Growing in Grace

So you can open up your Bibles to 2 Peter and we're gonna study, you know, we're studying these two letters consecutively as they appear in our Bible and so it just seems like, okay, first letter, second letter, but they're probably written a bit of a distance apart and completely for different purposes, although Peter just wants to encourage that is his heart and that's what God had given him to do. And so both of the letters are inspiring us how to live in difficult times. That first letter definitely gave us a lot more like specifics relationally and I love that, all the examples of how we're to live and this letter, if you had a chance to read through your outline in the study guide, it's a little bit more narrow in its focus. The meat of the first Peter was, you know, walking in humility. The meat of this one, the center of it is watch out for false doctrine. And so we're gonna start this letter by growing in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ. Watch out for false doctrine and then waiting for Christ coming with an expectation and eternal perspective. Peter's convinced that a true knowledge of our Savior coupled with a determination for spiritual growth will help us both detect and reject any kind of subtle deception from false teachers. I don't know if it's okay that I always do this. I'm gonna have to wait until the Lord convicts me if it's not okay. But have you noticed I like to rearrange scripture sometimes. So to put a kind of a theme for this, I went to the last chapter. And so I'm taking verses 14, 11, and 18 and I'm rearranging them that way. And in the last chapter, this is what you would get. Since you are waiting, what sort of people ought you to be in the lives of holiness and godliness? And the type of, the sort of people you ought to be is those that grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. So I feel like that is kind of a theme for us. Since we're waiting, what sort of people ought we to be? The kind of people that grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. And grace for the humble was the theme that we just left off with in 1 Peter. So I appreciate as we head into this book, you know that knowledge is a real theme for us. We pointed out in the study guide that the word know and knowledge appears 13 times. And it's not just an academic, like I've really absorbed this information, but it is much more that intimate knowledge of knowing someone, knowing something. In fact, Vines talks about knowledge this way. To come to know, to recognize, to understand. And we've talked before about how our union with Christ develops into communion over time. That sense of knowing, abiding with Christ. So we better just jump right in here to verse 1. Simon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who have obtained a faith of equal standing with ours, by the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ, may grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. And there's a lot that we can discover in the first two verses. Some of it was pointed out in our study guide, and I want to just leave it there because I want to give us ample time for all of the other great things to come in here. But I do just want to point out that Peter uses the term Jesus, Jesus Christ, three times as he opens up that. Three times he well establishes for us that he's talking about the person, Jesus Christ. And that's going to be important because as we start the next few verses, we'll have the personal pronouns, his, he, him. We want to identify exactly who it is that we're talking about. Have you discovered in life that when you talk about God in general, you can have a wide audience of people that are entering into the conversation. And when you narrow the specifics of God down to Jesus Christ, the audience narrows, right? And so that's why I like that Peter just establishes that we're talking about Jesus here. So let's read verse three.

This book is all by way of reminder. And we're reminded that we know we received the Holy Spirit when we are born again, but now Peter's reminding us of the working of the Holy Spirit, that the Holy Spirit comes into us with the divine nature so that we may be partakers of that divine nature. It's not just like we're marked, we are marked. Like I was thinking about, do you remember the snitches on Dr. Seuss that have the green stars on their bellies? You're all giving me a blank look. I don't know, I've always kind of thought to myself that the Holy Spirit was a little bit like that, like the star on your belly, but go watch the snitches. It's a great little film. But it's not just the marking. It is also this capacity now, he enters in with the divine nature, the nature of God. But God doesn't treat us like we're a remote control car. It's like, oh, I put my spirit in you, now I'm going to run the controls. He doesn't treat us that way. He gives us the ability, and so Peter says that you may partake in the divine nature. So let's keep reading a little bit about that. And so Peter says in verse five,

