(Transcribed by TurboScribe. Go Unlimited to remove this message.)

Hey, you're listening to Cut for Time, a podcast from Faith Church located on the north side of Indianapolis. My name is Claire Kingsley. And I'm Dan Breitwieser.

Each week, one of us will sit down with the person who gave Sunday's sermon to discuss their message. Cut for Time is a look behind the scenes of sermon preparation, and they'll share with us a few things that we didn't hear from the sermon on Sunday. Thanks for listening.

Happy Memorial Day, Nick. Happy Memorial Day, Claire. My kids asked me, why do we celebrate this holiday again? So it was like, it was fun to be able to tell them, but Hazel just said, because people died.

And I was like, yes, but why did people die? And she was like, because they believed in Jesus. And I was like, no, yeah, everything about Jesus. But anyways, my kids are confused about why this is a holiday, because we're not opening presents.

Do I get a Memorial Day basket like I got an Easter basket? No, no. Hazel did say, she said, should we walk through the cemetery today to celebrate? And I was like, maybe if that's what you want to do. There will be a lot of people there.

I didn't think about it until it was too late. But I referenced in my sermon, Vietnam and World War Two. And that just didn't even dawn on me.

I'm a little embarrassed that that is what we're celebrating this weekend. Well, I just actually thought that that was purposeful, because I made the connection as well. And I was like, oh, this is perfect for Nick.

I don't know. It was just a little nuance. It was perfect.

It may have been purposeful from the Holy Spirit, but it did not rise to my consciousness. Yeah. Well, thanks for that little tidbit.

Well, speaking of, why don't you jump in and give us a sermon summary from Sunday? Yeah. So I had the text that God is not slow, but he's patient toward you, not willing that any should perish. And then it really felt like a two-section sermon, because then the next section is that he will come like a thief.

And so examine your lives. And that was really the big two sections of the sermon. One was dealing with his slowness, or well, not his slowness, actually.

The text says he's not slow, but his patience. And I spent a fair amount of time trying to develop for people what that really means, like what he has endured. And I use Romans 9, because I think Paul's wording there is so powerful for us, that he desires to show his wrath.

He wants to expose his power and show that he alone has the power to judge all of this injustice, and he will do it. But he endures it with patience, waiting for those that he's called to. And he knows where and who his people are.

So if you've come to know Christ in this generation, you can look back at all of the heinous things that have happened since Peter wrote this letter in, we think, around 64 AD and say, man, that is patience. That is patience, and it's unthinkable. And then there was kind of a hard break in the middle of the sermon.

We had to pivot over to the next topic, which is then how do we live our lives, knowing that that judgment will come. Because patience, I didn't say this yesterday, but patience, if there's not actually judgment in the end, is weakness. It is impotence.

It is not worshipful. But so Peter reminds them, no, no, it is still coming. And so how do we live our lives in expectation of that? So that's a summary of the sermon, kind of the art that it took.

We should live our lives as though we would rather be in the new creation than here. And I think that what you just said puts a twist on judgment that we don't often think of it in such a positive light. It seems like it's God's wrath, and it is final.

And it might be not that we live in fear of it, but it can just carry such a darkness. It sounds dark. But what you just said made it sound like we need that to also see God in his might and power and fullness.

Yeah. In his book, The Reason for God, Tim Keller, I'm going to do a terrible job of paraphrasing this. There's no way I could quote it.

It's been many years since I read it. But the argument stuck with me that to think ill of a coming judgment is really a convenience that is only reserved for people like us who have lived in relative comfort, but for the global church and for just global humanity who have seen atrocities, genocides, the kinds of things that we now in our Western sensibilities, we don't even want to associate with war. We have clean rules for war.

But the things that humans have endured at the hands of other humans means that if there's not a just judge, if there is not righteousness coming, then this isn't a just war. And it is. It's coming.

It's coming. That's great. All right.

So, Nick, what did you have to cut for the sake of time this Sunday? Well, let's see. I had the Universalist and Arminian proof text that I was teaching from a Reformed perspective. So there was quite a bit of cut for time there.

