Let's open tonight's service
with hymn number 199 from your hardback hymnal, 199, and let's
all stand together. ? Sinners Jesus will receive ?
Sound this word of grace to all Who the heavenly pathway lead,
All who linger, all who fall, Sing it o'er and o'er again,
And prize receive. ? This sinful man ? Make the
message clear and plain ? Christ receiveth sinful man ? Come and
he will give you rest ? Trust him for his word is plain ? He
will take the sinful last Christ receiveth sinful man. Sing it o'er and o'er again. Christ receiveth sinful man. Make the message clear and plain. Christ receiveth sinful man. Now my heart condemns me not,
pure before the law I stand. He who cleansed me from all spot,
satisfied its last demand. Sing it o'er and o'er again. Christ, receive the sinful man. Make the message clear and plain. Christ, receive the sinful man. Christ receiveth sinful man,
even me with all my sin. Purged from every spot and stain,
heaven with Him I enter in. Sing it o'er and o'er again. Christ, receive a sinful man. Make the message clear and plain. Christ, receive a sinful man. Please be seated. Good evening. That is our hope
tonight, isn't it? That the message would be clear
and that it would be plain and simple that Christ receives sinners. And he only receives sinners
and he receives every one of them. Every one of them. What
comfort for a sinner. Turn with me in your Bibles,
if you will, to John 17. John 17, we looked at a couple
of verses in this prayer that our Lord offered to his father. Sunday morning, I want us to
back up to verse 19 and read to the end of the chapter. John chapter 17 beginning at
verse 19. And for their sakes, I sanctify
myself. Only the Lord Jesus Christ can
sanctify himself. That they also might be sanctified
through the truth. Neither pray I for these alone,
but for them also which shall believe on me through their word. Here we are 2,000 years later
and this prayer is still effectual. The Lord is still hearing it
for us who have believed on the testimony of these apostles. And here's our Lord's prayer
that they may be one as thou father art in me, and I in thee,
that they also may be one in us, and that the world may believe
that thou hast sent me. Our sin is falling short of the
glory of God, and everything about us has fallen short of
his glory. But here's the position that
we have in Christ, and I emphasize that word position, and I'll
show you why. in a moment when we get a few
verses further. And the glory which thou gavest
me I have given them that they may be one even as we are one. So the Lord gave us his glory
by revealing himself and his work to us and Faith in him is
the establishment of our position before God. Look at verse 23. I in them and thou in me that
they may be made perfect in one and that the world may know that
thou has sent me and has loved me as thou has loved, has loved
them as thou has loved me. Father, I will. that they also
whom thou hast given me be with me where I am, that they may
behold my glory. Now there's our experience. I have given them my glory to
put them in a position before God. And my prayer is that one
day they will behold my glory. they will experience my glory. For thou lovest me before the
world or the foundation of the world, O righteous father, the
world hath not known thee, but I have known thee and these have
known that thou hast sent me and I have declared unto them
thy name and will declare it that the love wherewith thou
hast loved me may be in them. and I in them. I want us to pray for Deanna. She's been in the hospital this
week. She's home now, but she's had some serious blood pressure
issues and they've changed her medication. So I think they have
it somewhat stabilized, but she's just got home. This morning,
last night, yesterday, last night, last night. Let's pray together. Our heavenly father, what hope and comfort, joy we
find in knowing that thy dear son, our successful savior, the
Lord Jesus himself, stands before thee as our intercessor and prays
that we would be sanctified and that we would have the hope of
knowing one day we will behold in fullness thy glory. Thank you, Lord, for the putting
away of our sin And thank you for the for the position of glory
and hope that we have in Christ right now. Looking in faith to
that which has not been seen. Lord, forgive us for our unbelief.
