Lord, put on your heart for us. Somehow I've already started
that. That's okay. Good evening. Invite your attention tonight
to 2 Peter 1. 2 Peter 1. Look with me at verse 1. 2 Peter
1, verse 1. Simon Peter, a servant and an
apostle of Jesus Christ, to them that have obtained like precious
faith with us through the righteousness of God and our Savior Jesus Christ,
Grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge
of God and of Jesus our Lord, according as his divine power
hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness
through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory
and virtue, whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious
promises, that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature,
having escaped the corruption that is in the world through
lust. Verse five, and beside this, giving all diligence, add
to your faith virtue, and to virtue, knowledge, and to knowledge,
temperance, and to temperance, patience, and to patience, godliness,
and to godliness, brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness, charity.
For if these things be in you and abound, they make you that
you shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of
our Lord Jesus Christ. But he that lacketh these things
is blind and cannot see afar 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 entrance shall
be ministered unto you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom
of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ." I wanted to start this
message by showing us who Peter's writing to. He's writing to those
who've been given a knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now,
for our text, I want to consider the rest of the chapter. And
this chapter is a needful exhortation to God's people. We saw this
morning that God's people are those whom He chose in Christ,
gave to Christ, whom Christ came to redeem by pouring out His
precious blood. Alright? Peter's writing to those
people. Now look here with me at verse
12. He said, Wherefore I will not be negligent to put you always
in remembrance, of these things. Though ye know them and be established
in the present truth, yea, I think it meet as long as I'm in this
tabernacle to stir you up by putting you in remembrance, knowing
that shortly I must put off this my tabernacle, even as our Lord
Jesus Christ hath showed me. Moreover, I will endeavor that
you may be able after my decease to have these things always in
remembrance. title this message, Always in
Remembrance. Peter's urging us here to remember
some things, to be mindful of some things. That's what I want
to consider. What things is he urging us to remember? Well,
if you saw in verse 12, towards the end of the verse, he tells
us that we're established in the present truth. And we know
Christ is the truth. He's saying, you already know
these things, you're established in Christ. Now we know, he said
present truth, truth changes not. Christ changes not. The
same yesterday, today, forever. You think about being established
in something, settled, grounded. That's what we are in Christ,
by God's grace. We just read a moment ago how
that God has given us like precious faith that looks to the Lord
Jesus Christ and Him alone. Now, what makes this faith precious? Is it us? Anything about us? Oh, no. It has nothing to do
with us, brothers and sisters, but it has everything to do with
Him. You know, it's sad when we hear
people, I'm a big sports fan, and a lot of times, you know,
it's encouraging in one sense when you see an athlete, they'll
be interviewed right after a great performance, and they'll say,
to God be the glory, or something along those lines, but then they
may go on and start talking about their faith, and then I'm discouraged.
The only thing worth mentioning about faith is Christ. It's not us. We're not worth
mentioning. We're just not. Look here, verse 16. He said,
For we've not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made
known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Our faith is in Christ alone. It's in Christ alone. He's the
author of it. He's the finisher of it. He's
the object of it. He's all of it. He's everything.
Christ is all and in all. And I love what Peter said here.
He said, we've not followed, we've not believed, we've not
trusted in cunningly devised fables. What he's saying is we
didn't make up what we believe. We're not believing a man-made
lie. Many people are. Many people
do. And it's sad. It breaks my heart
to know it. It breaks my heart to have to
say it. You read God's Word, it's just so. And he said, thankfully,
by the grace of God, we've not. We've not followed man-made lies.
We're settled and established in the truth. Praise God. believe
on Christ alone. Now, here's the first point.
We need to remember, us believing the truth, us having faith in
Christ, is not a result of something we've done. It's God's work. It's God who works in us. He
works this faith. He produces this faith in us.
It's His gift. It's His work. It's His gift
and it's precious because it's all about the Lord Jesus Christ.