So let's pause and talk about that a little bit. These qualities that are so eloquently, almost poetically given here. I love how he continues to repeat them, are expressions of the divine nature that has been placed within us, that nature that sort of now tethers us to heaven, and we feel like we almost belong in a different place. We belong to someone else, which we do. But these qualities are faith, virtue, knowledge, self-control, steadfastness, godliness, brotherly affection, and love. Did you find that these words are really similar to what the Apostle Paul mentioned to the Galatians with the fruits of the Spirit? It seems like a complementary list. But let's notice what Peter said about these qualities. He says, if they are yours, if you possess them in increasing measure, so we must own them, possess them, pick them up, work them. I feel like these qualities are like vitamins for a healthy body, or like miracle grow for a productive garden, right? It's like our body can function, but these qualities, if we possess them, if we increase in them, it's like a body that takes in good nutrients and vitamins and that. Maybe you've done this too, but I've gone down to Andrews and bought a tomato plant and plopped it in the ground. Without attention, you get one tomato. You need to give a little bit of attention. If you want a productive garden, you use fertilizer, organic fertilizer, miracle grow, something like that. And so, Peter's saying, if these qualities are increasing in your life, they'll keep you from being fairly unproductive. They will make you productive. They are your fertilizer, is that okay to say? I don't know. I don't think it is. But possessing these qualities is what helps us, I want to say, lean into Jesus, lean into that divine character. And here's what I mean by that. In just another verse, in verse 10, it's going to tell us that if we practice these, we will never fall. The new King James says we won't stumble. The picture that I get, and the reason I say if we lean into, you know how if you're hiking up a very steep hill, how do you do that? You lean into the hill, right? You're facing forward, you're leaning forward. And the reason you're doing that is if you were to stay perpendicular to the hill, you may well fall backwards and you would stumble. But if you lean into it, it keeps you from stumbling. It keeps you from falling. And so that's the picture. sure I have about these qualities that Peter is telling to us. If you lean into the divine nature that the Holy Spirit gives you with your spirit, not with your soul or flesh, just trying to be good, trying to act loving, trying to, you know what I'm saying. If you actually like connect with your spirit and lean into these, they will help you from stumbling. It doesn't mean you're not going to be sinless, but it means you won't stumble backwards. You won't stumble out of your faith. As we think about these qualities, I want to give you time to discuss them in your groups. In fact, there's a question in your study that says, which of these qualities do you sense the Holy Spirit working to improve this season of your life? And I want to give you time to do that. But there's just one of them that I want to point out, and that is the word virtue. And the reason I want to point that out is because I love it, and there is an aspect of virtue that you don't find as the first entry in the dictionary, and that is that virtue means fulfilling the purpose for which something was designed. Something is virtuous when it actually fulfills the purpose for which it was designed. I took a hot shower this morning, and my water heater provided hot water for me. It's done that for 10 years. It is a virtuous hot water heater. It fulfills the purpose for which it was designed. At any point that it stops working, it will no longer be virtuous, because its purpose is to chug out hot water. So what is my purpose? How am I virtuous? What is my purpose in life? Well, we've gone over in our Women of the Word Bible studies before, we've mentioned the first element in the Westminster Catechism that says, ask the question, what is the chief end of man? And the answer to that question is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. That is my purpose. My purpose in life is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. I am a virtuous woman if I fulfill my purpose. And I feel like the word virtue is sort of like a neon sign that lights the way to all those other qualities that are listed, because it will keep us productive. Now the common definition for virtue, maybe the first thing if you looked in your dictionary, was good moral character. And that agrees as well, because if we possess good moral character, we are glorifying God by leaning into his character, leaning into what he is like. But all of these traits are elements of moving forward to bring God glory, to be fruitful and not ineffective. I want to remind you, just a few weeks back, we were in 1 Peter 2. Now think about being productive and fruitful. And this 1 Peter 2.12, it says, keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable so that they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation. So I just thought that that was a good, that knit together really well. Let's pick up on verse 10. Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election. For if you practice these qualities, you will never fall. That's what we just talked about. For in this way, there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. So participating in the divine nature and increasing these qualities, in effect, helps us confirm our calling. We see that God is changing us. We see that element in our life. And we confirm the fact that God called me by name. God chose me. I chose him back. And these things are growing in my life. I can see in my life, it's like, wow, that's not me. Like I wouldn't normally, I wouldn't naturally lean that direction. And so it can be something that confirms our calling. Okay, we want to turn a corner now to this ministry of reminding. I love this in verse 12, how Peter begins to talk about reminding a lot in this paragraph. Therefore, I intend always to remind you of these qualities. Though you know them