2 Peter chapter 1 and verse 1. 2 Peter chapter 1 and 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 Saviour 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 ye 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, ye
shall never fall. Amen. May God bless to us this
reading from his word. I've got a riddle for you this
morning. A riddle, come a riddle, come
a rote-tote-tote. A riddle. What is precious but
can't be bought? May be weak but never fails. May be little but can't be lost. I think you all know it's not
a hard riddle really, is it? faith. This morning I want to
speak about faith because I believe it is a subject of great importance
and it is also a subject of great confusion. And I want to speak about it
also because Peter, in the opening verses of this little epistle,
calls it precious. What is precious is worth possessing. Indeed, faith is so important
that the Word of God tells us that without it, It is impossible
to please God. Faith is essential for worshipping
God. Faith is necessary for living
before God. Faith is required for us to have
any relationship with God and with the Lord Jesus Christ. To give it perhaps the structure
of a definition at the very outset, maybe I can say that faith may
be defined as trusting the testimony of God, relying upon his faithfulness
to do what he has promised. It is believing him when he speaks. But to say that also requires
that we enlarge upon it slightly because belief or trusting the
testimony of God requires also two things. It requires, first
of all, that we know what that testimony is, so we have a scriptural
knowledge, and it requires a spiritual understanding. You can't believe
what God says about himself if you don't know what God says
about himself. Equally, the testimony of scripture
is this, that men and women, because of their natural disinclination
and opposition to God, cannot receive spiritual things in their
carnal man. And therefore, to truly have
faith in God and in the Lord Jesus Christ and in the testimony
of God requires spiritual illumination and understanding. So yes, faith
is trusting the testimony of God, but that requires a knowledge
of that testimony, And it also requires that the Holy Spirit
lead us into truth and teach us those things which we read
in Holy Scripture. You can't believe something you
don't know. And by that we will put to flight,
I trust, any sense of there being an ignorant faith in God and
in the Lord Jesus Christ. And people may well say, well,
all you have to do is believe. Well, believe what? Believe whom? believe the testimony of God. What is the testimony of God?
What has God said? What has God declared? There
has to be a knowledge and Peter speaks much of knowledge and
in the coming weeks because it is my plan to spend a little
bit of time in this second epistle of Peter. We've spent some time
in the first epistle recently. I want to think about the second
general epistle of Peter. And I want us to know that knowledge
is important in the Christian life and that comes as a necessity
for unbelievers and it comes also as a requirement to believers. For Peter will teach us here,
and we will see in the coming weeks, that if we do not deepen
our knowledge, if we do not grow in grace, then we will not have
the benefits and the blessings of our spiritual inheritance
with the Lord. that there is an obligation rests
upon us, that there is a need that we have to draw an eye to
the Lord, to study his word, to be a workman in these truths,
rightly dividing the word of truth, hearing the gospel with
attentiveness, applying ourselves to its study, that we may learn
of him and so learn Christ. You can't understand something
that is foreign to you. And that's why we preach the
gospel. That's why we bring the gospel week by week, why we take
this message as being important and have to repeat it regularly. because we learn and we discover
that we are prone to forget, we are easily distracted. We have these things removed
from us and even though we have spent a lifetime in these things,
we discover that the world and the flesh and the devil have
a pretty easy time creeping up upon us and robbing us of our
joy and our peace and our comfort in our Christian walk. And I believe that there are
people in this world who believe that they have faith, and they do not. They do not. And I believe that there are
people who long to have faith, and they can't. And I believe that there are
people who genuinely possess faith, but they struggle to enjoy
the privileges of their inheritance and the rights that they have
as children of God. And it may well be that there
are some of each sort here today under the sound of my voice.
I want to show you what the Bible has to say about the true nature
of precious faith. I want to ask the Lord to graciously
and mercifully bestow upon us the gift of true and precious
faith. Now it's my plan, as I've mentioned,
to spend the next few weeks on this second epistle and To begin
today, just rather than moving straight into these thoughts
about faith, I want to make a couple of quick points about the book
and the author and the audience and the aim of this book. And just to give us a little
bit of a context, and then we will move on to think about the
introduction to this book in which the apostle makes reference
to faith. The author of the book is Simon
Peter, under the direction and inspiration of the Holy Spirit,
Simon was his Jewish name, so he was a Jew, and that's the
name that he was given by his parents when he was a child.
