obviously is one of great seriousness. And in some sense, we don't have
time to do it today, but if you turn over a few books in your
Bible and go to Jude, you'll find that there are extraordinary
parallels between Jude and 2 Peter. And the situation, of course,
is particularly serious for Peter because he knows that he's about
to be killed. In verse 14 of chapter 1, we
know that this is Peter's last will and testament. He says,
knowing that the laying aside of my earthly dwelling is imminent,
as also our Lord Jesus has made clear to me. So both Peter and
Paul had it made clear to them that their death was imminent
and so death sharpens realities and in 1st Peter The book of
1 Peter, Peter is dealing with the troubles of Christians living
in this world where they face extraordinary persecution and
the persecution that eventually led to Peter's death was the
persecution of Nero and the things that he did to Christians are
almost too disgusting to relate but some of them were things
like covering people in tar, Christians in tar and then tying
them to stakes and then lighting them at night so that burning
Christians were the lanterns in his garden and he celebrated
those things. And so, 1 Peter is talking about
the difficulties that Christians have facing the situations that
they'll meet in this world, a world that's controlled by Satan and
a world where God's people are rejected and seen as outcasts
and misunderstood. But in 2 Peter, he deals with
a situation which is even more troubling. And that is that he's
dealing with a situation of false teaching within the church. And Peter, like Paul, is writing
to people, and the other New Testament letters are written
to people, that these guys just loved with a passion. They loved
them in the Lord Jesus. and yet they had a word, a clear
word from God that these things would happen and they'd actually
seen them happen and it grieved them deeply. But Peter starts
his letter not by looking at those things but he starts at
the place that all Christians need to begin all the time and
that is he starts with who God is and who God's children are
in him. And so if we begin in 1 Peter
1, as I think we go through, I mean 2 Peter, as we go through,
I think we'll see that these verses that are so commonly used
are actually when you put them back into their context, they
actually say almost the opposite to what people want to make them
say. So he begins with these wonderful opening verses where
he describes himself as a bondservant, apostle of Jesus Christ, to those
who have received a faith of the same kind as ours. Now, that
receiving word is a special word. It's not very often used in the
New Testament, but it means to sort of receive by lot. And one
writer has described it as being as if you're sitting under a
tree and a piece of ripe fruit falls into your lap. God's children
receive faith because of the activities of God. It's been
granted to us to believe. But what's more extraordinary
is in the next part of that verse it says we have a faith that's
of the same kind as ours. The faith that the Apostle Peter
had, the faith that the Apostle Paul had, the faith that the
greatest saints through all of history have had, is the same
faith, same faith that we have. It's the same kind as ours. It's a faith that comes as God
moves in His Spirit in the lives of His people, and 1 Peter says,
they are born again by the word of truth. But this faith comes
by the righteousness of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ. Faith is actually a righteous
gift, isn't it? It's right for God to give faith
to His people because they are His children and they are dearly
loved in the Lord Jesus and they are united to God And so it's
the righteous activities that God does. Always His activities
are righteous, they're always just. And then we have a wonderful
description of our Saviour. He is our God. And I think that's
critical to understanding these two verses, isn't it? Jesus Christ
is God. God the Father is God, God the
Holy Spirit is God, but Jesus Christ is God. So we have a righteous God and
a righteous Savior. And then the grace and peace
Peter wishes to be multiplied to these people. He finishes,
begins this letter by talking about grace and peace and he
finishes this letter by saying, grow in the grace and knowledge
of the Lord Jesus. Grace and peace be multiplied
to you in the knowledge of God. And knowledge is not just knowing
about Him, obviously it's knowing about Him, but knowledge of God
is an experience thing, isn't it? As we walk together with
Him, we know Him, we experience His faithfulness, we experience
His faithfulness to His promises. And we experience, and Christians
know from the scriptures and the scriptures made real in our
lives, that Jesus really is God. He really is sovereign of this
universe. and we know Him and we know who
we are. And then we realise, God's children
realise that His divine power, His power that comes from His
deity has granted, has given up to us everything pertaining
to life and godliness. God's children walk in this world
lacking absolutely nothing because God is the one who provides and
he provides through a gift. It's granted to us. It's not earned by us. It's granted
to us. Everything pertaining to life
and godliness through the true knowledge of Him who called us
by His own glory and excellence. What a wonderful description
of our God, isn't it? He's a God who calls us to Himself,
but He calls us by means of His own glory and His own excellence. It's the manifestation of His
power, isn't it? It's His powerful deeds, His
wonderful deeds. It's excellent. It's a great
description of the Gospel, isn't it? The Lord Jesus is God. He grants and gives everything
through His glory and excellence. And then for by these He has
granted to us His precious and magnificent promises. Our God is a promise-making God
and our God is a promise-keeping God. And these promises are precious
to us. How do we live in this world?
