Two thousand years feels like a long time to wait. Jim Osman says that's exactly the point.

Continuing through 2 Peter 3, Osman tackles the mockers' challenge in verse 4: where is the promise of His coming? Peter's answer comes in two parts, and this sermon focuses on the second: God's patience. Osman walks through what that patience actually means, tracing it back through Exodus, Isaiah, and the Psalms to show that the Old Testament's "slow to anger" God and the New Testament's patient Father are the same God, not two different ones.

He works carefully through the Greek behind "slow" in verse 9, distinguishing tardiness from sovereign timing, and uses Habakkuk's own wrestling with delay as a parallel. Then comes the heart of the message: who exactly is God being patient toward? Osman pushes back against a popular reading of "not willing for any to perish," arguing from context that Peter is addressing God's own people, the elect not yet gathered in, not the whole world indiscriminately.

The sermon closes with four practical encouragements, including a direct word to anyone listening who has yet to repent. This episode offers a clear, doctrinally grounded answer to anyone wondering why God seems to be taking so long.

Trouble has a strange way of feeling like a curse. Phil Johnson makes the case from James 1:2–4 that for the Christian, it's actually the opposite.

Working through one of the earliest letters in the New Testament, Johnson identifies the James who wrote it: not the apostle, but the Lord's half-brother who became the leading elder in the Jerusalem church. From there, he turns to the text itself, "consider it all joy, my brothers, when you encounter various trials," and unpacks why that command isn't naive but deeply theological.

Johnson works through the Greek word behind both "trials" and "temptations," distinguishes between testing from God and enticement from the devil, and draws on the suffering of Job and Peter's failure and restoration to show that affliction is never random. It's purposeful, sovereignly governed, and aimed at one outcome: maturity that lacks nothing.

Three convictions anchor the message: trouble is a blessing, not a curse; tribulation tests us rather than punishes us; and trials perfect us rather than defeat us. For anyone wrestling w

The mockers had a question: Where is the promise of His coming? Time had passed. Apostles had died. Nothing had changed. Pastor Jim Osman addresses that question head-on as he works through 2 Peter 3:8 — and the answer is as pointed today as it was in the first century.

God does not experience time as we do. He is not encumbered by it, constrained by it, or running out of it. He meets no deadlines, feels no urgency, and is exhausted by no length of years. A literal thousand years is to Him what a single day is to us — not because time is vague or undefined, but because He is eternal and we are not. The delay in Christ's return is no evidence of a failed promise. It is simply a reflection of the unbridgeable difference between the eternal God and creatures made of dust.

Drawing from Psalm 90 and Peter's deliberate use of its language, Pastor Osman traces what God's relationship to time actually means for the church — and what it does not mean. He corrects three common misuses of this verse: as an argument for long creation days in Genesis 1, as a framework for end-times chronology, and as a basis for treating the thousand years of Revelation 20 as figurative.

The point stands: time has no bearing on the fulfillment of God's Word. His return remains imminent. The only question is whether we are found watching.

Grief is universal. But not all grief is the same.

In this message from 1 Thessalonians 4:13–14, guest speaker Cornel Rasor opens with a pastoral truth that Paul made plain to the Thessalonians: Christians do not grieve as those who have no hope. The distinction isn't about grieving less—it's about grieving differently. The sorrow is real. The tears are real. But the hopelessness isn't.

Rasor walks through what the Thessalonians were actually worried about: would their believing loved ones who had already died miss the glory of Christ's return? Paul's answer, grounded in the resurrection of Jesus, is a resounding no. Because Christ died and rose again, God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus. The dead in Christ are not behind—they will be coming with Him.

Drawing on ancient pagan epitaphs, Ecclesiastes, commentary from Leon Morris, and John 14, Rasor paints a vivid contrast between the despair of a world without resurrection hope and the settled confidence of those who know where their beloved ones are right now—and where they are going.

