A Savior to Stand On

A Savior to Stand On

2 Peter 3:14-18

Main Idea:  Christ is both the means and the end of our waiting.

I. A Simple Summary (3:14)

1. Be diligent

  • “make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue” (1:5)

  • “be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election” (1:10)

2. Without spot or blemish 

  • “blots and blemishes, reveling in their deceptions while they feast with you” (2:13)

3. At peace

  • “Where is the promise of his coming?” (3:4)

  • “The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you” (3:9)

II. Slippery Slopes (3:15-17)

Slippery Slope #1: We begin to perceive the Lord’s delay as dismissal.

Stable Christian Response: We receive the Lord’s delay as an invitation to active patience.

“We commonly associate patience with lying down.… Yet there is a patience that I believe is harder — the patience that can run.… It is the power to work under stress, to continue under hardship, to have anguish in your spirit and still perform daily talks. This is a Christian thing. The hardest thing is that most of us are called to exercise patience, not in the sickbed but in the street.”

- George Matheson

Two observations about Peter’s reference to Paul:

1. Paul wrote to these believers.

  • "Do you presume upon the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience? Do you not know that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?" (Rom. 2:4)

  • “Behold, now is the acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation.” (2 Cor. 6:2)

2. Peter viewed both he and Paul’s writings as Scripture. 

Slippery Slope #2: Instead of remaining tethered to God’s Word in our waiting, we twist the Scriptures when we don’t understand or agree with them.

Stable Christian Response: As we wait on the return of God’s saving Word, Jesus, we cling to God’s written Word, the Bible, as our instructions for endurance.

“To bend Scripture to our will is to make ourselves sovereign. The interpreter’s first duty is to bow.”

- B.B. Warfield, On Inspiration.

III. A Stable Savior (3:18)

Colossians 2:6-7: Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.

John 14:1-3: Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.

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