Good morning. It's great to be
with you all. As you can tell, Rachel and Hansel
are not here with me, but they send their love and greetings,
as well as Gabe and the congregation. For our Bible study, if you will,
turn with me to 2 Peter, Chapter 1. 2 Peter, Chapter 1. Our text will be verses 12 through
21, but by way of introduction, I'd like to go ahead and read
the first 11 verses. 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. 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. Now, I wanted to establish the
fact that Peter is clearly writing to believers. We can clearly
see that, can't we? He's writing to believers. And
what I want to look at today is this needful exhortation that
he gives believers. 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 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, verse 15, moreover
I will endeavor that you may be able after my decease to have
these things always in remembrance. Do you notice how many times
he's telling us that it's so important that we remember Some
things he's saying I understand I am here for a short time very
short very soon I must put off this my earthly tabernacle. I
must drop this robe of flesh and Physically die and he said
when I do and until the day I do I'm endeavoring That you may
be able to always have these things in remembrance. All right
That's what I want to talk about have these things always in remembrance
what things I? What things? Well, he told us,
if you notice in verse 12, I'll just read it again. He said,
Wherefore, I will not be negligent to put you always in remembrance
of these things. Now look what he says here. Though
ye know them and be established in the present truth. I hope
none of us are here today to hear something new. What he's
reminding us of, remember he's writing to believers. He's reminding
us of things that we already know. We already know. And I love the way he words it
here. He said, and be established. We are established. We have been
established by God, by God's grace in the present truth. I love that. Now we know Christ
is the truth, don't we? God, having saved us, he has
established us in him, in Christ. And I thought about truth. You
know, truth changes not. Things change. I've seen it in
my life. I've not lived all that long,
but things change. You know, when I was a kid, certain
things weren't acceptable that are now acceptable, widely acceptable. In fact, something's wrong with
us if we don't accept it. You know what I'm talking about.
But when it comes to truth, truth changes not. It doesn't change. And think of Christ. He changes
not. He's the same yesterday, today,
forever. And by God's grace, we've been
established in Him. We've been established in the
truth. And I read it there at the beginning
of the chapter where Peter's writing to those who've obtained.
We didn't work it up. We obtained it, the free gift
of God. We obtained life, precious faith. in the Lord Jesus Christ. And I want to talk about that
fable for a few minutes here. God's given us this fable. Look
at verse 16 right here. Peter said, For we have not followed
cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power
and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. God has been pleased
It pleased God, through the foolishness of preaching, to reveal Christ
in us. Aren't you so thankful? Honestly. It pleased God to reveal the
power and the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. That's what He
just said. And this precious faith, brethren, we know this,
but we need to remember this. It has nothing to do with us.
It's not precious because of me, all right? We know that.
We know that. And sometimes, you know, you
may say, oh, so-and-so is strong in the faith. It ain't them.
Or so-and-so is weak in the faith. Man, they're weak in the faith.
We're looking to the wrong place. Looking to the wrong place. Our
faith is in Christ alone. Our faith is in His precious
blood that He shed to redeem us. I didn't read it, but somewhere
in Peter, I think, 1 Peter chapter 1, where he tells us, you know
you weren't redeemed with corruptible things of silver and gold, but
with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without woman, without
spot. We've been redeemed by that precious
blood, verily. And Peter tells us here, he says,
we've not followed fables. You know, cunningly devised,
someone craftily came up with these fables, these lies. That's what religion is all about.
I mentioned things that used to be not acceptable are now
widely acceptable. That's because it hinges on man.
What man deems is right. What man deems is okay and acceptable.
It's not so with God. Truth changes not. God changes
not. That's why we can have hope in
God. Because it doesn't change. He
doesn't change. We change. But praise God, He
does not change. Now, while most people believe
a lie, Peter's telling us, remember this brethren, we've not. By God's grace, we've not. By the power of God, we've not
believed a lie. We've been established in the
truth in Christ. Now, in thinking about that,
I can't help but acknowledge this, and I remember when I was
a kid, I grew up under the truth. Don Fortner was my pastor for
a lot of years. I grew up hearing the truth.
