You can have all the right answers for defending Christianity and still have your faith shaken by someone who mocks what you believe. Why is ridicule so powerful, even when you know your beliefs are true?

What Does 2 Peter 3:3-4 Mean?

2 Peter 3:3 First of all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires

In 2 Peter, “First of all, you must understand” means “on this topic, here’s the chief thing you need to know …” (see 1:20). We must know ahead of time what the scoffers will say so we’re prepared. Otherwise it could damage our faith. The last days refers to the whole period between Jesus’ first coming and his Second Coming. Ironically, the scoffers’ effort to disprove the Second Coming based on the delay is actually evidence that the Second Coming will happen, since they themselves are fulfillment of prophecy. But the scoffers’ argument is not based on reason or evidence, but on their own desires. They don’t want there to be a Second Coming because they don’t want there to be a Judgment Day.

2 Peter 3:4 and saying, “Where is the promise of his coming? Ever since the fathers fell asleep, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation.”

They attack the promise. This is strategic for Satan because the whole Christian life grows out of faith in God’s promises (see ch.1 verses 2-4). And this is the central promise. Without it, the whole of Christianity collapses. The fathers refers to ancestors long dead, probably the people in the Old Testament who received the promise of God’s coming (see Hebrews 1:1). Their argument is that from that generation until now everything has remained the same as it was from the beginning of the world until the fathers, therefore nothing will change substantially in the future.

2 Peter 3:1 This is already, beloved, the second letter I’ve written to you to stir you up by way of reminder to pure thinking 2 to recall the words foretold by the holy prophets and the command given by our Lord and Savior through your apostles. 3 First of all, know that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires 4 and saying, “Where is the promise of his coming? Ever since the fathers fell asleep, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation.” 5 But they deliberately forget that long ago by God’s word the heavens existed and the earth was formed out of water and by water. 6 By these also the world of that time was deluged with water and destroyed. 7 By the same word the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.

Introduction: The Mockers Are Coming

On April 18, 1775, Paul Revere charged through the Massachusetts countryside in the middle of the night, alerting the colonists with what is arguably the most famous warning in American history: “The Redcoats are coming!” Now, historians tell us he probably would have said, “the regulars,” not “the redcoats.” And he wasn’t galloping through town shouting at the top of his lungs. There were British soldiers in the towns, so he would have kept it on the down low and quietly spread the warning with certain people. (Historians always have to ruin everything.) But the point is, it’s a famous warning because it played such an important role in the American Revolution. Revere and another rider set off a chain reaction of riders that blanketed the area and got the whole militia ready for what would have otherwise been a bloodbath.

Peter is the Paul Revere of the end times, but instead of “the redcoats are coming,” his warning cry in this passage is, “the mockers are coming.” We pick up today where we left off last time at 2 Peter 3:3. In v.2 he told us to think biblically, and then, to show us what biblical thinking about the end times is like, he says this:

2 Peter 3:3 First of all,[1] you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come

Peter’s sounding the alarm—“The scoffers are coming! The scoffers are coming!”

Must Know Ahead of Time

And you might think, “We need to know the scoffers are coming? Well, when they show up and start scoffing, then we’ll know. It’ll be obvious. Why write us a letter about it?”

Same reason Paul Revere didn’t say, “Once the British army shows up, then you’ll know.” For an early warning to work, it has to be early.

Mockers Are Dangerous We need to know some things about these mockers before they actually show up because if we’re not prepared before they arrive, we’ll be vulnerable. We’ll be vulnerable, because mockers are dangerous. If you haven’t thought through their arguments ahead of time, they can rattle your faith.

And please understand—that’s what’s at stake here—your faith. In v.4 they say, “Where is the promise of his coming?” That’s not a question. It’s mockery. “Whatever happened to Jesus coming back again? Didn’t really pan out, did it?” It’s not an honest question looking for an honest answer. It’s mockery designed to chip away at your confidence in the Second Coming. The redcoats were coming after their freedom; the scoffers are coming after your faith.

So this isn’t about winning an argument. Of course, you want to bring them to faith if possible, but that’s not Peter’s focus. His concern is about keeping your faith intact. Or as he says in v.17, it’s about making sure you don’t fall from your steadfastness.

