Be On Guard and Continue to Grow

Transcript

GR 1971
11/20/2016
Be in Guard and Continue to Grow
II Peter 3:17-18
Gil Rugh

We come to the end of Peter’s second letter so if you would turn to 2 Peter at the back of your New Testaments, a little before the book of the Revelation we have 2 Peter. Peter is going to draw this letter to a close in a rather abrupt matter, no closing remarks, no closing greetings. It is a letter written in the shadow of his impending death. In chapter 1, verse 14 he is telling them he is writing as a reminder. He had written them an earlier letter and in that letter he had reminded them not to forget what the prophets said in the Old Testament, what the apostles had said in more recent days, what he has written and he says in verse 14 of 2 Peter 1: “Knowing that the laying aside of my earthly dwelling is imminent as also our Lord Jesus Christ has made clear to me.” So there is no doubt about this.

It is interesting that some 35 years earlier Christ had told Peter that he would be giving his life as a martyr. Just turn back to John’s gospel, chapter 21, John chapter 21 and verse 18 and this is after Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection from the dead and here at this occasion with His disciples. Verse 18 He is speaking to Peter: “Truly, truly I say to you when you were younger you used to gird yourself and walk wherever you wish but when you grow old you will stretch out your hands and someone else will gird you and bring you where you do not wish to go. Now this He said signifying by what kind of death he would glorify God and when He had spoken this He said to him, ‘Follow Me,’ indicating there you will be taken to your execution.” It is not what you would choose normally but it will be the end of your life.

So Peter has lived for about 35 years knowing that Christ had told him the end of his life would not be a pleasant ending and then somewhere along the way as you come back to Peter, Christ had again made clear to him in a special revelation that now the time was imminent. Peter understands clearly that it is not going to be a heart attack or a death by accident. It is going to be the unpleasant death of a martyr. Tradition, history, says that Peter was crucified upside down. Not a pleasant death by any means but faithful to the end.

So there are no closing remarks, final good byes here just a rather abrupt ending. Peter’s concern through this letter has been for the spiritual well-being and development for those who will be left to carry on and he has written to encourage them not to be lured away from faithfulness of devotion to Christ and to live in light of what God has promised.

If you just come back to chapter 1. He began by saying in verse 3 that “His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness through the knowledge of Him who called us.” He has granted to us precious and magnificent promises. So you see we are to live for Him in light of the promises He has given to us and through this we are partakers of the divine nature and now live manifesting the new nature that we have received in Christ.

Then you have instructions for that godly walk and a warning not to be turned aside by corrupt teaching. This is a pervasive theme in the New Testament epistles, the warning about error. The devil is a great counterfeiter as Paul wrote in his second letter to the Corinthians, 2 Corinthians chapter 11. “He masquerades as an angel of light. He sends his servants disguised as angels of light” if you will, “as believers to infiltrate among God’s people and distort the truth,” corrupt the truth, bring in false doctrine that will work with a corrupted life, lure them away from faithfulness to Christ. Paul used the analogy of being betrothed to Christ and the importance of remaining faithful to Him.

Chapter 2, “False prophets arose among the people. There will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies.” It is easy for us to think that doesn’t happen to us. The subtle lies, the subtle distortions that are presented under the guise of clarifying truth, of helping us, of showing us how we should really be interpreting the Scripture. This is the follow up to the end of chapter 1 where he will remind them, “No prophecy of Scripture was ever made by an act of human will but men moved by the Holy Spirit.” And so it has happened in the Old Testament with the false prophets. They came in among the Israelites and they didn’t say, “We are false prophets.” They said “We are the genuine prophets” and they took the revelation God had given and they corrupted it.

It is sort of like we see Satan working at the beginning in the Garden of Eden. “Has God said to you that you won’t die? You are not going to really die. You are going to have your eyes opened to see things you never saw before.” Well you know there is a mixture there. They didn’t immediately die physically; they didn’t drop over when they ate the fruit. The process of physical death set in but they immediately experienced spiritual death and they did gain insight into the character of sin. All of a sudden in their relationship with God they realized it is broken. They are hiding from God instead of looking forward to the fellowship that they had enjoyed as He walked with them in the garden, these kinds of things. Satan hasn’t changed his tactic and here 2,000 years after Peter writes we still have to contend with the same thing and God is concerned for His people to remain faithful.