I knew it very well in my head. And I would go to school, and
I would hear people say things, and I remember one day coming
home, and I asked my mom, Mom, how do we know this is the truth? You got all these different forms
of religion, forms of Christianity. How do we know this is right?
Because I would hear things like, this is the truth. Other people
are believing lies. Well, how do we know? How can
we know this is the truth? And she would tell me, well,
we believe God's Word. Other places don't preach God's
Word. They twist it. They change it. They add to it.
They take from it. They could say what they wanted to say.
And I thought, OK. Well, that doesn't seem fair.
That all these people would believe a lie, and then God is giving
us the truth. And she would tell me, if I would
say something like, Mom, I just, when I hear things, I just, I
want to say something. And I don't know what to say.
And she'd say, well, son, remember, they're lost. God hasn't revealed
the truth to them. And what she was telling me was,
don't be hard on people because they're lost. That's the point.
And in time, when God gave me faith to believe on Christ, I
needed to know then and I need to know now. I didn't give myself
faith. We need to remember that. I pray
God will give us the word in due season to say something to
people who are lost, especially our lost loved ones. It's not
easy. It's not easy. It's not easy at all. But we
need to remember, faith is a gift of God. Paul said, for by grace
are you saved through faith. That not of yourselves is the
gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. Not of
him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, it's of God that
shall live in mercy. God gives faith, as he's pleased to do.
And I can gladly acknowledge this, the faith that God gives
is true faith, saving How many times do we read of our Lord
having an encounter with someone, and what does he say to them?
Thy faith hath saved thee. Go with sin no more. Go in peace.
But it's not because it's mine. That's not why faith is saved.
That's not why faith is precious. Now, we know, we read it in the
Hebrews, that without faith, it's impossible to please God.
But at the same time, we need to understand, without God, it's
impossible to have faith. You know, most people, again,
I know lost because God hasn't revealed the truth to them, but
most people have faith in their faith. I don't want to be that. I don't want to have faith in
my faith while I'm strong in the faith. I've really got it
down. I don't. I don't. I don't. But the faith that God gives
is saving faith. And Peter's writing to people
to whom God has given this precious, saving faith. And we need to
remember, God gave us this faith. This faith is critical. Without
faith, we're not going to be saved. But this faith is in the
Lord Jesus Christ alone. It's in Christ alone. It's in
Him through His blood alone. That's the first thing. Now look
at verse 16 again. For we have 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. I'm sure most of you remember
the account where our Lord took Peter, James, and John up into
the Mount, the Mount of Transfiguration, and he revealed himself in his
glory to them. They're standing there and they
see Moses and Elijah appear with our Lord. Our Lord is shining
as bright as the sun, raiment as white as the light. They didn't
even know what to think. In one of the accounts, if you
don't know, it always surprises me, I guess, but in one way it
does, in one way it doesn't, but the disciples fell asleep.
