WWUTT 347 By Way of Reminder?

The Need to Be Reminded of God’s Word

The Apostle Peter said that he was going to make every effort before his departure so that those he was writing to would be reminded of the things that he taught. Why was that important? Because we're weak and we need those reminders when we understand the text.

Many of the Bible stories and verses we think we know, we don't. When we understand the text as an online ministry committed to teaching sound doctrine and exposing the faulty, visit our website at www .utt .com.

Now here's our host, Pastor Gabe Hughes.

Peter’s Reminder in 2 Peter 1:12-15

Thank you, Becky. We are in 2 Peter chapter 1 again today, beginning in verse 12 where the Apostle says,. Therefore I intend always to remind you of these qualities, though you know them and are established in the truth that you have.

I think it right, as long as I am in this body, to stir you up by way of reminder, since I know that the putting off of my body will be soon, as our Lord Jesus Christ made clear to me, and I will make every effort so that after my departure you may be able at any time to recall these things.

So going back again to verse 12 where Peter says, I intend always to remind you of these qualities. What qualities? Well, the qualities that we were talking about yesterday and most of last week as well when we began our study of 2 Peter.

Starting in verse 5, Peter says, Make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love.

Love is the highest thing that we can attain, for it is the love of God that has been poured into our hearts through His Holy Spirit. It is by the love of God that we operate, reaching out in brotherly affection, having compassion for our brothers and sisters in Christ, and even showing generosity to people in the world around us, which we do because of the Holy Spirit that is within us.

As it says in Titus 3, 2, we need to show perfect courtesy to all people. As Paul instructed the Galatians, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, especially to the household of faith. So we take care of those who are in the church first, and then we are going to reach out with charity to those even outside the church walls and share the love of Christ in many ways.

So this is the highest thing that we can attain to as Christians. It is love. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13, these three remain, faith, hope, and love. And as long as we have been doing this broadcast, the Bible studies that we've been in, whether it's been Philippians, or Colossians, or Romans, we've seen over and over again how Paul will bring up three essential Christian virtues, faith, hope, and love.

They are essential virtues that every Christian must have, faith, hope, and love. And you notice that this list begins with faith and concludes with love. Now when he says in 1 Corinthians 13, the greatest of these is love, we've talked about what that means.

Faith and hope are things that we will have in this life, but love is something that will endure forever. It's said over and over in the Psalms, his love endures forever. We don't need faith and hope when we get into the eternal kingdom because what we were hoping for will be seen.

And as Paul says in Romans 8, 24, hope that is seen is not hope for who hopes for what he sees. So once we see, and our faith shall be sight, as Horatio Spafford sang about, then we won't have need for faith and hope anymore in God's eternal kingdom, but there will still be love.

We will rest in his love for all eternity. So the greatest of these is love. This is the highest thing that we can attain to as saints in Christ Jesus. And so this is ultimately in the growth of our faith in these qualities that Peter has listed.

What all of this is building up to is being strengthened in love. You have Paul saying to the Ephesians that we speak the truth in love and in doing so we grow up in every way into him who is the head, Christ Jesus.

That's what Peter is encouraging right here, that we are growing in these qualities. We would grow in these things. And Paul summarizes it in that single verse, Ephesians 4, 15, where he says that speaking the truth in love, we grow up all the more into Christ.

We mature and we are building up one another. So it's not just an individual growth that we are talking about. You grow more in your love. We're not just talking about that. We're talking about growth as the body of Christ.

So all of us, brothers and sisters in Christ together, growing up, maturing one another into the head who is Christ. Ultimately every pursuit that we have as Christians, every gift that we have been given, every opportunity that has been presented to us, all of these things are to be used in service to God for his glory, building up the body of Christ.

As we have it said in Ephesians 4, 11, God gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and the teachers for building up the saints to the works of ministry. So all of this is in the process of building up the body of Christ.

And Peter even talked about this before in 1 Peter 2, where he says that each one of you are like living stones being built into a spiritual house for God. Now you yourself, by yourself, you can't be a spiritual house.

Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. Yeah, we have that illustration given by the apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 6, but you yourself are not the spiritual house. You are a brick in that house. And we as living stones are being built up as a spiritual house to the Lord.

