2 Peter chapter 1. We're obviously
still in the promises. This is part 3 of the promises. We're going to look tonight at
the immeasurable value of God's promises. The immeasurable value
of God's promises. And we're going to look at this
particular passage in 2 Peter chapter 1. Let me read verses
1-4 and we'll specifically look at verse 4. 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 may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption
that is in the world through lust." So we're going to look
at the first part of verse 4, "...are given unto us, are given
unto us, Exceeding great and precious promises. Exceeding
great. The word great is greatest of the great. It literally in
the Greek is greatest of the great and precious would be costly
or valuable. Costly or valuable. So the question
I had to ask tonight is what is the value to us of these marvelous
and comforting promises? What's the value? these promises
or pledges from God to do the believer good, it's, so to speak,
it's like our real estate. And tangible real estate, you
know, pay taxes, you pay on your real estate, and they assess
the value to them. And every now and again, of course,
with spring coming, you get up, you know, you get out, you want
to do stuff outside, and then you kind of look at your house,
you kind of look at your property, does grass need to be mowed,
you want to maintain You want to maintain the value, so you
take care of the property. Spiritually speaking, as his
children, we should do exactly the same thing with God's promises.
Look at them and highly value them. and use them in our own
lives. Take notice, take stock, see
the real value to our souls and apply them in our spiritual walk. Mr. Spurgeon says this, I read
him a couple times, but he says, Spurgeon says, I like in my time
of trouble to find a promise which exactly fits my need and
then put my finger on it and say, Lord, this is your word. I beseech thee to prove that
it is so by carrying it out in my case. I believe that this
is thine own writing and I pray thee make it good to my faith.
He's looking for promises. He sees something, he's struggling
or whatever, and he looks in the Word, or just in casual reading,
and you find a promise and say, this is your Word. This is your
Word. Apply it to me and give me faith to believe it. So now,
back to our text. 2 Peter 1, verse 4, whereby are
given unto us exceeding great and precious promises. We're
just going to look at great, exceeding great, and exceeding precious.
The Apostle states, exceeding, exceeding, great. As I said, that word great is
greatest of the great. And you look at it this way,
kings and presidents promise many things, but only God has
promised His Son. I don't really read much in history
about them sacrificing their own children for the protection
of the subjects. and kings and presidents and
governors and you know this is election year and they're making
a lot of promises and they may keep them probably won't but
the Lord God Himself promised His Son He promised His Son for
our forgiveness of sins He promised His Son for our redemption He
promised His Son for our salvation full and free who? given unto
us given unto us exceeding great precious promise Firstly, they
exceed or surpass all expectations. This is their exceeding great
and precious. Probably exceeding great. First of all, they exceed
or surpass all expectations. Turn to Ephesians chapter 3.
Ephesians chapter 3. and verse 20 they exceed all
expectations verse 20 now unto him that is able to do exceeding
abundantly above all that we ask or think according to the
power that worketh in us unto him that is able to do exceeding
abundantly all that we ask or think So His promises are exceeding
great, and they exceed all expectations. Secondly, they exceed all measurement. We can measure the seas, that's
been done, the depths of the seas, the sky, but we cannot
measure God's boundless promises. Psalms 139. Psalms 139 verses 6 and 17. Such knowledge, said David, is
too wonderful for me. It is high. I cannot attain unto
it. I can't measure. And verse 17
in Psalms 139. How precious also are thy thoughts
unto me, O God, how great is the sum of them. His promises
exceed all measurement. Thirdly, His promises exceed,
they surpass all experience. No matter how old we grow in
grace, whether it's a child, a child new in grace, or if it's
an old saint ready to go home. There are still more for us to
glean, more promises for us to receive, and more promises for
us to rest. We can't exhaust them. Fourthly,
these great promises exceed all expression. They exceed all expression. Our use of them is but a drop
in the ocean. All languages, all races, all
ethnic groups will never exhaust these golden fragments in God's
large basket. And this basket is His promises.
This great God, the great God, has for every believer great
words for us to be comforted, to be helped, to be encouraged,
and to trust more upon Him and His Son." 2 Corinthians 9. I
like this one. 2 Corinthians 9 and verse 15. Oh, wait a second. Yep. Okay, yeah. Thanks be unto God
for His unspeakable gift. That word unspeakable, is just
like his exceeding great and precious promises. That word
unspeakable is indescribable. Or, I like this one, it's not
able to expound in full. So, you know, man thinks for
as much speaking. He can expound everything and
talk about everything. And we do. There's a lot of talk.
