Sometime in nineteenth century Germany, a children’s song was written which involved a silly conversation between “Heinrich und Liese.” Apparently the Pennsylvania Dutch brought it to this country, and it was eventually translated into English. Some of you septuagenarians might remember it as popularized by Harry Belafonte. “There’s a hole in my bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza, There’s a hole in my bucket, dear Liza, a hole. Then mend it, dear Henry, dear Henry, dear Henry, Then mend it, dear Henry, dear Henry, mend it. With what shall I mend it, dear Liza…? With straw, dear Henry… The straw is too long, dear Liza… Then cut it, dear Henry… With what shall I cut it, dear Liza…? With a knife, dear Henry… The knife is too dull, dear Liza… Then sharpen it, dear Henry… With what shall I sharpen it, dear Liza…? With a stone, dear Henry… The stone is too dry, dear Liza… Then wet it, dear Henry… With what shall I wet it, dear Liza…? With water, dear Henry… In what shall I fetch it, dear Liza…? In a bucket, dear Henry… But there’s a hole in my bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza, There’s a hole in my bucket, dear Liza, a hole.”
In our last lesson we saw that Peter was warning us of scoffers – those mocking murmurers. “Know this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts. And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.” Since nearly the second day of creation, Satan has been encouraging people to doubt God’s Word. And now after 6,000 years, not only does the scoffing continue, but now it is feeding off the foolish idea that God is not keeping the promises which were scoffed at in the beginning. The scoffers continue to scoff and the mockers are intensifying their mockery. Not only are they mistaken, but they have punched holes in the bucket in which they are carrying the scriptures and the facts. The truth is leaking out all over the ground and on rocks which prove the very God who made those promises.
“For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished: But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.” Let’s consider this scripture under these points: God SPOKE, God JUDGED and God DECREED.
First, God SPOKE.
“For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the WORD of GOD the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: There is a large branch of make-believe Christianity which says that Genesis 1 and 2 are religious allegories, Jewish fables, or something else which renders the beginning of our Bibles untrustworthy. Those people do not deserve to be called “Christians,” and the majority will never be found in Heaven. Nevertheless, there they are, and they aren’t going away.
I don’t need to go over the details of God’s creative work in Genesis, because we’ve studied it recently. But the gist of it is this: God SPOKE the words, “Let there be light, and there WAS light.” On the second day of creation, God SPOKE and there was an instantaneous division of the firmament. Then on the third day again God SPOKE saying, “Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear; and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth, and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas; And God saw that it was good.” The scoffers of whom Peter was speaking were Genesis-deniers. But if Jehovah Elohim didn’t create everything, then how did everything get here? Despite that question, those mocking scoffers are alive and well today, living in the ivory covered towers of academia as well as various places throughout our society.
I doubt that anyone in Peter’s day called themselves “evolutionists.” As I pointed out last time – it appears even the scoffers spoke of “the beginning of the CREATION.” Originally everyone was a creationist to some degree, but the deniers today are called “evolutionists.” God’s creation of the universe is something of which they are “willingly ignorant” – willingly, wilfully, deliberately, stubbornly, obstinately ignorant. There is a hole in the bucket of their theology, and the truth about the Creator is falling to the ground.
To Peter’s reference of God’s VOICE is added his second point – God’s JUDGMENT.
“Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished.” This takes us from Genesis 1 and 2 down the road to Genesis 6, 7 and 8. “God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth.” And God did destroy them. “In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened. And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights… And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man: All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died.”
Prompted by something I saw, yesterday I googled question: “Of what kind of rock is Mount Everest made?” An answer was spit out by some robot named “Ai,” apparently with the approval of the internet gods. “The summit of Mount Everest is composed primarily of Ordovician limestone, containing marine fossils that indicate this rock was once at the bottom of an ancient sea before the powerful collision of the Indian and Asian tectonic plates uplifted it to become the world’s highest peak. The summit rock contains fossils of marine invertebrates, such as trilobites, brachiopods, crinoids, and ostracods. These fossils are remnants of an ancient tropical sea that existed approximately 450 million years ago, long before the Himalayas began to form.” What an incredible mixture of undeniable truth with unprovable imagination. That ancient sea was the bed of the “Sea” which God created on the third day of the universe’s existence. From that sea bed rose up the highest mountain on earth – during the upheavals of the flood – less than 6,000 years ago. Even the scoffers of Peter’s day knew this to be true, but they chose to ignore it. “There’s a hole in my bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza, There’s a hole in my bucket, dear Liza, a hole. Then mend it, dear Henry, dear Henry, dear Henry…” I can’t mend it dear Liza, because I DON’T want it to be mended.
