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Welcome to Community Bible Fellowship's sermon podcast. For more sermons, click on the sermons tab. We hope you enjoy today's message. Thanks for listening. Well, good morning. I've got my books, I've got my water, I've got my throat lozenger, I've got my Kleenex, got everything I need, and more water. Unless anybody has a bowl of chicken soup or something. Honey, have you got? I'm so pampered. Appreciate your prayers this week.
This is a real privilege and an honor as we open up a new study in a new book, Second Peter. We can just turn there now. And what a joy to continue with the Apostle Peter and to dig deeper into his words. And so we just want to spend a short amount of time this morning to introduce this epistle and to review a little bit of where we've been with, with first Peter. Imagine, uh, unimaginable suffering that someone might go through, or, um, unbearable loss that someone might experience.
How would you come alongside that person? What would you say to them, especially as a believer? This is what Peter did in his first book. These were believers for their faith, for what they believed and how they were living, were suffering beyond anything that we can really identify with. They were being drug off to prison, challenged, intimidated, put to death, tortured, to recant what they believed and to turn from it. An e- an effort to completely destroy this new faith. So first Peter was this raging open war, roaring lion attack against the church.
Not, uh, sneaky at all. Open war, openly declared, coming at them. And so Peter, Peter dealt with that. And just to re- review a little bit about the Apostle Peter, I just love the Apostle Peter. Uh, I just identify, and I know you do too, most of you that I've talked to identify with, with the man Peter. And if we reflect back to, uh, Luke twenty two, the account that Luke gives us in that upper room as the disciples were enjoying the first communion, Jesus shared that one of you is going to betray me. Now that led to a quiet discussion between the disciples of, well, which one of us is going to betray him, which shortly led to an argument and a discussion about which one of them was the greatest, was going to be the greatest in the kingdom, which led to Jesus giving a short lesson on not lording it over one another, not being like the Gentiles, but the greatest among you will be servant of all, which led to Jesus
turning to Peter, who must have won the argument between the, the disciples, and saying, Peter, saying, Simon, Simon, Satan has demanded to sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith will withstand, and that once you have turned again... Oh, we're not even to this yet, John. Once you have turned again, strengthen your brothers, which led to Peter saying, Lord, I'm ready to go to prison with you. I'm ready to die for you. Even if the rest of these guys desert you, I never will.
Which led to the Lord saying, this very night, you'll deny you even know me three times before the cock crows. So Peter experienced great defeat. Peter had a great fall. Peter had great pride. But Peter had a great restoration, didn't he, with the Lord? And he was told, not only will you turn again and return, but you'll strengthen your brothers. And then he was told to tend my lambs, to feed my sheep, to tend my sheep. So these epistles really are the culmination of this great apostle's life as Peter the apostle to fulfill that ministry that the Lord had given him.
So First Peter really, if we summarized it, was strengthening the apostle Peter writing to strengthen the believer against the attack from without. That was first Peter. Now second Peter continues on in that same spirit of strengthening the believer. But instead of this outward open declared war, it's a much more subtle attack now. It's the attack from within, the battle within. To strengthen the brethren, to strengthen the believer against the battle of false teaching that's going to creep in. Now you remember that this has been very effective for Satan throughout all history, hasn't it?
This false teaching, this whispering. Where did it start? Well, it started right in the beginning, right in Genesis, right in Genesis three in the garden, when God had revealed himself to his creation and was in relationship with his creation in paradise, walking in the garden, perfect communion, perfect marriage, perfect humanity, a perfect world. Satan comes along and says, has God really said? Has God really said? That's the heart of false teaching. Are you sure? Are you sure God really said that? And so, instead of suffering and loss and unimaginable hurt and pain, through the tactic of terror to create fear, to get the believer to reject Christ and run from the church.
Now the campaign is distortion, deception, misdirection, and division, and the resulting false teaching. The tactic is propaganda. Very, very powerful tactic of war, misinformation, changing the truth. In First Peter, the defense that Peter li- outlines is to remember, to remember your salvation, to remember that the Lord is coming again, to remember there's a purpose in this suffering and a great encouragement in all of that. In second Peter, the defense is going to be built around a key word, and that word is, is knowledge.
You need to know some things as a believer. Knowledge that leads to right thinking. The foundation of the truth. This is what, uh, Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, tell me what a man believes, and I'll tell you what he'll will, he will do. Tell me what a man believes, and I will tell you what he will do. People act on their convictions. They live according to their belief system. So Peter is delivering now and for following his, his passing, his death, something to encourage believers to stand and defend against false teachers.
So that's the major theme of this epistle. It's very short, it's only three chapters, and the word knowledge in some form appears twenty six times in this short three chapters. Twenty six times, and six of those times in the Greek, you know, know- to know, know, knowledge is gnosis. Six times it's not gnosis, but it's epignosis, epignosis. And if you remember, a couple of weeks ago, Tim taught about the oversight of leadership in the church, and the Greek word for oversight was episkopio, episkopio. The idea of looking through a scope, seeing the big picture, and with that preposition epi attached as a prefix to the word, it added intensity to really get a hold of the big picture.
