Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
The Power & Promise of Knowing God (2 Peter 1:1-4)
33 Plays1 year ago
Sunday Message recorded 26 November 2023
by Dr. Stephen Mick
First Baptist Church -- Columbus TX
1700 Milam St.
Columbus, TX, USA 78934
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Thanksgiving Reflection
00:00:06
Speaker
Well, good morning, Church family. It's a pleasure to be here, and I'm glad to see that you've been able to be here with us to worship with us together. So good morning to you who are here, to those who are down the hall, to those listening and watching online. I hope that you've had a great and wonderful Thanksgiving holiday and that you've had good time with family.
00:00:29
Speaker
And I hope that today in the message, it will give you cause to be even more thankful. While not specifically a Thanksgiving message, I think the content that we'll explore together today would give us cause to thank God that what he tells us here is true. But then for those of you who are here in Thanksgiving and Christmas time and this whole season just hits differently.
00:00:59
Speaker
And it's hard to be thankful that I hope today as we look at our text that you will find something to hold onto. And that you will realize that God does love you and he is with you and he is for you and what he offers his great and powerful and wonderful promises are for you.
Teaching Style and Engagement
00:01:22
Speaker
So if you look at the back of your bulletin, normally Pastor Victor, he creates an outline and you can fill in the blinks as you go. So a couple good things come from that is you can take notes that you can then study at home, but then you also know when he's gonna land the plane. But for us, today you look and there's nothing but lines and there are a lot of lines. So you have no clue what's about to happen.
00:01:51
Speaker
So I'll tell you, what's the roadmap for today? We're going to look at four verses from 2 Peter. We're going to go in order. So when we're in verse 1, we're just at the beginning. By the time we get to verse 4, we're getting close. We're not there, but we're getting close.
00:02:10
Speaker
And what we'll do, so I've been teaching Sunday school with my wife Julie, we teach 10th, 11th, and 12th grade, and I love to teach by explaining a little bit and then asking questions. We'll do that today. So I promise you some of the questions will be, questions I think that you can answer, and we'll be glad to answer, but some of the questions, they might be difficult. But I'm doing it on purpose.
00:02:34
Speaker
and I'm not doing it only for you, but I'll let you know when I study scripture, I approach scripture thinking, first of all, what I'm about to read is true, and it's trustworthy, and it's good, and I'm probably not doing it. So I ask hard questions as I study scripture, because I want to understand if it's true, if it's good, if it's right, and I'm not doing it, if I'm not taking advantage of it, why?
00:03:05
Speaker
Well, it's easy to unearth those motives and those reasons through questions. So we're going to go from verses 1 through 4. I'll do a little explanation. We'll have a question. And then we'll wrap it up. And I hope that we'll be thankful. All right. So we're going to look at 2 Peter, chapter 1, verses 1 through 4.
00:03:27
Speaker
If you have your Bible, then I invite you and encourage you to open up to it. If you have the Bible app on your phone, open your app and scroll to it. If you don't have a Bible but want one, we have them in the pews. And don't be worried. If you don't know how to find our text, it's on page 1207 in the books that are in the pews. So don't be bashful. If you want a Bible, there's one in the pew in front of you. And we'll also have it on the screen for you.
00:03:54
Speaker
Would you mind standing as we read? That word will read it completely and then we'll just go back to the top and work our way through it.
Exploration of 2 Peter Verses 1-4
00:04:05
Speaker
Simon Peter, a servant and an apostle of Jesus Christ.
00:04:12
Speaker
To those who have received a faith equal to ours through the righteousness of our God and our Savior, Jesus Christ, may grace and peace be multiplied to you through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. His divine power has given us everything required for life and godliness through the knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and goodness.
00:04:38
Speaker
And by these he has given us very great and precious promises so that through them you may share in the divine nature, escaping the corruption that is in the world because of evil desire." This is the word of the Lord. Let's pray. Lord God, I pray today that you would make your word come alive to us, that you would meet us where we are, and that we would see the great and precious promises that you have for us just in these four simple verses.
00:05:07
Speaker
or inspire us, motivate us, move us, draw us closer to you. We pray this in Jesus name. Amen. All right, so let's just start at the top. We'll work our way through. So first of all, the book that we're reading from is called Second Peter. So who wrote the book?
00:05:31
Speaker
Well, yes, you would think that and I think that, but scholars, they argue about it, even still.
00:05:38
Speaker
But the evidence is overwhelming that yes indeed Peter did write the book or at the very least he dictated the book to somebody who wrote down the physical letters. So Peter is the author. He identifies himself in the opening sequence here as well as later in the book there's a lot of evidence that through the experience the author claims it had to be Peter.
