2 Peter 1:1-15 - Holy Supplements

Hello, and welcome back to Tabernacle Talk. We are beginning a new study today. We are in the book of Second Peter.

And Second Peter is a letter that's written from one of the three kind of closest disciples of Jesus, kind of that inner circle that was made up of Peter and then James and John, the sons of Zebedee.

And Peter was one that he was enthusiastic about everything. He may not always have been right, but he was certainly always certain. And Peter was one that he had started off as a fisherman.

He wasn't one that had done a bunch of book learning, didn't have much in the way of outside knowledge other than what was common in Israel at that particular time period in the first century. But then Jesus came.

And after spending three years with Jesus, Peter showed a lot of knowledge of the scriptures, of the fact that he had paid attention to when Jesus was speaking.

Peter was the one that kind of first proclaimed from the disciples, hey, you are the Messiah, the son of the living God. And we'd applaud him for that. He was also the one that when Jesus said, hey, here's how I'm going to save the world.

I'm gonna save it through my death and my burial, my resurrection. Peter said, are you sure there's not another way to do it? That sounds like an evil plan.

I want a good plan, one in which you don't die. And Jesus tells him, get behind me, Satan.

He says, you're trying to redefine what God has set up, his plan of redemption from all of the ages past, from eternity past, and you're not gonna get in the way of what God's doing.

And Peter was then, once Jesus did rise from the dead, though Peter had denied him three times the night of Jesus' trial, Jesus went back to him and three times asked him, Peter, do you love me? Do you love me more than the fish?

Do you love me more than the other disciples? Do you love, let me rephrase that real quick, do you love Jesus more than you love the disciples?

And Peter, three times, just as he had denied Jesus three times, then three times says, Jesus, you know that I love you.

And so Jesus has him be kind of that first, initial, main, most prominent speaker in Acts two, as we heard about many, many months ago now. And Peter spoke the gospel boldly.

We saw kind of his journey as he went through and preached to people and saw people saved. He preached in front of the Sanhedrin and the chief priests and stood with boldness.

We saw how he accepted Christ's call to go to the Gentiles and to see Cornelius and his family saved.

We saw in Acts 15, when there's a great debate about what role does the Old Testament law have with now this New Testament, this New Covenant that Jesus has made. And we saw that Peter says, hey, I'm giving my testimony that it was with Jesus.

It was Jesus alone. And that's the only reason that I got saved and it's how I've seen other people get saved was through Jesus alone. And so that's what I'm telling you all.

That's what we gotta stick with. It's not Jesus plus something else. It's Jesus alone.

So that's the story of Peter. When we come to the book of 2 Peter, it is right there at the end of his life and he'll even make a comment about that today that we'll see.

We're gonna be in chapter one and we're gonna look at verses one through 15, Lord willing. And this book appears to be written to somewhat of the same crowd as 1 Peter. 1 Peter is, 2 Peter isn't the sequel to 1 Peter, just so we're clear.

These are two separate letters, entirely different topics, different things that they're looking over. But 2 Peter appears to have possibly been to the same grouping of people.

These would be Gentile believers in kind of the Asia Minor region, modern day Turkey, and encouraging them that your faith in the Lord, it is certain, it is sure.

There are some false teachers that are coming into your churches, and they are spouting nonsense. They are saying things that go against the gospel. They are living lives that are opposed to the gospel.

And here is how I want you to think about your life, your walk with Christ, how you interact with it. Here are some of the objections that these false teachers are bringing up against Jesus. And here is how I want you to engage with them.

So, 2 Peter is a great little book that deals with real faith in us, that results in real faith in our actions, and then that results in real faith in our teaching.

And so, gonna look at this over the next, probably, it wouldn't surprise me if it was probably four or five days that we'll be going through this. But it starts off like this in 2 Peter 1, in verse number 1.

Simeon Peter, a servant and an apostle of Jesus Christ. He starts off by saying, yeah, so this is who it is. It's an apostle, but he says, I'm a servant.

I'm a, the word here is doulos. I'm a slave. I'm a slave and a messenger of Jesus Christ.

He says, I'm nobody special. Jesus is the one that's special. He says, to those who have received a faith equal to ours through the righteousness of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ.

He says, I don't have this great faith and all of you guys have a lesser faith because you didn't physically walk with Jesus. He says, you've got a faith that's just as good as mine because it's through Jesus's righteousness, not my own.

Verse number two, he says, may grace and peace be multiplied to you through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.

He says, as you know more and more about God, as you know more and more about Jesus, may it cause grace and peace to be multiplied in your life. Here, there's kind of the two greetings that are normal for this first century.

You would often say, hey, grace to you in the Greek world, it's charis, it's hey, may you have favor, may you have divine blessing and then peace. Shalom is the great classic greeting of the Jewish people.

