2 Peter 3:14-18 Advent Themes in Conclusion
Good morning!
Let’s pray.
We are finishing our work in 2 Peter this morning, so you can turn to 2 Peter 3:14-18, page 1019 in the pew Bibles.
So today is the fourth Sunday of Advent, the season of preparation for celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ, the incarnation, God putting on flesh and dwelling among us. I’d like to thank the kids who did the Advent readings each week and lighting the candles for us each week. At the Christmas Eve service we will light the last candle, the Christ candle as we remember His humble birth in Bethlehem.
Traditionally, each of the four Sundays of Advent has a particular theme. And I say, “traditionally,” because there is no command in Scripture that tells us the church to focus on these four themes, or even to celebrate Advent or Christmas for that matter. But we do it because it’s helpful, it’s helpful to remember, it’s helpful to focus on these themes.
The four themes of Advent are: hope, peace, joy, and love.
And their order gets shuffled around sometimes, and sometimes peace gets swapped out for preparation, but like I said, there’s no rules for this so it doesn’t really matter.
Oddly enough, these four themes are present in our final text in 2 Peter, which is a huge relief because Christmas is next Saturday and we’ll all obviously be over it by next Sunday.
Let’s turn to our text and look for these four themes.
14 Therefore, beloved, since you are waiting for these, be diligent to be found by him without spot or blemish, and at peace. 15 And count the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, 16 as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures. 17 You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, take care that you are not carried away with the error of lawless people and lose your own stability. 18 But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity. Amen.
So, remembering one of the golden rules of Bible study, we can’t start off with a “therefore,” until we know what it’s there for, and discovering what it’s there for is as easy as thinking back to last week’s text to see what Peter was referring to, and that is the Day of the Lord, the return of Christ, His Second Advent.
So Peter says, “Therefore beloved, since you are waiting for these,” meaning the return of Christ and the coming of the new heaven and new earth where righteousness dwells, since you are waiting, confidently expecting these things to happen, be diligent to be found by Him without spot or blemish…
What is the word that we use for “confidently expecting” something to happen? HOPE.
And hope is the first theme of Advent.
Hope is not a wish, though we often use the word that way, as in, “I hope I get an Xbox for Christmas.”
Hope is confidently expecting God to do what He said He would do. As Peter reminded us back in verse one of this chapter when he wrote, “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 through your apostles…”
Confidently expecting Jesus to return because the prophets foretold it and Jesus Himself promised it, that’s our hope!
The “people living in great darkness,” as Isaiah wrote, were looking forward in hope for the great light to shine. For them it was the first Advent of Jesus, for us it’s His Second Advent.
The second theme of Advent, and the one I struggle the most with personally, is peace.
Peter wrote in verse 14, be diligent to be found by him without spot or blemish, and at peace.
The Scholars are divided on who it is exactly that we are supposed to have peace with.
Christ’s first Advent made it possible for people to have peace with God, in fact, peace with God is only possible through faith in Jesus Christ.
Romans 5:1-2 says, …since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. 2 Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.
And certainly to found by Jesus at His return to be without spot or blemish will be evidence of our peace with God, but I’m not sure that is the kind of peace that Peter meant.
John Calvin didn’t either, he wrote,
“The word peace seems to be taken for a quiet state of conscience, founded on hope and patient waiting. For as so few turn their attention to the judgment of Christ, hence it is, that while they are carried headlong by their demanding and persistent lusts, they are at the same time in a state of anxiety. This peace, then, is the quietness of a peaceable soul, which complies with the word of God.”
A quietness of soul… doesn’t that sound good? And also hard to achieve? Maybe even impossible…
Maybe it seems that way because the peace we are after has more to do with our desire to have a pleasant and quiet life than what it is that the Lord says will bring us real peace.
Like Paul said, peace with God comes through faith in Jesus, and peace in our soul, comes from exactly the same thing, faith in Jesus Christ.
Faith in Jesus is not merely believing that He exists, it’s not just agreeing with facts, faith in Jesus is trusting in Jesus personally, trusting that He did what was necessary to pay the penalty for our sin on the cross, but also trusting Him to guide and direct our lives and the affairs of this world.
Peter shows us that the source of this peace is the hope of Christ’s return because He trusted Him to do as He said He would do, and that same peace is available to us.
We may not like our circumstances, we may not be happy about the challenges that we are facing or the losses that we feel, but we can still have peace, we can still have quietness of soul if we will trust the Lord Jesus to do as He said He would, to be with us always even until the end of the age.
The third theme of Advent is joy.
In the first Advent of Christ the joy is found in the incarnation of Christ, God taking on flesh and dwelling among us, the joy was that Messiah had finally come. We often experience joy when what we have been waiting for finally happens, I can only imagine the joy that those folks had who had so longed for Messiah to come, and there he was just as the prophets had foretold.
But the Joy that Peter alludes to is found in something that hasn’t happened yet, we are looking forward to it in hope, we have peace knowing that it is coming, but we find in joy the fact that it hasn’t happened yet.
Verse 15 says, …count the patience of our Lord as salvation…
Because the Father has yet to send back His Son to earth that means countless people still have the opportunity to be saved, every moment he waits His family grows as people come to faith in Him.
As Peter wrote back in verse nine, 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.
Every day that the Lord waits means that thousands more people won’t perish but reach repentance and that is cause for Joy, joy based on peace knowing that the Father is in control, and based on hope, confidently expecting to do as He promised.
The fourth theme of Advent is love.
15 And count the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, 16 as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures. 17 You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, take care that you are not carried away with the error of lawless people and lose your own stability. 18 But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Peter loved Paul but recognized that some of the things he wrote were difficult to understand and after preaching through Paul’s letters for like seven years I can resonate with that thought. But Peter’s endorsement of Paul as a beloved brother, or his wisdom, or endorsing Paul’s writings Scripture, is not the love that is found in our Advent theme.
The First Advent showed the Father’s love for mankind, as was read this morning: “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son that whoever would believe in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life.”
As we look forward in hope to Christ’s Second Advent and experience the peace of knowing that the Lord is in control, He has everything arranged, and knows the day and the hour that He will send the Son back with a new heaven and anew earth, as we experience the joy of seeing many more come to faith in Jesus Christ because the Father patiently waited another day, we can express our love for Him by growing in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Jesus said in John 14:15, “If you love me you will keep my commandments.”
The ignorant and unstable twist the Scriptures to their own destruction, says Peter, take care that you are not carried away with the error of lawless people and lose your own stability. 18 But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
We grow in grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, we stay stable and don’t get carried away into error, when we grow in the knowledge of the way that He has chosen to reveal Himself, when we grow in our knowledge of His Word, the Bible. When we get to know our Bible, we learn what He commanded, and so we express our love for Him.
Eva asked me this week about what to do for Jesus for Christmas, what to get Him for His birthday…
I think it’s this. Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love.
To him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity. Amen.
