narrative of the Bible, but they denied the supernatural that existed in it.
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It was impossible. Science had proven it was impossible. Evolution had disproven the idea of a
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God who created everything. And gradually, the church has become integrated with evolution.
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You don't have to literally believe Genesis 1 -1. You don't have to believe in a literal Adam and Eve so that you can write a book like Thank God for Evolution.
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And it seems enlightened, it seems brilliant. Why? Because you're freed from the shackles of just this book, and you're allowed to bring in new information.
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And it'd be brilliant. You know more than Moses, David, or Paul could have ever imagined.
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I really think this is probably the predominant view in the evangelical church today.
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Most people, in some form or another, would believe this. Whether it's the gap theory, meaning that there are large gaps between the days.
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And, you know, a day to the Lord is as a thousand years. We'll get to that next week, next
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Sunday morning. But non -literal understanding, even of how did
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Moses part the Red Sea? Well, you know, it could have been not the Red Sea, but a smaller sea.
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Or it could have been some kind of small little channel opening over here, there, or whatever.
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They've got a million excuses for it. The idea of the Assyrian army being destroyed by the angel of the
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Lord couldn't have happened. Absolutely could not have happened. Miracle after miracle is denied.
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Why? Because God just, if there is a God, he just doesn't do that sort of thing.
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This is just exaggeration, included in the Bible. Why would
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Christians adopt these kind of things? I think it's because of this desire to be normal, to be approved, to be able to go into the academic halls and to be thought of as intellectual, to be socially acceptable.
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You can't go into a conversation and say, well, I don't really actually believe in evolution.
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What is wrong with you? But Scripture cannot be clearer.
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God created everything by his word, by divine fiat.
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He spoke and creation leapt into existence. He didn't speak and then just kind of watch as these wonderful accidental things just sort of happened.
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This is a God, small g, who is clueless. Not the
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God of the Bible. What else do they suppress?
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They suppress the truth of the flood. Look at verse 6. Through which the world at that time was destroyed.
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It just kind of escapes their notice. The flood escapes their notice. It was destroyed being flooded with water.
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Again, at the time of the flood, there's no doubt that the people did not repent. That's why only Noah and his family were saved.
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The rest of the world, all the people and the entire world system that allowed their sin to flourish.
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Think about it. All the governments, all the people everywhere, all the sinful practices all wiped out, blotted out.
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Another word for flooded is inundated. The world was literally inundated, attacked, assaulted by this water.
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It was not localized. That's been one popular explanation. But that wouldn't explain how the whole world was impacted.
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This is a direct assault on uniformitarianism. I can almost say that. Listen, if there was a cataclysmic event that disrupted the entire world, then things aren't always the same as they were.
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There was a significant difference and change. It wasn't a localized storm.
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It wasn't a localized flood. And it wasn't just something that Noah was smart enough to see and just kind of predicted on his own.
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This is God telling him, giving him 120 years to do that, and he did it. It's a miracle that's very inconvenient for those who deny the power of God.
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But if unbelievers acknowledge God's creation, in other words, if they actually say, yes, I believe that God created the world, or if they believe that he once destroyed the earth by flood, then they've got a problem.
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If you believe the Bible starting in Genesis 1 .1, why would you stop? Likewise, when somebody says, well,
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I don't really believe in a literal creation, well, then I just say, okay, well, when do you literally pick up the
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Bible? When does that happen for you? Is that sometime midway through Genesis? Is it Judges?
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When does it become true? But if they accept one of these things, some mighty act of God is true, then the rest of the
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Bible might be true too. Listen to what Dawkins says about religion generally.
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I'm against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world.
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This is like saying, this is like, you know, I don't even know how to describe it. It would be like my dog expressing dissatisfaction with me.
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It is crazy. It is ludicrous. The idea that we don't understand the world because we believe what the
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Bible says. You know, I want to go back to the Job monologue.
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Were you there when God did this? Were you there when God did that? Explain to me how these things happened.
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Explain to me how the billions of years of ancestral bacteria, how that all happened.
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It just sounds so intelligent though. I'm sure this makes him the life of many parties. He could just spout off all kinds of facts because who can challenge him?
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When you can make up your own facts, when you can spout out your own creation story, you can do whatever you want.
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But the truth is that they are willfully ignoring the truth. They're suppressing it. The truth about creation and the flood.
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And that is what causes them not to understand the world. If you reject the wisdom of God, our maker and sustainer, then you've shown yourself to be foolish, not to be wise, not to be smart, not to be intelligent, but foolish.
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You're making things up as you go along. Lab tested truth number five.
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Unbelievers will face the full wrath of God. Unbelievers will face the full wrath of God.
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And first step of that was sinful or is sinful creation will be destroyed.
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Look at verse seven. But by his word, the present heavens and earth are being reserved for fire.
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This is an amazing concept that God created everything, as we said before, by his word.
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And he is keeping it, preserving it by his word. And why?
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Not for some happy occasion, not for some joyous thing, but for fire, for judgments.