So both for the Greek culture and for the Jewish culture, he says, may you have God's blessing and favor and peace in your life. How will that come? Will it just come by happenstance?

He says, no, no, the more you know about your God, the more you will realize how you've been blessed, the more peace you will feel in your life when you know who God is and what he has done for you.

Verse number three, his divine power has given us everything required for life and godliness through the knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. He says, you want to know how you need to live your life?

You want to know how to be godly?

His divine power, his grace, his ability has made it so that as you know him and you know that he has called you by his own glory, that he is wonderful and he invites you into that relationship and his own righteousness, he makes it so that you can

live and you can live godly. The Christian life is not something that is impossible to live with the help of our savior. With our savior, you are able to conquer sin.

With the help of our savior, you are able to go through incredible difficulties and trials. Don't despair. You are able through Christ to do what God has called you to do.

He says in verse four, by these, his glory and his goodness, he has given us very great and precious promises that through them you may share in the divine nature, escaping the corruption that is in the world because of evil desire.

God's promises make it so that you can partake in that image of God that he created you for. He wanted you to walk in relationship with him. He wanted you to walk in holiness.

He wanted you to walk into love and a care for other people, for the Lord, of following him. And in walking wisely in the world that he's given you, that you wouldn't squander resources, but that you would have that good life that he wants from you.

And in partaking in that divine nature, life in the way that God intended for us to live, it says we can escape the corruption that is in the world because of evil desire. There are two things vying for your life, for your actions.

The one is God's way, God's design, and the other is the corruption of evil and sin and this world and the devil that wants to drag you down so that you would not fulfill what God has created you for.

So, if we know that those two things are battling out, how do we follow God's way? Well, he says in verse number five this, for this very reason, so you can escape corruption, so you can partake in God's nature.

It says for this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith. Okay, we're talking about some medicines, we got some vitamins that we got to take, some supplements that will help us to be able to live life in the way that God wants us to.

Okay, well, what are those supplements? Well, he says supplement first your faith, so you have to have faith. That's the bottom line.

Hebrews chapter 11, I think it's verse number six. But without faith, it is impossible to please God. For he that comes to God must believe that he is, that he exists, and that he is a rewarder of those that diligently seek him.

Without faith, there is no relationship with Christ. Without faith, there is no experiencing his grace.

You can do all the things you want in the world, but if you don't believe in God, if you have not cast all of your eternal hopes and security on Jesus alone, then all the rest of this list is useless to you.

But he says, if you want to live God's way, supplement your faith with goodness. Goodness here is how you interact with other people, having just, hey, that's a good guy. Okay, well, how would you define that?

Would you define someone that is stingy, someone that is unkind, someone that is rude? Would you define that person as, oh man, that's a really good person? No, no, no, goodness manifests not in just your own self-righteousness.

Oh, he doesn't do a bunch of things, and so he's a really good guy. No, no, no, goodness is that expression that we have. It's Jesus' love and life and kindness and goodness being lived out of us, that we treat others how God has treated us.

So he says supplement your faith with goodness, goodness with knowledge. If you had to say, all right, what's more important, like a vibrant living out of your faith or a vibrant knowledge of who God is?

Peter says, okay, don't just pick one or the other. Pick one and the other. He says have a goodness.

You need to have faith in goodness in front of knowledge. If we're going by, here are the things that are most important and saying, okay, you absolutely have to have this. This is your foundation.

And you can build the other things on here that you do need. A toilet in a house is an important thing, or a shower in a house is an important thing.

But if you don't have the foundation, if you don't have the most important vital parts of the house first, it doesn't matter how nice of a bathroom you have. It doesn't matter how nice the shower or the toilet is.

It's going to be useless if you haven't put in the most basic, most foundational things first. So he says have faith, have goodness that you treat people in a way that God has treated you. And then he says add in knowledge.

People are sometimes scared of knowledge. They might know a bunch about sports, they might know a bunch about boats, they might know a bunch about politics, but then they're scared, they're nervous to learn things about the Bible.

But frankly, the knowledge of God, the knowledge of Jesus, the knowledge of how God has worked in our world, the knowledge of what he wants for our lives is such a worthwhile endeavor to dedicate your time and your attention to.

Add to your faith, supplement your faith with goodness, with knowledge, having a desire to know God and his word. If you have knowledge but you don't have goodness, if you have knowledge but you don't have faith, man, it's a useless knowledge.

As Paul would say in 1 Corinthians 13, you become like a clanging cymbal or banging gongs. It's just an annoying sound. He says, but if you know the Lord in addition to your faith and your goodness, what a wonderful thing it is.

