2nd Peter 1:1-11
"Simon
Peter, a servant and an apostle of Jesus Christ, to them that have obtained
like precious faith with us through the righteousness of God and our Saviour
Jesus Christ: Grace and peace be
multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God, and of Jesus Christ our Lord,
according as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through
the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue: whereby are given unto us exceeding
great and precious promises: that
by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the
corruption that is in the world through lust. And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge;
and to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience
godliness; and to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness
charity. For if these things be in
you, and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the
knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But he that lacketh these things is blind, and cannot see afar off, and
hath forgotten that he was purged from his old sins. Wherefore the rather, brethren, give diligence to make your
calling and election sure: for if
ye do these things, ye shall never fall: for so an entrance shall be ministered unto you abundantly into the
everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ."
Introduction
"This
book was written by the apostle Peter, probably from Rome, shortly before his death
in A.D. 67. While the book of 1
Peter was addressed to the Jewish Christians [The Judeo-Christian Diaspora] who
were spread throughout Asia Minor, this second epistle was written to
Christians everywhere. Peter had a
sense that his death was rapidly approaching, and this letter was written more
or less as a swan song, as he reminded the believers of the things that were
ultimately important. In this
respect it is similar to 2 Timothy, which was Paul's final letter...The book is
basically summarized in the final two verses, which say, "You therefore,
beloved, since you know this beforehand, beware lest you also fall from your
own steadfastness, being led away with the error of the wicked; but grow in the
grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory both now and
forever. Amen" (2 Pet. 3:17,
18)" [The Word For Today Bible,
New King James Version, Introduction To The Second Epistle Of Peter, by Pastor
Chuck Smith, p. 1649, selected parts.]
Things That Are
Precious To Peter
"2nd Peter begins like this, "Simon Peter," I was reminded again, as I was looking at commentaries
and reading scholars, of the endless arguments and debates over who wrote 2nd Peter, add nauseaum. "Simon
Peter," it's amazing
to me. He's going to tell us in
the end of the first chapter, that he stood on the Mount of the
transfiguration, with the Lord. Now there was Moses, and Elijah, and the Lord, and the Father, and James
and John and Simon Peter. So I'm
going to assume that Simon Peter is none other than Simon Peter, as we
begin. Ah, the first letter he
wrote, in light of the fact that Nero, the Church was under persecution, he
wrote to those in the Diaspora, those who had been scattered, who were facing
difficulties from without in many ways. In this second epistle he tells us in chapter 1, that he knows that he
must shortly put off this tabernacle, he must shortly put off his physical
body. He knows that the end of his
physical life on earth is close. And because of that, he writes now to the Church in regards to dangers
within, false teaching, those who would mock the 2nd coming of
Christ, of the important things of our faith. He uses the word "knowledge" 13 times in these three
chapters, and so important, he brings it across in so many ways "that we would
know," and not just an exercise of the intellect, but the epicknosis, the experiential reality of Jesus
Christ in our lives. And we'll
look at that, the necessity of it. And it's a very passionate letter, it's a very passionate letter. He says twice here in chapter 1, and
chapter 3, verse 1, that 'he's written so that we put certain things in
remembrance.' He's reminding us of certain things that
we know. John would say 'I
don't write unto you a new commandment, but an old commandment, what you've
known from the beginning,' and Peter's saying 'I want to remind you of certain things.' Now he understands the importance of that, because he needed to be
reminded of things. I mean, this
is a guy who fell from his own stedfastness, and he's going to tell us in the
end that he hopes that we don't fall from our stedfastness. He's going to remind us to be stedfast,
I mean, here's a guy who was asleep when he should have been praying, he was
talking when he should have been quiet, he was moving forward when he should
have been still, he's a guy with great motives, but he had to learn
self-control, he learned to be solid and sound in what he knew, he learned to
bring certain things in his own life to remembrance. Now no doubt, because Jesus had told him 'When you're
old, you're going to go forward, you're going to stretch forth your hands,
someone else is going to stretch forth your hands,' he knows that crucifixion is ahead of
him. And now he's remembering many things, what are the
great and excellent things now. And it's interesting, he's going to talk to us about our like-precious
faith in the first verse, and then in verse 4, about exceeding great and
precious promises, and it's interesting to see what's precious to him, this
old, burly fisherman, this man's man, no doubt---who had the energy to hack off
somebody's ear. I mean, he was a
man's man, remember when he dove in and swam to shore, it says they brought
that net full of fish in, and it says it was too many for them to pull it in,
Peter went down by himself and pulled it in, a man's man. But now he tells us, 1st Peter chapter 1, verse 7, verse 19, 1st Peter chapter 2, verses 4,
6, and 7 he talks about our precious Saviour, we hear about precious faith, we
hear about precious promises, precious blood. He's an interesting guy, over and over and over he uses this
word "precious." And for this old
burly fisherman, he's decided that certain things are extremely valuable, and
extremely precious. And no doubt,
the worth of those things was magnified in light of the fact that he knew he
was to shortly put off his frame. So he's going to tell us about the things that are very precious,
again. We can get up caught in the
business of life and we can get distracted. We can grow up in the church, and embrace it as a culture,
and sometimes it takes years before we really take hold of Christ for
ourselves. And certainly those
kinds of things that remind us of our mortality and of our human frailty, and
no doubt, some of that was before him, make certain things that the Lord has
held in front of us extremely precious. And he's going to write to the Church about those things so that they
