"What Sort of Person Ought You Be?"

Life's Most Important Questions  •  Sermon  •  Submitted   •  Presented   •  31:42
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Our Scripture lesson this morning is taken from 2 Peter 3:1-13:
2 Peter 3:1–13 ESV
This is now the second letter that I am writing to you, beloved. In both of them I am stirring up your sincere mind by way of reminder, that you should remember the predictions of the holy prophets and the commandment of the Lord and Savior through your apostles, 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 overlook this fact, that the heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God, and that by means of these the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished. 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. But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed. Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved, and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn! But according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.
I have chosen this morning to preach one final sermon from my series entitled, “Life’s Most Important Questions”. My reasons are twofold: First, I received a request to preach on this question and second because this passage serves as a good introduction for my series on Ruth. As I have mentioned before, the Old Testament foreshadows the greater realities found in the New Testament. The book of Ruth is set in the closing days of the period of the judges. I am going to show this morning how the period of the judges corresponds to the period we live in and how it relates to what Peter teaches us in our Scripture passage.
I am going to demonstrate this correspondence by the following points:
Living Between D-day and V-day
It is Darkest Before the Dawn
The Man Who Shall Be King
The Lord is Patient

Living Between D-day and V-day

The book of Judges begins in the wake of the decisive victories of Joshua. By Joshua 12, the back of the Canaanite resistance had been broken. It was much like D-day. On that day, the Allied victory was assured, but many battles and hundreds of thousands of lives would be lost until V-day came. It would not be until King David that V-day would come for the Israelites and even at that, because it was a mere shadow of Christ, David’s victory was not complete.
The time between the First and Second Coming is a time like this. At the cross and resurrection, Jesus won the decisive victory over Satan and the forces of evil. It was Christ’s and the church’s D-day! However, until Christ comes again, the church wages a mighty battle with world, the flesh and the Devil. The church Peter is writing to is under siege by false teachers. We see this reflected in our text this morning. These false teaches are mocking the very idea that Christ will hold them accountable for their sin and come in judgement (2 Peter 3:1-4).
Not only is there continued conflict, things get worse before they get better.

It is Darkest Before the Dawn

During World War II, as we drew closer to final victory, casualties did not lessen, but became greater for the Allies. For example, the Battle of Iwo Jima had 26,000 Allied casualties, the Battle of the Bulge 89,500, and Battle of Berlin had a staggering 361,000. Nothing is more dangerous than a wounded animal! Satan and his demons know they are doomed, but they are determined to take as many as possible down with them.
The book of Judges is a book of a progressive slide into sin and judgement. The first judge, Othniel, represents the ideal judge, of whom nothing bad can be said. Gideon, the fifth judge is a mixed bag of virtue and vice. By the time, we get to the thirteenth and last judge, Samson, nothing good can be said of him. After Samson’s story comes the third and last section of the book of Judges, there we find the repeated refrain, “In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” (Judges 17:6; 18:1; 19:1; 21:25) In this section, we read the story of how Israel has fallen into the vilest of sins. The closing chapters of Judges is not the Bible story you want to read to small children.
In a similar way, the New Testament warns us that in the period between Christ’s first and second coming, will be a time when things will go from bad to worse. As Paul anticipated his execution at the hands of his Roman persecutors, he writes one final letter to his beloved Timothy, warning him:
2 Timothy 3:1–5 ESV
But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people.
Never in human history, have these words be truer! We live in a world turned upside down, where good is called evil and evil is called good. In times of moral chaos and anarchy, people always look to the strong hand of authority. The refrain we hear in the third section of the book of Judges is, “In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.”
This brings us to the third parallel:

The Man Who Shall Be King

It is not surprising that as the book of Judges comes to a close and the book of Samuel begins, we find the people of Israel demanding a king. “Give us a king to judge us like all the nations,” is the request they made (1 Samuel 8:4-5). The king they choose was a man after their own heart, “a man taller than any of the people” (1 Samuel 10:23).
As the book of Samuel progresses, we are introduced to another king, David, son of Jesse, son of Obed, son of Boaz and Ruth the Moabites (Ruth 4:21-22).
David was not the type of king people would choose for themselves, but he was just the sort of man God would choose. When Eliab, the first son of Jesse presented himself before Samuel, Samuel thought surely this is the man to be king instead of Saul.
1 Samuel 16:7 ESV
But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”
The battle between Saul and David is the story of the battle between a the type of king whom people choose and the type of king whom God chooses. This battle pre-figures the greater battle between the anti-Christ and Christ. If you remember my series from the book of Samuel, I said at that time that Saul was a type of antichrist. John writes:
1 John 2:18 ESV
Children, it is the last hour, and as you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come. Therefore we know that it is the last hour.
Every generation has been plagued by antichrists and every generation must chose who shall be their king: Shall our king be a man after our own heart or a man after God’s own heart?
The book of Ruth is about how God brings the man of His choosing to the throne. The fact that the Lord would do this brings us to our final point:

The Lord is Patient

In a sense, the most surprising thing about the book of Judges is that the hammer of God’s final judgement has not already fallen. Deuteronomy 28 promised blessing for obedience and curse for disobedience. The ever increasing disobedience outlined in the book of Judges deserve the full measure of these curses, yet time after time, we see God’s judgement tempered with mercy. Rather than wiping Israel off the face of the earth, God is quietly working to bring to the throne a man after His own heart. Moreover, in the book of Ruth we see God doing this in a most surprising way. He brings His promised king to the throne through a young Moabite women named Ruth.
The union between Boaz and Ruth is a picture of the grafting of Gentiles into the remnant of Israel which Paul speaks of in Romans 9. Ruth the outsider is brought in by grace into the covenant promises of God’s people. This is why, according to Peter, God’s final judgement is being delayed. Peter writes:
2 Peter 3:9 ESV
The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.
We live in the best of times and in the worst of times. It is the worst of times because sin and wickedness abound and because of this God’s promised judgement loom on the horizon like an ominous black cloud. It is also the best of times because God’s mercy abounds even more. Through the preaching of the Gospel, people from every tribe and nation are bring brought into the church. The final Judgement will not come until the “fullness of the Gentiles has come” and “all Israel is saved” (Romans 11:25-26).
This brings us to Peter’s conclusion and the conclusion of this sermon:

What Sort of Person Ought You Be?

This is such an important point that I want to review with you what these verses say.
2 Peter 3:10–11 ESV
But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed. Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness,
The day of God’s Final Judgement will come, it was delayed during the time of the Judges, it was delayed during the time of Israel’s kings, it was delayed at Jesus First Coming and it is delayed today; but it will not be delayed forever. You see the signs, the day of Christ’s second coming “is nearer to us now than when we first believed” (Romans 13:11). Moreover, anyone of us could die today and as we are reminded of in the book of Hebrews, we are all “destined to die once, and after that to face judgement” (Hebrews 9:27).
Peter urges us to live lives of “holiness and godliness,” but there is no way to do this apart from faith in Christ. I urge you all, come to Christ in order that He might give you a new heart and a renewed mind. Our closing song is, “A Shelter in the Time of Storm.” Just as Ruth lived in a time of storm, so do we. Ruth clung to the God of her mother-in-law Naomi because she understood that He was the only Rock that could stand in a troubled time. Jesus is that Rock! Will you not cling to Him as well?
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