Well, the same thing here, when Peter attaches that preposition epi, it's to know. It adds intensity to really know this, to, to, to own it, to act on it. And so the division of second Peter, and you could write this down for this whole study, because I think this would be very helpful. Peter is going to share four things that we need to know. He is going to lay out and review four things that he's already taught. They already know this. This is a reminder to them. The first division is chapter one verses one through eleven is to know your salvation. You need to know your salvation.
The second division in chapter one, the remainder twelve through twenty one, is you need to know your scripture. You need to know what the scripture is, what it means to the believer, and you need to be very familiar with what it says. The third division is chapter two, know your adversary. Peter gives one of the most clear presentations of what false teachers are all about, how to spot them, how to recognize them, how to identify them. And then finally, in chapter three, you need to know your prophecy. You need to know what's going to happen. You need to know the end game that Jesus is coming. So with that brief introduction to the book, and we'll expand on that a bit, let's stand and and read our text this morning.
We're going to try to get through several verses this morning. In chapter one, second Peter, and we'll read the first twelve verses, first eleven verses. Simon Peter, a bondservant and apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who have received a faith of the same kind as ours, by the righteousness of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ, grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. Seeing that his divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness through the true knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and excellence.
For by these he has granted to us his precious and magnificent promises in order that by them you might become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust. Now, for this very reason also, applying all diligence in your faith, supply moral excellence, and in your moral excellence, knowledge, and in your knowledge, self-control, and in your self-control, perseverance, and in your perseverance, godliness, and in your godliness, brotherly kindness, and in your brotherly kindness, love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they render you neither useless nor unfruitful in the true knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
For he who lacks these qualities is blind or shortsighted, having forgotten his purification from his former sins. Therefore, brethren, be all the more diligent to make certain about his calling and choosing you. For as long as you practice these things, you will never stumble. For in this way, the entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ will be abundantly supplied to you. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we just commit this section of scripture to you and this study to you, and we lift it up to you that it might illuminate and elucidate our understanding of what you have revealed to us in this, that it might be powerful in our inner beings, that we might be transformed as you intend for us to be, that our faith might be, uh, enriched and nourished, and that we might be encouraged and edified even today.
And we just commit it to you, and we thank you for it, and we ask your blessing on it in our Lord Jesus' name, amen. Please be seated. Well, we read the first eleven verses, and I had every attempt, every intention in my pride and arrogance to cover all eleven verses this morning. And, you know, the neat thing about teaching here at, uh, Community Bible Fellowship, it's a real challenge. It would be a challenge in any setting. But what I really appreciate here and under, uh, Tim's mentorship and others' encouragement and mentorship is this isn't about me teaching anything.
It isn't about me coming up with something new or clever or some kind of, uh, impressive presentation. It's about the truth. It's about what's already here. It's what we possess. It's what's been given to us. And so the real challenge is, in preparation, to digest this passage and to dig into it deeper and deeper, and prayer- prayerfully, with the Holy Spirit's help, really attempt to understand what the Holy Spirit delivered to us through the Apostle Peter. What did this mean when Peter wrote it? What does it mean to us today? Because it means the same thing as it did then. And so, having gone through that, I have to confess that in the past, this isn't the first time I've ever studied second Peter, and this isn't the first time we've ever gone through it as a church, but my tendency has been to jump right past the first four verses and get right into verses five, six, and seven.
because you have these seven qualities, and those sound really cool, don't they? I mean, that just, this is something, oh boy, oh boy, oh boy, something, something we're going to get, something we need. You know, as we read through those, it's, we're immediately thinking, if you're like me, yeah, yeah, yeah, I need, I need some of that. I need some more, some of that. So what is, what is the deal there? How do we get that? So I continued to ask myself all week long, what is Peter really talking about here? What is he suggest- is he suggesting that in our effort and diligence and human strength, we just begin to emulate these qualities in our life? Well, I know better than that. You know better than that. Obviously, that's not what Peter's talking about.
What he is talking about is how to, to return to our basis of how we deal with false teaching. That's what he's talking about. What is our defense against false teaching? And that's the truth. Now, these first verses we're going to get through, Lord willing, today, verses one through four. And you know, believer, don't you, as you hear these verses, there's something very powerful in these. There's something very, very wonderful that Peter's saying here when he speaks about divine power and divine nature and partaking in that. But it has a tendency to fly right over our head because God's thoughts are not our thoughts, and his ways are not our ways.
So if you'll be patient and work through this with me, uh, we'll endeavor to illuminate what Peter's really talking about here. So our first point, and there's only three this morning, that's the good news, but these are really big points, and it's going to take some time to get through them. So our first point, our believers must know the source of their salvation. Believers must know the source of their salvation. We'll start off with Simon Peter, a bondservant, the apostle and apostle of Jesus Christ. Again, I just love, I love Peter.
