Good morning, everyone. It's great to see everyone who's
in the audience today. We have a regular members, we
have visitors who are perhaps feeling the seats of people who
are not here today from our own congregation.
So we want to welcome you. Thank you for being here and
hope you can come anytime you're able to have in the future to
join with us in worship. And we hope you know this is not
about us. Everything we've done so far
today, everything we will do in the future in this worship is
all for the glory of God. And that is our one focus this
morning. So there's not a better purpose.
There's not a better place to be.
And I'm thankful to get to lead in this part of the worship
because this is my favorite part.
This is the part where we dive into God's brilliance.
We get to dive into God's encouragement, God's wisdom.
And so I hope if you have your Bibles, you'll turn with me to
second Peter chapter 1. All right.
I didn't know where I was going to go next.
But Chris at the last service said he was kind of expecting to
go into second Peter. So we're going to go into second
Peter. So we're going to keep rolling
on from first Peter, which was all about the trials of their
faith. The apostle Peter, who had been
through some trials himself, who had really messed up a lot, who
had really ate his foot, who had really done a lot of stuff that
we look back and say, you know, that's that's not the ideal.
He'd been through a lot, but that saying Peter had a lot to
to express to us, had a lot to teach us about about the faith
and about what it means to go through those trials.
And as he's going into the 2nd letter, the tone changes, the
message changes. It's not so much a letter all
about the trials of the faith, but it's about those who would
work against those who are Christians, those who might try
to pull them away. And so really there's there's a
there's a lot of similarities to things we've studied recently in
first, second and third John in here.
So you may see notes of that. But the same man is writing this
and I've titled today's Add to your faith.
Now, I and many people believe this may be the single most
encouraging chapter in all the Bible.
I just hope I don't get in the way of that this morning.
I hope you will see God's word for its brilliance.
And as Dave prayed, go home and read it and go home and meditate
on it and do it again tomorrow. And then a year from now, this
is going to come alive in new ways because it is one of the
most awesome chapters in all the Bible.
First Peter, a second Peter chapter 1.
We're going to start right here in verse one.
It says Simon Peter, a bondservant and apostle of Jesus
Christ. So that's who's writing it.
He's identifying himself as the writer Peter to those who have
obtained like precious faith with us by the righteousness of
our God and Savior Jesus Christ. So he's he's identifying who's
writing to some people that the authors are writing to are
writing to people who have never heard.
We're studying with Frank in the book of Acts about he's writing
to O excellent Theophilus, this man who's a an influential,
maybe a leader, but he's not a Christian potentially check,
Fact Check myself, but not every recipient of the word has always
been a a believer or a Christian.
Here, though he has identified those who have already obtained
the faith. He's writing to people who in
the 1st chapter, he said you have been buried in baptism.
He says you've been washed by baptism.
He says baptism, not the removal of the filth of the flesh, but
the answer or the appeal of a conscience toward God.
He said those people have already obtained the faith.
They've already done that. These people are Christians.
So if you don't know how to be saved, hopefully you know you'll
pay attention at the end and that will dive into exactly how
to be saved. These people are saved.
It's in the past tense and they've done it by the
righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ.
I hope we never misunderstand when we stand in this pulpit,
none of our salvation is given to the glory of ourselves.
Our salvation is all by the righteousness of God, our Savior
of our God and Savior of Jesus Christ.
The Bible says that Abraham believed God and it was
accounted to him for righteousness.
Our righteousness comes from Jesus Christ.
And if there's ever any doubt that Jesus is our God, look what
it says right here of our God and Savior Jesus Christ.
He is our God and Savior. Sometimes we want to talk about
God, like there's God the Father, the real God, and then
there's Jesus and the Holy Spirit who are, you know, who
are of the family, but they're not really God.
No, there are three entities in the Godhead.
There's the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. 1 is not God
and the other word, the Son and the Holy Spirit, they're all
God. And this says our God and Savior
Jesus Christ. So he's writing to people who
have been saved by Jesus. He says grace and peace be
multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus
our Lord. So the writers often begin with
this because this is the ultimate goal of the message.
The goal of God's message is not to strike down sinners at the
hands of an angry God. Some people attribute that
motive to God and other false deities.
That's their motive. Our God seeks to bring peace and
grace if we will let him. That is the ultimate, the
ultimate motive of our God. But how does it come to us?
Sometimes we just want it the easy way.
We want to get it. We want to get Bam slapped in
the face by grace and peace. And he attributes this to the
knowledge of God. And I want to submit to you
today. If you want the easy way where
it just happens to you, you're going to be wishing for it your
whole life. If you just want it to happen to
you without diving into the peace of the Scriptures and the
love of God in the Scriptures, it's never going to happen.
Hopefully someone comes along your way and shows you that love
from an example, but unless we read it, we're not going to be
filled with it. May we seek to be filled with
the knowledge of God that will bring us grace and peace that is
beyond what our understanding can handle.