That's the name that he carried with him as a youngster and as
a teenager and into his adult life. But when he met the Lord
Jesus Christ, the Lord gave him a new name. The Lord called him
Cephas, or Peter, which is the Greek form of Cephas. And Peter means a part of a living
rock. And so this name Peter was given
to him in anticipation of a role that he would serve both as a
disciple and apostle and as a leader in the church. There was a recognition
here by the Lord giving him this name that Peter was going to
be a representative that would endure in the preaching of the
gospel and we in the book of Acts and in other passages in
scripture we do read about Peter and he certainly appears to have
been a man of some abilities and usefulness in the gospel
of the Lord Jesus. He calls himself an apostle and
he gives his writing, his letter here, the apostolic authority. But note that he first calls
himself a servant of the Lord Jesus. He was a servant and an
apostle of Jesus Christ. This is the second of two general
epistles that he wrote. By the word general, we mean
that it was sent out without there being a particular church
or individual to whom it was sent. And so perhaps there would
be a multiplicity of copies made, and they were sent to different
places. or it was simply intended that it went out to be circulated
amongst all the churches. But simply by recognising that
there is not an individual or a particular city or congregation
mentioned, it bears the name General Epistle. We know that
Peter spent time in Jerusalem. We know that he was involved
in the conversion of Cornelius at Caesarea. We know that he
spent time in Antioch. We discover that he was there
and we believe upon the phrases of the epistles that he also
spent time in Babylon so that he had moved in an easterly direction
for his own ministry, so much for the author. The audience
is also important, and while I've made mention of the fact
that this was a general epistle and not written to anyone specifically,
I also want to point out that here and in all the epistles,
it is written to people of faith. It's not written to the world
in general, it's written to churches and it's written to believers.
And that's important because what is said, what is written,
what is enjoined and indeed what is commanded to these people
is directed to them that have obtained like precious faith
with us. It is believers that these letters,
these epistles are written to and unbelievers cannot appropriate
them. Unbelievers cannot own them.
Unbelievers cannot say these blessings are for us because
these blessings come only to the Lord's people. They are directed
to them and that will be important as we read these verses and consider
the passages before us. The epistles, the apostles in
writing, the epistles distinguish between those that are Christ's
and those who are not. And that is a division that exists
and still exists to this day. You cannot claim the promises
and the blessings of these writings if you are not a believer in
the Lord Jesus Christ. This is our inheritance as believers
in Christ. And Paul says elsewhere that
all men have not faith. And that's just the reality.
All men have not faith. In 2 Peter 1 and verse 2, let
me just give you an example of what I mean here. We read this
verse. grace and peace be multiplied
unto you through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. So what is Peter saying there?
He's saying grace and peace be multiplied unto you. Unto whom? To whom is this grace and peace
multiplied? Not everybody. Everybody doesn't
have grace. Everybody doesn't have peace.
This is a targeted audience. This is to those who have like
precious faith with us, those who have been brought into faith,
those who have the blessings of faith bestowed upon them.
So here we see that there is an important recognition as to
the audience of this letter. And the aim of the letter is
for us to seek the enlargement of our experience of God and
the Lord Jesus Christ. That's a lovely ambition. I wish we all could carry an
ambition like that at the forefront of our minds, that we might know
more of Christ, that we might know more of God. You know, there
comes a time when we finish our studying and maybe around, I
don't know, well, maybe around 15, 16 for some of us, or maybe
around 20 or 22 for others, or maybe with this whole of life
learning that we're doing now, we get right into our sort of
30s and 40s and we're still doing studying and we're still reading
textbooks. Well, that's a good thing. But let us never imagine
that we can stop off learning about Christ. We're going to
be learning about Christ for eternity. And we do well to start
now. And so we should be eager. We
should be engaged. You know, if somebody had an
exam coming up, they would probably put it off. If they were anything
like me, they're studying off as long as they possibly could.
