Introducing Peter's Second Letter 2 Peter 1:1-2

Every time February rolls around I am filled with certain emotions.

Don McLean in his famous song, American Pie, wrote that February made me shiver. For me,

February makes me sentimental because it's the month that I started here. My first Sunday as your pastor was

February 12, 2017. Most of the people in this room were not here on that Sunday.

My daughter, Alethea, was only three and a half months old. And a few of you can remember the chubby baby that she was.

Isaiah was two years away from being born. It's hard to imagine this church without him. He was born on March 13, 2019.

As we think about that time, February 2017, it was a different world, wasn't it?

It feels like about 15 years ago. Think of how much the world has changed since February of 2017.

And the reason it's changed is because of what happened in March of 2020. About four years ago, in March of 2020,

COVID descended on the world. And the world changed. Our nation changed.

And my view and the view of many others changed concerning the broader American Evangelical Church.

As I look back at it, 2017 was a time of innocent ignorance.

We didn't know much of what was going on, but now we stand here seven years later and many things have come to light.

So we should view the world differently because that's where the facts have taken us. The world has changed since that time.

But what has not changed is what I came here to do seven years ago. When I took the call to be the pastor at Eureka Baptist Church, I came here to unapologetically preach the

Word of God. My goal then and my goal now has been to preach the Bible and to apply the

Bible to our lives so that you and I are able to live a life glorifying to the

Lord. When I preached that first Sunday on February 12, 2017, it was a sermon explaining why

I preached the Bible. When the Bible is preached, people are saved.

People are sanctified, which means they grow in holiness. And we as a church are united in the love and unity that comes when

Christ is our foundation. So this is what we have done over the last seven years.

We have gone through Philippians. We did a sermon series on the attributes of God.

We journeyed through Genesis. We started Matthew and then

COVID hit and I actually did a sermon series, a 12 -Sunday sermon series on the end times.

And then once that was over, we resumed Matthew and we finished that last spring. Late spring last year, we did a sermon series on the seven churches of Revelation and most recently, 1

Peter. And now this morning, we start a new journey, Peter's second letter.

And this is one that will take only a few months. There's only three chapters in 2

Peter. But while it is a short letter, it is an incredibly rich one.

Personally, it's one of my favorite books of the Bible. I used to be in Bible quizzing and this was one of the letters that I memorized by heart, 2

Peter. So we are going to journey through this over the next couple of months.

So at this time, I encourage you to turn in a Bible with me to 2 Peter. And if you don't have a

Bible, we do have those red Bibles. It's in the back part of your Bible. And this sermon is titled, this is a really boring title by the way, but I'll just say it,

Introducing Peter's Second Letter. We are going to begin by reading Peter's introduction in the first two verses and then

I am going to give an overview to prepare us to go through this letter.

2 Peter 1, verses 1 and 2. Simeon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who have obtained a faith of equal standing with ours, by the righteousness of our

God and Savior, Jesus Christ, may grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our

Lord. I am going to read this again. Simeon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who have obtained a faith of equal standing with ours, by the righteousness of our

God and Savior, Jesus Christ, may grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our

Lord. Here is our big idea. Prepare yourself to see the glory of God in Peter's second letter.

Prepare yourself to see the glory of God in Peter's second letter. And in your outline, for those who have an outline before you, the first space there, the first heading is

Author. Now you might be thinking, what a waste of time. We just read who the author is.

But let's go through this anyway. And there is actually a little bit of controversy, but I will address that in a little bit. There is a reason this letter is called 2

Peter. It was written by the apostle Peter.

And typically what we see in the New Testament, typically these letters are named after the recipients of the letters.

Think about Timothy. Paul wrote Timothy, but he wrote it to Timothy. So it is called 1 and 2

Timothy. Paul wrote to the churches in Thessalonica. So it is called 1 and 2

Thessalonians. He wrote to the churches in Galatia. So it is called Galatians. What is interesting about letters like 1 and 2

Peter and 1 and 2 and 3 John is that it is actually named after the one who wrote it. Like the

Gospels. Matthew wrote the Gospel of Matthew. So it is kind of interesting how that works.