Verse 2 of chapter 2: “Because of them the way of the truth will be maligned.” Corruption sets in but the balance perspective, verse 9: “The Lord knows how to rescue the ungodly from testing and how to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the Day of Judgment.” So we shouldn’t get discouraged by this. We understand the wicked don’t win and the righteous are not losing. Now Peter is writing this in the shadow of his sure martyrdom. It sounds like a defeat. I mean the Lord knows how to rescue the godly. Peter might raise his hand and say, “Lord, I am going to need rescued.” But He preserves them through whatever takes place. And so however Peter dies is a secondary issue. God has appointed that. He appointed that as He told Peter 35 years earlier. This is not something gone array or off the rails. So Peter will be rescued because when he breaths his last at the hands of those executing him – “to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.” And ultimately he will rule and reign in the kingdom that Christ will establish. So that is the perspective.

Don’t get discouraged by the activity of the unrighteous and you know the false teachers that come in. They wear you down. Churches look for ways to not have to deal with conflict. The major denominations have experienced their corruption over the years by that. Well we don’t need this fighting. We don’t need this conflict. We can all get along. And Peter is just encouraging them. He has given examples through chapter 2.

Then when you come down to chapter 3 he is ready to pull things together. Here is where he told them again, remember verse 2, what the prophets of the Old Testament said, the apostles in the New Testament said as he is writing here. Mockers will come. It won’t get any better. And what do you think now? It’s not been 35 years since Christ was crucified. It has been 2,000 years. He was still talking about the Lord’s coming.

Sometimes we think maybe we ought to just let that sit. One modern writer noted, “We used to have prophecy conferences. Now we have marriage seminars and financial seminars.” There is nothing wrong with looking at what the Bible says about our marriage, what our Bible says about our finances but somehow we back off from an emphasis on the future but the unbeliever is opposed to that. He wants to minimize and turn attention away from the sureness of the coming of Christ to the culmination of all things with the establishing of the eternal kingdom. God prophesied in the Old Testament and continues to emphasize right through the book of Revelation in the closing of his revelation to men. It is going to come. These things will be destroyed.

Well what about now, today? Live in light of this. Peter is going to be martyred soon. What is his hope realizing this is just a transitory time? We are strangers and pilgrims here. You say, “This world is not our home we are just passing through. Our citizenship is in heaven.” When the church’s attention is turned away from that, then we begin to settle down, begin to get comfortable in the world and find ourselves discouraged by things in the world and we don’t seem to be “winning.” It is not going the way I hoped. I thought we would have more victory. That is not what God promised. The road is moving toward destruction. Verse 11 of chapter 3: “All these things will be destroyed in this way,” the intense heat.

So if we lose everything here, we haven’t lost anything because we have the treasure Peter has written about stored up for us in heaven which is eternal. So life put into perspective.

“We are looking (verse 13) for the new heavens and new earth,” which we have unfolded for us in greatest detail in Revelation 21 and 22 in the messages for the churches. We are reminded to live in light of where we are going.

So, verse 14: “Beloved” as he speaks for his love for them. In light of this here is how we live. So it is not, well, prophetic things are less important. They don’t really help us now. They shape our conduct for now! We think we are making a difference now when we ignore the future. That is where we get off track and begin to do things that are short term. We can pour our life into making the world a better place and improving the world and I am not against doing helpful things but that is not our focus because they are so transitory. It may be nice to build a snowman in July but there is no future for it. You take it out of the freezer, it is gone. That is where the world is. So it does shape our conduct and our consuming compassion.

And Peter can write about this, verse 14: “Is to be found by Him in peace, spotless and blameless.” Understand what God is doing. These are days of salvation as he emphasized in verse 9 as he emphasized in verse 15. Keep perspective and those who don’t have a prophetic fixed view criticize us by saying, “They are so heavenly minded they are of no earthly good,” kind of thing. We are living for things beyond this life. We are not here to try to reclaim and reform and improve that which has no future. We are living for the future God has promised us and we bring a message of salvation. We don’t see making living conditions better as having any enduring significance. That doesn’t mean we are unwilling to be helpful but for us salvation is the issue. We just band about the verses from Jeremiah. “The rich man is not to boast about his riches” and on it goes. What you boast about is that you know the Lord. Whatever you have or don’t have. The question is – do you have the Lord? If you have Him, you have everything! If you don’t have Him, you have nothing. That is what Peter’s theme is and he warns about those who will distort the Scriptures including the writings of Paul, would include the writings of Peter and John as we study the book of Revelation. That gets all kinds of twisted, distorted interpretations. Some of the things in the Scriptures take intense study but God has given it for our understanding.

