2 Peter chapter 1 is our reading. Now verse 1, Simon Peter, a servant and an
apostle of Jesus Christ. Some professing Christians despise
referring to them as servants, but it seems the apostles had
no such hang-up. We want to be elevated, but that
elevation is in Christ, not in us. We are to ever view ourselves
not only His disciples but His servants. a servant and an apostle
of Jesus Christ. To whom is this letter written?
It's called a general epistle. Here he says, to them. No doubt about who it's to. It's
to them. To them that have obtained like precious faith with us, not earned it, not deserved it,
obtained it. We'll learn in just a moment
how that comes to be. Through the righteousness of
God and our Savior Jesus Christ. That is the source of faith. Christ is the author as well
as the finisher And in between, he's the sustainer of all faith. He is the alone object of faith. Therefore, it is quite appropriate
those that have obtained like precious faith with us through
the righteousness of God and our Savior Jesus Christ. Grace
and peace be multiplied. Our text will say, grow in grace.
And here we are taught, grace and peace be multiplied unto
you through the knowledge of God and Jesus our Lord. Almost a replica of verse 18
in chapter 3. All right? Third verse. According as His divine power
has given unto us all things, that pertain unto life and godliness. Now I would like to stress that
this is spiritual life, but it's also true that He has, by His
divine power, given us everything we have in this world, in our
human flesh, in our bodies. These things are gifts. not things
that we earn or merit. All things that pertain to life,
eternal life, and godliness, through the knowledge of Him
that has called us to glory and virtue. Whereby are given, same
word we had in verse 3, has given, now it says are given unto us,
exceeding great and precious promises, that by these, by these
precious promises, promises of grace, gospel promises, that
by these you might be partakers of the divine nature. Having escaped the corruption
that is in the world through lust, through evil over desire. And beside this, giving all diligence,
add to your faith virtue and to virtue knowledge, and to knowledge
temperance or self-control, and to temperance patience and to
patience, godliness, and to godliness, brotherly kindness, and to brotherly
kindness, charity, or love. For if these things be in you,
and there ain't but one way for them to be in us, and that is
if we are in Christ, for he is these things. If these things be in you, if
Christ is in me and abounds, he makes me that I shall neither
be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. All of these things are distinctly
tied to this one thing a knowledge of the Lord Jesus himself. All right, verse 9, but he that lacks
these things is blind and cannot see far off and has forgotten
that he was purged from his old sins. Wherefore, the rather brethren,
Give diligence to make your calling and election sure, a reversal
here in calling and election, in that calling comes before
election. But in reality, election precedes
everything. It traces to old eternity. But in our experience, we cannot
know if we are truly chosen of God unless he has called us to
faith in Christ by his grace. Make your calling and election
sure. For if you do these things, you
shall never fall. For so an entrant shall be ministered
unto you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord
and Savior, Jesus Christ. Wherefore, Peter says, 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 or fitting. As long as I'm in this tabernacle,
this flesh, 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
has showed thee. Let's see, that's either in John
20 or 21. All right, now my mind won't
distinguish. All right, verse 15. Moreover,
I will endeavor that you may be able after my decease after
my death to have these things always in remembrance, referring
to the things enumerated above. Moreover, I will endeavor that
you may be able after my decease to have these things, well, I
guess I'll read it twice, always in remembrance. The minute I
think my brain is in gear, it just leaves me. All right, verse
16. I know that's the next one. 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 honor and glory when there came such a voice
to him from the excellent glory on the Mount of Transfiguration,
this is my beloved Son, The Father said audibly from heaven, in
whom I am well pleased. This voice which came from heaven,
Peter testifies, we heard. Peter, James, and John heard. When we were with Him in the
Holy Mount, we have also You and I were not on that mountain.