and you're established in the truth that you have, I think it right as long as I'm in this body to stir you up by way of reminder. Since I know that the putting off of my body will be soon as our Lord Jesus made clear to me. And I will make every effort so that after my departure, you may be able at any time to recall these things. And a window into Peter's heart is opened. And we just see how deeply he cares for the believers, how much he cares for God's church. And he senses that his own days are really short and he wants to make the best use of his time. He wants to leave a legacy. And any of you with a little bit of age to you can kind of relate to that. You begin this in your spirit. It begins to kind of work up in you. It's like, I don't have as many days left as what I already lived. And I want to stir people up. I want to remind them of the things that are true. I want to make my days count. And I really appreciate his phrase, remind you though you know and you're already established in the truth. No matter where we're at in the Lord, no matter how mature we're at in the Lord, we need sound teachers to remind us of the basic truth in the faith so that we stay on course. And sound teachers will always be delighted to remind people of the basic truth of the faith. We in a sense, even though we know the gospel, in a sense we need to relearn it every day. In a sense we need to preach the gospel to ourselves every day. Repetition is the key to learning. Some of you who are teachers, it's repetition, right? You go over and over and over it. And when you've said something the 17th time and you see the light bulb come on in one of your students, you're just like, okay, it took number 17. Good thing I didn't stop at number nine. But repetition is what we need and I feel like that's kind of what's being reminded us. And I'm so grateful for this reminder. We go over the gospel over and over because in our Bible studies, in Women of the Word, we'll just keep doing it again. We'll just pick another book again. We'll keep going over. We're never going to get to the point where we say, oh, I've read that enough. I've done that study enough. We'll never get there. We can keep doing it because the Holy Spirit teaches us and he grows us more and more. All right, this final section that we're going to come to now, and it's a preface to the next chapter and the idea that the false prophets were beginning to say to the people that there is no second coming of the Lord Jesus. And Peter even begins to refute them and he's going to establish reasons right here and he's going to teach us other things, but among some things, establish reasons why the false teachers are wrong. Let's just get into it and you'll see what I mean. Verse 16, he says, for we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. Pause just a minute. Note that there's two opposing options here for a belief system in general or the idea of the coming of the Lord specifically. The two opposing systems are cleverly devised myths or an eyewitness account. And Peter is suggesting that the latter will help us detect and reject the former. Knowing that we have eyewitnesses prepares us to reject people who develop ideas and things like that that are corrupted teachings and secret ideas. And the next chapter is going to be completely taken up with warnings about false teachers. It was a thing in the first century church. False teachers was a thing. It is a thing today. We have the same thing, maybe different variations, a little bit of morphing of some of the teachings. And we'll see as we go through this that Peter's most distressed about the false teaching that the Lord is not coming back. Jesus is not coming back. And that was what his distress was. And you'll see why he was so distressed about that as he goes back in his mind 30 plus years and he begins to tell us now about what happened to him personally as an eyewitness on that mountain when he went up with James and John. Verse 17 says, for when he received, he is Jesus, for when he received honor and glory from God the Father and the voice was born to him by the majestic glory. This is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased. We ourselves heard this very voice born from heaven for we were with him on the holy mountain. And if you worked through your study guide, you went back to Matthew chapter 17 and walked through that experience of what happened. But Peter's saying he's so distressed about the false teaching that the Lord is not coming He saw the transfigured, the glorified Jesus. He saw him with his own eyes, he heard with his own ears the voice of the majestic glory, the voice of God saying, this is my beloved son, listen to him. And it's as if Peter is saying to those false teachers, you have no idea who you're tangling with when you say he's not coming back. Because I saw what he looked like glorified when I was on that mountain, just for a little bit of time. And I didn't know what to say, and I was kind of, you know, all that. But I saw, and that's how he's coming back, and he is coming back, and it's going to look like that. And there was three of us, I don't know why God privileged me to be there, but me and James and John, we were there, and he gave us a glimpse of his glory. I'm an eyewitness, don't tangle with me, I saw it. And so he's telling the believers, you have this, you have our eyewitness account to rest on. And, you know, on that day on the mountain, you know, not only did they see the glorified Jesus, but what did God bless them with? Those other two men that appeared. And so God gave them the representative of the law in the form