They would find everything to do. I used to cut the grass with
a plumb. because I didn't want to go to
my textbook. I would look for chores around
the house because I didn't want to study. And then, a week out,
It would suddenly dawn on me the realisation and you would
be spending something like 18 hours a day on these textbooks
trying to cram as much as you could. Let us not be like that,
but let us nevertheless take seriously our role and responsibility
to so learn Christ. That's what Peter's telling us
here. Peter is telling us that we are to be students of Christ,
students of God, and we are to learn of him. And he says to
them in the opening section here that he desires for them multiplied
grace and peace. I just love the way that Peter
gets to the heart of this message about the need that we have to
know more about God and know more about Christ. He just goes
straight to the point. In the space of a few lines,
he has mentioned faith, grace, and peace. Perhaps the three
most important words in our gospel message. And he's hit them, he's
landed on them with a hop, skip, and a jump within the first few
lines. These are words that sit at the
very heart of the gospel. And I did a little bit of counting
up and I realised that in 33 words, he'd hit those three and
he'd also landed on the righteousness of God and salvation by the Lord
Jesus Christ. Now that's not bad. He thought
about this. He thought about this when he
was writing it. He put time and energy into conveying
this message. And he's telling us that this
is important. And he's calling us to give ear
and to listen and to hear this message and to apply ourselves
to it. It's a lovely aspiration that
Peter has for us. And it's what every true preacher
wants for himself and wants for his congregation and wants for
his flock. that they might have multiplied
grace and peace. That's what I want for you. I
want you to have an enlarged experience of God's grace. I want you to have a deepening
understanding of God's peace in your life. I don't want you
to think that you've arrived on some sort of plateau, some
sort of plane, that you're out on the prairie and it just stretches
for miles and miles and there isn't a hill or a mountain to
be seen. No, I want you to be mountaineers. I want you to be
hill climbers. I want you to be seeking out
those opportunities, those ways where you can climb. And some of you may say, you
know, well, we're getting on in life and my muscles aren't
as strong as they used to be. Well, that's fair enough. But
if they're not exercised, they'll not do anything for you. And
if we are going to experience a deepening of the Lord's blessings,
of his grace, and his mercy, and his peace, then we have to
work for it, and we have to stretch ourselves, and we have to engage
with the scriptures, and that's what Peter is calling us to do. And I know, I know that you have
seen that God often does not remove the trials from our lives,
that he gives us thorns in our flesh, that he gives us burdens
to bear, that he gives us trials, difficulties that we have to
deal with. But these do not come alone.
They come with the call to deepen and broaden and multiply our
understanding and experiences of the graces of God and the
peace of God so that we are equipped when these challenges come against
us. And whether we are older or whether
we are younger, we will be taught. We will learn. that if we're
going to get through this life at all as believers, it will
be by learning to lean on Christ more and more. And if you don't
do it, there's a warning. If you don't do it willingly,
you will do it unwillingly, because the Lord Jesus Christ will bend
your knee to Him. If you're one of His own, He
will teach you and he will enforce that teaching. He will teach
you how to trust him. He will teach you what faith
is and it will be an active faith and a practiced faith and a real
faith and a genuine faith and it won't be the faith that you
put up on the wall like a picture and look at it a couple of times
a week. Let me spend a few minutes here
on this subject of precious faith. This really is the message that
we're going to be thinking about in days to come. So don't worry
about the time. I'm aware of the clock. But let
me spend a few minutes on the matter of this precious faith.