It comes from the knowledge of God and of Jesus Christ our
Lord. He says as His divine power, His
godly power has given to us all things that pertain to life and
godliness through the knowledge of him.
There it is again, who called us by glory and virtue.
If we ever doubt, let's just remind ourselves.
Peter's going to say in just a minute, I'm writing this to stir
up your minds by way of reminding you all things that
pertain to life and godliness are in His word, in the
knowledge of Him. And maybe Satan has tempted us.
Maybe Satanist tempted you to think that you don't really have
all you need in God to make you think that when you read the
Bible. Yeah, there's stuff about being
holy, but, you know, there's not really anything about real life
I deal with real life I deal with, you know, real stuff that
happens to people you don't know.
The Bible doesn't have that. That's nonsense.
The Bible has everything that pertains to life and godliness.
Sounds like that's all we need to know.
That sounds like it has every single bit of of life sustenance
that we need. But maybe life's challenges,
frustrations and endurances have you made you forgotten that have
made you lose a focus on the word, like it actually has that
for you. Peter wants to remind you that
it's the knowledge of it. It's knowing him.
It's knowing His Word and the things about Him.
They're going to get you through all the things that pertain to
life and being godly in it. And this is through Him who
called us by glory and virtue. We come to God because we
acknowledge that He has the glory and the virtue.
We don't come to God because of any other reason other than He
is the source of it all. He is what defines good.
We're going to talk about today how to be good and what it means
to strive to be good, but he is the source of it.
That's why we come to him. He is the source of all things
that are glorious and that calls us to him and he called us with
a message of glory and virtue as well.
We seek that verse 4 which haven't been given to us
exceedingly great and precious promises.
It's this glory and virtue that brings us exceedingly great and
precious promises that through these you may be partakers of
the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is
in the world through lust. His glory and virtue gave us
promises that are so great you can't even wrap your mind around
it. It's exceedingly great.
There's things in our lives that seem good and they last for
about a day or two. Or maybe here maybe there's
things that are really exciting for a little while.
But these things go far beyond to the point that they're called
exceedingly great by scriptures. They're promises that go beyond
anything else they exceed. They go above all the other
promises that through these you may be partakers of the divine
nature. The divine nature is something
you see when you look into the creation around you.
The divine nature you can grasp just a little bit of when you
look into the mountains and the solar system and you stand in
awe of the divine nature that has this kind of power.
When you see real goodness that someone would sacrifice
something of themself or someone else, you see divine nature when
you get to share in that. To partake means to take part,
to have a shared participation in the divine.
That's mind blowing that we could really touch the divine in
a real way. But it comes through having
escaping the corruption that is in the world through lust.
And if you haven't escaped the corruption, the lust of the
world will only corrupt as we seek the divine.
There are lusts that will only corrupt you and they seem good
for now. And if you're young and you
think, you know, this is great, there's nothing wrong with this.
It's going to show you in time that it's going to corrupt and
produce death. But the divine nature is where
we go to escape that. But also for this very reason.
For what very reason? For the fact that he has
wonderful promises, a divine nature.
And there's less that could pull you away because of that.
He says for this reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith
and I'm going to go ahead and read this and we'll go back
through slowly. He says giving all diligence add
to your faith, virtue to virtue, knowledge to knowledge,
self-control, to self-control, perseverance to perseverance,
godliness to godliness, brotherly kindness, and to
brotherly kindness, love. For these things are yours and a
bound in you and a bound you will be neither barren nor
unfruitful. And the knowledge of our Lord
Jesus Christ, if you want to get fired up to move forward and to
walk with God, there's no better place to start than right here.
So let's let's start. He says for also for this very
reason, given all giving all diligence, the first point he's
going to acknowledge is this is going to take a daily effort.
If you tried yesterday and you're surprised that it's hard
today, he's going to say, yeah, that's why you need diligence.
And at this stage of my life, I'm realizing how hard it is to
be diligent. I'm realizing that there's a lot
of things you could do for one day that's not always easy to do
tomorrow, and then the next day and the next day and the next
day. It takes diligence.
It takes a daily grind. But you can't.
There's nothing that God has asked you to do that you can't
do giving all diligence add to your faith.
So he's writing to people who have some level of faith and
everyone in this audience has some level of faith.
I had a chance to talk about these verses with some kids in a
in a club at school that they call Bible Club.
And I had a chance to teach to them.
And even those kids, you know very little about the Bible have
some little bit of faith. Hopefully it's like a mustard
seed, the Bible says, but you have some little bit of faith.
And so maybe you don't know much, but you have some seed of
faith that has you here today. The Bible says that his innate
power in Godhead is, is is known by all.
We at some point our lives may lose the acknowledgement, the
awareness that there's divine nature.
We lose the awareness. But God said we have all known.
So there's some seed of faith that he wants us to add to.