When did the Lord call him Simon, and when did he call him Peter? Whenever Peter was acting like his old self, he called him P- uh, Simon. And when he was behaving in his new self, he called him Peter. So Peter doesn't discard Simon. You know, I think he clings to that as a badge of humility. I'm Simon Peter. You know, doesn't that kind of speak, doesn't that encourage you? Because you have that same struggle. You know, I love, and I loved the concept from the beginning of being a new creation in Jesus Christ. I was more than willing and happy to be crucified with Christ.
I had thoughts of suicide up until the point that I believed. I didn't like that guy. I wanted to be a new creation. But, you know, the reality is, even though I'm crucified with Christ, even though I sacrifice that body as a living sacrifice, I'm still incarcerated in this flesh. It still hangs around me like a ball and chain, and it just never goes away. It continues to s- to to war against the spirit. And Peter identifies that in his own life. I'm Simon Peter. You know, I've been transformed into Peter, but I'm not done with Simon yet, and it is a badge of humility.
He says, I'm Simon Peter, a bond servant. This is the, the Greek word doulos. It simply means slave, the lowest servant, the lowest form. In fact, this is a bond slave, somebody who is down so low, their only option is to sell themself into slavery in order to continue to exist. And so he calls himself a slave, a slave to Christ, but he also says, and apostle of Jesus Christ. So on the one hand, you have Simon. How do you deal with Simon? How do you deal with the old nature? You enslave it. You enslave it to Christ.
It's either going to be a slave to sin or it's going to be a slave to Christ. And the new nature, Peter, in Peter, he has the authority of an apostle. So he's both slave, very low, and apostle, a very high responsibility and very high authority. I love that about him. I identify probably more with Peter than I do with Paul. I love Paul, I love all of his writings, but Paul is so up there in my own mind, it's hard to relate to him sometimes. You never hear Paul refer to himself as Saul Paul. You know, Saul was gone from day one. He never goes back. He never turns back. He says, I don't look back. I'm only looking forward to the cross.
Peter, on the other hand, re- remembers where he came from and who he was. So, moving on into this next portion, to those who have received a faith of the same kind as ours. What is the source of our salvation? First of all, those, to those who, who are those? Who is Peter writing to in this epistle? Well, if you remember back in First Peter chapter one, he's writing to those dispersed believers up in northern Turkey, right? And we believe that he's writing to the same believers here. Th- there's no question that they are in the faith, that they have received a faith.
And if you look at chapter three in second Peter, he says in the first verse, this is now, beloved, the second letter I am writing to you in which I am stirring up your sincere mind by way of reminder. So he says, this is the second time I've written to you. So it's the same believers that he's writing to in First Peter. And why is Peter starting with this issue of salvation? It's not only knowing about your salvation, it's having an assurance and knowing that you're saved, right? So he's talking about, and he's going to talk about here, assurance of salvation. Many of you in this room, uh, all of you as believers have struggled with doubts, haven't you?
You've doubted your salvation from time to time. Some of you are doubting it right now. You doubt whether you did the right thing. You doubt whether you see the evidence of salvation. There are all kinds of reasons for those doubts. You may be asking yourself right now, and if I was sitting out there, I'd probably be doing the same thing. Is this going to be a message about salvation and about doubting my salvation? I don't want to hear this. Na na na na na na. I know I'm saved. I got that figured out. I don't want to go back there. I don't want to revisit that. Well, I would strongly encourage you to consider verse ten. I did, and it was a little earth shaking for me this week. Therefore, brethren, be all the more diligent to make certain about his calling and choosing you.
That's a little dil- different slant on assurance in our day, isn't it? Isn't it? We talk about assurance of did, you know, did I say the right prayer? Did I do the right deal? Did I rock the, did I walk the right aisle? Did I hear the right gig? I'll just do it again. Did I do baptism right? I'll do that again. Okay, now I got it. Can I be assure now? See, we attach it to something we did, and we can never, Peter is saying, never have assurance in something we did. Never. We can only have assurance in something he did. We can only have assurance in God's faithfulness, not in our faithfulness.
So that's a fundamental tenet that Peter's going to lay out that we want to work through this morning and see for ourselves and cling to this, because being in doubt about our salvation makes us easy prey for false teaching. Because we're looking for assurance. We're looking for something that will make me feel more sure about my salvation and where I'm going. So what causes these doubts? Where do doubts come from? Doubts can come from all kinds of things. Just two I want to mention for us to think about this morning, and we'll see how Peter deals with these and how you and your thinking will deal, deal with these.
The cause of doubts, number one, could be that we're not saved. We're honestly not saved. We simply don't see the fruit of salvation or righteousness in our life. And we do a disservice if we try to assure somebody that they're saved, and they're not. It's a good thing to doubt our salvation if we don't have it. The second thing that causes us to doubt, again, is this idea that we attach it and associate with something that we've done. Our salvation is dependent on an action or an act on our part. Now, we're going to look at this this morning, and we're going to talk about the sovereignty of God and God's part in salvation, certainly, you all have a part in it.
