2nd Peter chapter 1 and verse
12. Wherefore I will not be negligent
to put you always in remembrance of these things, though you 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 endeavour that ye may be able, after my decease,
to have these things always in remembrance. 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. For he received from God the
Father honour 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. 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, for the prophecy came not in old time by the will
of man, but holy men of God speak as they were moved by the Holy
Ghost. Amen. May God bless to us this
reading from his word. The people of God are rich people. We're rich people. If we believe
in the Lord Jesus Christ, we are rich people. We are rich
in the possession of the love of God. We are rich in the possession
of the grace of God. He has shown mercy to us, distinguishing
us from very many other people that we know. He has graciously
imparted to us rich blessings of goodness and grace and mercy. He has given us forgiveness of
our sins. I wonder if we remember how blessed
it is not to feel guilty about the things that we've done. He has given us so great a salvation. And the believer is rich in the
Lord Jesus Christ. Now that is not with the riches
of this world. That is not with the fame or
the popularity. That is not with the accolades
or the material benefits and blessings that this world has.
Sure, There's a spread of all of these things undoubtedly,
but that is not where the believer cherishes his wellbeing or his
wealth. Not with riches that fade away,
not with riches that disappear, sometimes a lot easier than they
were ever achieved. But, says Peter, We have been
called. We have been chosen. We have
been justified. We have been sanctified. We have been born again into
the family of God. We are heirs and joint heirs
with the Lord Jesus Christ. We are rich people who believe
in Jesus Christ. Peter calls it, In 1 Peter 1,
verse 4, an inheritance, incorruptible and undefiled, and that fadeth
not away, reserved in heaven for you. And by faith we know
that to be true. He speaks again in the same book,
chapter 5, verse 4, and he says, when the chief shepherds shall
appear, we shall receive a crown of glory that fadeth not away. And so when Peter speaks in this
opening chapter of his second epistle, and he says in verse
11, He is talking about all of that inheritance, all of that
wealth, all of that richness. that we both experience now and
anticipate entering into when the Lord Jesus Christ returns
for his church and his people. Now we know, if we are believers
in the Lord Jesus Christ, that these riches are not of our own
getting, not of our own gaining, not of our own works. but rather
they are inherited as a gift. They are bestowed to us because
of the Lord's goodness and his grace towards us. God's riches
at Christ's expense. His grace granted to us. This richness comes to us out
of God's good benevolence and love. It is gained through the
labour of someone else. And that is the one to whom we
look this morning. Our eyes are to turn upon Jesus. Our eyes have to be towards the
Lord Jesus Christ in the things that he has done, in the achievements
and accomplishments of his life and his purpose, his redemptive
purpose for his people. And in 2 Corinthians chapter
8 and verse 9, the apostle Paul there speaks of the grace of
the Lord Jesus Christ. He says this, For you know the
grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, Yet
for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might
be rich. There's the great transaction
that took place according to the eternal purpose of God. Christ,
who was rich beyond all splendour, all for love's sake becamest
poor. He came onto this earth, that
great king, that great ruler in heaven, worshipped by angels,
served by the massed armies of angels, came to earth into a
humble environment, into poverty, into suffering, unto death, that
we might be rich through him. He humbled himself, becoming
a man, taking our flesh, taking our sin, taking our guilt, taking
that place that was due to us by substitution, and dying under
the wrath and judgment of God, which was rightly ours. So that
our wealth, our abundance, consists in the precious gifts that we
have been given and the possessions bequeathed to us by God because
of what the Lord Jesus Christ has done for us and in our place. And a believer's riches are weighed
and measured by the precious things that we possess by faith,
redeemed by precious blood, justified by precious faith, clothed in
the perfect righteousness of God, and possessing the precious
promises of God the Holy Spirit. And from what I have said already,
I trust that you appreciate that our riches, therefore, are essentially
spiritual. You wouldn't necessarily recognize
them at all from looking at the outside. Oh, but what a piece. What a blessedness, what a comfort
that there is in the heart of the individual who sees their
riches in Christ. And lots of things can happen
in this world. Lots of things can happen. but
those who are rich in Christ will find that their comfort
and their help and their peace endures because of that spiritual
reality which is their possession. Now, let us be clear that that
difficulty of seeing these riches causes some people to say, well,
they don't exist. They're not real. We can't see
them. They're just made up. They're
just some sort of intangible, nebulous, vague idea that some
people want to have, that they've got this special connection,
this special channel of blessing with God, and it's a kind of
mind game with no real substance and no real worth. Maybe you've
heard people saying that kind of thing. Maybe you've got friends
that say that whenever you talk about the Lord or you mention
that you're going to church. Come on, be real, get real. But you see, when you're rich
in faith, oh, that is the reality. And you wouldn't give it up,
would you? You wouldn't trade it, would you? He could say,
I'll give you a limousine. I'll give you the big house.
