God's Clock and a World on Fire Text: 2 Peter 3:8-10
Introduction: The Impatience of Mockers
We live in an age of profound impatience. We want our coffee instantly, our information immediately, and our gratification yesterday. This spiritual restlessness, this inability to wait, is not a new phenomenon. It is the ancient sin of the scoffer, repackaged for a digital generation. In the verses just preceding our text, Peter tells us that in the last days mockers will come, following their own lusts and asking a very pointed question: "Where is the promise of His coming?" (2 Peter 3:4). They look around at the apparent stability of the world, the predictable rising of the sun, and conclude that the Christian hope is a fairy tale. "For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all continues just as it was from the beginning of creation."
This is the uniformitarian assumption that governs the modern secular mind. It is a willed ignorance, a deliberate forgetting of the fact that God has intervened in history before, catastrophically, with the flood (2 Peter 3:5-6). The world that then was, perished. The scoffer's argument is not based on evidence, but on a refusal to see the evidence. He has a moral objection to the idea of a God who judges, and so he constructs a worldview where such a God is impossible.
But the Christian is called to a different way of thinking about time, history, and the promises of God. We are not to be agitated by the jeers of the impatient, nor are we to be lulled into the same sleepy complacency. Peter here gives us three foundational truths to anchor our souls as we wait for the day of the Lord. He gives us God's perspective on time, God's purpose in the delay, and the profound certainty of the coming judgment. This is not a passage for idle speculation or for frightened chart-making. It is a call to a sober, godly, and patient confidence in the faithfulness of God.
The Text
But do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day. The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some consider slowness, but is patient toward you, not willing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat, and the earth and its works will be found out.
(2 Peter 3:8-10 LSB)
God's Timeless Perspective (v. 8)
Peter begins by adjusting our clocks to God's time, which is to say, no time at all.
"But do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day." (2 Peter 3:8)
This is a direct quotation from Psalm 90, a prayer of Moses, the man of God. "For a thousand years in Your sight are like yesterday when it passes by, or as a watch in the night" (Psalm 90:4). This is not, as some have foolishly tried to argue, a secret decoder ring for prophetic timelines. This is not a mathematical formula where you can plug in "one day" and get "a thousand years" in order to calculate the date of the Second Coming. To do so is to miss the point entirely and to make the same mistake as the scoffers, just with a different calculator. The scoffers think God is bound by their experience of time; the date-setters think God is bound by their arithmetic.
The point is precisely the opposite. The point is that God is not bound by time at all. He is the eternal I AM. He inhabits eternity. Time is a creature; it is something God made, and like all creatures, it serves Him. He is not constrained by it. For God, the entire sweep of human history, from Adam's fall to the final judgment, is an eternal "now." What seems to us to be an agonizingly long delay is, to Him, no delay at all. He sees the end from the beginning.
This is a profound comfort. It means that God has not forgotten His promise. He is not distracted. He is not growing weary. Our impatience is a function of our finitude. We are creatures of dust, our lives a vapor. We are in a hurry because we have to be. God is not. He is the Ancient of Days, and He operates on a timeline that is entirely His own, for His own glory. To grasp this is to be liberated from the anxiety of the immediate. Our task is not to understand the "when" but to trust the "Who." We are to rest in the character of the one who made the promise, the one for whom a millennium is as a passing day.
The Purpose of the Delay (v. 9)
So if God is not slow, what is He doing? Peter gives us the glorious reason for what men perceive as slowness.
"The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some consider slowness, but is patient toward you, not willing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance." (2 Peter 3:9)
The delay is not a mark of divine indifference, but rather of divine patience. God is holding back the final judgment for a specific purpose: the salvation of His people. Now, we must handle this verse with care. Arminians love to rip this verse out of its context and use it as a battering ram against the doctrine of election. They say, "See! God wants to save everyone without exception, but His will is frustrated by man's stubborn free will." But this is to read the verse with astonishing carelessness.
