The world is very evil

Sermon for Midweek of Trinity 25

2 Peter 3:3-15  +  Luke 17:20-33

The world is very evil. We could have sung that hymn at the beginning of the service no matter what the outcome was of yesterday’s elections. The world is very evil, and it isn’t more evil today than it was last week or the week before. That hymn we sang was written almost a thousand years ago, and the first line reads, “It is the last hour. The times are terrible. Let us watch!” In one sense, the end times have been upon us since the Day of Pentecost. But can anyone look at the world today and not see it unraveling before our very eyes? As it was in the days of Noah, so it certainly is now. Unbelievers go about their daily lives, doing the normal things that people do, oblivious to their own depravity, oblivious to the reality that judgment is going to spring upon them at any moment. Meanwhile, as it was in the days of Noah, so believers in Christ are a tiny, tiny minority in the world, a remnant of a remnant, distraught by the evil around us, knowing that destruction is coming, warning those around us about the coming judgment, and doing the things our Lord has given us to do in order to survive it.

For Noah, that meant doing the arduous work of building an enormous ark and gathering food for all who would live inside it until the destruction was passed. For us, what does it mean?

I’ll tell you what it doesn’t mean. We won’t survive the coming destruction by trying to cling to this life, looking back at how good our life was here, how good we once had it, and longing for that life again, like Lot’s wife, who failed to escape the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, even though she began well enough to flee. That’s the danger for us who have been preparing for Christ to come again, preparing to meet Him worthily. When it gets hard, like it’s getting right now in our country and in our world, hard to live as a Christian, hard to know the truth about sin, about right and wrong, about God, and about His plan of salvation, and then watch so many people brazenly deny it and mock it all—when it gets like that, we’re tempted to long for a better life here, to wish things were better, easier, to wish the unbelievers around us would just behave more godly.

How foolish! The world is very evil, not very good, not mostly good, not even somewhat good. And we who believe in Jesus know that the things of this life are passing away, that we have no enduring city here, that our citizenship is in heaven. We also know that the kingdom of heaven, which is already in our midst invisibly, will soon be made visible when Christ comes to put an end, not only to every evil, but also to every earthly institution: to every government, to every city, to every house, to every game, to every job, and even to every marriage, which is only for this life. Why should we look back with longing and that which has always been destined to pass away?

Of course, the temptation on the other side is to grow so bitter toward this world and how very evil it is, that we turn into bitter people, too, that we begin to hate our neighbors, that we begin to despair and grow tired of waiting for Christ to come. Where is He? Why is He taking so long?

Peter tells us exactly why in our first lesson, and it’s a humbling answer: The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. Countless billions will be eternally condemned when the Lord finally appears. Their time of grace cut short. Their day of salvation ended. That includes people we know. It even includes some Christians who have strayed from the faith but will yet be brought back before the end. In fact, Peter says, He is patient toward you! So, long for the kingdom of heaven to be revealed! Long for Christ’s coming! But don’t imagine you know best when it comes to the when. He’ll come soon. Soon enough, at just the right time. And all of this will be erased, and the unbelieving will be condemned, and the believing will be rescued, not because we were sinless or deserving of it, but because God, through His Word, brought us to repentance and faith in His Son, and preserved us in faith and in the watchfulness needed, both to keep from looking back at this life with longing, and to keep looking forward, in hope, to Christ’s coming.

As Peter said in the first lesson tonight: Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be, in lives of holiness and godliness! You ought to be living as lights in a dark place, as salt in a tasteless world, as sons of God, and not as sons of the world. You ought to be different, different from your unbelieving neighbors and friends and family members, different from both unbelieving Democrats and unbelieving Republicans. You ought to be living as people who know they’re just passing through this place, in order to get to a much, much better place—a place that should make you eager to be done with all this temporary, inferior stuff, though also ready to endure it for as long as the Lord keeps you here. Whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will keep it!

The world is very evil. But our God is very good, and so is the kingdom of heaven, whether it’s here on earth where Christ reigns in the hearts and lives of His blood-bought people, or whether it’s in the new heavens and the new earth that He will create when He comes, the home of righteousness. The world is very evil. So don’t look back at it with longing. Look forward with hope! Amen.