As I keep repeating those words out of Romans 4 relating to Abraham,
he was strengthened in his faith and he gave glory to God. What
more could we want in this world? To be strengthened in our walk
of faith with God and the result of that is for God to get glory
because Abraham was fully persuaded that God had the power to do
all that he had promised. And the promise has a result,
doesn't it? He does two things to his children,
doesn't he? Two things to his bride. The
result of all this is that God's people become partakers of the
divine nature. Just let those words sink in. They're not my words, they're
God's words. We are partakers of the divine nature. 1 John
chapter 3 has these beautiful words, isn't it? Behold what
manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should
be called children of God. Therefore the world does not
know us, because it did not know Him. Beloved, now we are children
of God, and what has not yet been revealed It has not yet
been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed,
when the Lord Jesus returns and the new creation dawns, we shall
be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. And it's right for God's children
to participate in the divine nature, because that's what the
Lord Jesus has won for us. That's what was ours in eternity
when we were united to Him in marriage. And that's what the
Lord Jesus has won for us by His death on the cross and by
His perfect righteousness. He will present us holy and spotless
and beyond accusation before Him. We'll be partakers of the
divine nature and having escaped Not that we will escape in the
future. God says, having escaped the corruption that is in the
world by lust. And I think the corruptions are
the corruptions that we know exist in our flesh and know exist
in the world around us. And in 2 Peter, the corruption
is a corruption that takes people away from holding on to the truth
of who Jesus is. and leads them into a Jesus who
in some way sounds like the real Jesus and does some of the things
of the real Jesus, but is not the real Jesus. And so all that
defiles men before God in this world has been taken away from
God's people. Jesus bore our sins. God has
put them behind his back. He's buried them in the sea.
God's children are holy, holy in his sight. Not in their own
sight, but they're holy in his sight. And so we have everything,
everything in the Lord Jesus. And we don't need anything other
than Jesus. But Peter writes this letter
to stir these people up to remember. He wants to remind them of these
things in verse 12, that even though you already know them,
you've had the gospel proclaimed to you, and you've been established
in the truth, it's good to be reminded. That's what church
is about, isn't it? We want to be reminded again
and again of who the Lord Jesus is. That's what Christian fellowship's
about. isn't it, that we actually bring the gospel to each other
as we meet with each other. And he wants to stir these people
up in verse 13 by way of reminder. He knows that he's dying and
he wants to stir them up. Over in chapter 3, he wants to
cause them to remember. This is the second letter. He
wants to stir up their sincere mind by way of reminder. and he wants the people to remember
what God has promised about who Jesus is and who they are in
his holy word, the word spoken beforehand by the prophets and
the commandment of the Lord and Saviour. And so we start, Peter
starts his letter by just reminding people of how great and awesome
is this God how amazing He is, what He has done for His people,
the fact that He has given and granted everything, that He's
actually made precious and magnificent promises, and His glory and His
honor demand that those promises and
those gifts will reach their fruition. And so then as we actually
look at that, if we look at these verses that are so contentious,
we actually can see how they fit into the context. And on
your notes there, you'll see that there's actually, there
are contexts that we need to hold together when we look at
any passages of scripture. There's the context of the whole
Bible. What is the big picture of what
God is doing? because it is God who begins
everything and it is God who brings everything to pass. And
everything that happens in this world, everything that happens
in all of this creation happens because of God's absolute sovereignty. Sovereignty is an absolute term. God is not conditionally sovereign
on the basis of men's activities. He doesn't operate His sovereignty
on the basis of Satan having some say in things. God's sovereignty
is absolute. How far can you take the sovereignty
of God? There is just absolutely no limit
to it, is it? The specks of dust dancing in
the sunbeams in this room are moving exactly according to not
only God's sovereign hand here now, but they are moving because
of God's sovereign decree from all eternity. It cannot be any
other way. Either God is absolutely sovereign
and not a microbe and not an electron moves in this universe
outside of His absolute sovereignty, or we have to find another name
for Him. And we cannot hold on to precious
and magnificent promises of a God who is not absolutely sovereign. And so the Bible is a story of
the absolute sovereign reign of our triune God in glorifying
His name through the salvation of His people to the praise of
His glorious name. by the people of His eternal
love. So God's plans start before the
foundation of the world, but God's plans begin with what He's
going to finish with. The beginning of God's plans
is not the things that happened thousands of years ago. The beginning
of God's plans, just like when we plan something, we plan what
we want to have at the end, what did God want to have at the end?