I'll give you the good job. I'll give you the high flying
career. All you've got to do is give it up. No, no, I couldn't
give that up. I couldn't give the Lord up.
And sometimes we're battered and sometimes we're bruised and
sometimes we're hurt and sometimes we grieve. Sometimes we're challenged
in ways that we think no one has ever been challenged like
this before. But we could never give up the
Lord when we've tasted of the riches of his goodness. People will point to a believer's
trials, their sorrows, their fears, their failures, their
doubts, and they'll say, are you any different from anybody
else? You've just got this little idea about how you can deal with
it better. And I would have to agree that
the believer's troubles are often as great and sometimes greater
than our friends and our neighbours and maybe family members or whatever.
And what we sometimes talk about, these riches, this victory, this
triumph, this success in our Christian life and experience,
the power to overcome, it's elusive. We don't ride on clouds as the
Lord's people. We're not always happy. And yet that is the very essence
of our faith. That it's in those moments that
we find our faith to be most real. That's the enigma of our
senses. Our senses tell us we're under
pressure and our faith steals itself to help us through. Our faith looks away from our
troubles to the Lord Jesus Christ and our faith experiences something
of the richness of God's blessing to us. There is a paradox in
our flesh. There is a puzzle that the wise
men of this world can never understand. But those who have that simple-minded
trust and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ prove to be real time
after time. Hebrews chapter 11 verse 1 says,
Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things
not seen. And James in chapter 2 verse
5 says, Hath not God chosen the poor of this world, rich in faith,
and heirs of the kingdom which he hath promised to them that
love him? You remember that the Apostle
Paul could say in 2 Corinthians chapter 12, my grace is sufficient
for thee, for my strength is made perfect in weakness. You know, it's interesting. The
world has this idea that Christians are a little bit deluded or self-deceived. And yet, as you think about it,
see that thing there that we've just talked about, my grace is
sufficient for thee, my strength is made perfect in weakness.
That is what they set up. So how many times have you seen
a film from Hollywood where it's the guy who's down, the guy who's
not able to hack it, the guy who can't cut it, who through
a variety of circumstances, maybe a little bit of cleverness on
his part, a little bit of luck, gets to the top. And it almost
appears as if his problem is what ultimately gave him the
victory. Well, there is a sense, there
is a parallel in which the believer has that experience because we
know we are like that team of misfits that gets to
the Super Bowl. Why? Because we are better than
anybody else. No, we are the misfits. But the
Lord's power is made perfect in our weakness. And as weak
as we are, God's blessings flow to us and he takes the glory.