Because it's one thing to have a faith, but it's another thing to
live the faith. So what does it look like?
He says, add to your faith? Virtue.
What is virtue? It's moral excellence.
Moral excellence means being a good person, doing good things,
being morally excellent. Now, some people want to talk
about that like it's a holier than thou.
No, it's not. If that person is having a bad
day and they need somebody, they need somebody who's morally
excellent to be there for them, to support them and strengthen
them and be there. Virtue is moral excellence.
So it's not enough just to have faith.
You got to be morally excellent. So take whatever you currently
have and go do something good with it.
If you're starting out, just in the beginning, go do something
good. And you know what?
We all know what's good naturally.
Generally, we all know what's good.
You can take a kid and you say I want you to do your best today.
If you go out and do your best, I'm going to give you an ice
cream party. At the end of the day, that kid
is going to light up and they know exactly what to do.
Generally, OK, they might not know everything.
That's where we're going to get into something else next.
They might not have all knowledge of what's good, but
they generally know how to do good things, and we do, too.
That's why, though, he says add to your faith virtue and to
virtue knowledge. So as we develop the desire and
the ability to get ourselves to go do something good, we need to
be educated about what's good. How can you know all the good
things there ought to do unless you you learn?
How can we know what is right and good without diving into
Scripture? And so that's why I believe he
puts this next on the list. He wants us to have faith that
prompts action, but that action is going to be misguided.
There are things when I was young Christian that I thought
were totally fine and I didn't know until I got knowledge that
it was wrong, and it's something else I needed to be doing was
good that I just wasn't aware of.
I don't know how actively the scriptures tell us you need to
go visit widows and orphans, James says.
That's real religion. Are you visiting widows and
orphans? There are things you need to add
to your knowledge, their awareness of what is virtuous.
So you add to your faith, knowledge of what's good, and to
knowledge we add self-control. So once you know this stuff,
that's where our human will really hits a conflict because
at this point we've been aware of God and we want to do
something good until we learn about something that we don't
really want to do. And that's where you have to
control yourself. And I'm made aware of that
whenever I talk to Charlie. And Charlie's just doing
something. I said, Charlie, control
yourself. You have control.
There's something in one of you that wants to fly off the handle
and do something else. I need you to take control of
yourself. And if we act as mature
Christians or older Christians of the faith, as if we don't
still need self-control, we are not in control of ourself.
Because we'll realize how much it takes to overcome the evil
that is pressing against us and maybe pressing out from within
us that we have to control and to stop and to overcome.
Because there are undoubtedly going to be things that feel
good that we want to do. We have to learn again, the very
first word we learn as humans. The very first word you learn is
no. We have to learn the word no for
ourselves sometimes, and sometimes no means overcoming
complacency. No, I will not be complacent.
No, I will not sit here and act like I'm doing enough today,
like that's good enough and yesterday's merits are good
enough. No, I'm going to keep moving
forward. I'm going to take control of
myself and take responsibility for what is good, what is
virtuous, and I'm going to go do that thing I don't feel like
doing today. I'm going to take control of
myself, whether it's a desire to or a desire not to.
I got to take control of all that.
You can't control yourself and not just be controlled, be
carried away by the things that might detract from us.
So we have to learn to control ourselves.
Once we know, and once you learn to control yourself, he says,
add perseverance. You got to learn to just keep
going, to persevere through the successes because maybe you get
through the end of one day and you're like, man, I'm feeling
good. That was successful.
And you're like, I got to do that again tomorrow.
That can be exhausting sometimes.
But again, God will give us strength for the daily effort.
That's what daily bread is. That's what mana is.
It's a representation. Just says give us this day Our
Daily Bread. It's a representation of the
things I need to do today. I need today to do it again, to
live a life of faith again and that do it again mentality is
perseverance. Yes, it was hard to control
myself, but I can persevere in that.
You need to learn to persevere, not against only against
successes and through successes, but against failure to fall on
your face one day, so to speak, and to then go, I'm going to get
up again. I'm going to try again.
I messed up and the devil's message is you're a loser,
you're never going to succeed. You're a failure if you follow
that teaching. That's the teaching of the
devil. Do you realize that the teaching
of the devil is you can't succeed, you're a loser?
Sometimes we feel like it's this righteous voice inside of us
saying no, I if I know it's really right, I'm never going to
be successful. That is the message of the
devil. Reject that and hear what
scripture has to say. Scripture says no, you can't
control yourself and keep going in that despite your failures.
You get up again, you try again, one man said.
In order to grow in anything, you have to face it's opposite.
In order to be a strong person physically, you have to push
yourself to the point of weakness with muscles.
You have to accept the feeling I'm going to feel weak when I
try to push this load, whether it's on the job site or if it's
in the gym. You have to push to the point
that you feel weak, and then that makes you strong.