He wants a new creation, a holy place where the Lord Jesus and
a multitude beyond number of men and angels will live in real
physical relationships. And we will live without sin. We will live without the stains
of this world. That's the beginning point, isn't
it? And so everything else that happens in all of creation, from
the fall of Satan, to the fall of Adam, to the flood, to the
Tower of Babel, to the Exodus, all of biblical history actually
sits underneath that. And the scriptures talk about
that being the eternal covenant. It's the covenant of love and
it's the covenant of grace. But it's a purposeful covenant
because God doesn't plan to do things and then get thwarted
by things outside of His control because He's absolutely sovereign. And so there is that big picture,
isn't it, that the Lord Jesus is going to be glorified by God
the Father, He's going to be glorified by God's people, and
nothing in heaven and hell or anything else is going to stop
that happening. And then we have, when we come to the New Testament
or the New Covenant, we have a context of things that we have
to see in the New Testament that fit into that New Covenant. And the New Covenant is enacted
in the Lord Jesus. The new covenant is just that
eternal covenant, but it's new in the sense that it's been revealed
afresh, and it's new in the sense that it does away with the old
covenant that the Israelites lived under for 1,500 years.
And it's a covenant where the Holy Spirit, God, sovereign God,
the Holy Spirit, applies and takes the finished work of the
Lord Jesus at a time of His love to the saving and to then the
keeping and preserving of all of God's people. And so the New
Covenant is a covenant that is not a contract, it's an inheritance. It's not a contract, it's something
that's enacted by grace. Sovereign grace enacts the New
Covenant. And again, it all hinges upon
God's eternal purposes. And so 2 Peter is a letter that's
written at the time of the persecution
of Nero, so it's written about 30 years after the crucifixion
of the Lord Jesus. And Peter, that great apostle,
that great encouragement as he stumbles and staggers and messes
things up like all of us do time and time again, and he's graciously
picked up and he's restored by the Lord Jesus. He's about to
be executed for his faith. And so that he writes, he writes
this letter so that the people that he loves and cares for and
the people of God throughout the rest of time will be stirred
up to remember that they will stand firm in the faith and they'll
be reminded that the Lord Jesus is God and that he has finished
all that is needed for the bride, his precious bride, to enter
heaven. That's the context and that's
why he writes so beautifully and graciously about the Lord
Jesus. He wants them to begin as they read this letter which
is full of shocking things about the false teachers, the wolves
in sheep's clothing which are in their midst. He wants them
to start as we always should start. When we look at trouble
we need to look back at who God is and God's sovereign purposes. So he wants to remind them. And
so in chapter 1 we have these great descriptions of the Lord
Jesus, the great descriptions of the work of the Spirit in
the lives of people as we hunger and thirst for righteousness
and we grow in the assurance of faith as we look to the Lord
Jesus. And then we see God doing amazing
things amongst people. and he wants his people to grow.
He wants them to grow in knowledge and he wants them to grow in
the exercise of that knowledge with self-control, perseverance,
godliness, brotherly kindness and love. And Peter wants these qualities,
which are theirs, to be growing in verse 8. And so the God's
people are encouraged as they see God working in the lives
of others. They look into their own lives
and they see sin and they cry out like Paul, a wretched man.
