This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

(upbeat music) Welcome back for day two of week five of our survey through the
New Testament. We're taking a look at a book a day. First Peter yesterday, so
Second Peter today.

As we begin our look at Second Peter, let me begin with the first couple of
verses. Second Peter one, one and two says, "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 Christ our Lord.

" As Peter writes this second letter to a group of people that he also wanted to
see continue to grow, just as in First Peter, he writes knowing that his time on
this earth is limited. In chapter one, verses 13 and 14, he says, "I think it is
right to refresh your memory "as long as I live in this tent of this body,
"because I know that I will soon put it aside "as our Lord Jesus Christ has made
clear to me. " So he'd heard from Jesus.

He didn't have a long time in this world and he had some things to say to the
people that he loved to help them to continue to grow. He has some important
things to say to all of God's people. That includes you and that includes me.

In his first letter, he emphasizes the grace of God. In the second, he
emphasizes the knowledge of God. The word know or knowledge is used 13 times.

Now, know is not just intellectual understanding in the Greek language. One
person has called it a living participation in the truth. What you know is what
you do, is what you live out.

The first letter was written about persecution, trials from without. The second
is about heresy, trials from within the church. And the second type of
persecution is actually the more dangerous type of persecution for the church.

The main verse in 2 Peter, I would say is chapter one, verses 10 to 11. "If you
do these things, you will never fall and you will receive a rich welcome into
the eternal kingdom. " Well, Peter's just about ready to receive that welcome.

He's qualified to talk about this. And in one sense, this letter is about how to
have what I would call a fall-free faith. Falling from faith, falling from grace
is one of the dangers that the New Testament warns us about.

Now, when you think about this idea of falling from faith or from grace, you
need to realize that there are those who never believed who were in the church.
And their fall shows that they were trusting all along in themselves and not in
God. But the New Testament also talks about those who genuinely believe and yet
they fall away from following Jesus.

The Bible's clear that they don't lose their salvation, but they do lose their
joy. They do lose their fellowship with God and with other believers. They do
lose their rewards in heaven.

How do you make sure that you have a fall-free faith, that you're trusting in
Jesus and not in yourself? And once you've trusted in Jesus, how do you make
sure you don't fall away from following him? Well, Peter in this second letter
talks about three things we need to do.

Number one, you look inward, not outward. Number two, you look at God's word,
not man's word. And number three, you look forward and not backward.

That's what you do to have a faith that's not going to fall. Let's look through
those. First, you look inward and not outward if you want a faith that's going to
last.

Because God has given us, he gives us a list of why we can look inward and not
outward. Because God has given us everything we need for life and godliness. You
don't need to look somewhere else to find what you need to live out the
Christian life.

That is what false teachers tell us. You don't have enough. You need something
else.

Jesus already gave it to us. So in chapter one, beginning in verse three through
verse four, he says, 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 this world that's caused by evil desires. As you read these words,
you realize that the fisherman has become a theologian. He's got some deep
things to say about what God's doing.

God has given you everything that you need. And specifically, he says in these
verses, he has given you everything that you need through his great and precious
promises. Through them, you participate in the divine nature.

You take on God's character in your life. Through them, you escape the
corruption in this world. You have the power to defeat temptation in your life.

Now God isn't like us. He makes great promises and he keeps every one of his
promises. We sometimes don't keep our promises, maybe because we forget, maybe
because we don't have the power to do it.

The truth of the matter is when God keeps his promises, it's not always in the
way that we think and it's certainly not always as quickly as we demand, but he
always keeps his promises. Every promise is guaranteed by God's very nature. He
is perfect, he cannot lie.

He is eternal, he will not forget. He is faithful, he will not change. He is
all-powerful, he has the power to do it.

He is loving, he wants what's best for you. God keeps his promises. And out of
that, as you look inward, you realize I have everything I need to live out my
faith.

I don't have to look somewhere else. So out of that, he says, you want to live a
fall-free faith? You look inward, not outward.

You make every effort to add to faith seven qualities in verses five to nine,
the character that we need for faith. Verses 10 to 11, he says you have to be
eager to make your calling and election sure. You have to look to God's strength
and not to your strength.