There are many who claim to have faith in this world. This world
is full of religion, and we could narrow that down to Christian
religion if we like, but everybody claims to have faith of one kind
or another. The question is, is our faith,
is your faith, is my faith, the like precious faith of the apostles. Is it? I'm not here to beat you
up. In no way do I want my words
to hurt, to harm, to grieve, to lay any more upon your shoulders
than I know you already carry around with you. I want to be
a pointer. I want to be a comforter. I want to be a helper. But we
need to ask these questions of ourselves. Is my faith genuine? Is my faith real? Precious faith is saving faith. And it is more rare rarer and
more elusive than men and women possibly imagine. Faith is the gift of God. It cannot be bought. It cannot
be earned. It cannot be inherited. You don't
get this from your mum and dad. It's God's gift and he gives
it entirely according to his will and choosing. It's not the
churches to give. Everybody that dies and has a
funeral in a church gets a good send off because the assumption
is that they've been people of faith. They might not have been
attending very much. They might not have been engaged
very much. They might not have been able
to say very much or testify very much, but they were people of
faith. Because we're all people of faith. But we're not all people
of precious faith. We're not all people of like
precious faith with us, says Peter. Can't get it from your mum and
dad. Can't get it from your preacher. Can't get it from a Pope. Can't
get it from a church membership. Faith is planted in the hearts
of the elect by the Spirit of God. It's the only way it comes. And by this faith, this precious
faith, the elect come to know and believe. the testimony of
God, the promises of God, the faithfulness of God, the truth
of the scriptures, and that which God has revealed in his word. And particularly we may say that
faith receives and believes receives and believes the gracious purpose
of God to save his people by the substitutionary death of
the Lord Jesus Christ. That's what faith is granted
to us for. Faith is the vehicle that takes
us to believe in the substitutionary representative death of the Lord
Jesus Christ and the shedding of his blood for the cleansing
of our sins. That's what faith does. If you
have faith, you will believe that. If you don't believe that,
you don't have faith. And these blessings and promises,
they lead us to see the true nature of God in Scripture. In
believing the revelation of God, in believing the testimony of
God, faith apprehends God's will to forgive sin and to give eternal
life to his church and people in and by the Lord Jesus Christ. And faith, true faith, precious
faith, is active in that discernment of the testimony of God to reach
out and take those promises and draw them to itself. You can't go to sleep and be
a believer and expect to have spiritual growth and development. Faith is active, it reaches,
it takes, it lays hold, it appropriates the blessings of scripture for
the Lord's people. And that activity, that reaching
out, that seeking, that desiring after the blessings and the promises
of God in the gospel is characteristic of lively faith, of living faith,
of true faith and precious faith. It is the faith that sees the
Son of God as the one who has been sent into this world and
recognises Him for whom He is, thou art the Christ, the Son
of the living God. It is the faith that goes to
Him, seeking help from Him. It is the faith that ventures
upon Him and says, what have I got to lose? It is the faith
that trusts in Him when He is set before us as the only way
by which our sins can be cleansed. It is the faith that lives upon
Him when it says, the just shall live by faith and we grow and
develop and move in this world, in this life under the direction
of God because it's faith that moves us and directs us and guides
us. And faith works by Him. Faith is led by Him in our service
and in our doing. And you will not hear from this
pulpit, as long as I have anything to do with it, the obligations
of the Mosaic law being laid upon your shoulders. Because
Christ has dealt with that. Christ has been judged for that. That was there to expose us of
our sins. But you will hear me saying that
faith, lively faith, works according to the direction of the word
and testimony of God. Because he leads us to understand
our service. Now we've said it many times,
the Lord enables, the Lord provides what he requires, he provides,
but he calls us to be engaged and precious faith is that vehicle
by which the Lord's people engage with the blessings and graces,
the multiplied graces and peace of God. Faith is precious because
it is to be more sought after than this world's riches. You can be a millionaire, billionaire
many times over, you can have multiplied riches as much as
you like, but you go into a lost eternity without Christ, without
faith, you have nothing. Faith is to be more sought after
than all the world's riches. Peter tells us elsewhere that
silver and gold perish. Silver and gold perish. You know
why people like silver and gold? Because they don't perish. But
they do perish, because everything perishes, which is not faith,
which is not of faith, which is not of God, because everything,
and Peter is going to talk about that a little later. He's going
to talk about this whole world being wrapped up, like a scroll
just turned in on itself. You know, like you see it in
the cartoons. Gone. And that's what will happen. And faith is the only thing that
endures. Peter says, like precious faith.