This episode also addresses the harder question: what about loved ones whose salvation is uncertain? Rasor speaks to that grief with care and points believers back to the sovereignty, mercy, and goodness of God.

For anyone carrying the weight of loss, this is a message built to hold that weight.

Anxiety is everywhere. Roughly 38 million American adults are taking medication to manage it—a number that has climbed sharply since 2019. But anxiety isn't just a modern problem, and it isn't merely a clinical one. In this message from Philippians 4:5–7, guest speaker David Forsyth makes the case that anxiety is a sin of little faith—common to all believers, not unique to a few—and that Scripture offers a clear, three-part prescription to address it.

First, adjust your focus. "The Lord is near" is not a throwaway phrase but a statement of eschatological reality. Caesar is not Lord. Circumstances are not Lord. The risen Christ is Lord, and he stands near, interceding for his children.

Second, cease worry and pray. Paul's command is direct: be anxious for nothing, prayerful in everything. The antidote to worry isn't willpower—it's prayer built on a foundation of thanksgiving. Gratitude resets the soul and establishes the atmosphere in which believing prayer can flourish.

Third, believe God's promise. The peace that guards hearts and minds in Christ Jesus is supernatural—it surpasses comprehension. It is God himself standing watch over his children.

David Forsyth is honest: this isn't a quick cure. The battle with anxiety is lifelong. But long obedience in the same direction pays off, and God's grace is more than sufficient for the fight.

Climate alarmists have been predicting the end of the world for decades—and getting it entirely wrong. Pastor Jim Osman opens this exposition of 2 Peter 3:7 and 10 by showing why: they begin with the wrong assumptions. God has already revealed how this world ends, and it has nothing to do with carbon footprints or melting ice caps.

Peter's answer to the false teachers who denied the return of Christ rests on three characteristics of the coming Day of the Lord. It is certain—God's Word that created the world and judged it by water is the same Word that now reserves it for fire. The present creation stands only because God wills it to stand. When that will changes, it will be instant.

It is unexpected—arriving like a thief in the night. Just as the generation of Noah kept eating, drinking, and going about their lives right up until the flood came, unbelievers will be caught entirely off guard when the Son of Man returns. Believers, by contrast, are called to live in anticipation of that day, not dread of it.

And it will be thorough. The heavens will pass away with a roar—a Greek word Peter chose because it captures the sound of arrows, crackling flames, and rushing water all at once. The elements themselves will be consumed. Everything will be laid bare before God, with nowhere left to hide.

For the believer, this is not a day to fear. Christ has already absorbed the wrath. On the other side of judgment is a new creation—new heavens, new earth, and righteousness dwelling there forever.

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.

Peter warned the church that mockers would come. Pastor Jim Osman works through 2 Peter 3:1-4, examining the identity, motive, and arguments of those who deny the return of Christ—and why their denial is never as innocent as it appears.

Two thousand years have passed since the promise was made. That passage of time is precisely what the mockers weaponize. Their question—"Where is the promise of His coming?"—is not a sincere inquiry. It is a denial dressed up as a question, a pattern Osman traces through Jeremiah, the Psalms, and Malachi. When mockers ask "where is," they are not looking for an answer. They are dismissing the promise altogether.

Peter exposes their motive as well as their argument. These men follow after their own lusts, and the connection between their sensuality and their denial of Christ's return is deliberate. Deny the coming of Christ, and you deny the coming judgment. Deny the coming judgment, and there is nothing left to restrain the flesh. Osman draws out three strands of this connection: the removal of accountability, the loss of a purifying hope, and the implicit denial of bodily resurrection.

The mockers also argue from uniformitarianism—the assumption that because nothing has changed, nothing will. Osman dismantles this philosophy, shows its influence on secular science, and points to the flood as evidence that God has already intervened catastrophically once before.

False teachers are not a surprise. They are a sign. Their presence confirms that the last days are here—and that the Lord is still coming.