“that you should remember the predictions of the holy prophets and the commandment of the Lord and Savior through your apostles” (v2).
Are you easily distracted? Do shiny objects and loud noises steal your attention from what you should be doing? When you pray, does it go something like this, “Dear Lord…look a bird!” If so, join the club. I’m right there with you. And it seems we share something in common with the folks on the receiving end of Peter’s letter. False teachers have stolen their focus from Jesus and His Gospel. The apostle reminds believers to remember. We need to get back on task.
Pete’s big point in writing this sequel (3:1) is to warn folks about a crew of con artists that are infiltrating local churches and tearing them apart from the inside out (2:1-3). These false teachers are bad news. They’re out to bilk and embezzle believers (2:3, 14-15). They’re also sexual predators (2:2, 10, 14, 18). These hucksters are selling a word from God but deliver nothing but empty promises (2:17). The apostle writes chapter two as a wanted poster for Jesus’ followers to be on the lookout for these charlatans.
Don’t be fooled by imitators. Peter shakes us up and wakes us up (3:1). It’s not that we’ve completely forgotten who Jesus is, what He’s done and will do. But we get distracted. We get off track. These false teachers have enticed folks down the rabbit trail. The dude Jesus calls Rocky calls us to remember. Remember what God’s spokesmen said about Jesus. Remember the prophets’ predictions. Remember the apostles’ teachings. Hello, McFly! Focus. Back on task.
After grabbing us by the ears and getting our attention, Pete tells us to get back on track. We “should remember” (3:2). He uses a Greek word (mimneskomai) that means to remind, recall, or think about again. It doesn’t necessarily mean that we’ve forgotten the big idea. We just bring it back to the front burner. Make it our priority. Make it our focal point. In this case, the false teachers have distracted people with their religious flash and trash. In the end, their empty message is exactly what Shakespeare wrote about. “Sound and fury signifying nothing.” Remember. Remember what the prophets predicted about Him. Remember what the apostles taught about Him. Focus. Back on task.
Now that he has our attention, Pete sets our eyes back on Jesus. He’s the Hero of the entire story of the Bible. First of all, He’s the focus of the prophets’ predictions. Over the course of thousands of years, God used these folks as His loudspeakers to announce the One to come. Messiah would come to fix what we broke. He would punish sin. He would restore creation. It started in the garden just after the Fall (Gen 3:15) and continued in the desert with Jesus’ own wild eyed, bug eating cousin (Lk 3:2-6). The radical Rabbi/Carpenter lived a perfect life for 33 years before dying for our sins on a Roman cross. However the story didn’t end in the cemetery. He rose to new life, then headed back home to heaven.
Pretty awesome, right? As they say in the Ginsu knife commercials, “But wait! There’s more!” The resurrected Jesus has an encore. He’s coming back once and for all. He’s coming to the ultimate and final rescue. He’ll take care of the bad guys. That includes dealing with these pesky false teachers. He’ll return His creation back to glory. And the prophets have been talking about it for a long, long time. Dudes like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel. If you think what Jesus has done to this point is something, just you wait.
Pete then plays his trump card. He equates the prophets with the apostles. The construction of this verse places these two groups on a level playing field. The apostles are the prophets of the NT. The prophets are the apostles of the OT. God used both of these handpicked teams to write the Bible. We can be sure what they’ve passed along is the real deal. “And we have something more sure, the prophetic word, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts, knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (1:19-21). In other words, the teaching and writing of the prophets and apostles are legit. They’re from God. Anything else is just smoke and mirrors. And that includes the snake oil the false teachers are selling.
We need to remember that Jesus isn’t done. He’s got a return engagement. The apostle made sure to include that in what they wrote. MacArthur makes that point that Jesus’ personal posse of apostles filled 260 chapters of the NT with 300 references to His second coming. Christ’s own kid brother Jude also calls His followers to keep the supernatural forecast front and center. “You must remember, beloved, the predictions of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Jude 17).
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