He means that the faith of the apostles, that is the same with
the apostles. And this faith of the apostles
was a common faith. Paul talks about the common faith
that we have in Titus 1 verse 4 because it trusts in the same
thing. It sees the same object. It looks to the same Christ and
the same Saviour. It looks to the same sacrifice. It rests in the same promises. It has to do with the same testimony
of God and revelation of God. Ephesians 4, 5 says that there
is one Lord and one faith into which all the elect are brought. Your faith and my faith is the
same faith if it is this lively, precious faith. Every child of God comes with
the same precious faith to God. And yet the experience of faith
is not the same. And I say that to encourage you,
if I may, because some have strong faith and some have weak faith. Sometimes our faith ebbs and
flows and in the same person, it can be very high or very low. Faith can often be little, like
a mustard seed, the smallest of all the seeds. And we can
be like that bruised reed that's just hanging on by a fibre because
it has been smashed and battered. And we feel our lives to be just
like that. I'm only hanging on. or we might be like that smoking
candle and it's just about to flicker out and be gone. And it's just little faith and
there's so little of it left and we think to ourselves it
can't possibly endure, it can't possibly last. And some see a little When they
look at Christ, they don't see much. They don't see enough to
give them any depth. They don't see enough to give
them any real hold. And they're constantly worrying,
and they're constantly fearful, and they're constantly anxious
about what's going on around about them. What's the problem?
It's little faith. Some appear, seem to be able
to enjoy stronger faith. And there is a certainty and
there is a rest in their believing, but the point is that the experience
of faith differs, but not as to kind. If it is that common
faith, if it is the faith that is precious, if it is the faith
that is God given and Holy Spirit applied, then it is real faith. Therefore, to all of us, Peter's
words here are reassuring. For if our faith is strong or
weak, it is regardless, through the righteousness of God our
Savior, Jesus Christ and our Saviour Jesus Christ. And that's
what he says in verse one. 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 Saviour Jesus
Christ. That's where precious faith is
to be had. That is the nature, that is the
kind, that is what real faith is. Faith is not our work for
God, but God's work in us. Righteousness does not come by
faith. But faith is the result of justifying
righteousness. It is because God has justified
us in his eternal purpose, made us righteous and declared us
to be so, imputed that righteousness to us in Christ, that we are
given faith. That's the order. Some people
tell us that we believe and then God justifies us. We believe
and then God makes us righteous. No, it's not. Our faith is the
consequence of God having made us righteous in his eternal purpose. In the eternal counsel of peace
and grace, he has given us faith through the gospel of the Lord
Jesus Christ. to comfort our souls in time
and to lead us into the truth and the enjoyment of his blessings
for us. Sometimes by faith we see clearly
that the salvation comes to us from God. And sometimes we see
that less distinctly and we are given cause for anxiety and worry
and we wonder whether our sins are really showing us that we
have never been gods at all. But the truth is that our standing
in Christ never changes despite the rise and the fall of our
feelings or the ebb and the flow of our faith. If we have that
true faith in Christ, we are firm, we are sure, we are complete
in Him. Do you recall the miracle of
the Lord upon the blind man? I'm going to just read a couple
of verses to you in Mark chapter 8. Mark chapter 8 verse 22 reads
like this. He cometh to Bethsaida, and they
bring a blind man unto him, and besought him to touch him. And
he took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the town.