We were not party to that conversation or that glorious visit with the
Lord Jesus by Moses and Elijah. I want you to look at verse 19
very carefully. We have also a more sure word
of prophecy. Our eyes and our ears can deceive
us, but God's book cannot deceive. Men can use it to their own destruction,
but God's children come to know him through the words of this
book. Let's read this again. We have
also a more sure word of prophecy. Whereunto you do well that you
take heed, as unto a light that shines in a dark place until
the day dawn and the day star, which is Christ, arise in your
hearts." Now, Peter, without question, is referring to the
more sure Word of God, and these statements now that follow are
absolutely convincing that this is the only thing that he's intending
to convey. Knowing this first, being assured
of this, that no prophecy of the Scripture is of any private
interpretation. No part of this book is to be
lifted from what the Word of God says in all other places. It is not to be broken apart
from the rest of Scripture, even the Lord Jesus declared I'm not
sure about the chapter, maybe chapter 10. He said, no, it's
1335 maybe. He said, the scriptures cannot
be broken. Cannot be broken. Verse 21, for the prophecy came
not in old time by the will of man, But holy men of God spoke
as they were moved by the Holy Ghost," referring to the Old
Testament. There we have both, the Old and
the New. All right, we're going to come
back to chapter 3 in that same book of Scripture, work on that
18th verse, which is the final verse of the second letter of
Peter. Now if you'll turn back to 2
Peter, this time to chapter 3. Our text will be verse 18. Let us bow in prayer together. Lord, we come this morning asking that our reading of your
holy word are singing the hymns of Zion. Now we dare to take a verse out
of this book and seek to make it the basis of a message to
be preached to the ears of men. Lord, may your precious blood cleanse every fault, every sin, in every act of devotion by ourselves
in this place. Our very prayers themselves must
be covered in the blood of our Savior. If absolute purity is the requirement. None of us can pass the test. Father, You tell us in Your Word
that Your Son is our intercessor and that all of our prayers,
our worship, our praise, our readings are to be directed to Him. who
is our advocate, our divine intercessor, the one whose prayers are always heard. We come to
you through our Lord Jesus Christ. As we prepare to take these words
unto ourselves, Guard, guide, and keep us from a wrong understanding of
your holy word. Deliver us, we pray, from wrong
motives in the use of your word. That our supreme goal and purpose
is the honor and glory of yourself through the honoring and glorifying
of your Son, our dear and precious Savior, the Lord Jesus. Lord, whatever is to be accomplished
here today that will last for eternity must be a divine work. No preacher can accomplish such
a work. No church can accomplish such
a work. All the preachers in the world
and all the churches in the world cannot accomplish such a work.
It is a divine work indeed. Help us, we pray. Lift up your
holy name. Enable us to worship you, we
pray for Christ's sake. Amen. All right, we come to verse
18, 2 Peter chapter 3. These simple words. but grow in grace and in the
knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him be glory,
both now and forever. Amen. Amen. Let me repeat one statement,
and I may wind up repeating others but not consciously, that I made
Wednesday night that I think I got from a fellow named William
Jay. He was expressing his thoughts
on this verse of Scripture, and here are two injunctions
One is to grow in grace and the other is to grow in the knowledge
of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. His point being this. The second phrase accomplishes
the first one. There can be no such thing as
growing in grace without growing in the knowledge of our Lord
and Savior Jesus Christ. But that has to be understood.
That's a good foundation. We certainly do need a foundation. So the first thing we'll take
then is growing in grace. A divine injunction, growing
in grace. Here's the first thing. What
is, what does it mean to grow in grace? This is so simple, yet it is
so necessary. Dead things cannot grow. Dead plants will not grow. A person, in order to grow in
grace, must first be in grace. which means to be in Christ. That's not hard, is it? I know
it's not generally accepted in our day, but that's the absolute
truth. Growth in grace requires a being
in grace, and only God in Christ can put us in grace. Therefore, to the spiritually
alive, By the grace of God in Christ, we have this admonition,
grow in grace. Grow in grace. Here are some graces, just to
give you a short list, here are some graces in which we should
aspire to grow. The first one is this, faith. There is a growing in faith. Faith, another way of expressing
it, is trusting Christ. And surely our first trusting
of Him has not remained the same, not if it is alive. It has to
grow. So faith, then, is the very foundation
grace. Without faith, we have no such
thing as grace, and yet faith is a grace in which we are to
grow. Secondly, not only faith, but
love, love for God, love for our Lord Jesus Christ, love for
our fellow believers are primary and must be understood in that
light. So grow in faith, grow in love,
grow in hope. In hope. There is an increase
in our ability to draw hope from the springs of grace. To know
Christ better is to have at least a strengthened resolve, a strengthened
hope. And not only hope. Here's the
one with all, it's like throwing your curve. Grow in humility. Be very careful of that. It's
like a stick of dynamite with a fuse in it and a cap on the
other end. The very moment we say about
ourselves, I am humble. If we had any humility, we've
just lost it. That's just how human nature
is. It's kind of like patience. Everybody
has plenty until we need it, and then it's gone. And let's add one more. Grow
in contentment. Being content is a pearl of great
price that you and I seldom or rarely, if ever, experience. Second thing, why should we grow? Why grow in grace? Because not
growing, as in everything else, not growing is a sign of being
unhealthy. And in its worst case, not growing
is a sign of death. Thirdly, how are believers to
grow in grace? Here's the short answer, and
then I want to read you some verses that we read earlier.