You partake in it. But if your salvation is an act that you did, and this is a teaching that probably is most prominent in the Roman Catholic Church, that you can lose your salvation at any point that you stop working and producing the kinds of things that you need to produce, right? There's no assurance in that, and there never could be. So he says that he's writing to those who have received a faith of the same kind as ours. Let's just go through this quickly to understand what these words mean. First of all, received, who have received something that's happened in the past. This word is a really interesting word, received.
It's not that you root re- reached out and took something, it was given to you and provided to you. You have received, you have been given a faith of the same kind as ours. What is this faith? Now, is this faith that Peter's talking about the body of truth and knowledge surrounding the gospel, the basic tenets and doctrines of what the apostles delivered to everybody? Or is it talking about the saving faith in the heart of the believer that transforms that heart? Well, I believe that he's talking about the second. He's talking about the faith that saves. You have received a faith, this faith that saves, of the same kind as ours.
Kind is value and potency. It's just as strong, it's just as a potent, it's just as efficacious, efficacious as what we have received. Well, who's the ours in this? Who's Peter referring to as, as the same kind of faith as ours? Well, he could be talking about the apostles. Your faith is the same faith as ours. It's just as strong, it's just as potent, it's just as able and sufficient to save you because it comes from the same source as ours. But I don't think that that's what he's talking about here because he doesn't refer to the apostles. He's talking about himself singular as an apostle of Jesus Christ.
Who's he really representing as he writes here? He says he's, I believe he's writing primarily to Gentiles with some Jews that have been converted that are amongst them. I believe what he's saying here is that you've received the same kind of faith as Gentiles as we Jews. Your faith is the same kind. I believe that by going through Acts, where Peter's talking about this Holy Spirit gift being given to the Gentiles just as it was to us. So the, the, uh, you'll remember Paul speaks much about this, about Abraham's faith, that you will be a blessing to all the nations. Through you, all the nations will be blessed.
So the same faith that saved Abraham, the Jew, is the same faith that saves the Gentile here. So again, we're talking about the source of our faith. So this is who Peter is writing to. Now, how does this happen? How has this been done? By the righteousness of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ. So here it is. Here's the source. Underline this in your Bibles. The source of our salvation is his righteousness. His righteousness. Righteousness which originates in God and is channeled to us through Jesus Christ, our God and Savior.
We have got to be standing on this source. That's where it comes from. Doesn't come through human effort. Doesn't come through human faithfulness. It doesn't come through human faith. In fact, if God doesn't help us, we can't respond to the knowledge of Christ. When we hear who he is, when we hear the gospel, if God doesn't enable us, we can't hear, we can't see, we can't respond. See, that's where true security comes from, is that truth, that understanding that this is a work of God in you. God's making this happen in you. He's decided to do it, and he's doing it through Christ's righteousness.
Wow. And then notice this God and Savior. It doesn't say, the idea here isn't that, uh, God and our Savior Jesus Christ, it's Jesus Christ, you could say our Savior Jesus Christ, who is God. This is one of the strongest passages for the deity of Christ. We're going to develop this more as we go through these four verses, that this is an essential foundation block for us to stand on in our belief, and on what we believe is true, is the deity, the God person, the God man, Jesus Christ. We've got to understand that. I just love this, this story of a, I read about a young believer who had received Christ, come to salvation, was walking with the Lord and was asked, you know, on what basis do you think God's going to let you into heaven?
I mean, how do you know your sin is not going to keep you out of heaven? And so this young fella, uh, responded to that, well, if anybody is going to be kept out of heaven for my sin, it's going to be Jesus. The person, what are you talking about? Well, the word of God tells me that he took upon himself my sin. Jesus Christ took upon himself my sin, and he was raised from the dead, having paid the penalty for my sin, and he is now in heaven. So I know I'm going to be in heaven because of the resurrection and the fact that Jesus sits at the right hand of God the Father.
He bore in his body my sin. What wisdom from a new believer. You seldom hear that kind of insight from someone who's walked with the Lord for a long time. I know I'm secure in going to heaven because Jesus is promised me he bore my sin and has paid the penalty for my sin. Wow, isn't that great? So let's go to our second point here. That's the source of our salvation. The source of our salvation, we've got to understand this if we're going to defend against false teaching, is not our righteousness of any work that we could do, but it is solely based on the righteous life, deeds, actions of our Lord and our God and our Savior Jesus Christ, period.
That's what Peter's laying out here in one verse. It's huge, it's huge. Verse two. Our second, uh, point here is believers must know the substance of their salvation. So we have the source of our salvation, and now the substance of our salvation. Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. How many times have you read that? Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. Again, a absolutely foundational must-have block in the defensive wall of the Christian to stand against false teaching. Before we can really appreciate what Peter is saying here, and I, and I, I hesitate to do this, but I'm gonna do it, is we've got to take a little contrasting look at what the false teaching is to really appreciate this verse and the magnitude of this verse.