Dealing with the you and then the all and the any. So we can talk about that. And then related to that, there's a big theological topic around the types of will.

So he's not willing. The ESV translates it wishing, which is itself a translator commentary on the types of will that are in view. And I just felt like all of that didn't really make good content for a sermon.

But it would be a good lecture. If we had a deep dive on this text, then it should definitely be in there. But the purpose of a sermon is to connect with the heart, not necessarily the head.

So it's a hard one when all the kids are in the room. Oh, yeah. I had all the kids in the room, too, which Kendra reminded me of way late in the preparation for this sermon.

I was like, well, I'm preaching what I got. I feel like it went all right. Yeah, it was great.

But those things would have just been really hard for kids. Right over their heads, right? Yeah. So the you in here is a plural you.

We've probably heard preachers before talk about the y'all. We don't have a plural you in English. So Peter is speaking to his audience of believers.

So this section of the letter is written toward his believers, the believers that he knows in the churches, and he's encouraging them. When he was speaking of those who are not saved, when he was speaking of the false teachers, it was kind of in a third person. So he's not addressed this letter toward false teachers.

He's addressed it toward believers. And that then informs how we interpret the any and all that follow it. So the not willing or not wishing, as the ESV says, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.

Those two words are kind of subject to the you, right? That he's not wishing. And I did this in a few turn of phrases. And there's a way that I kept restating the passage in my sermon that he's not wishing that any of you would perish, but that all of you would come to eternal life.

So there's that was cut for time. And then, you know, when you do have to think through, well, does God want, does he will any should perish? You know, does he strongly desire, like he desires to show his wrath and make his power known from Romans nine? Does he desire strongly all would come to know him? And that gets into a delineation of his different types of wills that you can find in some commentaries. And the honest answer is, I don't know.

I don't know the answer to that. I know that this text isn't trying to answer that question. That's not what Peter's addressing here.

And so it could have been an interesting, you know, rabbit trail in a sermon, but it would have been a distraction. I feel like, and instead I just tried to hopefully preach faithfully what the text is teaching for us. So those things were cut for time.

I obviously cut a lot of in times discussion. Because again, didn't seem like this text, you know, expositional preaching is to figure out what the text is trying to teach us. What was the original author's intent? And if this text is not about in times predictions, instead he's using the thief imagery to encourage and implore a certain lifestyle, then that's what we should preach on.

So I cut for time a lot of this exploration of in times predictions. And then lastly, and I want a lot of credit for this, I cut for time mention of a chiasm. I feel like I'm in like a 12 step program.

There shouldn't be a program for preachers to stop talking about chiasms in sermons. And I think I've reached a pretty high level in that step when I knew it was there and I didn't even say it. But we want to know it.

But we want to know it. Well, the description of dissolving and burning all the heavenly bodies and everything to be dissolved comes twice. And it wraps the main point.

And so this is what I did is without saying there's a chiasm, I focused in on the main point, which is in the middle, which is to question your life. So these things are all true. But the main point Peter is getting into is, so what kind of people are you to be? And so that's wrapped in a chiastic structure.

Okay. Bonus points to anyone who found that on their own without Nick's- That's right. And text us in and let us know.

We'll give you a high five next week. Nick will personally hand out high fives and handshakes. I will be in the lobby handing out high fives to only those people who had found it on their own.

That's what's happening. All right. So I've got some questions for you.

Speaking a little bit about end times that you didn't get too much into, but I'm going to draw it out if you don't mind. So how can we live with expectancy for Jesus' return without becoming obsessed with end time speculation, but also being expectant? You know, that's a hard balance. Well, you know, you can live, let's go back to the analogy I use in the sermon of being a kid left at home alone with some things that were expected of you.

You can sit at stool by the front window and watch for headlights. That is end time speculation. Is that mom's car? No, no, no.

Those headlights, that's not our car. That's, oh, they're turning at the intersection. That's not them.

And but living with expectancy that they will come home has more to do with just, okay, live in the house. You can watch TV, play games, have a snack, whatever is in with them, do those chores, right? But all of the things you're doing, you're doing, realizing that at any moment, they're going to come to the door. So you're not leaving a big mess, doing things that are against the rules, fighting with your siblings.