Increase our faith. Reveal more of your. Of your
glory to us. Lord, we pray for Deanna, ask
Lord for your hand of strength to continue to be on her and
give her full recovery and return them in fellowship with us. We ask it in Christ's name, amen. Number 11 from the Spiral Gospel
Hymns Hymnbook, number 11, let's stand together. ? With broken heart and contrite
sigh ? A trembling sinner, Lord, I cry ? Thy pardoning grace is
rich and free ? O God, be merciful to me ? I smite upon my troubled
breast ? ? With deep and conscious guilt oppressed ? ? Christ and
His cross my only plea ? ? O God be merciful to me ? ? No works
nor deeds that I have done ? ? Can for a single sin atone ? ? To
Christ the Lord alone I flee ? ? O God, be merciful to me
? ? And when redeemed from sin and
hell ? ? With all the ransom throng I dwell ? ? My raptured
song shall ever be ? ? God has been merciful to me ? Please
be seated. Let's open our Bibles to 2 Peter
chapter one, 2 Peter chapter one. I've titled this message, Partakers
of the Divine Nature. You see that in verse four. Partakers of the divine nature. I mentioned last Wednesday night
Colossians chapter 1, I think it's around verse 18 where it
speaks of Christ in you being your hope of glory. And how that word in, that preposition
tells us the position of one word to another and it is also
translated with, so Christ with you, your hope of glory. Whatever it means to be a partaker
of divine nature and whatever it means to have Christ in me,
it seems to be my experience and I think maybe it might be
yours as well. that the more I look within myself
to find evidences of Christ, it seems like everything I see
is infected with my sin. We just read in John chapter
17 where our Lord prayed to the Father that we be in him and
he be in us. In 1 John speaks of the seed
which is Christ remaining in us and because that seed is in
us we are unable to sin and so clearly speaking of the new man
or as we often refer to the new nature in Christ. We find passages of scripture
that speak of having the mind of Christ or having the heart
of stone removed and a heart of flesh being put in. The encouragement
I want to try to speak to you from this passage tonight is
to be very cautious in trying to find Christ in you. If we're to have any hope of
salvation, we've got to look outside of ourselves. These passages seem to lead me
to try to find something, as I've already said, in me. Sometimes I'll respond to people
who say to me, how are you? I'll say, okay, I think. I try not to look too closely.
Isn't that true? I try not to look too close.
The closer I look to see how I'm doing, The worse things seem
to be. And the closer I look within
me, that's why I wanted to reference the first reference in John chapter
17, where the Lord Jesus says, I have given them my glory. That
is our position before God. Because we're not going to experience
his glory until the rest of that prayer is fulfilled when he said,
Father, I pray that they will that they will know my, they'll
see my glory, in glory. So what does, we have to look outside of ourselves.
Christ is all. He's all. And, And positionally,
God has made him to be unto us our wisdom and our righteousness
and our sanctification and our redemption. We look outside of
ourselves if we're to have any hope. We look within ourselves
for wisdom. How foolish we see ourselves
to be. We look for ourselves, we look
within ourselves for righteousness. and we realize if the Lord Jesus
Christ is not all my righteousness, if I've got to add one thread
to the robe of my righteousness, I'm not gonna be able to stand
in God's presence. We look to the Lord Jesus Christ outside
of ourselves for all of our sanctification, all of our holiness is in him. Christ is all. He's in all. We look within ourselves to see
if there's some degree of holiness or some degree of having been
set apart or some evidences of salvation and oh my, the closer
we look the worse it gets, don't it? We have to look outside of
ourselves. Redemption? God has made, 1 Corinthians 1.30,
God has made him and God has to make him to be that, doesn't
he? We didn't make Christ to be our righteousness, our wisdom,
our righteousness, our sanctification. God had to make him so. And so
he has. And what's the last thing that
the Lord says that the father made Christ to be for us? All
right, our redemption, our redemption. Are we gonna make, are we gonna
look for something in us that would qualify us to be redeemed? Are we going to try to come up
with something that we can offer God as a redemption price for
our souls and to put away our sins? I want us to look at this passage
of scripture. Because I fear that being a partaker
of the divine nature might cause us to look within ourselves to