00:06:02
Speaker
So Peter is the one who wrote the book, and he's one of the earliest and closest followers of Jesus. If you don't know who he is, I'll give you a little background. But he's writing to a group of people during a time where there is intense persecution and extreme hardship for followers of Christ. Many think that Peter wrote this book at the time of Nero, when Nero was, you know,
00:06:25
Speaker
hunting down and relentlessly killing followers of Christ. And throughout the entire book, not just in the four verses we're looking at, but through the three chapters of 2 Peter, he's exhorting, encouraging people who follow Christ that by God's grace, they should strive to come to truly know God.
00:06:45
Speaker
and that they should grow in Christ's likeness, that they should mature in their faith, that their lives should better represent and reflect the way that Jesus lived and taught and loved.
00:06:57
Speaker
that they would be more faithful, more holy, more sincere, and that they would be fruitful and effective. So this is why he's writing the book to them. And this is what he's writing to us. It's been handed down to us for the same purpose. And as we work our way into verse one, we see that Simon, or Simon Peter, uses two words to describe himself. One of the words is apostle.
00:07:24
Speaker
And what is an apostle? It's not only an early follower of Jesus, but somebody who was given authority. And Peter rightly identifies himself as an apostle of Jesus. Because not only was he one of the early followers of Jesus, but also he was specifically chosen by Jesus to be one of the 12 people that followed him from city to city and town to town and spent restless nights and chaotic times on the sea with him.
00:07:55
Speaker
He was an eyewitness to both the public and the private ministry of Jesus. He was a participant in the miracles that Jesus did. Not only watched some, but he's the one who walked on water.
00:08:09
Speaker
mind-blowing. But that's that's the Peter who's writing this book. He was enlightened with insight by God himself. It was Peter was the one when Jesus said, who do you say that I am? Peter's the one who God told you're the Christ, the Son of the living God. He was the first one to make that declaration.
00:08:31
Speaker
He was vested with authority by Jesus. He saw Jesus transformed into God's glory on a mountaintop. He was one of three who got to see that. And he was a pillar of the early church. So he identifies himself as Apostle, so people know who it is it's writing. And he rightly uses the word Apostle. So if we were to nominate a hero of the faith,
00:08:58
Speaker
Like some primary participant, or as the young people say these days, an influencer. It would be Peter. We might be tempted to set him apart or above us. He's on another level than us. But look at what he says in his own words.
Peter's Identity and Humility
00:09:18
Speaker
And if you were paying attention, you saw, I had to skip a word to get to Apostle.
00:09:24
Speaker
Because he describes himself first as a servant of Jesus. And the word there in Greek, now I don't know a lot of Greek, so I won't pretend to. I did take Greek for six weeks before I dropped it. But this was one of the words that we learned, doulos.
00:09:44
Speaker
And it means slave, right? So back in the Roman era when Greek was being spoken, you didn't have somebody who had a nine to five job as a servant. They were owned by somebody. A servant was a slave. And this word means slave. And the first way that Peter describes himself is a slave of Jesus.
00:10:07
Speaker
And because in Greek, the most important word comes first, what he's telling us is that being a servant, being a slave is more important than being an apostle. Great humility. I mean, is that surprising to you? That he would choose that order? Like if you were an apostle and a servant, how would you describe yourself? Like I'm Stephen, yeah, the apostle.
00:10:33
Speaker
Oh, and a servant, yeah, yeah. But not Peter. It's like, I'm a servant. But there might be a lot of guys named Peter who are servants. I'm also the one that's the apostle. I'm both. But he's a servant first. So he's setting an example for his audience and for us, even with his opening words. He's having a serving God and being used by God to serve other people. It should be an identifying characteristic.
00:11:04
Speaker
Okay, I promised you questions. Is service to God a defining characteristic of your life? Is service of Christ more important to you than status? Come on, man, these are hard questions because if we're honest with ourselves, we'll have to say, well, sometimes yes.
00:11:32
Speaker
But sometimes, no. I mean, so we could, five words, six words into scripture, already feel conviction. Because we see those who are following Christ, those who are leading by an example, setting an example that we could follow, telling us, listen, being a servant of Christ, a slave to Christ, it needs to define who we are, regardless of anything else we've done or achieved, or hope to achieve.