And then they look at their brothers and sisters and they see faith
in action, they see grace in action. they are encouraged and
so he writes to them as brethren and then he talks about the entrance
into the eternal kingdom in verse 11 of our Lord and Savior will
be abundantly supplied to you it's another grace gift from
God Getting into heaven is God's business. Jesus is very, very
good at getting His people into heaven. But He wants His people
to be established in the truth, and He wants to remind them of
the fact that God's truth doesn't come from cleverly devised tales
of verse 16. God's truth came by revelation
as the Lord Jesus revealed himself to them. And he talks about the
time that they are on that mountain of transfiguration. And we made
known to you in verse 16, the power and coming of our Lord
Jesus Christ. And we were eyewitnesses of his
majesty. They saw the Lord Jesus as he
really is. They saw the Lord Jesus as we
will see Him in the new creation. They heard God, the Father, speaking
from heaven and saying, ìThis is my beloved Son, with whom
I am well pleased.î But in verse 19, there's an extraordinary
thing. Just imagine being on that mountain
and seeing Moses and Elijah and the Lord Jesus almost lighting
up the sky with his glory. And then in verse 19, he says,
so we have the prophetic word made more sure. We have in our
hands as we hold God's word, we have something better. than seeing the Lord Jesus transfigured
and seeing Moses and Elijah. It's a call to Peter, isn't it?
To go back to your scriptures and hold your Bibles. Go back
to the Word of God and test everything against the Word of God. and
it will be, in verse 19, a lamp shining in a dark place. So this was a dark world that
Peter lived in and it's a dark world that we live in. The persecution
that they suffered hasn't come upon the Church of God, but there's
no reason why it can't come upon the Church of God. But this is
a dark place, isn't it? The Lord Jesus is blasphemed
in this land of ours and in this world of ours. It's a dark world
and the one place where there is light is opening up this word
and asking God, the Holy Spirit, to do as He's promised, to be
your teacher and your guide. And so the false teachers that
he'll talk about in chapter 2 created things from their own imaginations. But in verse 21, he talks about
God's word. For no prophecy was ever made
by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit
spoke from God. And we have this word, don't
we? We have a word from God that we hold in our hands. We have
a word from God that we hold dearly to. And so chapter 2 begins with other than the Lord Jesus'
woes in Matthew's Gospel where he talks about the Pharisees
being hypocrites and snakes and vipers. Chapter 2 of 2 Peter
is probably the most concentrated description of the false teachers
in all of the scriptures. And it begins in chapter 2 verse
1 with a word of comfort to God's people that these false prophets
were among the people and there will be false teachers among
you. It's a promise from God. God is sovereignly in control
of false teaching. all of it. He is Lord and he's
God and so he's actually been troubled as Paul was in Acts
20 by the fact that God had promised that from within the churches
people would rise up and bring destructive heresies. And there's
a list of them there on your sermon outline, a list of their
activities. They secretly introduced destructive
heresies and they even deny the master who bought them. And so
this word, this verse is often used as a means of establishing
the fact that Jesus' death was a death for everyone. And the verse just does not say
that. The word master there is best described as despotos. And whenever the Lord Jesus'
purchase of people is referred, there's always a price that's
mentioned. And so really what this verse
is saying is that the Lord Jesus has the right as God to rule
this universe. In John 17, chapter 2, God says, as you have given him authority
over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many
as you have given him." Jesus has authority over all flesh.
When we look at this town that we live in, look at this world
that we live in, We see so many people, billions, who don't believe
the Lord Jesus. We can either attribute that
to the fact that men are wicked, and they are, or do we really
attribute it where it belongs? And do we really go in prayer
to the only one who can do anything to fix it? It is God. Could God save all of Nauru?
Absolutely. And maybe there's a multitude
out there. We have to believe that there
is. But the question is not how wicked the men of Nara are, what
is God doing? Jesus has bought them, he has
the right to rule them. It has nothing to do with this
notion that he in some way died for everyone. If you just go
back to the opening verses that we've looked at, They don't receive
these great and precious promises. They haven't been granted those
amazing things that have been given. They haven't been called
by God. They are not His chosen people.
