1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:02,000 Amen. 2 00:00:30,000 --> 00:00:32,000 Amen. 3 00:01:00,000 --> 00:01:02,000 Amen. 4 00:06:00,000 --> 00:06:27,000 All right, let's go ahead and have a word of prayer. 5 00:06:27,000 --> 00:06:50,000 Father in heaven, thank you for allowing us to be here this evening. We thank you for your word. We thank you for your people. We thank you for how you have cared for us. We just ask that you would watch over Tom Wolfe, that you would be with his situation, that you would encourage him and be working in his life. 6 00:06:50,000 --> 00:07:11,000 We ask that you continue to be with Dee as she's recovering. We thank you for the recovery that she has made so far and the progress she's made. And so we just ask that you would continue to be with her and be with Susan as she's recovering. Watch over her and give her strength. Be with our study tonight in 2 Peter. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. 7 00:07:11,000 --> 00:07:26,000 I'm going to pull this up. I've got to turn the sound off on my phone so that I can actually see if we get comments without hearing a crazy echo. 8 00:07:26,000 --> 00:07:40,000 Alright, we're going to jump into 2 Peter tonight. We want to kind of walk through this. We're just going to start with the first couple verses. Kind of walk through it. 9 00:07:40,000 --> 00:07:56,000 Next Wednesday, I'm going to be out of town, but I'll give you a little bit of an assignment for when we get back together. If you want to read through 2 Peter, just three chapters, and just kind of become familiar with it. 10 00:07:56,000 --> 00:08:13,000 And also, specifically, that first section, like verses 5, 6, and 7, there's a whole big list of words, kind of think through and meditate on how all these characteristics kind of fit together and build on one another. 11 00:08:13,000 --> 00:08:24,000 So, I'm just going to go ahead and read this, and then I want to do a little bit of background on 2 Peter, and then we'll dive into our verses and spend a little time in discussion. 12 00:08:24,000 --> 00:08:45,000 So, it just starts like this: "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." 13 00:08:45,000 --> 00:08:52,000 So, I want to think a little bit, as we get started, about protecting things, specifically protecting things that matter. 14 00:08:52,000 --> 00:09:01,000 And so, one of the things you find if you've ever looked at anything you've purchased, we always find warning labels. And so, I got a couple of examples here. 15 00:09:01,000 --> 00:09:09,000 There's one here that just simply says, "Not intended for highway use," which sounds okay until you realize that was on a wheelbarrow. 16 00:09:09,000 --> 00:09:20,000 And so, I don't know what prompted the "Not for highway use on a wheelbarrow," but evidently someone felt that need as well. 17 00:09:20,000 --> 00:09:40,000 And then there is this, "Remove child before folding," which, you know, on a stroller, you think it would be common sense, "Remove the child before folding," but oftentimes these things are not very obvious to some people. 18 00:09:40,000 --> 00:09:49,000 And so, we spend a lot of money and a lot of resources on protecting things. So, when you buy a car, you go buy a new car, a lot of times they'll talk about the crash test rating, 19 00:09:49,000 --> 00:09:56,000 which I always thought would be kind of a fun job because you just, you get to crash cars into one another and see how they do and how they handle. 20 00:09:56,000 --> 00:10:04,000 And I actually watched a video this past week where they crashed a modern car into like a 1955 Chevy Bel Air, 21 00:10:04,000 --> 00:10:11,000 and you would think that giant steel car would have been great, but just the way it crumpled, it was a little scary. 22 00:10:11,000 --> 00:10:18,000 And so, we spend a lot of money testing things, whether it's cars or medicine or food, and we do that in part 23 00:10:18,000 --> 00:10:27,000 because we're trying to protect people. Peter, as he writes, is writing to protect the faith of his readers. 24 00:10:27,000 --> 00:10:35,000 And so, in 2 Peter chapter 1, starting in verse 1 down through verse 3, Peter writes this, 25 00:10:35,000 --> 00:10:44,000 "But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you who will secretly bring destructive heresies, 26 00:10:44,000 --> 00:10:49,000 even denying the master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction. 27 00:10:49,000 --> 00:10:56,000 And many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of truth will be blasphemed. 28 00:10:56,000 --> 00:11:03,000 And in their greed they will exploit you with false words. Their condemnation from long ago is not idle, 29 00:11:03,000 --> 00:11:10,000 and their destruction is not asleep." And so, Peter, in chapter 2, begins to talk about those who are 30 00:11:10,000 --> 00:11:17,000 opposed to the gospel, and he talks about sort of how this has happened before and it will happen again. 31 00:11:17,000 --> 00:11:23,000 He says, "But false prophets also arose among the people," sort of calling back to Israel's history. 