Sunday Sermon: His Great and Precious Promises (2 Peter 1:1-4)

The Apostolic Greeting and the Need for Orthodox Teaching

You are listening to the teaching ministry of Gabriel Hughes. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday on this podcast we feature 20 minutes of Bible study through a New Testament book. On Thursday is a study in the Old Testament and then we answer questions from the listeners on Friday.

Each Sunday we are pleased to share our sermon series. Here's Pastor Gabe.

2 Peter 1:1-4 and the Righteousness of Christ

Second Peter chapter 1. We're going to read through verse 4. That's as far as we'll get today. Second Peter 1 starting in verse 1. I'm reading from the English Standard Version. 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. His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness through the knowledge of Him who called us to His own glory and excellence, by which He has granted to us His precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.

Let us pray. Heavenly Father, as we look at this word today, I pray that we are reminded of Your great promises, and they are indeed sweet to our ears. They are refreshment to our hearts. They are the assurance of this faith that we have, knowing that everlasting life awaits for us in glory, and that through these precious promises given to us in Christ Jesus our Lord, we have faith with God, fellowship with God even now.

Guide us in these truths as we look at this text this morning. It's in Jesus' name we pray, and all God's people said, Amen. So just to quickly review what we looked at last week, I had it requested of me, could I do kind of a handout, do something on paper and be able to hand it out.

I hope you understand I was really busy this past week, so I don't have anything like that prepared, but I'll try to talk slower. Also, the reason I'm wearing this mic, I've arranged with Jeremy to have this recorded, and so later in the afternoon I'm going to upload it to the podcast, and if you don't know how to get to the podcast, visit with me afterward.

I have business cards, I didn't bring them in here with me, but I've got them in the office, but they've got the address for the podcast on there and everything. If there's something you missed, you want to be able to go back, write it down again, it'll get on there later this afternoon, and especially as we're hitting the summertime and people are going to be traveling, you want to keep up with what we're doing in Second Peter.

We are keeping a record of all of this. So let me do a quick review of what we looked at last week. We had this very brief introduction, Simon Peter introducing himself as Simeon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, and as I had clarified with you, there is a number of liberal scholars out there that want to say that Peter was not the author of Second Peter, but we know from church history that this is a fairly new phenomenon for somebody to have denied the authorship of this particular letter.

If we're going to say that Peter was not the author of this letter, then we would be saying the Bible is lying, for it is very clear and evident from the first sentence that Peter is the author, and 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.".

Now it's interesting to see it phrased that way. "...to those who have obtained a faith of equal standing with ours by the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ.". This is one of the reasons why orthodox statements of faith are so important.

As Pastor Tom kind of shared this morning about the new president of the Southern Baptist Convention was elected, and then we find that he doesn't have an orthodox statement of faith on his church's website.

To have a statement of faith that is grounded in historical biblical orthodoxy, and when I mean historical, I mean it's what we see through the history of the church. This isn't something that was made up at some point in time, but you don't see that consistently through good, solid biblical teaching over the 2 ,000 year history of the church.

So it's not only orthodox in that it's right teaching that comes from the Bible, but the church has held fast to that sound teaching, that orthodoxy, and we see that expressed in what we refer to as orthodox statements of faith.

So in case that word is not very common to you, orthodox very simply means right teaching. Orthopraxy is a word that we use that means right practice. So you have good orthodoxy, you have good, solid, right teaching grounded in the Word of God, and then the practice of that right teaching is what we refer to as orthopraxy.

We must not only have good orthodoxy, but then good orthopraxy that flows out from that sound teaching of the faith. So that's why we value those statements of faith that have come through the history of the church, and we're talking about, as Tom mentioned, even sound orthodox statements of faith.

There are some bad statements that have come out even in the history of the church, but we're holding fast to those things that are right and true that summarize. This is how a statement of faith is very valuable.

It summarizes what we believe about the Bible. The Bible is over 750 ,000 words. So how do you summarize what it is that you believe that the Bible says? That's what we have through things like confessions and catechism, summarizing those things that we believe.

So Peter here is even stating here with those who are receiving this letter that we're writing to those who have the same faith that we have, a faith of equal standing with ours by the righteousness of God.

This is coming from an apostle. So Peter is saying, just because I'm an apostle doesn't mean I have a greater faith than you have. We have the same faith. We believe in the same Lord. We've received the same baptism.

We have the same God and father of us all who is over all and through all and in all. That's how Paul summarized it in Ephesians chapter four. So Peter saying that to those who are receiving this letter, we have a faith of equal standing.

