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Is intended to go on for a very long time. One week ago, I gave the example of a museum that showed what the Grand Canyon, geologically, is going to look like millions of years from now. I also explained that scientists believe that several billion years from now, the sun is going to run out of juice, and that if humanity hasn't destroyed itself yet, this will be the end, because of course, when the sun is gone, life cannot survive.
The world thinks that things are just going to keep going on and going on into the future. But this is not what God says. The one who knows what is going to happen in the future, and in fact, the one who writes the story concerning what is going to happen.
The Lord is writing the story of all of human history, and the story the Lord writes is the best story of all. Every good story has good guys and bad guys. Every good story has many twists and turns. Every good story has moments of tension.
Every good story has the bad guy getting defeated at the very end of the story. The Lord's plan for human history has a beginning, a middle, and an end. It starts with creation, then comes the fall of humanity, then thousands of years later, the God-man Jesus comes on a rescue mission to save sinners, and then Christ comes back to the earth.
All good stories are a mere reflection of the grand story, the story of the Bible that God is writing and we are in. And as we think about the story of life, what is this story all about? The story is about redemption, as I have explained, and this story is about moving ahead to a final goal, to a final kingdom where God reigns with his people forevermore.
Revelation 22, verses three through five tells us the future. No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it and his servants will worship him. They will see his face and his name will be on their foreheads and night will be no more.
They will need no light of lamp or sun for the Lord. Their God will be their light and they will reign forever and ever. This story is not meant to go on for billions and billions of years as godless people in this world say.
This is one of the many reasons I think the universe is thousands of years old and not billions of years old. When you think about it, there is no point for this present universe to be billions of years old if the whole point of human history is for God to redeem a people for himself and then establish his kingdom with these redeemed people, then there is a fixed time when it will end and it will not go on forever and ever and ever as many falsely say.
What we must understand is that the Lord doesn't leave us in the dark concerning the imminency of the end of all things. We have a book written by God that tells us he gives us signs so that we can know that the end is near.
Jesus details these signs in the gospels and it shows up in three gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke. It's Matthew 24, Mark 13, Luke 21. And what Jesus tells us is that these signs, whether it be earthquakes and famines or wars and rumors of wars or false prophets rising up, apostasy increasing, the increase of wickedness or the regathering of the nation of Israel into their homeland, all of these signs and more tell us that this present world and this present universe are coming to an end.
Matthew 24, eight says, these signs are but the birth pains. And at the end of a birth, the signs increase in frequency and intensity just as the contractions increase in frequency and intensity at the end of a birth.
The world and the universe isn't meant to go on and on forever. God has a plan and once he accomplishes his plan, then we move to the stage where Christ returns. His kingdom is established on the earth.
Satan is finally and forever defeated. And the last thing that happens is what the apostle Peter is describing in second Peter chapter three. The last thing that happens is that this universe, this enormous universe that we live in will be destroyed and a perfect universe will take its place.
And this perfect universe that is created will be an eternal one as we have already seen in second Peter three. While other places in scripture allude to the end of the universe, the place that most vividly details the end of the universe is found right here in our text, where we are in our sermon series in second Peter.
Peter explains in detail here what the very end is going to be like. So this time I encourage you to turn the Bible with me again to second Peter chapter three. As I mentioned, one week ago we did part one of verses one through 13.
Today is part two. Next Sunday is part three. If you don't have a Bible, we do have those red Bibles in the pews where you can follow along. Last Sunday, we looked at verses one through four. Today, we're gonna look at verses five through seven and verse 10.
But for context here, I'm gonna begin by reading verses three through seven. Verses three through seven of second Peter chapter three. 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. For they deliberately overlooked 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. 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.
Our big idea that we saw one week ago in this sermon is that we are to understand that God's biggest judgment for this rebellious world is reserved for the end. And last week, we saw the first fact how, and that is that the world must know that mockers will rise up mocking God's creation and Christ's consummation.
Okay, that was our first point of this five-point sermon. Our second point is this, the second fact the world must know is this. Many deny that this planet was once destroyed by a flood. We saw one week ago, the apostle Peter pointed out the folly of many on planet earth who are wholly unprepared for what is going to come on this world.