32 00:11:23,000 --> 00:11:31,000 And he says, "Just as it happened then, it will happen to us as well." And so there is a danger to the church of false teachers. 33 00:11:31,000 --> 00:11:36,000 And notice what happens. They secretly bring in destructive heresies. 34 00:11:36,000 --> 00:11:44,000 So nobody shows up at church with a giant sign saying, "Hey, I'm a heretic, and I'll lead you down the path to damnation," right? 35 00:11:44,000 --> 00:11:52,000 It comes in secretly, and it comes in quietly. It often comes in a little bit at a time, a little bit here, a little bit there. 36 00:11:52,000 --> 00:11:57,000 They go on to deny God. Their road leads them nowhere good. 37 00:11:57,000 --> 00:12:04,000 And in verse 2 it says, "Many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of truth will be blasphemed." 38 00:12:04,000 --> 00:12:10,000 Verse 3, "In their greed they will exploit you with false words." 39 00:12:10,000 --> 00:12:15,000 Their condemnation from long ago is not idle. Their destruction is not asleep. 40 00:12:15,000 --> 00:12:23,000 This false teachers thing is not a new phenomenon, but it's also something that's going to keep happening and keep going. 41 00:12:23,000 --> 00:12:29,000 And so Peter here is essentially giving the church a warning label. He's saying, "Watch out for these false teachers." 42 00:12:29,000 --> 00:12:36,000 And so throughout this letter, he's going to sort of unpack that in different ways. 43 00:12:36,000 --> 00:12:43,000 And what's interesting to me, and I have not, prior to the last several weeks studying 2 Peter, 44 00:12:43,000 --> 00:12:51,000 haven't spent a lot of time in 2 Peter. It's kind of one of those books that sometimes we sort of tend to gloss over or skip around from. 45 00:12:51,000 --> 00:12:58,000 And so what's interesting to me is how Peter seeks to protect against these false and destructive heresies. 46 00:12:58,000 --> 00:13:05,000 We can protect things in a lot of different ways. So we can, you know, put somebody in a witness protection program. 47 00:13:05,000 --> 00:13:09,000 You protect them by hiding them, right? So nobody can see them. 48 00:13:09,000 --> 00:13:15,000 Peter isn't advocating that the church hide. The other way that we can protect something is we put it somewhere safe. 49 00:13:15,000 --> 00:13:24,000 We, you know, put armed men around it. We put walls around it and a door and a safe and alarms, and we try to protect that way. 50 00:13:24,000 --> 00:13:34,000 But Peter chooses something that probably we wouldn't grab sort of at first guess, and he chooses to protect with knowledge. 51 00:13:34,000 --> 00:13:43,000 Let me just give you a couple examples of this as he talks about this. Look at verse 2. He says this: 52 00:13:43,000 --> 00:13:49,000 "May grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord." 53 00:13:49,000 --> 00:13:54,000 And then in the very next verse, in verse 3: 54 00:13:54,000 --> 00:14:04,000 "His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness through the knowledge of him who has called us to his own glory and excellence." 55 00:14:04,000 --> 00:14:09,000 And then in verse 5: 56 00:14:09,000 --> 00:14:18,000 "For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, virtue with knowledge, knowledge with self-control, self-control with steadfastness, 57 00:14:18,000 --> 00:14:25,000 steadfastness with godliness, godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love." 58 00:14:25,000 --> 00:14:33,000 And so just those first part of the first chapter, you find this sort of over and over again about knowledge. 59 00:14:33,000 --> 00:14:43,000 And it doesn't just stop there. Something like 15 or 16 times he'll use the word knowledge, or a variant of knowledge in these three kind of short chapters. 60 00:14:43,000 --> 00:14:49,000 He's always talking about knowledge here, knowledge this, to know the knowledge of God's promises. 61 00:14:49,000 --> 00:14:55,000 And I think knowledge protects us in a couple of different ways. One is it shows us danger ahead, right? 62 00:14:55,000 --> 00:15:00,000 So if you've been driving down the road and you see a sign that says, you know, "left lane closed ahead," 63 00:15:00,000 --> 00:15:06,000 what happens is we, you know, we move over into the right lane because we know that there's an obstruction ahead. 64 00:15:06,000 --> 00:15:19,000 And so that knowledge allows us to react. Additionally, knowledge can help us determine what's dangerous and what's not. 65 00:15:19,000 --> 00:15:26,000 So this past week we've been seeing a lot of snakes at my dad's, and there's this page on Facebook that helps you identify snakes, 66 00:15:26,000 --> 00:15:33,000 and all his snakes are pretty harmless. But there was a post in this snake identification group on Facebook. 67 00:15:33,000 --> 00:15:37,000 Anybody know what kind of snake this is? We found it in our store in Winchester. 68 00:15:37,000 --> 00:15:44,000 We get a lot of merchandise from different places, and it turned out to be a Southern Pacific rattlesnake. 