So one brick by itself can't be a house. It takes many bricks together being built into that spiritual house to the Lord, giving praises and offerings unto God through the Holy Spirit that is within us in Jesus Christ our Lord.

And so this is a work that we do together as the church. It is not you in your own pursuit in building up your ability to love others, but it's in that growth in loving others that you are teaching them to love others.

And on and on the process goes as the as the house of the Lord is being built up in his saints in Christ Jesus, the body grows, the body of Christ grows so that it builds itself up in love Ephesians 4 16.

So Paul also says this to the Thessalonians in his greeting in his second letter to the Thessalonians. He says, we always give thanks to God for you, brothers, as is right, because your faith is growing abundantly.

And the love of every one of you for one another is increasing. So Paul is not just celebrating the fact that the Thessalonian church became converts. OK, we heard the gospel proclaimed. We repented. We got saved.

We got baptized. Here we are. And Paul says, I'm thankful that you got baptized. That's that's not the end of his thankfulness. His thankfulness is that they heard the gospel. They believed it. And now they're growing abundantly in their faith.

And the love of every one of you for one another is increasing. In fact, in fact, really, when you look at that greeting there in second Thessalonians 1 3, Paul's thankfulness is not that that they heard and believed because that's already been confirmed.

It's confirmed in the fact that their faith is growing abundantly and the love of every one of them for one another is increasing. So their faith is confirmed. And that's what the apostle Paul is celebrating.

And so that's what we confirm when we are growing in these qualities that Peter has listed. We are keeping ourselves from being ineffective or unfruitful. And as we talked about yesterday, a person who is ineffective and unfruitful isn't a Christian.

And so that's what Peter is warning against falling into apostasy. Practicing these qualities will keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he is cleansed from his former sins.

So then in verse 12, I intend always to remind you of these qualities, though you know them and are established in the truth that you have. So once again, Peter acknowledging that those who are receiving this letter that he has written are already converted.

They're already believers in Christ Jesus. I recognize that you are established in the truth and you know what these qualities are, but I remind you of them. Why would Peter remind them of these qualities?

Well, as a pastor, I would present to you that the reason why Peter feels it is important to remind the Christians that he is writing to of these qualities is because they still inhabit corruptible fleshly bodies, bodies that are susceptible to temptation, that are prone to forget and can easily go our own way once again and leave the path of righteousness.

And Peter wants to prevent that from happening. And he is being gracious. I mean, he's not beating anyone over the head here. He's being gracious to fellow Christians and saying, I'm putting these things forward to you as a way of reminder to protect you.

It is good for you. You know, very early on in my pastorate, and I'm talking when I became the head teaching pastor, not just when I was serving as an associate pastor, I was an associate pastor for two years in the church where I am currently the head pastor.

And I was the leader of worship. That was my primary function as the associate pastor, is that I would be head over all of the music and the worship and some of those kinds of things that went on in our church.

I did some teaching. I did Bible studies, taught the youth group for a while there as well, and did sermons occasionally when the pastor decided to go somewhere and needed a pastor to fill the pulpit.

I was there to do that. So I did have some teaching capacity, but primarily I was overseeing the music aspect within the church. So when I came on board and took over the teaching, after our pastor left, he went and planted another church elsewhere.

When I took over the teaching, he was halfway through Ephesians. So I went ahead and finished up chapters 4, 5, and 6 in the book of Ephesians. So when I finished Ephesians, I was trying to figure out where to go next.

And I was looking at Philippians, but I felt like Philippians was saying a lot of the same things that I had just preached on in Ephesians 4, 5, and 6. And so I wondered, well, maybe I shouldn't go into Philippians.

Maybe I should pick another book. And I was contemplating that, but it was while I was reading Philippians again, I don't know how many dozens of times, to be honest with you, I've read the book of Philippians.

But it was in reading Philippians again, where I read chapter 3, verse 1, where Paul said, finally, my brothers rejoice in the Lord. To write the same things to you is no trouble to me, and it is safe for you.

And there are a couple of things in that one verse that stuck out to me. First of all, that halfway through his letter to the Philippians, Paul said, finally, my brothers rejoice in the Lord, because it's like, finally, but he's still got half the letter to go.