So in your Christian life, don't be surprised when you get to
feeling like you're weak and it hurts mentally.
Like I like this. That means you're being pushed
towards strength. If you want to develop social
skills, you have to embrace awkwardness.
You have to go out there and try.
A lot of times it happens when people are young, they got to
push themselves past being awkward into social situations
they don't really like. But that's the only way to get
better. If you don't like public
speaking, the only way to get better is to go through the
awkward. So the only way to feel
comfortable is to embrace the awkward.
Sometimes in order to get physical health after an injury,
you have to feel more injured. Sometimes when I separated my
shoulder, the last thing I want to do is rehab, right?
Because the rehab hurts and you're made more aware of your
injury. But every day I just kept doing
it and it became healthy. It became a healthy shoulder.
There's no popping, there's no limited range of motion.
But I had to embrace the injury. If I sat there, I wouldn't feel
injured. I feel great.
As long as I don't move, I feel fine.
But as soon as I start to move, that's what hurts.
In order to develop health, you have to feel injured.
Sometimes. In order to get strong,
mentally, have mental health, you have to.
You have to handle the past hurt and you have to handle the
current reality of how bad you are right now.
Maybe it's really bad, maybe it's not super bad, maybe it
feels really bad, but you have to look that in the face and
deal with that. It's easier to numb ourselves
with any number of things, with substance, with distractions,
with entertainment, to the point that we don't think a thing
about how we really are right now.
That's easy and you feel good, but it doesn't make you good.
It keeps you mentally unhealthy. But to be healthy, you have to
look unhealthiness in the face and you have to look at who you
are right now and deal with the pain of where you're at, where
you've been. It's nothing.
It's nothing new. You all know this.
And so spiritual health often comes in the form of spiritual
war. Spiritual health comes through a
spiritual fight. And so if these call to
perseverance and all these things feel like, man, this
Christian life isn't what I thought it was going to be.
I thought I was going to walk in and Jesus was going to sweep me
off my feet and carry me on. Yes, but that's not always what
it feels like. He's going to carry us and give
us strength that we don't have on our own, but it's not always
going to feel like that. And so we have to be perseverant
and to perseverance godliness. There's a lot of reasons why you
could explain the order, the way that things they are, the way
they are here. I think it makes sense that
until you have learned to know what's good, to control yourself
and to do it even when you don't feel like it, how can you
possibly know what it means to be like God?
God and all of human history has faced frustrating idiots like us
and said I'm still going to be good to you anyway.
And it's not until you've dealt with something you don't want to
do and you still did what was good and virtuous anyway, that
you can even comprehend what it means to be godly.
And that is the goal, being like God, being more like him.
Or we can overcome and still seek good despite the challenges
to godliness. Brotherly kindness.
Some translations say brotherly affection.
I think that might be a little bit better for the trying to
understand what he's really getting at.
He wants us to add a God to godliness and brotherly
kindness. Because there's a lot of people
who are godly, but maybe people don't quite feel the affection
from them. So you got to add that.
You got to learn how to be affectionate like a brother, not
like a spouse. It's not spousal affection.
That's why he says brotherly. I believe it's because it's a
different kind of affection. It's a it's a brotherly like I'm
here for you and I want you to feel that.
I want you to know that. I want you to see that, that I'm
here for you as a brother in support and to lock arms with
you and to do this thing. Let's go.
I want to make people feel that way.
So if you're godly, maybe you need to seek to make people feel
that that kindness from you. There's a lot of angles on this
passage, but I think it's also important to note that there are
people who are godly in many areas of their life, But when it
comes to loving their brethren, maybe specifically their
brethren in Christ, that's hard because we sometimes are the
shortest with the people that we're the closest to.
You don't have your most fights with your distant friends.
You know, a lot of times have fights, but people who are close
to you because you know them, you've been through this before.
We've hit this wall before, and I'm frustrated with you.
And so it takes another level of effort to be kind to your
brother sometimes. Me, I had two older brothers and
younger sister. We were probably the rudest
toward each other out of anybody.
We would never be as rude to other people as we were to each
other sometimes. And so sometimes we have to
learn how to love each other despite how close we are and
despite the warps we see in one another that make it hard to be
affectionate, brotherly. I think that's all wrapped up in
this. It's a whole nother thing to be
affectionate toward people and not just be sternly godly.
Sometimes we need to be affectionate beyond the goodness
that we see in God. And a brotherly kindness, love,
This is the last thing he says on this list here.
And you might think, well, why don't you start with that?
Why don't you start with love? Brandon, many of you have seen
in the past as you've studied this and you can see it now that
love is a lot. As you read First Corinthians
chapter 13, you realize love is a lot of things that require a
lot of effort that are actually things on this list.
How can you be loving if you don't know how to be loving if
you're not a good person? Can you be loving if you're not
virtuous, if you're not a good person?
Can you be loving if you don't know what's good and right?