We see these proofs and evidences in the facts around about us,
in the experiences that we've had, in the testing and the proving
of the faithfulness of God over the years. Because here we are
still, despite the fact that we've come through so many dark
forests, so many deep valleys, so many dark nights. And here
we are still today, enjoying the riches of God's blessing
and His goodness and His grace. That's a testimony to the goodness
of God, not to our ability or strength, but to the goodness
and faithfulness of our God. And it is thereby that we enter
into the joy of those experiences. It's by faith that we enter into
the joy. We grow in grace and in our understanding
of the Lord Jesus Christ through the trials that we have, through
these difficult experiences. And the Lord takes the glory
and his gospel teaches us to grow and to deepen and to experience
this faithfulness in the midst of our tests and trials, even
our persecutions. And that's the product of spiritual
wisdom. And that's what Peter is talking
about. That's the gospel truth. That's the divine illumination
that comes upon the heart and mind of an individual whom the
Lord is pleased to reveal himself to. Not everyone sees these things. Not everyone can. They are spiritually
discerned. Peter calls it the knowledge
of God and of Jesus, our Lord. And not everyone knows the knowledge
of God and of Jesus our Lord. He calls it the knowledge of
him that hath called us to glory. To glory. To glory. To eternal glory in the presence
of God and his holy angels forever and ever and ever and ever. called. He's called us to it
and he gives us that as a free gift. This is our richness. These are our blessings. But there is an evidence also
of grace, which is an internal evidence, which is an evidence
which we know personally and we have individually. It is too
dispensed from above and it is administered by God the Holy
Spirit to our souls. And that is the ministry by which
we persevere through these trials that we encounter. Despite ourselves, we are being
made like the Lord Jesus Christ. That's a tremendous concept and
idea. We are being conformed to the
image of Christ in our lives, in our souls, in our spirit.
That image, that likeness of Christ is being nurtured in us
by God. And it's hard sometimes to go through
the challenges that we face. And we consider giving up, but
we can't give up. We struggle to believe But we
do believe. We feel overwhelmed by the waves
of life that come crashing in upon us. But when that wave pulls out
and reveals the sand on the seashore, lo and behold, there we are still
clinging on. to the foundation that is Christ.
And that's what happens to the Lord's people. We are given that
tenacity, that ability to endure, that perseverance of the Spirit. And not only are we still there,
do you know what we discover? That that wave, which so nearly
sucked us out to sea again, has actually pushed us further up
the beach. We've grown, we've learned, we've
moved on because of the trial. 1 John 3, verse 2 says, Beloved,
now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we
shall be. But we know that when he shall
appear, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. Well, what has this got to do
with Peter? What is Peter saying to us here in this? Well, the
apostle would have us remember something. He would have us remember
that there is a reality in this knowledge of our richness and
our standing in Christ that enables us and helps us to endure in
the face and midst of our trials. There is a reality in this blessed
state of this hope and calling that we possess in Christ. Peter's
dying. Peter's old and he's dying. And he knows that his death is
imminent. And he knows that his death will
be violent. And this is his last will and
testament. This letter, when we read it, we ought to remember
this is an old man writing down his last will and testament before
his violent death. Final words of encouragement
that he wants to give to his readers before he enters into
the presence of God. And that's what Peter's doing
here as the Apostle passes into glory. He has this message to
leave. You know, back in the UK there's,
or in Ireland perhaps if I want to be a little bit more specific,
there are lots of people who believe that they come from a
royal lineage. If your name's O'Neill or O'Donnell
then, there's a good chance that somewhere back in the dim distant
past, in the mists of time, there was a king or a queen in there
somewhere. And maybe it's because of the
surname or maybe they own a little bit of field and there used to
be a castle on it or something. They hope, they think, they aspire
to the fact that they were the sons and daughters of the ancient
kings and queens of Ireland. And I've got a picture in my
mind of an old man dying. And he gathers his family around
him. And they've grown up with these fanciful ideas that they've
got a noble bloodline or despite the fact that they've lived in
poverty all their life. And as the old man's life ends,
he calls for a box to be brought to his bedside. They open it up and inside is
a simple gold crown. Not valuable. Very old, with
a little inscription written on the side. And it says, the
glory shall return. And as the old man dies, he whispers,
all that I told you was true. That would make a difference
to that family, wouldn't it? To know that it was true. That's
what Peter's doing here. He's telling them it's true. What I've told you, what we've
talked about, what I've ministered, what I've preached to you, I'm
dying, but I want you to know that it's all true. The Apostle passes into glory
and he leaves his spiritual family with a final testimony of their
rich inheritance in Christ. Not a rude crown, but an eyewitness
account of Christ's glory and majesty. He's saying to them, not only
have I spent time with the man, Christ Jesus, not only did I
walk through the streets and the villages and the plains and
the hillsides with this man, Christ Jesus, but I saw the divine
glory in Jesus Christ. I saw God shining in Jesus Christ. I heard the Father. testify of Jesus Christ. Peter takes us back over 30 years
in this statement to the Mount of Transfiguration where he and
James and John were taken by the Lord when the Lord was transfigured
in the presence of Moses and Elijah. And he is telling the
people that these are the things that he saw and heard. This is
an eyewitness first-hand account of what he saw and heard. He's
saying to them, you know the truth. I've preached these things
to you. You know it. You have believed
the gospel that I declared. He calls it the present truth.