don't forget. So, Simon Peter here, probably about 3 years after his
first epistle, "a servant and an apostle of Jesus Christ, to them that have
obtained like precious faith with us through the righteousness of God and our
Saviour Jesus Christ:" (verse 1) Notice what he puts first here, "a
servant" first, then "an
apostle." You know, if you and I were writing, we
might be tempted to put "an apostle and a servant," strictly because that's
alphabetical order, of course, not because we, you know. Whose he writing to? Listen, "to them that have obtained
like precious faith with us" 'I'm writing to those who have
obtained like precious faith with us---the same precious faith, precious,
valuable, unimaginable the worth of it.' And it's
the same precious faith "with us." Whose he
talking about? He says, he's going
to say in verse 16, "We were eye-witnesses" he's talking about himself and James
and John, the apostles. He says
I'm writing to those who have obtained the same precious faith that we
have. They may be 2,000 years after
this, they may be sitting in Philmont Avenue, you know, 8 o'clock on a
Wednesday night in an old meter factory, but the faith they have is no
different than the faith that we have. 'Because we walked with him and saw him does not give us an
advantage in regards to belief over those who will obtain the same precious
faith.' In fact, remember Jesus said to Thomas, 'Blessed are those who believe without seeing,' so yes, they had an advantage, in
privilege in a sense, they walked with him and listened to him. John says 'We gazed upon him,' Imagine what that was like, 'this Word who came from eternity, we
listened to him, we gazed upon him, we handled him.' But
we're going to get to do that, that's ahead of us, it's on the schedule. But for now, there is a blessing for
us, blessed are those who believe without seeing, that Peter didn't have, there's
a privilege that's ours also. He
writes in the first chapter, "Whom having not seen, ye love; in whom though
now ye see him not,
yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory..." (1st Peter 1:8), 'it's
so unspeakable I can't even say it.' So we have
this great privilege also. But the
basis of it, on both sides, is "the same like precious faith" that the apostles had in the
beginning. He says, 'That's
who I'm writing to, anyone, anywhere that's embraced the same like precious faith
that we have.' [continuing in verse 1] "through the
righteousness of God" King
James says, "and our Saviour Jesus Christ:", the Greek says, "through the
righteousness of our God and Saviour Jesus Christ." he's affirming the deity of the Lord
Jesus Christ right in front, in the first sentence of this second letter, that
Jesus in fact is God, God our Saviour, Jesus Christ.
Grace And Peace Are
Multiplied To Us Through The Experiential Knowledge Of Jesus Christ In Our
Lives
Writing
to us, through the righteousness that's come through him, "Grace and peace
be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God, and of Jesus our Lord."
(verse 2) Now how many of you have been with us
less than, ah, you're just starting here at Calvary Chapel? Anybody, new folks here? Three, four, some of your are so new
you don't even trust me to raise your hand, do you? You don't know what's going to happen to you. Do we make everyone stand up and put on
a hat and dance in circles here? Then I'll put you in remembrance of this, because he's doing this, for
some of us we love to hear this as we go into these epistles, "Grace and
peace be multiplied unto you" that is always the order. It is
never peace, then grace. You never
have peace until you have grace, it's always grace, and then peace. Grow in grace he's going to say, and in
the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. It will be the exercise of our entire lives, even in the ages to come
we're still going to be learning of his mercy and his grace. Grow in grace, he'll sign off, and of
the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. Grace he says, and then peace, and no doubt certainly it's peace with
God, but it's also the peace of God, that we would experience peace. There are a lot of Christians who have
peace with God, because of God's grace, because of the blood of Christ, as far
as heaven's concerned they're at peace, the price has been paid, paid in
full. But they don't experience
the peace of God, because they're tortured by one thing or another. I know that in my own experience. But when we really understand the grace
of God, we have peace with God, and we have the peace of God also reigning in
our hearts. Grace and peace, not just
have some, but "be multiplied unto you". And how
does that happen? By means of, "through
the knowledge of God, and of Jesus Christ our Lord." Now listen, this is the experiential, this is not an intellectual
exercise, this is through the experiential, intimate knowledge of Jesus Christ
in your own life. And look, I see
kids grow up in the church, I see people that have grown up in the church, and
church can become a culture, it can become desensitizing. We can know the songs
and just come sing them because we know them. We can get used to the routine. I mean, we have Christian bumper stickers, and Christian
concerts, and Christian bookstores, they even have Christian night clubs and
dating services! Come on, cut me a
break, somebody! But he's saying
that grace and peace are multiplied to us through the experiential knowledge of
Jesus Christ in our lives. It's
not a set of precepts, it's a person that we walk with, that we communicate
with, that we hear, that we experience. The most profound theology is a personal relationship with the living
Jesus Christ. There is no more
profound theology than that. Everything else is measured off of that, the Chief Cornerstone. So he says, he wants grace and peace to
be multiplied in their lives, and he says, he says through the experiential
knowledge of Jesus Christ and of God. Peter, you know, he's the guy who denied him. He's the guy who pronounced an anathema upon himself, and
then he must hear the rooster crow as he writes this, because it was there on
resurrection morning that Jesus, and Peter, he appeared unto Peter, he talked
to him. And no doubt one of the
first things he said to Peter was, as Peter was going 'Aah, aaah,' he said 'Shalom, peace,' showed him his hands, 'Peter, I
paid the price, and I told you that your faith wouldn't fail, and it
hasn't. And I told you that after
you're restored I want you to strengthen your brethren,' and certainly that's what he's doing
for us as he writes these things to us. He'll put us in remembrance of things. But he understood, through his personal experience with
Jesus Christ, a multitude of grace and peace. Look, we would follow him. You know, Christ is risen, Christ reveals himself to Peter,
speaks to him on resurrection morning. And then they go to Galilee to wait for him as he told them to.
