THE DANGER OF FORGETFULNESS

2 Peter, Chapter 3 – Part 1

1 This is my second letter to you, dear friends, and in both of them I have tried to stimulate your wholesome thinking and refresh your memory. 2 I want you to remember what the holy prophets said long ago and what our Lord and Savior commanded through your apostles.

3 Most importantly, I want to remind you that in the last days scoffers will come, mocking the truth and following their own desires. 4 They will say, “What happened to the promise that Jesus is coming again? From before the times of our ancestors, everything has remained the same since the world was first created.” 5 They deliberately forget that God made the heavens long ago by the word of his command, and he brought the earth out from the water and surrounded it with water. 6 Then he used the water to destroy the ancient world with a mighty flood. 7 And by the same word, the present heavens and earth have been stored up for fire. They are being kept for the day of judgment, when ungodly people will be destroyed.

Once again Peter starts his letter on a gracious note: Dear friends. Yet you get an inkling of frustration, he has tried to stimulate [their] wholesome thinking. The world of authentic Christian leadership is no walk in the park. People, like sheep, are wayward, absent-minded and seem to have the propensity to just wander off and it takes committed and dedicated grit for a leader to stay the course. But that is the heart of the shepherd, and that’s exactly what beats inside Peter.

Peter employs a typical Old Testament strategy of constantly inviting people to remember and recall what God had done for the nation of Israel, a re-occurring theme: Remember His marvelous works which He has done, His wonders, and the judgments of His mouth, (I Chronicles 16:12 - NKJV) Remember His covenant forever, The word which He commanded, for a thousand generations. (I Chronicles 16:15 - NKJV)As we have seen memory is a fickle human aptitude and all too often God and His goodness were taken for granted. His marvelous works …  His wonders, were quickly relegated to the pit of forgetfulness. Peter is well aware of this mindset and he is at pains to keep these things in the forefront of their thinking.

He wants them to use their memory to stimulate their thinking and in so doing keep them pointed in the right direction. Above anything else, he wants them to really apply their mental powers to what our Lord and Savior commanded through your apostles. He is not just suggesting they have an idle chat about it, but rather they make a serious and concerted effort to recall and meditate on it, and fuse it into their mindset.

This holy nation is always going to have its critics, even up to this day and age, and these chosen people, these royal priests need to come to grips with this reality. As we have already considered, the new Christian community is all too obvious and all too different to escape close scrutiny, and they will need to find a strategy for the criticism, sarcasm and scoffing that will come their way. The reality is that these protestors are people also, in need of the of salvation offered through the holy nation

In answer to the protestors, Peter reflects back to the awesome power and activity of God in the creation and the obvious reality that they have deliberately missed its importance and relativity. So immense was the power of God that he simply spoke and the world came into being. He reminds them of the historical fact of the flood in Noah’s day where God used water to destroy a sinful world, and the reminds them that the same God, simply by His own word, is storing up fire in heaven and on earth  for the day of judgment, when ungodly people will be destroyed. These scenarios ought not to be missed on believer and unbeliever alike.