But 2 Peter is called 2 Peter because Peter is the one who wrote it. What we spent the last 8 plus months going through is the letter of 1

Peter. In 1 Peter 1 .1, Peter said that he is the author of that letter.

There he started the letter by saying, Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ. We learn who the author of 2

Peter is right from the get -go. As we just read in 2 Peter 1 .1, Peter writes, Simeon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ.

Now the word Simeon, that is kind of a word we don't see very often, a name we don't see very often in the New Testament.

Simeon is the Hebrew version of his original name that we see in the Gospels, Simon, which is

Greek. When we went through Matthew, we learned in Matthew 16 .18

that Jesus gave Simon a new name, Peter. Peter means, anybody know?

Rock. What did Jesus say to Peter? Remember that? You are

Peter, and on this rock I will build my church. And this is a big controversial, this might be the most controversial verse in the entire

Bible because it's the verse from which Roman Catholics get the

Pope. The church is built on Peter, right? It says it right there, but that's not what Jesus is saying.

What he's saying is, the church is built on the apostles. And specifically, what about the apostles?

They're teaching. So that's what he means in Matthew 16 .18. And Peter was kind of the head of the apostles,

I think that's fair to say, but he didn't have any extra authority than they had. It's built on the doctrine of the apostles and the foundation, which is

Jesus Christ. Because that's what that means. So Simon Peter identifies himself as the author of this letter.

We also know this because of what he writes in 2 Peter 3 .1. There he writes,

This is now the second letter that I am writing to you, beloved. In both of them

I am stirring up your sincere mind by way of reminder. So he tells us, he wrote a letter before this, and we know what that letter is.

That letter is 1 Peter, and this is 2 Peter. In chapter 1, verse 14, he refers to the prediction of his death that Jesus predicted in John 21, verses 15 through 19, that we read this morning.

He also tells us in chapter 1, verses 16 through 18, that he was at the Mount of Transfiguration, an event described where Peter, James, and John saw the radiance of the glory of Christ on that mountain.

This event was described in three gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the Mount of Transfiguration. Now you might think that given this strong evidence, no one would question the reality that Peter wrote this letter.

But not surprisingly, because of the sinful hearts of man, some have said that Peter didn't write this letter.

I remember when I was in seminary, I wrote a paper on the authorship of 2 Peter. I studied liberal scholars who said that someone different wrote this letter because the

Greek is more advanced in a second letter than in the first. We might wonder, why would someone write a letter in another's name?

It is true that in ancient times, people would do this. Another way to say this is that one wrote in a pseudonym.

This can be seen in the Apostle Paul's letters to the church in Thessalonica, where someone wrote a letter to them in Paul's name, and the people there were troubled, and Paul had to write two letters saying that he didn't write those letters that were identified as him.

So someone forged it. Someone wrote, saying, I'm Paul, but it actually wasn't Paul who wrote it.

And they could tell it wasn't Paul, because this sounds different than what I heard before. The letters that Paul wrote in response to those false letters are the letters of 1 and 2

Thessalonians. So what some scholars are saying is that someone else wrote the letter, but wrote in Peter's name.

Now, no conservative biblical scholar says such a thing. It is those with an agenda who do.

But these liberal scholars shouldn't be given the time of day. Peter writes in the first verse that he is writing this letter, and in chapter 3, verse 1, he says, this is my second letter.

And I wish these evil people would just get a secular job instead of trying to abuse the word of God.

This is one of the great problems of academia. In order for people to make a name for oneself, they have to come up with a cutting -edge idea, and those saying that someone else wrote 2

Peter are doing exactly that. So based on the evidence we find in 2

Peter, it's clear that the apostle Peter wrote the letter of 2 Peter. Now, whenever a letter is written, it is written to someone.

So this brings us to the second heading. Recipients. It's written to a person, a church, or lots of churches.

In Peter's first letter, he tells us right at the beginning the group of people to whom he was writing.

In 1 Peter 1 .1, he tells us that he wrote to those who are the elect exiles of the dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia.

What I explained in our journey through 1 Peter is that these were all churches located in Asia Minor in what is modern -day

Turkey. Now, in 2 Peter, the apostle Peter doesn't specify a specific group like he did in the first letter, but he makes it general.