They are unprepared because they don't believe the Bible. The people that Peter described in verses three and four are called scoffers. Another way to say scoffers is mockers. These are people who laugh and joke and ridicule.
They don't believe in the Bible and they have no problem poking fun at those who do. To these people, the Bible is nothing more than a fairy tale. As we saw one week ago, they begin by denying that God created the world and the universe.
You know, this world is just here. We don't know how, but it's here. And that's what they say. And as these scoffers deny the story of creation, as they deny the reality of Christ's return, with that, they are also denying all of biblical history.
Okay, so this book is not a history book. It's just fairy tales. There might be some morality that we should follow, right? That's the furthest that they're gonna go with it. But this book is not telling the story of life.
It's just a book written long time ago. That's what they think. They deny biblical history. These scoffers, as we saw one week ago, are secular. Second Peter chapter two described Christian false teachers.
They have the Christian veneer. They live within the Christian community, but they're really preaching a different gospel. These in second Peter three are secular. These are not people who care about holding on to a Christian veneer.
They just mock. They are the world. They are pagan. They are secular. They look at Genesis one and they scoff. God didn't really create the world in six days. They look at the stories in the Old Testament like the Red Sea crossing, Balaam and the talking donkey, Daniel and the lion's den, Jonah being swallowed by a whale and they scoff.
And you might say, who are these people in our day? We are a church that names names. If we don't name names, we're not really being helpful. We wanna be specific. Where is this happening? Let me give you some names of some secular false teachers.
Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Neil deGrasse, these are the people that the media loves. They're the wise people. Let's go to these people. Keith Olbermann, he used to be on SportsCenter, ESPN, and then he went to MSNBC and he's just mocks and mocks and mocks.
And everybody on those networks just about is a false teacher. There is one other name that many children are familiar with and that is this one, Bill Nye. I remember in middle school watching his show, Bill Nye, the Science Guy.
As a child who grew up in a Christian home, little did I know how the secular world was using this man. This man believed in trying to explain the natural world without explaining the one who created the natural world.
And what does Proverbs 1 .7 say? The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. We don't have knowledge, true knowledge, without a belief in God and specifically the God of the Bible. And as you watch the show, it's hard to tell that this man hates God.
He's just telling us about science, isn't he? But a number of years ago, Bill Nye debated one of the leading creationists, Ken Ham. And some of you have been to the Ark in Kentucky and the Creation Museum.
All of this came from the ministry of Ken Ham. And in that debate, what you learned about Bill Nye is that he is an avowed atheist or agnostic, I'm not sure which one he is, that he believes that we randomly evolved.
So he believes in evolution. He doesn't believe that God created the heavens and the earth or all the living things on the earth. He's the typical uniformitarian. That second Peter three describes. A uniformitarian is once again, one who believes that the universe runs on its own and that we don't live in a story that God created.
And most importantly for Bill Nye, he doesn't believe that a judgment is coming in the future. So that like all these secularists, they can live a sinful lifestyle without any worry of a future judgment.
One week ago, I quoted to you what Elders Huxley said in a work that he had written, Reflections of Being an Atheist. And in that he says, me and my contemporaries, we find reasons not to believe in God because we want to explore our immoral freedom.
So it's convenient. Remember one week ago, Peter told us that here is the reason they don't believe in the Bible. They don't believe in God. Verse three says, they are following their own sinful desires.
Do not give too much credit to atheists. These quote unquote, smart people in society. Just go to second Peter three three. This is why they are in this position. It's not because they arrived there intellectually.
They did not.
Their heart is driving their conclusions. Okay, second Peter three three tells us that. So men like Bill Nye deny all of this. And because they deny this, they also deny the major world cataclysm that took place over 4 ,000 years ago, as Peter describes in verses five and six.
And I'm gonna read that again here. For they deliberately overlooked this fact that the heavens existed long ago and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God. Okay, so they deny the creation.
And then verse six, and that by means of these, the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished. What Peter does is he points his readers back to the creation account. He says that the heavens existed long ago and so did the earth when God created it.