The analogy starts to really break down, but you get the idea that you just live your life. You don't need to be obsessed with, is it today? Is it tomorrow? Did this particular event in the Middle East start a timeline that now in 70 weeks from now, this is going to, that's not necessarily where our infatuation is, but it's actually living a life that says, well, whenever it happens, whenever mom and dad come home, they're going to find that I'm living a way that I was hopeful that they would be here at any time. And the same is true for us, that when the new creation is here, when Christ is reigning and His just standards are the rule of law on the earth, we fit and we belong.

And as a matter of fact, our lives get better there than they do here. So this is living in a way that says he can come home at any time and I'm ready. I'm not standing at the window trying to figure out which set of headlights is actually mom and dad's car.

So he can come at any time. And we see in your sermon and through this text, God's patience, you said not slowness, but patience. So what is the difference between God's patience and God's delay? If someone is talking about it in this, trying to think that those are like the same thing, what they're not.

So what's the difference? Yeah, I think delay insinuates that there was a time. Think about as your flight was delayed, it was scheduled for a time and didn't happen at that time. And we've all had the experience of it being delayed and delayed and delayed and delayed and delayed until I sat in an airport not long ago when finally at like two in the morning, they canceled it.

Great. After six hours of delays. That's not what's in view.

So the difference between that and patience is that we don't know when he's intending to return. Even Jesus says it's not, you know, to know the day and the times, but it's already set. He is being patient for that set time.

He's not going, maybe now, nah, I'll wait a while. That's delay. He's not delaying.

It's purposeful. It's set. His plan has been set from the beginning.

We simply don't know the timeline of it. And that demonstrates his patience to wait for the fullness, not willing that any should perish. Okay.

How does this passage speak to just the theme of injustice and how we should, the struggle of why God's not maybe acting more quickly in situations of suffering and injustice? And can we get something from this passage that gives us an answer to that question that a lot of believers ask and even not believers are like, well, if there was a God, then this would not be happening. Yeah. Man, that is a hard one to answer in a podcast.

I think I would say one of the first things is if you are struggling with that, it's probably not something that a texted in question to a podcast is going to solve. Find a pastor who knows you deeply and who loves the Lord and walk through that suffering together with other people who know Christ is the first thing to say. But in the abstract, what we can say is that that coming judgment is the reality of it matters because of the injustice in this world.

And I went through a series of heinous injustices that I listed in my sermon trying to illustrate how patient God has been. He's waiting through these things for you, for the believers that were baptized a few weeks ago at our church. But that doesn't negate the fact that there have been heinous things and justice doesn't seem to have happened yet.

So that is kind of like I mentioned earlier, Tim Keller's reference that God's judgment coming is what we should hope for, which gives us the freedom to not try to exact it ourselves right now and not feel that the burden is for us to be the wielder of justice, that we don't have to do that. There will be an ultimate judge. And that's about as far as I can answer that question.

It's really hard. It is very, very hard. I think it makes us yearn for the new creation.

It can make us angry that it's not here yet. It can make us feel like God is absent. And I don't negate those emotions, those reactions.

But that's why I say walking through that alone, bearing that feeling alone is not what we're designed to do either. Just to process that through with other believers, pastors who can process exactly what you're going through. Because that kind of question is a personal question, right? And there's no universal answer.

I could see you connecting it back to just how are we living our lives? And connecting our future hope with our present holiness. So that looks like doing it with other people and living in community and having those mentors. And also being okay with what grieves you also grieves God.

And it's the already not yet conundrum. But living expectantly. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. All right.

Thanks for your time, Nick. Yeah, no problem. Thank you.

Have a good Memorial Day. Thanks, you too. Thanks for listening to this week's episode of Cut for Time.

If you wish to submit questions to our pastors following Sunday's sermon, you can email them to podcast at faithchurchindy.com or text them into our Faith Church texting number, and we'll do our best to cover them in next week's episode. If this conversation blessed you in any way, we encourage you to share it with others. We'll be back again next week.

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