This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

Hi, this is Pastor Tom. We are continuing our study in 2 Peter chapter 1, day 4
of our study. Peter has been talking to us about how to be the kind of person
who endures and lasts in your faith, like he did.

He endured. Peter continued to be faithful through the years with Jesus. Peter
was faithful through the three years of following Jesus while Jesus was living,
walking on this earth.

He was faithful even through his own denial of Jesus at the trial. Peter was
faithful through the cross, into the resurrection, through the glory of the
early church, through the struggles with Paul over how to treat the Gentiles,
and now he's been faithful even into old age. I want to learn from him.

I want to learn from this one that the Lord chose to inspire these words about
endurance. In verses 12 to 21, Peter talks to us about what you need to endure.
He talks to us about what it is that keeps you continually renewed in your
faith.

And listen to what he says, beginning in verse 12, down through verse 15. You're
going to hear him say that one of the things that you need to be continually
renewed is you need continual reminders. You need to be reminded of what you
know.

Listen to these verses. "So I will always remind you of these things, even
though you know them and are firmly established in the truth that you now have.
I think it's right to refresh your memory as long as I live in the tent of this
body, because I know that I will soon put it aside, as our Lord Jesus Christ has
made clear to me.

And I will make every effort to see that after my departure, you will always be
able to remember these things. " Peter just says it again and again and again in
these verses. He says, "I remind you of these things, and I think it's good to
refresh your memory of these things.

And I'm going to make sure that even after I die, there's going to be somebody
around to remind you of these things. " We need a reminder for the remainder. We
need a reminder for the remainder of our lives on this earth.

To be continually renewed, you have to be continually reminded. You can't just
get it once, the truth of God's love, the truth of God's grace. Oh, I got it 20
years ago, 10 years ago, one year ago, one month ago.

You can't just get it once and then just live the rest of your life on that. Our
memory needs to be refreshed. Even though he says you are firmly established,
I've got to keep reminding you.

It's not enough just to know it. You want to live this truth. In order to live
the truth, you have to constantly be reminded of this truth.

The truth of God in your life is not like luggage. Luggage that you stick out in
your garage or in a closet somewhere until you need it. It's more like food.

You need food throughout the day, every day, in order to be healthy. And you
need God's word, the truth of God's word throughout the day, every day, in order
to be healthy. You can't store it up for the future.

You need it continually in your life. You need continual reminders. In verses 13
and 14, Peter says, "As long as I live, I'm going to keep reminding you.

" He says, "As long as I live in this tent of the body. " He's talking about a
temporary residence which he knows one day is going to become a resurrected
body. He says, "As long as I'm here, I'm going to keep reminding.

" And now he turns to what it is that refreshes our memory, our daily food. And
he says, "That daily food that refreshes our memory, it's the word of God. " To
have a fall-free faith, we talked about in the early part of this chapter, you
have to look inward, not outward, at what Christ wants to do in your life.

But secondly, you have to look at God's word and not man's word. He tells us
here that there are a couple of things you have to do with God's word from the
very beginning. You have to trust God's word.

You have to pay attention to God's word. First you have to trust it. And Peter
says you can trust it because there's the authority of someone who experienced
it and eyewitnessed behind it.

Listen to what he says in verses 16 to 18, "We did not follow cleverly invented
stories when we told you about the power and the coming of our Lord Jesus
Christ. But we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For he received honor and glory
from God the Father when the voice came to him from the majestic glory, saying,
'This is my son whom I love.

With him I am well pleased. ' We ourselves heard this voice that came from
heaven, and we were with him on that sacred mountain. " Peter writes and says
you can trust this because I was there.

I saw it. One of the ways that historians know that you can trust a historical
account is whether it comes from an eyewitness or it's a second or a third-hand
account. When you read the scripture, you are reading eyewitness accounts.

As Peter writes about this, he says let me talk to you about what we now call
the Mount of Transfiguration. You might remember in the Gospels that Jesus took
three of the disciples with him and he went up on a mountain, and all of a
sudden Moses and Elijah were there with him, and they shone as bright as the
sun. And the disciples said, 'Could we build three tents and just stay here?