They felt that the most glorious thing they've ever physically
seen, they beheld His glory. We just read there were eyewitnesses
of His majesty physically, alright? And they fell asleep. Again,
shows how strong our faith is, don't it? Shows how strong we
were, not at all. But anyway, there they saw him,
arrayed in his glory. And Peter is telling us here,
we saw him. And when I think about it, and
when I read about it, how glorious that was, every time I can't
help but get jealous and think, oh, if only I could have been
there. Seriously, I would have loved to have been there. But
then I read things like this, we'll go on and read, and then
it hits me, I do see this by faith. Faith, faith looks to
Christ. Faith really beholds Him in all
His glory. You know, sometimes we think,
well, I've not seen Him. By faith, we've seen Him. By
faith, we see Him when we come here to worship Him. If God is
willing, if He sends His Spirit and opens up the Word to us,
we'll see Him. That's my prayer right now, that
we might behold Him in His glory. This true, God-given, saving
faith sees the Lord Jesus Christ to be everything God declares
Him to be. To be the spotless Lamb of God. To be the stone
of righteousness with healing in His wings. It's Him to be
all righteousness. No goodness in here. All goodness
is in Him. There's one righteousness. It's
Him. Christ alone. Verse 7. 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 Mount. You
remember Peter, you know, Peter often had some great ideas and
great things to say. And Peter, I bless his heart,
I know he meant well. But he said, Lord, it's good for us
to be here, and it was. He was right about that. But
here's where he said, let us make three tabernacles, one for
you, one for Moses, one for Elijah. And I love it. It says, While
he was yet speaking, a bright cloud overshadowed them, and
they heard a voice from heaven, which is read from the Excellent
Glory, which said, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well
pleased. Hear ye Him. What are we to learn from that?
God's well pleased in Christ. Now, are Moses and Elijah saved
in glory with Christ? No doubt they are. But we're
not to glory in them. We're not to glory in one another.
We love each other, hopefully, by God's grace. But we glory
in Christ alone. He's called us into the fellowship
of his Son, Jesus Christ. And we're to glory in him alone.
Our faith, and God gives us faith in this, this precious faith,
is In Christ alone. It's in Christ and Him alone.
If God's going to be satisfied with me or you, there's only
one way that can be. That's in Christ alone. In Christ
alone, my hope is found. I don't know what comes next.
He's my life, my joy, my all, something like that. It's so. It's so. It's either Christ or
something else. It's Christ or nothing. Either
He's all our hope or we have no hope. This is my beloved Son
in whom I'm well pleased. There's one we need to hear and
attend. There's one we must believe, one we must hope in. It's Christ
and Christ alone. And I know, I know God's not
going to let us forget that, but Peter's urging us to remember
that. Remember that. You know, until God gives us
this faith, these words might come in one ear out the other.
We're warned in Hebrews about not letting these things slip.
How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation? We won't. Christ is all. I pray God will
enable us to hear him, hear his voice, and believe on him. Verse
19 says, We have also a more sure word of prophecy. What's he saying? The Word of
God. And specifically, he was talking
about the Old Testament. He says we have a more sure word of prophecy. More sure than what? He just
told us about when he was an eyewitness of Christ's majesty. When he heard the Father himself
speak directly to them. Hear him, this is my beloved
son, in whom I am well pleased, hear him." He said, this is more
sure than that. We know God does not speak audibly
to us. He speaks to us through his word,
through the foolishness of preaching. They heard the voice of God. And he said, we have a more sure
word of prophecy. Is that not amazing to you? Honestly,
amazing. It's hard to believe except for
the fact that God said it, and that settles it. God's Word is sure. I said everything
here changes. We know it to be so. His Word
doesn't change. Not a word of this book is going
to change. We're warned against adding to this book, the words
of this book, or taking from the words of this book. And people
love to make all their translations what it is. They don't like how
it reads, so they change it, make it sound a little more appealing
to the flesh. Dangerous. That's so dangerous.
We need to take God at His Word, believe it as it is. You don't
understand it, Lord. Hell, we don't understand it.
We come back to hear the Word preached over and over and over
again. If we perfectly understood it,
would we keep coming back? If we felt so strong in the faith,
well, I've got it all down. We come here to hear more of
him. We need to hear more from his
word. We need to hear more of Christ. By God's grace, that's exactly
what will happen. 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. The words of this book truly
are a light in a dark place. This is a dark world, isn't it? This is a dark sinful vessel,
isn't it? What light do we have? We have
Christ is the light. Our brother John is teaching
the kids right now from John chapter 1. In him was light and
the light was the life of man. I may have that backwards, but
you get the point. He's the light. He's the life. He's the word.