But if every... Well, like the Scripture says,
and I think Nathan and I were talking about last week. if everything that God wrote,
books could not contain Him. That's how full, that's how surpassing
He is. So we could talk in all the sermons
of all the grace preachers from all time that we know, it still
is not even a drop in the bucket. It's not even a tenth or a percentage
of what God's expressive and surpassing promises are. So, God the Son promised to give
us God the Spirit. Think about that. God the Son,
He said, when I leave, I'll send a comforter. We know that's a
word. It's a promise. And it's been fulfilled. Now,
take that word, take just that phrase. He's given us the Spirit. How can you... How can that be
measured? How can that be valued? How can
that be quantified? Okay? That's why it's called
eternal life without end. The promises are like God. They
ever flow. They're eternal. I ask you a
couple questions. I ask myself this. Can we properly
value our resurrection? How can you value that? Can we
properly value the second advent? If we're here and Christ comes
back. Talk about that. You can't. It's exceeding great. Can we properly value what it
will be like to be with Him in glory? I know as Tim James says,
he calls them sanctified ramblings. And he says, this is what I think
glory will be like. We don't know. It's exceeding
great. It's exceeding great. All of
these truths or promises and realities are of infinite value
and are given to us freely in his word of promise and they
have all been executed through the son of his love through Christ
they are freely given to us now the next thing in our text it
says given unto us are whereby exceeding great and precious
so we'll look at the precious for a little bit exceeding beyond
value precious beyond costly not only are these promises great
and they're sovereign and they're powerful they are precious, they
are tender, they are compassionate, and they are exactly what we
need. Precious. Precious. I like what
Spurgeon said, he says, the more we believe the promises, the
more we find in them to believe. Just think about that for a while.
The more we believe the promises, the more we find in them to believe. Because the more we see of God,
we see His character, His attributes. Turn to this example, 1 Kings
chapter 17. Now this is truly amazing. 1 Kings
chapter 17. And we're going to start in verse
8. This is Elijah is sent to that
widow woman. You remember that widow woman
had herself she was taking care of and her son. and Elisha is
charged of God to go after the ravens had fed him and brought
him flesh in the morning and he drank of the brook and the
brook finally dried up because Elisha by God promised that there
would be no rain and so there is no rain so the water is running
out everything is very difficult. So we picked up this story in
verse 8, "...and the word of the Lord came unto Elijah, saying,
Get thee to Zarephath, that which belongeth to Zidon, and dwell
there. Behold, I have commanded a widow woman there to sustain
thee. So he arose and went to Zarephath,
and when he came to the gate of the city, behold, the widow
woman was there gathering of sticks, and he called to her
and said fetch me I pray thee a little water and a vessel that
I may drink now she doesn't know doesn't know what's going on
yet and as she was going to fetch it he called to her and said
bring me I pray thee a morsel of bread in thine hand And this
is what she said, "...as the Lord thy God liveth, I have not
a cake, but a handful of meal in a barrel, and a little oil
in the crews. And behold, I am gathering two
sticks, that I may go in and dress it for me and my son, that
we may eat it and then die." So this is their last meal. They're going to eat it and die.
This is how bad things are where they're at. And Elijah said unto
her, Fear not, go and do as thou hast said, but make me a little
cake first. and bring it unto me, and after,
make for thee and thy son." Now, she's got a handful of cornmeal,
whatever, for her and her son. And the audacity of this preacher,
this prophet, comes in and says, make me at first. That seems like it's selfish,
it's rude, it's uncompassionate. And look at what she says. Obviously,
she was a believer. and Elisha said to do this, fear
not for thus saith the Lord God of Israel he gave me a promise
this is what he's saying God gave me a promise a barrel of
meal shall not waste neither shall the crews of wool fail
until the day that the Lord sendeth rain upon the earth and she obeyed,
she went, she simply obeyed and that's what faith does and did
according to the saying of Elisha God had given Elisha a promise
But we see that this promise affects two other people. So you say, well, I can't get
a promise for somebody else. Hold on. Hold on. Yes, you can. And we'll look at this later
in this study. You sure can. The Lord gave Elisha a promise
about himself and two other people. She, being a believer, she did
what he said. And he told her, this is how
God works. He didn't send rain to Noah until
Noah's got the ark built. You see, that's what faith does.
God said, this is what I'm going to do. And Noah's like, it's
never rained like this. It's always sprinkled from the
bottom. But nevertheless, at his word, He built, got ridiculed,
got ridiculed preaching the gospel, got ridiculed walking by faith
in a world that understood that world was not worthy. It didn't
trust Christ, didn't have any idea what was going on. And then
once it started to rain, then he went in the ark. So faith
sees what God has promised before the promise is fulfilled. And
we see in Hebrews 9 that a lot of them didn't even live the
promise. They didn't realize the promise, but they believed
the promise. So they were fully persuaded, the scripture says.