' And then they heard this voice from heaven, and Peter repeats it exactly here.
This is my son whom I loved. With him I am well pleased.

And they went down from the mountain, and they continued to serve. Peter never
forgot that moment. I wouldn't have forgotten that moment, and he's telling us
here years and years later of that moment, his eyewitness account.

I was there. You trust God's word based on God's revelation to these
eyewitnesses and the fact that they passed it along to you. But then you become
an eyewitness to the majesty of his work in your life.

You may not ever be on a Mount of Transfiguration like Peter was, but you're
going to have some experiences with Christ. He's going to take you through that
difficulty. He's going to use you in that circumstance.

He's going to bring that healing into your life or into somebody else's life.
He's going to let his word speak into your heart in a way that transforms you.
He's going to give you a time with him, a relationship with him, that you know
how close he is.

You know how close heaven is. As you have those experiences, now you're an
eyewitness. You have a personal experience with him yourself.

Let me just remind you though, that when you struggle with trust, it's important
to remember that you're not the only eyewitness. Your experiences with Jesus are
not the only experiences with Jesus. There are billions of people on the planet
right now experiencing the love of Jesus Christ.

But just go back to the scripture. Look at Peter. Look at John.

Look at Paul. Look at their experiences with Jesus Christ. Sometimes we try to
make our faith depend just on our experiences, and Peter says don't do that.

Trust these eyewitness experiences that we've had with Jesus Christ. You trust
it based on the fact that God has been at work, God has been at work in human
lives since the very beginning, and he wants to be at work in your life right
now. So you trust it, but then he says you also have to pay attention to it.

You have to pay attention to what you trust. You can trust something without
paying attention to it. And if you do that, you're going to find yourself
falling away from it.

You can trust that your wife loves you, that your husband loves you, but not pay
attention to that love. And all of a sudden that love starts to diminish. Well,
when it comes to our relationship with God, God's love is never going to
diminish from you, but you can feel farther from him because you're not paying
attention to his word.

In verses 19 down through 21, Peter writes, "And we have the word of the
prophets made more certain, and you will do well to pay attention to it, as to a
light shining in a dark place until the day dawns and the morning star rises in
your hearts. Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came
about by the prophet's own interpretation. For prophecy never had its origin in
the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy
Spirit.

" Peter writes here and he says, "The word of God, you've got to pay attention
to it because it's like a light shining in a dark place. Pay attention to it
because it's the only light that shows the way. " He says here, "Until the day
dawns and the morning star rises.

" Those are both pictures of the second coming of Jesus Christ. He says, "Until
that day when Jesus Christ comes in, he'll be our light in heaven. " The light
that we have is the word of God.

Pay attention to it because it is the light that shines in the dark place of
this world. It is the light that shows you God's way. So, as you read this, pay
attention to God's word, trust in God's word, the question comes back to you.

How do you need to trust his word like you never have before? How do you need to
pay attention to God's word like you never have before? How could you build more
time to pay attention to God's word into your life?

But maybe even more importantly, how can you trust a word that God has given you
that you haven't been trusting to this point? You've been resisting trusting it
maybe because you're afraid, maybe because there's a seed of selfishness in your
heart, maybe because you've been disappointed, maybe because you feel like it's
just too much for you. God is trustworthy.

God loves you more than you can imagine. He is trustworthy. How can you trust
his word right now?

Our Father, as we pray, we ask for strength to trust you. Sometimes it seems
easier to trust ourselves than you, but the truth of the matter is it's always
easier to trust you. Because in the end, the greatest joy, the greatest benefit,
the greatest good, the greatest relationship with you is going to come out of
trust in you.

So even though the world around us or Satan's temptations might make it feel
like it's easier to trust ourselves, right now, Lord, help us to have a sense of
the freedom that we have in Christ. He has set us free. The freedom that we have
in Christ to trust you in this circumstance, with that relationship, with this
decision.

We trust you. We trust your word right now. In Jesus' name, amen.

Tomorrow, we're going to take a deeper look together into verses 19 to 21.