69 00:15:44,000 --> 00:15:49,000 And so rather than calling a rescuer somewhere, they just let it out the back door. It's like, "There you go." 70 00:15:49,000 --> 00:15:58,000 And so a little bit of knowledge in that situation would have gone a long way toward alleviating the danger. 71 00:15:58,000 --> 00:16:06,000 And here's the problem. There are so many lies in our world, and so much looks good and sounds good and is popular. 72 00:16:06,000 --> 00:16:13,000 And without knowledge, it's so easy to be led down a road that leads to destruction. 73 00:16:13,000 --> 00:16:17,000 And so Peter is saying, "Hey, I'm going to protect you from these false teachers. 74 00:16:17,000 --> 00:16:23,000 I want to protect you from the lies of the world, and I'm going to do so with knowledge." 75 00:16:23,000 --> 00:16:32,000 Any thoughts or comments as we just think about knowledge a little bit before we get into 1 Peter? 76 00:16:32,000 --> 00:16:40,000 Alright, in order to think about protecting, one of the things that we have to think about is value, right? 77 00:16:40,000 --> 00:16:48,000 So if something's valuable, we want to protect it. Things that aren't valuable, we generally don't worry about protecting. 78 00:16:48,000 --> 00:16:55,000 And so, you know, when it gets ready to rain, we go through the yard, we pick up all the kids' toys that they have left outside, 79 00:16:55,000 --> 00:17:00,000 and we pick up the ones that can't be out in the rain, because we want to protect those things. 80 00:17:00,000 --> 00:17:06,000 And so, Peter, one of the things, in order to protect our faith, we have to understand the value of it. 81 00:17:06,000 --> 00:17:13,000 And I think one of the struggles that the American church has, specifically, is we don't value our faith. 82 00:17:13,000 --> 00:17:19,000 We don't value the wonder and the blessings of being a Christian. 83 00:17:19,000 --> 00:17:29,000 And so, look at what he says, "To those who have obtained a faith of equal standing with ours by the righteousness of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ." 84 00:17:29,000 --> 00:17:36,000 And we'll talk about the equal standing here in a minute, but some of you will have translations that will say something else. 85 00:17:36,000 --> 00:17:47,000 They'll say something like, "Like precious faith." And you may have heard that in the church, who have obtained a like precious faith. 86 00:17:47,000 --> 00:17:56,000 And Peter here talks about how this faith is precious. It's something to be held onto, something to be guarded, something to be protected. 87 00:17:56,000 --> 00:18:03,000 But he also says that these people, these readers and us, have obtained a faith of equal standing. 88 00:18:03,000 --> 00:18:12,000 And you have to remember who's writing this, right? This is the Apostle Peter, the guy who preaches the very first gospel sermon in Acts chapter 2. 89 00:18:12,000 --> 00:18:22,000 Who, you know, presides over, you know, they have the first church council in Acts 15. He preaches the gospel of the Gentiles first before Paul is even a Christian. 90 00:18:22,000 --> 00:18:29,000 And he says that, "In Christ, we all are of the same faith." 91 00:18:29,000 --> 00:18:35,000 And what's interesting is that Peter really likes to use this word, "precious." 92 00:18:35,000 --> 00:18:47,000 Not just here, where he talks about an equal standing, and the Greek word is literally something of honor that is shared equally, something good that is shared equally. 93 00:18:47,000 --> 00:18:57,000 He talks a lot about the preciousness of our faith. And so, look at 1 Peter chapter 1, verses 6 and 7. 94 00:18:57,000 --> 00:19:18,000 It says this, "In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold, that perishes though it is tested by fire, may found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ." 95 00:19:18,000 --> 00:19:35,000 Peter says that faith, it's more precious than gold, and gold is an amazing thing, because you can put it in the fire and it separates out all the impurities and the gold comes out pure, but ultimately gold will disappear, it'll wear away, but your faith is more precious than that. 96 00:19:35,000 --> 00:19:53,000 In verses 18 and 19, he says this in 1 Peter 1, "Knowing that you were ransomed from the futile way of life inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ like that of a lamb without blemish or spot." 97 00:19:53,000 --> 00:20:04,000 He says the price that was paid for your redemption, for my redemption, is of the utmost value. It wasn't something as trivial as gold or silver, but it was the blood of Christ. 98 00:20:04,000 --> 00:20:28,000 And in 2 Peter 1:4, just the very next verse, they say this, "By which he granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you might become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire." 99 00:20:28,000 --> 00:20:46,000 And so Peter has talked a lot, not just here in 2 Peter, but he'll talk a lot in 1 Peter about the preciousness of our faith, that it's better than gold, it's better than silver, that the promises of God are to be held onto, and they are precious, and they should be guarded. 