00:12:04
Speaker
And if service isn't a defining characteristic for you, for me, if it's not more important than status, then it would seem like Peter's very different from us. But it doesn't have to be that way, and it shouldn't be that way. Because Peter's trying to help us not to draw a distinction between us and him, but to focus on what should be similar
00:12:29
Speaker
And as we go on in the verse, what does he say? He says, to those, he's writing to us, to those who have received a faith equal to ours. Well, we just have realized how unequal he is to us, but he's not bringing himself down to us. He's saying, you need to elevate. Your faith needs to be more than what it is.
00:12:54
Speaker
because the faith that he has is a faith that you and I can have as well. So what an amazing statement. And he's telling the people he's writing to, he's like, you have a faith like us, a faith equal. And we'll come back to this concept in just a second, because it's here in the verse. But they have a faith equal to his, not because of something special they did.
00:13:21
Speaker
and not because of something special Peter did, because of something special Jesus did. They have a faith equal to Peter because of the righteousness of Christ. And because Christ is righteous, and because those who trust Christ are given to themselves his righteousness, his capacity to grow in faith, then our faith is equal, can be.
00:13:49
Speaker
So they might not be as mature as Peter. They might not be as far along in their faith journey, but they have the essence of what it takes to grow in faith, just like Peter. So this declaration of equal faith, it could and it should apply to us. But again, in the spirit of asking hard questions and trying to be deliberate about this, let's not simply assume that it does.
Faith as Dependence and Devotion
00:14:20
Speaker
Instead, let's work our way to a question. So equal faith is not meant to bring Peter down to us, especially if we're not living faithfully. Those who have an equal faith to Peter, they don't simply possess a knowledge of what faith is. He's not talking to the people who say, oh yeah, I know what faith is, look at my coffee cup.
00:14:42
Speaker
Faith is the evidence of things hoped for. I know. That's not what he's talking about. Those of equal faith are those who actively put their faith in Jesus. Some translations of scripture translate faith as trust.
00:14:59
Speaker
Faith isn't something amorphous without hard to conceptualize. Faith is putting trust in Jesus actively, ongoing trust in Jesus. Those with equal faith are those who are becoming equally dependent and equally devoted to Christ like Peter was.
00:15:23
Speaker
So being declared to have faith equal to that of an apostle, it doesn't bring him down to us. It should fill us with inspiration, with energy to live and act, to speak and hope and dream and pray and wait for God to transform us, our families, our communities like it did for Peter and for those he was writing to. This act of faith and this dependence and this devotion, it'll produce an obvious evidence
00:15:52
Speaker
One obvious evidence is that we would gladly bear the title, slave of Christ. So do you gladly call yourself a slave of Christ and live a life that reflects it? Is your affiliation with Jesus, is it public or is it private?
00:16:19
Speaker
Does your dependence upon him and your devotion to him, does it define the way that you live? Do we have a faith equal to Peter? I ask questions like this of myself as I'm studying, and I'm thinking, man, if I have to measure whether my faith is like his based on my dependence and devotion to Jesus right now, I'd say, oh no, maybe.
00:16:47
Speaker
I bet I think that we have some good news coming up. Again, I mentioned it earlier. I said we'd come back to it because I think we need it right now. We can have faith equal to Peter not because of something special we did, but because of something special Jesus did for us. And we might be immature and early on in our faith, but are you putting your trust as much as you can into Jesus and praying and actively trying to see your faith grow?
Grace: Unmerited Favor and Spiritual Growth
00:17:20
Speaker
And that's what gets to the heart of verse two. See, we're making progress. We're 25% of the way through. In verse two, understanding that living with the type of faith that Peter claims for us, it requires us to continually remember and to acknowledge our dependence upon Christ and then live this way day after day after day, and it requires help. So Peter offers both a prayer and a prescription for us.
00:17:49
Speaker
Let's read verse two again. It says, may grace and peace be multiplied to you through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. It's a prayer because Peter is expressing a hope that grace and peace being multiplied to us through knowledge, that it might become true of us. And it's a prescription because he's telling us how to experience more of God's grace and peace through knowing him.
00:18:19
Speaker
So we should take note, this is a prayer, but Peter comes back at the end of his book, so he starts here, there's a lot of stuff that he says for the next three chapters, and then he ends his book with this prayer as well, but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. So this isn't just a throwaway introduction, it's the defining sentence of his text that he carries all the way through and concludes with, so grow in grace, and grow in the knowledge.
00:18:48
Speaker
So we should pay attention to it. So let's dive in more to verse two. And first of all, let's ask ourselves, he wants us to experience this grace and peace. So what exactly is grace? What is peace? So grace is God's unmerited favor. And there's like two sides to one coin. Grace comes in one flavor, because there is something that we do deserve, and there's something that we don't deserve.
