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Well now, ladies and gentlemen, allow me to add my own word of welcome this morning to this, the first of our three seminars on the second epistle by Peter. Thank you very much for making the effort to come. It is particularly gratifying to see those who came last year to the seminars on the tabernacle, uh, here, many of them present again this year, and of course also very gratifying to see new faces along joining us on this year's study. I'm particularly grateful for those of you who have volunteered to lead the study groups for the question times.
And if I may, just a brief word in the ear of those who have so volunteered. First of all, the questions that are issued, you will find, are a very mixed bag. I suppose in an ideal world, we would have different groups that might specialize at different levels and with different interests. That has so far not proved possible. Maybe we shall do that in other years, if God will, who knows? But you will find, as it is, that the questions are of different types and difficulties and kinds.
I should be grateful if you would manage to work through those questions in the time allotted, uh, taking them at what speed you feel, uh, appropriate. The questions are not there to limit you. If you have time and inclination to go beyond those questions and raise other matters with your groups that are relative to the passage being discussed, of course you are perfectly free so to do. It will certainly add weight and value to the studies. It will be, I hope, that those of you at least who lead the groups will find yourself in agreement with what I say from this rostrum here over the main thrust of this epistle.
At least I hope it will be that way. It will be, I should think, impossible that you will agree with all the detail of what I shall say. And let me make it clear that we're not expecting you who lead the groups to agree with all the detail that I say in every particular. If you find yourself in some particular, uh, holding a somewhat different view from what I hold, then I would ask you of your grace and mercy to make it, uh, uh, just to make sure that your group have understood what I have said. And then, of course, you are at perfect liberty to say, but I don't agree with Dog's body on that. I think he's a bit to the left or the right, or above or below, and uh, that the true meaning is rather here.
Let there be open and honest and genuine debate and seeking together the meaning of God's word. You will also find, perhaps, that the questions, uh, given in some, uh, for some of the sessions are not enough to fill the time. You may find that the questions given on other occasions are too many to get into the time. As the seminars proceed, leaders feel free, please. For instance, if in the first session you don't have enough questions to go round, to look ahead, if you want to, to the next section and begin to prepare your group for what is liable to be coming in the next session.
In other words, maneuver the questions around as best suits you and as best suits the time. With that, let us begin our sessions by reading the opening verses of the second epistle by Peter. The version that I am at the moment reading from is the Revised Version. No, we shall not stick by its translations everywhere. Second Epistle by Peter, chapter one. Simon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ to them that have obtained a like precious faith with us, in the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ, grace to you and peace be multiplied, in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.
Seeing that his divine power has granted unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that called us by his own glory and virtue, whereby he has granted to us his precious and exceeding great promises, that through these you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world by lust. Yea, and for this very cause, adding on your part all diligence, in your faith supply virtue, and in your virtue knowledge, and in your knowledge temperance, and in your temperance patience, and in your patience godliness, and in your godliness love of the brethren, and in your love of the brethren love.
For if these things are yours and abound, they make you to be not idle nor unfruitful unto the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For he that lacketh these things is blind, seeing only what is near, having forgotten the cleansing from his old sins. Wherefore, brethren, give the more diligence to make your calling and election sure. For if you do these things, you shall never stumble. For thus shall be richly supplied unto you the entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. I suppose the first sensible thing to do in coming to the second epistle of Peter is to take a bird's eye view of its contents and then of the relevance of those contents to our experience.
Our epistle is a very small epistle of only three chapters, yet the things that it manages to mention in the course of those three chapters are literally of earth-shaking importance. Now, compared with the marvelous calligraphy that, uh, was on the screen before, this, of course, is immediately evident to be the work of an amateur. And not only the work of an amateur, but a very elderly amateur. The man I got in to do it for me is elderly, and he suffers from the shake of the hand, you'll see. But never mind, in your Christian spirit, you'll forgive all that.