And so it was kind of like, to me, I'm saying at the end of my reading, my teaching through Ephesians, I was saying finally, and then offering the final things that Paul was teaching there in Ephesians.

But there's still so much Bible left to go. And so here in the book of Philippians, I was kind of seeing that same thing. Paul's saying finally, but still had much to teach them as there was half the letter coming up.

And then the other thing that I noticed there is that next sentence, Philippians 3, 1, where he says, to write these same things to you is no trouble to me and is safe for you. Paul was repeating things to the Philippians they had heard before.

They'd heard him teach these things before. They probably even had writings of his that they were reading and had heard this stuff from the apostle Paul, not only in his personal preaching to them, but in writings to other churches.

And we do know that there was kind of a collection of letters that had been sent to other churches based on what we read in the book of Colossians, because Paul says to the Colossians, take this letter and read it to the Laodiceans and then also read the letter that I sent to the Laodiceans.

And Peter talks about at the end of this book study that we're doing, 2 Peter 3, he talks about the letters of Paul and how there are difficult things in his letters that people will twist and distort to their own destruction like they do the rest of the scriptures.

So you have Peter giving an indication of some kind of collection of Paul's letters of letters from all the apostles, most likely, or at least the apostles that wrote such letters to the churches that would be collected in the and the churches would read and study these things based on the doctrines and the theology that was being presented by Christ's own apostles.

So the Philippians had this stuff. They had heard these things read before. They had heard the apostle Paul preach these things. He wasn't really presenting to them anything new. He was thanking them for the gift that they had sent to him and using that as an opportunity to encourage the Philippians to rejoice in all circumstances, whether good situations or or bad situations, whether circumstances are plentiful or we find ourselves in need.

It is Christ who gives us our strength. And so he meant to encourage the Philippians in this in something that he had encouraged them in before. But he says in the midway point of that letter to write these same things to you.

It's no trouble. It's no trouble for me to write these down. I'm not wasting my time sharing the gospel with you once again and rejoicing in the common faith and salvation that we have in Jesus Christ, our Lord.

And it is safe for you. You are being reminded of these things. You are hearing them over and over again. It conditions the mind. It submits it more and more to God's will. We are being transformed by the renewal of our mind and submitting ourselves daily unto the Lord.

I've heard Chip Ingram preach on Romans 12, too. It's Chip Ingram's ministry. They got that R12 ministry that's kind of based all around the things that are being taught in Romans chapter 12. And I've heard Chip Ingram talk about how that verse Romans 12, too, where it says, be transformed by the renewal of your mind, suggests there are undertones there in that passage of a daily renewal.

That's what Paul is suggesting there. Transforming by the renewal of our mind means that every day we get up, we are renewing our minds once again and submitting our thoughts fully unto the Lord, unto Christ Jesus.

Why? Why do we need to do that? Because we're weak in our flesh. We need the constant reminders because our corruptible flesh wants to pull our minds away from God. The way that the devil still works in his schemes in this wicked and fallen world that has been subjected to futility.

He still means to plague our minds with forgetfulness, to draw us away from the Lord and rejoicing in God and instead be reminded of the passions of our flesh and start chasing after those things again.

So we need these constant reminders from the scriptures of our hope in the Lord and knowing that he is our strength. We are not invincible in this flesh. It doesn't matter that we have walked the aisle or been baptized in water.

We are still susceptible to corruption. And I've mentioned before Charles Spurgeon, his sermon on indwelling sin, where he talks about, yeah, this was in a podcast that I did a little bit more than a week ago where I was responding to Nabeel Qureshi.

Spurgeon talked about how the sin that is within us does not leave us when we get saved. We stand justified before God. We are fully forgiven by the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ. But that doesn't mean that man stops sinning.

We are still constantly going to be at war between the desires of our flesh and now the desire of the spirit that is within us to do the things that please God. There's going to be this constant battle that is going on in us until the day we die.

Before we came to Christ, we were perfectly comfortable with our sin. But once we came to Christ, we are convicted in our sin. And any time we do sin, bringing ourselves before the Lord and asking for his forgiveness, which is why we have such a grace given to us in 1 John 1, 9, where it says, when we ask forgiveness for our sins, God is faithful and just to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

He's just to cleanse us from all unrighteousness because Christ already paid the sacrifice. It's not that God expunges our sins, but rather Christ is the propitiation for our sins. He died for our sins.