Don't talk about your faith. If you hear me talking about
my faith, you correct me. It's the faith of Christ in which
we hope. And our faith in Christ is His
gift. That's the first thing. Look
at verse 16 again. He said, We've not followed cunningly
devised fables when we made known unto you the power and coming
of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty. That's what we looked at this
morning. our Lord Jesus Christ on the Mount of Transfiguration
where Peter, James, and John, Peter's writing about it now,
later. He's a dying believer. He's writing these things to
us that we might remember these after his decease, after he's
gone, he knew his time was near. And he said, you need to remember
these things. Remember what happened on that Mount of Transfiguration?
Remember, he didn't write about it here, but we just heard it
this morning, what Peter did, want to build those three tabernacles,
and then the Father spoke and he, He said, this is my beloved
son. Look at it, verse 17, he goes
on, he said, for he received from God the Father honor and
glory when there came such a voice to him from the excellent glory.
This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased. And this voice
which came from heaven we heard when we were with him in the
holy mountain. saying, what happened here, you
remember this. That's why I brought a message
on it, because it's important. It's important that we understand
Christ is everything. I am nothing. They saw no man
save Jesus only. That's who we must see. That's
who we must hear. And when I think about them being
on that mount, I can't help but think, oh, to see what they saw.
Oh, to hear what they heard. God is well pleased. And you
know, I gave some examples of what that means, but we just,
we can't enter into just how vast that means. When he said he's well pleased
in him, I wish I could give it justice. How well pleased is
the Father with Christ? I don't know how to say it other
than perfectly. You know, I might be well pleased with you, or
you hire someone, you might be well pleased with the job they
did. You may not. God's well pleased with His Son. He's so well pleased with His
Son. We just sang, oh, the deep, deep love of Jesus. He could
love, we know He doesn't love everybody, but He could love
an infinite number of people. And in Christ, He is so well-pleasing
in the Father's sight. His love is so effectual. His
work is so complete, so satisfactory. He could love an infinite amount
of people and it would always be enough because of who He is
and what He's done. You know, you find something
that's valuable. Say, I'm holding on to that unless
someone makes me an insane offer. It's like the song we sing, the
unsearchable riches of Christ. It's wealth that can never be
told. You may get a job, make a lot more money than you used
to, it'll make you happy for a while, and then you want more,
and then you want more, and then that ain't enough, you need more.
If we have Christ, there is nothing more. There's nothing else. There's only less. Everything
pales in comparison of Him. You have Pearl of Great Price.
You could have had all the pearls in the world, but when you find
him, you toss all those other pearls aside. You have him. You
have the Pearl of Great Price. To be an eyewitness of His majesty
is to see Him for who He is, to see Him for what He's worth
in all His glory, all His majesty. And we saw it this morning, and
I'll say it again. If God's gonna accept us, if
He's gonna let us enter in, if He's gonna say, come in, we know
the only acceptance we have is on the behalf of Christ. We must
be in Christ. God will be satisfied with a
sinner like you or me in Christ and only in Him. And thinking
about this, how they were eyewitnesses of His Majesty physically, you
know we are spiritually? I think I said earlier, I get
jealous when I think about it. We're eyewitnesses too. The things
that we've seen and we've heard by faith, Have we not witnessed
His majesty? Have we not witnessed His glory?
When Peter and Paul and all the disciples went preaching and
teaching those things concerning Jesus Christ, they said on multiple
occasions, all we're telling you is what we've seen and heard.
Witnesses. That's what we are. Through the
faith He's given us, He's given us eyes to see Him, ears to hear
Him, And right now, if God's done that for us, and I believe
He has, we see the Lord Jesus Christ to be the beloved Son
of God, don't we? in whom He's well pleased. We see Christ to be all our righteousness. I ain't got any righteousness
of my own. All these works, whatever good works I might think I have,
are filthy rags. He's my righteousness, all of
it. All of it. He's my righteousness. He's all
my standing. Brought a message recently, standing
on the promises of God. That's all my hope. We just read,
I think, in verse 4 where He's given unto us exceeding great
and precious promises. Is that your hope? That's my
hope. That's the only hope there is.