Every single one of us who are in Christ Jesus, our fellow heirs of his glorious kingdom. And to all who receive him, to all who believe on his name, he has given the right to be called the children of God.

And so we are. That's out of first John three, one. So we have obtained this faith of equal standing by the righteousness of our God and savior Jesus Christ. It is not by our righteousness that we have received this faith, but it is by the righteousness of Christ and it is by the grace of God.

Grace, Faith, and the Knowledge of God

So he goes on to say, verse two, may grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. How is it that we have faith in Jesus Christ? It comes by the knowledge of God.

It is by the grace of God. As you know, Ephesians two, eight and nine, it is by grace. You are saved through faith and this is not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not a result of work so that no man may boast.

So it is by the grace of God that we receive this, but it certainly comes by knowledge. For as it says in Romans 10, 17, faith comes by hearing and hearing through the word of Christ. So you've come to a knowledge of your sin and you have come to a knowledge of your need for a savior by the gospel that was proclaimed to you.

This is a knowledge that has been shared beginning, as Paul talks about in, well Paul, the author of Hebrews talks about in Hebrews chapter two, it was professed first by angels. You have the proclamation of angels that came announcing the good news of the birth of the savior.

And then it has been entrusted to those apostles that Jesus sent out that they would bear witness to the things that they saw and heard, put faith in the Lord Jesus Christ who died for us on the cross for our sins and rose again for our justification so that all who believe in him, we are forgiven our sins and we have everlasting life.

We have received this knowledge through the sharing of the gospel that we would repent of our sins and put faith in Jesus and be saved. So Peter says, may grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of this, in the knowledge of God that has come to you through the preaching of the gospel of Jesus our Lord.

So then we get to this next part in verse three, concentrating today mostly on verses three and four, where Peter says his divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness.

Now the interesting thing about this in the NASB, if you're reading the new American standard, you'll notice that from that greeting, verses one and two and verse three, the translators there have not broken up the sentence.

It's still one continuous sentence. So looking at it from the NASB, verse two says, grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord, seeing that his divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness.

So we're just continuing the thought, like Peter's not even letting up. If you were to have read this in the original Greek, it would look more like kind of that continuation that we see there in the NASB than the breakup that you see in the English standard version.

So Peter just kind of flowing right into, from the grace and peace that we have from our God, he has, by his divine power, granted to us all things that pertain to life and to godliness. By God's divine power, he has given to us everything that we need.

Everything we need for life, everything that we need to grow in godliness. Now what is godliness? Godliness is very simply becoming like God. Now when, sometimes when we say that, we get a little timid about it though.

Because it's like, oh hang on, wasn't that what Satan said in the garden though? Like he's telling Eve, well God doesn't want you to eat the fruit because he knows that when you eat it, you'll become like God.

So aren't we supposed to avoid that? We're supposed to avoid becoming like God? No we are supposed to become like God. Now that does not come by our own ability. That's by the grace of God that he does that for us.

Again, by his righteousness. By the righteousness of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ. We are being grown in godliness. Now we won't become God. That's not what we mean by desiring to become like God.

The Apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 11 .1, Be imitators of me because I am of Christ. So we want to become like Christ, who should we imitate? We should imitate other people who want to become like Christ.

And the greatest models that we have from the very beginning of Christ's likeness, after Christ, are going to be the Apostles. So if we desire to be like our Lord and Savior, we look at what they modeled.

We look at what they did in Acts. We look at what Paul wrote in his epistles, what Peter is writing here. And we desire to have the godliness that they had because we want to be like our God. We desire to be like God.

We know that the only way you can stand in the presence of God is to have the perfection of God. A couple of weeks ago, I preached from Matthew 5, verse 48, where it says there, Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

It's the only way we're ever going to have fellowship with God is if we have the perfection of God. Now, of course, we can't attain that. As sinful, wretched human beings, as imperfect as we are, as deserving of the wrath of God as we are, we are never going to attain that perfection.

We needed a substitute. We needed somebody who, by His grace, was going to give us the perfection of God. And that's what we have through Jesus Christ. Now, having received His righteousness doesn't mean we are fully righteous in the presence of God.

As a preacher, I remember saying to me years ago when I was trying to understand justification and sanctification. So justified, where we stand before God, is just. Sanctified, we stand before God. Or we're being made holy in the presence of God.

So I'm trying to understand those two concepts. See, you can tell how much I'm struggling with them already. And so this preacher said to me, When you came to Christ, you were completely justified. But you are not yet fully sanctified.