In 2 Peter 1 .1, he says that he's writing to those who have obtained a faith of equal standing with ours by the righteousness of our

God and Savior, Jesus Christ. So what we can conclude is that Peter is writing broadly to Christians and he desired this letter to get circulated throughout the

Roman world. Even his first letter, which was written to a regional group of churches, he would have desired it to be circulated as well.

This is what happened with New Testament letters. In all the books of the New Testament, they were sometimes written to a small number, even an individual.

Like I mentioned, Timothy, written to one person. But the goal, the design, was that these letters would be spread all throughout the

Roman Empire so that they would be read, so that the church would benefit from what was written in it.

This is scripture. This is meant to be read by everyone. And it's amazing to think that here we are, 2 ,000 years later, reading this letter that was written originally to a certain group of people, but God, of course, designed it that it would be written to every single

Christian down through history. Now back then, they didn't have the

Internet, of course, so all the letters would need to be hand -delivered and then copied down wherever they went.

This was the task of Silvanus, as we saw in 1 Peter 5 .12. There, Peter recognized him as a faithful brother who was charged with the task of hand -delivering the letter.

So in the case of 2 Peter, Peter is writing this important letter to Christians broadly, hoping that all will be able to read it.

So the recipients, again, is a general body of Christians living at this time.

But I want to emphasize this. This letter is very much written to us.

That's the way God designed it. It comes from the Holy Spirit. All scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for everyone that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work.

So it is meant for every single person. So now we get to the third heading. The third heading is

Date. When was this written? Peter's first letter was written in about 64 to 65

A .D. after the city of Rome had burned. His second letter was written not long after that.

This was the time in history when the emperor Nero persecuted Christians.

There was a Roman historian, Tacitus, who described Nero's persecution of the

Christians. Nero started the fire in Rome but did not take responsibility for it.

Instead, he blamed the people he liked the least, which were the Christians. Leading to the martyrdom of many followers of Christ, Nero died in 68

A .D., and church history records that the apostle Peter died during the great persecution inflicted by Nero.

So putting all this together, Peter wrote this letter not long before his death in 67 and 68

A .D. Now we get to the purpose, which is why was this letter written in the first place?

As it relates to the purpose, both 1 and 2 Peter have similarities, but there are also clear differences.

Here's what one author wrote concerning the difference between Peter's first letter and his second letter. 1

Peter was written to help suffering Christians. 2 Peter was written to expose false teachers.

One letter teaches that the second coming is near, 1 Peter, and one deals with its delay, 2

Peter. 1 Peter, ministering especially to suffering Christians, focuses on the imminency, the closeness of Christ's return as a means of encouraging the

Christians. 2 Peter, dealing with scoffers, emphasizes the reasons why that imminent return of Christ has not yet occurred.

So God has this design, He has this plan. Christ is coming back.

His return is coming, and there is an imminency. We should live with this imminency. He is coming back, but the

Bible also teaches us in the New Testament that there is a delay to Christ's return. And in that delay,

Christians need to be prepared to live in that environment. So 2

Peter, there's actually an entire chapter written to addressing false teachers.

As one author writes, this book is the most graphic and penetrating expose of false teachers in Scripture, comparable only to Jude.

If you read the letter of Jude, it's very similar to some of 2 Peter. We might say this sounds like our world.

We live in the midst of a broader church where a false gospel is preached in many places, where a false

Jesus is presented, and where hard truths in Scripture are avoided. Anybody see the

He Gets Us campaign during the Super Bowl? They just take portions of the

Bible they like and don't address the portions they don't like. That's what false teachers do.

Okay, we like this part, we don't like this part. You know a true teacher when they just teach the whole

Bible in its fullness. And the glory of God, by the way, is missed when we don't teach the

Word of God in its fullness. And people are not helped unless we teach the Word of God in its fullness.

Because if we just, you know, a little truth there, it actually ends up being falsehood in the end.

So this letter will be relevant to us as we live in 2024

America. Because remember, the goal of preaching the Bible is to proclaim what

God has said and to apply it to the time in which we live. So that's what we're going to do. Just as we do with any other book we go through, we're going to do that with 2

Peter. Okay, now we get to the themes. What are the themes of 2 Peter?

