Good evening, good to see you.
If you will turn with me back to 2 Peter chapter 1. 2 Peter
chapter 1. Now as we just saw, as our brother
read this chapter to us, Peter here is writing to believers. In verse 1 he said he's writing
to those who have obtained like precious faith. It means these
are people who didn't do something to get it, God freely gave it
to them. In verse 4 it says, these are
they whom God has made to be partakers of the divine nature,
Peter's writing to God's elect. Now, what I want us to look at
tonight is verses 12 through 21, and it's a needful exhortation
that our brother, the Apostle Peter, has given us. Let's read
verses 12 through 15 together. 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 am 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." I've titled my message, Always Remember These
Things. Peter said, I will not be negligent
to put you always in remembrance of these things. He went on to
say, after I'm long gone, after my decease, I'm endeavoring that
you may be able to always have these things in remembrance. Do we see the importance of this?
It should be obvious. He stressed it over and over
again. There are some important things that we as God's people
need to remember. Well, what are they? What things
could be so important that we need to always remember? Well, right here in verse 12,
he said, I'll not be negligent to put you always in remembrance
of these things. And I noticed what he said here,
though you know them. See, as God's people, There's
some things we already know, okay? And I love this. I thought
about every time one of us stands to preach, we're not telling
anything new. We're telling things that God's
people already know. Telling the same old story that
we love to hear. We love to be reminded, and that's
the point. Though we know these things, God's revealed them to
us. We need to be reminded of them.
I don't know about you, but sometimes I can be kind of forgetful. And
when it comes to the things of God, I don't want to forget.
need to be reminded of these things. Now look what he said
at the end of the verse. He said, though ye know them
and be established in the present truth. This is a glorious declaration. He said you already know these
things and you are, you have been established in the present
truth. I love that. Now, in case you're
wondering why it says the present truth, I'll just say this. The
present truth is the eternal truth. Truth is truth. And we
know that Christ is the truth. He said, I am the truth. And
He changes not. He's the same yesterday, today,
and forever. We've been established in the
truth. Well, we've been established
in Christ. established in Christ, the Son
of God. God has given us His elect like
precious faith in Christ. God's done that for us. Look
here, verse 16, Peter said, for we've not followed cunningly
devised fables when we made known unto you the power and coming
of our Lord Jesus Christ. What he's saying is, God has
used me, he's used us, his apostles, his disciples, his servants,
his ministers, to make known unto you, God's people, the power
and the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul put it this way,
it pleased God through the foolishness of preaching to save them that
believe. This is how God gives us faith. We read that faith comes by hearing.
not hearing any old preaching, not hearing any old message,
hearing by the word of What's the Word of God declare? It declares
the power. The power of God. The power and
the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. That's what we want to
hear, isn't it? We want to hear Him. We want to hear about His
power, not ours. We want to hear about how He's
coming back, don't we? I love it. Every time I hear
Christ is coming back, oh, it gives me such hope. You know,
when I think about death and the resurrection, well, am I
going to be resurrected into glory? Well, was Christ resurrected
into glory? Is He on the throne right now?
Well, He said, Father, I will. Those whom you've given me be
with me where I am. And so shall we be resurrected with Him. Now,
this matter of this faith being precious, I want to make this
very clear. It has nothing to do with us. We're not precious. There's nothing precious about
us, honestly. In this flesh, there's nothing
good in here, not at all. But this precious faith, God
said it's precious, has nothing to do with us, but it has everything
to do with the Lord Jesus Christ. Our faith is not in ourselves.
I get so tired sometimes hearing people in this world talking
about their faith. My faith, let me tell you something. My
faith, I'm talking about if it has anything to do with me, it's
nothing. on my strongest day, it's not
worth mentioning, honestly. It's nothing. Our faith is not
in ourselves, but our faith is in the precious blood of Jesus
Christ, which Peter told us about in 1 Peter 3, that He shed for
us by Himself, freely shed for us. Our faith is weak, but praise
God, the Lord Jesus Christ is the author and finisher of our
faith. And our faith won't fail because it's His faith. And remember,
He told Peter, He said, I prayed for you, Peter, that your faith
fail not. Praise God. We're kept by the power of God
through faith unto salvation, ready to be revealed in the last
time. There are many scriptures that talk about the faith of
Christ. You know, you might get hung
up sometimes on where it says faith in Christ or faith of Christ. Or when Christ told someone,
thy faith hath saved thee. Great is thy faith. We know this. There's one saving
faith, that's the faith of Christ. And that's the very faith God
gives His people, and that's why it's precious. Pray God would
be pleased to give us that faith. Peter said in verse 16, we've
not followed cunningly devised fables. What he's saying is,
he's assuring his brethren, we've not believed a lie. He said,
what I'm telling you, what I've been preaching to you all these
years, I didn't make it up. And again, religion, this world
is so full of religion. And you know what it's full of?