So we stand before God justified. We're declared innocent. Our sins have been forgiven. We've been washed clean by the blood of the Lamb. But we've not yet attained that holy perfection that we will have when we stand in the presence of God.

And that is something that God is working in our hearts even as we are. Even as we are right now. As you're sitting under the teaching of the Word of God, as you're hearing this in sermons, as you're hearing this in Bible classes, maybe you listen to it on podcasts or things like this, when you hear God's Word proclaimed to you and you desire to conform your thinking with Christ and you want to be like Jesus, sanctification is being grown in you.

You're growing in holiness. Your mind is changing. You're going from being less like the world to being more like Christ. And so this is that sanctification that is being worked out in us as we continue to live in this life, as we live in this present world.

And it's by God's divine power that this transformation is happening. So it wasn't that you came to faith and then God just left you like, okay, there you go. Good job for you. You're converted. I changed you around.

Now you're on your own. Grow in holiness and in righteousness. Praise God we don't worship like a deism God, where God just sets everything in motion and then he just takes his hands off of it and walks away.

He's with us continually. His promise to the disciples at the very end of Matthew, the closing promise that we have there in Matthew chapter 28 is, Lo, I am with you always even to the end of the earth.

Even to the end of the age. He says that to his disciples there and don't we receive that as a precious and very great promise even in our present. And so it is through his divine power that he is growing in us this godliness.

God is not separated from us. He is with us. All of us who are followers of Jesus Christ, we have the Holy Spirit living within us. That's a very precious and great promise that God has given to us. As it says in Philippians 1 .6, I am confident of this very thing, that he who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it at the day of Christ.

And later on in Philippians chapter 2, for it is God who works in you both to will and to work for his good pleasure. It's all by the wonderful working of God. And so it is by his divine power this transformation has occurred and is occurring.

And that he is granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness. How we live, how we grow to become more like our God. Through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence.

The Knowledge of God Through His Word and the Divine Nature

So here we come back again to knowing God. And how do we know God? We know him because of what the Bible says. What his word says. We don't know him by walking around in nature. We can know things about God.

We know of the existence of God. Even unbelievers know of the existence of God. According to what is said to us in Romans 1, 18 through 20. It's clearly seen in all that has been made. Not just the existence of God, but his eternal power and divine nature.

So even unbelievers can know the eternal power of God and his nature as divine through the things that have been made. But you can't know God that way. You don't come to a relationship with God that way.

You come to a relational fellowship with God through the teaching of his word. Because it's when we read the scripture that we hear the voice of God. As my friend Justin Peters has said, if you ever want to hear God speak to you, read the Bible.

If you ever want to hear God speak to you out loud, read the Bible out loud. That's how we hear the voice of God. And then how do we talk to God? Through prayer, right? We talked about that in the sermon this morning.

When we pray, we're talking to God. When we read the word, God is talking to us. And it is through what he teaches us in his word in the Bible that he grants to us his precious and very great promises so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature.

What does that mean, partakers of the divine nature? Well, once again, it's those things that pertain to life and godliness. Growing in godliness, becoming more like Christ, becoming more like God, that is being a partaker of the divine nature.

Having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire. If you're reading out of the NASB, I think the LSB reads it this way, the corruption that is in the world because of lust.

Oftentimes when we see lust, we think of that as being a sexual fulfillment. Like we're going after some sort of sexual immorality. That's what we see with the word lust. It's one of the reasons why I think the ESV translators may have leaned to the side of saying sinful desire rather than lust.

But the lust we're talking about here is not necessarily sexual. It's just the desire of the things of the world. As it says in 1 John 2 .16, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.

These are the things that are worldly, that keep us from God. So rather than going after the things of the world, we desire to go after the things of God. And we find that we are completely satisfied in all the promises that God has given to us.

The First and Last Promises of Scripture

Let's consider some examples of these promises. I've already given a few. Like, for example, Matthew 28. I am with you always to the very end of the age. That's a wonderful precious promise of God. And I was listening to Martin Lloyd-Jones teach on 2 Peter.

And he said that he even divides up the promises of God into two categories. There's the immediate and the ultimate. So there's an immediate promise that we get, and there's ultimate promises. What would immediate promises be?

Immediate promises would be things that we receive from God right now. And I was fascinated that one of those examples that Lloyd-Jones gave was the Lord's table. The Lord's table is one of those immediate promises that we get.

God is with us, supping with us at this table, when we partake of these symbols of His body that has been broken for us, and His blood that is symbolized in the cup, the blood that was spilled for the forgiveness of sins.

