Be Reminded, On Guard and Growing

Transcript

GRM 816
11/13/2002
Be Reminded, On Guard and Growing
2 Peter 3:11-18
Gil Rugh

In our study of Acts we were looking at Paul's farewell remarks to the Ephesian elders. In that context we looked at several passages in Paul's last letter written to Timothy, comes its own farewell address. And I want to direct your attention to the book of 2 Peter for our time together because 2 Peter is Peter's farewell address written in the shadow of his rather imminent execution. In 2 Peter 1:12 Peter says, "Therefore, I shall always be ready to remind you of these things," things he has just mentioned regarding salvation and our growth in the salvation that we have in Jesus Christ and ultimately that entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. "Therefore, I shall always be ready to remind you of these things, even though you already know them, and have been established in the truth which is present with you." That emphasis of Peter that even though you know these things, even though I believe you are established in these things, the truth of God as you have heard it, been taught it, have studied it, I still think it's necessary to keep on telling you, keep on reminding you. "And I consider it right, as long as I am in this earthly dwelling, to stir you up by way of reminder, knowing that the laying aside of my earthly dwelling is imminent, as also our Lord Jesus Christ has made clear to me. And I will also be diligent that at any time after my departure you may be able to call these things to mind."

So you get something of Peter's situation and his concern. He wants to teach and teach and repeat and repeat so these things become as it were second nature. Like driving a car, young people that are going to drive the car and they are sure they can do it. And certain things they can. And as they learn and as you are starting, yes, you know what to do. But they are just not second nature so to speak. You have to think about it. Well, after a period of time, you do it, you do it, you do it, it just becomes natural. And so it is with the handling of Scripture, if you will. It's not enough just to know these things but be established in them. But we've all been in the situation… yes, we know it, we know it, we hear it, yes. And all of a sudden somebody with a different view confronts us, challenges us, all of a sudden… where is that verse, where are those passages, what was it we studied on that, what was it I… and it's just not there. And I think, I know, I know this. What is it?

Peter says I just want it to be there. Because Peter has the same concern as Paul. When he's gone the false teachers will intensify their attacks, if you will. There were many attacks and relentless attacks during the days of the apostles obviously, but with the apostles passing off the scene that focal leadership for the church will not be there. It will be replaced now with the elders as we saw in Acts 20 that have been appointed. So there's something about the loss of those recognized leaders. These men directly appointed by Jesus Christ, the direct recipients of revelation from Him. Now we are going to be dealing with men who do not have that connection. We are dealing with men who received the truth from the men who received it from Christ. And so the attacks will build, if anything, and Peter is concerned that this truth be such a part of your life that your natural response, your immediate response is to stand firm.

In chapter 2 he devotes that entire chapter to a warning about false teachers, the harshest passages in all the Word of God on false teachers; very similar to the content of Jude. In chapter 2 he said, "But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will also be false teachers among you, who will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them. They will bring swift destruction upon themselves." Sounds very similar to Paul's warning to the elders from the church at Ephesus. Peter says this is a sure thing, there will be false teachers among you, they will secretly introduce destructive heresies. Jude wrote similar material in his little one chapter letter just before the book of Revelation and he said in verse 4, "For certain persons have crept in unnoticed." Already it was taking place. I was going to write a different kind of letter but I was constrained to appeal to you to earnestly contend for the faith because certain men have already crept in and they've come in unnoticed. They are godless men but you see they come in the guise . . . the wolves in sheep's clothing. They come in dressed as believers, talking as believers, but both in their lives and in their doctrine it becomes clear they are not standing on the foundation of the Word of God.

So back in 2 Peter, 2 Peter 2 warned in verse 2, "Many will follow their sensuality." They are going to be effective. "Because of them the way of the truth will be maligned." Sad but, you know, they come, they profess themselves to be believers. And so before the world their godliness casts a cloud over the testimony of genuine believers. The preaching of the truth is colored in people's eyes by the hucksters, those who are an embarrassment as they twist the Scriptures and make it a means of gain and so on. They call themselves Bible believers.