So he is ready to wrap it up and close as we come to verses 17 and 18 and you note he says, “You therefore brethren” (brothers.) They are the ones he loves. He mentions that several times we noted in this last chapter. He is going to close abruptly but he really loves them. So it is not like we might say, “I want to say goodbye to so and so, say how much I have appreciated the help of so and so,” tell about his family and you know he is a human being. We know he was married. I assume they had a natural marriage and they have had children. Those things don’t come up. It is not that we don’t care about those things but he closes out here with two commands in these two verses.

Verse 17 he is going to tell them to “be on your guard.” And in verse 18 he is going to tell them to “continue to grow.” Those are the two things that they are to be doing. “Be on your guard, continue to grow.”

I was thinking of Nehemiah as I was going through this again. You know, Nehemiah 4 where it says, “Because of the threat of the enemy. In one hand they did the work with the trowel and with the other they had the sword.” Charles Spurgeon entitled his magazine that he published many years ago, “The Sword and the Trowel.”

You know you are building and you are ready, you are on guard with the enemy. That is what he is going to tell them here. So verse 17: “You therefore.” And the “you” is placed for emphasis here to make a contrast between those he has just talked about, the end of verse 16, “The untaught, the unstable distort the Scriptures.” Not only the writings of Paul but they do this with all the Scriptures.

Note we are dealing with people here that are a danger to the church. They are not those who reject the Bible and say, “We don’t accept that as the Word of God.” They are the enemies of truth but they are not the ones who threaten the church. It is those who deal with the Scriptures and work in the Scriptures and seem to be able to build a case using Scripture that begin to make inroads.

Over time we see this with Roman Catholicism and the Protestants to use that as a clear picture and over time what? Roman Catholics have become more adept at using the Scriptures again. It used to be you opened your Bibles and Roman Catholics didn’t know what to do. Now they are writing from the perspective of challenging Christians about their handling of the Scripture and pretty soon, well we have more in common than we have made.

We had too much fighting and this is what happens in the denominations. You get a larger group within the denomination. They have differences. So well we have to work together so let’s decide on what we can compromise on and pick out the essentials and leave the rest. Eschatology is never one of the essentials as we have given example. So “You therefore beloved” in contrast to those who distort the Scripture and this will get a confusing area.

Often I have been asked over the years, “Do you think so and so is truly a believer?” You know it can get so confusing you can’t tell. All we can deal with is to be careful on what they are teaching, what they are practicing. If that is off, whether it is a believer who has been led astray or an unbeliever who is a fill in, regardless it has to be dealt with.

So “You therefore beloved” in contrast to those who are distorting the Scripture. He is confident in them. They are untaught and unstable as far as the knowledge and handling of the Word, these false teachers but “You therefore, loved ones” as he called them in verse 1, as he called them in verse 14 and he calls them here, “Knowing beforehand.”

We use the expression “to be forewarned is to be forearmed,”knowing beforehand.” They have been warned about the false teachers. They have been told in Peter’s letter and we have it pervading our Scriptures. We read verse 1 of chapter 2, “There will be false teachers among you. They will introduce destructive heresies. They will cause the way of truth to be maligned.” Many are going to follow their error. It is just going to be.

So you have been forewarned. So they should prepare for them, be all the more watchful. So the command is given, a present imperative, a command given in the presence tense. They are to be constantly on their guard. Keep guarding yourselves you could translate this. You have to be watching. You have to be careful.

Paul warned the Ephesians elders in Acts chapter 20, verse 31 to be on the alert. He used a different word but the same idea, to be watchful. To be on the alert “For among your own selves men will arise teaching perverse things.” It is a relentless work of the devil to try to corrupt the church. It just is. Just like it was relentless to corrupt Israel and over time he became more and more effective but God’s grace continues to work.

