This transcript was generated by whisper.ai. Hi, this is Pastor Tom Holliday and I want to welcome you to our study of 2nd Peter. This short three-chapter book has a lot to say to us about how to faithfully live the life that God's called us to. It begins with these verses, verses 1 and 2, "Simon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who through the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ have received a faith as precious as ours. Grace and peace be yours in abundance through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. " Peter is writing some important words to people that he loves. We're going to see in verse 13 of this first chapter that he knows that his time on earth is limited. And so he has some important things to say to all of God's people. In the first letter that he wrote, 1 Peter, Peter emphasizes the grace of God. In this second, he emphasizes the knowledge of God. The word know or knowledge is used 13 times in this short book. Now know, knowledge, is not just intellectual understanding. The Greek word has behind it the idea of relational understanding, of a living participation in the truth. That's the idea of this knowledge that we're talking about. The first letter, 1 Peter, was about persecution, trials from without. The second letter, the whole second chapter talks about heresy and that's trials from within the church. In many ways, it's the second type that is the more dangerous type for the church. We tend to rally together when we have trials from outside, persecution from outside, but when we have heresy within the church, sometimes that can divide the church. So Peter warns us against it here and tells us how to live faithfully even in the face of false teaching. In many ways, the theme verse to me, verses of 2 Peter are verses 10 to 11 of this first chapter where Peter says, "If you do these things, you will never fall and you will receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom. " These verses, these chapters are in some ways about how to have what I would call a fall-free faith. How to have the kind of faith that endures, the kind of faith that persists through any circumstance of life. And we're going to see as we walk through these chapters that in chapter 1 verses 3 to 11, he says to have a fall-free faith, you have to look inward and not outward. You have to look at what God wants to do in your heart. In the last part of chapter 1 through chapter 2, we're going to see that to have this kind of enduring faith, you need to look at God's word and not man's word. You can't trust false teachers, you have to trust the truth of what God teaches us. And then in chapter 3, we're going to see that to have a faith that persists, you have to look forward and not backward. It's also interesting if you look at these three chapters, they tend to have a different tone. Chapter 1 has a tone of guidance. Chapter 2 has a tone of warning. Chapter 3 has a tone of hope. And we need all of these in our lives if we're going to live the kind of faith that God wants us to live. So let's see what guidance he gives us in verses 3 and 4 of this first chapter. Peter writes, "His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires. " Now as I read these verses, it's amazing to me that the fisherman has become a theologian. Here's Peter who started as a fisherman, but now later in his life he's writing like a theologian. Under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, these words are pouring out of him because of his lifetime of following Christ. And he writes and he says to us, he says to you, "God has given you everything that you need. " Maybe not everything that you want, but he's given you everything that you need. Specifically, he's given you everything you need through his great and precious promises. Because Peter says through them, those great and precious promises, you participate in the divine nature. You become more and more like Christ. This doesn't mean you become a god. It means God's character comes more and more into your life. The divine nature, God's character. He also says through those great and precious promises, you escape the corruption that's in this world. You escape the evil that's around us. You don't get caught up in those things. It doesn't mean you don't have to face evil, but you are not overwhelmed by evil, overcome by evil. You endure even through evil. Now he's talking here about the fact that when I trust in God's promises, I actually become more and more like Christ. Now the way to trust in God's promises is obviously to trust in God's word, to read God's word. When we talk in our class 201 here at Saddleback about what it means to have a daily quiet time and the purposes of that quiet time, there are four of them. And the fourth one is especially significant for what we're talking about here. The purposes of a daily quiet time, a daily time of listening to God's word, letting God's word sink into your life. What you're doing right now in drive time devotions, taking 10 minutes to let God's word sink in. The purpose is number one, to give devotion to God, just to tell God that you love Him. Psalm 29. 