"In their greed they will exploit you," in verse 3. Paul's defense in Acts 20, he didn't take their money. The elders need to be careful that they are not in it for greed. That's a mark of false teachers, they are looking for what they can gain and believers are just a source of revenue for them and if they can get money from believers, they will talk the language of believers. Then he goes on to give examples, beginning with the angels, no one will escape the judgment of God for their deception, for their twisting of the truth, and the series of examples drawn from the Old Testament.

He comes to chapter 3 to wrap up the letter. He says this is the second letter I am writing to you. He wrote the first letter, now this is the second letter. And he's stirring up their sincere minds by way of remembrance. He's not claiming to tell them anything new, anything original, but he's being used of the Spirit of God to pull certain things together, to remind them of truths that they must have fixed in their hearts and minds. They “should remember the words spoken beforehand by the holy prophets and the commandment of the Lord and Savior spoken by your apostles." So both the Old and the New Testament are brought together and the revelation through them. Then he tells them even the coming of the Lord will become a source of mockery, "in the last days mockers will come with their mocking, following after their own lusts [desires], and saying, 'Where is the promise of His coming?' " And we get variations of that today. You talk about prophetic matters, you talk about what the people says about the future and people say, "Look, I don't care about the future. I'm not interested in what's going to happen. I just want to know about today." Well, you know that becomes its own form of mockery. Almighty God has spoken and saw fit to have recorded in His Word much information about the coming of His Son Jesus Christ and we say it's of no interest to me whether He's coming or not, it's not what I'm concerned about. They often but it in the guise of I just believe He's coming, whenever He comes it will be all right -- the joke of: we're pan-millennial, it will all ‘pan out in the end,’ that kind of thinking. And, you know, there's a certain humor to it. We have to be careful. You know, there is nothing that God has said that I can just cast aside as unimportant. To say, well, God saw fit to lay it out, He saw fit to have John record the Revelation, but that's too hard, that's not to understand, we are not going to delve into that. What do you mean we are not going to delve into that? Are we saying God says things that aren't important, not worthy of our attention? Or God didn't do a very good job of communicating with that book so it's not something I'm going to bother myself with.

So the mockers that will come. And these mockers are really denying the reality of the Second Coming. But Christ is coming. In verse 9, "The Lord is not slow about His promise." His Word will all be fulfilled down to the smallest jot and tittle as Christ said. He's patient, “not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.”

And this impacts us. As believers we understand this world is destined for destruction, it’s going to be consumed by fire, all these things “will be burned up,” verse 10. "Since all these things," verse 11, "are to be destroyed in this way, what sort of people ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness, looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God, on account of which the heavens will be destroyed by burning, and the elements will melt with intense heat! But according to His promise we are looking for new heavens and a new earth, in which righteousness dwells. Therefore, beloved, since you look for these things, be diligent to be found by Him in peace, spotless and blameless." He's concerned that believers, as he wraps up this letter now, draws it to a close and rather abruptly, we ought to have a passion for godliness and holiness of life. That does not mean we cannot enjoy the things that God has blessed us with, but they don't become the occupation and preoccupation of our lives. Why? It's all going to be wiped out. It's all going to be burned up. We are looking for new heavens and a new earth and all that God has promised to those who love Him.

In this context Peter has said that there is to be a passion for the lost. Verse 15, "And regard the patience of our Lord to be salvation." So in verse 14, "be diligent to be found by Him in peace, spotless and blameless, and regard the patience of the Lord to be salvation." That's what he said in verse 9, that the Lord is patient, “not wishing for any to perish.” Now here's an opportunity for us to be purified and refined, to be found by Him spotless and blameless and to use every opportunity in these days of salvation. We say, oh, I wish the Lord would come. And we do desire His coming, but by the same token aren't these unique days of opportunity? We realize that these are days of salvation. And there will come a time there will not be these opportunities any longer. These are days when people can get saved. There will come a time when there will be no opportunity for salvation. We will be enjoying the splendor and glory of God's presence forever and the lost will be enduring the suffering and agony of Hell forever and there will be no change in those realms, no opportunity for the salvation of one more soul. For how we ought to look… oh, I wish the Lord would come, the burdens, the sufferings, the trials, the difficulty. And yet every day that He's not come is another day of opportunity for the salvation of the lost, another day when God has demonstrated His patience, another day when He's given the opportunity to share the truth of Christ so the Spirit might use it to change and transform a life.