Remember, Peter is countering the false teachers. He's standing against what already is creeping in. This is big for Peter. You know, he's in prison. He's already been arrested. He's probably imprisoned in Rome. You can see in verse fourteen that he's close, he knows that his death is very, very close. This letter was written maybe a year within First Peter. So this is, this is very, very well crafted, of course, by the Holy Spirit, as Peter writes this. So let's take a quick, short diversion, and we'll come back to this. The problem, of course, that we're going to see is not so much the pagan religion and worldly thinking.
We know that exists. That's not a surprise, is it? They don't have the truth, they don't have the light, and so they walk in darkness, and a lot of the goofy stuff that they think about is just that, it's goofy. The problem isn't that, the problem is, is it creeps into the church and begins to corrupt our truth and our foundation that we have delivered to us through the scriptures. So, new age thinking is probably one of the best examples that I could find of what Peter's combating here, new age thinking. I can remember back in the eighties being on the fire department, and we had a Christian chief, uh, fellowshipped with him for years, dear friend, and uh, Stan, out of the blue, bought this series, this guy named Lou Tice from the Pacific Institute, and this ten thousand dollar video series and forced everybody in the city to sit through this whole course on new age thinking.
And the premise was, this will give you, at the very least, it'll improve your golf game, guys. So you want to listen to this. This is good stuff. What was the basic premise? Well, you know, this led to this incredible current blockade in thinking that perception is reality. Have you heard that at the workplace and all of your sensitivity training and the stuff they put you through is perception is reality. That's what our politics now are driven by. That's what our workplace policies are driven by, is I don't care what you think reality is, it all that matters is someone's perception.
Perception. So here in a nutshell, I should probably have this up, but you're just going to have to listen. Spiritual power in your mind fine tunes a perception of what you want, and wanting that perception clearly and strongly enough makes it a reality. Your mind can create. This is new age thinking. Your mind can create. So if you can visualize what you want, and you focus on that strongly enough and clearly enough and long enough, you can create your own reality. Let me, let me just read quickly here.
I, it didn't take me but about thirty seconds to go on the internet, and, you know, is this, is this out there? Is this out there big time? Well, this is the first thing that came up. This was a quote from Abraham Hicks, and forgive me again for sharing this, but this is going to contrast what Peter is saying so that we can see it more clearly. Abraham Hicks says, the only freedom that exists in all of the universe, and it's everything, is in the knowledge that I create my own reality, and that I can feel the way I choose to feel. Because the only thing, the only thing that anyone fears is that something will happen that will take their good feeling away.
Isn't that what is inherent in all negative emotion? Isn't that really the best description of fear that you've ever heard? It is the belief that something will happen that will make me feel bad that I can't control. And when you know and demonstrate that you can always choose the way you choose to feel, now everyone's off the hook, and you are, for the first time, utterly free. Well, thank you, Abraham Hicks. So this thinking, this false teaching, which is rampant in our day, is based on four ideologies.
I just want to go over these real quick. The first ideology is evolution. Evolution. That's pretty big in our day, isn't it? We've all grown up on that, if you're my age. It's been shoved down your, your throat throughout all of your education out in the public sector, and it's rampant through everything, and if you don't think it influences the church, you're wrong. It does. So what does evolution basically say? Well, it fits right into new age thinking, doesn't it? Uh, gosh, um, I'm a fish, and I don't want to be a fish anymore. I want to be a crocodile. And so I set my mind on that, and I concentrate on that, and look at that, a leg pops out, and another leg and a tail, and now I'm a crocodile.
And, you know, that was fun for a while, but, you know, I think I want to fly. So I set my mind on that, and I concentrate on that, and pretty soon, yep, out comes a little, you know, for a while you're a dragon, that's where that came from, I'm sure. But evolution takes some time, you know, there's a process here. And so, do you get the, do you get the lie, do you get the deception there, is that the power to create is in the mind of the creature, of the creature. You have in you the power to create, is the premise of evolution, is the whole premise of evolution. And that leads to the next ideology of pantheism.
Pantheism, that God is in everything. See, this magic secret power, you know, the force in Star Wars, it's in everything. This energy, this positive energy, this creative energy, it's in everything. It's in the trees, it's in the birds, it's in the rocks, it's in the animals, it's in everything, and you want to tap into that inner power, and you know, that's how we create things. Now, the problem, of course, with both of those premises, other than being ridiculous, is that they lead to a devaluating or an even valuating of everything.
Nothing's more valuable than anything else. Nothing. It's all the same. It's all the same inner power. A tree, a rock, a butterfly, a baby, a human, a child, it doesn't matter. And so, you know, we go down the path that we have to create protections and rights for rocks and trees and spotted owls and everything else, because they're just as valuable as everything else. In fact, everything today has rights. Everything has rights. The only thing that doesn't have rights is a human baby. That's the only thing that has no rights at all.