So 2,000 years later there are multitudes of churches throughout the world that are faithful to the Word. They may not be the largest churches. They may not get the most visibility but places where the Word of God is being faithfully taught. It is a constant battle. We constantly see in denominations, constant splits. People say, “Why are there always splits and divisions?” Because the devil is effective in worming his way in, infiltrating and he won’t go away. So you end up with a conflict, a battle. It goes on.

“Be constantly guarding yourselves.” Why? “So that you are not carried away by the error of unprincipled men and fall from your own steadfastness.” So you are not carried away. If you allow yourself to be influenced it will have its impact. You know the starting point is don’t pay attention to the error. Don’t listen to lies. Don’t subject yourself. We think, well I can handle it. I can do this. You are no match for the devil. Well I have the Spirit in me and the Spirit in me is greater than the one in the world. That is right so pay attention to the Spirit. Don’t listen to the devil. It is amazing when he gets my attention what he can do with me. You know we like to think that wouldn’t impact me that way. You don’t want to think that.

I use the illustration so many times that you could give it. When I was in a program in a theological seminary after sitting there I felt I can’t stay. I was afraid. I was afraid if I stayed I might become influenced and begin to adjust to that. Oh well I have done a lot of training. I know the Word. You don’t want to subject yourself because sometimes we just have to you know, the little theological jingle, “Be careful little eyes what you see. Be careful little ears what you hear.” Sometimes we get careless. That is what he is warning about. “Be on your guard.” Be constantly guarding yourself that you are not carried away, swept along. It can happen. It happened to the best. It happened to Peter.

Come back to Galatians chapter 2, verse 11: “But when Cephas came to Antioch I opposed him to his face because he stood condemned. For prior to the coming of certain men from James he used to eat with the Gentiles. When they came he began to withdraw and keep himself aloof fearing the party of the circumcision.” The rest of the Jews joined him in hypocrisy and even Barnabas was carried away with their hypocrisy. Wait a minute. You know, Barnabas, Peter? Don’t think well, I won’t be. All of a sudden people have come in and I respect them and I value their opinion of me and Paul has to plant his feet and oppose them, rebuke them. None of us are above that. So be guarding yourself. That little voice, be guarding yourselves against being carried away.

As one commentator put it, “You keep too close company with these kinds of people you will soon find yourself becoming like them.” It happens. It continues to happen down to today. None of us are so strong we can be sure it wouldn’t happen to me but we want to be very careful. Be guarding yourself. It is not a suggestion. It is a command. It is a command given by the Spirit of God through Peter as you come to verse 17 again of 2 Peter 3. “Be guarding yourselves so you will not be carried away by the error of unprincipled men.” That word, ‘error,’ the wandering, roaming of unprincipled men. They are going astray and they are leading others astray. You are familiar with that word translated error. We get the word ‘planet’ from it because the planets seem to be wandering out there. These are men who have gone astray.

Look back in chapter 2, verse 15 and it talks about “Eyes full of adultery, never cease from sin. Enticing unstable souls, heart trained in greed, forsaking the right way they have gone astray.” Gone astray and now they are wandering around, error but they are unprincipled men; the error of unprincipled men. What they want to do is remove your stability and unsettle you and now you can be moved you know certain ways.

Football players, they learn how to plant themselves so they are not easily moved. I was watching one of the games yesterday and they were talking about that and they were rerunning something on one of the players and saying, “You see how he did? He was planted so he wasn’t moved when that person came.” That is what he is talking about here. These want to move us as believers off the stability that we have. Now these are not people that are unstable.

Back in chapter 1, verse 12 Peter said, “I want to remind you of these things even though you already know them and have been established in the truth.” They have demonstrated stability but I don’t have the confidence in myself that I am going to expose myself to these kinds of people that I couldn’t be swept away from my stability and pretty soon now they’ve got me in a position of uncertainty. Now the devil has more freedom to work with me. He has moved me off my anchored spot so to speak and now I become adrift.