He satisfied the wrath of God in his death and took care of the record of debt by nailing it to the cross. This is talked about in the book of Colossians. And so these things we need to be reminded of.

We go to church to be reminded of these things. And you can't grow in love, all right? You can't grow in this quality that Philippians, that I'm sorry, Philippians, that Peter is encouraging his readers to grow in if you're not with the people that you're supposed to be growing with.

So as a brotherhood, as brothers and sisters in the Lord, we cannot grow in love unless we're with our brothers and sisters to exercise that love and grow together in these things. This is one of the reasons, another one of the reasons why we attend church.

So we can be in regular fellowship with the body of Christ. We can be reminded of the gospel, constantly having our minds renewed, growing together in the declaration of these things, in the things that we don't yet know and don't yet understand and need to mature.

And every one of us needs to do this. I mean, I'm a pastor and I still need to mature in these things. This is why I regularly read the scriptures, not because it's my occupation, but it is because it's what the Lord has required of me as one of his saints, as one of his followers to daily submit my mind to the Lord and to his word.

If you want to know the mind of God, you read the word of God. This is how we get insight into God's mind is what we read. And so we need to be with the saints. We need to sit under good teaching. We need to be refreshed by constant reminders of the gospel as Peter is presenting these things to the Christians that he is writing to.

I intend always to remind you of these qualities, though you know them and are established in the truth that you have. You know, he already talked about how we need to to to grow in steadfastness. And he's even saying to these Christians, you're established, but I need to remind you to be steadfast all the more.

These constant reminders of being steadfast, because it's those who endure to the end who will be saved. I think it right as long as I am in this body to stir you up by way of reminder, since I know that the putting off of my body will be soon, as the Lord Jesus Christ made clear to me.

We talked about that last week in our introduction to this study of second Peter. And I will make every effort so that after my departure, you may be able at any time to recall these things. What does he mean by that?

Writing these things down so you can come to them and be reminded of them every time you read them and every time they're read aloud among the congregation. The the Apostle John said at the start of Revelation, blessed is the person who reads aloud the things that are written down in this book.

And you could apply that to any book of the Bible. Blessed is the person who reads these things aloud. And so Peter means for these things to be preached, to be talked about in the church. He's writing them down so that they will have a reminder that they can constantly come back to hear the gospel proclaimed and see the lessons that are taught according to the command of Jesus Christ.

I will make every effort, even even while Peter is awaiting his sentence of death, so that after his departure, we may be able at any time to recall these things. Even us now, 2000 years later, we're able to recall the words of a man who was with Jesus during his earthly ministry, who saw him resurrected from the grave, who was commissioned by him to feed his sheep, who saw Jesus ascend into heaven and and also was given the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost and went and preached the first come to Jesus sermon after Jesus's ascension into heaven, which we read about there in Acts chapter two, Peter's sermon at Pentecost.

We are able to read the words of that very man whenever we come to this book of the Bible and open it up and study it. So Peter, empowered by the Holy Spirit, made every effort to write these things down so that we may be able to recall the charge that is given to those who are in the faith to grow in love for our brothers and sisters in Christ and for Christ himself.

A Prayer for Renewed Minds and Faithful Remembrance

Let us pray. Our Lord God, we praise you for this word that has been given to us so that we might know your will, so that our thoughts will constantly be refreshed and placed in submission to you and to your will.

May your will be done as you taught us to pray. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Let it be your will and not ours, oh Lord. And whatever it is that we have to do today, let us be in submission to the mind of God.

We've been reminded here of the scriptures and what the scriptures say, so keep these things in our mind, thinking about them as we go. Rejoicing in the Lord for the salvation we've been given in Christ and the hope that we have for your kingdom that will come and will bring with it your perfect peace forever.

A place where there is no more crying, no more tears, no more death. The sting of death is gone. No more pain. We will be with our Lord God forever, rejoicing and worshiping you for your goodness and faithfulness.

In Christ Jesus we pray, amen.

This is a protection of First Southern Baptist Church in Junction City, Kansas. Find us on the web at www .utt .com.