100 00:20:46,000 --> 00:20:57,000 Now these ideas that Peter is sharing with us, they're not new ideas, right? Jesus talks about the value of being part of the kingdom. Remember, he has two parables that explain this in a very picturesque way. 101 00:20:57,000 --> 00:21:14,000 The parable of the hidden treasure, and the parable of the pearl of great price. Both those situations, a guy goes, one case he finds a great treasure in a field, the other time he finds a pearl that is of the utmost value, and then he goes and sells everything that he has, not most things. 102 00:21:14,000 --> 00:21:26,000 He says, "This treasure, or this pearl, is more important than anything that I own, including my wife's grandmother's china," which probably led to some awkward conversation. 103 00:21:26,000 --> 00:21:42,000 Ultimately, at home, but Jesus' point was the kingdom of heaven is more valuable than anything that we have, and we tend to take it for granted. But Jesus also talks about protecting. He says, "Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees." 104 00:21:42,000 --> 00:21:55,000 He talks about how he is the good shepherd, and he uses the picture that he's the door to the sheepfold, that his people are in this sheep pen, and there's a wall surrounding them to protect them, and the shepherd puts himself between the danger of the outside 105 00:21:55,000 --> 00:22:15,000 and the safety of the sheep, and so that any danger that comes toward the sheep, the good shepherd experiences first. And there are these pictures of the preciousness of our faith, the importance of protecting it, and Peter says, "Well, how do you protect it?" 106 00:22:15,000 --> 00:22:24,000 With knowledge, by knowing these things. And specifically, that knowledge, Peter's going to tell us, is the Word of God. Any thoughts or comments 107 00:22:24,000 --> 00:22:42,000 or comments or questions as we think about sort of that introduction, trying to get a little bit of the context before we jump into 1 Peter, which is why I have my "I can do all things through a verse taken out of context" coffee cup. 108 00:22:42,000 --> 00:22:53,000 It's been amazing to me over the years in the various places I was, the number of people that have been in church for 40, 50 years 109 00:22:53,000 --> 00:23:22,000 I've never read, not even once, a fair amount of the Word of God. Even to the extent that those who call them elders in a couple of those churches, they didn't know what was in the book. All they did was sit here like I am tonight, listen to you. If you lead me astray, I've got no way to check on you. 110 00:23:22,000 --> 00:23:25,000 If you don't read the Word, you don't know. 111 00:23:25,000 --> 00:23:51,000 Well, yeah, and I think part of that, the issue of not spending much time in the Word is that we have so much access to it, we don't think about it. Just like we have clean water coming out of our faucet, and the time we really appreciate that is what happens. We turn on the faucet and it's not there anymore. I think in many ways we've taken the Word of God for granted. We've forgotten that the Word 112 00:23:51,000 --> 00:24:20,000 of God is a treasure. It's a sword that defends us. It's the shield that protects us. It's a light into our path. All the 119th Psalm, the alphabetical list of all the ways in which the Word of God is wonderful and powerful and at work in our life, and I think in a lot of ways we've taken it for granted. Just like we take our faith for granted, and in some cases our freedom to express our 113 00:24:20,000 --> 00:24:25,000 faith for granted. Any other thoughts or comments? 114 00:24:25,000 --> 00:24:49,000 I don't know what your situation is here because I don't claim to pay any attention to this here, but in a lot of congregations anymore, it's rare to find somebody carry a Bible in the church house. One that they're familiar with. In this Bible, when basically they read, to you and I, we can read 115 00:24:49,000 --> 00:25:18,000 any of them and get the message. But if you're going to study the Bible, you've got to be able to do some cross-referencing and this and that and the other, and most people rely on their phone if they're not interrupted by somebody else who's looking for something else instead of the Scripture. That's the best-case scenario in our present time. This may reflect my age considerably. 116 00:25:18,000 --> 00:25:43,000 Normally, I carry my phone and my Bible, but generally, I just follow him with the phone. If he don't have it on the board, if he has it on the board, well, I got the phone never needed. Absolutely, right here. 117 00:25:43,000 --> 00:26:00,000 What I like, especially with what Neil does, is you can pull up any translation right off the top, too. But once again, we have so much access to the Word of God, it's really easy for us to take it for granted. 118 00:26:00,000 --> 00:26:06,000 People say, "I don't spend that much time." 119 00:26:06,000 --> 00:26:20,000 Well, you look at what's in the New Testament, in every print Bible, and you're talking about roughly an inch book, an inch and a quarter of a max. 120 00:26:20,000 --> 00:26:29,000 You pick up another book, an inch and a quarter, and you figure, a day, two days, I have read. What's the problem? 