00:19:15
Speaker
And in God's grace, he doesn't give us what we do deserve, but he does give us what we do not deserve. That's his grace. What do I mean by that? Well, as you study God's word, we learn that he is a holy God. He created us and he put upon us an obligation to serve him.
00:19:42
Speaker
And by nature, we reject it. In Romans chapter 5, we see in three different ways that we reject God. First, in Romans chapter 5, verse 6, it says, while we were weak. So God put an expectation on us, we're unable to do. And then in verse 8 of the same chapter, it says, let's see, while we were weak, while we were, somebody look it up. I like blank. That's so embarrassing.
00:20:12
Speaker
While we were weak, while we were sinners, yes, thank you, Julie. To the rescue. While we were weak, while we were sinners, while we were enemies. Okay, I got them all out there, so now I won't forget them. So while we were weak, while we were unable, while we were sinners, while we were choosing not to, follow God. And then the last one, verse 10, while we were enemies, while we were actively opposed,
00:20:39
Speaker
I said three ways that God put his requirement on us and we're like, no thank you. I'm not gonna do it. And because of that, we're going to incur his wrath. Rebellion is responded to with wrath. That's what we deserve. But God and his grace,
00:21:05
Speaker
is willing not to give us what we don't deserve, which is instead of wrath, we can have peace through faith in Christ, or God's grace. And we'll see God's grace come back many ways when we get to verse four. So it doesn't give us what we do deserve, but does give us what we don't deserve, right? Just because we might not be subject to wrath through Christ,
00:21:33
Speaker
He also invites us. He calls us. So yeah, we might not be subject to his anger, but he could leave us there and he doesn't. He's like, not only are you not subject to wrath, but I'm calling you into my presence. He gives us Christ's righteousness. It's there in the verse. It's throughout scripture. He gives to us what we didn't earn. And we'll talk more about that when we get to verse four. All right, so this is what grace is.
00:21:59
Speaker
getting what we don't deserve and not getting what we do deserve. So what is peace? Peace is binding together or joining together that which is broken or divided. Being two things that are in an improper, a broken relationship and being put back into a proper relationship. You can think of a bone being broken.
00:22:21
Speaker
I have a powerful and vivid memory. I broke my arm and had an extra elbow for a while. Terrible, right? But then it got fixed. The two pieces of bone got put back together and they healed. That's peace. And so peace with God means that we are set right. We are in right standing in unity with Him at rest in His presence.
00:22:47
Speaker
And this is what Peter's saying, is he wants grace and peace for us. He's praying for us. So when our grace and peace needed it, because we could say, oh yeah, I got that. I was 12 years old when I experienced the grace and the peace of God. That was great, that was a great time.
00:23:10
Speaker
But that's not what Peter's telling us. What we learn is when is grace needed? When is peace needed? Not once and done, but ongoing, all the time, in every way. Question for you. Is everything in your life right now good? 100%? Is there any problem you're facing, anything that's broken?
00:23:37
Speaker
Do you have any external influence where you're facing some sort of persecution, a relationship that's struggling, a sickness, something you didn't do to yourself that's being done to you that's not right? Well, friend, you need grace and you need peace for that right now. And that's external. What about internal? How's your walk with the Lord going?
00:24:05
Speaker
Are you struggling with anything, faith related? How's your consistency? Do you have a problem with lust, with doubt, anxiety, bitterness, apathy, anger, doubled mindedness, distracted? Are you lazy and rebellion? Are you just forgetful? Is there anything in your life that needs to be fixed? Then you need grace and you need peace for that right now.
00:24:35
Speaker
And that's what Peter is praying for us and what we should be praying for ourselves. So have you ever experienced God's grace? And have you ever experienced God's peace? Has he ever calmed a fear, helped you to overcome, answered a prayer, met a need, encouraged you, anything? Okay, another hard question. How?
00:25:03
Speaker
Old is your most recent experience of God's grace. Has it been a while? Has it been a minute? We need grace and peace right now. God wants to give us grace and peace right now. So if our most recent story is ancient, why? Why are we not experiencing God's grace and peace now when we need it now? And he offers it now.
00:25:35
Speaker
Shouldn't we have news stories? Shouldn't we have recent experiences? So if your experiences with God's grace and peace are old or aging, might there be room for more grace and more peace in your life right now?
00:25:53
Speaker
Grace and peace, they're supposed to be active and ongoing, intensifying and transformational in our life. And that's why we need them to be multiplied, which is what Peter talks about next. And it's why he prays for us and what he hopes for us. May grace and peace be multiplied. In every aspect of our lives, we need to realize and experience and come to know God's grace, getting what we do not deserve. And his peace, how he's setting things right.