It's full of stuff that men have made up. If it's not in accordance
with this book, this holy word of God, then men made it up. And there's a lot of it out there,
a lot that I don't even know about. Peter's telling them,
he said, you've been establishing the truth. We've not preached
a lie, a cunningly, wittingly devised lie. People, this flesh
is so good at making things up, ain't it? Making something out
of nothing. Making something look good that's
ugly. We're very deceitful. He said, I'm not deceiving you.
By the grace of God, we believe the truth. And I'm telling you,
if we do believe the truth, if we do believe on Christ alone
for salvation, it's not because of anything we did. It's not
because of anything in us. It's by the free, sovereign grace
of God. You know, He chose us unto belief
of the truth. That's what it says. Separated
us, chose us. He causes us to believe the truth.
I love this familiar verse, but in Ephesians chapter 2, we read,
by grace are you saved through faith? And he said, that's not
of yourselves. I'm so glad every time I'm reminded of that. My
faith is not of myself. It's the gift of God. Not of
works. My works cannot add to the faith
He's given me. If I add my works to it, all
I'm going to do is ruin it. Not of myself is the gift of
God. Not of works lest any man should boast. And lastly, on this faith, we
must acknowledge all men have not faith. Our Lord told us that.
You know, faith is a word we love to throw around. People
love to throw the word faith around. Faith in this, faith
in that. The only faith that matters is
faith in Christ. The faith of Christ that truly looks to Christ. And it's precious faith because
it's hard to find. Only God's people have this faith
because God must give us this faith. There's a verse that says,
without faith, and that's the faith of Christ. Without faith,
it's impossible to please God. But did you know without God,
it's impossible to have faith? That's what I'm saying. Faith
is of God. Faith is of Christ. We need Him
to work this faith in us. And if He does, we'll know it's
precious because we'll look to Christ and say He's precious. We heard it this morning. He's
precious to the Father chosen elect, precious. And He's precious
to His people, to all who believe on Him. Now, look in our text
again, verse 16. We read, In the New Testament, I believe
Matthew 17 is one of the accounts where our Lord took Peter, James,
and John. He took them apart into a mountain,
the Mount of Transfiguration. He took those three men. And
there they stood, and there our Lord was transfigured before
their eyes. They really saw this with their physical eyes. They
saw our Lord standing there in His glory. It says they saw His
face shining as the sun. They saw His raiment as white
as the light, glistening, exceeding white as snow. And every time
I read about that, I am in utter awe. I'm jealous. Honestly, I
wish I could see that. But then in studying for this,
I thought about this. That's exactly what we see by this precious
faith God's given us. We see Christ in His glory. We
see Him to be the Son of Righteousness. All our righteousness before
a holy God. Do you see Christ to be that
to you? Do you see Christ to be your only hope? God's given
us this faith. That's what we see. We see Christ
to be all our standing before God. the spotless Lamb of God. Verse 17 says, And if you go
back and read it, When God the Father spoke, here's
what was happening. Peter, at first another account
says they were asleep. Go figure, that's our flesh,
isn't it? Well, God woke him up, and Peter sees, and he just
has to start talking, right? Peter. He starts talking, and
he said, Lord, it's good for us to be here, and it was. I
can't imagine how good it must have been. And then he said,
Lord, let's make three tabernacles, one for you, of course, and one
for Moses and one for Elijah. And I love this. It says, while
he was yet speaking. bright cloud overshadowed them.
And God the Father spoke from heaven and said, This is my beloved
Son, in whom I am well pleased. Hear ye Him. And it says they
fell down on their faces sore afraid. Our Lord came and touched
them and said, Arise, be not afraid. What's it say after that?
They saw no man, save Jesus only. They didn't see Moses anymore.
They didn't see Elijah anymore. They saw Christ. What's that
tell us? God's pleased with Christ. He's
well-pleased in the Lord Jesus Christ and Him alone. And if
God's going to be well-pleased with us, we must be in Christ. Wording is very important. He's
well-pleased in Christ. Where does God say His people
are? In Christ. Well, that means He's well-pleased
with us, doesn't it? Ephesians 1 tells us, we're accepted in
the Beloved, truly accepted, as accepted as Christ Himself.
God said, this is my beloved Son. I'm well-pleased in Him.
He said, we're in Him. He's well-pleased with us, too,
in Him. Praise His holy name. Let's remember that. As we live
this life, let's remember God is well-pleased with Christ.
And we need him, honestly, more than anything. I have a test
tomorrow morning. I really hope I do well. I'm
going to go home and study. And in one sense, I feel like
I really do need to do well. But at the end of the day, that
is really insignificant, honestly. The only thing that matters is
that I'm in Christ, honestly. I need to work. I need to provide
for my family. None of you would tell me that's
not important, would you? But I'm telling you, the only
thing that matters is that we're in Christ. That's all that matters, because
judgment's coming, and we're not going to be accepted if we're
not in Him. We're not going to be accepted if we're not covered
in the blood of Jesus Christ, robed in His perfect righteousness.