And that's what's backwards about our society.
A lot our society says it's loving if you just accept me how
I am. No that is not knowledge says
that is not true. Love says I don't I love you
enough to not leave you there because if I love you I will
pull and pull and help you from where you stand.
Not just say you're fine, do what you're doing.
You do you. No, that is not love and
knowledge tells us that. So can you be loving without
knowledge? Can you be loving without
self-control? Man, I've been around people who
I thought were superly, superly, super, super good at brotherly
affection. They were like, they made me
feel good when I was around. They were like affection in a
different way. But then there's some things
that happened and they flew off the handle.
They had no self-control. And all of a sudden I was like,
whoa, whoa, whoa, you're not who I thought you were.
Can you be loving if you don't have self-control?
Can you be loving if you don't keep going when it's hard?
Can you be loving if you are not godly?
Because there's things about God that are pure love that we could
never come up with on our own. Can you be loving if you're not
affectionate? I think we might think that, but
then other people disagree. They're like, you're not that
loving. There's things that people see
in us. They were like, well, I thought
I was loving, but you didn't really make anyone else feel
loved. And I think that's why this is
at the end of the list, because that's when you start to really
see it all come together. Now, I don't believe this is the
ending point. I believe this is cyclical.
But don't be afraid if you think you're here, start at the
beginning. Maybe you need to add more
faith. Maybe you need to add more of
the beginning pieces of this process.
And it's cyclical. And this is the life right here.
This is the life we live. We go around and around on this
process. But I hope you at least start to
see that you have direction today.
I hope you see something in this list where you're like, yeah, I
feel like I've got that, but I know I think I need that right
there. And so you keep going.
You add to your faith. That is Peter's first message to
the people in this letter. Add to your faith, verse 8.
Why should I do this? Because for if these things are
yours and abound, you will neither be barren nor unfruitful
in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
So he says, if you just have a little bit of this sometimes in
your life, you're going to you're going to be fruitful,
right? No, he says, if this here, these
are yours and about if you try this one time in your life, it's
not promising good, a whole lot of great things.
But if it abounds in your life and you make this the habit of
your life, like I'm going to keep doing this and keep going.
He says the product will be guaranteed.
If you had a farmer and you could tell him if you do this
thing, you'll be guaranteed a harvest, you'd be a billionaire.
That's what every commercial probably tells these farmers.
If you just get this pesticide or you just get this fertilizer,
you're going to have a unhindered harvest.
It's going to be perfect. The Christians have a guarantee.
If you do this, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in
the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
If you have this perfect Peachtree, but it produces no
Peaches, it's barren and it's unfruitful.
You did all the work. You planted it, you dug the
hole, you, you planted it. You, you fertilized it.
You kept the weeds out of it. You did all the right things and
it produces nothing. It's just a waste.
God does not want our lives to be a waste.
That's the biggest, that's the biggest danger I think in our
lives is that you go through all of it, all the challenges, all
the heartbreak, all the ups and downs, and then for what?
For nothing. He doesn't want that for us.
He wants us to be fruitful. And to be honest with you,
that's one of my fears is that am I doing the right things?
Am I going to look back later and say I I was unfruitful?
I see the results later because I was unfruitful, because I was
not abounding in these things. How do I know that I'm going to
look back later in life and I'm not going to have regrets?
This passage is so comforting because it says if you do this
stuff he just talked about, don't worry about that.
The product will take care of itself.
The results will show because that means it's possible to have
knowledge of Lord Jesus Christ that does nothing for you.
It's possible to have a knowledge of Jesus Christ that
does nothing for anybody else. That is terrifying.
That is demonic. Even the devil's believe and
tremble. The demons believe in tremble.
You don't have to worry. If you just keep adding to your
faith, these things, everything will take care of itself.
You don't have to wonder like what is God going to do with me?
There's some of those questions like God's plan for my life.
You just go. You just go and let the manager
take care of the managers business and you take care of
your business. And if you do that, you will
never be unfruitful in your knowledge of Him.
For he who lacks these things is short sighted or near sighted,
we might say today even to blindness, and it's forgotten
that he was cleansed from his old sins.
Near sightedness For those of you who have eyeglasses, near
sightedness is when you can only see what's near.
You can't see what's beyond your face.
And so some people will be sitting there reading, will be
looking up and ahead of you, but you need glasses to see close.
That's called farsighted. Farsighted, as you can see, far
near sighted is I'm starting to flip myself around.
Near sighted means you can't see past right here.
OK, so near sighted means I can only see what's right here in
front of me. He says if you don't have all
these qualities, you're near sighted.
You can't see past what's right in front of you.
Why is that a problem? Because he says it leads to
blindness because you've forgotten that you're cleansed
from his old sins. You're too near sighted about
your past. It's like you forgot who you
were. You can only look this far back
and you're like, oh, that was pretty good yesterday.
So that's who I am. No, this history is you.
