Sermon: "Thinking From God's Big Picture"
INTRODUCTION: STIRRING THE SAINTS
Getting the big picture
No doubt, you’ve heard the expression, “thinking outside the box.” It’s become quite common. In fact, it’s probably too common, maybe even clichéd, to say, “We need to ‘think outside the box!’”
So, I’ve decided to try a slightly different though not necessarily new phrase on you this morning. Maybe, instead of “thinking outside the box,” we need to start “thinking from the big picture.”
Okay, I’ll admit that “seeing the big picture” is also a cliché. It means to take in the total perspective. But thinking from the big picture goes beyond just seeing the big picture. Not only do you perceive the broader perspective, but you then begin to build your thinking from the broader perspective.
Of course, that means it’s important to have the correct big picture to begin with.
An early rock star
Charles Lyell was a big picture kind of guy. Lyell is known as the “father of modern geology.” You might say he was an early rock star, more than a century before Elvis, in fact. Before Lyell came on the scene in the early 1800’s, nearly every thinking person held a Biblical view on the age of the earth, that it was about six thousand or so years old. Most people, at least in Christian-based cultures, believed that God had created everything in six literal days and that there was a Great Flood that had covered the entire earth.
But Lyell didn’t believe the Bible. He rejected the Bible’s accounts. And he came up with his own ideas about the age of the earth. Lyell observed that the processes shaping various geological formations were slow and gradual in nature. So he concluded that these processes must have always been slow and gradual since the beginning of everything. He decided that there was an overall uniformity to geology and its processes. Hence, this explanation for everything, this “big picture” idea, was given the tedious and cumbersome name of “uniformitarianism.” (Remember that word, because it will be on the test!)
Actually, it’s not particularly important that you remember the word “uniformitarianism.” What I really wanted you to see is that Charles Lyell is a good example of a scoffer. Lyell scoffed at the Bible. And, since he rejected the Bible’s explanation for all that we see around us, he had to come up with his own ideas to explain the “big picture.” So he said, “Everything goes on as it has since the beginning of time.” And that assumption – please note that it is not a fact – became the bedrock foundation of modern geology.
Our passage of Scripture today talks about scoffers like Charles Lyell. We’ll see that they deliberately reject the Biblical “big picture”, literally from beginning to end.
And we’ll ultimately conclude that, when we begin to see things from God’s “big picture,” it will affect our actions. Or, to put it another way…
You will change the way you do things once you change the way you view things.
Our main Scripture text is found in the second epistle of Peter and the third chapter. Peter begins this section of his letter by seeking to get his readers to…
A. Think Good Thoughts
2 PETER 3:1 – Dear friends, this is now my second letter to you. I have written both of them as reminders to stimulate you to wholesome thinking.
In both of his letters, Peter’s focus was to his own countrymen, Christian Jews. Persecution had driven them from Palestine and scattered them throughout various provinces in western Asia. These people had suffered for their beliefs, and Peter sought to encourage them in their faith.
With that in mind, he says that both his letters were written as “reminders to stimulate you to wholesome thinking.” The NIV uses the word “stimulate” here while a number of other versions actually translate it as “to stir up.” I think that gives us a better picture, a better image. The Greek word means “to wake up; to arouse from sleep”. Peter wants to awaken the wholesome thinking in the minds of his readers. One commentator says the original language suggests that Peter is “trying to stir up” these good thoughts.
When you pour chocolate syrup into a glass of milk, where does the syrup go? It sinks to the bottom, doesn’t it? It goes all the way down to the bottom of the glass to rest there, to hibernate there, and to nap down there. And it will continue napping until you do what? That’s right, it’ll continue to rest down there until you stir it up and rouse it from its slumber. Then that good chocolate flavor will permeate the whole beverage.
That’s what Peter wants to do for his readers. He wants to arouse in us the good thoughts that have been allowed to go to sleep. He’s trying to stir them up so that their quality will permeate our whole minds.
Well, what are these good thoughts? To find that out, Peter essentially says that we’ll have to…
B. Break Open the Bible
Listen to what Peter says in the next verse…
2 PETER 3:2 – I want you to recall the words spoken in the past by the holy prophets and the command given by our Lord and Savior through your apostles.
This is pretty straight forward, really. The wholesome thoughts, the good thoughts, from verse 1 are to be found in the “words spoken in the past by the holy prophets and the command given by our Lord and Savior through your apostles.” The words of the past spoken by the holy prophets are the Old Testament Scriptures. And the apostles put together the command of Jesus into what we now call the New Testament. Therefore, the wholesome thinking Peter wants to bring about can be found for us today in the Old and New Testaments – the Bible!
You know those little pine tree air fresheners you can get at the car wash? Break open the package and the scent quickly fills the atmosphere inside your car. Peter wants us to break open our Bible and allow its aroma to fill our minds.
Compare the imagery of the flavor and aroma found in stirring up good Bible thoughts to the last couple of verses from 2 Peter 2. Peter spends all of chapter two warning us of the dangers of false teachers and their false doctrine. It’s all very descriptive language, and he ends that chapter by saying…
2 PETER 2:20-22 – If they have escaped the corruption of the world by knowing our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and are again entangled in it and overcome, they are worse off at the end than they were at the beginning. 21It would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than to have known it and then to turn their backs on the sacred command that was passed on to them. 22Of them the proverbs are true: "A dog returns to its vomit,” and, "A sow that is washed goes back to her wallowing in the mud."