00:26:22
Speaker
So how do we get it? Well, the answer is there. Through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. Seems simple enough. Just need to know Him. We sang about knowing Him. But here again, limited Greek.
00:26:39
Speaker
from fair warning. There are two words that describe knowledge. And I think that makes sense to us as well. One word is gnosis. Starts with a G, kind of weird, G silent, gnosis. And it means academic knowledge, book knowledge, theories, that sort of thing.
00:27:01
Speaker
And then there's another type of knowledge called epinosis, and it means experiential knowledge, not book knowledge, but heart knowledge, like-mindedness. So how can we increase in our epinosis knowledge, the type that Peter's talking about? Let's say it's not a formula.
00:27:22
Speaker
But it is a process. And the process includes these components. I'm not claiming a formula, okay? But the process includes components like this. First of all, you need to be interested and curious. And then your interest and your curiosity should lead you to learning and putting into practice. And then that cycle repeats through devotion. You keep after it.
00:27:51
Speaker
And so I'll give you an easy example. Maybe it's a little weighty, so I'll make fun of myself now. You can think of golf, right? And if you were to be out on the golf course with me yesterday when I played with my son Ethan, you would question whether I even have gnosis of golf at all. Because yes, I know that there are important things about hitting a golf ball from here to there, like aiming is one of them.
00:28:21
Speaker
Not holding the club too tight, but not too loose, because it could fly away. You actually, when you swing, it turns out you actually need to make contact with the ball. Don't know if you do that one. All right. The club face has to be a certain way. Your hands have to be a certain way. You have to do this, and it's slow, and throw your hands, and don't stand, and put, wow, it's a lot. So I kind of, I like know that there are these things to be known.
00:28:48
Speaker
But then when I go and try to put it into practice, it's laughable. So I don't have yet the epinosis. I go, Ethan's much closer. We played a scramble. He carried us. So that's golf. But verse two's not talking about golf. It's talking about God. How can we grow in our knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord? It's kind of the same process. More questions for you to consider.
00:29:18
Speaker
What about God interests you? Anything? Are you interested in God? What about God are you trying to learn? Anything? You have a plan? Is there any curiosity? Because it like starts there.
Curiosity and Knowledge about God
00:29:42
Speaker
You gotta want to know something before you'll go home and open the book.
00:29:48
Speaker
or turn on the podcast, or try to change your life. What about God interests you? What do you know of God presently that changes the way that you live, that impacts your hopes and your dreams and your priorities, and where can you proclaim that you've experienced Him? So I'll give you a personal story.
00:30:14
Speaker
I'm really hesitant to do it because I have to tell you one of my ongoing faults and that there are so many faults to choose from. I don't want to air out everything, but I'll tell you about my lifelong and continued journey, battle against selfishness.
00:30:31
Speaker
And like you pick a vice, you pick a weakness, I could tell you a story about that too. I'm just picking selfishness because it seems a little safer, right? But maybe you have a story and I want to help you see how this process of being curious about what God says, wanting to learn something, realizing, oh man, this is true, but I'm not putting it into practice. So you try to change.
00:30:54
Speaker
And then you feel like, okay, I've got this, I'm putting it into practice. But then you realize through devotion, you got to come back and do it again, and then do it again, and then do it again, because we need grace and peace not once, but to be multiplied over and over to us.
00:31:09
Speaker
So my journey through selfishness or towards selflessness as a teenager, I would have told you I was not selfish because that's what I thought to be true of myself. I volunteered at a lot of places. I was highly active. I went to this ministry on Friday nights where we would go out into the club area of Houston, not to go into the clubs, but to catch people before they did so we could share the gospel with them.
00:31:34
Speaker
I mean, I was engaged in every way, and I didn't realize about myself that I was intensely selfish. And then I met the love of my life, and Julie and I got married, and if you've been through marriage, then you know what she found out. Trying to blend two lives together, it exposes some things. And I learned anew. I'm a selfish person.
00:32:03
Speaker
And I learned that I needed more grace and more peace. And she learned I needed more grace and more peace because I did. So rather than being content with my teenage self and bringing that into marriage, I began to seek the word again to learn how can I get more of God's grace and more of God's peace to deal with this issue that's bringing friction and trouble into our marriage.