The biggest theme is the one I just stated. Believers are to understand that at whatever time they live in, false teachers will be in the church and we should not be naive to this reality.

We need to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. I was talking to a guy a while back who said one of the great problems with the church is that the church is innocent as doves, but they're not wise as serpents.

We need to be discerning. And it doesn't mean we're looking for problems. I think people can go overboard with that sometimes.

But we do need to be discerning. What is true, healthy, biblical Christianity? And what is a false version of it?

Because they abound in our world and we should not be naive to that.

What we will see in this letter is that Peter doesn't address a specific heresy.

In other letters, in the New Testament, he does specify heresies. For example, we're going through Galatians right now in Sunday school.

He addresses the Judaizer heresy, which said that, oh yeah, Christ is our Savior, but we also have to earn our way to heaven.

Well, that's heresy. And Galatians addresses that. There's certain books like the letter of 1

John that addresses the Gnostic heresy, that there was this secret knowledge that matter is evil.

Anything that's physical is evil. So Christ came to deliver us from the physical world so that we can enter the spiritual realm.

That was Gnostic teaching. And certain people had this special knowledge. And the

New Testament debunks that teaching and says, no, that is false. Jesus came in a body.

He died in a body. He rose in a body. And he always will have a body. And so will we when we are resurrected and reign with him.

So there are specific heresies addressed in the New Testament. But Peter doesn't, it's interesting, he doesn't really address a specific heresy.

But you know what he focuses on? He focuses on their character. The character of false teachers.

Because if someone is teaching something that is out of line with scripture, something that is false, you better believe it.

Their character is going to be off. The two go hand in hand. Jesus told us that in Matthew 7.

You will recognize them by what? Their fruits. So this is where Peter's main focus is.

And he says this in 2 Peter 2. But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the

Master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction. But Peter, while mentioning heresies in general, gets specific in the area, as I said, of character.

In chapter 2 verses 13 -14, they are blots and blemishes, reveling in their deceptions while they feast with you.

They have eyes full of adultery insatiable for sin.

They entice unsteady souls. They have hearts trained in greed, accursed children.

They get into religion for all the wrong reasons. It's not to build up the body of Christ.

It's not to get people saved. It's for their own agenda. And he goes after their character.

They're greedy. Their eyes full of adultery. They prey on people. And this happens.

It happens far too often, sadly. Peter also has other themes in this letter besides addressing false teaching.

Right at the beginning of the letter, he encourages his readers to grow in their walk with the Lord. As he writes in 2

Peter 1 verse 5, we're going to see this next Sunday. Make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self -control, and self -control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness.

So we see here, he expects his readers to be disciplined in growing in the faith.

God doesn't just put us here just to leave us here, and, you know, okay, I did that. I put my trust in Christ. I'm good.

I'm going to live life however I want. No. That's not what Scripture teaches. That's not what 2

Peter teaches, and we're going to see that very clearly. The Christian life is to be one of discipline in following his will, his holy will.

Another theme is that he encourages believers to have assurance of one's salvation. I heard this recently from someone who said they were alarmed that someone said we should examine our salvation.

And as I heard that, I'm like, wait, the Bible says the opposite of that. It says that we should examine our salvation.

We should examine to see whether we are truly saved. Now, that doesn't mean that we're always doubting, but there should be this legitimate question we ask ourselves at some point in our journey.

Am I truly saved? And if we pass the test, well, great. And then you move on, and you shouldn't have those doubts anymore.

But we should ask that question. Scripture teaches us that. Listen to this. 2 Peter 1 .10

Be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election. So Peter helpfully instructs us how we can be sure that we are saved.

The Lord doesn't want us to doubt our salvation. So this is something that will be helpful for us to look at in this letter.

Another theme is that Peter covers an important topic of the doctrine of Scripture.

And the reality that his writing has the same authority as the

Old Testament. I mean, think about that. They're writing these letters. They're writing these letters to different groups, to different people, to multiple churches.

And these letters are not just your ordinary letter. These letters, these books, are inspired by the

Holy Spirit. They are the Word of God. It's truly remarkable.