of, in the person of Moses, and he gave them the representative of the prophets in the person of Elijah. And it's as if God was surrounding him with all the word that came before. All the word that came before and Jesus was standing right there and saying, see, this is all in agreement. This all fits together. And you're going to understand that as time goes by. You're going to understand that the law and the prophets and my son, the word of God in flesh, it all fits together. It must have been a beautiful day. What a glorious experience. I just love it. So Peter tells the believers in verse 19, he says, and we have the prophetic word, which tells us that Jesus will return again, more fully confirmed to which you will do well to pay attention to, as to a lamp shining in a dark place until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. And we also have the prophetic word, which was given us in ages past through the Old Testament. We have it more fully confirmed. We have the law, the word of the law, which expresses God's character and points to the Messiah in the first place. We have the word of the prophets, which enlightens us as to two comings of Jesus, both his first coming and his second coming. And then we have the words of Jesus and the apostles, which tell us what happened when Jesus came to earth the first time. And now Peter is saying, this is going to, Jesus is coming again. And he says, you will do well to pay attention. It's all in agreement. The whole scripture from Genesis to Revelation is in unity and continuity together. And it's really, that's why I love this passage right here. And as we go on, it says, knowing this, first of all, that no prophecy of scripture comes from someone's own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man. But men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. I think this is one of the most well-crafted explanations about the unity of scripture here. And we see in just these last two verses, first of all, that men spoke from God, 40 authors over 1,600 years. Our Bible wasn't just written by a guy who an angel came and told him something. You know, our scripture is so unique in all of religious history. Our scripture, you know, is different than everything else in that we have this vast amount of people that were involved. And as we'll get the next point, I'll just say it. They were carried along by the Holy Spirit. Peter's reminding us of what we have, the treasure that we have in the Holy Scriptures. They were carried along by the Holy Spirit. And that word, carried along, is a word that would be used for a wind blowing into a ship sail. Carried along that way, this wind, and you know, it was a few weeks back that we pointed out 2 Timothy 3.16 that told us that all scripture is breathed out by God. Breathed out, the Holy Spirit breathed upon people for them to put the Holy Scripture into practice. It was inspired and breathed out by the Spirit. And we see that the New Testament writers were eyewitnesses of this majesty. Now, why do we go through this so carefully? I think this has a lot of application and implications for our lives, particularly as mothers, as we're raising our kids. Maybe your kids have said this to me. I had a couple kids that they get up to sixth grade, junior high or so, and they begin to notice the world around them. And they'll say, how do we know, mom, how do we know that the religion we picked is the right one? So they're beginning to notice the world, but they haven't yet formed and, you know, applied all the things. And that's a good question. You want your kids to ask that question. You don't want them to just absorb whatever it is that you say. You want them to investigate on their own and to own it themselves. I feel like this passage, among others, is some of the best material that we have for that understanding of, well, the reason that I have a foundation in what I believe is true is that we have this scripture that, you know, stands the test of archeology and historicity and all of these things. And it tells us the history of where we came from, that God created us, and that he promised he would give a Messiah. And then he did, and how we can trust in him and what our future is. Other religious sacred writings are not that way. So you tell your kids, go investigate it, well, under my tutelage, but, you know, it's like we, so many, so many are just, it's crazy how there's no substantiation. But we have a Bible that can be substantiated, and I feel like this is kind of the heart of what Peter wants the believers to remember and know as he's going to move into the idea of people will confront you with all kinds of false ideas. You need to know. You need to know that we have the word of God more fully confirmed. So we're going to end there, and we have a lot. There's a lot of applications, a lot of implications in this passage, and so I'll pray for you as you discuss. Lord, thank you for this passage and opening up this next book, and Lord, as we go back to the growing in grace and we think about those character qualities that you have listed there, Lord, I just want to ask that even before we talk about them individually, Lord, I ask for each of us in this room, Lord, that you would come and touch us and help us, Lord, to lean in more to your divine nature and to rest upon what you have given us, the potential that you have placed within us, Lord, to be more like you, to look more like you. And Lord, even this week as we may choose one or two to grow in, I pray that you would give us the growing power, Lord. Pray for our discussion groups, Lord, now in Jesus' name, amen. 🎵🎵🎵 🎵🎵🎵 🎵🎵🎵