But in the course of its three chapters, Peter manages to talk to us about these tremendous matters. First of all, the creation, which he mentions in chapter three. In chapters two and again in chapter three, he talks to us in some detail about the flood by which the original creation of our world was destroyed. He talks to us, likewise, of that catastrophic intervention into human history that was the destruction of the cities of the plain, and in particular of Sodom and Gomorrah.
This little epistle of three chapters is unique among all the epistles of the New Testament. It is the only one, as far as I am aware, that talks to us of the transfiguration of our Lord Jesus. And therefore, naturally, is of particular interest to us, and we shall be asking necessarily, what is the special significance of the transfiguration of our Lord? We see practic- with some ease, I su- I suspect, the significance of the incarnation of our Lord Jesus.
Though nowadays the incarnation of our Lord Jesus has been subject to much debate in the public media, uh, recently. We see and commonly speak of the significance of our Lord's death as an atonement for sin. We see, I suspect, with ease the significance of his resurrection. That great foundation of the Christian faith. If Jesus Christ is not risen, then there is nothing in Christianity. We see, I trust, the significance of his ascension and often talk of it, and of his coming again. But in my experience of attending hundreds and thousands of serm- sermons in my long, long years of life, and now my advanced old age, I have to confess I have not heard all those many sermons on the Transfiguration of our Lord and what its significance may be.
So this epistle will have special interest for us, and we shall spend some time, God willing, today particularly, in considering the significance of that awesome event. We notice at least the context in which Peter is led to mention it. We are thinking in terms of our great planet Earth, of its creation, of its final dissolution, and of the way, when eternity dawns, there will be a new heaven and a new earth. We are thinking in this epistle of certain catastrophic interventions of divine power in the course of history.
The flood bringing its welter of destruction, the judgment upon the cities of the plain, Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboim, and the others. Here in the transfiguration of our Lord, if our imaginations can be summoned to help us imagine what it was like, we have our blessed Lord standing on our planet Earth, and yet in open contact with eternity. And the whole thing bids us consider the relation of time to eternity, of our present experience here on this Earth, and how it is related to the other and eternal realm.
The relation of the temporary to the eternal. And of course, that transfiguration of our Lord will emphasize in our heart that our temporary, present, and visible world is not the only world there is. There is another. It is before our world. It is concurrent with our world. It will be beyond our world. And it will bid us think that we shall not understand the true significance of life on this temporary planet unless our life here is geared into that eternal world which surrounds us.
So then the transfiguration of our Lord, that bids us consider, first of all, Jesus Christ, a man as we are, standing with two feet on this present world, and then bids us watch as he is transfigured and taken up into the glory of that eternal world. That transfiguration of Christ is going to talk to us about God's intention for us humans as well. How making those right discoveries and responses to God in the course of our temporary world here, we too may be transformed and made suitable for that eternal world.
In addition to talking of creation and God's interventions in judgment in the past, in the flood and the destruction of Sodom, our epistle will also talk to us about God's interventions in the future, about the second coming of our Lord. That is mentioned explicitly in chapter one. We have not followed cunningly devised fables when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus. In addition to talking of the second coming of Christ, this epistle will talk to us, as I have said, about the dissolution of all things, the end of the present earth and heavens.
And finally, it will talk of that eternal heavens and earth, the new heavens and earth, that great goal for which our temporary planet was but a stepping stone, a preliminary stage. So much then for some of the great events that we shall be considering in the second epistle of Peter. Let us fasten for the moment on the emphasis that Peter will put before us in chapter three. It is this, that this present world in which we live is temporary.
Now, of course, that happens to be nowadays the reigning theory amongst the cosmologists. When I was a youth, eh, some cosmologists were inclined to the view that the universe around us is eternal. Ancient Greeks held the view that matter is eternal. But as you will know, of more recent years, the theory has gained favor amongst the cosmologists, that the scientific evidence, as far as we understand it, proclaims that our world is temporary.