Who is the "you" that Peter is addressing? The first verse of the letter tells us: "To those who have received a faith of the same kind as ours." He is writing to believers. The "you" toward whom God is patient are Christians. Who are the "any" and the "all" He is talking about? It is the "any" and "all" of us, the elect. God is patient, not willing that any of us should perish, but that all of us should come to repentance. The history of the world is the history of God gathering His chosen people. The final day will not come until the last of the elect has been brought into the fold. The promise is delayed for the sake of the saints who have not yet been born, or who have not yet been converted.
This does not mean God takes pleasure in the death of the wicked who are outside this group. Of course He does not (Ezekiel 33:11). But we must distinguish between God's will of decree (what He sovereignly ordains) and His will of command (what He tells us to do). He commands all men everywhere to repent, and He genuinely offers salvation to all who will come. But His secret, sovereign plan is to ensure that all His chosen people actually do come. The patience of God, therefore, is salvation (2 Peter 3:15). Every day that the sun rises is another day of grace, another opportunity for the gospel to go forth and for God to call His people to Himself. This should not make us complacent; it should make us evangelistic. The delay is for the purpose of mission.
The Certainty of the End (v. 10)
But this patience has a limit. The day of grace will end, and it will end suddenly and catastrophically. The delay does not mean denial.
"But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat, and the earth and its works will be found out." (2 Peter 3:10)
The "day of the Lord" is a common Old Testament theme, referring to any time God breaks into history with decisive judgment. There were many "days of the Lord" in the Old Testament. The destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. was a climactic "day of the Lord." But all these are foreshadowings of the final day of the Lord. And it will come "like a thief." This means it will be unexpected by the world. The scoffers, busy with their mocking, will be caught completely off guard. When they are saying "Peace and safety," sudden destruction will come upon them (1 Thess. 5:3).
The description of this day is cosmic in its scope. The "heavens will pass away with a roar." This is the de-creation of the fallen cosmos. The "elements will be destroyed with intense heat." The word for elements, stoicheia, refers to the fundamental principles or building blocks of the world. This is not just a surface fire; it is an unmaking of the very fabric of the fallen order. The "earth and its works will be found out," or as some manuscripts say, "burned up." The idea is one of exposure and purification. Everything done in this world, every secret thing, will be laid bare before the judgment seat of Christ, and the world system, built on rebellion against God, will be consumed.
Now, we must be careful here. This is apocalyptic language. Does it mean a literal, material annihilation of the planet? Or does it refer to a fiery purification that leads to a renewed creation? Scripture elsewhere points to the latter. Paul says the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption (Romans 8:21). We look for a "new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells" (2 Peter 3:13). This is not annihilation, but renovation. The fire is a refining fire. God is not scrapping His original creation; He is purging it of sin and rebellion, burning away the dross to reveal the gold. The world will be baptized with fire, just as it was once baptized with water, in order to be reborn.
Living in Light of the End
So how are we to live? Peter's point is not to satisfy our curiosity about the future, but to shape our character in the present. If this world in its current form is passing away, if judgment is certain, what sort of people ought we to be? (2 Peter 3:11). The answer is that we are to live in "holy conduct and godliness."
We are not to be like the scoffers, living for the temporary pleasures of this passing age. We are not to be like the anxious date-setters, frantically trying to outsmart God. We are to be a people whose lives are defined by the coming reality. Our citizenship is in heaven, and we are to live like it. Our hope is not in the stability of this world's systems, which will all be consumed, but in the unbreakable promise of the God who is patient for our sake.
The patience of God is our salvation. The coming of the Lord is our hope. The certainty of judgment is our motivation for holiness and mission. We live between the "already" of Christ's first coming and the "not yet" of His second. And in this interval, God is working His purposes out. He is building His church, gathering His people, and preparing a new creation. The delay is not a sign of weakness, but of mercy. And the end, when it comes, will not be a moment of terror for us, but the day of our final redemption. It will be the day when the patience of God has accomplished its perfect work, and the new heavens and the new earth are finally revealed in all their glory.