And that’s an issue because, let’s face it, that question—where is the promise of his coming, can be tough. A Jewish carpenter appears on the scene in the Mideast, and yes, he made a big splash in his local area. But then he was killed. He promised he would bring about Judgment Day and the end of the world and the salvation of all his people. But he died and year after year went by, and … nothing. And now it’s been 2000 years. Paul spoke as though he expected to be alive when Christ returned, and Jesus had said, “Be ready at any moment.” Yet generation after generation has lived and died waiting for an event that never occurred. Every Christian in the past who expected to see Christ return during his lifetime has been wrong. And the longer the delay continues, the worse it looks for this expectation being anything other than wishful thinking with no basis in reality.

Critics might ask you, “What evidence could ever persuade you that the promise has failed? And if no evidence would persuade you, isn’t that the definition of an irrational belief? At what point does patient faith become just a stubborn unwillingness to face the evidence?”

That’s the kind of thing the mockers will hit you with, and you need to be ready. We need to consider questions like that carefully ahead of time, so we can really think them through.

There are a lot of Christians who take a head-in-the-sand kind of approach to hard questions. They just say, “I don’t want to think about that because it’s a threat to my beliefs,” so they just push the hard questions aside. But if you do that, the time will come when you’re confronted by a mocker. And when that happens, especially if it’s someone you can’t ignore—a family member, a friend, maybe a teacher—you won’t be prepared and it can create a real crisis in your faith.

And that danger cranks up to an 11 if it happens in a time when you’re emotionally vulnerable—maybe right after you suffered a terrible loss, or a time of hard suffering or a period of temptation or a moment when you’re really discouraged, angry, upset, afraid—any time you’re embroiled in some emotional ordeal when it’s hard for you to think straight. We all have our weak, vulnerable moments, and if the mockers come to you in those times and make fun of your belief in the Second Coming 20 centuries after Jesus said he’d come back, and you’re not prepared for that, you’ll be in trouble. When you’re fragile and you’re not in a frame of mind to listen to a hellfire and brimstone preacher like Peter, and these mockers come along and make fun of hellfire and say there is no hellfire—they can get to you.

Those moments of crisis are no time to be responding off the top of your head. And so Peter gives us advance warning because he knows if we’re not prepared, we could fall.

2 Peter 3:17 Therefore … be on your guard so that you may not be carried away by the error of lawless men and fall

Last Days

So this is serious business, because the mockers will never let up. If you haven’t run into them yet, sooner or later the mockers will come. Look at v.3.

2 Peter 3:3 … in the last days scoffers will come

The last days refers to the whole church age—from Jesus’ first coming to the Second Coming. Sometimes Christians get confused about this. They think the last days refers to the time right before Jesus’ return. People will say, “Hey, there’s a lot of chaos out there. Do you think we’re in the last days?” I saw a video that came up on my feed the other day titled “Five Signs That We Are in the Last Days.” We don’t need signs to know we’re in the last days. All we need is Hebrews 1:1.

Hebrews 1:1 In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets … 2 but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son.

The last days started when Jesus came the first time. That’s how the phrase “last days” is used consistently throughout the NT.[2] So when Peter says the mockers will come in the last days, it means they’ll always be with us from Peter’s time until Jesus returns. They’re like the false teachers—a blight that never goes away. Mockery is something we’re all going to have to face. And Peter’s determined to get us ready.

But what is readiness? To prepare for a British attack, you need to grab your musket. How do you prepare for this battle?

As this chapter unfolds, Peter is going to give us answers to the mockers’ arguments. By the time we’re done, you’ll see that those arguments aren’t problems at all. In fact, Peter will give us a perspective that will show how the long delay in Jesus’ return and everything we observe in the natural world fits perfectly with what Jesus promised. And it’s the secular worldview, not ours, that is laughable and that ignores the evidence. So we’ll get into all that in the weeks ahead. But for today, before we get to the answers to the mockers’ arguments, Peter wants us to know some things about the mockers themselves and how they operate.