Christ is all. What a glorious thing to teach
our kids. What a glorious thing to stand here and declare. God
forbid we declare anything. Anything but Christ. I love what
the psalmist said. He said, thy word is a lamp unto
my feet and a light unto my path. As we go through this life, you
need advice, where do we go? Often, I think I have the answer.
And I'm far more quick to run to people for advice, now mind
you, people I truly trust, like Ada, for example. The best advice
we're ever going to find is in here. Nothing's stopping us from
looking for it. Lord Jesus Christ. He's the Word. He's the Word of God. He's the
light. The light of the world. The light
of His people. And He is the day star that shall
arise in your hearts. When God says, let there be light,
and there's light. And God sees the light and it's
good. We know that's Christ, don't we? What a glorious picture
that creation is. God said, let there be light.
Darkness was upon the face of the deep. That's me. The Spirit
of God moved upon the face of the waters. The Spirit of God
moves through the preaching of His Word. God says, doesn't matter
what I say. God says, let there be light,
and there's light. And He sees, doesn't matter what
I see. He saw that it was good. I love
that. Praise God for His borders. Praise
God for His willingness and being pleased by the foolishness of
preaching to save them that believe. In 1 Peter chapter 2 verse 9,
we read that God hath called us out of darkness into his marvelous
light. I pray that never gets old in
me. And may we always remember, we
need to remember this, We were all in darkness until God called
us out. All of us. All of us. We were in darkness. We read
in John 3 that light was coming to the world. Christ himself
came into the world. Did we want the light? Did we
want anything to do with Him? We all loved darkness rather
than the light. And let me put that plainly.
Naturally, until God saves us, we all love ourself and our sin
and our sinful ways, our sinful lusts, rather than Christ. Rather than God. You know, the
common belief is, well, we can love yourself, love ourselves,
and love God. Not according to God's Word,
we can't. We loathe ourselves and love Him by His grace. And
we don't feel like our love for Him is what it ought to be, do
we? In fact, we just don't see it.
We just don't see it, do we? But it says, we love Him. We
love Him. Because He first loved us. We
read that He loved us, don't we? Gave Himself for us. everlasting
love, he loved us and drew us to himself, and that we'll never
be separated from his love to us in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Well, God has his way, doesn't he? Well, we love him, don't
we? We love him. Praise the Lord. Verse 19 again, 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's star arise in your hearts, 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 This is a more sure word of prophecy.
It's the Word of God, it's sure, it changes not, it's to be believed. Alright? Now, I mentioned it
a minute ago, but we know this. There are many, and Paul told
us about this in 2 Corinthians chapter 2, there are many who
corrupt, deal deceitfully with this more sure word of prophecy. There are many who make their
own interpretations of this book. You know, you take a part of
a verse here, a part of a verse there, maybe a chapter here,
a chapter there. Ah, we don't like that. Let's cut it out.
Here's our creed. Here's our doctrine. So dangerous, brethren. There's
one interpretation of this book. It's not mine. It ain't yours. It's his. He said what He means. He means
what He says. I believe we read that He's given
unto us His people. He's given unto us light, precious
faith. He's given unto us exceeding great and precious promises. He gave it to us. He gave them
to us. That means we can count on Him.
You know, people are so quick to trust something because a
preacher said it. You know what, if a preacher
says it, we ought to be extra careful and not trust it until
we can back it up with this book. In a message recently, I believe
I said, don't believe me, believe God. Like John the Baptist, I'm
just a voice. I'm just the voice of one crying
in this wilderness of a world. I need to hear him speak. I need
to hear what he has to say. What's God's interpretation of
it? Paul says this, in spite of God.
