Today’s reading: Isaiah 24; 2 Peter 3
The beginning of 2 Peter 3 points us to one reason why it is beyond important that we, as Christians, are regularly exposing ourselves to the Scriptures.
Peter tells his readers that he is writing them these letters to remind them of the things predicted by the prophets and commanded by Jesus, because it is easy to drift from remembering these things. Over the course of one person’s lifetime, what changes in the world? Sure, nations may rise or fall, but the world just keeps on spinning and things, in a broad sense, just continue on from day to day unchanged. Because of this it is really easy to forget the importance and urgency of the Christian life. Yes, we are heading toward eternity in heaven, but that just seems so much less real or urgent than life now, so living for heaven takes a backseat to living for now. Yes, there will be a last day when Jesus returns to judge the world in righteousness, but that day hasn’t happened yet, and it just doesn’t seem all that likely that it’s going to happen soon, so living with the end in view takes a backseat to living as though my life will continue on until I die naturally of old age.
Peter reminds his readers that nobody in Noah’s day expected the flood, but that didn’t stop destruction from descending on the earth, and in the same way, whether people are waiting for it or not, the day of Jesus’ return will come as well. Rather than slipping into living as though this life is all there is, we need to fix our eyes on the greater spiritual reality, living for that unseen truth rather than living for what we see.
If Christians in Peter’s day needed that reminder, how much more so do we need it today? How many more distractions and time-wasters do we have to fill our thoughts and affections today than people did back then? Forget simply getting distracted by life from the greater reality of the life to come, we struggle with getting distracted even from this life! Apart from the over-busyness of our lives today, we sink whatever free moments we are left with into endless streaming, social media, video games, etc., never leaving a quiet moment for our brains to have to process life or the Lord.
We need reminded of what we should be living for today significantly more than Peter’s original readers ever did…
He was writing to them so that they would be reminded and would keep their eyes set on the Lord, letting their lives here count for eternity, and God has seen fit to preserve those letters for us today, as well as so many other letters and writings from His apostles and prophets. The more regularly we turn our hearts to the Lord through the Scriptures; reading them, listening to teachings about them, reading books (or blog posts) about them, talking about them with one another, etc.; the more likely it is that we will live our lives faithfully for the Lord through to the end.
Making a regular habit of reading the Bible is not just a formality of the Christian life. Learning and investing our thinking in the Word of God helps guard our hearts and keep our eyes fixed on the unseen realities that are so much more important than anything this world has to offer.
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