121 00:26:29,000 --> 00:26:38,000 We can't do that in your time? Come on. I want to, it's the problem. 122 00:26:38,000 --> 00:26:42,000 Any other thoughts or comments? 123 00:26:42,000 --> 00:26:50,000 Alright, let's take just a quick look at what Peter says just in these first three verses. 124 00:26:50,000 --> 00:26:58,000 And one of the things I thought about when I was looking at these verses is a lot of times we sort of treat these first couple verses, 125 00:26:58,000 --> 00:27:05,000 a lot of times as sort of a kind of a throwaway when it comes to looking at these books. 126 00:27:05,000 --> 00:27:17,000 It says, "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, 127 00:27:17,000 --> 00:27:24,000 may grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord." 128 00:27:24,000 --> 00:27:28,000 And at first look, it just sort of seems like Peter's kind of getting his greetings out of the way. 129 00:27:28,000 --> 00:27:33,000 Like, "Hey, it's Peter. I'm here. I've got some things to tell you," and some kind of general well wishes. 130 00:27:33,000 --> 00:27:41,000 But I want to just take a minute to unpack a little bit about that. 131 00:27:41,000 --> 00:27:47,000 So we have Simon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ. 132 00:27:47,000 --> 00:27:51,000 And it's interesting that ancient letters, they generally start with the name. 133 00:27:51,000 --> 00:27:54,000 So it's kind of like us when we get a letter in the mail. 134 00:27:54,000 --> 00:28:01,000 So if I get it, you know, most of the time you get a letter, it's obviously junk mail or a bill or something. 135 00:28:01,000 --> 00:28:02,000 You know right away what that is. 136 00:28:02,000 --> 00:28:06,000 But sometimes you'll get a letter with a handwritten envelope, and you look at it and go, "Oh, what's this?" 137 00:28:06,000 --> 00:28:10,000 And so what's the first thing we do? We look at the return address to see who it's from. 138 00:28:10,000 --> 00:28:18,000 And in our case, most of the time, it's somebody, you know, trying to, sending a flyer for something or, you know, some kind of promotional item. 139 00:28:18,000 --> 00:28:27,000 But we look at the return address. And so the letters in ancient times, you started with your name so that the person doesn't have to kind of flip all the way to the bottom of the piece of parchment. 140 00:28:27,000 --> 00:28:30,000 You know, unroll it all the way and try to figure out who sends it. 141 00:28:30,000 --> 00:28:37,000 So you start with the name. And what's interesting is Peter refers to himself as Simon Peter. 142 00:28:37,000 --> 00:28:45,000 And it's interesting. Simon is a kind of a name in the first century, like like Bob, like there's one everywhere. 143 00:28:45,000 --> 00:28:54,000 You know, there's just all the time. So in the New Testament, there's something like nine besides Peter, Simon's mentioned. 144 00:28:54,000 --> 00:29:01,000 So he refers to himself as Simon Peter. It differentiates him from all of the other Simons in the New Testament. 145 00:29:01,000 --> 00:29:14,000 And if you remember his name, Peter, in Aramaic, Cephas, translated rock or little rock or rocky, a nickname given to him by Jesus. 146 00:29:14,000 --> 00:29:21,000 And what's interesting is I don't want to worry so much about the name as his description of himself. 147 00:29:21,000 --> 00:29:28,000 Look what he says is a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ. And in this, he does two things. 148 00:29:28,000 --> 00:29:37,000 First of all, he shows his humility. He says, "I am a servant." The word in Greek literally is slave. 149 00:29:37,000 --> 00:29:43,000 I remember in Greek class, our professor would always say that this is never a nice word. 150 00:29:43,000 --> 00:29:48,000 It's a word that contains complete submission. And so Peter, as he's writing, first of all, he says, 151 00:29:48,000 --> 00:29:55,000 "I'm not writing this because I think it's a good idea." He's not lifting himself up, but he says, 152 00:29:55,000 --> 00:30:05,000 "My master and my authority and the one who directs my hand and my word and my steps and my future, I'm his servant." 153 00:30:05,000 --> 00:30:12,000 But he also, in addition to showing his humility, what does he do? He also reminds them of his authority. 154 00:30:12,000 --> 00:30:20,000 So he says, "I am an apostle." And maybe we've ran into people like that who say, "Well, don't you know who I am?" 155 00:30:20,000 --> 00:30:26,000 And they want us to remind them, and so I always make sure, "Well, no. Well, I've never heard of that person." 156 00:30:26,000 --> 00:30:34,000 Just to kind of egg them on a little bit. But notice when he talks about his authority, he's not doing so in an arrogant way. 157 00:30:34,000 --> 00:30:41,000 He's a servant of Christ Jesus or Jesus Christ, but he is also an apostle. 158 00:30:41,000 --> 00:30:46,000 Remember, the apostles are the Twelve, the ones who are sent out. 159 00:30:46,000 --> 00:30:54,000 And so you can have, anybody can be an apostle, small a, but there is a very limited amount of apostles, capital A, in the Bible. 