And Peter addresses that in 2 Peter, in a couple places.

This is shown in 2 Peter 1, verses 13 -21. And at the very end of the letter, in 2 Peter 3, verses 14 -18.

We looked at that in Sunday School this morning. Paul was this great persecutor of the church.

He has this dramatic conversion on the road to Damascus. And then he comes back and they're like, who is this guy?

He used to persecute Christians and now he's proclaiming Christ. And remarkably, the

Lord Jesus Christ made Paul an apostle who has the authority to write things that are the

Word of God. It's truly incredible to think about that. So every word in the

Bible we will see is inspired, is the Word of God from Genesis to the end of Revelation.

Another theme he discusses is the reason why Christ's return is delayed. He writes this in chapter 3, verses 1 -13.

I already mentioned that there is a focus on the delay of Christ in this letter. The delay of His return, that is.

The word tarry, by the way, sometimes we sing that in the song, Come Thou Fount. Come now

Lord, no longer tarry. Take my ransomed soul away. The word tarry means delay.

Lord, no longer delay. That's a good prayer to have. Lord, do not delay your return. We want you to come back. But it's a reality.

He does delay His return. And in light of that, how are we supposed to live?

And then towards the end of the letter, he covers a very sobering topic, and that's the end of the universe.

This universe that we live in is disposable, which means that it's on borrowed time.

What the end of the Bible says is that God is going to destroy this, the heavens and the earth, and He's going to create a new one where anybody who is a genuine follower of Jesus Christ will dwell with Him as He reigns.

And Peter addresses that issue, that this place will be blown up.

And the old joke is, we do believe in global warming. It's going to get hot. The whole place is going to explode in the end, but just in a little bit different way than our culture says it.

So the universe we live in is disposable, and he covers that. So we see all of these different themes that come out in this letter.

So it's a short letter, but he covers a lot of ground, and so I look forward to looking at that with you in the coming weeks and months.

Lord willing, right? Because we never know what the future holds, but that is our plan.

So as we conclude here, over the next few months, we will see these themes that are of utmost importance that we take in.

And as we do this, we will do what the last verse of this letter commands us to do.

The last verse says this, 2 Peter 3 .18, Grow in the grace and knowledge of our

Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Grow in the grace and knowledge of our

Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. I don't even need to look at the Bible, because all I have to do is look past Eric at that back wall, because that's the verse on our wall.

It says it right there. We also have it on the wall in our Madison building. If anybody asks you, what is the purpose of Eureka Baptist Church?

That's what it is. We have a mission statement. And I don't really like mission statements, by the way, because it sounds too business -y.

But if it's a good one, that's fine. And here's ours. We are here to grow in Christ together.

To grow in Christ together. We want to be a growing church, which means we want to see people come to faith in Christ.

We want to see people grow in their walk with the Lord. That's why we exist as a church.

That's why we're here. And if we're not doing that, we're going against the very reason we are here.

So we are here to grow in Christ together, which means being better husbands, being better wives, being better parents, being better neighbors.

I mean, right down the list of all the things we're supposed to do as Christians. Sharing the Gospel with unbelievers.

Delighting in God more. Fighting false teaching more. I mean, all the things that we're called to do as Christians.

That is why we are here. To be those kind of Christians who fully follow the

Lord Jesus Christ. So as we have seen this morning, our big idea, prepare yourself to see the glory of God in Peter's second letter.

Because that's what we will see in this letter. We will see the glory of God. And we will see how we glorify

Him in our lives. So next Sunday, we will jump in to the body of this letter.

And I can't wait to jump in because he starts out with a bang in verse 3.

So at this time, let's bow our heads in prayer. Father in Heaven, as we come before you right now, we say thank you for this opportunity to sit under the preaching of the

Word and Lord, even as I preach, I sit under the preaching of the Word. My words hold no value unless my words are what you have already spoken.

So as we go through this letter, Lord, may my words as I preach be the words that you have spoken. And may we as a church experience what 2

Peter 3 .18 says. May we grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

May we each take, individually take a step of faith as we go through this journey.

And we as a church as well. So we ask for your help as we start this Lord willing next