[Comment: And this would have been
after the Last Day of Unleavened Bread, a holy day, which was that Wednesday
three days after that Sunday morning when they saw the stone rolled away, when
everyone would have been headed back to their homes, and these guys lived in
Galilee, so as everyone is headed back to Galilee and their homes, these guys
and the 120 are headed north to Galilee within this returning crowd. Nothing looks amiss to the Pharisees,
scribes and priesthood who may have been on a lookout for them.] Peter, impetuous, impatient, that's why
he's going to be excited about temperance and patience, because he discovered
it later on. But impatient, he
says 'I'm going fishing, I'm going back to the fishing industry.' And the first crisis in the Church, all the apostles go with him. And the Lord has to come and stand on
the shore and call them back again. In the Book of Acts, and he stays at the house of Simon the Tanner,
which was a breakthrough for him, he should have remembered what the Lord said
to him about putting new wine in old skins, because that's one of the main
things he'd see in the house of the tanner. And the next day he's going to hear a voice, as the sheet
comes down from heaven, and says "kill and eat." What does he say? "Not
so, Lord," those
things don't even go together. Three times he has to be told, and God is so patient, and he
knows this is the old three-time guy, you had to tell this guy everything three
times, you follow through, you know. And the third time, Peter's finally getting it. [And it wasn't that God was telling him
to eat unclean food, as we see in Acts 8-10]. And Paul says at Antioch, Peter comes with certain of the
brethren from James, and it says he started to trim his sails, uses an
interesting phrase there, and it says he wasn't walking orthopedao, straight-footedly, according to the
Gospel. And Paul had to rebuke him
before his face, in front of the Church, because he was causing a division,
causing people that could never keep the law to try to go back under the law
[Comment: And that is a misinterpretation of the event. Peter was eating with some Gentiles
there, which Jews weren't supposed to do, mixing with Gentiles, but Peter had
just been shown God (cf. Acts 8-10) was calling Gentiles too now, and that
those in the Church were not to discriminate against Gentiles or separate
themselves from them anymore. When
James and some of the Jewish brethren showed up, Peter moved away from the
Gentiles he was eating with in a discriminatory way, which Paul corrects. It wasn't about any abrogation of the
moral law of the Ten Commandments, as misinterpreted by some. You have to look up the event in the
Book of Acts and read the account.] So Peter when he writes to us and says "Grace and peace be multiplied
unto you" he needed a
multitude of it in his own life. That's why he appreciated it. And he says that comes through an experiential knowledge of Jesus Christ
and of God.
You Are Not A
Christian Because You Perform Certain Things---You Are A Christian Because You
Have A New Nature
"According
as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through
the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue:" not a great percent, not most things, all
things, "whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious
promises: that by these ye might
be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the
world through lust." (verses 3-4) Now, grace and peace be multiplied to
you... "according as his divine power" he gives it to God, it's by the power of God, that's
necessary. Paul talks about those
in the last days that would hold a form of religion, and deny the power
thereof. It's through his divine
power that any of this is real. I
remember the night that I got saved, something real happened. Something real happened in my life and
it is just as real now when I remember it, as it was then. [Comment: He's talking about the divine calling experience real
believers go through, where God reaches down and draws a person to Jesus and
the knowledge that all this, God's Word, the Bible is true, and the
evolutionary fairy tales of man are false (cf. John 6:44). It takes a divine power to crack
through all the deception Satan has deceived all humans minds with. And when this calling and drawing to
God's truth takes place, it's a very real event. I remember a very specific time in my life where I started
to understand God's truth and was drawn into a direct relationship with God, a
period of time where my natural hostility to the things of God and laws of God
dropped away (cf. Romans 8:1-9; Psalm 119).] 'Through his divine power,' he says, 'he has given us all
things that pertain to life and godliness,' and he says it again, "through the
knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue:" To glory, the glory, the outshining of God, and to virtue, both sides of
that, there's a balance. He's
talking about glory, he's going to talk about virtue in verse 5, the things
that should be demonstrated in our lives. And he's going to say, 'but all things have been given to us, that
are necessary for life and godliness, (verse 3b) "whereby are given unto us
exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped
the corruption that is in the world through lust." (verse 4) Through God's divine power, through the knowledge of Christ, through
like precious faith, this new-birth, the divine nature, that new nature, we
have a new nature. A new nature
demands a new birth, that's how it came, a new appetite, a new destiny, a
divine nature, having escaped the corruption that's in the world through
lust. 'He's given us through
great and precious promises, that by those we might be partakers of, we believe
[in] Christ, we've accepted Christ, accepted the Gospel, that we might be
partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that's in the
world through lust.' Look, some of you may struggle with
assurance, and I'm going to say that, because this verse is very precious to me
because of that. Some of you may
struggle with assurance, 'How do I know, Lord? How do I know?' It depends on your theology, you may
struggle with more, 'How do I know that I'm elect? How do I know I'm predestined? How do I know, Lord, that this is real? How do I know when I see you you're
going to say 'Well done, thou good and faithful servant?' You know, because Satan can condemn, and certain believers
would just struggle. I remember,
early in Calvary Chapel, struggling with assurance in regards to some things,
in my own life, studying, and struggling, with my heart before him. And in fact I was studying this
passage. And he said to me, and he
does this sometimes, 'Joe,' it's no doubt who he was talking to, like Simon Peter here. 'Joe, if my promises were good
enough for Peter, for James, for John, Arinais and Chrisostum, for Huss, and
Whitfield and Spurgeon, and Moody, and Billy Graham, why do I have to give you
something different? Aren't my
promises that were good enough for them, good enough for you? There are no other promises.' And it was somehow in this verse in my own life that I
really embraced something, and took hold of something, that he was offering to
me the very same thing he had offered to Peter, to John, and to James. In the privacy of that place where I
sat, reading and studying, in a very real way, he said 'The same precious
promises, like faith, that I offered to them, and through those promises they
became partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruptions of the