We must be. It's the only way we're going
to be accepted before God. Now, at this account, our Lord
was correcting Peter where he was starting to glory in the
prophets and the law. saying they saw Christ only.
We must glory in Him alone, alright? We're no better than Peter. We're
prone to—we do glory in one another. We certainly glory in ourselves
all the time. May God cause us to glory only
in Christ. Back in our text, look at verse
19. Peter said, We have also a more sure word of prophecy. More sure than what? Well, based
on the context, we have a more sure word of prophecy that is
more sure than what we just read about. It's more sure than those
three men looking at Christ face-to-face, beholding Him in His glory. Now, that's a strong statement
because I read that and think, I can't imagine anything more
sure. Now again, this is one area religion
just plum goes wrong. They teach us to trust in our
experiences. You know, go back to a time and
say, now that, at that moment, something happened. I'm telling
you, I don't have an experience I can trust in. And Peter, James,
and John would have been wrong to trust in that experience,
though it was a glorious experience. I'm not downgrading that experience. We must glory in Christ. This
more sure word of prophecy is about Christ, all about Christ. Again, our brother read this,
but in verse 4, it tells us that God has given us, He's given
His people, exceeding great and precious promises. You know,
as we live our life, we make lots of promises, don't we? How
often do we not make good on a promise? Well, if you're anything like
me, most of the time, unfortunately. Well, this word of God that we
have, this more sure word of prophecy that God has given us,
understand that whatever it says is sure. It's not like you or
me making a promise. He said, I give unto them eternal
life and they shall never perish. You can take it to the bank.
Honestly, him that cometh to me, I'll in no wise cast out
ever. That's good news, brethren. Verse
19 again, we have also a more sure word of prophecy where unto
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 said this more sure word of
prophecy that we have, we really have it, God's given it to us
and given us faith to believe it. This word God has given us,
He said, you would do well to take heed unto it. He said, this
word, this more sure word of prophecy is a light that shines
in a dark place. It's a dark world we live in,
isn't it? You don't have to look far and just look within and
you can see it so clearly. The words of this book, are light
in a dark place. I love what the psalmist said
in Psalm 119, 105, it says, It is, isn't it? We know that Christ himself
is the word. John chapter one, he is the words
and he has the words of eternal life. That's what Peter said
in John chapter six, when the Lord said, will you also go away?
He said, Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of
eternal life. But brother, not only does our
Lord have the words of eternal life, he is eternal life. If we're in him, we have eternal
life. Christ is our life. Not only is Christ the Word,
Christ is the light. He's the light of the Word. He's
the light of the world. It's a dark world. Christ is
the only light in this world. We think the sun is the light.
Oh, that sun's nothing compared to this sun. Christ is the only
light there is. And I tell you this, I rejoice
to know this, He's the light of His people. Isn't He? Is He your light? We walked in darkness. Christ
himself came into the world and we all, I'm telling you, if I
was alive in that day, I would have loved darkness, excuse me,
and loved sitting in my darkness rather than the light, Christ. We all rejected him. all of us,
until, as our text says, until the day dawn and the day star
arise in your heart. You know, in the beginning, when
God said, let there be light. There wasn't light until God
said, let there be light. The earth was without form and
void. Darkness was upon the face of
the deep. And that's where we are spiritually until the day
dawn and the day star, that's Christ, arrives in our hearts.
He is our light. And we're gonna see the light
as God reveals it to us in his word. Peter's stressing the importance
of the fact that we have this more sure word of prophecy. Oh, may God help us for taking
this word for granted. I know I do. All the time. This is a glorious word. In 1
Peter 2 verse 9, we read that God has called us out of darkness
into His marvelous light. I'm so glad He did not leave
us all in darkness. I hate the darkness, honestly.
I'm so glad when I leave here on Sunday and Wednesday night,
it's not dark. You kids go outside, you stand there, you play, you
run around. I run around sometimes. We have light. It's a beautiful
thing to have light. God's given us light. Thank Him for that. And pray,
Lord, give us more light. Walk in the light, He'll give
us more. I pray it might be so. Let's remember, Christ is the
Word. This Word speaks all of Him.
And Christ is the light. He's the only light we have.
He's the only light we're gonna have. He's the only light we
need. You know, I love thinking about eternity. All the time
I think about death, what's it going to be? You know, in this
flesh, we're so scared of it, we don't want to think about
it. I don't want to think about it. But we need to think about
it. Because it could be, we may not make it out these doors.
I may not make it back to the pew. Honestly. But it says, there shall be no
night there. You know, in the beginning, It says that God made,
He said that the evening and the morning were the first day.