see if there's something divine. If there's some nature in us that's not our sinful nature,
Is there? Yes. Yes. It's Christ. Christ. But we can't look to ourselves for
that. Look at verse four, whereby are
given unto us succeeding great promises. We looked at this last
week. God gave to us exceeding great
promises that by these you might be partakers
of the divine nature. In other words, we look in faith. to the exceeding great promises
of God given to us in his word. And God, the Holy Spirit, has
made God's word to be alive and effectual so that when we read
it, we believe it. We believe it. And by these,
by these, we are partakers of the divine nature. We're not
looking within ourselves to see if there is some evidence of
a new nature. We're looking to Christ through
God's word, all the promises of God, all the promises that
he's given us are yes and sure, yay and amen in Christ. And so these great and precious promises
are what God uses to give us faith. Faith comes by hearing
and hearing comes by the word of God. And faith is looking
to Christ. It's looking outside of yourself. What does it mean to be a partaker
of the divine nature? I want us to, this word partaker
is not used very many times in the New Testament, but it is
used some. And I want us to look at a few
verses where it's used. Will you turn with me to Matthew
chapter 23. Matthew chapter 23. We'll begin reading in verse
29. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because
you build the tombs of the prophets and garnish the sepulchers of
the righteous. All of these religious leaders
acted like they were in full support of these dead saints
and their tombs and their memorials. They wanted to be identified
with the Old Testament prophets and the tombs that remained in
and around Jerusalem of them. But here's what the Lord says,
verse 30. And you say, you say, if we had
been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers
with them in the blood of the prophets. There's the word, partakers of
the divine nature. We would not participated with
them. We would not have been a part
of that. Wherefore, verse 31, you are
witnesses unto yourselves that you are the children of them
which killed the prophets. You testify against yourself
when you say, we would not have been partakers of them because
look what you're doing to me. You're doing to me exactly what
your fathers did to the prophets. And you say, we wouldn't have
partaken in that. We wouldn't have been a part
of that. We wouldn't have associated with that. Look at 1 Corinthians chapter
10. And we'll begin reading in verse
18. Behold, now, The church in Corinth, you know, lived in a very pagan
culture where idols were worshiped and the meat that was offered
to idols was often sold in the marketplaces. And the believers
were offended if someone ate meat of an animal that had been
offered to an idol. And so the Lord is addressing
that problem. And in verse 18, he says, behold,
Israel after the flesh are not they which eat of the sacrifices
partakers of the altar. Some of the believers say, well,
we can eat that meat. It's not a problem. The problem is that
when the believers knowingly participated in eating the meat
of an animal that had been sacrificed to an idol, they were seen as
associating with that idol, not only by the other believers,
but by the world. And so now the Lord's instructing
them on how to deal with this. And he says, are not they which
eat of the sacrifice partakers? It's the same word, same word,
partakers. of the altar? What say I then,
that the idol is anything, or that which is offered in sacrifice
to idols is anything? But I say that the things which
the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils and not to
God, and I would not have you to have fellowship." There's
the same word. Partakers is now translated fellowship. I would not have you to have
fellowship with the devils. Don't have anything to do with
it. You see, the words being used here the same way that's
used in the passage we just looked at. Don't have any association
with that. The Pharisee says, we wouldn't
have participated in that. We wouldn't have been partakers
of that. We wouldn't have associated with that. And now the Lord is
telling them, don't fellowship. You don't want to be seen as
having any fellowship with the devils. And so just don't have
anything to do with that. Don't be partakers of that. There's
another place where Peter, James and John, they had a fishing
business together. And the scripture refers to them
as partners in this fishing endeavor. And it's the same word that's
in our text. They were partners together in
their fishing enterprise. And so, if we look at those passages,
we get a little bit of idea of what the Lord is talking about.
