TEXT: 2 Peter 3:1–7 TEACHER: Mark Driscoll RELEASE DATE: July 12, 2009 Perseverance is finishing well. The last day is the most important day.

Persevere in Scripture (2 Peter 3:1–2)

There is no perseverance in life without perseverance in Scripture. How is your time in Scripture?

• Christians are beloved. We persevere because God already loves us, not because we're trying to earn his love. God loves us despite the fact we're ill-deserving.
• Christians are forgetful. We tend to know certain things but forget to live in light of these truths.
• "The Bible that is falling apart usually belongs to the person whose life is not." –C.H. Spurgeon

Persevere through Scoffing (2 Peter 3:3–4)

If you love Jesus, read the Bible, and try and live a life that is obedient to Scripture out of love for Jesus, you will get made fun of. Which scoffers are getting to you?

• You will either fear the Lord or fear man.
• Scoffers tend to argue chronologically, not theologically.
• The Bible promises fiery judgment (Mal. 4:1; John 5:25–29). The Last Day, the day when sin is no more, when death is no more, when Jesus is all. As Christians, we evaluate every day along the way in light of that day.
• Christianity is not opposed to science; it is opposed to naturalism, which denies that there is a Creator and Sustainer of the world ("the Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be" –Carl Sagan).
• Big Bang/Big God; Second Law of Thermodynamics/Second Coming of Christ. Both science and Christianity recognize a beginning and an end.

Persevere Until Judgment (2 Peter 3:5–7)

Christianity is this: Jesus lived, Jesus died, Jesus rose, Jesus is coming again. Those are the facts. Everything we believe hinges on facts (not speculation, not philosophy, not theory).

• Certain people deliberately overlook the facts (Rom. 1:18).
• Christianity and the Bible are not dismissed on intellectual grounds; they are rejected based on the moral implications of the facts.
• The Bible says that we are without excuse (Rom. 1:20). It's not that your mind is unable to understand, it's that your heart is unwilling to repent.
• Nobel Laureate Steven Weinberg:

  "I personally feel that the teaching of modern science is corrosive of religious belief, and I’m all for that!…From my own point of view, I can hope that this long sad story will come to an end at some time in the future and that this progression of priests and ministers and rabbis and ulamas and imams and bonzes and bodhisattvas will come to an end, that we’ll see no more of them. I hope that this is something to which science can contribute and if it is, then I think it may be the most important contribution that we can make."

  In other words: I don't want there to be a God, and so I'm going to do everything I can to make sure that nobody else believes there is a God (deliberately overlooking the facts).
• It's okay to have questions, but follow the truth wherever it leads. Don't deliberately overlook the facts.

God is Creator

• Creation comes from the Word of God (Gen. 1; Heb. 11:3)
• God made everything from nothing (ex nihilo); God existed before creation.
• The Bible is the Word of God: living and active (Is. 55:11; Heb. 4:12).

God is Sustainer

• God not only made the world, he also remains involved in the world.
• God is keeping creation together, though it is marred by sin and its affects.
• God came into the world as the man Jesus Christ, and he continues with us by his presence with the Holy Spirit.
• We do not persevere by ourselves (Heb. 13:5).

God is Judge

• Nobody is getting away with anything (encouragement for victims).
• Your sins were either judged on the day of Jesus' death, or they will be judged on the day of your death (John 3:16, 36).
• Thirteen perecent of Jesus words are on hell. The wrath of God is spoken of more than 600 times in the Bible.
• In the past, God judged the whole earth with water. In the future, God will judge the whole earth with fire (2 Pet. 3:6–7). If you don't believe in the Day of Judgment, remember the Day of the Flood.
• Jesus compares hell to Gehenna: an area outside Jerusalem, previously the site of child sacrifices, later a dump where fire burned refuse continuously.

The fear of hell does not compel Christians to persevere as much as the hope of God's Kingdom. We look forward to going home, seeing Jesus.