In the middle of verse 15 he says, ‘This is what our beloved brother Paul, according to his wisdom, the wisdom given him,’ he sees it as a divine wisdom and revelation from God, ‘he also wrote to you.’ We appreciate Peter. And we often point out Peter's failures and flaws. But here we are at the end of Peter's life and Peter is being used of the Spirit to write a portion of the inspired Word of God, a man faithful to the end. He's a man who had been publicly rebuked by Paul and that rebuke is contained in the eternal Word of God in Galatians 2 as Paul referred to the failure… Peter, the rebuke of Peter… and yet here you have our beloved brother Paul, who has written to you according to the wisdom given.

What did Paul write? Well, back up to 1 Peter 1. Who is Peter writing to? Because he is saying Paul wrote to you, the same people I'm writing to. First Peter 1:1, "Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who reside as aliens, scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, Bithynia." We saw in his second letter… he says this is the second letter I'm writing to you, writing to the same people as the first. Paul wrote what? He wrote letters to the churches in Galatia, Asia, letters like the letter to the Galatians, the letter to the Ephesians, the letter to the Colossians. I take that those are the kind of letters that Peter is referring to, the inspired letters that the apostle Paul wrote.

Peter already recognizes that this is going to come up, that what Paul wrote was the inspired Word of God. So he says in verse 16, "as also in all his letters, speaking in them of these things," an indication that Paul's letters circulated around to different churches. There are occasions like in Colossians 4:16 where he tells them have your letter be read in this church, read the letter that I sent to the Laodiceans, and interchange these letters." That way the Word of God was spread as it had been given through Paul and the other apostles.

Paul has written about the same thing Peter has. When you go back and sit and read about the letter in chapter one about the importance of godliness and growing in our relationship to the Lord, the warning about false teachers in chapter 2, the information regarding the coming of the Lord and the new heavens and the new earth and the Second Coming of Christ, and that spurring us on to godliness… those are the kind of subjects Paul also wrote about, that absolute necessity of godliness. Peter has just referred to it as such a dominant emphasis in all the writings of the apostle Paul.

He also says in Paul's letters there are some things hard to understand. Now here's the apostle Peter himself, the recipient of direct revelation. He is the inspired author of two letters in our New Testament, 1 and 2 Peter. He was the dominant figure in the beginning of the Church in the first ten chapters of the book of Acts, the early history of the Church. And, you know, he says Paul writes about some things that are hard to understand. That doesn't mean that they are impossible to understand. It means that a person who doesn't take care with the Scripture, handle the Scripture properly, will get confused, distort the Scripture, and so on. So he says, "In which are some things hard to understand, which the untaught and the unstable distort." The untaught and what we have here probably are these teachers who come in and they have not been correctly taught apostolic doctrine, if you will. Oh, they have cobbled together things but they have not been correctly instructed in the Word of God. They are basically untaught. They may know a lot of the Bible, a lot of Bible verses.

I was watching a television preacher that I occasionally catch so it must be the time when I turn on the tv. He is one of the worst. I shared with some of you, so far I haven't seen him do anything but sit behind a desk and tell people why they ought to send him money. I’m sitting there watching this guy, he doesn't give you anything for your money. He doesn't supposedly do miracles there for you to see. He doesn't even preach a sermon to earn his keep. He just sits there and says you got to send money, God will bless you if you send money. And the amazing thing is evidently people are sending money. Well, here's a letter from Harry in California, he's committed a thousand dollars. Oh, here's Sue in Georgia, she's committing 500. You need to get your seed gift in the mail. You know, I turn him on the next time and he's doing the exact same thing, sitting in that exact same chair. But you know what impresses me is that he can quote Scripture like crazy. I mean, he just starts quoting Scripture and rattling it off. Now he's totally taking it out of context, totally misusing it, but he can impress you with his ability to quote Scripture rather obscure Old Testament passages, just fire them right out there. He's untaught.

Now we want to be careful, we are not saying men who are not able to quote Scripture . . . I watched the program the other day, and I don't watch a lot of this, but I do make note of the one's I watch. And there were two people on the Roman Catholic channel doing a program and it's a series in their program and the title of the series is "By Grace Alone but Not by Faith Alone." And two people formally evangelical Christians by their testimony have come to see the light of Roman Catholicism and to understand while we are saved by grace alone, we are not saved by faith alone. So this series of programs was explaining how evangelical Christians misunderstand the Word. Untaught people, they do not know the truth, they are unstable, they have no grounding in the truth.

