The false teachers of Peter's day had a simple argument: things have always continued as they are, so there is no reason to expect a cataclysmic divine judgment in the future. Pastor Jim Osman works through 2 Peter 3:5-6 to show how Peter dismantles that argument—not by predicting the future, but by pointing to the past.

Peter's first move is to expose the nature of the false teachers' error. They are not simply uninformed. They willfully overlook what they already know. God displayed His power in creation, speaking the heavens and earth into existence by His Word alone. That same Word sustains all things in being—which means the stability of creation is not evidence that God cannot intervene, but that He has chosen not to yet.

Osman draws four lessons from the creation account: God created by divine fiat, God is entirely separate from and not subject to His creation, creation exists only by His will, and Christ Himself holds all things together by the word of His power. Remove His sustaining will and everything ceases to exist.

The flood then becomes the decisive counterexample. Peter points to a worldwide, catastrophic judgment that already happened—one that used the very same water present at creation. If God judged the ancient world by water, the present world is reserved for fire. The evidence of that past judgment is visible everywhere, Osman argues, for those willing to see it.

For believers, there is refuge from the coming wrath—in Christ alone, who bore it fully.