world through lust, are the same promises I'm offering to you. They're yours.' Now I had taken hold of them, but somehow in a more full way, in that
moment, I had great assurance, I had great assurance. And if you struggle with that this evening, I want you to
know that those promises are held out constantly to you also, by the Lord. The same promises that transformed the
life of Peter and James and John, and the saints through the centuries, the
same promises. You have to step
out of the boat onto the water. You
have to hear him say, 'Come to me,' the same promises, "whereby are given unto us
exceeding great and precious promises:" now he loves this word "precious." One author I read said there are 7,474
promises in the Bible. I didn't go
back and count them to see if he was telling the truth, by the way. I've heard other people say about
8,000, because they must have read this guy and figured 'I'll round it off,
I ain't gonna count them either.' But that's a reservoir of
promises. "Yeah though I walk
through the Valley of the shadow of Death, I will fear no evil, for thou art
with me." [Comment: Eugene Sledge, a US Marine and believer who went through the
Battle of Pelelui, where multiple thousands of US Marines died in the battle to
secure Pelelui and 10,900 Japanese died in the same battle, constantly recited
this Psalm of David throughout the battle. He survived the war to write "With The Old Breed" describing this and the battle for
Okinawa. He grabbed hold of this
promise, day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment, and God didn't let him
down.] I watched my dad in his
last hours, as he listened to that psalm, and had been in a coma, shake his
head, 'Yes,' and
affirmed that he was still listening, he was still there, though he was out of
touch, he wasn't out of touch with that. 'I will fear no evil, for thou art with me.' 'Trust in the Lord with all your heart,
and lean not to your own understanding, in all your ways acknowledge him,' That's your part, those three things. We all flunk the first one, trust
in the Lord with all your heart,
that's where we're out of the contest. 'Lean not to your own understanding, in all your ways acknowledge
him,' and then the
great and precious promise, 'and he will direct your paths.' That's a reservoir of over 7,000 promises in the Bible. And we call them to mind sometimes,
don't we. "that by these you
might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is
in the world through lust." (verse 4b) "through lust," through desire, desire
for money, desire for power, desire for sex, desire for anything, that what
drives this world is desire, lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, the pride of
life. Having escaped all of that,
because you have a new nature. You
are not a Christian because you perform certain things. You are a Christian because you have a
new nature. And some people say, 'That guy goes
to Calvary Chapel, but my neighbor, he's a nicer guy than he is.' Maybe he is nicer than you, that's a shame. 'And he's kinder. And you mean to tell me that because,
well, he must be a Christian too.' Well, wait a minute, not unless he's a
partaker of the divine nature, not unless something eternal and divine has been
planted inside of him, that's what makes you a believer, and that's the different
between a believer and an unbeliever, is you have a new life-force planted
within you, you've been born-again (cf. John 3:1-8; Acts 2:38-42; Romans
8:1-9). Not with corruptible seed,
with incorruptible, with the Word of God. And it's a shame when a Christian acts like a scoundrel. We don't get into heaven [the kingdom
of heaven] by performance. I'll
tell you the shame, some Christians are going to get in with the seat of their
robes smoking. [Comment: now this
is where differing parts of the Body of Christ disagree somewhat, based on what
the apostle Paul said in Galatians 5:19-21, if your lifestyle is so bad, just
like the world's, you ain't gonna be there, and that isn't me, it's the apostle
Paul saying that. So Calvary
Chapel's theology disagrees with mine somewhat, even though I know what he's
getting at. None of us will be
totally sinless when we die. But
we all are supposed to be progressing in the day-to-day sanctification
process.] All their works burnt up
like hay, wood, and stubble (cf. 1st Corinthians 3:11-15). But I would say this, you don't have an
excuse to live carnally because it says 'Let those who name the name of
Christ depart from iniquity.' And it says, 'Let a man examine
himself, to see if he's in the faith,' if you have had no change in your life, and you're still
living in sin, you need to sit alone with Jesus, have an experiential knowledge
of him, and take inventory, and make sure that you've taken hold of those great
and precious promises. Because
there is power, it says there, and that is life-changing power. [And that is power to overcome sin, and
John defines sin in 1st John 3:4 as being the transgression of God's
law. So if you ain't overcoming
sin in your life, you may not be in the faith, is what Pastor Joe is
saying. Examine the evidence in
your life. We in the Churches of
God tend to go through this examining process of 2nd Corinthians
13:5 once a year, around Passover time. It's not a bad practice at all, is what he's saying.] Hold yourself to the same standard you
hold me to (cf. 1st Timothy 3:1-13, see http://www.unityinchrist.com/1stTim/1stTimothy3-1-13.htm). I'm sure you don't want a pastor whose money-hungry, because
you see enough of those guys on TV. So you don't want to come in here and have me say 'Aye know there's
five of you gonna give us a THOUSAND DOLLARS this evening! PRAISE the Lord!' That's why you're here, because you don't want that. You don't want me up here, swerving,
drunker than a skunk, you don't want me drunk. You don't want to find out I have a harem somewhere. [laughter] Now wait a minute, you should hold yourself to the same
standard that you hold me to. If
we've been partakers of the divine nature, there is life-changing power in the
Gospel of Jesus Christ, and I appreciate being free [he means free from sin],
and I appreciate being alive, and I appreciate being set free from what my life
was. I'm alive, I wake up in the
morning, you know, if I'm looking for Colombian or Hawaiian, it's coffee
beans. I wake up in the morning,
all I need is a cup of Java and my Bible, the sky is blue, I'm in another
world. I am free and alive. And I'm not afraid to lift my head and
say 'Lord Jesus, come today! Come
today.' So, it says here that there should be a
new nature that has been planted in us by these exceeding great and precious
promises, and that through that new nature, that divine nature, because it's of
a different birth than your physical body, and because it's of a different
nature, that it has different appetites, and because it has different appetites
it's drawn to different things than the world, that hasn't escaped, because of
it's own lusts, it's own desires. The appetites of unsaved people are the things of this world, and
they're never satisfied. That's
why you see millionaires in Betty Ford Clinic. If money made people happy, they wouldn't have to have
rehabs for rich people. But you
and I have a different destiny now, a hunger for something different, where we
can actually say 'Come quickly Lord Jesus,' where we can lift our hearts and our
minds above the pains of this world sometime and think, you know, we have a
different destiny and a different future, partakers of glory.
