Don't be vague Christian, one who is on autopilot. You just take life as it comes. You start the day with no particular plan or purpose, with no idea of taking an opportunity to witness, with no idea of how we will resist our most common sin. Don't be a dreamer. How daydreams occupy time! On the bus, with moments to ourselves: just dreaming about the home, or what we will do or buy or have. No reflection on the wonders of grace, on the guidance of God and what he has done for us. No reflection on the passage we read earlier on. Don’t be a muddled Christian, muddled about doctrine. You are saved; you’ve found Christ; you know the gospel, but now you’ve stopped learning. You don’t have a book on the go, or a doctrine, and when you come to prayer you never include a period of affirmation in your prayers.
How important is the sound, rational mind of the believer! You must be in control. Don’t listen to those Charismatic preachers who want you to throw away your rationality, to just live by feelings. ‘Get the drums going, get the rhythms going, turn off your mind. Get into trances and ecstasies; listen to prophets who are beside themselves.’ ‘No,’ says Peter, ‘be sober, always have your mind rational.’ There is a tremendous gulf between Charismatic religion, which is barely Christian, and true religion. The mind is always alert and operating in true Christian faith. The mind is the citadel and the palace of faith. We understand, we have the Scriptures; we have the gospel. We understand it in our minds. What are the emotions? They are a system of response within us. I understand about Christ and my heart responds and praises and feels but the mind comes first. The whole Charismatic system is like medieval Rome – ‘Put on the theatre, get the emotions going and let your mind take a back seat.’ So we have got no discernment. We are never thinking, we never understand the times, we never see through false teachers, because the mind is switched off. The mind should always be on. Don't be anxious to be in trances and speak in tongues, and be clairvoyant, and have words and imagined inspirations. There’s no authoritative inspiration since the completion of the Bible. We have the word of God. It is complete. It is all sufficient; it's all we need. God will speak to you. There will often be an inner impulse, reminding you of some duty that you should do, which is Scriptural, which you already know about, convincing you of some sin you're about to commit. Yes, God interacts with his prayerful people, but not with revelations of truth.
It doesn’t make you an over-cerebral kind of person, because you are considering truth and glorious things. I want to understand these things. I want a hymnbook that has intelligent hymns in it. Not intelligent in the sense that they are intellectually sophisticated. No, but they contain truth and I can sing with my mind and my heart will join in as I do so. Don’t take these hymns, empty them of all their depth, and turn them into simple choruses, the same line repeated over and over again.
The disciple of Christ has a new focus to his life. Before conversion, this world and the things that he could have on earth dominated his attention, but since he has caught a glimpse of the world to come, those better things have ravished his mind. His centre of gravity has moved away from earth to heaven, providing a new context to his life. To be told therefore that the end of all things is at hand should be exactly what he wants to hear, for if his spiritual life is flourishing he is eagerly waiting for these things, and is ready at any time to leave behind what is passing away and embrace what is eternal. Sadly however, it is too easy for us to grow content with our earthly life and to forget the preview we have been given of heaven’s glory, so that we start to live for what we can have now and lose our eternal perspective. Peter therefore re-focuses our minds on those eternal things which have lasting value.
What does Peter mean here? Did he think that the Lord was coming in his lifetime, at any time? Some people say this. They say, ‘Oh, the New Testament writers, they thought Christ was going to come then.’ Well, they didn’t. They used this language in another sense. Peter, of course, was a disciple of the Lord and he heard his teaching. Christ said that ‘this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto the nations; and then shall the end come.’ This gospel is going to be preached throughout the world first; that is going to take a long time; that is way, way into the future. The apostle Peter was there when the Lord told certain parables, which spoke about his return and his coming – after a long time. The ages are going to proceed; all kinds of prophecies must first be fulfilled. Peter was in no doubt, the coming of Christ was a long way off and yet speaking under inspiration, he is able to say this. The return of Christ is at hand now, and was near even then in those days. First of all, it is at hand not so much in the sense that it is next week from Peter’s point of view, but it is fixed and sure. To the unbelieving world it’s like a great shadow hanging over them down the centuries – it is always at hand, exhaustive, imminent judgment. It will come not only upon the last generation who are still alive when Christ returns, but on all; his judgement will look back across the centuries. It is like a spotlight on human behaviour in every age of history. But to the believer it is a glorious thing to consider. It is near in the sense that it is the central reality of life which transforms how we live and what we look forward to – the visible coming of the kingdom of heaven. Besides, no one has long. Our life span is not very long and so as far as everyone is concerned, we only have our life span and then, as far as we are concerned, Christ comes again.