I’m not sure what you think, but a wallowing hog and a vomiting dog are not my ideas of wholesome flavor and aroma! Please break open a pine tree air freshener! Break open a Bible! Peter is trying to say we need to get away from the “stinkin’ thinkin’” of false teachers and false doctrine and to allow the wholesome thinking found in the Bible to be refreshed in our minds. And getting back to chapter 3, we see that Peter gives us…
I. THE SCOOP ON SCOFFERS
We’ve already considered a scoffer this morning. We talked about Charles Lyell and his rejection of the Bible. Lyell said that, when it comes to the processes of geology – wind and water erosion, the depositing of sediments, the building up of layers of earth and rock, and other events – everything has been happening just the same as it always has since the beginning of time. Remembering that big word, “uniformitarianism,” we see that the scoffers Peter writes about also have…
A. A Rationale Built Upon Uniformity
Here’s what Peter says in verses 3 and 4…
2 PETER 3:3, 4 – First of all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. 4They will say, "Where is this 'coming' he promised? Ever since our fathers died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation."
These scoffers will come in the last days, mocking the truth of God’s promises. They will mock and ridicule the Word of God.
Please note that the kind of ridicule these mockers will level at our Christian beliefs will not be carried out because these men have the better argument. No, they will mock and scoff, Peter says, because of their own evil desires. They want to ridicule God’s Word so they can continue in their sin.
What kind of argument do they make? Listen to it once again in verse 4…
2 PETER 3:4 – They will say, "Where is this 'coming' he promised? Ever since our fathers died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation."
This is what makes up the scoffers’ “big picture”. They say,” If Jesus is really coming back, where is He? If we’re really in the last days, then Jesus should have come back by now! Where is He? Where is this so-called ‘coming’ He promised?”
And then, what do the scoffers say? “Everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation."
Well! Where have we heard that before? It’s the same thing that Lyell, the founder of modern geology, put forward as his idea for rejecting the Bible! All things continue in a uniform way since the beginning of time. There are no drastic changes. Lyell sounds like one of Peter’s last-day scoffers.
“Jesus hasn’t come back yet. And He never will! Today was the same as yesterday and tomorrow will be the same as today. I don’t need to worry about Jesus coming back to judge the living and the dead! And, since I don’t have to worry about that, I can live like I want. I can do the things I want to do. Because nobody’s going to be around to stop me.”
It’s interesting, really. Lyell’s uniformitarian geology and its long ages for the earth provided the framework for Darwin’s theory of evolution, which essentially says that there’s no Creator. There is no God.
Thomas Huxley was a strong advocate of Darwin’s evolution theory, doing all he could to spread Darwin’s ideas throughout Europe. And Huxley’s son, Aldous Huxley, the author of Brave New World, embraced the evolutionary ideas of Darwin completely, even coming to believe that life itself was meaningless. And, if life is meaningless – if that’s the “big picture” you have in your mind – then you begin to think that you can live like you want to without consequences. If there is no Judge, there is no Law. And, if there is no Law, then lawlessness reigns. If you won’t take my word for it, listen to what Aldous Huxley himself said. Listen to how he pits his “big picture” ideas against the Bible’s “big picture”:
“For myself, as, no doubt, for most of my contemporaries, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation. The liberation we desired was simultaneously liberation from a certain political and economic system and liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom; we objected to the political and economic system because it was unjust. The supporters of these systems claimed that in some way they embodied the meaning (a Christian meaning, they insisted) of the world. There was one admirably simple method of confuting these people and at the same time justifying ourselves in our political and erotic revolt: We could deny that the world had any meaning whatsoever.”
People think that these ideas of uniformitarian geology, the theory of evolution, and the resultant philosophy about the meaninglessness of life are modern ideas. The Apostle Peter was basically describing these fellows 2000 years ago. Listen to the passage again, this time from The Amplified Bible:
2 PETER 3:3, 4 – To begin with, you must know and understand this, that scoffers (mockers) will come in the last days with scoffing, [people who] walk after their own fleshly desires 4and say, Where is the promise of His coming? For since the forefathers fell asleep, all things have continued exactly as they did from the beginning of creation.
Peter goes on to describe these scoffers as being…
B. Dumb on Purpose
2 PETER 3:5-7 – But they deliberately forget that long ago by God's word the heavens existed and the earth was formed out of water and by water. 6By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed. 7By the same word the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.
The scoffers, Peter says “deliberately forget.” I like the King James; it says that they are “willingly ignorant.” That basically means, “dumb on purpose.”
What is it that they choose to ignore? Well, they purposely ignore that God created the heavens and the earth by His Word. And, according to verse 6, they ignore that God destroyed the entire world by means of a Great Flood. They deliberately turn their backs on God’s “big picture!”