Do you remember where he pulled you from?
Your floor as a person is not, you know, a kind of a Christian
who messed up a few times here and there.
No, that's not your floor. That's not my floor.
Our floor of our life is dead in trespasses and sins.
Ephesians chapter 3. We were dead in our sins.
And so if we act like we can't see back far enough to see where
we were dead, that's nearsighted.
We're blind to see what's past just right here.
We can't see far back enough to see where we came from.
And you know, something that I hear past people have struggled
with addiction. Something those people say is
they say I can go nowhere near these things because I know
where I've been. I know what I've struggled with.
I know what my triggers are. I know that I can't hide my
weaknesses and we need to learn something from people who've
struggled with addiction in that they're aware and acknowledge
what's their challenges are. But sometimes we as Christians
act like I can do whatever I want and I'm going to be fine.
We're blind to where we came from.
We came from the dust of death and sin and we will stay there
if we are not careful to add to our faith.
But also we're short sighted because if you don't add these
things, you're just living for the moment.
Right now. You can't see the consequences
on the other side of right here from our face.
You can't see why oh need to have self-control and brotherly
love. We can't see past the moment.
And so it is short sightedness. And because of that you're just
as good as being blind. If I can't see right here, If I
can't see past right here, I'm blind to what really matters.
He has forgotten. He has cleansed from his old
sins. Therefore, verse 10, brethren,
be even more diligent to make your call and election.
Sure. The Scriptures mention this
phrase a lot about how you are called.
You're chosen. Did you know you can make that
more sure? Whatever anyone wants to tell
you about election, we've talked about that in past studies, so
I'm not going to go into it. Whatever people say about having
been called by God, you have the ability to make that sure you
and your own life can latch onto that and make that a strong
surety. You don't have to be like, did
God choose me? That's not what this is about.
It's about I can make it sure I can be the called of God by
answering the call for sure. You don't have to wonder.
I in my life have struggled with assurance of my salvation
because it just blows my mind. Like how is this real for me?
But he says you can make it sure.
You don't have to be wondering. You don't have to be unsure.
If you are adding to your faith, this will help make you sure.
For if you do these things, you will never stumble.
Stumbling is kind of in contrast to what scriptures often call
the walk of faith, the spiritual race, an upright life, walking
in the light. It's in contrast to think about
stumbling. So what is stumbling?
Scriptures describe falling in phrases like falling from grace.
So you can fall and he doesn't want them to stumble.
So stumbling might be called the process that leads up to
falling. Maybe it's the the sequence of
stumbling steps that leads to a fall.
He doesn't want that. He doesn't want us to
spiritually fall. Spiritually destruction,
spiritually destructive fall is what he wants us to avoid.
And I was reading after people who say, well, it doesn't mean
you're going to lose your salvation, which means you're a
fall. Well, why does he say next you
have an abundant entrance into the Kingdom?
I believe he's contrasting the abundant entrance with stumbling
to fall. Judas, he stumbled and he fell.
Peter stumbled, but he got back up.
This phrase stumble literally means a loss of footing.
That's what your foundation is. That's your foundation for
everything else. And he doesn't want these people
to stumble in the sense that they lose a strong foundation.
So I believe the best way to kind of summarise this is it's
not missing the mark, right? Because we can be living the
life of faith, walking the light and miss the mark and sin.
That's what the definition of sin is.
It's to miss the mark. But if we stumble, it's he's
like classifying it as a downward trajectory into a fall
spiritually, because we're, we're all going to sin.
We're all going to miss the mark, but if you do these
things, even though you missed the mark, you're not going to
fall into a cycle or a pattern of destruct, destructive living.
I believe that's kind of the context of what he's saying
here. We will still sin.
We're not going to be perfect. There's no scripture that says
that. You are never going to argue to
be perfect. But if we do these things,
you're not going to slip into destructive patterns.
You're not going to be lost and fallen for so in an entrance
will be supplied to you abundantly into the everlasting
Kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
Frank has taught on this not too long ago.
It's an abundant entrance. It's not squeaking in like I
think you said by by the skinnier teeth.
It's not just barely getting in. It's an abundant entrance.
If you live your life like wonder, am I going to squeak in?
You're probably not adding to your faith.
If you're adding to your faith, it'll make you sure and as it
makes you sure it'll be an abundant entrance.
Don't doubt it. If you struggle with that, talk
to one of us. You need to work through things.
I've had to work things and do have still have to work through
things. So don't let that linger as an
idea in your mind that is real. God wants you to have an
abundant entrance supplied to us into the everlasting Kingdom of
our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
That's the that's the ideal. For this reason, I will not be
negligent to remind you always of these things Peter says,
though you know and are established in the present
truth. For this reason, he's saying,
because this is the case, I need to keep reminding you.
So what he's saying is you are now aware of this and you're
established in it, and yet this person is still writing them a
letter. How much do you think that
means? We need this.