I made myself not stop and comment because I wanted to save it for
now because it fits perfectly with this statement. grow in
grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ."
Then added the word, Amen. God who gives us grace, it is
the gift of God's grace. God who gives us grace, if we
are to have more grace, must himself give that grace. We have this funny notion that
God just makes everything available to everybody and the people that
have the initiative, they're the ones that have all of this
and the rest of us are left behind. No, that's the rat race of this
world. That's not how the gospel operates. The God who gives grace, if we
are to have an increase in grace, we are to grow in grace, He Himself
must be the author of it. It's just like in creation. This
world was made by a divine fiat, and I'm not talking about an
automobile. God simply spoke, Light be, and
light was. That's how the whole creation
was made. Hebrews 11, about the first or
second verses, will tell you that this world came into being
by simply a spoken word. And this is the same here. This
is not something difficult for God. It's difficult for us to
understand. But the God who speaks and it's
done is the one who must do the same for us in regard to growing
in His grace. in Christ. All right, would you
turn back to 1 Peter chapter 1? I thought I could read you a
few verses out of our reading right near the beginning of chapter
1, 2 Peter chapter 1, and it would come apparent that the
point that is being made is that We are to grow in grace through
the grace of the God who gave us grace. Impossible to do without
this. Let's begin with verse 2, though
the sentence has already begun. Grace and peace be multiplied. There's growing in grace. How? Through the knowledge of
God and of Jesus our Lord. That's what Mr. J said about
2 Peter 3.18. Growing in grace is accomplished
how? By growing in the knowledge of
Christ. The knowledge of Christ. through the knowledge of God
and of Jesus our Lord, according as His divine power has given
unto us all things, all things that pertain to life and godliness,
through the knowledge, there's that word, knowledge of Him that
has called us to glory and virtue. whereby are given unto us exceeding
great and precious promises that by these you might be partakers
of the divine nature having escaped the corruption that is in the
world through lust. This is how believers are to
grow. Let me caution you on just one
little word that we've used. It's the word how. You rarely,
I hope you rarely find me using that word because it is so misused
in our generation. Religion wants to tell you how
to do everything in a mechanical formula of one kind or another.