When we partake in that, all the church together, we're partaking in an immediate promise. Your sins are forgiven now. But in the Lord's table, there's also an ultimate promise. You think of that? For it was when Jesus instituted this custom with His disciples that He said to His disciples, I will not drink of this vine with you again until I drink it with you in my Father's kingdom.

And so even through this table, we have right now, it is given to us that our sins are forgiven. And we also have in this table an ultimate promise that we're going to sit and dine with our Lord forever in glory.

There's an immediate promise, and there is an ultimate promise there as well. And I was thinking about this last night. I was like, what's the first promise that we're given in the Bible? And what's the last promise that we're given?

Let's start with the first one. Can anybody have any idea? What is the first promise that's given to us in Scripture? Anybody want to guess? That's exactly the verse, yes. Genesis 3 .15. Let's go look at it together.

So flip all the way to the very beginning. It's easy to find. You won't get lost. Genesis 3 .15. I'll get lost if my pages stick together like this. So this is, of course, in Genesis 3, we read about the fall of man, where Adam and Eve did not feel satisfied being partakers in the divine nature and all that God had given them there in the perfection of the garden.

They were not satisfied. So Eve was tempted by the serpent to eat the fruit that God told them not to eat. And she gave some to her husband there, and he ate. And I'm often asked, I mean, I've fielded this question pretty much my entire pastorate.

I've had people ask me, why did God even make that tree? Why did he even put it there? If it meant that Adam and Eve were going to eat from it, and they were going to sin, and all of mankind was going to fall.

Now, recognize that the Garden of Eden was a perfect paradise, and in that perfection, which God looks at and calls very good, he still gives Adam and Eve law, a law to follow, so that we may know that perfection comes with obeying God.

To enjoy the presence of God is even to obey God. That's part of our enjoyment in fellowshipping with God, is that we've been given his divine decrees, and we delight to follow them, because it is how we worship and glorify God.

So Adam and Eve even had that in the garden, even though things were perfect and were very exceedingly good, yet they were given a law, that they would know the pleasure of what it means to love God through obedience.

But Adam and Eve weren't satisfied with that. There's one thing they did not have. I need that one thing, and then I'll be satisfied. They were not satisfied with the presence of God himself. And so eating of that fruit, which Eve took after the serpent tempted her to take of it, she gives it to Adam.

He eats. Their eyes are open. They recognize what it is that they have done. They're ashamed. They recognize their nakedness, and they try to cover themselves. When God finds them out, for as the scripture says, be sure your sins will find you out.

He issues a curse to the serpent, then to the woman, and then to the man. And it's in the curse that God says to the serpent that the first divine promise is given. In verse 14, the Lord God said to the serpent, Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field.

On your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.

The big term for this verse, Genesis 3 .15, is the proto-evangelium. Evangelium is Greek for gospel. And for whatever reason in the Greek there just came out more syllables than we have in English. Proto means first.

This is the first declaration of the gospel. It's the first divine promise that we're given. That God is going to destroy the works of the devil, and that enmity is going to be put between the work of Satan and the work of God.

And it is through the offering of this child, which is promised in the first gospel, that we would have salvation and deliverance from the curse. So here's our first precious promise. A deliverance from the curse through Jesus Christ, who is the fulfillment.

He's the promised seed that is talked about here in Genesis 3 .15. How about the last promise? What's the very last promise that we're given? That is exactly right. Let's go to Revelation 22 .20. Go all the way to the back of your Bible.

Again, you shouldn't get lost. Just flip to the other cover and then back a few pages. Revelation 22 .20. Before we even get to the maps, the Apostle John writing the words of our Lord Christ. He who testifies to these things says, Surely I am coming soon.

Amen. Come Lord Jesus. That's the second to last verse of the Bible. And then John issues this benediction, the grace of our Lord Jesus be with all. Amen. Which is certainly a great promise. But the last promise that we have in Scripture is the promise that Jesus is coming again.

Surely I am coming soon. So there you have the first and the last promises that are given to us in the chronology of Scripture. The first one in Genesis 3 .15, the promise of a Savior who is undoing the works of Satan and is going to deliver us out of the curse and into the perfection and presence of God.

And then we have the very last promise is that Jesus is coming. So as we live in this sinful and wretched fallen world, we have the promise of Christ's return. Surely I am coming soon. And there are promises all throughout Scripture in between.