2 says, "Give the Lord the glory that's due His name. Worship the Lord in the splendor of His holiness. " A second purpose of a daily quiet time is to get direction from God. Psalm 25. 4 says, "Show me the path where I should go, O Lord. Point me on the right road for me to walk. " How are you going to know unless you take the time to listen? And just a few minutes listening can change your day, can change your life. To give devotion to God, get direction from God. The third purpose is to gain delight in God. Delight yourself in the Lord. He'll give you the desires of your heart, Psalm 37. 4 says. So you love the Lord by spending time with the Lord. The more you spend time with the Lord, the more you're going to love the Lord. So you just delight in your relationship with Him. And then there's this fourth reason that we have a daily quiet time, scriptural reason, and that is to grow more like God. In the Living Bible, 2 Peter 1, 3 and 4 that we just read says, "For as you know Him better and better, God will give you through His great power everything that you need for living a truly good life, a truly godly life. As you get to know Him better, you become more like Him. " Now this is important. How do you get to know Him? You get to know Him, Peter is telling us here, through His great and precious promises. You get to know God through everything that's in His Word, obviously. But Peter zeroes in on the great and precious promises in God's Word. You want a great life? Build your life on God's great promises. That's what Peter is saying here. You want a great life? Build your life on God's great promises. Now as we talk about this, building your life on God's promises, let's just hit the pause button for a second. How do I know? Maybe you have the question, "How do I know I can trust God to keep His promises? " That may have been solved for you a long time ago, but if you're new to faith, if you're just checking it out, or if you've been disappointed in your life, you may be thinking, "How can I be sure I can trust Him? " I want to let you know that even people who've been believers for a long, long time sometimes struggle with this one. So how do you know you can trust God's promises? Two reasons that we struggle with this. One of the reasons is you don't know God's promises. And so sometimes you put words in God's mouth, you say, "God promises such and such, He didn't give it to me. " Well, there's no scripture that says God promises you a perfect life on this planet. In fact, the Bible says you're going to face difficulties and persecutions on this planet. God promises to be with you through everything, but if you put words in God's mouth and expected Him to do something He never promised, of course you've been disappointed. God promises you peace in the midst of difficulty. God promises you strength for whatever comes your way. God promises you the hope of heaven. Those are things you can hang on to because they are His promises. And sometimes we struggle with God's promises because we don't know His promises. We haven't taken the time to get to know them well enough. But there's a second reason sometimes we struggle. And that is we look at ourselves rather than at God. And we know how bad we are at keeping promises. We think, "Well, I wanted to keep my promises, but I ran out of time, I ran out of energy. " Well, just remember this, God is not like us. God makes great promises and God keeps great promises, all of His promises, because He never runs out of time. He never runs out of energy. Now, He doesn't always keep those promises in the way that you would think and exactly the way that you want Him to. And He certainly doesn't do it as quickly as you want Him to. You can't demand that God keep a promise exactly on your timetable. That's never going to work. But He does always keep His great promises because every promise is guaranteed by God's very nature. God is perfect. He cannot lie. And so He keeps His promises. God is eternal. He will not forget. And so He keeps His promises. God is faithful. He will not change. So He keeps His promises. He is all-powerful. He always has the power to do it. So He always keeps His promises. He is loving. He wants what is best for you. And so He's always going to keep His promises. Someone has counted and seen that there are over 7,000 promises to us in God's Word. Tomorrow, we're going to look at what happens as you begin to build your life on those promises. Let's pray together. And as we pray right now, Lord, our prayer is that you would help us to see how great and how precious your promises really are, like we never have before. There's a lot of things that seem great to us. There's a lot of things that seem valuable, that seem precious to us. But right now, I pray that in our hearts, you'd help us to see how great your promises are. They're what's going to last. They're worth building our life on. And how precious, how valuable those promises are. More valuable than any money, more valuable than any gold, because what happens in our lives because of those promises is going to last into eternity. So Lord, convince my heart, convince our heart of how great, how precious those promises are. We ask this in Jesus' name, Amen.