And so these false teachers deny the Master. They deny the Lord
Jesus. And to deny the Lord Jesus is
to deny the perfection of His finished work for His people.
It's to deny the fact that his blood was shed specifically for
them. It's to deny the fact that his
substitution is a perfect substitution. He stood before God in his holy
righteousness and clothed his bride with that righteousness.
He bore the wrath of God for his bride and his bride alone
when he died on the tree. He didn't try and do something
and fail. He's not a failure, our God.
He said, I come to do your will, our God. He will not fail, says
the Scriptures, and He said when He had finished, it is finished. And so to deny the Lord Jesus
is to deny His work right now that He lives in heaven. reigns
in heaven and lives to intercede for his people, that he is working
now sovereignly all things for their good. It's to deny that
his will reigns supreme in this universe. And so the rest of
these activities of these people which are going to be successful,
the outcome of their teaching is that many will follow their
sensualities and the way of truth will be maligned. And we live
in a world where the way of truth is maligned. The way of righteousness
is maligned. The Lord Jesus is the way. The Lord Jesus is the truth.
And that is maligned. And in Peter's day, it was being
maligned by people not on the outside of the Christian world,
it was maligned by people on the inside. Because they carouse
with you and they entice unstable souls. And if you just read that
list of their characteristics, you'll see that it's all to do
with earthly activities. It's all to do with activities
of their flesh. They do their religious activities
to gratify their sensual desires. They do their religious activities
because of greed and they indulge themselves. They are self-willed. and they do not tremble. They
do not tremble. And Peter describes them as people
who live like animals. It's a shocking, shocking thing. But in verse 9 of chapter 2,
there's a wonderful promise from God. And in a sense, it's almost
the centerpiece of this book, isn't it? the Lord knows how
to rescue the godly from temptation and to keep the word is reserve
the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment. So the
Lord knows how to keep these people in the midst of us and
he gives us three examples in those verses from four down to
eight. He gives the example of the angels
who fell and God preserving the other angels. He gives the example
of Noah, a preacher of righteousness, and all of the others who died
in the flood. The flood didn't come until God
had shut Noah and all of those eight people up in the ark. And solemn Gomorrah was not destroyed
until Lot and his two daughters were taken out of Sodom. And so the Lord knows how to
rescue the godly from temptation. And at the same time as he rescues
his people, he actually reserves the others for judgment. And I think as we look down at
the end in your notes there, you'll see the end of these people.
You'll see that again and again in verse 4 of chapter 2, he talks
about these people, the angels have been committed into pits
of darkness and they are reserved, they are actually kept by God
for judgment. And in verse 9, that keeps the
unrighteous. In verse 17, that blackest darkness
has been reserved for them. And so on the one hand, if these
verses, and especially when we come over to verse 9 of chapter
3, is going to mean what the religious people tell us it means
today, then what on earth do all these verses mean? Where
God has reserved them, their judgment is not idle, their destruction
is not asleep. They will, in the destruction
of creatures, also be destroyed. Blackest darkness is reserved
for them. And it would have been better
for them not to have known, in verse 21, not to have known the
way of righteousness. It would have been better if
they had never heard about the Lord Jesus. To hear about a false
Jesus is worse than living in depravity in this world. It would
have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness
than having known it to turn away from the holy commandment
handed on to them. They had the oracles of God.
They had God's apostles speaking to them. They had God's apostles
ministering to them. And so we come to that verse
in chapter 3, Peter then deals with people who scoff. So in
chapter 2 he's dealing with the religious world who deny the
Lord Jesus even though they claim to be his people. In chapter
3, the context of chapter 3 is that there are scoffers. and
we have them abundantly in this world today, and they are scoffing,
they're mocking from outside of the church. Where is the promise,
verse 4, of His coming? Ever since the Fathers fell asleep,
all continues just as it was from the beginning. So the life
goes on and on and on, this endless cycle of life that the Buddhists
and now so many people in our world talk about. but it's not going to go on.
God has promised, just as He destroyed the world with flood.