Scientists talk to us about the fact that our sun is moment by moment burning up vast, almost incalculable stores of energy. And in more recent years, we have become alerted, haven't we, to the fact that you can't go on burning energy forever. It, uh, runs out. The concern some years ago about the possibility that fossil fuels would run out and face our modern world with difficulties of finding some alternative forms of energy to use and keep our advanced civilizations going.
That is only one little reminder to us that the great sun up in the sky, pouring out its vast quantities of energies constantly every second, must by definition, one of these days, burn out. And the picture that the scientists paint is rather uncomfortable. They hazard the guess, perhaps it's more than a guess, that as our sun begins to grow old, one day it will blow up and become a massive red giant, as they call it, and when it does, or even before, our little planet will sizzle up like a sausage in a saucepan.
And all that has been humanity, and all that has been apparent progress, and all that has been achieved, will be burned up. Now, the Bible has been saying this for a very long while. We're not to suppose that when the Bible talks of the world being burned up, it is confining itself to the possibilities that the scientists talk of. The Bible affirms that our present world, with all its forces, is kept together by God's sovereign will in Christ, our Redeemer and Creator, all things are held together, be they the strong forces or the weak electrical forces or whatever they are, in Him, says Scripture, they hold together.
When it pleases His divine majesty to let those forces come asunder. Then all things will be dissolved. But at any rate, to this extent, there is no conflict between what Bible has been saying for centuries and what now at last the modern scientist is saying. Our world is temporary. Now, when the scientists talk to the general public about this fact, they deem it good and proper and decent manners to comfort our hearts by saying, yes, but it won't happen yet a while, you know. Hum. It won't happen for billions and billions and billions of years, so you're all right.
But that's facile comfort, isn't it? Because the very fact that our world is temporary raises a very big question, namely, what is the significance of human life on our planet? The whole episode of humanity. You see, it isn't merely that one of these days you will pass away, die, that your life is temporary. You've seen that long. The fact is that human life as we have known it on this planet, the whole race is a temporary thing.
A temporary phenomenon in the heavens. Just as we can train our telescopes on certain stars and see them as burnt out stars, finished, dead worlds. So one day our planet and humanity with it, the whole thing shall be a thing of the past. That raises a very big question, doesn't it? What is the significance of human life? And in particular, what are we to think of human progress?
I hope you are human enough to feel a certain pride as you read your history and observe what is going on around you, a certain pride at the tremendous progress that human beings have made on the planet. I've often rejoiced in it here in Belfast, but I don't see the gentlemen living in caves and pulling around their wives by their roots of their hair and beating them with clubs. They have got much more sophisticated ways, I understand, of controlling their wives. But life, at least in Belfast, isn't the nasty old thing it used to be, not only centuries ago, but what it was in your grandfather's time.
With what greater ease and affluence do we go about our daily living? When I consider the ingenuity of man and his marvelous inventions, his technological process, progress, I for one am filled with admiration. What a wonderful story of progress it has been and is. And now in our decade, as we observe, mankind is making progress not at an arithmetical but a geometrical rate.
They tell me that IBM have got so many new editions of computers under wraps, because, you know, the present ones are marvelous, the ones they've got, uh, are even more marvelous, but they can't bring them onto the market yet because they wouldn't sell the ones that they've already got. The progress that promises now in these next decades almost defies description. What of it? If one of these days, however remote in time it may be, the whole thing is going to be burned up. Now, the answer that the Christian gospel has to this matter, of course, is a marvelous and glorious and positive one.
Bible affirms that all true progress is of eternal significance. We are told in the Epistle to the Hebrews in chapter one that our Lord, by whom all things were made originally, he made the ages of human experience. And at its end, he will be the heir of all things. We may hope that all true and genuine human progress will not be waste.
Christ will be its heir and inheritor, build it into his eternal kingdom. But this, uh, today and in our studies, we shall find Peter in this letter concerned not with human progress at the technological level. He is concerned with progress at the far more important level, and that is moral and spiritual progress. For according to Holy Scripture, the significance of our human race is not to be found merely in its technological progress, but in its moral and spiritual progress.