00:32:31
Speaker
started reading books and learning what does it mean to be a good husband and trying to put that into practice and then I would have told you and Julie would have told you we're not selfish people anymore we got it under control and you know what happened next we had kids and we realized how terribly selfish we were like like we hadn't even started not being selfless
00:32:55
Speaker
hadn't even begun the journey. So we could have given up. We could have just brought our young married selves into parenthood. But we knew that's not what God wanted for us. That's not what our kids needed. That's not how we were going to love them well. So we come back. Well, God, what do you say about being parents? How do we change this? What do we need to learn? What do we have to apply? How can you change this? Interest, curiosity, learning, practice, devotion.
00:33:25
Speaker
And then we came to the point where we felt like we were pretty good. We were being selfless towards our kids. We were loving them. We were leading them. And we would have said, I would have said to myself, I'm not that selfish anymore. And then I became a bivocational pastor. I didn't have just one job. I had three jobs, one of them being a pastor. So I was tired all the time.
00:33:48
Speaker
And I realized, again, how selfish I really was. I can't tell you the number of times I was traveling on a business trip and late at night, ready to go to sleep, the phone would ring, and somebody, I mean, I've got these calls. Hey, Steven, I need your help. She opened my computer. Sorry, dude, I'm sleepy. No, you stay up.
00:34:15
Speaker
And then when you land, you go over and you help. And I realized how incredibly selfish I had been. And what does it take to love people well, to walk side by side with them and help them put into practice the things that will prevent them from ruining their lives, at the very least, for the things that will help new grow and flourish.
00:34:40
Speaker
And then present day, I would tell you, I won't even bother to say I'm not selfish, because I am, in ways I don't even realize, in ways I don't want to admit. And that's why I keep studying scripture, so that God would keep exposing to me in his grace and with his peace that he would set things right. And it's not just selfishness for me. Again, pick a vice. I need help.
00:35:08
Speaker
I need God's grace and I need God's peace right now and I need it all the time. And as we strive to know God and experience his ongoing grace and peace, let us be confident of this, that God wants it for us too. And we take hold of that as we see the next few verses. So we're on verse three now. Verse three is going to be quick. We're going to land the plane.
00:35:31
Speaker
And not because there isn't a lot to say. I was lamenting with Josh earlier. I have six pages of notes. And three of them are still in outline form, and they're on the cutting room floor. There's so much to say, so you're welcome. We're on verse three. Verse three, let's read it. His divine power has given us everything required for life and godliness through the knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.
00:35:59
Speaker
His divine power. What that tells us is God's power is the source of everything. It's His power that saves us. It's His power that equips us. His power that energizes us and works through us. It's His power that helps us to persevere and His power that will raise us up to new life and eternity with Him. His power is behind it and through it all. And we could focus on lots of different aspects of God's power.
00:36:28
Speaker
But we're going to focus on one specific aspect, and that's, it says, His divine power has given.
God's Abundant Gifts and Promises
00:36:35
Speaker
God has given us something. What is it? What did God give us? I want to know. Because it's almost Christmas. And we're going to shake it, and you're like, no, we don't have to be, we can open it, and we can have what He's given us.
00:36:50
Speaker
He's given us the word here. He's given us something of exceedingly high value, and the word emphasizes the generosity, the lavishness of the giver. God has given us something of exceeding value, and what has He given us? Everything required for life and godliness. That's cool. Life, as He intended it to be lived in godliness, what that means
00:37:15
Speaker
It's being able to live in the presence of God with a desire to honor Him and never be separated from Him. That's what Godlyness is.
00:37:27
Speaker
So a paraphrase of that first part of verse three would be something like this, because of God's amazing gift, we lack nothing for life as he meant it to be lived. And we lack nothing for the godliness, the ability to live aware of, and in the midst of God's presence with a motivation never to lose that closeness. That's what he's given us. But I'm an engineer by training. That's cool, but can we get more specific?
00:37:56
Speaker
Yes, we can. Let's head to verse four. Again, there's a lot we could say, but we're going to focus on one aspect of what it is that he's given us. So verse four, by these he is given. There's that word again, very great and precious promises. Now Peter knew what he meant when he said, God has given us great and precious promises. Like he's pointing back to a memory and a list, a PowerPoint slide.
00:38:22
Speaker
Right? And his listeners, his audience, they would have known, but for us we're like, ah, that's still not specific. Come on, unpack it. What is it? What are these promises? And there are hundreds of promises that God has given us. We don't have time for all of them. So what we're gonna do here, the next few minutes, I want to unpack for you seven promises that God has given us related to salvation. Right?
00:38:50
Speaker
God makes a claim on our lives and we reject it. But He offers us peace anyway through the blood and the sacrifice of Christ. And oftentimes when that message gets communicated, we use a generic word and say saved.