I've told you a dozen times about Billy Graham's book, How to be
Born Again. Well, go ask Nicodemus about
How to be Born Again. He could not understand it, had
no idea what the Lord was talking about, did not realize that a
man has two natures, one by nature in which he's dead in trespasses
and sins, and then a new nature in Christ, and it is only in
that new nature that he is born again. The old man is as bad
as ever, if not worse. So this word, how? is an abused
word in our day. But there's the answer, how the
believer grows in grace. Now, second thing in our text
was this second injunction that is above and beyond the first not only grow in grace, but grow
in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. When we talk about growing in
our knowledge of Christ, we must, in our minds, we have to direct
our thoughts to some degree. You don't just leave it, our
thoughts about Christ. But what are the specific thoughts
and ideas that we hold about our Savior? There are words that
will call to our minds certain aspects of things. For example,
here's a list I tried to scribble down. To know more of Christ,
like Paul said in that glorious third chapter of Philippians
after telling us those wonderful things that we worked on verse
8 of Philippians 3 just last Sunday. And then in verse 10,
after all of those expressions about winning Christ and gaining
Christ and being found in Christ, he had the audacity to say, Oh,
that I may know him." He's already counted his life
and all of his accomplishments and all of his religion as being
nothing but garbage in order to have Christ. And then he says,
that I may know him? Paul certainly already knows
him, but he doesn't know him well enough. He desires to know
him more. and better, that I may know Him
and the power of His resurrection, the fellowship of His suffering
being made conformable unto His death." What a glorious word
indeed. All right, now let's see if we
can put our minds in a certain train of thought. Here's the
first thing about our Lord Jesus, in which our knowledge of Him
needs to grow. First thing is his person. Who
is he? He is almighty God and he is
the absolute, sinless, perfect man. His Godhead is perfect manhood. These things are united in his
one person, two absolutely distinct natures. yet only one person. Now the same is true of the believer,
if you considered it in this light, that when a believer is
born again, his old man is not taken from him, his old man's
not even put in chains. His old man is still his old
man, which hates God and loves sin.
And there's a conflict begun the moment a sinner is born again,
but no such conflict in our Lord Jesus Christ. His human nature
did not come through Adam, but rather through Eve. And therefore,
Adam's depravity and fall is not communicated to the Lord
Jesus. So we have to think, if we're
going to grow in the knowledge of Christ, grow in the knowledge
of who He is. Who He is. Don't let this peanut
Jesus that religion talks about all the time, don't let it pollute
your mind, steal from you the glory of the Son of God. This world is stupider than anything
in this world could ever imagine. No place in history is worse
than the present hour in that regard. They don't mind talking about
the man upstairs and all other kind of slang expressions that
have no place on the believer's lips, but you tell them the truth
about who Christ is and they'll depart your company rather quickly. Not only as person, But his blessed
work, finished, complete, nothing to
be added, perfect. The sinner has nothing to add
except sin. His glorious death as our substitute,
dying in the room place instead of his people. that one death
delivering every last one of his elect people from a spiritual
grave to eternal life in the Lord Jesus. Not only is his work,
blessed work, finished, his death, but his resurrection, this is
the greatest evidence that God has accepted the sacrifice on
Calvary for the sins of His people is when He was raised from the
dead. Romans 4, just turn there for
a second. It won't be fair for you to go
all morning without turning at least one time. I believe it's
Romans chapter 4, right at the end of the chapter. Verse 25,
Romans 4, 25. who was delivered for our offenses,
and here it is, and was raised again for our justification. How do we know that the death
of our Lord Jesus and the shedding of His blood satisfied divine
justice for all that the people of God owed when the Lord Jesus
got up from the dead. That is proof positive. That's as good as you can get.
It is an absolute declaration. Not only is resurrection, but
our Lord presently is our intercessor. He's praying for us. And we must never forget is glorious
coming again. Maybe we've got time to do one
more little part here on this growing in the knowledge of our
Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Why grow in the knowledge of
Christ? Why is it necessary to grow in
the knowledge of Christ? Why is it good to grow in the
knowledge of Christ? Because the scripture says, speaking
of Christ, whom to know is life eternal. Listen, knowing Christ is having
life everlasting. We cannot truly know Him and
not have eternal life. You can find these words in John
17 verse 3. That's exactly what it says. Whom to know is everlasting life. But here's a greater reason why
we should grow in the knowledge of Christ. because he who does
not long to do so does not yet even know Him. We cannot know Him and not desire
to know Him better. We can't have Philippians 3.8
without Philippians 3.10. We cannot have Christ not long
to know him better. I recall to your mind, maybe
you don't need recollections, but I do, I call to your mind
the words to that hymn we sung last this morning, nearer still
nearer. That, my friend, expresses growth
in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. Somebody said absence from Christ
is hell and present with Christ is heaven. That states it pretty
plainly. May the Lord bless these words
to us. I'm going to work on this again tonight and I'm going to
work, I guess I am, I think I I even hope I am. The last phrase, to
Him be glory both now and forever. Amen.