So then here, in the meal, verse 16, wasted not, neither did the
crews of oil fail, according to the word of the Lord, which
he spake by Elisha. Now, in verse 15, she went and
did according to the saying of Elisha. She and her son, and
her household, her house, her son, Elisha, did eat many days. Well, if you've got a marginal,
it's a full year. I don't know how it worked, it
just kept on going, and there was more meal, there was more
meal, there was more meal. She believed God's promise, what
was told. Matt stands up there and reads
the word. Bruce stands up there and teaches Bible class. I stand
up there and preach. Nathan stands up there and preaches.
Whatever. If they read, they're just telling what God has already
told. And if it happens, if it comes
across your ears and happens to be a promise, lay hold on
it. Eternal life, salvation, full
and free. Because what you're doing when
you believe the promise, all the promises in Christ. That's
the key. We can't, we don't have faith.
He has to give us faith. We don't know what repentance
is. He has to give us repentance, trust. All these things give
us, but he's put the heart already in to receive the word. You sit there and you listen,
you listen, nothing happens, and then one time something happens.
Why? The grace of God. And in Spurgeon's own example,
and I don't know if you remember his example of how he was converted,
he said that he was under conviction, he's trying to go to the church,
and it was in the wintertime, he can hardly see, there's a
massive blizzard, and he just turns into a church, a Methodist
church. Now, this is when the Methodists
were preaching the gospel. Turns into the Methodist church
as a boy, and the preacher can't make it. So he's not even there. The elder, another elder, stands
up and just simply reads, Look unto him, all ye of the ends
of the earth, and be ye saved. And that tore Spurgeon up. And
that's, you know, he recollects, he's just being told. And that
man just got up there, he didn't know what to, he wasn't a preacher,
he said that. And he just tells, he just reads
the word. He speaks the word. He tells
the word. He preaches the word. Remember all these promises and
this promise that he gave Elijah affected him, her, and her son.
but all these promises are yes and amen, so they are dear, are
valuable, and wonderfully exceeding in a time of sickness, a time
of trial, a time of hardship, a time of weakness, a time of
little faith, a time of great faith, the time of death. You have every warrant as God's
children to go in this book and find See, I'm struggling with
this. Go to this last story right here.
That's why we try to teach our children the importance of reading
the Word. That's why we, who believe, we
know how precious this Word is, because it's like Him. It's like
His promises. They're exceeding great and precious.
And we ought to be looking at these. I don't know. I don't
have a time period or daily readings or anything like that. But the
Word, it's His own Word. And it's so very important because
of all these times, and I'll guarantee you this, and you know
this as well as I do, if you believe for a while, you're going
to be tried. You're going to be tried. That's when the proof hits the
fan. You know, that's when it all
comes together. But during those times, seek His Word. Seek His
Word, His great precious promises. Hold them close. Have them applied
to our various situations and circumstances. It's just like
finding that pearl of great price. He got that thing, sold everything
he had, and I know that parable is speaking about Christ. But
again, Christ and His promises. You can't separate them. Not
to the believer. I know that passage is referring to Christ,
but I say again, also His promises to us. Because if you have Christ,
This book is for you. And if you're without Christ,
beseech Him to show you. I promise to show you Himself
through the preaching, through talking to somebody who understands
the truth, just to have Him show you. That's pleading for mercy.
That's pleading for mercy. We'll close. I'm going to read
one more thing out of Mr. Spurgeon here. He says, The precious
promises of our great God are expressly intended to be taken
to Him and exchanged for the blessings which they guarantee. Again, let me read this. The
precious promises of our great God are expressly intended to
be taken to Him and exchanged for the blessings which they
guarantee. Prayer takes the promise to the
bank of faith and obtains the golden blessing. If I'm not clear, these two things
that I've read for Spurgeon are clear. So, again, may this be
said of us here this morning, or this evening, at Sovereign
Grace Church here at Jackson, and may we pray that it would
be said for our children, and for our parents, and for our
friends, and for our neighbors. And the pearl of great price,
because you know as well as I do, there is nothing, there is nothing
like it. There is nothing like our Lord
Jesus Christ and there is nothing like His promises. They are just
like Him. He is great and He is precious.
Nathan, would you close us? Heavenly Father, thank You for
these promises. They are easy to see.