Remember back in chapter 1 verse 12 Peter refers at the end of the verse that even though you are established in the truth which is present with you I want to remind you. They are unstable. So in chapter 2 verse 14 referring to false teachers, "having eyes full of adultery,” they “never cease from sin, enticing unstable souls, having a heart trained in greed." So the untaught and unstable distort the Scriptures. Here you have teachers that come, supposedly going to instruct believers, but they don't understand the Scriptures. They are unstable, they are without grounding in the truth, and so they distort what Paul has written. They are not really teaching the Word, they are distorting the Word. That means to twist, to torture something, to mangle it. You know, they say they distort the Word, they mangle the Word. What they are doing is making all kinds of alterations with the Scripture to make it say what they want to say. This individual I referred to earlier, why you should send him money and why the Lord is going to bless you when you send him money. You know, I've never heard him (and I've seen him a number of occasions) ever say some of you have needs out there and it would be great for me to get the blessing of helping you, call me and I'll send you a thousand dollars. The blessing always goes the other way. You send me and that will be your blessing. I feel sorry for him. He can't get any blessing because it's all going one way. I feel sorry for him for more reasons than that.

What are they doing? They are twisting the Scripture. We all struggle with this because we sometimes confront false teachers that are so good in their distorting of the Scripture that we find ourselves back on our heels because we don't quite know what the response is, we don't know how to answer them. There's something not right in what they’re saying but I'm not quite sure what's not right with it. That's why Peter is hammering into them the truth of the Scripture so they will recognize this kind of distortion of the Scripture.

They distort what Paul wrote as they do the rest of the Scriptures. And you'll note there, and in so saying, the Spirit of God is using Peter to declare the writings of Paul as Scripture. Already at this early stage it was recognized that that letter that Paul had written to the Galatians was not just the thoughts of Paul. That was a revelation from God. The letter to the Ephesians, the letter to the Colossians -- that's Scripture. And these teachers distort the scriptures that Paul has written like they distort the rest of the Scriptures. In other words, that's the way they use the Scriptures. They misuse them. But you note we are not dealing here with Hindus or people that are out there that we realize they are in error. Peter's concern is those who are taking the Scripture, the revelation from God, and distorting it, twisting it, misusing it so that it says what it does not say and thus they undermine it.

It's “to their own destruction,” the end of verse 16, they do this “to their own destruction.” What do you do if you distort and twist the Scripture, what do you have? Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of Christ. You've twisted and distorted the only means of salvation. And so in handling the Scripture they are, not only as Jesus condemned the religious leaders of his day, cutting themselves off from salvation, they are doing all they can to cut others off from salvation as well. What a horrible thing. That's why false teachers are such an abomination to God. They not only bring ruin on themselves but they become instruments to bring ruin on others. Nothing gets me so worked up as to listen to a false teacher, a false preacher, and think there are people sitting there listening, being deluded and deceived and hardened, if you will.

So false teachers distort the Scriptures to their own destruction. This is a serious matter, one of the issues we look at to determine if a person is genuine or false. Again, it doesn't mean we agree on every passage of Scripture, that any of us have a perfect understanding of Scripture. We're all learning and growing. But there is a distinction between those who faithfully handle the Word properly and those who do not, and sometimes that line seems to get blurred. Sometimes it seems what people are saying is so true, so correct, so genuine and yet at other times it seems that they totally misunderstand. Ultimately, only God knows whether they are saved or not. But the more we find them distorting the Scripture, not handling it properly, the more question is raised about their true spiritual condition. I think the evangelical church has been infiltrated and filled with men now in influential positions who know nothing of the truth of Scripture in the proper way and are just eroding the foundations as people get caught up more in the superficial approach that they are offering rather than grappling with the Scripture and submitting to the Scripture. If it is the Word of God, then it is a serious matter to handle it anyway than properly and correctly.