Christ is all our hope before God. And Peter's urging us here,
remember that. You think, oh, well, I don't
need to be reminded of that. I do. You better believe I do. A lot
of times we feel hopeless, don't we? Well, if you want hope, remember
Christ. When you get down in the dumps,
think of Him. Just remember what He's done for you. Remember His
promises and how He fulfills every one of them. And He always
will. Remember we're accepted in the Beloved, in Him through
His blood. Verse 19 right here says, we have also a more sure
word of prophecy. Now, in the context, he's saying
this is more sure than being an eyewitness of his majesty.
You know, I've heard this said a lot where people lost in religion
will have what they claim to be some sort of mountaintop experience. I don't know if you call it emotionalism
or what, but you know, they get all, I don't know, something
happens, but it ain't of God. Here we had the truest mountaintop
experience that's ever taken place. And we're told we have
a more sure word of prophecy. What is it? Moses and Elijah. The Word of God. You remember
that rich man who died. In his life he fared sumptuously.
He dressed in purple and fine linen. He had everything you
could want. And then he died. He was buried,
had a funeral, but he lifted up his eyes in hell. That's what
God said, being in torments. And there was another man who
had been right there in that man's presence. This man had
nothing. Poor, covered in sores. The dogs licked his sores. Had
to be carried to that man's gate where he ate the crumbs which
fell from his table. Pitiful. Lived in pitiful shape. And yet
he died. We don't read that he was buried.
Don't read that he had a funeral. Don't read that anybody cared
except for God. Said he was carried by the angels
into Abraham's bosom. And if you recall, that rich
man who was in hell, he prayed to Abraham. And I don't understand
this, but this is what it says. He prayed to Abraham and he asked
to send Lazarus, that was the poor man's name, to dip his finger
in water and cool his tongue because he was tormented in those
flames. And he said, son, remember, there's gonna be a remembrance,
I pray we'll remember Christ. He said, remember in your lifetime,
you received your good things, Lazarus received his evil things,
now he's comforted, you're tormented. He says, it's too late, it's
too late. And he said, well, I have five
brothers. We can relate to this, can't we? Have five brothers.
Would you send Lazarus, send him back that he might testify
unto them, lest they also wind up in my condition, lest they
also come to this place of torment. I pray God would pierce our hearts
with what he said. And if you want to read this, I think it's
in Luke 19. Abraham told him, he said, they have Moses and
the prophets. Let them hear them. the more
sure word of prophecy, he said, they have it. He wanted them
to send Lazarus back. He said, they wouldn't believe
even if one come back from the dead. They didn't believe Christ, did
they? He said, they have the word of God. We have the word
of God. I pray God will teach us how
valuable this book is, just how much we have in having this book.
The words of this book, They're light in a dark place. Not only
are they light in a dark world, they're light in a dark, dead
center. It's the only light I have. The psalmist said, thy word is
a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path. Nothing else is. Nothing else is. We have this
more sure word of prophecy, the word of God that is forever. It shall endure forever. You
know, people change. God doesn't change. His Word
doesn't change. We can trust His Word now and
we can hang our souls on every word of it. We know that Christ
Himself is the Word, don't we? He's the Word. He's the light. The light that shines in a dark
place. Look at verse 19 again. We have
also a more sure word of prophecy, whereunto you do well, that you
take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until
the day dawn and the day star arise in your hearts. He's the
word, he's the light, he's the day star that arises in our hearts. You know when he arises in our
hearts? When Christ the light arises in our hearts? Here's
when. When God says, let there be light. What we read about in the beginning
of the scriptures in Genesis 1 with the creation, that's a
beautiful picture of what God does in saving His people. I want to show you a verse, turn
back a few books to 2 Corinthians chapter 4. 2 Corinthians chapter 4. In the beginning, when God said,
let there be light, it says there was light. If God wants us to be saved,
we shall be saved. And it doesn't depend on us.