We preach Christ crucified. That's his interpretation of
it. We preach Christ crucified unto the Jews a stumbling block,
unto the Greeks foolishness. But unto them which are called,
unto us which are saved, Christ the power of God and the wisdom
of God. He said, I determined not to
know anything among you. Churches are full of so much
stuff. Make it all about us. He said, I determine not to know
anything among you. Say this one thing, Jesus Christ
and Him crucified. We preach not ourselves, but
Christ Jesus, the Lord, and ourselves, your servants, for His sake.
For the Lord Jesus Christ's sake. It's all about Him. This book,
I'm going to hopefully, by God's grace, now remember a lot of
things that Brother Fordner said over the years. And I'll tell
you, it took many years for me to actually enjoy what he was
saying. I didn't like it. I did not like it. I'm not afraid
to tell you. In fact, I hated what I heard for most of my life.
Then God said, let there be light, and he caused it all to make
sense. Everything I heard all these
years, it became good news to me. I finally heard Christ is
all, all in all. From Genesis 1 verse 1, in the
beginning God, we know in John 1, that was Christ. The Word
was with God in the beginning. All things were made by Him.
Without Him was not anything made that was made. That's Christ.
Revelation 22, 21, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with
you all. Amen. It's all about him, from the
first verse to the last and every verse in between, even the ones
that, man, they're just hard to read sometimes. The Lord has
blessed Gabe in this way. Let me just tell you this. He's
gone through some books and dealt with some passages where the
whole chapter is just names, genealogies. I read it, I get
nothing. Absolutely nothing. And then
he can bring a whole message, by God's grace, telling us what
each of these names means and how we see Christ in it. My soul. Praise the Lord. The hymn book. That's what I
was going to say before. He said that this is the hymn book. H-I-N,
capital H-I-N. It's all about hymn. Let's remember that. God gives
us a chance to speak to somebody. May he cause that to cross our
mind. It's all about Him. Let me show you. Verse 20, Again, knowing this
first, that no prophecy of the Scripture is of any private interpretation. For the prophecy came not in
old time by the will of man, but holy men of God's stake as
they were moved by the Holy Ghost. I think it's been obvious, but
I'll say it again. This is not a man-made book.
Did men write the words of this book? Absolutely they did. Who
were they? Holy men of God. Sinners saved
by the sovereign grace of God. And they spake with their quills
or whatever they had back then. God caused their hand to move
and write His holy inspired word that He's preserved all these
years for us, giving it to us in our language that we can read
and understand. It's his book, from start to
finish. And I thought about this, there are so many books out there.
I feel like some people just, for a living obviously, but some
people just for fun, for habit, just write books. So many books
and people love to read books. Reading is a great thing. I have
a little daughter, every day she wakes up, book, book! And I'd like to read to her.
But there's only one book that matters. I pray one day God will give
me an opportunity to read her this book. Because there's only
one thing that matters, and that's that we know Christ to be found
in Him. The words of this book are able to make us wise unto
salvation through faith which is in our Lord Jesus Christ. You know, we can read this book
all we want to, but until God reveals Christ to us, It's really
just another book. Until we see Christ in it, it's
all about Him. We can learn a lot of good things
from this book, not knowing Christ. But if God ever reveals Christ
to us, we've learned everything there is to learn. Does that
make sense? This Word declares who God is,
in His holiness, in His sovereignty, in His majesty, in His glory. I love reading about who He is,
don't you, how glorious He is? This Word declares unto us who
we are. I don't like reading about that, but I need to. I'm
a sinner. I drink iniquity like water.
All that is in this flesh is bruises, wounds, putrefying swords,
it's disgusting, it's filthy. And here's the thing, in God's
sight, that's what I am in my flesh, in God's sight. And this
Word declares our only hope. Praise God, this Word is full
of hope. And we've been reading about it. The Word, the light,
the life. My beloved Son, in whom I'm well
pleased, this Word declares salvation, substitution, satisfaction, redemption,
sanctification, justification, you name it. We have it in Christ. Oh, praise God for His Word,
brethren. May He enable us to have these things. The things
of Christ. always in remembrance. Amen.