Mothers’ Hearing

Recently, I watched a documentary on Emperor Penguins (it was like the movie Happy Feet). Mothers lay eggs and go off to feed themselves so they can feed their babies when they hatch. The fathers incubate the eggs. Just as the eggs hatch, the mothers return. Miracle of miracles – they pick their babies by their cries! They have not heard their cries before. How can they know they are their babies in a crowd of thousands of newborn chicks? God alone knows! Yet, each mother finds her baby and feeds them.

Peter wanted his readers to know that God’s love for them was similar. Whatever the situation was, God knew how to rescue them. To illustrate that, Peter gave three examples:

“For, if God did not spare sinning angels but gave them into judgment, casting them into gloomy Tartarus and keeping them there, 5 and at the beginning of the world did not spare the ungodly of the world but protected the eight with Noah, the righteous preacher, when he brought about the deluge, 6 and when he condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah turning them into ashes, making them examples for the irreverent, 7 to deliver the righteous Lot who opposed the wicked in their irreverent lifestyle (8 that righteous man saw and heard great evil by dwelling among them daily, being tormented in his soul by their unlawful and unrighteous works), 9 the Lord knows how to deliver the reverent from their testing and to keep the just punishment for the unrighteous.” (2 Pet 2:4–9)

God knew how to protect and deliver his people amidst testing and to punish the unrighteous people. He could discern the voices of his children amidst the crowd of enemies and jump into action to rescue them. He could spot Noah and his family and Lot and his family even though they were living amid crowded ungodly people. He could spot them without difficulty and deliver them.

The same was true of Peter’s audience. They were going through persecution and thought God didn’t care, but he did. He spotted them and would deliver them.

At the same time, he also knew how to inflict pain on their enemies by water (in the days of Noah) or fire (in the days of Lot). Even in Peter’s time, he knew how to inflict the right suffering upon the unrighteous people, who were . . .

“going about doing works by the desires of their flesh, despising rulers, being reckless, and speaking ill of the glories ones without trembling before them, even when heavenly angels, stronger and mightier than them, do not speak ill against the glorious ones.” (2 Pet 2:10–11)

The ungodly were arrogant. Besides doing whatever their flesh desired, they also reviled every authority, including “glorious ones” that even the heavenly angels do not speak ill of. God would judge such arrogant people while protecting his own.

We can’t lose focus of the key message in the clutter of beautiful imageries: God knows how to rescue his people. He had done that for centuries. He would do the same for us. When we are in trouble, we call on him. He rushes to our aid. That’s the heart of our motherly God. He loves and cares for us. When we hurt, he runs to our help.