How to Be Prepared

Knowing

2 Peter 3:3 Above all, you must understand …

Understand what? Three things. And by sheer coincidence, all three happen to start with the letter T. We need to understand their target, their tactic, and their thirst. Their tactic and thirst are in v.3, then their target in v.4, but I’d like to start with that one. So let’s peek ahead at v.4 because understanding their target really clarifies the main issue.

Their Target: God’s Chief Promise

2 Peter 3 … in the last days scoffers will come … 4 They will say, “Where is the promise of his coming?”

Satan Goes after the Promises

They mock the Second Coming. But when Peter describes it, he uses a word that’s a crucially important word in 2 Peter—promise.

Most mockers probably aren’t going to actually use that word. They’ll just say, “Where is his coming?” But Peter wants us to understand what they’re really saying. He wants us to see through what they say to the real issue. So he uses the word “promise,” and in the Greek, that’s the word that gets the emphasis. Where is the promise of his coming?

And as I said, that’s a loaded word in this book. Peter started the book by telling us that everything in the Christian life and our whole relationship with God grows out of his great and precious promises. All nearness to God comes through trusting what he promised. So when Satan works to destroy our relationship with God, that’s naturally what he goes after—the promises. That’s his target.

I think Peter’s point is, “Look, they might come up with all kinds of creative ways to make fun of Christianity, and they might say it’s about this historical point or that scientific fact, but the real target is God’s promises.

Whether the mockers understand that or not, you can be sure Satan does. Our enemy knows everything Peter said in ch.1 about God’s promises is true. He knows trusting those promises is what unleashes God’s power in our lives. So when Satan works to destroy your relationship with God, and he wants to keep his own work from being destroyed, he knows the only way he can make that happen is if he can keep you from trusting God’s promises. It’s Satan’s only hope for defeating you.

And we saw in ch.2 that one way Satan gets you off of trusting God’s promises is by enticing you to trust his promises instead.

2 Peter 2:19 They promise … freedom

That’s Satan’s promise—freedom to indulge the desires of the flesh. The battle for your heart between God and Satan is really a battle of competing promises. Satan tries to entice you with his promise of counterfeit freedom, and he tries to make you feel like a fool for trusting God’s promises. That’s where the mockery comes in. You’re a superstitious, mindless religious extremist if you believe God’s promises—especially God’s chief promise: the promise of the Second Coming.

Jesus’ Promise of the Second Coming

Here’s what Jesus promised:

Matthew 25:31 When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory. 32 All the nations will be gathered before him

To some, he’ll say:

Matthew 25:34 Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world.

To the rest, he’ll say:

Matthew 25:41 … Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. … 46 “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”

That’s the coming that Jesus promised—a glorious return followed by judgment on the wicked and final salvation of the righteous.

And I call that the “chief” promise because that’s the way Scripture presents it.

1 Peter 1:13 … set your hope fully on the grace to be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed.

That encompasses the totality of our hope.

Titus 2:13 … we wait for the blessed hope–the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ

That’s the blessed hope. We have a lot of hopes—the hope of sanctification, the hope of healing, the hope of heaven. But the hope—the blessed hope—is our hope in Christ’s appearing.

That’s the promise Jesus gave a sample of that they would never forget on the mount of Transfiguration. That’s the promise God spoke from heaven to confirm and that Moses and Elijah (who represent the law and the prophets) showed up to witness. When Peter was establishing the credibility of the Apostles as eyewitnesses in ch.1, he didn’t talk about being eyewitnesses of his healing miracles or his stilling the storm, walking on water, feeding the multitudes, or even raising the dead. He spoke of witnessing the Transfiguration, because that was a preview of our chief hope.

That hope is so central to our faith that the Bible ends with that promise: “Look, I am coming soon!” And we say, “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus” (Revelation 22:20).

So all that to say, the target of their mockery is strategic. When they make the chief promise of the Bible the target of their attack, they’re striking at our foundation. Take away the Second Coming and every bit of Christianity falls. The dead are never raised, evil is never finally judged and eliminated, Jesus is proved a false prophet, and there’s nothing left of Christianity. Take away that one promise, and you’ve gutted the entire religion.