That's the eagerness that you need. So you begin by looking inward and not
outward or else you're going to be subject to false teaching. Second thing you do
is you look at God's word, not man's word.

As long as you're looking at what people say, your faith is going to be subject to
the winds of the latest doctrine, latest fad that's out there. No, you look at
God's word. Second Peter one, 20 to 21, some of the most famous verses about the
power of God's word in the whole New Testament.

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. Wow.

Trust in God's word is your best protection against false teachers. If you want to
be protected against a lie, you look at what's true. You don't look at what's
false and study it and study it and study it to try to determine if it's false.

You just look at what's true and then you'll know what's false, immediately know
it. So you trust in God's word and not man's word. It's that illustration of
those who work for, those who make sure they understand what counterfeit money
is and can recognize a counterfeit bill immediately.

The way they are trained is not by looking at counterfeits to understand every
different kind of counterfeit. They're trained instead by looking at the real
thing and they look at it, they feel it, they run it through their hands and by
doing that, they know the truth. So that even if they're just running through a
hundred bills and they feel that the paper is wrong, they know that it's wrong.

When you look at God's word, that's going to happen in your life. You're going to just
feel that what somebody said was wrong. You don't know quite why it is yet.

You haven't seen it in God's word yet, but you just feel there's something wrong
with that. There's something not right about that. And then you look to God's
word and you say, oh, that's where that would lead me.

That's how that would lead me into selfishness or into temptation or more often
than not into pride. A lot of false teaching leads us into pride about the fact
that we're a Christian. Isn't that crazy when you think about it?

The most humbling thing in the world is that Jesus Christ died on the cross for
us and Satan would like to make you selfishly prideful about that. So you trust
in God's word and not man's word. And then he says the third thing you do, you
want to be protected in your faith, you look forward and not backward.

You look forward to what God's going to do in eternity. You look forward to what
God's going to do. If you look forward, you recognize that that's where your hope
is and that's what you hang on to.

Now, as Peter walks through this with them, he says there's a couple of things
to remember, two facts to remember. Number one, scoffers will come. And number
two, the day of the Lord will come.

So the fact that scoffers will come, people who make fun of Christianity, the
fact that the church grows through difficult times, God already told us in
advance that was going to happen. Don't let that hurt your faith. Don't let that
cause you to think that God somehow has let us down.

The Bible tells us that's going to happen. But the Bible also tells us that after
that, the day of the Lord will come. That they won't have the final word, Jesus
Christ will have the final word.

And so out of that, because we know that that is true, Peter says, what kind of
people should you be? Since you know you have something to look forward to, how
do you live your life today? Well, he says, here's the list.

You live holy and godly lives. He says you look forward to God's day. In fact,
you speed its coming by looking forward to it.

Did you know that? As you look forward to the second coming of Jesus Christ, as
you anticipate his coming, you actually speed it in some ways. Your faith, in
some ways, affects God's timetable.

I don't know how that works. I just know the Bible says that's true. He says
you're to look forward to the new heaven and earth.

When's the last time you did that? I know we're caught up in the everydayness of
this life right now. But if you're going to live a faith that's going to be protected
against this world, you gotta look forward to the next, the new heaven and
earth.

A new heaven and earth where you will be found spotless and blameless and at
peace. And remember that patience, he says, equals salvation. Remember that
God's patience, leaving us in this terrible planet for longer, means more people
are being saved.

And be grateful for that. And he says out of all that, you gotta be on your
guard. Peter ends the letter with these words, 2nd Peter 3, 18.

But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him
be the glory both now and forever. Amen.

So let's pray that that would happen in our lives today. Jesus, we come to you
and we pray that we would grow in your grace. We grow in the knowledge of who
you are.

And then as that happens, we bring glory to you. It's amazing to us that that
can happen, Jesus. We see ourselves and we see our failings and we see how weak
we are.

But we turn our eyes from ourselves right now and we look at you. We see your
greatness, we see your power. And we see that we can grow in your grace because
you've given us grace.

We can grow in the knowledge of who you are because you've given us that
knowledge. And so out of that, to you be the glory both now and forever more.
Amen.

Tomorrow, we're going to look at 1st, 2nd, and 3rd John.