If you think you can just coast through life and not live in the
scriptures, we're lying to ourselves.
Because he says these people know it and are established, but
they still need to hear it. I still need this or I'm not
going to be. In the right spirit frame of
mind to grasp it. And he wants them to be reminded
always of these things, of the present truth.
Verse 13 yes, I think it is right.
As long as I'm in this tent, it's a temporary earthly
dwelling. It's his body.
His body is a temporary place, His tent.
As long as I'm in this tent to stir you up by reminding you,
knowing that shortly I must put off my tent because I'm going to
die soon, I'm going to lose this earthly body.
This tent as opposed to a house, it's permanent.
It's tent, it's temporary. Just as our Lord Jesus Christ
showed me, He had revelation that showed him he wasn't going
to be here a lot longer. So he's writing this letter as a
final admonition to these people.
Moreover, I will be careful to ensure that you always have a
reminder of these things after my disease.
Isn't that cool? He was writing thousands of
years ago, said I'm going to make sure that you don't lose
this message. And we're still hearing it
thousands of years later. We still have the reminder after
Paul or Peter's been dead for thousands of years.
Wow. For we did not follow, it says.
For we did not follow cunningly devised fables, he says.
The stuff that we're asking you to believe in, it wasn't like
some trick we put together. And that's what people try to
say, right? You've heard people say that,
that the Bible is just like all these people who got together
made a plan to trick everyone, he says.
We didn't follow these sneaky tricks when we made known to you
the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were
eyewitnesses of his. I think he actually says glory.
I don't know if that might have chopped off the end of the
verse, but he says we were eyewitnesses.
The things you're reading are from an eyewitness to it.
Peter saw this with his own eyes.
What did he see? For he received from God the
Father honor and glory. When such a voice came to him
from the excellent glory, who is this for?
He being Jesus, received from God the Father honor and glory.
So like we know this is this guy's real deal because we saw
it happen. He got honor from God the
Father. When, what?
When such a voice came to Him from the excellent glory, and
this is what the excellent voice said to him.
What did he say? This is my beloved Son in whom I
am well pleased. Peter said We heard God tell
Jesus that, God the Father tell Jesus that.
And we heard his voice which came from heaven when we were
with Him on the holy mountain. You remember who wrote this?
Peter, Peter, James, and John went on the mount of
Transfiguration with Jesus by themselves.
Jesus pulled them aside and only those people got to see.
This is an amazing scene. And Jesus was transfigured
before their faces and he's shown and they saw his glory.
Why? To contrast with Moses and
Elijah, to contrast with these people that they revered.
He said, no, no, no, this is my beloved Son.
Hear him. That's what the Father
identified about the Son. And it's in that the Peter's
writing the same guys, we didn't make this up.
We saw God identify Jesus and reveal his glory on the Mount of
Transfiguration. We're not making this up, guys.
This is real. And so we have the prophetic
word confirmed that confirmed it for them, which you do well to
heed as a light that shines in a dark place until the day dawns
and the morning star rises in your hearts.
We're almost done. Please stay with me.
This is some of the most powerful imagery in all of the
scripture. I'm not going to try to get the
lights all turned out right now, but I want you to picture
yourself in a dark place in a dark cave even and I have been
to I think it was the moaning caverns.
You couldn't even see your your hand in front of your face.
That's the illustration here that you would be, that you
would heed the light that shines in a dark place.
If you're in those caverns, whenever someone turns on a
light, everyone's eyes go to it immediately.
You can't help it. Your eyes lock on it like it's
the only light in a dark, dark place, He says.
That's how we need to be living our lives, looking into the
Scripture. Look at God's Word, the
prophetic word. Look at it like it's the only
light in a dark, dark place. Are you looking at the Word of
God like it's the only light in a dark place right now, Or are
you looking at everything else and that's just kind of in the
room with you? It's the only light in this dark
place. The earth right now is a dark
place. In many ways.
It's not a surprise. We need the light that shines
the Word of God in this dark place.
Until what? Until the day dawns and the
morning star rises in your hearts.
What is he talking about here? This is beautiful.
What is he talking about? If you look into the night sky a
lot of times in town you can see this.
You can see some beautiful stars out there.
You can see some some celestial bodies, as First Corinthians
calls it. They're just amazing.
And in the night sky, you see a dark place and there are lights
that are shining. But he wants them to identify
the morning star. What is the morning star?
Well, when you look up at the night sky and you see this, this
is the night sky through the Hubble telescope.
So if you go up in the mountains where you're away from all the
light pollution, you see something closer to this.
You still can't see it all. The telescope helps you really
see it. But these stars just form a
mass. They form a lot of lights that
are kind of unclear as to what's what.
And during this day and time, if you're trying to use that for
navigation, it could be very confusing.
What he wants them to see is the morning star.
Can you pick out the morning star in this sky right here?