And then he said the same water that God put on the earth is the same water that destroyed the earth when God sent the flood on the earth during Noah's day. It's interesting, if you read the creation account and then the flood account, in the flood account, what it tells us is that this world was flooded by water and the water came from two different places.
And Peter's even mentioning that here. It came from above and it came from below, right? The deep burst forth from below and then for 40 days and 40 nights, you think we got a lot of rain this year? For 40 days and 40 nights, feet and feet and feet of rain came down upon the earth till it got to the point where not even the highest mountain was a safe place to be.
The entire planet was flooded. So when did this happen historically? So historians are always trying to find out when did certain events happen? Well, this happened 4 ,300 years ago. And it's important for everyone in this world to understand the true world that we live in.
We live in a world that was destroyed by a flood. And is there evidence that a global flood wiped off this earth? And the answer is yes, very much so. The question is, do people want to see it? There are sedimentary rock layers all over the earth, limestone, sandstone, and trap rock.
In fact, if you go to Interstate Park, you see two of these, sandstone and trap rock. Well, where did that come from? Well, that came from the earth, below the earth. These rock layers are all over the earth, including in our own backyard.
There are fossils all over the earth, including dinosaur fossils. And it's neat that we live so close to a little creation museum. Some of you maybe have seen it at Shepherd of the Valley Lutheran Church on the hill in St. Croix Falls.
They have a little creation museum. And not only do they have a creation museum, they have a dinosaur playground where they have these signs that point out these facts that show that the Bible is true.
And Aletheia and Isaiah love to play at this playground. And what's interesting is that there's a sign there that talks about how dinosaurs and humans lived on the earth at the same time. Okay, the secular world says dinosaurs existed long before humans, but the Bible says they actually lived together.
Job chapter 41 describes this creature, this massive creature known as Leviathan. And the imagery that it gives, this cannot be any animal that we have on the earth right now. In fact, it's not only describing a dinosaur, it's describing the biggest dinosaur.
It's called, I think it's called a centropod or something like that. This dinosaur is being described in the Bible and they lived during the time of humans. So when it was it that these dinosaurs died?
That, well, they died in the flood and they became fossilized. And this is what the sign says at this playground. It says, how do we know that dinosaurs and humans live together? Well, it says dragon legends passed down in stories and carvings.
And it mentions, for example, the Chinese and the Native Americans. We think, well, dragons are just this fantasy. Well, they actually did live on the earth at one time. And they were a dinosaur, very interesting.
It also says this, dinosaur fossils with soft tissue and or red blood cells are found in these fossils, these dinosaur fossils. Okay, so if these dinosaurs lived millions and millions, hundreds of millions of years ago, would there still be red blood cells and soft tissue in them?
And the answer is no. If they lived thousands of years ago, yes, that makes sense. Well, guess what? They find this in dinosaur fossils. So when you think about it, why don't people believe? There's evidence that says that dinosaurs and humans lived on the earth at the same time.
The Bible says that they lived on the earth at the same time. Well, it's just too much for them to believe, right? It's too inconvenient for them to believe. There was also a prolonged ice age, something that doesn't happen within the normal fluctuations of the climate.
A significant event is what causes an ice age that lasts over a century. And that significant event is the global flood. Another piece of evidence that one can look at to see the reality of the global flood is that in every ancient culture, they had a flood story.
It only makes sense that these flood stories were passed down from generation to generation because a flood really wiped out all of the people on the planet and every culture that came from the eight that survived is gonna document this, and they do in the different cultures.
But guess what happens? Time goes on and time goes on and people forget that there really was a flood. And this is convenient for sinners. Sinners convince themselves that there wasn't a flood because if there is a flood, then that means the Bible is true and I can't continue living in my sin.
You can see how this works. The story of the flood is instructive to everyone to tell us who God is and who we are. If one doesn't properly understand this past history, then one won't properly understand the present nor the future.
Every good historian tells history as it took place. Every good historian knows that history repeats itself and history repeats itself because the hearts of men do not change. They are the same hearts in every generation.
For example, you look at the Jewish leaders, the Pharisees, the very ones who put Jesus to death. These men love power. They love control. They love prestige. Well, guess what? What do we see in our society?