And the question that Peter will address to our hearts is like this: What am I? I started as a little bit of a two-celled organism. I grew. I was born. Since then, I like to think I've progressed. At least I've progressed physically. I like to think I've progressed in my intelligence. I like to think I've progressed morally. What am I? You see, I'm not a static thing, am I?
No human being is a static thing. You're moving even as you sit on those chairs. Not merely that the chemistry of your cells is moving, but your personality is moving, isn't it? Today we'll see us all that little bit changed from what we were yesterday, making progress. Progress for good. Or progress for the worse.
Pray let me, let Peter impress that on our hearts. What am I? I am not a static something. At the very deepest levels of my being and personality, I am not a static something. I'm on the move. I live on a planet that's constantly on the move. I sit on this planet Earth, and it goes around the sun. And the sun itself is going somewhere, and we are following it, corkscrewing through space. You'll never come back to the same place, not even in space.
You're on the move. What is true physically is true morally and spiritually. We are on the move. And even now, at the very moment, we are determining in part what we shall be. It is therefore exceedingly important that we get this notion of progress into our hearts and make sure that the progress we make is the right kind of progress. For when Peter comes to his second chapter, he warns us that there is such a thing as bad progress, if you can put it that way.
In chapter one, he's exhorting us as Christians to make sure that we do make positive progress, deliberate, by God's grace. In chapter two, he will remind us that in his day there were those who advocated a certain kind of progress. They said it was moral progress, and that it had a tremendous future in it of freedom. But Peter denounces it as being false and cruelly deceptive. Progress, if it be progress, that will land people in an eternal abyssum of corruption.
This false progress to which he refers, of course, is what you might, what we nowadays would call permissiveness. There were people, as the first century of our era drew to its end, who, in the name of Christianity, preached permissiveness. The old moralities, they said, were old fashioned. If you had the new philosophies, you would see that, uh, the old restrictions on sexual morality didn't matter. Now we were free. They said it promised even greater freedom, much more development of the personality, better, healthier people, freed from our inhibitions.
It is interesting that we have found in this last, say, twenty, twenty five years in Western Europe and in the States of America, that same emphasis on permissive morality, preached in the same terms, not as ultimate rights and wrongs, but as old-fashioned and modern. Sexual license. is advocated on the grounds that the older restrictions are old fashioned. As though morality was something that kind of develops, and you judge it like you would judge a motor car.
You only have to look at some motor cars and say, God, that's old fashioned, dear me, double declutching and all that. Oh, that went out with the ark. And we're so used to new cars, new televisions, new computers, and old fashioned is bad that we get it into our heads that old morality. So used to new cars, new televisions, new computers, and old fashioned is bad that we get it into our heads that old morality is bad. And the mark of whether a thing is right or not is, is it new? Is it new fashioned? So nowadays, homosexuality, instead of being, uh, branded, as it always was in God's word, as sinful, is counted all right.
And that in spite of the diseases that it now gives alarming rise to. And premarital sex, and fornication, and adultery, and divorce. These things are not excused, they are flouted in front of us, aren't they? Flaunted in front of us. As being a mark of the modern man, of the human race making progress. Therefore, in this second letter, we shall have to listen to Peter exposing why that is false. But let's not go further along that line at the moment, save to notice this.
Now, Peter will not only denounce that kind of numerality as false, he will warn people that God will not forever put up with it, and there will come judgment on our planet for that kind of thing. And if you should be thinking, yes, judgment may be, but the end of the world is a long, long, long way off. Yes, you may be right. But chapter two of Peter's epistle will remind us that long before this present world disappears, there is to be another intervention within history, and that is the coming again of Jesus Christ our Lord.
Just like the flood came and intervened in history and destroyed evil men, and when it was over, history went on. And just as the fire and brimstone came from heaven and destroyed Sodom, and when it had done its work of purifying, history went on. As it was in the days of Noah, as it was in the days of Lot, so shall it be when the Son of Man comes, the Lord will come. He'll clear up our old world, morally, and history will not necessarily come forthwith to an end.