Pursue knowledge, pursue knowing Jesus and his word more and more throughout your life. So supplement your faith with goodness, with knowledge, knowledge with self-control. Man, self-control is one of the hardest things in our life.

For some of us, we exercise self-control in some specific ways and circumstances, and it's easy to control certain aspects of our life, and it's really hard to control others.

I think even of what James says in James chapter 3, where he says, you know, we've got many areas in our life, but he says if anyone does not offend, cause people to stumble through the words that they speak, he says the same as a mature, a complete

person, and that person is going to be able to control every part of their body. We have to have self-control in the words that we say, the attitudes that we have, the perhaps food or drink or medicines that we take that we would not abuse any of

those things. Even in our relationships, like having self-control in how we manage our bodies, that we would say this belongs to God and I want to care for it. I think I might have mentioned this a few weeks back. If I hadn't, then forgive me.

Self-control is one of those things that I know as a pastor that I have to have. It's a fruit of the spirit here. It's one of those things that I have to supplement my faith with.

And so I don't want to get 20, 30 years down the line and go, man, I showed zero self-control in my 20s, and so now I'm not able physically to do many of the things that I would want to do in playing with my kids or eventually Lord willing playing

with my grandkids. So this year, I've tried to be cautious with my eating, with all sorts of stuff. I'm down 30 pounds through the year.

I'm thankful for that, but I want to keep on going, to have that self-control because it's something that's so vital. To be able to tell my body, no, you're not going to treat that person like that. You're not going to lash out in anger like that.

You're not going to just eat any of the food you want or eat any of the desserts that you want. You have to have a care for your body, and that goes for both the physical.

It also goes for the spiritual, how we treat others, what we put into our minds. We have self-control and say, yeah, like I might like that particular show, but I'm not going to watch hours and hours and hours of it on end and just waste my life.

I'm going to have some self-control. Verse number six, knowledge with self-control. Self-control with endurance.

That attitude that says I am not going to give up. I'm not putting in the towel on my walk with God. Yeah, not every day is sunny.

Not every day is wonderful. Not every person, not every believer that I interact with is going to make me like really, really want to keep on coming to church, but it's okay because I have endurance. I am sticking in this race no matter what.

He says self-control with endurance. That endurance that is built, as James 1 would tell us, through the testing of our faith. You want to endure in the Christian life, it will only come as we experience hardship.

So if you want to grow in your faith, part of growing in your faith is experiencing and adopting endurance that comes through hard times where you choose endurance. Endurance isn't just something that happens to you. It's not just a passive thing.

The normal interaction when we encounter hardships, when we encounter relational difficulties is to run from it. But endurance says, I'm going to keep on in this church. I'm going to keep on with not abandoning what God has for me and for my life.

So then he says endurance with godliness. And man, godliness is that characteristic of wanting to be like God in the good way as much as we can. That we'd say, okay, I know what the Lord is like.

He's gracious. He's full of compassion. He's slow to anger.

He is holy. He has treated us well. He hasn't treated us like how our sins demand that we be treated, but he has been gracious to us.

He is just. He does not excuse away sin, but he has a hatred for sin. May we have those traits in our life.

Verse number seven, godliness with brotherly affection. I'm not just going to tolerate people. I'm not just going to be coldly greeting of others.

I'm going to have a brotherly affection. Hey, you're my brother. You're my sister in Christ, and I'm going to treat you like a sibling.

It doesn't mean I always approve of everything you do, but even in my disagreements with you, even when you wrong me, I'm going to treat you like you're my family. I'm not going to treat you like some outsider. You're my family and I love you.

And then he says, in brotherly affection, with love, with charity, the word agape, it's that love that gives and gives and gives.

It's that covenant type love, like that chased that we talked about in the Old Testament, that covenant steadfast love that does not give up. Verse number eight, for if you possess these qualities, so let's count them up real quick.

We've got faith, goodness, knowledge, self-control, endurance, godliness, brotherly affection and love. So there are those eight qualities.

He says if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, if you keep growing in them, you're not going to have it perfect. You're not going to have perfect godliness all at once. You're not going to have perfect self-control all at once.

You're not going to have perfect faith immediately. He says you possess them in increasing measure. You ask God every day, God, help me to grow in this.

Right now, I'm struggling with my love. God, right now, I'm struggling with self-control. I'm struggling with wanting to give up.

Give me endurance. As we possess these qualities in increasing measure, it says they will keep you from being useless or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. You can know about Jesus in a way that is useless to you.

You can know about Jesus in a way that is unfruitful, that bears no benefit to you or to others. And man, there is so much of that in our world today.