160 00:30:54,000 --> 00:31:05,000 And he is one of the capital A apostles. And so you have here this wonderful picture of both humility and authority tied together. 161 00:31:05,000 --> 00:31:14,000 And as I was thinking about that, we live in a world that is very disagreeable. We like to, we disagree. 162 00:31:14,000 --> 00:31:20,000 Sometimes we disagree for sport and argue for sport. Sometimes we disagree over serious things. 163 00:31:20,000 --> 00:31:27,000 But notice how Peter, as he writes a letter that's addressing false teachers, it's going to be confrontational. 164 00:31:27,000 --> 00:31:33,000 He does so with both humility and authority, which I think is a wonderful example for us. 165 00:31:33,000 --> 00:31:39,000 But we also see his agenda, an apostle of Jesus Christ. 166 00:31:39,000 --> 00:31:48,000 And one of the things in my Bible reading plan, I've been, it goes like two books of the Old Testament and two books of the New Testament, 167 00:31:48,000 --> 00:31:55,000 and it recently just went through Acts. And one of the things that really kind of grabbed me this time about going through Acts 168 00:31:55,000 --> 00:32:02,000 is every time Peter opens his mouth in the first like 10 chapters of the book of Acts, a gospel sermon comes out. 169 00:32:02,000 --> 00:32:07,000 You know, it doesn't matter where he is. Like, you know, Day of Pentecost, he opens his mouth, the gospel sermon comes out. 170 00:32:07,000 --> 00:32:14,000 He stands before the Sanhedrin, gospel sermon comes out. Some guy goes, "Hey, can you, you know, give me some gold and silver?" 171 00:32:14,000 --> 00:32:22,000 And what happens? The gospel sermon comes out. It's just like, you know, he gets arrested, a gospel, like it just, Peter is just overflowing with the gospel. 172 00:32:22,000 --> 00:32:31,000 And I think Peter's agenda should be our agenda. We should be people who overflow with the gospel. And it's easy to get tripped up 173 00:32:31,000 --> 00:32:41,000 and tangled up in other debates and other controversies. But at the heart of it, Christians should be people who ultimately overflow with the gospel. 174 00:32:41,000 --> 00:32:50,000 And what's interesting is Peter is writing this from prison, probably about a year after he writes 1 Peter. He'll actually reference that in 2 Peter 3. 175 00:32:50,000 --> 00:32:58,000 He'll say, "Remember my first letter?" And now in this letter, he's writing from prison, maybe even as close to a year before he is martyred. 176 00:32:58,000 --> 00:33:07,000 And from church tradition and church history, the tradition is that Peter was crucified. And as they lead him to be crucified, he says, 177 00:33:07,000 --> 00:33:13,000 "I am not worthy to be crucified in the same manner as Jesus." And so they crucify him upside down. 178 00:33:13,000 --> 00:33:22,000 And so remember, these are some of Peter's last recorded words. And those words are generally something we place a lot of weight on. 179 00:33:22,000 --> 00:33:27,000 When somebody's last words, we say this is the most important. They're trying to say this before they die. 180 00:33:27,000 --> 00:33:37,000 He's saying something to the church before he dies. And so these are something that we should probably hold on to and pay attention to and grab hold of. 181 00:33:37,000 --> 00:33:42,000 Any thoughts or comments about just Peter writing this? 182 00:33:42,000 --> 00:33:55,000 Well, in most Bible studies, especially for a new Christian, that is what you do. You tell them who is speaking and where they're located in that way. 183 00:33:55,000 --> 00:34:02,000 Well, it gives us some context, too, about what's happening, especially, you know, because I think most of us are pretty familiar with Peter. 184 00:34:02,000 --> 00:34:10,000 He's that guy who, on one hand, is very enthusiastic. And I think you see his enthusiasm both in his successes and in his failures. 185 00:34:10,000 --> 00:34:15,000 Kind of my favorite is, well, there's a lot of favorites with Peter. You know, he's walking, Jesus comes walking in the storm. 186 00:34:15,000 --> 00:34:23,000 Jesus, can I get out? And, you know, if it's really you, let me out. He jumps out of the boat, goes across the water, looks around, goes, "Wait a minute, I'm not supposed to be walking on water." 187 00:34:23,000 --> 00:34:30,000 Almost like one of those old-timey cartoons and just, you know, a guy goes off the cliff and doesn't realize he did and keeps running and then just falls. 188 00:34:30,000 --> 00:34:36,000 That's what Peter does. Or, you know, when he makes the good confession that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. 189 00:34:36,000 --> 00:34:42,000 And, you know, it's a remarkable thing. And Jesus commends him and talks about building the church. 190 00:34:42,000 --> 00:34:50,000 And then, like, three paragraphs later, Jesus is like, "I'm going to Jerusalem to die." And Peter goes, "Well, we're not going to let you." And, you know, Jesus says, "Get behind me, Satan." 