00:39:10
Speaker
But it can mean one of many things. So let's be diligent. I'll use seven different words. Some of them won't be familiar to you. Some of them you will know what they mean. And we'll just go from top to bottom. One of the promises is a fantastic word, rarely used, but it's called propitiation. Do you know what propitiation means? If you don't, that's okay. I'll explain it. Propitiation means to satisfy wrath.
00:39:38
Speaker
And what we learn about our relationship with God when we rebel against him is we deserve his wrath. Now you could be one to say, bring it. I would encourage you not to have that position. But it is the position of Psalm. God's mad at me, I can take it. No, you can't. We need somebody to help us.
00:40:05
Speaker
And what scripture tells us, lots of places, Romans 3, 25, 1 John 4, 9 through 11, if you don't have the references, you can't write them down, I'll give them to you later. It says, we are saved from wrath because Jesus himself is the propitiation for our sins. We can't handle the wrath of God. But Jesus took God's wrath on our behalf to say great and precious promise.
00:40:36
Speaker
But that's not the only one. So we're saved from wrath and to peace. There's another word, you should know what this means, forgiveness. Right, just because God saved us from wrath, he poured his wrath on Jesus instead of us. Okay, he's not angry at us. But that doesn't make us forgiven. Forgiveness is a financial term and it means you have a debt.
00:41:05
Speaker
And when we read about our need for forgiveness in scriptures, we realize we have a debt we cannot pay. It would bankrupt us and more to try to pay it. But the promise in scripture is that through Jesus' sacrifice on our behalf that we can also be forgiven.
00:41:27
Speaker
released from our debt, debt free. Colossians 2.14 says, Jesus canceled the record of debt. What a great and precious promise. There's another word used to describe salvation, it's justification. Right, so just because we're saved from wrath, just because we're free, doesn't make us clean. Justification means your sin has made you filthy.
00:41:57
Speaker
It's like after rain going and playing in the mud and now you're coated. How can you be washed? How can you be clean to stand in the presence of God? It's justification that though we are filthy in our sins, it even says it here in our passage, we get imputed onto us Christ cleanliness, his righteousness.
00:42:25
Speaker
We didn't do anything special to deserve it. He did something special to give it to us. It's a great and it's a precious promise of God. There's another word that's used to describe salvation, reconciliation. And this carries with it the connotation of war.
00:42:43
Speaker
People at war with each other. And before trusting Christ, we are an enemy of God. But because of the reconciliation that Christ brings through his death, we are made friends with God. That's in James chapter four, Romans five, second Corinthians chapter five. But it gets better. There's also another word related to salvation, adoption.
00:43:12
Speaker
We go from being outside of God's family because we chose rebellion to being brought into the family, not as a guest, but as a son or a daughter adopted into his family. Galatians chapter four and Ephesians chapter one.
00:43:28
Speaker
We also have, in other words, redemption. And this carries with it the connotation of slavery. Because of our sin, we are a slave to it. We are victimized by the power and the grip and the hold of sin in our lives. And some of us, in some ways, you still are.
00:43:49
Speaker
But there's a very great and precious promise of God that you can be redeemed. You can be released from your bondage and have freedom. It's for freedom that Christ has set us free. And you see this in John 8, 34, that we're slaves in Galatians 5, 1, we're free. And there's yet another promise related to salvation, life. Because the wages of sin, what we earn by sinning, what we earn by rebelling against God is death.
00:44:20
Speaker
for the gift of God, his life. He rescues us from death to life. So these are just seven of the great and precious promises of God related around one single topic. God is granted to us his precious and very great promises so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature.
00:44:47
Speaker
Are you taking advantage of all that God has promised? Like, let's just take these seven. Are you taking advantage?
00:44:54
Speaker
of the fact that you're saved from his wrath, saved from your debt, released from your debt, cleansed from our filth, made a friend instead of an enemy, adopted as a son or daughter instead of being a stranger. We can come to the Thanksgiving table with them. We're free from the grip and power the sin has over us. And we can have life like he meant it to be. He's giving us everything we need for life and godliness. Verse three.
00:45:22
Speaker
Are you taking advantage of all that he's given and promised? I came across this quote a guy I had never read before as a Scottish preacher from the Wayback Machine named Alexander McLaren. Here's what he said. I think it's great. He says, we have as much of God as we will. Christ puts the key of the treasure chamber into our hand and bids us to come and take all that we want.
00:45:52
Speaker
Now if a man is admitted into the gold vault of a bank and told to help himself, and yet comes out with one cent, whose fault is it that he's poor? Are you growing in faith? Are you interested, curious, learning, applying, and repeating in devotion? Is grace and peace being multiplied to you? Do you know God?