For the Lord knows how to intervene in history, to put down evil, and to keep evil men from doing further harm and to keep them under punishment until that remote time when it shall please God to finish our planet completely. Anyhow, I would like to suggest to you then that one of the lessons that we must pick up from our study of this epistle may be put in simple terms as follows. This world is temporary.
Number one. With all that that means, there is no standing still. It's endless and irresistible progress in one direction or another. This world is temporary. There is an eternal kingdom. And thirdly, all true progress here in this world will have eternal consequences in the next.
And of course, Peter's chief object in putting before us this lesson is to prevail upon us as Christians, not to take a fatalistic attitude, but to say to ourselves, yes, if life is temporary, life is the time for change, for progress. If there is eternal world and progress here will have eternal consequences there, then God help me. With all the resources of my redeemed intelligence and redeemed emotion and redeemed strength, God help me to cooperate with God so long as I am in this temporary world, so that I make such progress as will bring me the maximum of benefit and enjoyment and potential in that eternal kingdom.
Now, Peter held that it was such a very important lesson, that, uh, he'd got to do something a little bit drastic about it. At the risk of being an unpopular preacher or an unpopular ret- letter writer, he tells us in the second part of chapter one what he intends to do. Here is this major lesson. There is an et- uh, this world is temporary. There is an eternal world. And progress in this world will have eternal consequences.
Says, Peter, I'm going to remind you of it. Ah, not just that, more than that. I'm not only going to remind you of it, I am going to stir up your minds by way of remembrance. Ah, yes, but not only that. I'm going to ensure that you yourselves will always be able to recall these things. Notice the threefold, uh, uh, uh, uh, intention he has. Let me illustrate it. Suppose I had some, uh, some lesson to teach you. I'll take a silly lesson.
You might remember it then, wouldn't you? I say to you, you know, I'd like to remind you of something. You say, what? Hmm. It's hot in the Sahara. Oh, you say, it's hot in the Sahara. I see. Oh, I say, I want to remind you it's hot in the Sahara. So what? Ah yes, but I can see that you're just taking it casually, and I come up to you and I get you by the shoulders and I begin to shake you. I say, you don't seem to understand. It's hot in the Sahara. Can't you get hold of it? Get stirred up, get excited. So you begin to get excited. That must be important, what this chap is saying.
Uh, I didn't quite understand hot in the Sahara. What's that got to do with me? But anyway, he seems to think it's important. Do you know what? It's hot in the Sahara. No, you're getting excited now. Yes, so I'm getting somewhere. Even that isn't enough. For I keep on shaking you, and I keep on stirring you up with this result, that when I'm dead and gone, you'll be sitting around your fireside one of these nights, and suddenly the conversation, being a bit dull, will turn to that curious fellow dog's body that used to live in Belfast. And as somebody mentioned his name, the grin will come over your face. You say he was an odd bod, wasn't he? Do you remember the way he was always saying it's hot in the Sahara? Ah.
Oh, it's had its work then, for now, even when he's gone, you can recall it. Well, I'm not going to preach to you it's hot in the Sahara, but I and Peter are going to preach to you there is an eternal world. Our world is only temporary, and your place and condition and enjoyment in that eternal world will depend on your progress here. I'm going to tell you that, remind you of that, says Peter. Oh, I'm going to do more than remind you. I'm going to shake you by the shoulders and stir you up. And get you dancing around the place and telling each other, do you know what?
This world is temporary, and my enjoyment of that eternal world will depend on my progress here. More than that, says Peter, when I've gone and put off my tabernacle. I want so to have taught you that anytime you like, you can recall this message, and you will recall it constantly. That is our task, ladies and gentlemen, in these studies. Not only to be reminded, not only to be moved, but to so get hold of second Peter...
that we could recall it anytime we wished. Can you? I'm not going to ask you, madam, or you, sir, to get up on your hind legs now and recite Second Peter. Could you if I asked you? Could you give me a summary of each chapter? You'll disappoint H- Peter if you get home to heaven and you can't. And let us remind ourselves that if one of these days, uh, we found ourselves in a communist jail, bereft of our Bibles, it would be an incalculable blessing to be able to recall the main outline of second Peter.
