by Rose Murdock

"Knowing 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."
2 Peter 3:3-4

Peter makes this statement right before talking about the Lord’s return.  What he says is that the scoffers would be the ones saying that ‘all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.’  The scoffers are saying that nothing is going to change.  Everything will continue on as it always has.  The scoffers think there will be no judgment.  They think they can continue as they have been and there will be no consequence from God for what they do.  The Amplified Bible calls these scoffers ‘mockers.’  And Peter says here that these are people who walk after their own lusts or fleshly desires.  Kind of like the wicked servant who began to sin once he saw his lord delayed his coming  (Matthew 24:48).

Notice that these were people who had heard about the coming of the Lord.  This group of mockers is not limited to unbelievers.  This same bug can bite the church and cause us to believe that we have no hope of His return—of His presence—in our lives.  It starts when we’re faced with a tough time and we succumb to discouragement.  We think that ‘nothing is going to change, all things will keep going like they have been.’  We can fall into a hum drum type of existence where once we feel we have lost His presence among us we just keep doing what we have been doing and we don’t expect anything to be any different.

What this means is that we, the church, can lose hope of the ‘coming of the Lord.’  Not just His physical return but His presence in our midst.  His presence in our life right now.  If we have no hope and no expectation of His presence in our lives then we have no joy and no peace.  We will end up becoming skeptical and sarcastic of His promises.  We will eventually become scoffers because of bitterness in our heart.  This happened because we were overcome with discouragement and lost hope.

Hope deferred makes the heart sick…(Proverbs 13:12)

Once we lose hope we also lose the energy necessary to make the changes we need to make.  If we lose hope we also lose joy and the joy of the Lord is our strength.  Once we are discouraged and depressed then we have no motivation to seek God and follow His leading.  The thought of any change may appear overwhelming to us.  When that happens we need to learn to do as David did when he ‘encouraged himself in the Lord his God.’  It’s so easy to fall into the self-pity trap once we lose hope.  David had no one to encourage him, no one to sympathize with him.  He had to go to the Lord directly and receive his strength and encouragement. Then he could continue. (See 1 Samuel 30).

Just as the scoffers Peter is talking about are those who walk after their own fleshly desires, sometimes discouragement comes because things didn’t happen the way we wanted or expected them to happen.  We had false hopes.  Hopes that were developed when we had a limited perspective of God’s will for us.  We had too much of our own desires in there and not enough of God’s desires.  When things don’t happen the way we expect then we need to go to the Lord and get His insight and His perspective.  We need to re-discover God’s will for us based on the increased understanding we have gained.  This is not a time to argue with God or try and manipulate Him to do things the way we want, this is a time to humble ourselves before Him and open our hearts to His will for us.  We need a Word from Him which will give us hope, and that Word will also give us the strength to go on with His will for us as we put our faith in what He’s said.