00:46:22
Speaker
Or do you know of him? He wants for grace and peace to be multiplied to us as we come to know him better. Last topic. We see there are very great and precious promises in the scripture. But in this verse four, it's there, but I'll tell you how. There's a second set of promises there. And this is often the second set of promises, what we hold on to, unfortunately.
00:46:50
Speaker
And it's that last part of the verse, sinful desire. Right, we're born with desires that are contrary to God's nature and to his commandments, and it's our desires, they make promises to us. I mean, because if they didn't, why would we follow through with them? Our desires promise, fulfillment, and happiness, and satisfaction, and relief, and power, and victory, and importance, and all the things that we want to chase after. Our desires would make those promises to us.
00:47:21
Speaker
but they're false promises. Our evil desires end up breaking us and breaking our relationships. So just consider this, is your life and are your relationships better because of lust, anger, envy, selfishness, apathy, bitterness, lack of self-control,
00:47:46
Speaker
out of control thought life, your pride, lying, to prop yourself up, to cover up over yourself, putting work over family, hobbies over community, ignoring your responsibility. Is that what makes your life and your relationships better? Well, you know that it doesn't.
00:48:05
Speaker
But that's what our evil desires lead us to, to embrace a false set of promises. And when we pursue our evil desires, we embrace these false promises. We refuse to know God. We refuse to have His grace and His peace multiply to us. And we can't experience the life and godliness that God intends for us. But as we pursue knowing God,
00:48:30
Speaker
He fulfills his amazing promises, some of which we looked at in the aspects of salvation. We go from being an object of wrath to at peace, from having a debt we can't pay to forgiven, from being filthy to righteous, from being an enemy to a friend, from being a stranger to family, from being in bondage to the power of sin to being free and from death to life.
Trust in God Over Sinful Desires
00:48:59
Speaker
So there's two sets of promises. The very precious and great promises from God and the false promises of evil desire. Which set of promises do you believe and which set of promises are you going to act on? If you want to act on the great and precious promises of God, then I would like in closing to read verses five through 11. We didn't get to the text. I would encourage you to go home and study it.
00:49:24
Speaker
But here's what Peter says, if you agree, verses one through four, something you want, then what? Again, page 1207, if you're following along.
00:49:40
Speaker
For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue. And virtue with knowledge and knowledge with self-control and self-control with steadfastness and steadfastness with godliness, godliness with brotherly affection and brotherly affection with love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you.
00:50:07
Speaker
from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins. Therefore, brothers, sisters, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election. For if you practice these qualities, you will never fall. Oh, my friend.
00:50:37
Speaker
Do you want the power and the promise of knowing God? I hope that you do. I know I do, but to do it, I need grace and peace to be multiplied to me today, and then again tomorrow, and then the next day, and the next day, and you do too. And I hope that we can help each other as we go through this journey.
00:51:04
Speaker
So I invite our musicians to come back for the final song. And during this time, right, this is classically what we call an invitation, a time for people to make decisions. But I would encourage you, every person in this room, myself included, we have a decision to make right now.
00:51:23
Speaker
Because we have to decide what's holding us back from receiving and experiencing God's grace and peace. What in our life is broken? What in God's word is true that we don't want to be true and we refuse to acknowledge it? Where do we need his peace? Where is that for you? Would you surrender it to Christ today?
00:51:48
Speaker
And if you need to surrender for the first time, then somebody in this room will help you. I can be down front. I'll be happy to help. But you might feel comfortable with somebody else. Get somebody else to help. But make the decision today. And maybe you've made the decision in the past, but your stories of grace and peace are old and they're ancient. You're like, man, I need the grace and peace again. Yeah, you do. We all do.
00:52:13
Speaker
So decide today you're going to pursue knowing God, make the decision, and then follow through. Let me pray for us. Lord, I thank you so much for your word. I thank you that just power-packed four verses, God.
00:52:29
Speaker
The prayer and the prescription, God, let us want your grace and peace to be multiplied to us. Lord, let us want to experience the truthfulness that you've given us everything we need for life and for godliness. Lord, let us come to understand your very great and precious promises and help us to hold onto those and choose those rather than the corruption that comes from evil desires. Help us, God. Motivate us. Inspire us. Or draw us near to you.
00:52:59
Speaker
Let us not be hard-hearted or apathetic or indifferent. God help us to pursue you in Christ. This is a ministry of First Baptist Church, located at 1700 Milam Street, Columbus, Texas.