So these are “unprincipled men,” verse 17 of chapter 3 says. The error of unprincipled men, those who themselves are astray and somewhere along the line here you know we cross from unbeliever to believer. That is why he is warning these that he says he is confident of believers so the devil starts the error, the lie, the confusion. He puts it into individuals that he has disguised as believers. I am not saying they even recognize their true condition but now they become instruments to affect the believers. That’s why I say along the way we get confused. Are we dealing with believers, are we dealing with unbelievers because somewhere along the line the unbeliever who is serving the devil becomes effective in confusing the believer and when the believer gets led astray by unprincipled men “they are lawless, rebellious, without control” and back in chapter 2, verse 7, it is used of the men of Sodom. “He rescued Lot oppressed by the sensual conduct of unprincipled men.”

But when they are disguised as righteous we lose. So somewhere along the line like Peter is concerned about the believers he is writing to could if they are not guarding themselves carefully be carried away by the error of unprincipled men. Now you get confused. Who is the believer and who is the unbeliever here? The unbeliever disguises as a believer and the believer is now conducting themselves like an unbeliever and you can see now how the people of God just get in – where are we? We are just floating around here, being driven around. We can’t fail to take seriously what is behind all of this? It is a work of the devil and behind it are these, his servants.

Now again we want to be careful. I am not saying everyone who gets carried away is not a believer. That’s where you don’t know. Where do we go here because the unbeliever begins to get confused and he can be begin to act on the devil’s side like with false doctrine in the schools. I have seen it in schools I attended, the seminary I attended. It was just thrown into confusion and shattered. You get men in there and you can’t tell if they are an unbeliever of not and they are bringing this and pretty soon they have other people, unstable professors that I thought were rock and now drifting all over. I wrote a letter to the president. You know better. You at one time stood for this. What has happened? You know you give your ear. I talked to professor and he said, “Well, it worked, this individual, infiltrated among and got accepted as one of the professors and began to establish a relationship with others and pretty soon they were won over to his perspective. It happens. You know it is as we would say, “Not rocket science.” He tells here, “Be constantly guarding yourself that you are not carried away by the error of unprincipled men and fall from your steadfastness.”

Boy oh boy, this should be concerning to us. Peter realizes he will soon be gone. The apostles are passing off the scene, being removed. Things are serious. Will those who follow them take this seriously?

You know like with our children. Do you take this seriously? Do you understand the importance of this? You keep reminding them and they get to the point, “I know, I know, I know. You have told me before.” That’s what we find as we are going through the Scripture. We studied that before. We have read that before. We are familiar with that. It is not enough to be familiar with it. We must have such a hold on it we won’t let it go.

So here he said that you will not be carried away and fall from your own steadfastness and this is what happens then. We become like the unstable men in verse 16 who were twisting the Scripture. Those who were stable become unstable. What has happened here? And that is where then the confusion and the mixture becomes very difficult and then you know it spreads because as like I said, it spread through the school I was part of because one professor then gets won over and he influences another professor. Well I have respected these men. Maybe I should relook at this. You know the confusion begins to spread then pretty soon there is no room for those who would take a stand. It happens place after place after place.

That’s why I remember S. Lewis Johnson from Dallas Seminary spoke here and said, “Every school, every church goes liberal. It is just a relentless tide. It just is the constant move and it is not enough that these have stood faithfully and been established in the truth.” Now doesn’t mean now today, it doesn’t matter. I have been faithful for 30 years, 40 years, therefore I couldn’t be moved. We can be moved. And then the generation coming up and on it goes.

The same word is used here for steadfastness. Jesus used a related word when He told Peter, “When once you have turned again, strengthen your brothers.” And that is what he is doing.

Remember Paul’s letter to the Galatians. Come back to Galatians. We were in Galatians a little bit ago. In Galatians chapter 5, verse 4. Now here are churches that Paul ministered in. He established them. He led them to Christ. He taught them the truth and yet in chapter 4, verse 16 he said, “Have I become your enemy by telling you the truth.” Something has gone on here. They have begun to listen to what they shouldn’t have listened to. Teachers have infiltrated.

So in chapter 5, verse 4 he said, “You have been severed from Christ. You were seeking to be justified by law. You have fallen from grace.” Something is going on here. He is not even sure anymore he is dealing with true believers because once you start to drift you don’t know where it ends.

Again I mention Spurgeon whose battle was he was in the Baptist and when it came down to voting when he was taking a stand for the truth and with his great influence the vote was 2,000 against him and anywhere from two to six supporting him. Even his own brother voted on the wrong side who was one of his assistants. I mean what happens? Spurgeon’s response was “History will show me right.” By the time it was shown to be correct he is washed away. It is hard for us to take it seriously because well, it won’t happen in our particular church. It is written for us today.