191 00:34:50,000 --> 00:35:00,000 Like, so he goes from, you know, the guy with this foundational confession about who Jesus is to the next minute being called Satan and saying, "Get to the back of the line." 192 00:35:00,000 --> 00:35:12,000 And so, one of the great things about Peter is he relates to us. Because all of us, we sometimes are very enthusiastic for good and then very enthusiastic for bad. 193 00:35:12,000 --> 00:35:16,000 And so, it's a good thing to sort of put these things in context. 194 00:35:16,000 --> 00:35:31,000 So, let's take a look at verse 2 here. "To those who have obtained a faith of equal standing with ours by the righteousness of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ." 195 00:35:31,000 --> 00:35:42,000 And so, he talks about this equal faith or like precious faith, depending on your translation. And likely what Paul is doing, or Paul, Peter is doing. 196 00:35:42,000 --> 00:35:52,000 Remember, one of the big controversies in the early churches between Jew and Gentile. And here's the guy who is, you know, undeniably Jewish. 197 00:35:52,000 --> 00:36:02,000 And he's writing, and we know from 1 Peter, his letter goes out to all of these different cities, and all of these different places, and you're going to have Jews and Gentiles together. 198 00:36:02,000 --> 00:36:07,000 And what he's saying is, essentially, there are no second-class gospel citizens. 199 00:36:07,000 --> 00:36:15,000 There aren't some people who are, you know, better than others, that we all share the same faith. 200 00:36:15,000 --> 00:36:26,000 And what really kind of stood out to me about this is the source of this faith. It says, "By the righteousness of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ." 201 00:36:26,000 --> 00:36:35,000 One way to evaluate truth is to look at the source, right? It's one of the things that maybe we've lost in our society, 202 00:36:35,000 --> 00:36:42,000 is the ability to evaluate something by the source. So you hear all of these different rumors and news, 203 00:36:42,000 --> 00:36:47,000 and you say, "Well, where did it come from?" That should be our first question, "Evaluate the source." 204 00:36:47,000 --> 00:36:53,000 And one of the things when it comes to dealing with false teachers is evaluate the source. 205 00:36:53,000 --> 00:37:02,000 And what I mean by that is, where is this message coming from? You know, is it coming from, are they saying, like Paul or like Peter here, 206 00:37:02,000 --> 00:37:09,000 you know, the faith that is coming from our God and Savior, Jesus Christ, you know, I'm a servant of Christ Jesus, 207 00:37:09,000 --> 00:37:16,000 or is it saying, "Hey, I have this really, really good idea." Look at who they point to as the source. 208 00:37:16,000 --> 00:37:26,000 And what's interesting about this is if you look at that, on first glance it says, "By the righteousness of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ." 209 00:37:26,000 --> 00:37:34,000 He's not saying, "Our God and our Savior." In Greek, there's only one article here. This is one person. 210 00:37:34,000 --> 00:37:40,000 He's talking about God and Savior, Jesus Christ. What he's saying is that Jesus is God. 211 00:37:40,000 --> 00:37:52,000 And this is a big deal, because there are a lot of people who will say that Jesus may have been a good man, or a good teacher, or a good prophet. 212 00:37:52,000 --> 00:38:01,000 But in Peter's mind, Peter is still holding that same good confession, right, from Matthew, that Jesus is God. 213 00:38:01,000 --> 00:38:10,000 Now, later on, he will talk, and in fact, the very next verse, he'll say, "May peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus Christ our Lord." 214 00:38:10,000 --> 00:38:16,000 But notice that here is Peter, who makes the first good confession that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. 215 00:38:16,000 --> 00:38:26,000 And, you know, 50 years later, he's still holding to that confession, while in prison, about to be martyred, right? 216 00:38:26,000 --> 00:38:32,000 He's seen it all. He's seen the crucifixion, he's seen the resurrection, and Jesus is God. 217 00:38:32,000 --> 00:38:43,000 And so notice Peter's consistency, and one of the great arguments for the truth and the reliability of the gospel is the consistency of those who proclaim the message, right? 218 00:38:43,000 --> 00:38:48,000 They didn't just proclaim it when things were good and things got tough. They backed down or changed their story. 219 00:38:48,000 --> 00:38:58,000 But here he is writing this letter in jail in the very last part of his life, and he's saying, "Jesus is still the Son of God. Jesus is still God." 220 00:38:58,000 --> 00:39:06,000 And it's a remarkable picture of Peter's consistency. Any thoughts or comments before we move on? 221 00:39:06,000 --> 00:39:20,000 Take a look at the very last phrase here. It says, "May grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord." 222 00:39:20,000 --> 00:39:27,000 What I like about this is that Peter says, "The knowledge I'm giving you, not just for your heads." 