You know, Paul wrote to Timothy in his second letter… Why don't you back up to 2 Timothy 2, a passage that we read when we looked at Paul's closing remarks to the Ephesian elders. His closing remarks to Timothy, 2 Timothy 2:15, "Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth." It's a serious matter that takes diligence on our part. We are to apply ourselves to the work of the Scripture. It's not a time to sit back and be entertained, to hear a light message that we will find encouraging. This is the hard work of grappling with the Word because God expects us to handle it accurately, to cut it straight, and thus be approved by Him.

Now what is also lacking in false teachers is the presence of the Holy Spirit. It is not possible to understand the Scripture apart from the ministry of the Holy Spirit. The unregenerate person would never come to understand and believe the Gospel apart from the work of the Holy Spirit in the life. It is the work of the Holy Spirit to enlighten our minds and give us understanding. And two dangers we must avoid. Number one, just thinking by our own effort we can know the Scripture. And number two, to think we don't have to put much effort in it because the Holy Spirit makes us know what we should know and a casual acquaintance with the Scripture will be sufficient. It's just not so. We need to be diligently applying ourselves to the Scripture and recognizing that it is the Spirit who opens our eyes to understand, to grasps these truths, and that's a distinction between a believer and an unbeliever. An unbeliever can study the Word the God and I could begin to give you a list of unbelievers who have written Bible commentaries and they know much about the Scripture but they have not been enlightened by the Spirit of God. So you come to portions and you realize their eyes are blind. They have missed the point. It doesn't fit together. A man who has written a much used set of commentaries covering the New Testament, in his autobiography written to the end of his life, you know what he said? Everybody's going to heaven, there is no hell, and on he goes. The man spends his life studying and writing about the New Testament and dies not understanding its message, denying the deity of Jesus Christ. And yet if I would stand up here, I could read you page after page after page after page of his commentary and you say, “There is a solid evangelical believer.” And I could read you other passages and you'd say, “That guy he doesn't understand anything about the Scripture.” And you have that kind of confusing mixture and we have to be careful because you can't just read one page because he sounds like one of us. So the danger of false teachers.

First Corinthians 11, go back there if you would, 2 Corinthians 11 (we could get into trouble on 1 Corinthians 11 but we will go to 2 Corinthians 11), 2 Corinthians 11. Paul is expressing the same kind of concern that is expressed in some of his letters that Peter is writing about. And you see here is this is a spiritual issue. Paul's concern in verse 3 of 2 Corinthians 11, "I am afraid, lest as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your mind should be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ." Paul's concern is these false teachers can even bring confusion to believers. The result is they will be turned away from faithfulness to Christ. This is a serious matter. "If one comes and preaches another Jesus whom we have not preached, or you received a different spirit which you have not received, or a different gospel which you have not accepted, you bear this beautifully." You know one of the sins of the Church is we are too tolerant. We ought to be gracious and kind and loving. And hard and intolerant and firm in dealing with false teachers and false doctrine. The Corinthian church prided itself in the gracious spirit. Now I know that there is a lot that they teach that's not true but they are good men. Paul says you put up with those that you shouldn't and you battle with those that you should receive. Paul has to spend chapter after chapter defending his apostleship to a church that prides itself to its open spirit. Do they have themselves turned around? Any wonder the church was in confusion.

Why is there such confusion? Go down to verse 13, "Such men are false apostles, deceitful workers, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. Therefore it is not surprising if his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness, whose end shall be according to their deeds." Both Paul and Peter have no qualms about making it clear these men are on their way to Hell, these men are on the way to destruction. Why are they so effective? You understand this is a supernatural battle. We do battle not against flesh and blood but against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenlies as Paul wrote to the Ephesians. Satan masquerades as an angel of light. He's bringing something better, something new. He's going to clarify and help you. That's how it began in the Garden, wasn't it. Your eyes will be opened. That deluded them. These false teachers don't come and say look don't believe the Bible. They say, no, we believe the Bible, but you don't understand, let me help you. And if you are not well grounded, if you don't keep both feet on the ground, if you don't sort out carefully, you get confused. There's some people that with every error that comes down the pike, they want to come and say, you know, I was reading this, I heard this, it sounds pretty good to me. That sounds good to you? Is there anything that doesn't sound good? I mean, we have to be careful, we have to be discerning, that's part of growth, we are never done. I trust I'm more discerning today than I was five years ago and I trust I'll even be more discerning as I study more the Word and I become clearer on things. So we are doing battle in this realm.