You know what the morning star is?
It's a specific star. And even more so if you look in
the Hubble telescope. I'm not an astronomer.
I don't know where the morning star is today.
We know that the morning star is not just a star, it's a it's
actually a planet. It's Venus.
In the morning sky you can see Venus and it's the last star
left standing before the sun comes up.
It's hard to see sometimes in the dark.
This is Venus. If you look next time there's a
sunrise and there's not clouds in the way, look to the east
where the sunrise is coming up. The last star you'll see before
the sun comes up is Venus. It's a planet.
They call it the Morning Star. Who is that?
Revelation 22 clearly identifies?
That's Jesus. Do you see the metaphor building
here? You've been going through
darkness. You're in darkness.
The true light is coming where we live in the presence of the
sun, where we are in living in light right now.
We're living in light, right? You guys see the the the sun is
up. We're living in light.
That's a metaphor for being in God's presence.
But we're in the darkness right now, as if we're in the night,
and he wants us to look while it's still dark, out before the
sun is out before in God's presence.
He wants us to see the morning star.
He wants us to see Jesus and what he says is if you hold on
to this light, the word of God on the Bible up here, if you
hold on to the word of God like it's the only light in a dark
place, what's going to happen is everything else is going to
disappear. All those lights that were
confusing to you and like how do you know what truth is?
How do I know who's the right God and how do I know which
church to be a part of? How do I know it's right on this
doctrinal issue or this issue? He says you hold on to the word
of God and pretty soon it's going to be the only light left
standing. Jesus, the bright and morning
star is going to be standing there.
The truth will be revealed. It'll be clear eventually.
This is true both in eternity's sake, but it's also true in your
individual lives. With the questions you have, are
you wondering about this or that?
Hold on to the word like it's the only light in a dark place.
And eventually this is going to happen.
Truth will become clear. But you may be standing in the
night looking at the night sky and you're like, I don't know
what to believe. Hold on to the Word of God until
the day dawns, the day starts to come up, and the morning star
rises in your hearts. You know why?
This is not just an eternal thing.
Jesus will come back and then we're going to go to be in the
presence of his light. But I know it's also for right
now because he says it's in your hearts.
It's still in our hearts now. So even though we're not in the
presence of the Father, you can have that peace that leads you
to see truth despite the lies, despite the mess, despite the
confusion, the darkness, Jesus, the true light will shine
through. But you have to 1st hold on to
the Word before that day star comes.
This symbolizes the end of the night.
Jesus is the end of the night. He is the day that is coming.
The true light is coming. When you see that day star, you
know the light is on its way. The sun is coming up.
God's coming back to get us. Jesus is coming back.
But right now wait to see the day star.
They will light on this star for navigation in the night sky sky.
If you couldn't pick out the Venus, which they could, they
could pick out Venus to to guide them.
If they couldn't pick it out, they were lost.
They needed it for navigation and today we need Jesus and we
need the word for truth. Side note, if you're not looking
at the Hubble telescope, this will increase your faith in the
magnitude and the power of God. These are photos from the Hubble
telescope so as Christians please use it.
It's mind blowing knowing this first that no prophecy of
scripture is of any private interpretation.
The the people who wrote the word of God didn't give us their
interpretation what they thought God was telling them.
No, it's not a private interpretation.
Therefore we can't privately say I think it means this.
You can think whatever it means. No, God gave them for prophecy
never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as
they were moved by the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit said, I want you to say this, He gave this to
them. However you got that done.
I know that the Holy Spirit spoke through them.
So what that means is they didn't pick what it meant and we
don't pick what it means. God's truth needs to shine
through. And that's the end of chapter 1.
And today, if you have not begun walking in this light, if you
have not identified that Venus, that morning star in the night
sky, I can tell you it's Jesus. And I can tell you that the
Bible is clear about how to be saved and how to become a child
of his. As we've talked today, the Bible
says in Mark 1616, he who believes and is baptized will be
saved. But we're told we can't just,
you know, keep living. Like he said in this chapter, we
have to add to our faith, and that involves repentance.
It means I have to change. I have to go from my way and go
toward God's way. I need to change according to
Luke 13. Three, we need to confess.
Jesus Christ is the Son of God. You can't just say that there's
God out there and all these stars in the sky are all great.
I'm going with all of them. No, there is one morning star,
that's Jesus Christ. We must confess Him and we have
to be baptized, as we already read in First Pier 321.
He already addressed this. These people were baptized and
washed in baptism. First Pier 321.
If you've done that, then you are a child of God.
You may be a strange child of God, but you can come back today
and you can make things right. If you want to do that with in
front of the audience, say you can do that.
If you need to talk one-on-one to make that right.
Whatever we can do today to support you.
If you need to be baptized for their mission, their sins, if
you want to get started in the process working towards that, or
if you need to make something right, please come forward while
we stand on what we see.