Isn't that amazing? And so that leads into amoralism. The next basic ideology in this false teaching is amoralism. You see, since the creative power is in you, since you evolved, you know, some monkey decided to be you at some point, and now you're you, then who can tell you what's right and what's wrong? You see, you're God. You created. You have the power, so why, how can anybody tell you what you do is right or wrong? The fact that you're doing it is part of the process.
And so this leads to an absolute impossible justice system. Justice system doesn't know how to deal with these cra- I could read to you the craziest, most vile, perverted, sick stories that the justice system doesn't know what to do because of amoralism. There's nothing to stand on to say, that's wrong. Nothing. And then finally, a fourth one. Evolution, pantheism, amoralism leads to mysticism, and this is primarily, I believe, how this creeps into the church. Mysticism is a system of beliefs and ideas which are the product of my own personal intuition, which I assume transcends understanding.
See, I don't have to, I don't have to be able to explain it. I don't understand it. It's just me. See? So sheer speculation believed to be reality. So we create our own reality, and we get into this whole mysticism, this whole s- uh, superstition, this whole visualization, and uh, you see that rampant, rampant, rampant throughout Christianity today. Now, all of this fits into some kind of a vain reasoning, doesn't it? It makes sense to the people that believe it. I mean, they strongly stand upon it and defend it. But none of it, none of it is intellectual or based in any way on facts.
See, if it was, the facts disprove all of this. Facts disprove all of this. The facts disprove evolution, disprove pantheism, disprove all of it. None of it works. You know what? Reality is reality. There are certain things that are real. You might like to think that you can step off of that ten-story building and float out into air. You can visualize that all you want and have happy thoughts in whatever song that you're singing to yourself, but reality suggests what's going to happen when you step off of that building.
Here's a quote from John MacArthur. Christianity is totally and utterly and completely and fully contrary to anything and everything that is mystical. Christianity believes in objective, historical, revealed, actual, rational truth from God. Praise God. You know, we say this over and over and over and over again. Christian, do you know what you hold in your hand here? Should we tread lightly upon this revealed truth that we have from God? You remember Dave Hunt? Some of you are familiar with his book, The Seduction of Christianity.
Here's what he said. This is how this has crept into the church, and I'm not going to name churches and name names, you know, you certainly could, just turn on your satellite TV to TBN or something, and you'll get it. Anyone who imagines, this is a quote, anyone who imagines that because he thinks certain thoughts or speaks certain words, God must respond in a certain way has slipped into sorcery. Wow. And if not playing God, is at the very least attempting to manipulate God. See what he's suggesting here?
The idea that I can get God to do something for me and to move in a certain direction is attempting to manipulate God. So, what was the work to wrap this up? What was the work? We, we, we have only to look at history, don't we? Um, hundreds of years of dark ages. Why were they called the dark ages? What was the Reformation all about? The Reformation was about giving you back your mind, wasn't it? You could think again. You could have the scriptures. You could read it for yourself.
You could process truth and respond to it. The Reformation returned to a rational, reasonable, reasonable study of the truth. So the problem, of course, is when this creeps into the church. Power of positive thinking, visualization, name it, claim it, and on and on and on. So now back to our verse. Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. So grace and peace, what a fantastic thing these are. What is grace?
What is grace? Grace is the substance of our salvation. God has forgiven, in his own decision-making process, through Christ, he has forgiven my sin, past, present, and future. Grace covers all my sin. Grace is greater than all my sin. It's paid for. He bore my sin in his body on the tree, and then he was raised from the dead and sits at the right hand of God. Wonderful truth, amen? So what is peace? Peace is the product of grace. Peace is the product of grace.
Now that's substance. That's substantial. Christ won grace for me, the believer, who responds in faith to him, the source of our salvation, the righteousness and deity of Jesus Christ, and then imparts grace to me through his righteousness, and I have peace with God, reconciliation with God. How is this multiplied to you? How is this multiplied to you, multiplied to you? On and on and on. Well, this knowledge again is this epinosis, the knowing. You need to know this beyond just an intellectual assent to it, right?
Many in that day will say unto me, Jesus said, Lord, Lord, did we not do, do, do? And what's he going to say? And he did a lot of stuff. He's going to say, depart from me. I, I never knew you. So what kind of knowing are we talking about here? And we'll develop this a little bit more shortly. But we're talking about an intimate knowledge. We're talking about knowing Jesus intimately. Us in him, him in us, and understanding the truth about Jesus that leads to a relationship with him. So we hear the truth, we respond to the truth, and the truth leads us to a relationship with Jesus Christ.