Come back to 2 Peter. Peter wraps this up and he says very simple two things: be on your guard and keep growing. Verse 17, "Be on your guard." Sounds like Paul, doesn't it, speaking to the Ephesian elders in Acts 20. “Be on your guard.” "You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, be on your guard lest, being carried away by the error of unprincipled men, you fall from your own steadfastness." Now that ought to put the right kind of the fear of the Lord in all of us. We would pride ourselves in knowing the Word, in being planted in the Word. Peter says that's the kind of people he's writing to. They are established in the truth. Back in chapter 1 verse 12 he says they are steadfast, but you know the danger? If you are not on your guard, "you will be carried away by the error of unprincipled men and fall from your steadfastness." That "you" there is emphatic. It gets the emphasis in verse 17 as it begins "you therefore," in contrast to those who twist the Scripture to their own destruction. Peter's not writing because he's concerned they’re not genuine. He really is convinced they are, but that does not mean they are above being deceived and deluded and mislead and thus having their spiritual life thrown into turmoil.

You know this beforehand. Now if they knew it beforehand, what about us? We have the completed Word of God. We have 2000 years of church history to reinforce this, to have set out for us, the relentless assaults of Satan, the way the church has been infiltrated and undermined. And yet today the church goes on, blinders, thinking little superficial sermons are enough. As long as we love the Lord and are sincere, let's all work together. Till we come to the point now you have people who are recognized as evangelical leaders who can't see any significant difference between Roman Catholicism and evangelical Protestantism. People have died over these issues and now we have leaders who say, look, we can work together. Then you can turn on the Roman Catholic television station and watch them say what? It's by grace alone but not by faith alone. And if it's not by faith alone, it's not by grace alone. And some evangelicals say we can all work together, the differences aren't great. I say, where have we gotten off track? How have we lost our way? One time certain issues were clear and now they are not clear. We were going back to where we were before there was a Reformation. You know what happens? People get carried away by the error of unprincipled men. We have to be careful what we open ourselves up to.

I shared with you before, one time I was in a seminary study program and after being there and taking the course, I had to go in and tell the dean of that program I can't continue. Why? I'm afraid if I stay I'll come out like you. I mean, can I just go and sit and say, oh, I'm above being deluded and deceived? And after telling him that he says, oh, you're such an asset to our program, it's so good to have you here, we'll hold your space if you want to come back. And I go out of there saying, Gil, why do you always have to do this? But, you know, can I just go and sit and expose myself to this, take in that teaching, not be affected by it? As you know that's one of my concerns over Christian radio and all that kind of thing. You get such a mixture there. I turn it on sometime and I think, that's some of the best teaching I've heard, and I turn on another program and I say, where in the world are they coming from. I say, are people sorting this out. And I say, are we above . . . Oh we're steadfast, we're strong. We are today but what will happen if we are not on our guard? We will be swept away. I've seen the change happen in my own ministry lifetime. I never thought that would happen that quickly to the people it's happened to. I saw the seminary I graduated from torn apart, ceased to function as a seminary in the way it was because it got torn apart, infiltrated by men who taught doctrine contrary to the Word of God. I would have sat and thought these men would never have let that happen here. I mean of all places, it won't happen there. When I went to seminary they were only recommending three seminars in the entire country. This was one of them and it got all torn apart. I sit and scratch my head and say, how did this happen?

What's it say? "Be on your guard." "Be on your guard lest you be carried away by the error of unprincipled men and fall from your own steadfastness." God forbid that I begin to think it wouldn't happen to me, it couldn't happen to me. It's happened to better men than me. I'm sure what happened to me easier than it happened to them. I have to be on guard.