And when he had spit on his eyes and put his hands upon him, he
asked him if he saw aught. And he looked up, the blind man,
and said, I see men as trees walking. After that, he put his
hands again upon his eyes and made him look up, and he was
restored and saw every man clearly. It's a very interesting little
miracle that the Lord performed there. It was a progressive miracle. It did not heal the man as most
miracles did. And I am absolutely sure that
the Lord did it purposely for a reason. The Lord could have
healed that man's eyes first time without any difficulty. There was not a need for a second
touch. But the Lord was showing us something
in that second touch. He was showing us that while
the man could see, he couldn't see clearly. While the man could
see light, yet there was a lack of distinction and clarity. There was more to be had. There
was a greater insight and understanding and knowledge yet to be encountered. No doubt that while a man is
either justified by God or not, whether a man is either saved
or not, whether a man's sins are either dealt with or not,
whether the blood of Christ is cleansed or not, there is a growth
and development in our experience if the Lord has touched us and
the Lord has blessed us with salvation. And this progression
is not a progression of holiness. It is not a progression of righteousness
or sanctification as is often spoken of, but rather it is a
deepening of knowledge, a development of faith, an enhancement of understanding,
a greater insight and sight of the Lord Jesus Christ. May we
say on the basis of this this miracle in Mark chapter 8, that
there is light before sight. Gospel knowledge and understanding
strengthens and intensifies as our faith grows in the Lord Jesus
Christ. I began this morning by saying
that I believe that there are people in this world who believe
they have faith and they do not, that there are people who long
to have faith and they can't, and that there are people who
genuinely possess faith but struggle to enjoy its privileges. People
can call their religious leanings whatever they like. And everybody's
got faith, as I've already mentioned. And it doesn't matter whether
you're a Buddhist, or whether you're a Hindu, or whether you're
a Muslim, or whether you're a Jew, whether you're a Baptist, whether
you're a church of whatever. Everybody's got faith. Everybody's
got faith. And they'll live and they'll
die by that faith. But if it's not the light, precious
faith of the apostles, if it's not the common faith of the elect,
the faith that comes through the righteousness of God and
our Saviour, Jesus Christ, then it is no real faith at all. And the majority will say, how
dare you? How dare you? God forbid that there is anyone
listening to my voice here this morning that will ever hear those
damning words. Depart from me, ye cursed, into
everlasting fire. I never knew you. I never knew
you. Do you long to believe but can't? Do you want to believe but don't
find it within you to be able to do so? Do you desire salvation but don't
know how to get it? Maybe you say to me, I've tried
to believe but I am constantly beset with unbelief. Well then let me point you once
again to the Lord Jesus Christ. Let me point you to Jesus. Do
you remember the man who came to Jesus seeking help for his
son? He asked the question in Mark
chapter nine, verse 22. He said, if thou canst do anything,
the man said to Jesus, if you can do anything, have compassion
on us, help us. And Jesus said unto him, if thou
canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth.
And straightway the father of the child cried out and said
with tears, Lord, I believe, help thou mine unbelief. And that's it right there. To
whom have you gone? to believe. You've gone to Christ. You've gone to the right one.
You've gone to the scriptures. That's what you desire. That
desire wasn't placed in you by natural forces. That desire wasn't
given to you because you are any different from anyone else
in this world. That desire is God's gift to
you. And if God has given you that
desire to go to Christ, then go to him with that same plea
that was given long ago. If you can have compassion upon
me, do something for me. If you will love me, then help
me in my need. I believe, help thou mine unbelief. The Lord Jesus Christ turns no
one away that goes to him upon that footing, upon that ground,
and for that mercy. Perhaps you feel that you genuinely
do possess faith, but you struggle to enjoy its privileges. You feel like a child in a room
of adults. You know that you should be maturing
in your faith. You should be deepening in your
understanding. Let me remind you what Peter
said in the second verse here in our introduction. Grace and
peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God
and of Jesus our Lord. Grace and peace be multiplied
unto you through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. How is grace going to be multiplied
to you? How is faith going to be enhanced
in you? How is peace going to be enjoyed
by you? Through the knowledge of God
and of Jesus our Lord. Don't imagine you got the knowledge
of God the day you were converted. Don't imagine that you got the
knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ the day that you were converted.
That was just you giving your first cry as a little baby coming
out of the womb. You know, we need to feed you
milk now because that's all you can stomach. But the time will
come when you need strong meat. The time will come when you need
substantial food. The time will come because if
you are alive, you need to grow. And your enjoyment of the Lord
will be enlarged by your knowledge of God and the Lord Jesus Christ. Believers grow in grace as we
learn Christ. And the Lord Jesus Christ will
not let his people remain in their diapers. One way or another,
he will bring on his people and he will cause us to learn of
him. May the Lord bless these thoughts
to us and encourage our hearts in them.