'Add To Your Faith,
Virtue, Moral Excellence, And Then To Your Virtue Add Knowledge'
Now,
he's called us to glory and virtue, he says now in verse 5, there's an exhortation to us in
regards to the way we live, he says, "And beside this, giving all diligence,
add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge;" Your translation might say "because of
this", it's causative. The sense
of it is, 'In light of this, give, giving all diligence,' now it's active [grammatically] an
injunction to you and I, "add to your faith" now this is not to be saved, but he's
saying 'OK, you are saved, you have this divine nature. Now in cooperation with the Father, be
diligent to furnish,' is
the word "add" there, 'or supply to your faith, your saving faith, your
belief in Christ,' you know it isn't enough to say 'Oh I'm a Christian,' he's saying now there's something to be
demonstrated if that divine nature is in there, you don't wait till you get to
heaven [into the kingdom of heaven] to be like Jesus, there should be a change
now in our lives that's observable. So he says now to us, and look, he changed, slowly, but he changed. "And beside this, giving all
diligence, add to your faith virtue;" 'now supply to your faith, or furnish to your faith,' first he says, 'virtue.' It could be translated "praise," the idea is "moral excellence." If you say that you believe, and you're
a partaker of the divine nature, you have the like precious faith, there should
then be a "moral excellence" about your life. If you're a partaker of a divine nature that no longer has
the same lusts that unsaved people have for things in this world, one of the
things you should take heed to and pay attention to is there should be moral
excellence, there should be virtue that you should add to your faith. And then to your virtue, to your moral
excellence, there should be knowledge. Now, not epicknosis now,
a practical knowledge, an understanding, he wants us to understand. [That would be a Biblical
understanding, doctrines, Bible teachings, etc., knowledge of the Word of
God]
'Add To Your
Knowledge Temperance, Self-Control, And Then Perseverance'
"and
to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience
godliness;" (verse 6) And then he says, "and to knowledge" your understanding of
what's going on [spiritually], "temperance;" "self-control" is the idea [not just
the abstinence from alcohol as the word has been misapplied]. So here we are as a Christian, I'm
saved, now there should be some change in my nature, I'm a partaker of the
divine nature, so there should be a "moral excellence" about my life, and I
need to understand that, there should be knowledge there [Biblical, doctrinal],
knowledge then, attached to that. And because of that understanding, he says, one of the things we should
immediately exercise is "self-control." It should be one of the fruits of the Spirit (cf. Galatians 5:22-23), it
should be something that is being demonstrated in our lives. "and to temperance" then "patience;" which is "perseverance." "Self-control is in regards to
pressure, "patience, perseverance" is under pressure. So there are different kinds of pressure. Ah, self-control to the pressure of
temptation. Of things demanding,
and then this other kind of patience, it's "as you're in the pressure itself,
you're bearing up under it, it has to do with the strength to be in there. "and to patience[,] godliness;" and it's "piety," it's made of two
words that mean "well-devout" and it speaks of devotion. To our temperance, to our self-control,
and to our perseverance there should be devotion, we should be devout. I hear people talk about devotions in
their home, and we should have them, those are good things [what our church
denomination calls 'prayer & Bible study', usually done when we get up, but can
be done anytime during the day]. But devotions without devotion will never produce anything. In the life of a mother and a father
there has to be observable devotion. If children are able to observe devotion individually, in the life of
the mother, father towards Christ as Lord, not just Saviour but as Lord,
there's devotion, it's infectious. There's too many homes where there's devotions, you know, we have this
rule, we do this [our prayer & Bible study time], and I think we should
read together, and there's devotions, but they see a lifestyle that contradicts
the very thing they're saying, and it has no power. So this word godliness is to be well devout, it speaks of
devotion, there's to be devotion in our lives. If Christ is our Lord he died for us, he's paid the price in
his own blood, he's offered us these great and precious promises, we should add
then to our faith, he says, and to our belief system moral excellence, and
understanding that goes with that, and because we're understanding we should be
self-controlled, we should endure the pressures of life [perseverance], we
should be devout.