There is so much of that oftentimes in my life, that though I know about what Jesus says about something, even though I know what Jesus says about evangelism or sharing my faith with those around me, I can have a useless knowledge of Jesus by not

pursuing God in these ways, by not partaking in God's nature. God is the one that is faithful. He is the one that knows that he is true to his word and he believes, he has belief.

You can look at Jesus, that he had faith that God would raise him from the dead. He prayed, he asked God for things and believed that God would answer. God is full of goodness.

He is the very definition of goodness. God is omniscient. He knows everything that he wants to know.

He is the perfect example of knowledge. Jesus is the greatest example of self-control, of even when he was hungry in the desert after 40 days and Satan tempts him, he has that self-control to say, no, I'm following God, I'm obeying God.

He had that endurance that though the cross was coming, though the beatings, though the sufferings were coming, he endured the cross despising the shame and is set down at the right hand of the throne on high, as Hebrews chapter 12 would put it.

He is the one that has all godliness. He is the perfect embodiment of all of God's qualities.

He is the one that has brotherly affection, that he has not viewed us as his slaves, but as Hebrews chapter 2 or 3 puts it, that he is not ashamed to call us his brothers and sisters.

And then he is the perfect embodiment of love, as we would read about in 1 John chapter 4. Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God, and everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth God.

He that loveth not does not know God, for God is love. And Jesus is the perfect embodiment of all of that. So let's partake in his nature, following him.

But then verse 9 tells us this. The person who lacks these things is blind and short-sighted. You can't see what God has for you.

You can't see what you're doing with your life if you do not have these things, if you're not pursuing them, if you're not pursuing living life like Jesus, if you're not pursuing his way.

This is blind and short-sighted, and has forgotten the cleansing from his past sins. He says, you're not walking in repentance. You're not pursuing Jesus.

You're not following him as Lord if you are not pursuing these things. So verse 10, Therefore, brothers and sisters, make every effort to confirm your calling an election, because if you do these things, you will never stumble.

As you pursue Jesus, you're never going to abandon him as you follow these things. It confirms your calling an election. It doesn't make you called.

It doesn't make God elect you, but it is that stamp that says, oh yeah, this is real in this person. And he says, you can do that through your actions, that you can prove both to yourself. Sometimes people wonder, am I saved?

I believe that Jesus is who he says he was. I believe that he's God. I believe he died for my sins, was buried, rose again, and I believe in him as Lord.

Well, how do I know? Well, 1 John and 2 Peter would say, as you live out that life, it's obvious. Oh yeah, Jesus is in me.

That I have these traits that are showing up in my life. Like I'm pursuing him, but I know me. And I wouldn't naturally do these things in and of myself.

This is me turning to God. This is me acknowledging him as my Lord. And it's obvious God is the one that is doing these things.

11, for in this way, entry into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ will be richly provided for you. He says, there is great reward coming in the coming kingdom as we pursue him. And then he closes with this thought.

Therefore, I will always remind you about these things, even though you know them and are established in the truth. He says, I'm not telling you something you don't know. I'm just reminding you.

He says, I think it's right. As long as I am in this bodily tent, this temporary living space, to wake you up with a reminder, since I know that I will soon lay aside my tent, as our Lord Jesus Christ has indeed made clear to me.

He says, Jesus says, let me know. I'm not long for this world right now. So I want to remind you of this basic, important, foundational thing for as long as I can.

Verse 15, and I will also make every effort so that you are able to recall these things at any time after my departure. He says this, you guys know these things. You know how important it is to follow Jesus, to pursue Jesus in this way.

He says, but I'm going to keep on reminding you until I'm gone, because this is the most important thing, knowing and following, embodying Jesus. Today, have you had questions about your salvation? Can I encourage you follow what Peter here says?

He says, pursue Jesus, pursue his character, and it will make it so that you do not forget that you were cleansed from your past sins.

He says, when you do these things, it's just that confirmation of your calling an election by God that you go, oh yeah, I guess I am saved. Like there are these things that I'm pursuing that it doesn't go along with my flesh.

My flesh wants to be angry. My flesh wants to quit. My flesh wants to disobey, to not have self-control.

And yet, I'm doing these things because I believe in Jesus and that belief is resulting in action. It's that faith that works that James Chapter 2 talks about.

And as we do that, we find God's grace and his comfort, his peace through realizing, oh, I see more and more clearly how perfect Jesus is, how sinful I am and how I am pursuing him because I don't want to be the old me anymore.

I'm pursuing Jesus, following him, knowing him, relying on his grace in my life.

Hope that today would be an encouragement to you that you would seek to supplement your faith, add in those medicines of those traits of Jesus that we so desperately need in our life.

Tomorrow, we're going to look at some wonderful things with the Word of God and looking forward to that time together. Thanks for tuning in.