We are in fellowship with Christ. We're in partnership with him. We are in association with him. And so, go back with me to our
text in 2 Peter chapter 1. exceeding great and precious
promises through them or by them by the revelation that has been
made of Christ and what he has accomplished and the faith that
God has given you to believe that revelation and to look in
faith to Christ and to have fellowship with Christ you have become partakers
of the divine nature You're in association with the
divine nature. Now here's the point that I'm
trying to make, brethren. And I've done it and maybe you've
done it. You look within yourself to find some evidences of the
divine nature. And everything in you is less
than divine. Everything in you is affected
by your flesh and by your sinful nature. We can't say, oh, well,
that part of my life is the divine nature and that part of my life
is the sinful nature. No, we have a sinful nature and
we're in association with the divine nature. Through faith
in Christ by the promises of God, we have union with Christ
positionally. And the fullness of that position
is not going to be revealed until we rid of it, until we rid of
this flesh, until the corruptible becomes incorruptible. And then
we'll see him as he is and be made like him. And then the divine
nature, the sinless divine nature will be our experience. in the
presence of God, whatever all that means. We know we'll be
without sin. We know we'll see him in the
fullness of his glory. So being a partaker of the divine
nature is to look outside of yourself, is to look outside
of yourself to the Lord Jesus Christ and see that God has made
him to be for us. And that through these great
and precious promises, God has given us faith to look to and
believe on him and to rest in him as all of our acceptance before
God so that Christ is now all and he's in all. There's another place in 1 John
1, verse 17, if we walk in the light as he is in the light,
and there again, we oftentimes, soon as we read that, we think,
well, am I walking in the light? As if it was some level of obedience
or some level of sinlessness or some level of abstaining from
one thing or doing something else, walking in the light. If
we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship.
There it is. Partakers, we have fellowship
with one another, with Christ. It is the Holy Spirit that points
us to Christ. It is the promises of God that
reveal to us the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. And that promise
that he made in John chapter 17, Father, I have given them
my glory. There's our position before God.
We start looking within ourselves and we find that everything in
us has fallen short of his glory. But we have a great and precious
promise that God has given us His glory in Christ and that
He has given fellowship in Christ. And walking in the light is walking
in faith. It's looking in faith to Christ
and trusting Him and resting in Him for all of our righteousness
before God, all of our acceptance before God is in Him. He's all
we've got. He's all we need. And we don't
have anything to add to it. And we can't find anything in
us to compare to it. We must look outside of ourselves. And so when somebody asks you,
how you doing? Say, well, I think I'm doing
okay, but I try not to look too close. Don't look too close. Don't you love the story? of
the children of Israel in the wilderness being bitten by fiery
serpents. And the Lord told Moses, take
a hunk of brass and fashion a serpent out of it, a brazen serpent,
and put it on a pole. Well, we know what that serpent
is. In the New Testament, the Lord
Jesus said, the serpent was lifted up in the wilderness so much
the Son of Man be lifted up and I if I be lifted up I'll draw
men of it what's that about Christ a snake yes it's Christ made
sin there's the there's the punishment and that's what those serpents
on the ground were they were there there are sin they're viperous
poisonous serpents that will kill us And these serpents were
real in the camp of the Israelites. And the Lord told Moses, you
put that serpent on a pole and anyone that's been bitten, if
he looks, shall live. Now, if I was bitten by a snake,
my first reaction is gonna be to tend to that bite. You know,
we gotta get the poison out. We gotta try to figure out how
to keep this thing from killing us. Oh, we gotta kill some of
the snakes around. You know, we gotta stamp them
out. No, the Lord said, if you, not
everybody had been bitten, but those who had been bitten,
not everybody had been bitten. Oh, everybody's been bitten with
sin, but only sinners know that they've been bitten. Only those whom the Spirit has
convicted You know, it's expedient for you that I go away. If I
go not away, the Comforter will not come. But when he comes,
he's gonna convict you of sin because you believe not on me. Only those that have been convicted
by the Holy Spirit have been made to be sinners and they know
that everything about them is sinful and everything about them
falls short of God's glory. And if Christ doesn't give them
his glory before God, they'll have no hope of the revelation
of His glory being made to them after death. So if anyone been bitten and
they look, they live. They live. He didn't say tend to the wounds,
tend to the snakes, try to figure out how to tame the snakes or
how to kill the snakes or how to beat the snakes off. He said,
look, Look. Look where? Look away from the snakes. Look
away from your sin. Look away from yourself. Look
away from something in you and look to that serpent on a pole.