'To Godliness, Our
Devotion, Add Brotherly Kindness, And Then Agape-love'
"and
to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity. For if these things be in you, and
abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord
Jesus Christ." (verses 7-8) And we should add to that "brotherly
kindness". Tough, huh? You look around this room, you've got a bigger family than
you ever wanted. A lot of brothers
and sisters here. Of course the
Old Testament says he puts the solitary in flocks, you know, he gives us
family. Brotherly kindness should
be part of what's demonstrated in our lives. I think the Body of Christ is always healthier when there's
brotherly kindness. Our culture,
here, should defy every cultural expression in the world. There is no excuse, and I don't care
what kind of prejudice we were raised with, I don't care what kind of
background we have, all of that stops at the door. This is a different culture and a different society
here. Our grandparents all got off
the boat after the Flood, all of us. When they take the big family picture, we're all in there together. Ok? We should carry that with us into this world, and try to
infect this world with that. But
when we come here there's none of that stuff out there, that should be alive
here. There's a brotherly
kindness, and then add to that, the divine, the sacrificial love [God's agape-love,
called "charity" in the King James version]. No doubt Peter remembers Christ saying "By this shall all
men know you're my disciples, by the love you have one for another. And a new commandment I give to you,
that you love one another as I have loved you." Not
just that you love one another, but you love one another sacrificially. And no doubt he's filled, though he's
putting us in remembrance, that he's filled with remembrance of those things. He says this in verse 8, look, "For if these things be in
you, and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the
knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ." Look, this is a
great check-list. I go back
through this and think, 'I need to add a little bit more temperance to my
life,' you know, this
is a great thing to go back, and look, do you feel, are you in a place in your
life where feel like, 'You know what? I'm cold, I'm in the desert, I don't sense his presence,' we come up with all of this jargon to
try to describe sometimes a luke-warmness that can creep into our lives. He says if these things are in you,
first place, you're not just in church because your parents go, because it's a
culture, you personally get alone with Jesus Christ, you sense his presence,
you hear his voice. You sense his
leading, you know the conviction of the Spirit, you have a real relationship
with Jesus Christ. And in that you
realize that you have this connection with heaven, that he's given you this
divine nature. And then go back
and add, 'OK, Lord I want to do this knowledgeably, I want self-control, I
want temperance, I want a devoted life. I want Lord your love to be shed abroad towards the brethren, and in a
sacrificial way to this unsaved world. I want you to find your way through me with all of that.' Because it says, "For if these things be in you, and abound, they
make you that ye shall neither be barren
nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ." People come to me all the time, 'I want to be in
ministry, I want to be in ministry, I want to be in ministry,' and I think what you're saying is you
want me to die so you can have the pulpit, I understand, you don't want to help
in Sunday school, and you don't want to weed the gardens out front, and you
don't want to hand out bulletins, you want me to die so you can have the
pulpit. You only think you
do. What it says here, 'if
these things are in you, you will have the ministry in you,' it isn't being in the ministry, where
you have this strange idea. In the
Book of Acts the apostles didn't go into the ministry, the ministry went into
them. When the Holy Spirit fell,
the ministry went into them. And
he says 'if these things are alive and active in you, there's no way you
can ever be barren or unfruitful.' You want to touch other people's
lives? And you want to see the
Gospel of Christ spread? Then we
should be living Epistles. More
people are going to read you than will ever read the Bible. And he says 'If these things are
alive, they abound in us, we will never be barren,' barren is idle, the idea is 'we're
not gonna be pew-potatoes that don't accomplish anything, we'll never be
unfruitful if those kinds of things are cooking in us, they're going to touch
the lives of other people.' Even people at work that give you a hard
time, I guarantee you, if you are self-controlled, and you're temperate, and
you have love, they may hassle you and give you a hard time, and make fun of
you because you have a Bible in your desk or whatever, but I guarantee you, the
moment they hear their grandma or ma has cancer, they are going to come and
find you and say 'Would you do me a favour, would you pray for my mom?' Because you may not think that your witness is going out, but it is,
because you are the light of the world. Light is not heard, it's seen. And they watch. You're the
salt of the earth. That's tasted,
it's not heard. [see http://www.unityinchrist.com/wwcofg/wearesalt.htm] And Peter says 'If these things are in you, you will never be
barren or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.'
It's Time To Soar
With The Eagles Instead Of Flocking With The Prairie Hens
Look
at verse 9, "But he that lacketh these things is blind, and cannot see afar
off, and hath forgotten that he was purged from his old sins." He who doesn't have these things cooking in his life, he
can't see properly. He's not
functioning up to the par of the new nature that he has. Charles Swindol in 2nd Peter, and I think that's where I heard it a long time ago, I just have the
note here, but I always have to think 'What in the world did I write that
there for?' He tells of an old tradition amongst
the Navaho and Hopi Indians and how they tell the story of this eagle, the
mother eagle, and one of her eggs fell out of the nest and rolled across the
ground and rolled up to this prairie hen. And prairie hens being as smart as prairie hens are, she put it with her
eggs, and didn't notice that all her eggs were this big and one was this big,
and sat on there, and hatched it with her other eggs. And that this eagle, eaglet, hatched with these prairie
hens, and grew up with these little prairie hens, and ran around on the ground
with the prairie hens and acted like a prairie hen, and ate what prairie hens
eat, and rubbed the feathers on his wings and acted like a prairie hen. And one day they were all there
together, and all the prairie hens went 'Ohhhh,' and looked up and there was this eagle
just soaring, and he said, 'What is that!?' And they said, 'That's an eagle,
man. Look at that thing, that is
an eagle. Imagine soaring through
the sky instead of running around here with stupid prairie hens on the ground,' and the eagle said, 'I wish I
could,' and the other
prairie hens said 'Don't even bother, you're a prairie hen, don't even think
about it.' And of course, the Hopi Indian
tradition is that he went on and lived his life with the prairie hens and died,
a prairie hen. It's just a story,
it's not [loud laughter] It's a
story, you don't have to go 'Aaah,' if you get too sad you won't learn. [laughter] You're supposed
to learn from this. This shows that all along he had the potential, he had the
capacities, everything he needed to be an eagle was in him. We've been partakers of the divine
nature, everything we need, for faith, virtue, temperance, patience, brotherly
kindness, love, it's all there. It's all there. We don't
have to be the kind of Christians that bumble around like prairie hens, 'oh
man, look at that, wish I could, look like that,' 'Don't even bother, man.' Don't
listen to that. God is not looking
for people that are qualified, he's looking for people that are available, if
he can find a life that's given over to him, who knows what might happen. 'If those simple things are in
you, there's no way you'll ever be barren or unfruitful in regards to the Lord
Jesus Christ. But if they're not
there, you've forgotten,' he says, 'he that lacketh these things, he's blind, he can't see afar
off, he's forgotten that he was purged from his old sins. He's forgotten who he is, his
beginnings, he's forgotten where he's come from, and he can't see where he's
going, he's lost perspective.' I'll tell you, because if you remember
you were purged from your old sins, how can you not be patient and loving with
other people? You know, people say
to me, 'How you doing?' and I always say 'Better than I deserve.' Now if I do
that in a restaurant, I'll hear a waitress say 'Oh Honey, that's not true.' I'll say, 'Oh yea, I'm not going to hell.' [laughter] 'I deserve to, and everything this
side of that is gravy.' And then they just, 'What do you
want?' [loud
laughter] It's a great
reminder. Because if you remember
the price that was paid for you to be purged of your old sins, how can you not
be gracious or kind to someone else? If you remember where you're headed, an inheritance, incorruptible,
undefiled, that fadeth not away, how can you not be gracious and loving to
other people? It says somebody who
doesn't demonstrate these virtues is giving evidence that they're blind, they
can't see afar off, they've lost perspective, they can't see ahead, where
they're going anymore, and they've forgotten that they were purged from their
old sins, they lost perspective in this whole thing.