And he says, I know you know, I know you believe the present
truth, the gospel that I've declared. But he says this message, this
message, it's not, it's not, any cunningly devised fable. We haven't made this up. We haven't
constructed this for our own ends. Your eyes didn't see the
Lord, but my eyes did. Your ears didn't hear the Lord,
but my ears did. You've never laid hold upon him,
but these hands have. And this is the gospel that we
preach. This is the gospel that we made known unto you. This
is the power and coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. So Peter is telling them here,
look at verse 16. For we have not followed cunningly
devised fables when we made known unto you the power and coming
of our Lord Jesus, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty. Peter knew from the Lord's own
lips, he had said it in Matthew chapter 16, verse 27, the son
of man shall come in the glory of his father with his angels. And I suspect that Peter was
taking comfort from that comment right then personally, as he
anticipated his own demise. But he is also conveying that
in his letter to those to whom he was writing, to you and to
me and to the churches that have benefited from these words down
through the centuries. He's saying, you've understood
what we've told you. We've understood what you've
heard. You've believed this gospel truth. But then he takes them
on. and he shows them something else.
By drawing their attention once again to the transfiguration,
he is saying to them, there's more yet to come. The glory shall return. The glory is coming again. Something peculiar. in the glorious
majesty of the Lord Jesus Christ to encourage the hearts of his
people. That's what Peter is telling
us. We know the story of the Lord's coming onto the earth.
We know about the manger. We know about the poor circumstances. We know a little bit about his
early years. We know less about the middle time. We know a little
bit about the ministry of the Lord. We know about his death.
We know about his resurrection and his ascension. This is the
gospel message that we have heard and we love and we cherish. This
is the present truth but Peter is saying there's more, there's
more. He's saying because I saw something.
I saw something which was so wonderful, so amazing. I saw the glory of the Lord Jesus
Christ and as I prepared to die I want you to know something
of this glory and what I saw in him. Here he is speaking about
his confidence in triumph over death. He is speaking about the
manifestation of the glory of the God-man Jesus Christ. And
I think that these two strands coming together as they do here,
shows that Peter had realised the implications of glimpsing
the personal glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. In that great day
of his coming again, It is that which Peter, James and John witnessed
on the Mount of Transfiguration that will be revealed to the
church and to the people of God. It is that glorious Christ who
is coming back. Not the man in his human body
that we would have recognised had we seen him walking up and
down the streets, but that man in a human body, right enough,
but in a human body out of which such a brilliance emanates, such
a glory shines, such purity, such brightness, such whiteness,
that Peter says, you know what? If all the scrubbers in all the
world had got together with their brushes and soap, they could
never have made such a work as we saw there that day. Brilliant, glowing, glorious,
shining as snow, radiant. And that is the Christ that is
coming back. That is the Christ that we are called to look for.
That is the Christ to anticipate. That is the Christ that Peter
says, I want you to know I'm dying and I want you to know
he's coming back and this is how he'll come. Remember these two that he had
there with them on the mountain, Moses and Elijah? And they also
had glorious bodies. They had glorious bodies. These
two old saints from vastly different periods of the church's history. And yet there they were standing
together with the Lord Jesus Christ, with this glory. Undoubtedly, it was a derived
glory that these two possessed. But here is a picture, surely,
that Christ will come with his saints in glory. That was what
Peter was being shown. And that's what he's telling
us. That when Christ comes back, he will have his church with
him. Moses and Elijah, the law and the prophets, all that testified
of Christ. There they were standing with
Christ and Peter was given a glimpse of something wonderful, something amazing,
something transcendent. He was able to recognise there
in the Lord Jesus Christ and these two saints beside him that
there was some significance in this with respect to the return
of the Lord Jesus Christ. And he had seen the miracles.