It doesn't hinge on us. The light is Christ. Christ is
our salvation. God said, let there be light,
and there was light. And I love what it says after
that. It says, and God saw the light, that it was good. Are
we really saved in Christ? You better believe it. Look here,
I love this. 2 Corinthians 4 verse 5 says,
For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord, and
ourselves your servants for Jesus' sake. For God, who commanded
the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts to
give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face
of Jesus Christ. I mentioned, and we saw it in
Matthew 17, where his face shined like the sun. And I quoted part
of this verse, when God reveals Christ to us and in us, we see
Christ's face shining like the sun. We just read it. God commands
the light to shine and it shines. Where does it shine? In our hearts.
What happens when he does that? The light of the knowledge of
the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, shines unto
us. We see Him in His majesty. We see Him arrayed in all His
glory. I pray God would cause the light
to shine in our hearts. I pray He'd cause that day star
to arise in our hearts. Peter said in 1 Peter 2, verse
9, that God hath called us out of darkness, that's what we are,
into His marvelous light, into the Lord Jesus Christ. I pray
he would cause us to always remember what we are apart from Christ. You know what we are apart from
Christ? I don't want to know, but I know
this. We're darkness. We're death. Christ is light. So what we read in John 1, in
Him is light and life. He is the light, He is our life.
Praise God for Christ. Verse 19 again, back in our text,
2 Peter 1. We have also a more sure word
of prophecy, whereunto ye do well that ye take heed as unto
a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn and
the day star arise in your hearts, knowing this first. that no prophecy
of the scripture is of any private interpretation. We would do well,
Peter says, to take heed to the words of this book, knowing,
we can know this, this is a more sure word of prophecy. It's to be believed. It's safe
to believe every word God wrote. It really is safe to trust the
Lord, the Lord Jesus Christ. And we need to know this, what
Peter told us in verse 20, that this book, is of no private interpretation."
Now, what that means is there's one interpretation of it. You read it, and you think one
thing, and then somebody else reads it, and they think another
thing, and then I read it, and I think one thing. Well, we're
all right. We all just have our opinion, our interpretation.
Peter, by the inspiration of God, said, absolutely not. He
said, know this and know it first. There's no private interpretation
of this book. What is the proper interpretation of this book? Christ. Simple as that. Christ. Jesus Christ and Him
crucified. Moses and Elijah, who Peter has
mentioned, who we saw earlier, They wrote of Christ. When our Lord was walking after
His resurrection, when He was on the road to Emmaus, and those
two disciples were walking with Him, and they were so sad, they
thought that He had been the one that was going to redeem
them. Oh, they were so sad, they were so upset. And the Lord told
them, He asked them why they were so sad. They said, do you
not know what happened? You remember what he told them?
He asked them a question. He said, Ought not Christ to
have suffered these things? He walked with them. He taught
them Himself. He said, O you fools and slow
of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken. This
is why Christ came was to suffer these things. He said, Moses
and Elijah, the Psalms, they all wrote of me. Everything they wrote was concerning
me. That's the interpretation of
this book. It's all about Christ. Paul warned us in 2 Corinthians
2, I think, where people deal deceitfully with, they corrupt
the Word of God. They don't handle it properly. And that right there is what
scares me to death in standing here and doing this, because
I don't want to do that. I don't want to be guilty of
handling this more sure word of prophecy corruptfully, deceitfully. It's too important. We need to
know the truth. We need to know God's interpretation
of this book, what it means, what He meant, why He said it.
