Our scripture readings for this week include: Isaiah 40:1–11; Psalm 85; 2 Peter 3:8–14; Mark 1:1–8. My hope is that these short reviews of each passage will work like an Advent devotional this year. Also when these passages are read on Sunday we will all have a better understanding of the text what praising our God should look and sound like because of them.
Readings for the Second Week of Advent
Advent Devotion – 2 Peter 3:8–14
But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slow to fulfil his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed.
Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved, and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn! But according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.
Therefore, beloved, since you are waiting for these, be diligent to be found by him without spot or blemish, and at peace. (2 Peter 3:8–14)
We would never admit and it may hard to hear…we do not understand God. We do not understand his timing. We do not understand the ways he chooses, anything. See we are “good Christians” and therefore we have to know God and how he works, right?
Wrong. God himself tells us through the prophet Isaiah that His “thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways [His] ways…for as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:8–9)
Not only that but Isaiah confesses to God in Isaiah 45:15 that “Truly, you are a God who hides himself, O God of Israel, the Saviour.”
So rest assured it is okay to say you do not understand God. But what then are we supposed to do with that kind of God. A hidden and un-graspable God. A God that we cannot control or manipulate.
Even when God does reveal himself to us it is mysterious. An example, how does God plan to make himself knowable to us and save the whole world. Send a warrior king who is also a prophet and a saviour? No, how about a baby. How about Jesus, God become man and the most vulnerable kind of human you can find.
That is how unexpected and mysterious it was the first time.
Here is what we know about the second arrival of our Saviour from 2 Peter. God may seem slow to us when in fact he is patient and merciful not desiring anyone to perish but rather that everyone would be repented. However, when that day does come, that last day, everything that we know will be made new and in fact better than new. All of what God created will once again be united. Heaven and Earth will be made one.
Peter also offers to us something to do while we wait. Practice holiness and godliness while we await our true righteousness which waits for us completed in our final home with our King and Saviour.
The Advent of our King and Saviour brings with it all the completed promises of God which are guaranteed by the one claimed victory over Satan, Sin, Death, and Hell.