Everything that we read that is a divine promise of God is meant for us to grow us in godliness. And notice also that it is meant for us to be rescued from the sinful corruption that is in the world. Back to verse 4, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.

By through these promises we become partakers of the divine nature. As I mentioned to you last week, I went through kind of a summary of some of the themes that we're going to see throughout 2 Peter and one of the things that I mentioned is that we would be, number 1, we would be partakers of the divine nature and number 3, that we would not be walking in falsehood.

And so these are some of the things that the very precious promises of God deliver us from. They deliver us from even sinful desire. We won't go after temptation as we're reading about in the Lord's Prayer today and we're going to come back to in the sermon next week as well in Matthew chapter 6.

We have that request of God, that petition we make of God. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil or in some translations, deliver us from the evil one. Now what happens when we are not satisfied with the divine promises of God?

Well, we fall into the same thing that Adam and Eve did. When we're not satisfied with the promises of God, we sin. We go after our own flesh or we go after the ways of the world. And as we've shared with you about some of the things that have been going on in the Southern Baptist Convention, as we talked about in the resolution that had been drafted and been signed by over 200 people from this church, we warned about worldly philosophies that are trying to take the place of what the gospel promises.

There are people that think that the gospel doesn't promise enough. So we need to latch on to these worldly ideologies in order to supplement those things that the gospel doesn't fulfill. Dehati Lewis is an executive with NAMM, the North American Missions Board.

And a couple of years ago he said the following, The gospel is not good news without spiritual redemption or restoration. But the gospel is also not good news without emotional, economic, and social restoration.

The good news of the kingdom is that God is establishing a new order where all things, spiritual, emotional, economic, and social, are restored to their original sinless design. From there, Dehati goes on to share the gospel.

And the gospel, as you know it, that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and we are saved from the judgment of God that is coming against sinful man when we turn to Jesus Christ, who died on the cross for us and rose again from the grave, so that all who believe in Him will be forgiven their sins and will have everlasting life with God.

After Dehati says that, he says, Do you realize how this gospel presentation falls short? Was there anything short about that gospel presentation? There's nothing short about that. We've been given heaven, folks.

We've been given the eternal kingdom of God. There's nothing short of that. We have the presence of God that we are promised to live in forever. We are promised God through faith in Jesus Christ. What could be greater than Christ?

But Dehati says that the gospel presentation falls short because sin caused brokenness to more than just our spiritual needs. He says, I believe Tim Keller is spot on when he says, We must neither confuse evangelism with doing justice nor separate them from one another.

The gospel demands the church engage holistically with our cities. What do you say to a person when you say to them in a fuller gospel presentation, according to Dehati Lewis, you say to them, God has promised you full emotional restoration and they struggle with depression for the rest of their lives.

What is that person going to think? What's that? Yeah, it's a lie. Right. They're going to think the gospel is a lie. Because you told me I would have full emotional restoration. I don't feel emotionally restored.

And what is their dependence on? Their dependence is on the gifts and not the giver. They're looking for fulfillment in those things that you told me God was going to give me these things and I don't have them.

Therefore, your gospel is not good news to me. When we're putting our trust in the gifts rather than the one who gives, that's when we have a gospel that falls far short. You can hear in presentations like this that there is not a rejoicing in the precious promises that have been given to us by God.

But rather, no, I need to find something in this world that's more satisfying to me than what God has promised in His Word. Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones said this, The terrible tragic fallacy of the last hundred years has been to think that all man's troubles are due to his environment and that to change the man you have nothing to do but to change his environment.

That is a tragic fallacy. It overlooks the fact that it was in paradise that man fell. We could make this world an utter utopia. And all we've done is handed people a comfortable seat on their way to hell.

The only deliverance we have is in the divine promise of Jesus Christ. By faith in Christ and what He's done with His death on the cross, taking the wrath of God upon Himself, giving us His righteousness, rising again from the grave, ascending into heaven, being seated at the right hand of the throne of God, where He is interceding for us on our behalf and He gives us this precious promise, I am coming soon.

It is only when we trust in Christ that we know the precious and great promises that will deliver us out of this world into His eternal perfect kingdom. Throughout the scriptures we're promised we're going to have trouble.

Jesus said so to His disciples, In this world you will have tribulation. Not some of you are going to go through tribulation, but some of you are going to find holistic fulfillment. In this world you will have trouble.

But take heart, for I, Christ, have overcome the world. There's our precious and great promise through which, through Christ, we become partakers of the divine nature. We escape from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.

And then Peter from here encourages us to grow in this promise that we've been given in Christ. That's what we're going to look at next week.