'Wherefore, Give
Diligence To Make Your Calling And Election Sure'---Are You Worn Out?
"Wherefore
the rather, brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election
sure: for if ye do these things,
ye shall never fall: for so an
entrance shall be ministered unto you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom
of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ." (verses 10-11) They go together, to "make your calling and election sure", certainly if there's, God wouldn't
call somebody if he hadn't elected them, Peter's not arguing about anything, he
says "make your calling and election sure." You
know, it's through his power, his divine nature has been passed to us, great
and precious promises, it's the same kind of faith, "make your calling and
election sure: for if ye do these
things," he's asking
you to cooperate with the new birth, what the Father's done in your life, if
you do these things, not to be saved, but to grow in Christ, to mature, we're
saved by grace through faith, but there are good works, foreordained, that we
should walk in them. "for if ye do these things, ye shall never fall." Now that's a great and precious promise. Isn't it? If
you do these things, you shall never fall. I need a dose of that continually. "For so" he
says, "an entrance shall be ministered unto you abundantly into the
everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ." (verse 11) What a great promise, he takes us all the way to
glory. Now, you know, sometimes we
can get worn out, and sometimes we can get tired as believers, sometimes we can
get discouraged. [Tell me about
it.] And no doubt sometimes that's
because God is taking us through something that's a mandatory course, not an
elective, and we're going to learn certain things. Paul said, 'I've learned through my weakness strength
is made perfect.' I can agree with that, I haven't
finished that course yet. I just
want to take the correspondence course on some of these things. But I remember a time in my life, just
being tired, tired of my own failings, tired of things going on around me, and
saying, 'Lord, you said whoever is the least in your kingdom is greater than
John [the Baptist].' and I said, 'Today, that's all I want, I will be the least, just I want to go to sleep tonight,
and when I open my eyes I want to be in heaven, I don't want to wake up
tomorrow. And I don't need any
titles, I need nothing special, I'll be the least. You just let me inside the gate, and you give me a kingdom
cup, and a kingdom blanket, and I'll just sit against the wall and be the
kingdom beggar. Everybody who
comes in will walk by me, I'll be the least.' That's how
tired I was. [Pastor Joe just
described how I feel.] And I'm
glad he didn't listen to me. Because he says that for you and I there can be an abundant entrance into
the kingdom of God, because this life will go by, snap! like that. And then eternity will be upon us, and it will never
end. And you can only lay up those
treasures in heaven, while you're here. You'll get a chance [to enjoy them] when you get there. And it says for you and I that there's
crowns of righteousness, crowns of glory, crowns of joy, that when we get in
the scene around his throne, and the cherubim look up, and they look at him,
now because he is infinite, every time, you know that's why Peter in the 1st epistle says that our inheritance is incorruptible, undefiled, and then he says
it fadeth not away, it never gets old. This gets old for some people, I watch them, they first come here,
they're excited, it's time to hug each other, first it's a little bit strange,
but then they're huggy for a while, 'Hey, how you doing, how you doing?' and then they change their seats, 'Don't
sit there, he might hug you,' you
know. When they first come they're
excited, they're singing, they're clapping, and then it's like 'Oh, can't he
learn a new song? Do we have to sing this again?' and you know, this can kind of gets
old. It shouldn't, that's a shame,
because then you see the same person when they're broken or something's gone
wrong in their life, and they're singing the same song with tears running down
their face, now it's new again. But in heaven it says every time the cherubim look up and see him, and
they have four faces, face of a man, face of an eagle, face of an ox, face of a
lion, so every time they look up their minds are blown, and they fall down and
say [more like shout] 'Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, who is, and was
and who is to come!' They never say 'Can't we learn a new
song? We've been singing this
forever.' Because every time they look up they
see something they had never seen before, and it says then the saints fall down
and cast their crowns. And I
decided, you know, he saved me, I was dead in trespasses and sin, and I'm saved
by grace and faith, not of myself, not that I could ever boast. But I'm doing what I'm doing because
there are good works foreordained that we should walk in them. And you can't beat the program, because
he saves us when we don't deserve to be saved, he calls us his sons and
daughters when we never deserve to be called his sons and daughters, he gives
us a new nature, he calls us to ministries that we can walk in, ways that we
can serve, he rewards us for the work that he does through us, when we yield to
him, and then when we get to heaven [kingdom of heaven, because it ends up on
earth, cf. Revelation 21:1-23] we get to throw our crowns before him because
then we will know ultimately they were all his anyway. So I decided when I get there I want
have something to throw. I don't
want to just be sitting there with my cup saying 'That must be fun, can I
throw cups too? You know, I'm the
kingdom beggar.' And you don't want to be there with a
little beanie hat with a propeller on it...I want to hear him say 'Well done,
thou good and faithful servant,' And I was tired at that point in my
life. And I thought, you know, 'I'm
blowing it, I'm not being a witness, my earthly father would be ashamed of me
if he knew the way I was acting right now, I know my heavenly father is ashamed
of me,' and because I
was young, I thought, 'He's just there tapping his foot, with a stick, with
a yard-stick, waiting for me to come and pray, and he's just gonna whack
me.' And what he showed me that night was
that I had the stick in my hand, and I was just re-beating him. He had paid the price in full. And when he said to me that I was
justified, sanctified and glorified, it was by his completed work. And his grace overwhelmed me. It's all part of a growing
experience. And I decided, you
know what, I don't want to be the kingdom beggar, I want an abundant entrance
into the kingdom of God. And it
does something very interesting here, too. It says in verse 11, "for so an entrance shall be" see that word "ministered unto you abundantly"? That word "ministered" there is the word
"supplied" or "furnished", it's the same word in verse 5, where it says "And beside this,
giving all diligence, add",
it's the same word there "add", where it tells us that we should "furnish" to
our faith, that we should "supply" to our faith, these things. He's given them to us, they're part of
our nature now, he says, 'then supply these things, that we should
furnish,' and it
says, 'if we do this we shall never fall, for so an entrance shall be supplied unto us.' He's saying to us, 'if you supply
these things, you're going to be fruitful, and if you do that, I will then supply' same word, 'unto
you an abundant entrance into the kingdom of God.' You know, it's interesting, in John chapter 14 it says there, 'Let
not your heart be troubled, if you believe in God, also in my Father's house
are many mansions, if it were not so I would have told you, lo I go to prepare
a place for you, that where I am you may also be, and if I go to prepare a
place for you, I'll come again to receive you unto myself.' He says that he's preparing a place for us, in his
Father's house, a mansion. Then over about in verse 26 of John 14, he says, 'If you keep my
commandments, if you obey, then my Father and I, we will come and dwell with
you.' It's the only other place where that
word "mansion" is used, 'We will dwell with you.' He says, 'I'm going to heaven to prepare a place for you,' it took him six days to make heaven and
earth, he's been preparing a place for us for 2,000 years. Imagine what that's going to be like.