This book speaks of Christ. Paul said, but we preach Christ
crucified. That's the only message there
is. There's no other message. You know, people may get tired
of that and look for something else. I hope I never do, because
there's nothing else. We're just going to get carried
away. How can we grow beyond Him? How can we get enough of
Him? I hope we never will. He said,
We preach Christ crucified unto the Jews a stumbling block and
unto the Greeks foolishness, but unto them which are called.
unto God's people, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power
of God and the wisdom of God. Here's the reminder, if we miss
Christ, we'll miss everything. My message is simple, and I pray
my message never changes. It's Christ, Christ, Christ,
nothing else. Well, I need, nope, we need Christ. Well, I need to hear something
about this. What'd the Father say we need to hear? Christ. That's it. Nothing else. May
God cause us to always remember this book is a hymn book. It's
all about hymn. Verse 20 again. I've heard some
people say that this is a man-made book. God used men to write this book.
He did. But it's not a man-made book. God used the men whom He was
pleased to use, whom He was pleased to save, to write this book. It's God's Word. It's the Word
of God. Does your Bible say what mine
does? Holy Bible. It's God's holy, perfect, inerrant,
infallible, pure, everlasting Word. I love that. I love just thinking about it.
How eternal it is. How perfect it is. How sure it
is. And you know, this is the only
book that matters. It's so exciting having a little girl who loves
to read. Every day, Rachel does more than
I do, but when I'm a part of the goodnight routine, I'll read
her a book. And she gets so excited. read it. There are so many books in this
world. I've read a lot of books, learned a lot of things. Some
people spend their life reading books, writing books. This right
here is the only book of any importance. Right now I'm enjoying reading
to my daughter Llama Llama Red Pajama and Little Blue Truck. I hope she likes those books
for years to come, but I pray in God's time he'll cause her
to hear the words of this book. Because the words of this book,
God says, are able to make us wise unto salvation. If He hasn't, I pray He'll cause
us to hear the words of this book. If He ever does, we're not going
to have a whole lot of interest reading other books. You may
love to read, but you know what I mean. No book compares to this
book. I pray God would give us a true
desire for it. This Word declares who God is.
By nature, we don't know who God is. This whole world ain't
got a clue who God is, and yet they're about to go meet Him.
They're about to go face the consequences of what they are
and what they've done before Him. We need to know who He is. This Word tells us who He is.
Holy, righteous, majestic, sovereign, almighty God. This Word tells
us who we are. Sinful men and women. Rebels. Haters of God. Despisers of all
that is good. Sinners ruined separated from
God dead in trespasses and sin and praise God this word this
blessed book That God has graciously given and preserved for us Tells
us about our only hope You live this life you find yourself
in trouble, you know, there's times of trouble and then there's
the time of trouble and Again, if we've not yet, I pray God
would cause us to find the time of trouble where we know who
God is and who we are. And how in the world are we going
to be reconciled? How in the world am I going to
be accepted before Him when my time comes? Because I'm telling
you, our time's coming. We read it. Peter was saying,
my time is coming. And he said, because I know my
time's coming, I'm urging you one more time, remember these
things always. Remember these things. Remember
Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Remember the things that He accomplished
at Jerusalem for His people. For all sinners who need a Savior,
you remember Him. Remember Him and His perfect
sacrifice for sin. Remember Him. Don't add to it. Don't try to take from it. Don't
try to mix yourself and Him. Believe on Him. Look to the Lord
Jesus Christ and Him alone. May God enable us to do just
that. May God put it in our hearts
to heed the words of this book. The light that shines in a dark
place the day star that arises in a sinner's heart, the Lord
Jesus Christ and Him crucified. I pray God might cause us to
truly remember Him, to truly think upon Him and be mindful
of Him, to desire Him, to truly need Him, to seek Him, to call
upon Him, to rest in Him and Him alone. Because one of these
days we're not gonna be here anymore. We need to think about
that. Time's coming soon, and we need
a hope, and there's hope in Christ. This is my beloved son, in whom
I am well pleased. May God cause us to hear Him, and hear Him,
and hear Him again. Amen. Lord bless His Word.