People who love power, love control, they love prestige. The sinful heart does not change no matter what generation you live in. And it's important to study history so that you learn from the past. And you avoid the bad from the past as many travel down the destructive path and instead you go down the right path.
If you study the history of the Bible, which is the most reliable history in the world since the author is God, then what you know from the early pages of the Bible is that God destroyed this world because of the wickedness of mankind.
As Genesis 6, 5 through 8 says, the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord regretted that he made man on the earth and it grieved him to his heart.
So the Lord said, I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens for I am sorry that I have made them. So 4 ,300 years ago, this world experienced this judgment, a global flood, and the reason this flood came on the earth as Scripture so clearly says is because of man's great wickedness.
If God destroyed the earth before because of man's wickedness, then it makes sense that he's going to do it again for the same reason. One week ago, I took us through the judgment that will be poured out on this earth during the final seven-year tribulation that the Bible predicts, mostly predicts in the book of Revelation, the last book of the Bible.
The book of Revelation describes three different judgments that God is going to pour out on the earth. The seal judgments, the trumpet judgments, and the bull judgments. And at the end of that seven years is the time when Christ is going to come to this earth to establish His kingdom.
And this kingdom that Christ will reign over, Revelation 20, verses 1 -6 describes, this kingdom will last for 1 ,000 years. Now what is interesting about this 1 ,000-year reign of Christ is that at the very end, there's going to be one final rebellion.
During this 1 ,000 years, Satan is going to be locked up in the pit, and then he is going to be released. And when he's released, he's going to gather unbelievers and his demons, and they're going to have one final battle against God and against Christ.
Revelation 20, verses 7 -10 describes this final rebellion. And it is at this point that the final judgment of this stained world and universe will take place. This final judgment will be the granddaddy of them all.
The point that Peter is making is that even though many deny the reality of the creation and the global flood, it really did happen. Do not believe those false voices. You know what I love about that playground in St. Croix Falls?
It says what the best evidence is. The best evidence is not that they found this blood clotting in these fossils. It's not that they found these carvings and these writings by the Chinese and the Native Americans.
It's not any of that. The best evidence is what?
This.
Why do we believe that the world is this way? Because the Bible says so. That's why. And of course, we can appeal to evidence if we need to. But the best evidence is the Bible said so. So here we have this judgment from the past that's pointing ahead to a judgment in the future that we will see in the next point here, point three.
But here's a point two. Understand that God's biggest judgment for this rebellious world is reserved for the very end. And the second fact that the world must know is that many deny that this planet was once destroyed by a flood.
The third fact that the world must know is this. Everything physical will be incinerated by fire. Let's see this in verse seven and also verse 10. 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.
Let's go down to verse 10. The second half of verse 10 says, 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.
What Peter's telling us here is that the same word of power, Hebrews says that the universe was created by the word of his power. The same power that created the heavens and the earth and the same word of power that destroyed the earth with a flood, where only eight people survived is the same word of power from God that is going to destroy this universe.
Now, as I've mentioned, the destruction in the final seven-year tribulation on the earth is going to be enormous. I remember one week ago, Jesus said, if those days had continued, no human would have survived, but they were shortened for the sake of the elect, which means that eventually everybody would have died from this destruction, but it was only seven years.
The greatest destruction is reserved for the very end. Okay, so after the 1 ,000-year reign of Christ, which comes after the seven-year tribulation, after the 1 ,000-year reign of Christ is when this destruction is going to take place.
In Isaiah 65, 17, the Lord says what's coming after this destruction, it's going to be a new heavens and a new earth that is going to be created. Now, there is debate about whether the future universe will be restored or recreated, but as Isaiah 65, 17 says, create means that God is going to create it, not restore it.
But not only that, verse seven of 2 Peter 3 tells us that this place is going to blow up. Not just verse seven, but also verse 10, as I have read. The heavens will pass away with a roar and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved.
This is what Peter is describing. This is going to happen at the very end, 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.
Revelation 20, 11 says, then 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. The apostle John who wrote the book of Revelation in his vision, he saw in this vision that he received from the Lord, the destruction of the universe and then the judgment that followed.