A relationship with Jesus Christ. What a marvelous, marvelous thing. So this is not through some visualization accessing something inside of me. Truth isn't inside me. It isn't inside you. Truth is in God. God has revealed his truth. Why? So that we can know him, and in knowing him through his truth, have a relationship with him that leads to the receiving of grace, all my sin covered, and peace, reconciliation with God. Okay, our final, final thought here. Three, believers must know the sufficiency of their salvation. This is where it really gets good.
The sufficiency of our salvation. Now, you know, what, what, what's the deal? Is God stingy? You know? Is that what Eve really thought in the garden? God's holding back on you, Eve. You know, he's giving you a pretty good deal here, but there's much, much more that he's holding off. Is that what we think? Because that's the false teaching, that's the lie, that's what is coming at us all the time. Somehow God is holding back, so yeah, you know, um, I like this idea of salvation, I like this idea of my sin being paid for. Right? I like this idea of going to heaven. But all of us in this room, all of us are born into a fallen, sin, st- sick, corrupted, fallen world, and we live in fallen flesh.
And the result of that is we suffer a lot of stuff. We suffer loss, we suffer pain, we suffer failure, we suffer blindness, we just don't get it. We suffer going the wrong direction, we suffer having to repent, we have to say we're sorry. Suffer, suffer, suffer. People we love die. We hurt people we love. We get in conflict. It's excruciating. It's excruciating. So, is our salvation sufficient for all of that? Or is God holding back? Did he just give us enough, you know, to kind of cover things and then just left us here?
Well, we want to look at that. We want to look at that. So we're going to go through five words in these next two verses and, and close this up. First of all, seeing that his divine power. Our first word is power. There's going to be, uh, 5 P's here. Seeing that his divine power. What kind of power? Well, first of all, his power. This isn't human effort. This isn't something we generate. This isn't something we come up with because we just try so hard. But this is his, and referring back to who? Jesus Christ, our God and Savior, because of his divine power.
Resurrection power, sufficient. The Christian will never suffer a power outage, ever, unless you turn off the switch or pull the plug. It's always there. This divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness. Our second word, we have power, power that comes from God. It's divine. It's not this energy that's in the trees and in the rocks and in everything else. It belongs to God, and we're accessing it through Jesus Christ. He has granted everything to us pertaining to life and godliness. Our second word is provision. Through this power, this divine power, this resurrection power, we have been granted everything pertaining to life and godliness.
So what this has granted, let's look at that. This is a, uh, a couple of verbs here. Has is past tense, granted is perfect tense. You remember that from your English classes? Cindy? We always pick on Cindy, I guess. No, this Cindy. Perfect tense. So we put them together, and what does this mean? It's something that occurred in the past, but it's continually always happening. He has granted. It never stops being made available. He has granted to us what? Everything pertaining, pertaining to life and godliness. What a provision. Life and godliness, life and godliness, life and godliness.
What are we talking about there? What does Peter mean by that? How many times have we said and reviewed and talked in this church about the three aspects of our salvation? We're saved from the... the penalty of sin, or it's been paid for. He bore in his body our sin, believer. It's paid for. Well, yeah, my past sin, but what about, you know, if I sin tomorrow? Paid for. Past, present, and future, it's all paid for. His payment is efficient and sufficient. So that's life. That's life. The penalty is removed, and we can live now in Christ.
He has granted to us everything pertaining to life. We have life now in Christ, and we're saved from the penalty of sin, and we're saved from the godliness. We're being saved from the power of sin. We will be saved from the... Okay, that's future. But Peter's talking about these two right now, life and godliness. So before we get into next week, these seven qualities you've already received, you've been granted a past event by your Lord and Savior Jesus Christ has granted to you, present and continuing, everything you need to deal with your sin and to walk in godliness now.
To be forgiven of your sin, to be saved, and to be sanctified, to be set apart for him. It's already happened, believer. It's a done deal. Wow. How did Paul say it? In Ephesians one three, he said, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. Peter's doing the same thing here. He's building a foundation for assurance. Number one defense against false teaching, being certain of your salvation. Next word is number three.
So we have this power, this divine power. We have this procurement, I mean, I'm sorry, we have this provision, and now we're going to have procurement through the true knowledge of him who called us by his own glory, glory and excellence. This just gets better and better. So how do we access this warehouse of everything that we need for life and godliness? We access it through knowing Christ, through the true knowledge of him. We access it through an intimate relationship with him. Who called us. How? By his own glory and excellence.
Wow. By his own glory and excellence. Now think about that for a minute. What is Peter saying here? So this act, this powerful act of God... intervened on our behalf and our redemption and our salvation, and he made available everything we need for dealing with sin and for godliness and sanctification now, through knowing Jesus Christ. Now hang on to that, don't lose me here. Who called us... by his own glory and excellence. So his glory is what?
And his excellence is what? Well, his glory is his deity. His glory is the fact that he's God. Remember he left? He set aside his glory, humbled himself, became as a man. That's his glory. He returned to glory. God. He's God. He is God. His excellence is the life that he lived in the flesh. The life that he lived in the flesh. Perfect humanity, sinless. He never sinned. So, on the one hand, we have his deity. On the other hand, we have his humanity, and he calls us by those, believer.