But on the other hand, trusting that one promise will do you more good and give you more spiritual strength and do more damage to the enemy than anything else you could ever do.

Their Tactic: Mockery

So, what’s their target? What are they attacking? What is it that you have to protect? Your trust in the promise of Christ’s coming. This is a defensive text—teaching us how to defend against an attack. Of course we want to bring them to faith—share the gospel with them. But Peter’s main concern with mockers isn’t their faith; it’s yours, because your faith is the target.

OK, so now that we know the target, let’s back up to v.3 and learn their tactic. What tactic will they use to undermine your faith?

2 Peter 3:3 … in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing

That’s their tactic—mockery. That’s their weapon of choice.

We need to know that so we understand what’s going on. When they come at us with ridicule, their objective is not to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of suppositions and discover truth. The objective is to make you feel dumb.

I get this atheist page that comes up on my Facebook feed, and every single post is mockery. Never a reasoned argument. It’s always something like, “Why doesn’t your invisible sky daddy cure cancer?” That’s not a real argument—it’s mockery.

And they are very good at it. You read their posts, and very quickly you can start to feel dumb and embarrassed and doubts start rising in your heart, which is exactly what their goal is.

Ad hominem

And many times they use their insults as if they were arguments. It’s what’s known as the ad hominem fallacy. Ad hominem is Latin for “against the person.” Instead of actually addressing your argument, they attack you as a person.

Children learn that tactic very early. Someone makes an argument and they respond with, “Oh yeah? Well, you’re a stupid head.” That’s basically what the mockers do. Their insults may sound a little more sophisticated than “stupid head,” but it’s still the same kindergarten method for winning an argument: “Your view is wrong because only stupid people hold that view.” (And honestly, I don’t know if “sky daddy” is really all that much more sophisticated than stupid-head.)

Ad hominem arguments are considered a logical fallacy, but that tactic is still widely used because it’s effective. It works.

Why Scoffing Works

It works because it threatens something of great value—your honor. Your honor is a very valuable thing. And by mocking you, they’re saying, “If you hold to that view, you’ll be stripped of honor and risk rejection in society.” And that’s a serious threat because honor and acceptance are both hugely important to all human beings.

Now, they might not consciously think of this as a strategy. They might just use mockery because they hate you and want to hurt your feelings. Or they might use it because they don’t have an intelligent argument so that’s the best they can do. But whatever their reasoning, it’s important that you understand what’s being attacked. It’s not your argument; it’s your honor. They want you to be afraid of becoming a reject in society.

Hostile words are dangerous. Your mom taught you to say, “Sticks and stones can break my bones but words can never hurt me”—your mom was wrong. She probably taught you that because words had already hurt you. Words can hurt far more than sticks and stones, which is why scrapes and bruises you got when you were a kid are all healed up, but you’re still smarting from humiliating or hostile words spoken to you decades ago. Words are incredibly powerful.

And that’s why ridicule, which is why ridicule was one of the main weapons Satan used against Jesus. A major part of Jesus’ suffering in his work of redemption was enduring mockery and ridicule. You expect Hebrews 12:2 to say, “He endured the cross, despising its pain.” Or “despising its agony” or “despising the physical torture.” But it doesn’t. It says, “He endured the cross, despising its shame.” The mockery and shame was a huge part of Jesus’ suffering, and if words could hurt Jesus, they can hurt you.

Peter wants to make sure we understand this tactic that they use because if you think it’s mainly about your argument, you’ll be defenseless against the real attack. You can be a master at apologetics and know all the arguments for defending the faith, but that won’t help you against attacks on your dignity and your need for approval and acceptance. Intellectual preparation and emotional steadfastness are different things. Even when you have the best arguments, you can still be deeply shaken by mockery and ridicule. So we need to be emotionally prepared, not just intellectually prepared. And that’s why Peter warns us about their tactic.

Their Thirst: Fleshly Cravings

OK, so Peter says, “You need to know three things.” Know that their target is your faith in the promises, their tactic is scoffing and ridicule, and then one more insight into the mockers—their thirst. Peter uses the word “desires.”