Yes, he had. He had been there at the death.
He was first into the tomb. When the Lord Jesus Christ rose
from the dead, he was there at the ascension of the Lord. He
was party to the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. It
was he who stood up in the second chapter of Acts and preached
that wonderful sermon. But as he faced his own death,
his mind turned not to the miracles, not to the cross, not to the
empty tomb, but to the Mount of Transfiguration. That was
where his mind went. That was what he thought upon.
And it was that view of the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ that
he had in his mind's eye and that he had revealed to him by
the Holy Spirit. Peter, James and John were undoubtedly
shown this for themselves, but also for us. Because this is
a testimony that men in this world are not simply looking
forward to the returning glory of the Lord Jesus Christ, but
have already seen the coming in glory of the Lord Jesus Christ
in that Mount of Transfiguration, the glory of Christ was revealed.
Men with human eyes have already seen it. And that is the one
who is returning again. This was no cunningly devised
fable, says Peter. This is the precious promise
of God. In 2 Peter chapter 3, we'll come
to it in a few weeks' time, God willing, he writes in verse 12,
looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God
wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved and the
elements shall melt with fervent heat. What an hour that is going
to be. What a minute, what a moment
that is going to be. when the heavens on fire shall
be dissolved and the elements shall melt with fervent heat.
Why? Because they're in the presence of the glorious Son of God. Nevertheless, says Peter, we,
according to his promise, look for the new heavens and new earth
wherein dwelleth righteousness. The ground of our hope in life
and death is the glorious person of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is our more sure word of
prophecy. This is Christ's own testimony,
not simply spoken, but also manifested. He took Peter, James and John
up onto that mountain to show them something. He had already
told them several days or weeks before that they were going to
see something special. He was telling them in anticipation,
he says, you're going to see something amazing in the next
little while. And then he took them up onto
that mountain and Moses and Elijah came and that whole scene unfolded
before their eyes so that we might know something of the glory
of Christ in his coming, in his power. the Son of Man shall come in
the glory of his Father. He says to his disciples, I will
come again and receive you unto myself, that where I am, there
ye may be also. And of this precious promise,
Peter says, we do well to take heed, as unto a light that shineth
in a dark place. This is a dark place sometimes
for the Church of Jesus Christ. This is a dark place for believers.
I've said it before, if you haven't already been in a dark place
in your Christian walk and profession and testimony, in your personal
circumstances, in your life, if you've not already been there,
wait a little while, because it's coming. But we have got this testimony,
not a cunningly devised fable, this testimony, this eyewitness
account of the imminency of the glorious coming again of the
Lord Jesus Christ. He would draw our eye as a light
on a dark night draws the eye of the traveller. He would draw
our eye to the brilliance and glory of the Lord Jesus Christ.
He would thereby raise our confidence to trust in the faithfulness
of that more sure word of prophecy that we have been given by Christ
himself. He would hereby confirm our hope of that eternal life
that the Lord Jesus Christ has for us and encourage us to press
on in the work that now falls to our hands. For how long? How long? Well, only a little while. Only
a little while longer. Only until the day dawn and the
day star arise in your hearts. Until the dawn of that great
day with the full illumination of all that at present is seen
through a glass darkly, is seen but by faith. Then it shall be
manifested. Then it shall be real. Then we
will see what Peter's already seen. We will know what John
already knows. We will hear what James has already
heard. We will see the glory of Christ
revealed. And we will see him face to face. and we will know as we are known. I've got a couple of quotes that
I just want to end with, and that's us finished this morning.
The first one comes from a man called Robert Hawker. They both
pretty much say the same thing. The second one is from a man
called James Wells. I was pointed to this recently
by a friend. Robert Hawker said, it is Christ's
person which is the great object of our faith. All our high hopes
of everlasting happiness and joy are centred in Him. He is our hope, our joy, our
confidence. And James Wells said, just in
proportion as the Lord Jesus Christ is precious to your soul,
just in proportion will be the strength of your faith and the
strength of your hope, and the strength of your love to God,
and the strength of your consolation. Amen.