Look to Christ and you'll live. He's completely outside of you. The Lord said in John chapter
7, verse 39, if any man thirst, let him come to me. Come to me. In Matthew chapter 11, the Lord tells us, all you that
labor and are heavy laden, come. Come. I'll give you rest for
your soul. Learn. of me. Learn of me. Don't look for me
in you, learn of me. Where are we going to learn of
him? The great and precious promises that God's given us, all fulfilled
in Christ. That's where we learn of him.
Learn of me. I'll give you rest for your soul. My burden is light. My yoke is
easy. I've already carried the burden
of sin and the judgment of God. I bore that whole weight. Don't
try to bear it yourself. Don't try to add to what I've
done. Don't look for something in you that's going to give you
some hope of glory. You have fellowship through faith
in Christ. You walk in the light as He is
in the light. You have fellowship. Him and the blood of Jesus Christ
cleanses you of all sin, all sin. Here's my hope, all been
put away. Oh, whatever it means to have Christ
in you, my problem has been looking for
him in me. By these, by these great and
precious promises, you might be partakers of the divine nature,
having escaped the corruption that is in the world through
lust. Now, a couple meanings there.
Number one, this world is corruptible. It's corrupted and it's dying. And the word corrupted is used
all throughout scripture of that which is judged, condemned. And we've not been judged, condemned. We've escaped. We've escaped
in Christ. God has made him to be our escape. We have fled to him and found
him to be our city of refuge and found him to be the way of
escape, which God has provided. So we have escaped the judgment
of God that shall come. But also, I want you to look
at the last part of this verse again, and I'm gonna read to
you, I looked up every word in this verse. I labored over each
word in this verse. And I wrote a paraphrase, which
I think accurately describes each word in its tense. All right? So, having escaped
the corruption that is in the world through lust, which enables you to continue
fleeing from the corruption that is in the world through fleshly
desires. Oh, we have all these fleshly
desires, don't we? And they're not, you know, we
think of lust as just being a sexual problem, but that's not, it's
the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life,
all the things that men lust after, desire for and look to. And what our Lord's telling us
is your fellowship and your partnership and your union with Christ is
your position before God. And he's encouraging us to be
mindful of what God has done in putting us in a position of
glory and a position of acceptance and a position of perfection
in Christ before God. And that position will influence
everything we do. we will be enabled to continue
fleeing. We're always running from and
to something. We're running to Christ and from
our fleshly lust. And looking for, I'll tell you
another way to think about fleshly lust is looking for fleshly experiences
for the hope of our salvation. Do we not do that? Do we not
look for feelings and experiences of some sort? You see, again,
we look within. We're testing the waters by looking
within to see if there's some evidence. We must flee from that
fleshly lust. And we constantly happen to turn
from that and run from that. Why don't we run to Christ? run
to Christ to escape the corruption that
is in the world. Now, I want to quickly look at
these next few verses because I want to summarize them with
an illustration that I think is accurate and hopefully it'll
be helpful to you, it was helpful to me. Verse 5, and besides this, giving
all diligence, add to your faith virtue, and to virtue knowledge,
and knowledge temperance, and temperance patience, and patience
godliness, and to godliness brotherly kindness, and brotherly kindness
charity. For if all these be in you and
abound, they make you that you shall neither be barren nor unfruitful
in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now these are the
fruits of the Spirit. These are the fruits of the Spirit.
This is the work of the Spirit of God. The works of the flesh
contrast Galatians chapter 5, to the fruits
of the Spirit. And the fruits of the Spirit
is what the Spirit of God. So if any of these things exist,
it's the Spirit of God that gave them to us and manifested them
through faith in Christ. Now who gets the glory? But he that lacketh these things
is blind and cannot see far off, and hath forgotten that he was
purged from his old sins. Wherefore, the rather brethren
give diligence to make your calling and election sure, for if you
do these things, you shall never fall. For so an entrant shall
be ministered unto you abundantly unto the everlasting kingdom
of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Now, Is the Lord telling
us to be diligent, to produce these virtues in our lives, and
then to look to them for the confidence and the evidence and
the assurance of our salvation? You know that's not true. We
look to Christ for those things. We look to Christ. Again, we
look outside of ourselves. But here's the illustration.