“You have been severed from Christ.” It has gone that far. Now you see you are starting to promote a gospel that is in no way related to the Gospel that I preached to you. Well it is. These are people who agree with us. They just say this and then it gets into not only salvation but sanctification. You know you are saved by grace but you have to be kept by law and then the conduct gets corrupted.

Come back to 2 Peter, chapter 3. What are we to do? Second command, verse 18, first command, verse 17, “Be constantly on guard for yourselves;” second command, “Be constantly growing in grace.” Both are present tense commands. We might say it that way, “Be constantly growing in grace, be continually growing in grace. “Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.” This is the positive side. Once you get moved from your stability and begin to now drift around you will not be growing like you should and when you stop growing like you should you will not be as discerning. It doesn’t take long to begin to lose the discernment and the sharpness of recognizing error. So we are to be growing in the grace and knowledge.

Now this is their personal responsibility. Peter can teach them but he can’t make it happen. You know it is like your kids and they grow. You can’t make them do what they should do and that is true in the spiritual realm. We can’t make one another do what we should. We can teach one another. We can encourage one another, we can help one another but it becomes a personal responsibility. So in that sense we are not accountable for one another. We are accountable in that we are to be ministering to one another as member of the body as we should but the accountability ultimately then is mine for me and you for you. Paul said that to the Ephesian elders. “I have taught you the whole counsel of God therefore I am free from responsibility, from the blood of all men.” It doesn’t mean they all did what he taught but he had to fulfil his responsibility.

So, “You grow in grace and knowledge.” This is where we were back in chapter 1, verse 5 where he talked about they “have become partakers of the divine nature,” in verse 4. Then in verse 5: “For this reason also applying all diligence, in your faith supply moral excellence, in your moral excellence, knowledge; in your knowledge, self-control, in your self-control, perseverance and perseverance godliness; and in your godliness, brotherly kindness and in your brotherly kindness, Christian love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they render you neither useless nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

That full title of Christ used four times in this letter. And it is our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. We have a preliminary here, “our Lord Jesus Christ.” The full title will be in verse 11: “In this way the entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.” Verse 9: “If you lack these things you are blind or shortsighted. You have forgotten.” That is what Peter is doing, reminding them, don’t forget. So you see what happens here; and happens when we let unprincipled individuals influence us. Then we become unstable. We begin to become wanderers. Then we forget and then we begin to go backwards and now we are not as discerning as we should be. We become more open to more error. We say how did people who were here end up here?

I have followed the tracking of certain men that I have known, not necessarily personally but through their writings, some men who I was reading what they wrote back in the early 70’s which were the standard for truth and today they deny what they wrote. It happens. These were men who I would say were better men than me, stronger men than me. Where along the way and once you move you never know where you will end up. That is the frightening thing about sin, about error. It is not a major thing. Once I move from my stability I don’t know where I will end up.

So Peter is back to this where he was at the beginning of the letter and now at the end. “Grow,” back in chapter 3, verse 8: “Grow in the grace.” We experience this grace in our salvation. “For by grace you have been saved, through faith.” And this salvation is “not of ourselves.” “It is the gift of God.” It is “not a result of works. So we can’t boast.” We are to continue to grow in grace.

So it was Paul’s issue with the Galatians. You begin by faith and now you progress by works. It is all of grace and that’s why it is by faith. It is reliance upon what God has gone and living in light of that enablement He gives. We continue to grow in maturity and in knowledge, “The knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ,” continued growth in that knowledge. We are not done. We are growing. We are never done. We could go through the Scriptures 100 times studying and we wouldn’t have mastered it. We go back and we need to be reminded because we forget.

Sometimes when going through the Scriptures and some of you have shared that. You know I have been going through the minor prophets and I find myself saying, “I’d forgotten about that. Yes, I can go back and look at that again.” You know we forget and then in the application of it something comes up and it draws our attention away from the truth that we know and then we are out here acting on the basis of something impacting us now and we let go of the truth. We are to be growing in the knowledge and the grace. We are to stay fixed there. So I have to go back. What does the Scripture say? What does the Scripture say? What is my responsibility in this?

Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night as you do. I go over to my study. I’ve got things on my mind. I say I have to go over and clear my head here as I lay in bed thinking about I get wider awake. I go over and look at the Scripture. What does the Scripture say? I have to settle my mind here, bring it back. I can’t resolve it in just my thinking about my thinking. I have to come back and tie myself down. That is what we do. “Grow in the grace and the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” This is not just to have more facts. This is to have this truth applied in my life. I am living in the grace and knowledge that I have as a child of God. We are not just out here grabbing onto things that come by.

“Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory.” That is a statement of the deity of Christ as clear as any statement. He is our Lord and Savior. He is our Lord. Just stop and think here. “Why do you call Me Lord and not do the things I tell you?” “Well you know I got confused and someone…. I heard this and they said that and I don’t know, I was a little confused.” Don’t get confused. That was the first command. “Be guarding yourself” and then the second command, “continue to grow in grace and knowledge.”

It is like we tell our children. Well we got confused. Why? Well my friends said this. Yes, why did you get confused? Why did you listen to them? Well, you know. That is not an excuse.

So here we are. God has spoken. Listen to Him. It is not complicated. God didn’t give us this because He wanted us to wander. “To Him be glory.” He is our Lord and Savior. He is not only Son of man, He is Son of God, the God Who said He would not give His glory to another but that glory belongs to the Father, the Son and the Spirit. “To Him be the glory both now and into eternity.”

He was called our God and Savior when Peter began this letter. He ends on the same note. Chapter 1, verse 1 he said, “To those who have received a faith of the same kind as ours, by the righteousness of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ.” It is fitting we would end, “To Him be the glory, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, both now and to the day of eternity,” that future time, to the day of the ages. It’s what we have talked about, where we are moving on into eternity. This transitory we are in we will have a new heavens and a new earth and He will receive glory.

So that is my concern here. You know I keep these things fixed in my mind. I can maintain my stability. I began by emphasizing the key role of Christ in our salvation, chapter 1, verse 2: “Grace and peace by multiplied to you.” We end with the “Grace and knowledge.” It is in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. He is central. He is focused. There is never any reason for me to sin. There is never any excuse for me to be led astray. The Spirit of God does not lead me astray. We would all say, “Amen.” God’s intention for me is not to be led astray. He has made provision for me not to. So when I am led astray it is because I decided to do something that wasn’t consistent with the Scripture, not consistent with the Spirit’s leading. It is amazing the excuses we make. Well I didn’t know. I thought they were telling me the truth. Well you think the Spirit lies? No. Then why would you listen to then a lie of the devil? So how do false teachers get in? How does this error creep in? Be Biblical.

That’s how Peter ends up. The letter is done. “Amen.” What more can be said? This is true. You are the best I can do to prepare you for living for the Lord after I am off the scene. How gracious God has been. Here we have the entire completed Word of God. We are studying His last Words, the book of Revelation. He has given us everything necessary for life and godliness. Well nobody is perfect. That’s why He died for, to bring us His perfection. We all stumble but I don’t want to become accepting of my stumbles. I don’t want to be comfortable stumbling around. And I don’t have to. That is the beauty of it. The sad thing is the devil is effective with the same old approach. It doesn’t change. It doesn’t change. It doesn’t change. He continues to work and so we want to continue to grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ and the stability that only He can bring.

We are going to be going through this with the seven churches that Christ addresses as He closes out that revelation to His people. We will find the same issues come up 30 years later when John writes and Christ addresses the churches as He had to come and address the churches together as we have them today we would find similar evaluations. By God’s grace we continue to grow in grace on guarding ourselves against exposure to unprincipled people and continue to grow and that’s will bring glory and honor to Him on through the ages of eternity.

Let’s pray together. Lord You Lord for the riches of Your Word. We are thankful that we have everything necessary in Christ for a life of godliness. We all stumble in many ways. We are mindful that we are unfaithful and You are always faithful because You can’t deny Yourself but Lord we want the passion of our hearts to be faithful, to honor You. May we be closed to the influence of those who would corrupt us, unsettle us, move us from the stability that we have as we are being faithful to You. May we continue to grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and may we be a people that bring honor and glory to You, to Him, to the Spirit who indwells us as He will through all eternity we pray in Christ’s name, amen.