223 00:39:27,000 --> 00:39:34,000 Head knowledge is important. It's important for us to know that, but he also says it impacts the rest of our life. 224 00:39:34,000 --> 00:39:43,000 And there are people who sometimes struggle with knowledge, right, because it's sort of dusty books and old things, and knowledge is dry and boring. 225 00:39:43,000 --> 00:39:55,000 But notice what Peter says, that grace and peace are what? Multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus Christ our Lord. 226 00:39:55,000 --> 00:40:02,000 That through the knowledge, it multiplies. And the picture here in that Greek word is it sort of just multiplies. 227 00:40:02,000 --> 00:40:07,000 That it just keeps adding up and it adds up until it's completely full. 228 00:40:07,000 --> 00:40:11,000 So he's saying that knowledge doesn't just give you a little bit of grace and a little bit of peace. 229 00:40:11,000 --> 00:40:14,000 It doesn't just change how you feel or how you see this world. 230 00:40:14,000 --> 00:40:23,000 That it radically transforms things. It transforms not just your mind, but your heart and ultimately your actions. 231 00:40:23,000 --> 00:40:30,000 And at the heart of this is knowledge. And so Peter's knowledge that he's talking to is not just dry, boring, 232 00:40:30,000 --> 00:40:33,000 boring facts that he's just going to kind of reiterate. 233 00:40:33,000 --> 00:40:39,000 You know, we probably all had teachers like that. Some teachers would make, you know, the information come alive. 234 00:40:39,000 --> 00:40:42,000 And other teachers, it was just like a rote repetition of fact. 235 00:40:42,000 --> 00:40:44,000 Peter here is not doing that with us. 236 00:40:44,000 --> 00:40:51,000 What he's saying is that this grace and peace is going to multiply in your life through the knowledge that God gives us. 237 00:40:51,000 --> 00:40:57,000 So this applies not just to our heads, but it impacts our hearts as well. 238 00:40:57,000 --> 00:41:02,000 Any thoughts or comments about where we've been? I know it's kind of a short introduction. 239 00:41:02,000 --> 00:41:05,000 We're going to dive into, not next week, but the week after. 240 00:41:05,000 --> 00:41:14,000 Peter talking about his calling and, you know, our calling and election, God's power, you know, supplement your faith with virtue. 241 00:41:14,000 --> 00:41:18,000 All of these things I'd encourage you to kind of read through and spend some time meditating on that. 242 00:41:18,000 --> 00:41:22,000 Any thoughts about 2 Peter or what we've covered tonight? 243 00:41:22,000 --> 00:41:26,000 I find it interesting that right above that, again, 244 00:41:26,000 --> 00:41:32,000 to those who have obtained a faith equal understanding of ours, or equal standing of ours. 245 00:41:32,000 --> 00:41:39,000 That has nothing to do with how much you have read and how much you have learned at that time. 246 00:41:39,000 --> 00:41:45,000 Okay? So, I think that Peter is really doing a good job saying, 247 00:41:45,000 --> 00:41:50,000 "I don't care how young you are in your faith, it's equal to ours." 248 00:41:50,000 --> 00:41:55,000 And then in the next verse, he was saying, "Now, basically, go ahead and 249 00:41:55,000 --> 00:42:00,000 and with the knowledge, with knowledge, then hopefully your grace, 250 00:42:00,000 --> 00:42:06,000 your understanding of God's love and the peace will also multiply." 251 00:42:06,000 --> 00:42:08,000 But the two are not linked together. 252 00:42:08,000 --> 00:42:12,000 Right. Yeah, because everybody starts in the same small place. 253 00:42:12,000 --> 00:42:16,000 And so, I like what he's saying is that you may have some really young Christians, 254 00:42:16,000 --> 00:42:19,000 some really Christians who have been around for a long time. 255 00:42:19,000 --> 00:42:22,000 You have some Jews and some Gentiles, and he says, "We're all starting here." 256 00:42:22,000 --> 00:42:25,000 But he's not distinguishing one is better than the other. 257 00:42:25,000 --> 00:42:26,000 Exactly, yep. 258 00:42:26,000 --> 00:42:33,000 But he's just saying, "Hey, along the way," again, and I think that's what we fully understand, 259 00:42:33,000 --> 00:42:40,000 is the more we gain in knowledge, the more we do understand God's love 260 00:42:40,000 --> 00:42:46,000 and the peace that we have in that knowledge of what he's done for us. 261 00:42:46,000 --> 00:42:49,000 Right. Yeah, absolutely. 262 00:42:49,000 --> 00:42:51,000 Any other thoughts or comments? 263 00:42:51,000 --> 00:42:57,000 All right, let's go ahead and have a word of prayer. 264 00:42:57,000 --> 00:43:02,000 Father in heaven, we thank you for Peter's letter. 265 00:43:02,000 --> 00:43:12,000 We just ask that as we look at defending our faith from all of the different kinds of attacks that we face today, 266 00:43:12,000 --> 00:43:17,000 that you would help us to see, first of all, our faith is precious, 267 00:43:17,000 --> 00:43:23,000 and that the knowledge that we grow into helps us to defend our faith 268 00:43:23,000 --> 00:43:30,000 and to see the falseness that is so prevalent and the lies that abound in the world that surrounds us. 269 00:43:30,000 --> 00:43:35,000 So encourage us, strengthen us, be with us with our study of 2 Peter.