Far as I know, right now, my body temperature's about 98.6. My blood pressure's probably
somewhere around 110 over 70, that's normally what it is. My sodium level's probably around
140, that's in a normal range. My heart rate is is probably
around 70. I haven't tested any of those
things. But if any of those things weren't
where they were supposed to be, I would know it. But the fact that all of my vital
signs are where they're supposed to be, I feel fine. I feel fine. And I thank God for the good
health that I enjoy. I thank God for it. But I don't
walk around thinking about my body temperature. I don't walk
around thinking about my blood pressure. I don't walk around
thinking about my electrolytes. I don't walk around thinking
about those things. I just assume all those things are okay because
I feel fine. And the older I get, the more
diligent I have to be in what I put into my body to maintain
those vital signs where they should be. And if I abuse my
body, if I eat the wrong thing or don't exercise, then all of
a sudden I feel things start to get out, there becomes a problem. As long as those things are there,
there's not a problem. And I thank God for the fact
that he's You see the illustration along with these lines? If these
things are here, they're here because you are looking through
the precious promises of God, which are all fulfilled in Christ,
all the promises of salvation, all the hope that we have of
being able to come before the throne of grace with boldness,
with confidence, All the hope that we have of knowing that
Christ has given us His glory. And because we've been given
His glory, therefore, God is able to love us in the same way
that He loves Christ. And the hope of knowing that
we're going to see Him in the fullness of His glory one day.
The promises of God that I have put away your sins, that God
saw the travail of his soul and God saw all the promises of God. We believe them. Why do we believe
them? Because God gave us faith. He gave us faith and we can't
not believe. Now the Holy Spirit is manifesting the fruits of
his presence by causing us. I mean, I wanna
have a good body temperature. I hate it when I have a fever.
I want my blood pressure to be good. My blood pressure goes
down and it does, I'm out. But as long as those things are
good, I'm thankful. So the spirit of God, works these
things in us and he that lacks these things, he that lacks these
things has lost sight, has lost sight of the fact that he's been
purged of his sins. He's lost sight of who he is
in Christ. He's lost sight of Christ. He's
looking somewhere other than the Lord Jesus Christ. for his
hope and comfort and peace and rest. And we do it. We do it. And so we have to keep coming,
don't we? We have to keep hearing. We have
to keep coming to Christ. Oh Lord, you've convicted me
again of my unbelief and my sin. I've looked inward to try to
find some comfort and peace and I can't find any. And the closer
I look, the worse it looks. And Lord, you're gonna have to
give me an escape in Christ from the corruption that's in this
world and that's in my flesh. I mean, I like being healthy
physically. And so it's not a great, It's
not a great thing to put forth a little bit of effort to try
to maintain some physical health. So when the Lord says to be diligent
in these things, be diligent. partakers of his divine nature. We have fellowship with God.
We have peace with God. We have union with Christ. We
have the glory of Christ. That's who we are. That's who God has made us to
be. Is there anything that moves
your heart more to want to be these things that
are described here, then for God to remind you, you're a child
of the King. Here's what the Lord's saying,
you're a child of the King, act like one. You know, just walk
after me. He's reminding us of our position
before God. partakers of his divine nature. I hope that'll be helpful. Comforting. Let's pray together. Heavenly
Father, thank you for your word. Lord, forgive us. We're trying
to find something in us to give us hope and comfort and peace.
Lord, give us grace to believe, to believe who we are and what
you've made us to be in Christ. And give us your spirit that
would produce the fruit of virtue and godliness and brotherly kindness
and love. Lord, we ask it in Christ's name.
Amen. 226. 226. Let's stand together.
226. I am not skilled to understand what God hath willed what God
hath planned, I only know at His right hand is one who is
my Savior. I take him at his word indeed. Christ died for sinners, this
I read. For in my heart I find a need
of him to be my Savior. That he should leave his place
on high, And come for sinful men to die. You count it strange,
so once did I, Before I knew my Savior. And O that he fulfilled, may
see, the travail of his soul in me, and with his work contented
be, as I with my dear Saviour. Yea, living, dying, let me bring
My strength, my solace from this spring That he who lives to be
my King Once died to be my Savior.