"But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ." You got to be on guard and you got to keep growing. Be on guard and keep growing. You know, it's like in the book of Nehemiah, in one hand they have the sword and the other hand we are building. Here we are, we are watching, we are scrutinizing, we are sifting carefully, and we are growing and maturing. Well, wait. These are people that already knew these truths. They've been established in the truth. Chapter 1 verse 12 says it. Yes, and you're never done. As soon as we think ,yes, we know that, we don't need that again. You know, like your children, soon as they think, oh, they know it, your concern is what? They are going to get in trouble. The Lord tells us as soon as you think you know it, you are going to get in trouble. It doesn't mean we don't know the Word. We do. We are confident that what we know is the truth, but I know I'm not done. I need to know it better. I've been going through the Old Testament in the mornings and, you know, you do that on a regular basis. But you know, I still find myself coming to portions and you know what my thoughts are? I forgot that was there. Now I know I read it because I went through this several times, multiple times, but you know when I hear it . . . you know, if somebody had asked me on a test that that was there, I would have said, no, that's not there.

One of you asked me a few years ago (I've used this before, a number of years ago), come up and said, I have to ask you question. Was it Cain . . . Did Cain go to the land of Nod to get his wife? I mean I could hardly stand up. The land of Nod? I think you've got a fairy tale mixed in there. Then ‘lo and behold’ one day I'm reading the Old Testament, you know where Cain went to get his wife? The land of Nod. Good grief, what kind of Bible teacher are you? I mean, I didn't know that, I had read it but I forgot it. And I think, how much have I forgotten? If we were going to give a Bible test today, how many of us would sit down and have a hard time answering some of ‘those questions we know.’ All of a sudden we say, I don't know.

When I went to seminary (and this is an aside), when you go to seminary you think you ought to be able to write the books of the Bible in order, spelled correctly. I mean, it became a seminary issue. Because you know what they did? They gave you that test and you know what they did with those tests? They put them on the bulletin board in the hall. And you know what? Everybody who didn't get them all exactly right, they had to take the test again the second week. And you know what they did? They put their names and their test scores on the board in the hall. Well, you know when you got to the third and fourth week, things were getting tight. As you walk in the hall and say, hey, Joe, I saw your name on the board. Can't spell Zephaniah, huh? Oops, you left out Haggai. Didn't you know that was a book of the Bible? You know what? Things you forget. You don't know. And I realize spelling and things like that can be challenges.

"Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory, both now and to the day of eternity." That's what it's all about. Is that an abrupt letter to the last letter? I mean, here it is. Be on guard, continue to grow but all the glory is for Him both now and to the day of eternity. I love the way that's put. A writer said, we are not quite sure. Does that mean you're viewing eternity as one long day or are you viewing that day that begins eternity? It doesn't matter how you put it. You know, when we step into eternity, we are going to say we're here and we are here forever. How do I grasp that with this mind? But the glory will be to Him both now and to the day of eternity. I am to be on guard. Keep growing. This is a serious matter. I can't be too careful. I can't be too careful. I can't know too much. I can think I know too much but I can't know too much. I can't go over these old truths too many times. I can't say, look, I've memorized that, I've memorized it, I know, I know, I know. But you know what? I come back and it grips my heart again and I know those words and I knew them just as well as I did before. But you know, that truth grips my heart. Sometimes I have to come and say, something's wrong with me, Lord, it just doesn't get ahold of me. The danger is after time it becomes commonplace. That's why Peter says I'm going to keep on reminding you until I step out of this life so that hopefully you will remember when I'm gone and keep at it.

I trust that will be the testimony of our church. You know, if the Lord doesn't come for the next 30 years, you know what we are going to be doing? Studying the Scripture. In our morning Bible study hour, in our Sunday morning service, Sunday evening, Wednesday night Bible study, home Bible studies, other studies that go on, sharing the Gospel with the lost. Nothing changes. And by God's grace I trust we can be faithful to that until He comes. Let's pray together.

Thank you, Lord, for Your truth. What a treasure has been entrusted to us. Lord, it seems to put this treasure in earthen vessels makes it so susceptible to failure, to our weakness and yet a testimony to Your grace that this treasure of Your Word in earthen vessels becomes the means You use to bring salvation to the lost, to enable us to grow and mature in our walk with You. May we never tire of these truths. May they never become old or boring or wearisome. And Lord, may they refresh our soul and our spirit. May we delight to study them again and again and again. Lord, may we be on guard. May we manifest a gracious and kind and loving spirit. May we also manifest that intolerance, that firmness, that harshness, if you will, in dealing with those who would distort or twist Your truth. May we be a people on guard and continuing to grow for Your glory. We pray in Christ's name, amen.