2 Peter 3:3 First of all, know that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires

Peter wants you to know that their reasoning is driven not mainly by intellectual pursuit, but by their cravings—the hunger and thirst of their soul. The reason these mockers deny the Second Coming and Judgment Day is not because they weighed all the arguments and came to a rational conclusion. It’s not that they can disprove it scripturally or logically or scientifically. It’s not because they have some profound insight into theology.

They reject it because they don’t want it to be true. They have a thirst for immorality. They love their sin and they don’t want there to be any ultimate accountability. Judgment Day cramps their style. They want an eschatology that fits their immorality. They want freedom to indulge the flesh. They’re just like the false teachers in ch.2 who promised freedom to indulge the flesh. And in order to have that freedom, you have to stick your head in the sand about Judgment Day.

What Did the Prophets Foretell about the Mockers’ Message?

And this is nothing new. It’s the same thing mockers have always said. Remember what Peter’s doing in this chapter—he’s stirring up our thinking to recall what the holy prophets foretold. What did the OT prophets foretell about mockers?

They showed us a pattern of what the mockers said back in their day. And mostly, the message of the mockers was this: God’s prophecies never come to pass, therefore you don’t have to worry about threats of coming judgment. And they said that so often about Ezekiel that it became a common proverb.

Ezekiel 12:22 Son of man, what is this proverb you have in the land of Israel: ‘The days go by and every vision comes to nothing’?

“Ezekiel, you keep saying God’s judgment is coming, but days go by—day after day, year after year, and nothing ever happens.”

The other prophets faced the same mockery.

Malachi 2:17 … “Where is the God of justice?”

Jeremiah 5:12 They have lied about the Lord; they said, “He will do nothing! No harm will come to us”

Mockers in every age want to deny judgment day or any kind of accountability to their Creator.

Now, they won’t tell you that. In many cases, they won’t even admit it to themselves. People who deny the Second Coming of Christ very often present their arguments in a scholastic, sophisticated way. And they may truly believe that it’s all rational conclusions from pure reason. But very few people realize how many of their conclusions are driven more by their desires and biases than by facts and logic.

Desire Drives Reason

People like to think their brain is a computer. “I’m Mr. Spock. I just analyze the data and crunch the numbers and arrive at the most logical conclusion.”

But that’s not how the human mind works. How many times has there been a preacher who says, “The Bible is crystal clear—homosexuality is sin!” And then a family member comes out as gay, and the next thing you know, “Oh, lookie there—here’s a verse in the Bible that says it’s okay.” And the arguments they used to find ridiculous, now they find those arguments compelling. Why? Is it because those are strong, sound arguments and they’re just now seeing it? No. It’s because they want homosexuality to be okay because otherwise they’ve got a whole lot of conflict with a family member that they don’t want to have.

Mike Rosen was a conservative radio talk show host in Denver for many years. And for a long time, he was a very strong defender of the unborn. He had great arguments proving the pro-life position and he would demolish pro-abortion advocates who would call his show.

But then he switched to being pro-abortion. And he admitted it was only because his daughter came of childbearing age, and he wanted her to have options if she ended up with an unwanted pregnancy. All his brilliant arguments evaporated when he had something on the other side pulling on his desires.

And again, to the mockers, it really does seem like it’s 100% intellectual. It seems that way because arguments pass through your desires before they ever get to your mind. That’s why it’s so important to have good desires.

But once in a while, you find one who is honest about it. In 1937, the famous atheist Aldous Huxley, grandson of Thomas Huxley, wrote this: “I had motives for not wanting the world to have a meaning; consequently, I assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption. The philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with a problem in pure metaphysics. He is also concerned to prove that there is no valid reason why he personally should not do as he wants to do.” He wanted a philosophy that let him do as he pleased. Then he went on. “For myself, as, no doubt, for most of my contemporaries, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation.” Liberation. Liberation from what? Remember chapter two—they promise freedom. Huxley continued: “The liberation we desired was … liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom.”[3]

When you talk to secular people today, and you ask them what they believe about morality and right and wrong, more often than not you find out that in their view, right and wrong match up perfectly with how they naturally want to live. Everything they want to do is moral. And the only things that are immoral are those things they don’t really want to do.

