Don't Get too Comfortable

“This is now the second letter that I am writing to you, beloved. In both of them 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 and Savior through your apostles, knowing this first of all, that scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own sinful desires. They will say, "Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation." For they deliberately overlook this fact, that the heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God, and that by means of these the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished. But by the same word the heavens and earth that now exist are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly.

(2 Peter 3:1-7 ESV)

It’s easy for us to get comfortable. As we live life, as we go from day to day, nothing seems to change. Everything seems rather routine. And this can lead us into the false belief that nothing will ever change.

Eventually, things do change. We get married. We have children. We lose a job. We move to a different city. A child moves away from home. We lose a loved one. And we’re rattled, we’re caught off guard, by the sudden change to our existence.

The same sense of comfort finds itself into our life of faith as well. Because the world continues to go on as it always has, we believe that it always will.  Because God has not yet judged the world, we begin to think that he never will.

Regardless of what Scripture tells us about the end of this age and the coming judgment, we dismiss it. We begin to think and act as if this is an unreliable teaching. We begin to think and act as if the nature of God differs from the way he’s revealed it to us in his Word.

We must recognize that, just because God hasn’t yet brought about the end, this doesn’t prove that he never will. Because God has not yet judged the world doesn’t mean that he never will. We must bear in mind that God is faithful to his Word.

When we doubt the coming judgment, we must remember a simple truth. In the beginning, everything was created by the Word of God. And, in the same way, the world was, at one time, destroyed by God’s Word.  In the days of Noah, the world that then existed was brought to an end. Knowing this, we can believe that, by that same Word of God, the world is being kept for the day of judgment.

Realizing this, we must not grow comfortable with the world in which we now live. We must not lose our hope of eternal life in the presence of God. We must not doubt or dismiss God’s Word when he speaks of his judgment or the end of this age. We must live our days knowing that the end will soon come upon us, and that everything he has promised will come to pass.