We're in darkness before we're in the light. When a baby is
conceived in his or her mother's womb, they're in darkness. Then
comes the light when they're born. When we're born again,
God takes us out of darkness into the light, the marvelous
light of Christ. Isn't that glorious? Oh, my soul. Verse 20 says, knowing this first
that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation.
We would do well to take heed to the words of this book. Knowing
it is the more sure word of prophecy. Knowing it can be believed. It's
to be believed. Every single word on every single
page. And we ought to know this. This book, there's just one interpretation
of this book. I want to show you something.
Turn to 2 Corinthians chapter 2. 2 Corinthians chapter 2. Verse 17, Paul is writing and he says in
2 Corinthians 2 verse 17, for we are not as many which corrupt,
and my center margin says, deal deceitfully with. We're not as
many which corrupt or deal deceitfully with the Word of God, but as
of sincerity, but as of God in the sight of God." This is in
the sight of God. He said, speak we in or of God. He said, we're not handling the
word of God deceitfully. We're not arresting the scriptures
to our destruction and to yours. He said, we're telling you God's
interpretation of this book, Christ. He said, but we preach
Christ crucified. Unto the Jews a stumbling block,
unto the Greeks foolishness, but unto them which are called
both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom
of God. It saddens me when I learn of... or when I just see and am reminded
of the fact that I have many loved ones who either have no
regard for the things of God, no interest in the Word of God,
no interest in Christ, or even worse, I guess, when I see young
people in my young world, but it's usually young people, who
I see making their decision and deciding to follow God and giving
Jesus their heart. You know what I'm talking about.
We've all been there. We've all witnessed it. It saddens
me because There's nothing easier in this life than to get religion.
I grew up under the gospel, but I still had mighty me. The easiest thing in this world
is to get religious. Cling to our religion. But that's
not going to do anything for us. If we believe a lie, if we receive
not the love of the truth, we're gonna perish, all right? If we
don't see Christ crucified in this book, we've missed it. We've missed everything there
is to have. If we don't know Christ, if we
don't see Him, we have nothing. I mean that. It don't matter
how rich we might be. If we don't have Him, we're the
poorest people on earth. We must have Christ. May God
first cause us to see Christ in this book. And second, may
God cause us to always remember this book speaks of Christ and
nothing else. It's all about Him. He's everything. Paul summed
it up well. Colossians 3.11, I think he said,
Christ is all. All in all. Verse 21 says, For
the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man, but
holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. It really goes without saying,
but this book is not a man-made book. God used men to write this
book. but it's not a man-made book.
Sounds like a contradiction, don't it? It's not. It's not. You know, when I think about
how, I try, I like to study history and remember how, you know, good,
cool things that happen, things that blow my mind. Well, there's
really not much more that blows my mind, not much that blows
my mind more than thinking about how, how this book came to be. We know King James had it translated
for us. It was in Greek and Hebrew. But
how it's been preserved, how we have the Word of God right
in front of us, and it's infallible, it's perfect, it's absolute truth. It's amazing, isn't it? But is
anything too hard for the Lord? You know, as many men write books
like it's nothing, you think it's too hard for God to write
a book? But this ain't just any book. These are the words of
life. God wrote this book. I'm only
saying this because I hear people say sometimes it's a man-made
book. It's not a man-made book. It's inspired by God. God breathed
every word of it. Holy men of God moved their,
I was going to say pens, but I guess they didn't have pens.
Whatever they had to write with, they moved as they were, they
wrote as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. And every word God
has preserved for us in this book is pure. Every word of God
is pure. It's perfect. And it shall stand
forever. Forever and ever. See, it's not
a man-made book. Every man-made book will perish. Useless. Worthless. God's Word. I thought about this. When the
world is consumed, what's gonna happen to our Bibles? Well, I
suppose physically they'll burn up our cell phones. We have Bibles
on there. It's gonna be burned up. You remember who the Word
is, don't you? He's on His throne. His Word
endures forever. Not a single word's gonna be
lost. I'll close with this. God's word declares who God is. Declares God in his majesty,
in his holiness, in his sovereignty. Does what he will, how he will,
with whom he will, when he will. And God's word declares who we
are, sinners. Nothing but sin. lost and undone
without God's precious Son, without Christ, without God, no hope
in this world, no hope before God. But God's Word also declares
salvation. God's Word also declares redemption,
forgiveness, reconciliation, justification, sanctification,
substitution, and satisfaction. Aren't you glad God's Word declares
these things? Remember these things. Remember what? Remember
Christ. It's all about Christ. Remember
the things of Christ. That's what Peter was urging
the brethren here to remember. When he said, may you always
have these things in remembrance, he's saying, may you always have
the things of Christ in remembrance. That was his prayer for us, and
that's my prayer for us. May God help us to have Christ
always right here in remembrance. Amen.