For 120 years Noah preached to those people and they said, this
is a joke Noah, it's never rained in the world. And here you are
building a great big boat, there's no water around, there's no rain,
for 120 years he was mocked. But God had made a promise, we
have just had to wait a little while. even though it seems like
a long time. In verse 8, it seems like a long
time, but don't let this fact escape you, beloved, that with
the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are
like a day. It's only two days since the
Lord Jesus was taken up to glory. It's not a long time in God's
economy and God's timing will always be perfect. So verse 9
is the verse that people use, isn't it? The Lord is not slow
about His promise. The promise is that the Lord
Jesus is coming back. that this world, this magnificent
building is reserved for fire. One day, if this survives that
long, the Lord Jesus will come back and with a word He will
burn this place up so that you will never ever know that there
was a School of Arts in Nauru and you'll never never know that
there was a Nauru. Nothing will be left. The elements
will melt in the heat. That is the destiny of everything
that we see in this world and hold on to in this world. Our
security is not in the things of this world. And so God is
not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but He's
patient. Who is He patient toward? There's
a special word there. He's patient toward you. And who are the you? The you
are the people in the beginning of the letter who've received
a faith as precious as ours. They are the people who have
received the promises of God. They've been granted these promises.
They've been granted God's Spirit in their lives. It's you. He's patient towards you. God will
not come in the fiery judgment that this world so much deserves
until the last of God's children is locked away and safely put
in the ark. He will not do it. And that's what the verse is
saying, isn't it? The Lord is not slow about His promise. He's
patient towards you, not wishing any to perish, but all of you
to come to repentance. All of God's children must be
saved. They were saved in eternity.
The Lord Jesus represented them in His life and death and resurrection.
The Lord Jesus intercedes for them now in heaven. The Lord
Jesus rules this world for the saving of His people. He's not
slow. He's patient and every single
one of them will come to repentance. And so it's a wonderful thing,
isn't it, that the scriptures that cause us the greatest comfort
are scriptures that so many people want to use against us. Zechariah
talks about a fountain that was opened, the fountain for sin
and uncleanness. Really, as proclaiming the Gospel,
we are saying to people, come and drink at this fountain. Come and drink with us. at the
glory of the Lord Jesus who reigns supreme, a God who makes promises
and keeps them, a God who brings relationships with his brothers
together that we might be encouraged one with another. And so we have
the challenge before us, don't we, of correctly handling God's
Word and then dealing with people who oppose it. I can't find one word in all
of the scriptures that causes anything but extraordinary discomfort
in my soul for people who deny the Master who brought them,
and deny His Deity by changing His Word. And once they've changed
His Word in one place, they then have to keep fiddling with the
Word of God to make it justify what they have said. To deny
the Master is to deny His deity. The Scriptures and 2 Peter is
just a serious, serious warning to people. Please don't be like
it. For those who teach these things
and continue to teach them in the face of warning, there is
no, nothing in the Scriptures that I can find except serious
warning for them. But also, we live in this world
where not only are there those teachers, but we have people
that we love and care for who sit under those ministries. And
we need to be mindful of the fact that we have one thing that
has power, isn't it, which is the Gospel. We need to keep going
to them in love with the Gospel of the Lord Jesus, to declare
His praises to them and pray that God would work. because we can't win them over
by argument. We are not to quarrel with them.
We are not to be proud of what we know because God says we've
received it as a gift, not as something that we've earned.
We are no different and we are no better than them. We just
need to pray desperately for them. Pray that God would rescue
them from it. Rescue them from teachers who
are leading them astray. And we need to be compassionate
as we do so, because the errors that they are living under are
errors that we lived under, and it was only the grace of the
Lord Jesus that rescued us. And so we need to be gracious
towards them. because only God can do something
about it. It's not a human activity, isn't
it? It's only God who can open their eyes to see the truth. Because these are serious words
from God. Just read chapter 2 again and just... I pray that God would
cause the weight of what he is saying here and the weight of
what he laid upon Peter as he was dying to just bear down on
us. These things are serious. Eternity
is at stake. We know God will never lose any
of those, but we are not to be people who preach peace to people. That is God's job to give them
peace. Our job is to treat them with
deep and serious compassion and love, and a love that is prepared
to say tough things to them when tough things need to be said,
for the glory of our God and the good of their souls. Let's
pry.