Now next week, we're going to look at this more so. We're going to look at the great white throne judgment, which is the judgment for believers and the judgment seat of Christ, which is the judgment for believers.
And that's next week though. Now in our text, what you must understand is that God's future destruction of the universe, it's not a violation of the covenant that he made with Noah. The Noahic covenant in Genesis 9, 11, the Lord told him, I established my covenant with you that never again shall all flesh be cut off by waters of the flood.
And never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth. Okay, this week we just had a rainbow, a beautiful rainbow in the sky. We actually, with all the rain we've gotten this past three months, we've seen lots of rainbows.
Every time we see a rainbow, it's a reminder. God is not going to destroy this earth with a flood again. Okay, that's remarkable. I mean, think of how wicked our earth is. He's not going to do that, but he is going to destroy it at the very end.
And this time it will be destroyed with fire. As Peter writes in verse seven, the heavens and earth that now exist are stored up for fire. Okay, not water. Water, as once happened, fire. A while back, 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. Harry S. Truman. By the way, what's his middle name? The letter S is his middle name. 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 Japan, and it was hoped that this would bring an end to World War II in the Pacific theater. And what scientists discovered during that time in history is that if you pull atoms apart, this is known as fission, a chain reaction occurs that produces a large explosion.
The other way that explosions happen is the opposite of pulling them apart, pushing them together. And this is known as fusion. This is what's taking place on the sun. We see the sun, it's so beautiful.
You know what the sun is? It's a place where just massive explosions are constantly taking place that release energy, that releases the energy of light, which gives us life on the earth. But thankfully, when you're far enough away, it's beautiful, which we are.
It's amazing that atoms, we're all made of atoms, has this capability. And with this knowledge that we know about the material world, we can see that the Lord is going to have no trouble finding a method to destroy the entire universe.
Could you imagine all the atoms in the universe fusing together and having an explosion that is hard for us, in fact impossible for us, to wrap our minds around? It will be an atomic bomb unlike any other.
But when this takes place, all humanity will be awaiting God's final judgment. And God will create a new earth and a new heavens, which is a new universe, awaiting the future redeemed humanity. And this is the place you want to live.
This place that is coming. So this present earth will be destroyed by fire in the future, and then God will create a universe that has not been polluted by sin and never will be. God's biggest judgment for this creation is reserved for the very end.
And the second fact we must know is that everything physical will be incinerated by fire. Did I say second fact? Third fact we must know is that everything will be incinerated by fire. Okay, this is where the world is going.
This is what the Bible says. And it's amazing. Think of all these prophecies that have come true. All right, we talked about this one week ago. All these prophecies that have come true. All these prophecies made thousands of years ago.
All of these prophecies have come true. And guess what? God fulfills his promises. This is going to happen in the future. And so with that in mind, we need to look ahead to the future. Next Sunday, we're gonna look at this very thing.
As we look ahead to the future, God expects us to live a certain way, right? There's a reason he gives us all this information. It's not just to tell us history for history's sake. He's giving us this history because he wants to do something in us.
This future history that is coming. So we will look at that one Sunday from now, Lord willing. And I say Lord willing because who knows what'll happen in the next week, right? I could die. Christ could come back.
I could get stuck in Duluth. We're going to Duluth tomorrow. I mean, who knows what could happen? But next Sunday, Lord willing, we will look at point four and point five, which focuses on how are we to live in light of these future events that will come on the earth.
But this time let's bow our heads in prayer. Lord, as we close here, as we meditate on what the scripture said, we first of all want to give you praise. You are a God that keeps your promises. You said you would never flood the earth again and you haven't.
Even though this world has untold wickedness in it, we see that rainbow and we are reminded that the flood that you once sent will never come on the earth again. But we are also mindful, Lord, that you will judge the earth.
You will bring this place under judgment at a future time that you know. In the meantime, Lord, help us to be mindful of you and the will that you have for our lives. And as we look at that next week, help us to live lives, Lord, that are productive and where we are truly useful to you.
And so, Lord, apply this message today to everyone right where they are at. And we ask this in Jesus' name, amen.