[Comment: Do you want to read
about that mansion, at least some of it's size, dimensions and
composition? Read Revelation
21:1-23, or log onto http://www.unityinchrist.com/revelation/Revelation%20%2021-22.htm. At the very end of the Millennial
Kingdom of God on earth, just after the new heavens and new earth are created,
this "mansion" comes down to earth, landing in the approximate location of the
Middle East. But first in time
sequence comes 1st resurrection to immortality, the Wedding Feast of
the Lamb, then the 2nd coming of Jesus Christ with the saints, where
he lands on the Mount of Olives, and it splits in two (cf. Zechariah
14:1-15). Then we rule with Jesus
over mankind, until the meltdown of planet earth and the universe, and the
creation of the new heavens and new earth. That's when our "mansion" comes down from heaven, what
amounts to God's throne coming to earth, the new Jerusalem, the heavenly city
Abraham was waiting for.] What he
asks in return is, 'You keep my commandments, and my Father and I will
come, and we'll make you into our mansion,' [i.e. he's talking about God the
Father and Jesus Christ dwelling within us through the indwelling Holy Spirit,
which is what the entire 14 chapter of John is about, really. See how obedience and the receiving of
the Holy Spirit go together, which then enables greater obedience, as we're
filled with the divine nature?] Now I get the feeling we get the better end of the deal here. I'm a fixer-upper here, I'm not a
mansion. He says if we'll obey his
commandments, he'll come and make us his mansion. Same word he uses earlier in the chapter, and the only place
you'll find it is in John's Gospel. He's preparing a place for us, a mansion in glory. Here he says, 'If you will
furnish, I've supplied, now add to your faith these things. I've supplied them, they're in you, you
have a divine nature, they're there, it's your nature now. If you'll supply those things to your
faith, what you believe, I will furnish for you, because you'll be fruitful,
you'll never fall, an abundant entrance into the Kingdom.'
Do You Really Know Christ?
If
you're here tonight, and you don't know Christ as your Saviour, what does all
this sound like to you? When you
die, what are you expecting to happen? Peter was getting ready to be crucified. He knew that. And he talks about great and precious promises that were keeping him at
that time, and will keep us. Do
you believe when you're dead, you're dead, and that's all there is and there
ain't no more? What's the basis of
it? What's your proof? Tell me about the experiment. How many times have you done it? Whose come back to tell you? You don't know anybody who came back to
tell you, because you believe when they're dead, there ain't no more. So how can they come back and tell you
it's true? 'When you're dead,
you're dead, that's all there is and there ain't no more.' So nobody can come back and tell you it's true, because of
what you say is true. But Jesus
was dead for three days, and he got up from the dead, there's an empty tomb in
Jerusalem, and he says to us that if we will come to him and ask forgiveness of
sin, if we'll believe that he died in our place, that he took the penalty for
our sin, that we then can have eternal life. [And that is the basic Gospel message of Jesus Christ. see, http://www.unityinchrist.com/misc/WhatIsTheGospel%20.htm] Christianity is not a religion, it's a relationship. Jesus didn't come to leave us a
particular denomination, he came to give us life. And I'm not against denominations. But do you know him this evening, yourself? Are you saved through the experiential
knowledge of him? I went to church
for years. I sang 'the B.I.B.L.E. that's the book for me,' when it wasn't. I sang 'Jesus loves me, this I know,' when I didn't. I would go to church Christmas Eve when
it got real cold, and we were half drunk, because it was a late service and we
could get in somewhere warm finally, and I sung all the Christmas hymns. I'll tell you this, when I got saved, I
sang those hymns with tears running down my face. Because they exploded with light and with life...[transcript
of a connective expository sermon on 1st Peter 1:1-11, given by
Pastor Joe Focht, Calvary Chapel of Philadelphia, 13500 Philmont Avenue,
Philadelphia, PA 19116]
related
links:
We
are the light of the world and the salt of the earth. How can we live that way? See, http://www.unityinchrist.com/wwcofg/wearesalt.htm
What
is the Gospel? See,
http://www.unityinchrist.com/misc/WhatIsTheGospel%20.htm
What
are the "mansions" we will inherit? See,
http://www.unityinchrist.com/revelation/Revelation%20%2021-22.htm
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