Faith

Peter clears up all those loose ends at the end of Second Peter, Chapter 3. His words are tied to Paul, when he reminds his readers not to forget what Paul had to say. Interesting that someone who was right beside Jesus for three years would think that the words of someone else said it better.

What both Peter and Paul wanted us to remember was that not everything will be understandable now. And just because they are not understandable (they don't make sense or defy our logic or we just don't agree with them/it), it becomes easy for people to confuse us. [more]Simply because we don't understand the language, or have not studied the Bible enough, we easily fall prey to those false teachers. They stretch and distort the truth and we go along with them.

God reveals Himself to us in many ways. We need to be cautious that we don't get hung up on what we don't understand. When we can't get past verse "A" because it doesn't make sense, we can miss what God has for us in verse "B". Maybe it's possible that when we get to the end of a chapter or book that all of a sudden the meaning of the unclear becomes clear.

The challenge is there in verse 18 – "grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord…" We can grow, or we can stagnate, but it is our choice.

Tying up the loose ends has gotten to be difficult. It's like a rope that keeps "undoing" itself – never quite stays together.

Here at the end of Second Peter, there is a echo in chapter 3 where verses 9 and 15 talk about how patient God is with us. Now the actual word is that the "Lord" is patient with us. Patient because he doesn't want anyone to "perish" or not be on the list to spend forever with Him. However, it does not say that His patience lasts forever.[more]

It does say that He waits for us, but we can miss that. Maybe it's like the sale at the store – they were there until they closed, and tomorrow is another day AND the item you wanted will no longer be on sale! If you and I wanted to take advantage of the lower price, we should have been there!

The store wanted as many people as possible to take advantage of the reduced price, but you had to be there. It wasn't some "Internet-Only" event – it was an in person thing. So it is with the Lord, who waits patiently for us to show up and claim our prize. We have no idea when the doors close, and so we do other things, and miss the opportunity of a lifetime.

We may protest that the doorkeeper should have let us know when the offer ended, but that will be too late. He is waiting – we are doing the "dilly-dally".

Read "The Final Knot" tomorrow…

One chapter and seventeen verses – still leftovers to figure out. How did Peter, Paul and John come up with this stuff?

Here in chapter three (Second Peter), he seems to have mixed a pot of stew or soup that needs to be eaten very carefully. Take time to dig out each chunk – false teachers (actually teachers of falsehoods), fire coming down, right living, remembering Jesus, creation and the end.

If what he wanted from his readers was attention, [more]he's got it! The word he uses about false teachers is that they are scoffers who follow their own evil desires. That means that they would be people who would mock or ridicule everything the believers had learned. Not only that, they would probably do it in such a way that they would make "believers" feel ridiculous for what they believed – even doubt that it was what they were supposed to believe.

Those teachers would come to plant seeds of doubt, convincing Christ's followers to question what they were doing and how they were supposed to live. Trying to get us to question if "that's really what it means", or "did He really say that?"

Peter's challenge to the early church is "live holy and godly lives…" His reminder is that those who scoff (ridicule or mock) God's Word and Jesus do it not to build us up, but to pull us away from the one we claim to be following. "Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior…" (2 Peter 3:18)