Now I'm going to spend, we're running late, as you'll see, but we started late. I'm going to spend a few brief moments, starting in those verses that we read in First Peter one and priming the pump of your thinking so that now as you go to your classes, you will be able to begin raising the questions that I have put on the sheet, and then in the second sec- session, I shall try to deal with the questions that you have discussed and take the topics further and, uh, go down to verse eleven.
So now what I would like you to give your attention to in your classes, if you will, is chapter one, verses one to four. Simon Peter. Why do you suppose that, whereas in his first letter he just says Peter, in this letter he says Simon Peter. Is that because he was particularly proud that he had two names, like some people have, you know, James Bartholomew Spink, and they're proud of the Bartholomew bit?
Any significance in the fact that in this letter he calls himself Simon Peter, using his two names? What does it mean when he says, to them that have obtained like precious faith with us in the righteousness of God? What do you think that means? When he says in verse three— verse four, sorry. Uh, uh, sorry, come back as you were.
When he says, we have obtained like precious faith in the righteousness of God. What has that righteousness of God and our Savior Jesus Christ got to do with obtaining faith? In verse three, he says that Christ called him by his own glory and virtue. I'd ask you to think how you were called to Christian faith. And what do you think Peter means when he says that he's called us by his own glory and virtue?
When he says in verse four again, he says that we are to be made partakers of the divine nature, what do you take that to mean? Do all believers, by definition, partake of the divine nature? Is it a something that we get when we are converted?
Or is it a something that we have to get hold of after we get converted? Or what is it? Now, as I say, because we ran a bit late in starting, what I want to do, leaders of classes now, is simply to prime the pump, if you will. Not necessarily to come to answers, but to begin to think about these phrases. What do they mean to each other, and what do you think, uh, uh, uh, they have to do with our general topic? I am myself going to give what I think they mean in the second session, and then you may care to carry on the discussion of those first verses on down to verse eleven in the second series of question sessions.
Yes? Is that moderately clear then? We now go into our groups, and shall we give them, Mr. Chairman, twenty minutes just to do that initial survey of what they think these terms mean, and break at eleven past twenty? Questions on the first session, the resources for spiritual growth. Question one: the starting point for progress. Part A. What, according to chapter one, verse one, do all believers have in common as the basis of progress?
What, according to chapter one, verse one, do all believers have in common as the basis of progress? Part B. Consider the translations like Precious Faith Authorized Version and Faith of Equal Standing Revised Standard Version. Which translation makes better sense in the context? Part C.
What has the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ, chapter one verse one, got to do with our obtaining faith. What has the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ, chapter one verse one got to do with our obtaining faith? How were you called to faith and salvation? Through a sense of guilt, through fear, through a need or loneliness. How were you called to faith and salvation? Through a sense of guilt, through fear, through a need or loneliness.
Part E. In chapter one, verse three, Peter says that he called us by his own glory and virtue. What does that mean? In chapter one, verse three, Peter says that he called us by his own glory and virtue. What does that mean? Question two: the provision for progress. Part A. Do we get the divine nature at our new birth, or when we reach heaven, or in the course of our Christian life? Do we get the divine nature at our new birth, or when we reach heaven, or in the course of our Christian life?
Part B. What does it mean to partake of the divine? Do all believers partake of it equally? What does it mean to partake of the divine nature? Do all believers partake of it equally? Part C. What are the exceeding great and precious promises referred to in chapter one verse four? Name some of them. What are the exceeding great and precious promises referred to in chapter one verse four? Name some of them.
Part D. Chapter one, verse four says that his divine power has given us all things necessary for a godly life. But how does the verse say that these all things become available to us? Chapter one, verse four says that his divine power has given us all things necessary for a godly life. But how does the verse say that these all things become available to us.