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It's a common theme of the second coming of the day of judgment and the very picture of the full wrath of God being unleashed on a sinful universe.
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Hebrews, the writer of Hebrews says that our God is a consuming fire. Listen to Malachi chapter four.
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For behold, the day is coming, burning like a furnace. Talking about the day of judgment, burning like a furnace.
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And all the arrogant and every evil doer will be chaff.
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And the day that is coming will set them ablaze, says the Lord of hosts, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch.
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But for you who fear my name, the son of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings and you will go forth and skip about like calves from the stall.
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You will tread down the wicked, for they will be ashes under the soles of your feet on the day which I am preparing, says the
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Lord of hosts. But God can't really destroy everything, can he?
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It's a crazy question. Didn't he create the sun? Does he not understand the construction of every atom?
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If we have learned to split the atom and thus create an atomic bomb and now nuclear weapons, can he not unleash the power of an infinite number of split atoms all at once?
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Can the very universe that we live in not be completely consumed? I think so. It's kind of like,
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I remember in the 8th grade, my science teacher blew me away and it's probably a good thing that I was not the adventurous type because one day he came into class and he brought this little powder.
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It was called lycopodium. You ever seen this? And he just threw it up in the air and he lit a little torch and the whole thing just incinerated.
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And I was like, I mean, I was glad I wasn't close because I bet some people got singed that day.
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But that's what it's like. It's going to be an all -consuming fireball.
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Why? Why would God do that? Why would he preserve everything and everyone for fire?
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God so loved the world that he sent his only son, Jesus Christ, that whosoever believes in him shall be saved.
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And he so hates sin that he's going to eradicate everything that sin has tainted.
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This entire world, this entire universe to eliminate once and for all the effect of sin.
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There will be a cataclysmic uncreation. All that physically exists will be destroyed so that there will be no decay, no disease, nothing that is displeasing to God.
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And not only will creation be destroyed, not only will the earth and everything around it be destroyed, but sinners will also be destroyed.
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Again, look at verse 7. Kept for the day of judgment and the destruction of godly men, this fire, they too are preserved by his power for the day of judgment.
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Like the chaff Malachi described, all sinners will be consumed.
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This term judgment that Peter promised will come to the false teachers and it will come to every person who has not been redeemed by the
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Lord Jesus Christ. One man described this destruction as not a simple extinction of existence, but an everlasting state of torment and death.
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Remember how Jesus talked about the worm that shall not die, that it's going to be tormented, but it will not die.
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That's the idea, that there's a consuming fire and I think even Pastor Mike's talked about it.
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Basically, I mean, it's hard to get your head around, but you will have a body that is fit for withstanding the full wrath of God forever.
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What a horrifying idea, terrifying idea. And these scoffers suppress the things that they know about God because if they think about judgment, if they think about this almighty
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God, if they think about the judge who will sit in judgment of them one day, they'd be terrified.
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They know they're not fit to stand before Him. So they say He doesn't exist. Furthermore, not only does
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He not exist, He didn't create everything. Not only did He not create everything, but you know, everything's just the same as it was and everything came out of nothing.
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I'm a brilliant man and I can tell you that and you have to believe me because I'm brilliant. Well, you need to be reminded repeatedly, we need to have the truth of God continuously driven to our hearts.
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Secondly, you need to be pointed to Scripture primarily. Thirdly, unbelievers mock
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God. Fourthly, unbelievers suppress the truth. It's not like they don't know these things. We could read all about it in Romans 1, how they see what's true about God just by looking around, by seeing the order of creation.
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They've got the law of God written in their hearts in chapter 2. And what do they do? They suppress that. They ignore it.
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And finally, number five, unbelievers will face the full wrath of God. Throughout history,
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Satan has raised up men and women who distort the Word of God. And many of these have been those who have been welcomed with open arms into the church.
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Their distortions and lies are eventually succeeded by something more complex and more compelling, but it's the same old story.
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There really is, as Solomon said, nothing new under the sun. Scoffers scoff, mockers mock.
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That's what they do. What is our response? We return to the more sure word again and again, arming ourselves against lies with the truth.
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You ought to have no interest in the praise of godless men who suppress the truth, truth that could not be more obvious.
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Let's pray. Father, it is indeed a terrifying proposition to think about falling into the hands of a living
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God, a God who is a consuming fire, who is going to bring his wrath fully to bear, not only against this world and this universe, this very thing that you've created, but upon every single person who scoffs, who mocks, who denies, who refuses to worship your son.
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Father, I pray for anyone here, anyone who is listening, who does not know you, that their eyes would be wide open, that they would not ignore the truths that are so evident about them.
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Lord, would you just give us a real sense of urgency in dealing with a world that is so steeped, so filled with untruth, with deniers of truth, with scoffers, people who think they're perfectly fine, who don't have a care in the world, who are living, buying, selling, marrying, trading, eating, having a great time with no idea that they are one instant away from judgment.
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Lord, would you compel us to share the good news of Jesus Christ with those in our family, those in our neighborhoods, those with whom we just strike up conversations.