How convenient! I always want to ask them—what are the odds? Billions of people in the world, countless different ideas of what’s moral and what’s immoral, and it just so happens that this guy is one of the rare people in the world who happened to be born with desires that match perfectly with right and wrong. Lucky him.

Now, I’m not saying every unbeliever is like Aldous Huxley. Different people have different motives that drive their thinking, but the role desire plays in our thinking is far more powerful than most people realize.

Why This Is Important

And it’s important to know that for two reasons.

Answer Their Desires, not Just Their Argument

First, because if you try to just use logic and reason to argue with desire-driven conclusions, you’ll get nowhere. You have to address those underlying desires. You’ve got to address their thirst.

That’s not to say you have to tell them, “You only reject Christianity because you really just want to sleep around …” Like I said before, they might not even realize how much their desires play a role. But what we can do is talk a lot about how what God offers is more satisfying than what the world offers. And if you give examples from your own experience, they can’t argue with it. If you say, “I had this emptiness in my life, and I found nearness to God incredibly satisfying—far more satisfying than anything I’ve tried in this world”—if you say that, no one can disprove that because you’re just talking about what satisfied your soul. And it may or may not convince them, but it sure will glorify God. I think we would do well to talk a whole lot more about the satisfying goodness of God. Like the psalmist in Psalm 73.

Psalm 73:28 As for me, the nearness of God is my good … I will tell of all your works.

As for me, my bread and butter in life is the nearness of God. And I’ll tell everyone about it. We need to show people that they aren’t missing out by following Christ. They’re getting something far better than what they’re giving up. If they have desire-driven thinking so that their desires won’t let them accept the truth, then help them have better desires so they can hear you when you show them the truth.

And that’s where Peter goes next—the truth. Now that we understand their target, their tactic, and their thirst, we’re ready for the big T—the truth. In verses 4-7 Peter’s going to show us their reasoning and set it right alongside the truth so we can see where it goes wrong. How do we answer all that stuff I said at the beginning about how long it’s been? Why has it been so long? And what’s the biblical way to think about that delay? Peter’s going to answer all that for us and expose the critical mistakes the mockers make in their thinking. By the time we get through v.7, he reduces their argument to rubble. And it’s fascinating how he does it. It gives us a completely new way of looking at the world that makes it all make sense. So I can’t wait for that, but it’s too much to try to include in this session, and the points we’ve already covered are important enough that I don’t want to distract you from all that by moving on to a new point. So let me just wrap this up here by giving some points of application so we don’t forget what Peter’s said so far.

Conclusion: How to Prepare

How to Prepare for Scoffing: Get Honor from God

For myself, there are three points of application I take from what Peter’s said so far. First, I ask myself—if their weapon of choice is ridicule, how do I protect my faith against that weapon? Strong arguments won’t be enough. I need something to protect my desire for dignity. Remember, I said you can’t just be mentally prepared—you need to also be emotionally prepared if you’re going to withstand mockery.

None of us like being made fun of, and none of us like being rejected by our peers. So how do you get the kind of courage and steadfast confidence that isn’t moved by efforts to make you look like a fool? How do I get to where someone a lot smarter than me can tie me in knots in a debate and make everyone laugh at me, and it still doesn’t even faze my faith?

That kind of courage and confidence comes when you get your honor and acceptance and approval from God, not men. Desiring honor and dignity is good. It’s a good desire, but only if you seek it from God. Romans 2:7 says God will reward those who seek glory and honor, implied, from him. So prepare yourself to handle the mockers by seeking glory and honor for yourself from God so that your dignity isn’t threatened. If you depend on people for your affirmation, then your faith will always be vulnerable. In John 5, Jesus explicitly connected seeking praise from men with inability to believe.

John 5:44 How can you believe if you accept praise from one another, yet make no effort to obtain the praise that comes from the only God?

Failing to seek praise from God destroys faith. So seek that “Well done, good and faithful servant” from God. When you have that, no one can threaten your honor or dignity.