You see, Lyell was wrong. Things have not been the same since the beginning of creation. God acted in human history before when He judged human sin by flooding the entire world with the destructive force of water. Rather than Charles Lyell’s “slow and gradual” processes, that event would have changed the surface of the earth radically and quickly!
And verse 7 says that God will act in human history once again, this time by fire. There is a day of judgment coming, a day for the destruction of ungodly men. You can choose to ignore what God has done in the past and you can ignore what He’s got coming in the future. You can be dumb on purpose. You can be like the ostrich. Pretending that God’s judgment hasn’t happened in the past and that His judgment won’t happen in the future, you can stick your head in the sand. Then you won’t have to look at God’s big picture. Just remember that, when you’ve got your head in the sand, most of you is still exposed and vulnerable.
For those of us who take God at His Word however, we can have…
II. CERTAIN ASSURANCE …
…that God will keep His promise…
A. In His Time
2 PETER 3:8, 9 – But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. 9The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.
You see, we’re on God’s timetable here. Peter is saying that the scoffers have chosen to deliberately forget some things, but, if you’re going to trust God Word, and allow its flavor to be awakened in your mind, then don’t forget this:
With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.
The scoffers look around and say, “Everything happens the same every day, day after day, and it’s been that way for a long time. If Jesus were returning, He’d be back by now! He’s obviously not coming! So we don’t have to worry about it.”
Well, you see, Mr. Scoffer, that’s your understanding of slowness. That’s your perception of time. God is not bound by time. For Him, a day is like a thousand years and a thousand years are like a day. You say Jesus isn’t coming back because it’s been two thousand years since He left! Well, for Him, that’s only been two days ago! He hasn’t even finished out the week yet!
And why is He waiting? Because He loves you! He doesn’t want anyone to perish in judgment. He wants all to come to Him and repent of their sins. He wants you to seek His forgiveness while it can still be found. What are you waiting for? Is your sin really that satisfying that you’re willing to risk it all for a few moments of pleasure? Don’t ignore God’s warning! Repent! Turn to Jesus before it’s too late! Are you getting God’s big picture?
Be ready for the coming of…
B. The Day of the Lord
2 PETER 3:10 – But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare.
Does a thief arrive in an obvious and open manner? No, he comes quickly and suddenly. Peter says the day of God’s judgment will come in the same way. “The heavens will disappear with a roar.”
I like the way the King James Version renders that phrase:
“…the heavens shall pass away with a great noise…”
Man’s “big picture” ideas say that everything began with a “big bang.” God says that everything is going to go out with a “big bang.” Who are you going to believe?
Here is the verse that falls right in the center of the Bible:
PSALM 118:8 – It is better to take refuge in the LORD than to trust in man.
Which “big picture” are you going to adopt? Man’s – or God’s? It makes a difference. Remember what I said at the outset…
You will change the way you do things once you change the way you view things.
As we adopt God’s big picture, we’ll begin to act with a more...
III. CONSECRATED CONDUCT
As we take in God’s view, we find ourselves…
A. Looking Forward in Awe
2 PETER 3:11, 12 – Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives 12as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming. That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat.
We need to come to grips with something that those scoffers are deliberately ignoring. God is all-powerful. He is holy and He is just. And He is the Judge of the living and the dead. Because of sin, He will bring to a fiery end the heavens and the elements.
So, in light of the impending and certain judgment, Peter asks, “What kind of people ought you to be?”
In this passage, we’ve seen the incredible patience and longsuffering of God. He is not willing that any should perish. And we’ve seen His unbelievable power, able to bring everything to total annihilation quickly and completely.
If we really see God for who He is and we carefully consider what He has planned and we trust completely in Him, we can be…
B. Looking Forward to Righteousness
2 PETER 3:13 – But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness.
The scoffers say, “Where is the promise of His coming?” They don’t want to acknowledge their accountability before a righteous Judge.
But we believers have the correct “big picture.” We can act in keeping with the promise of His coming. We know that beyond the judgment to come lies a home of righteousness. For God will fashion a new heaven and a new earth. Behold, all things will become as new!
And as we learn to behold God’s big picture, from the things He has done at the beginning through to the things He will do at the end, we can say we truly have…
CONCLUSION: HOPE FOR LIVING
Peter brings this section of his second letter to a close:
2 PETER 3:14 – So then, dear friends, since you are looking forward to this, make every effort to be found spotless, blameless and at peace with him.
We ought to be thinking from God’s big picture. If we can truly learn to be looking forward to what God is going to do, if we can learn to keep in our minds and hearts in line with this holy God, if we can truly change our view over to His big picture from beginning to end, then, Peter says, we ought to allow for changes in our conduct.
Things have not always been going along in the same fashion since time began. God has acted forcefully and directly in the past. And He has promised to so act in the future. His mercy is longsuffering and His judgment is sure. If we choose to ignore Him for the express purpose of living unto our own selfish desires, we do so at our own folly.
But, if we can change the way we view things, we can change the way we do things. We should seek to live above our own desires and seek to please Him with every effort of our lives. Let’s be at peace with God.
And, knowing that redemption draws near, let’s do all we can to warn others around us of the dangers of trusting the words of men and the consequences of ignoring God’s Word.