As you should know, God’s hand is unavoidable throughout creation. There will be a brief article in our next church bulletin about this – How does moisture get from deep in the ground to the top of a 200 foot tree? By way of a miraculous feat of creative engineering. And as far as that goes, how does water get from that African lake up that giraffe’s long neck and down again into it is belly? Such a mechanism could not possibly evolve. How can the human body do all that it does without the hand of an omnipotent Creator? How does the eye see, the finger feel, the ear hear, and the tongue taste? El Shaddai. And why do the results of Mt. St. Helen’s eruption 45 years ago look like it took place 45 million years ago to the mockers and scoffers? Because there’s a hole in their bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza. The coffers of the scoffers have punctures as well as pilferers.
Not only did God speak the world into existence and judged the ancient world…
God has DECREED to judge it again.
And this is why it is necessary that Christ return: to deliver His people before that destruction comes. Don’t laugh at the thought, “Saying, where is the promises of his coming.” Praise God for His grace toward us. “For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only” – Matthew 24.
“The heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.” Why do self-willed sinners refuse to believe in divine creation? Because if they acknowledge God as their creator, they will have to admit His sovereignty over them. “We will not have this Creator to rule over us.” And why do self-righteous intellectuals deny that the world was destroyed by a flood in the days of Noah? Because if they admit to that destruction, then they will have to consider that something similar might happen again tomorrow. The coffers of these scoffers are bleeding Old Testament and New Testament scriptures.
Since these false teachers are attempting to steal God’s flock… And since they are referring to the scriptures in trying to do so… it appears they aren’t Greek philosophers or Roman idolaters. I’m going to assume for the most part that they are Jews. They grew up listening to the Torah – the Pentateuch – the first five books of the Old Testament. They also knew the writings and the prophets – the Psalms and the Prophets.
But they’ve punched their intellectual and religious buckets with so many holes, there’s hardly any truth still inside. Isaiah 51:6 – “Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look upon the earth beneath: for the heavens shall vanish away like smoke, and the earth shall wax old like a garment, and they that dwell therein shall die in like manner: but my salvation shall be for ever, and my righteousness shall not be abolished.” The last phrase demands surrender to the Lord; something which these scoffers will not do. “Wait ye upon me, saith the LORD, until the day that I rise up to the prey: for my determination is to gather the nations, that I may assemble the kingdoms, to pour upon them mine indignation, even all my fierce anger: for all the earth shall be devoured with the fire of my jealousy” – Zephaniah 3:8. “For, behold, the LORD will come with fire, and with his chariots like a whirlwind, to render his anger with fury, and his rebuke with flames of fire. For by fire and by his sword will the LORD plead with all flesh: and the slain of the LORD shall be many” – Isaiah 66:15-16. Judgment will come “in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ” – II Thessalonians 1:8.
Notice that Peter says the heavens and earth are both “kept” and “reserved” for God’s destructive fire. They are “laid up in store,” with an army of guards protecting and guaranteeing them. The heavens and earth “kept by the power of God ready to be incinerated with the rest of the trash.” They are “reserved unto fire against the day of judgment.” But notice once again, “the HEAVENS and the earth.” If the earth is reserved for judgment, and the heavens too, that must include Mars, Jupiter and whatever man-carrying capsule is flying between earth and those distant planets. In other words, when the judgment of God falls, there will be no place to hide – the heavens and the earth will be destroyed.
But let it be known that the kosmos will not be incinerated, because it has covered itself in gasoline and lit the fire of its own destruction. It won’t be because of ozone destruction or man-made global warming. The judgment that is coming is due to man’s sin against the Creator. The judgment will come because of these mockers and squawkers – these rebels and unbelievers. “The heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and PERDITION of UNGODLY men.” God, the Creator, said to the first human of His creation: Because you have sinned against me, “cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life.” Isaiah put it this way, “The earth also is defiled under the inhabitants thereof; because they have transgressed the laws, changed the ordinance, broken the everlasting covenant. Therefore hath the curse devoured the earth, and they that dwell therein are desolate: therefore the inhabitants of the earth are burned, and few men left.”
Peter tells us that “the heavens and the earth are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.” The word “perdition” is also translated “destruction,” “damnation,” and “waste.” The heavens and the earth will suffer as collateral damage when God’s wrath is poured out on the ungodly scoffers and unbelieving followers of those false prophets and false teachers.
In Peter’s next lesson, we will get to the fact that God’s time table is different from man’s. “One day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years (is) as one day.” That means there is still time to plug the holes in your theological bucket, dear Henry, dear Henry. BUT – you’d better be quick about it, because you and I don’t know when God’s thousand years will be up. “The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. BUT the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.” The dawn of the day of the Lord’s judgment could begin at dawn tomorrow morning. “Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out (NOW), when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord…”