Acceptance from God

Same thing with acceptance. Romans 15:7 says, “Christ accepted you.” Latch on to that. Think about it often. Enjoy his acceptance. Because when your honor and acceptance are untouchable, then you won’t be vulnerable to the strategy of mockery.

Participate in the Sufferings of Christ

That’s the application that comes from understanding that their tactic is mockery. A second application is to realize that when we are mocked or belittled or made fun of, Jesus taught us to celebrate that.

Matthew 5:11 Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. 12 Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

Sometimes preachers will minimize the significance of mockery. They say, “In other countries, Christians are being imprisoned and tortured and killed. In America, we just get made fun of. That’s not persecution.” But according to Jesus, not only does getting made fun of count as real persecution, it’s the only form of persecution he mentioned in the beatitudes. Insults and false accusations.

It’s a big part of what Jesus suffered, and it’s what we suffer with him on his behalf when we stand firm in the face of ridicule.

2 Timothy 1:8 So do not be ashamed to testify about our Lord … But join with me in suffering for the gospel, by the power of God,

Enduring ridicule about the gospel is suffering for the gospel. And that is a grand privilege. It’s something to celebrate because it will bring you great reward.

To Be Aware of Your Own Desires

So prepare for ridicule by getting all the acceptance and honor you need from God and by realizing that being mocked for the gospel is participation in the sufferings of Christ. Those both come from understanding their tactic—mockery. The third application: comes from understanding their thirst—the fact that their thinking is driven by desires of their flesh.

Here’s what we need to remember: You and I aren’t any different from Aldous Huxley. The desires of my flesh can be a powerful force that has a massive impact on my thinking and reasoning. And if I’m not aware of that, I can end up just like the scoffers. If I don’t deal with my sinful desires, they can bump my thinking process off a degree and then another degree and another until I’m way off course. So be alert to which direction your desires are pulling, because they will affect your thinking and, eventually, your beliefs.

Keep your finger on the pulse of your desires. Your desires exert a powerful gravitational pull on your thinking, your logic, and your analysis of ideas. You don’t want to end up like the mockers or the false teachers.

And how do you change desires? Through enjoyable, satisfying experiences of the thing you want to desire more. So when desires begin to slip, taste and see that the Lord is good. Make sure that when the attack comes, your desires are prepared.

Conclusion

The mockers are coming. And when they come, they’ll target God’s promises and their tactic is to make you feel stupid. So be ready. Next time we’ll talk about how to prepare your mind, but for now, prepare your emotions and prepare your desires. Live on God’s approval. And guard your heart against feeding the desires of the flesh. And never forget that what’s at stake is nothing less than your faith, which is the only lifeline that tethers you to God.

[1] The words “first of all” (τοῦτο πρῶτον γινώσκοντες) are repeated exactly from 1:20, where Peter said “First of all, you know that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation.” So it doesn’t mean first in an absolute sense. It means of first priority in this particular context.

[2] The phrase “the last days” appears five times in the NT. Three of them refer to the first century (Acts 2:17; Hebrews 1:2; James 5:3). Two use future tense verbs (as does 1 Timothy 4:1 with the phrase “later times”), but in the following explanation, all three switch to present tense (2 Timothy 3:1; 2 Peter 3:3). The idea seems to be that, while it was a present reality at the times of writing, the writer wanted to emphasize the fact that it would be an ongoing reality in the future. The phrase is never restricted to the time just before the very end. The parallel to 2 Peter 3:3 in Jude is Jude 1:18 where Jude has “last times.” Peter also uses “last times” in 1 Peter 1:20, again, referring to the whole church age.

[3] Aldous Huxley, Ends and Means: An Enquiry into the Nature of Ideals and into the Methods Employed for Their Realization.

[1] The reason Israel turned away from God was because of a memory problem. God warned them over and over—Don’t forget what it was like to be slaves, and don’t forget what I did to deliver you.” And what happened?Psalm 78:11 They forgot what he had done, the wonders he had shown them. They forgot everything God told them to remember. But they did remember one thing. Numbers 11:5 We remember the fish we ate in Egypt at no cost– also the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic. They forgot the misery of their bondage. But they remembered the food.

[2] From ch.7.