He called you by that. So another way of saying this is that you heard about Jesus. You heard the truth from scripture about the fact that he's God. You heard the truth, you read the truth, you heard teaching of the truth of the life that he lived. And through that truth, through knowing that truth, God stirred up in you a drawing to the Savior. You were drawn by his glory and his excellence. You were drawn to him. You know that song, turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full on his wonderful face.
It is so true, the things of earth will go s- grow strangely dim. That is the calling of God in your life. That's what Peter's saying, how you were called. That's a calling. Did you have a moment when you heard about Christ? Did you have a moment, or maybe a s- a whole process that you went through where you learned the truth about who Jesus is? And something inside of you was stirred, and you were drawn to the fact that this is the Son of God, God himself incarnate, and that the life that he lived was absolutely remarkable. Everything that he did, everything you read in the Gospels just blows you away.
You couldn't have that without his call. You couldn't have that without the Father enabling you, and that is your assurance. That's what built, what Peter is laying here is assurance. A fourth word, promises. It just gets better. For by these he has granted to us his precious and magnificent promises. By what? By these, by his deity and sinlessness, by who he is. Again, you have this perfect tense verb, granted. Something happened in the past is now made available to you continually, now and forever.
You have been granted, as a believer, his precious and magnificent promises. Precious, referring to the value of them. They are of great, great value. Magnificent, referring to the size and the scope and the effect of them. They are sufficient. They are sufficient for you, the believer. What promises? What promises are we talking about here? I mean, this is good stuff, isn't it? Does this stir your heart? Look what you have received in Christ. Well, he promised life. He promised life to all those who believe on him. Resurrection life, abundant life, eternal life.
He promised peace, not as the world gives, but his peace. He promised to send the comforter, the Holy Spirit. He promised to never leave us, to keep us, to prepare a place for us, to cleanse us from all our sin. He promised us all things present, things to come, life, death, everything. It is estimated that there are over three hun- or thirty thousand promises in scripture. He's talking about all those. You have access to all of those. You have it all. Well, why? Why did he do this? Fifth word.
We have power. We have provision. We have procurement. We have these promises, and now a fifth word, partakers. So that by them, these promises, you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust. Don't miss this. Peter's clearly using terminology that would be familiar to the pagans when he talks about the divine nature. You know, they're all, you can read it for yourself today, they're all trying to get a hold of this energy, this divine nature thing out there. And Peter's saying, no.
Here's how, this, this is how this happens for you, the believer. Don't buy in to any of these lies. Here is the truth that we deliver to you, having received it from the Lord Jesus Christ, that through these promises is how you become partakers. So, uh, in the power of God, he makes provisi- provision and grants us everything that we need, that we procure through faith, in a work that God did, in his ability and in his power. And in that, we have access to these promises, that by those promises, we become partakers of this divine nature. Partakers, the word in Greek is koin- koinonos, sometimes fellowship, not koinonia, but koinonos.
Also, you could translate this as partner, sharer. We become partners in the divine nature. God's life is in us. Peter is using this premise because they would be very familiar with hearing this in the false teaching. So it's not by works of the flesh, not by some ascendant or transcendent means, but by grace, but by grace through faith. So, we have struggles. We have lots of enemies, you know. We've said over and over and over again, this is not happy land.
We're in a battle. We're in a war zone. We're in hostile territory. The enemy has failed in America through open persecution, and so he has been very successful through propaganda, and this is our protection. Is your salvation sufficient? Yeah. Oh yeah. It, it is all there, and we can look forward to next week to going more into this. Peter has reviewed for us the source, the substance, and the sufficiency of our salvation. Next week, we're going to see where true security comes from for the believer. Right knowledge leads to right thinking, leads to right living for the true possessor of saving.
So, let's just close in prayer. Commit all of this to the Lord who cares for us. What marvelous truths that we just began to scratch. Looking forward to actually to, uh, our Tuesday night home group, because there's just not time to really develop these wonderful, wonderful truths. And you're all welcome to come to that, by the way, Tuesday night at our house, seven o'clock. Right, Sherry? If you want to go into this deeper. So let's just bow in prayer and thank the Lord for all of these things. Lord, we just, uh, bow before you, Heavenly Father, and we just so appreciate your truth that you have revealed to us and given to us, and we know that your truth tells us that, uh, we, uh, have received our name from you, and we just pray that you would grant each person here, according to the riches of your glory, strength in their and power through the spirit and their inner man, so that Christ may dwell in each heart here through faith, and that you, each of us, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and the length and the height and the depth, and
to know the love of Christ, which surpasses knowledge. Each person here, dear Father, would be filled up to all the fullness of God. Now we just commit unto you all of these truths, knowing that you are able to do exceeding abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us. To Lord, to the Lord Jesus be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen.