Bible In A Year - 2 Peter

The Purpose of 2 Peter: Warning the Church and Stirring Up the Saints

Our Father, again, once again this day, we come to you thanking you and blessing you for the week that we've been through. We know that you have been faithful to us, you have kept us, but physically you've sustained us and spiritually you've been there underneath being the everlasting arms.

We know that you're caring and thinking about us, your people. We know that we are ever upon your heart and that you guard and protect and watch over and you guide and direct us through the ministry of the Holy Spirit and we pray for that this morning that it may continue, that you would teach us, that you'd help us, that as we open up this book it might be a blessed time as we consider your word, it might be a very instructive and profitable time for us in the day in which we live to have the word of God shine a light upon the culture in which we live, the teaching, the people that we have to deal with that we may have our eyes opened and that our hearts might be stirred as it was the Apostle Peter's desire to stir up the saints, to cause them to awake if they were in sleep, to cause them to be stirred and awaken from a slumber or from being in a sitting position to a standing position and being steadfast and firm in the faith.

Pray that you'd help us and teach us and bless us, forgive us our sins and help us, O Lord, to have by your favor a good day in the house of the Lord, in Jesus' name, amen. All right, here we are, 2 Peter.

You remember last week doing 1 Peter that the Apostle spoke of the trials and the persecutions that could come and will come to the life of the believer and his desire was that they would stand firm, that they would hold the ground, that no matter what came their way, the circumstances which could affect their feelings, which could affect them as far as their thinking and doubting the situation that they find themselves in, he wanted them to stand strong.

And in standing firm, that they would have the joy of the Lord, in standing firm, that they would look at what was happening in their lives not as an accident, not as a punishment coming from God if it indeed wasn't discipline, but it truly was a persecution, a trial, something that God had brought to them to prove the genuineness of their faith, to so strengthen them, to give them joy, to know that the work that had begun in their life was a work of God, that was the salvation of the Lord, and that they would be obedient.

That's one of the themes that comes through in the book of 1 Peter, that in difficult times standing firm, but also being obedient in the faith, remaining true and faithful to the Lord and plugging away and going forward.

Now we come to 2 Peter, and there is a little bit of a different attack that is coming upon the church, or something else that Peter would desire to warn us about, and definitely what it is, is false teaching.

It is an attack from within. And you'll notice, if you would turn with me to chapter 2, where Peter says,. But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privately shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction.

Where are these people? They are within. It almost reminds you of Paul speaking in his parting shot to the elders at Ephesus, saying, Beware that there would be wolves that would come in to the church.

And isn't it grateful? Aren't we thankful? If you think how children should be so thankful for the protection that God gives them in their parents to protect them, so in the church of God, the membership of the church ought to be so grateful to God because He protects us, He guides us, but also He has put authority in the church, leadership in the church to protect the gates, to protect the pulpit.

I mean, we just don't allow anybody to get into the pulpit and teach whatever they'd want to teach, like in some churches. There's no checking of where these people are from, what their background is.

They just allow them to teach. And of course, there is a danger there because that way there are wolves that can come in and they have poor motivation, they have false doctrine, which can devastate a church.

And we're thankful that God has set it up in such a way that there is leadership under shepherds, under the Lord's shepherding to protect and guard the flock. And Peter writes to these people, Peter writes this letter to them because he wants to warn them.

He wants to not only encourage them to continue to keep going on, but he wants to warn them to be careful not to get sidetracked. Remember first, Peter, stand firm, stand fast. Turn with me, if you would, to the last chapter and notice this key verse as he wraps up the book.

In verse 17, he says, You therefore, beloved, seeing that you know these things before, and he's all the things that he's taught in the book, where he speaks of salvation, where he speaks of how important the word of God is, when he speaks about the enemies that can come into the church and the false teaching, when he speaks of prophetic things, eschatology in chapter 3, and how the earth is going to dissolve, and all these things are going to come to pass, he says, seeing that you know these things already beforehand, beware lest you also, being led away with the error of the wicked, fall from your own steadfastness.

You see how that kind of pulls the two books together? First, Peter, he wants them to stand firm, and here, he says, all these things that I've taught you, he says, don't get led astray by this false teaching, by the error of the wicked, but I want you to stay steadfast.

Well, this is Peter, who is the author of this book, and he writes this as, and this is his last letter as a leader of the apostles, writing out, this is the very last letter that he would write. It is very similar when it comes to its warmth and its passion, and the subject matter, and what he's attempting to do, as Paul did in 2 Timothy, particularly in chapter 4, when you know that the time of his departure was at hand, and he gave his parting words to Timothy.

Peter is doing the same thing here, and like Paul, these great men of faith, in some way, God, because of what is happening in their lives, they have a sense that their days are numbered, that their life is over, and they're giving this last letter, like Paul did 2 Timothy, like Peter here in 2 Peter, knowing that, if you look in chapter 1, he knows that his days are over, or they're numbered, if you take a look in chapter 1, and in verse 13, where he says, yea, and I think it meet or necessary or fit, as long as I am in this tabernacle, to stir you up by putting you in remembrance, so he's saying, I'm in this body, I know that as long as I'm in it, I want to stir you up, and he says, but he says there in verse 14, knowing that shortly, I must put off this my tabernacle, or this my tent, or my body, what he's saying here, pretty soon I'm going to die, and he says, even as our Lord Jesus Christ has showed me, and if you take a note, you can look back in John 21, 18, where there was that conversation between Peter and the Lord about his death, and notice also in verse 15, he says, moreover, I will endeavor that ye may be able, after my decease, to have these things always in remembrance, so there's this knowledge, this awareness, that he's not going to be around much longer, and like we would, I don't know if you've ever done this, I've done this with my family, unbeknownst to them, if I go on a business trip, there have been times when I'll go into my office, and I'll write a letter, and I'll talk to my wife, and I'll talk to each one of my children individually, and I just give them my last parting words, whatever it might be, to tell them I love them, and I encourage them to go on in the faith, or encourage them to come to Christ, if they've not come to Christ as my children, and I just give them off my heart what it is that I'd like for them to know in my last writing, and that's what Peter is doing here, he loves the church, which is loved by God, he's an apostle sent from the Lord, he wants them to stay steadfast, he knows that he's not going to be around much longer, so he gives them from his heart, from his concern, and there's warmth, and you see the words beloved used, he used beloved brethren, these endearing terms, and he wants them to have from his heart what God would impress upon him as he was penning this, as he's writing this, so that they would be prepared, they would be ready, they would be equipped for what was coming their way with these adversaries, these false teachers that would be infiltrating into the church amongst them, and he wanted them to be very, very aware and careful of that.

The theme of 1st Peter, I said, was suffering, and Peter gave his counsel on how to react to that external, more or less an external pressure that would come upon them from persecution, from different ways that they were treated from on the outside, but here, again, in 2nd Peter, the theme is this heresy and this attack of the enemy, and that's more of an internal pressure, like when I looked there with you in chapter 2, verse 1, saying that this would come from within.

Of course, in the latter problem, became more of a threat to the spread of the gospel than the suffering because it actually deals with essential doctrine, it deals with what the teaching is in the church, and if the enemy can come in and spread false doctrine and displace the truth, then there's real trouble.

The other one is suffering and persecution, and it's not coming in in that stealthy way. It is a pressure. It is difficult, but we can still continue on with the gospel. Here, it's just, and I think that's why Peter uses these words of, if you notice with me, in chapter 1, the verse that we read over in verse 13, I think it's fit, as long as I'm in this tabernacle of body, to stir you up by putting you in remembrance.

You see that word, the word remembrance and stirring up? He wants to remind them. He wants them to recollect these things. He wants them to be stirred up, and that word in the Greek means to wake up fully, to arouse, to raise up, to stir up, to arouse from like a sleep, or to arouse from inactivity, or to arouse from sitting down or lying down.

It is to get up, and it's almost like a stirring of the troops, and that's what he's doing here because he's warning them because this is important. The attack that will come from within, and that could potentially come from within with false doctrine, and we'll get into that a little bit more about the characteristic of these people, the characteristics of these people.

Peter is so concerned about that that he puts it down as led by the Spirit of God to teach them. Written about 67 or 68 AD, the authorship of 2 Peter probably, you can read things and it comes under question because there are differences between 1 Peter and 2 Peter in its style, in its vocabulary, in its theme, and some say that Peter did not, but really when you come right to the book, very first verse, Simon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ.

He claims, the writer claims right from the beginning of who it is, it is Simon Peter, the apostle of the Lord. And sometimes people don't understand, like with Paul and with Peter, Peter in 1 Peter, chapter 5 and verse 12, remember he used Sylvanus as a scribe, as a secretary to pen down these words, and sometimes that, of course, when the writer writes, the personality, the vocabulary of the person who's writing comes out, and that no doubt is the reason why there may be a bit of a difference in the two books because in 2 Peter, it doesn't say so, Peter doesn't record it, but it could have been a different secretary, it could have been a different scribe, or it could have been that Peter picked up the pen and just wrote himself, like the apostle Paul did at times, and for him it was difficult for some reason that we don't know, but for Peter, he could have picked up the pen and that's why there could be a little difference in it.

But really, when you think about it, and you go through this book, you see that the book itself claims that Peter is the writer, it speaks of his apostleship, it speaks of him being on the Mount of Transfiguration, chapter 1, Peter certainly who was there.

There are too many internal evidences which show and prove to us that this is Peter, so we're just going to take it that it is the apostle Peter who wrote this book. Again, it is, since, a little bit of a background, since writing and sending his first letter, again, Peter had become increasingly concerned about the false teachers, and these teachers, again, were infiltrating the churches in Asia Minor, causing trouble.

The same thing happened with the apostle Paul, if you remember, wherever he would go, the Judaizers or false teachers would come behind trying to rip apart everything that he was building up, and Peter is saying the same thing.

There are those that are going to come with heretical doctrine, they were going to come with immoral lifestyle, that's all of what chapter 2 is, and we won't be able to read the whole chapter, but it speaks about the characteristic, the lifestyle, and the teaching of these people who could potentially do damage in the church, and Peter loves the Lord, the church which the Lord loves, and he wants to protect, and he wants to help, and he wants to encourage, and he wants to warn them and kind of stir them up and wake them up and say, think about what it is that's going on in your midst and be very careful who and what you allow into the church.

In the verses that we read, verses 13 to 15, where Peter says he's going to leave, he's going to die after his demise, this is kind of like his last will and testament to warn these beloved believers in Christ about these doctrinal dangers that could impact them and that they will most likely face.

Peter could have possibly written, it seems like he wrote this letter from prison in Rome when he was facing imminent death. I didn't cover this, but up in the author and date section, Nero died in about 68, and it is, through history and through tradition, it is said that Peter died during Nero's persecution, so he would have, that kind of puts you about the time when the writing of this letter took place, so it was shortly before his death, no doubt about 67 or 68 A .D.

Let's see, that's the first page of, I'm going to try to go over the sheet and then we'll head into the book itself. I think we can actually do that. What I'd like to do is I'm going to take the quick overview outline and just walk through the book, because I think it will be very helpful to us today, because, I mean, would you agree with me that we live in a day where you can hear just about anything when it comes to Christianity, when it comes to what is to be accepted as sound doctrine?

Many times we'll see it or hear it, and it causes us to wag our heads. I mean, how can people believe that who claim to be Christians, or how can that possibly be a church, and that is what they're holding to?

So we live in a day where all kinds of teaching, human opinion, crazy, wild doctrine is infiltrating the church. It doesn't take too much if you just turn on any Christian radio station or Christian television station, and the things that you will hear, if you have been studying the Word of God, and you're really listening, it will begin to grate on you like sandpaper.

That's kind of like a phrase that I use. It's just something isn't right, maybe just the underlying tone of it, or if it's just blatantly outright false. It is a discrediting of the Lordship of Christ.

It is a denying of His second return. It is a twisting of His life, His work, His ministry, of what God has done for us in salvation justification. It might be a doctrine there where it's taken away where it's no longer something that God has done, but it's something that we cooperate with God with and do.

And you just hear so many different things. So the book is relevant for us, 2 Peter. And what He does, and I'd like to walk with you through there, there is an over-repetitive theme throughout the book of knowledge, of the word knowledge or the word to know.

And the idea of what Peter is saying as he expresses that and uses that word in the Greek, that word means that our knowledge is to grow and it is to progress. It is not to be stagnant as we open the book and we read it.

It is not to be to wear, well, I've heard that and that's it. I mean, isn't it just so delightful when somebody preaches or teaches or maybe you just read a portion of scripture that you've read 30 times before and it's just so alive that something new and fresh comes from it and God applies it to your heart and you say, well, I never saw that before.

Have you ever said that if you read the scripture? I never saw that before and how wonderful it is. And when it comes to knowledge, it isn't just an intellectual knowledge. It isn't just to have the facts and just to be able to repeat back who the 12 apostles are, how many books in the Bible there are, what the names of the Bible books are in order.

But it is a knowledge that presses itself upon us and really presses us into its mold so that our lives are totally changed and affected by it. And we ought to grow, as it says in chapter 3, the very near the very end of this book, Peter says the very last verse, but grow in the grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, to him be glory both now and ever.

And that's where I want to start. You'll notice on your quick overview, the outline of the book, there's a salutation at the beginning by Peter, of course, but I'm also going to, I'm going to start by saying that there are things that we need to know.

Why is it so important? I guess maybe in the light of what I've already said, chapter 2, false teaching, heretical doctrine, infiltrating, people coming in and infiltrating. Why is it so important to know?

Any ideas? What's the, why would Peter have this emphasis on knowledge? What do you think? So knowledge of the word, to be able to use it in such a way to be able to deal with the error that comes in, to be able to rebuke or to counsel or to point a person in the right direction.

Okay, good. Something else, another thought, Lewis. So in training in the, in the financial arena, showing people real money, what the, what the new bills when they put them out, and we've had a lot over the last few years, what they look like rather than the counterfeits.

So if you know what the real is, you'll know what the counterfeit is when it comes in the door. And that's one of the most effective, profitable ways for us, or the greatest, I guess I'll put it this way.

The greatest protection against false teachers comes from a solid foundation in the word of God. I put it that way. The greatest protection against heresy and false doctrine is to have a foundation in the word of God to know.

And where does that begin? Begins, it reminds me of last week with brother Stuart Scott coming in. Do you remember one of the things, maybe some of the men who were here when he talked about combating sin or what is necessary in the life of a believer when struggling, when having periods of doubt or whatever that we are, he said to saturate ourselves with the word of God.

But one of the first things that he said was, is to, is to know who to know Christ. Do you remember that when he brought that out a couple, three times, he said that, that every, every believer ought to be in a place.

It reminds me of even the apostle Paul in Philippians chapter three, that I may know him. All the years that the apostle Paul had been serving the Lord and on his missionary trips and, and, and being in the things that he had seen and heard.

And yet his heart's desire was, is that he might know Christ and that he, and that's where I want to start the very, the very beginning of this book, the first, first and second verse of chapter one, Simon, Peter, a servant and an apostle of Jesus Christ to them that have obtained like precious faith with us through the righteousness of God and our savior, Jesus Christ, grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God and of our Lord of the, of Jesus, our Lord.

In the notes, it's not there, but I put between Roman numeral one and two, know your God and savior for every believer of our passion, our desire and time and effort needs to be spent to know our God and savior, to know who Jesus is.

Not the only, the one who created us, but recreated us being born from above. Not only the one who saves us, but the one who keeps us. The righteousness of God comes through Jesus Christ, not our own efforts, not our own righteousness.

He is our God. He is our savior and grace and peace are multiplied to us through the knowledge, through the knowledge of God and of Jesus Christ, our Lord, as we, as we study and as we, as we meditate upon, as we are saturated with the word of God.

And as we think of, of our blessed Lord and savior, Jesus Christ, grace and peace are multiplied to us. There comes a, a comfort. There comes a foundation. There comes a settledness and assuredness that certainly it isn't we who saved ourselves.

It is, it's not possible. We have a great God and a great savior whom we need to press on to know, forgetting those things which are behind Philippians three and pressing on, running the race, reaching forward, wanting to know him more, not only, not only in the good, as far as his life and he has, as he went about doing good and all the ministry of the healing and the teaching and the blessedness of that, but also in what the fellowship of his sufferings.

First Peter kind of goes back to there to be able to know that we, we are counted is counted a privilege for us and a joy and an honor for us to be associated with the Lord Jesus Christ. And he was rejected.

We will be rejected. He was spoken ill of. We will be spoken ill of and where it reminds me in an ax chapter four, I believe when they went out, the disciples went out to preach the gospel and they were persecuted that they came back to the church and they were rejoicing because they were counted worthy to suffer shame for his name.

And that badge, that, that badge of honor that comes to every believer is something that we ought to want to know more about and to enter into that fellowship, into that knowledge of the Lord, of not only how he suffered, but also he's victorious and we're victorious in him and all about all about Christ, knowing God and our savior, the sweeter he is and the closer we are to him and the more knowledge that we have in him.

And we are encouraged to grow in that grace and knowledge of the Lord. The stronger we will be, the more, the more powerful we will be in that there will be, there will be exhibited in our life. I mean, after he taught out of first Corinthians, there were questions that were given him to him.

And, and then after that we broke and we, we were able to talk in a one-on-one with some of the students. And one of the students I was speaking with was having, having a difficulty with this. I mean, we wouldn't think this way, but here we are at Harvard law school and in the future when we leave and graduate, we are going to be partners most likely in some law firms or we could be judges and lawyers.

And we don't want to be Christians who later on in life, we look, they look back at the time in school and we were the ones that were pestering people. And we were the ones that were just beating them over the head with a club as far as getting, trying to get them come to the, to Christ through the preaching of the gospel that we were badgering people.

And one of the things that I said to them, and you've heard me use this word before, as I said, what, what we need to be as believers, yes, the cross, the cross of Christ is offensive and it, and it, it is foolishness to many people and they don't want to hear it no matter what way we bring it to them, no matter how much love and sacrifice we, we show to them.

But one of the things that we don't want to be is, is ogres and long-faced, gnarly, gnarly people. But we ought to be the most winsome people on the face of the earth with a joy in our heart because God has saved us and we're, we're the, the blessed children of God and the ones who supposedly know the Lord and know about salvation, know about eternal life, know we're going to heaven, know that we have joy no matter what comes our way, because underneath of the everlasting arms and the Lord, our salvation is eternally secure and we have assurance and we have God who is for us and we ought to portray that.

And I tried to get that across. And I think that's what Peter did in first Peter chapter one. I mean, in, in the book of first Peter, but in the, in the book of second Peter, he's kind of tagging onto that letter and he's kind of reaffirming and kind of shoring up what he, what he said in first, in first Peter is because the attack is going to come and the attack isn't going to be from the outside, so to speak.

It's going to be from the inside and there's going to be false teachers. And one thing that you need to know is you need to know your God and savior, Jesus Christ. And then he goes on in, in chapter one and he says, you need to know your salvation.

And I've kind of touched on that and open that up a little bit. You want to know your salvation in that your salvation is sustained by the power of God. Three and four courting as his divine power has given unto us all things that pertain unto life and Godliness through the knowledge of him that has called us to glory and virtue, whereby are given unto us exceeding and great and precious promises that by these, you might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.

Salvation is of God. It's in, in, in here he says it's by the divine power of God. He has given us these things. We know that we're kept by God and we know that every thing that we need for life and Godliness and every precious promise and being partakers of the divine nature has not been sourced in us, but it comes from God.

So know your salvation. Very important. Daniel question. Yeah, that's, and that is true that, you know, there is an emphasis on ecumenicalism today and everybody ought to be inclusivism. And I think that's one of the things that Paul, Peter warned about in chapter two.

He says that these men, when they come into the church, they're going to come in privately. Paul said the same thing. They're, they're like wolves in sheep's clothing and they come in and they infiltrate.

Many times what they do is they don't outrightly attack, but what they do is just twist it just a little bit, just to put a little skew on it. And that, of course, we know that a little bit of error mixed with a lot of truth is all error.

And, and that's how they, how that's how they can come in. It sounds good. And sometimes when you listen to some of the teaching, some of these people, what they're teaching, what they're saying many times is fine.

It's, you can track along with it and go along. And then all of a sudden, or if you're reading one of their books, all of a sudden you'll come to that paragraph or that phrase and the, and the red lights ought to go off.

It's not right. Cause it's, it's all this truth, but you got a little bit of error mixed in and that's how, that's how they come in until they can get a foothold. And then once they get a foothold and get a position where, where they've, they've got the people around them and believing them and being influenced by them and buying into them and their teaching, then they can let all the barrels go and they can bring it all out.

And then the true colors come out in the, in the wolves, the sheep's clothing gets pulled off and the wolf comes out and it bites and it's too late. It's devastating. And what Peter's, what Peter's trying to do is get them to be watchful, to be thinking, to be careful.

I don't know if I answered your question, but, but as far as, as far as teaching, well, for, for me, one of the things, I mean, one that we all know about is, um, this whole felt needs purpose driven.

You read the book and there's many, many good things, the purpose driven life. You can see, yeah, I could track with that. I can go along with that. But then all of a sudden there is this emphasis that it's all about you.

It's all about you and what you want. Rick Warren, a purpose driven life. And we see that it's not, it's not right. It's not there. And for what motive, for whatever reason, that's the track that, that he took.

And that is one that in the church, so to speak, maybe not in this church, but it's devastating. A lot of different, a lot of churches to where they're getting away from the teaching of the word of God in good, sound and healthy doctrine.

And it's, and it's almost, that book has become the Bible and we've got to revolve all of our ministries around it. Yes. I saw another hand out of the corner of my eye. Sure. Being selective in what you're teaching.

Daniel kind of spoke to that when he talks about ecumenicalism, there's a concentration on love, you know, and inclusiveness and God, God is a God of love. We ought to love just like him following in his footsteps.

And yeah, there, there, there are a lot of different ways for the error to come across. It could be, it could be that it's blatant, openly wrong. It could be that it's truth mix. There's a little bit of error and they're just trying to stick that little arsenic pill in with it to, to get it to go through.

Or, or like you're saying is it's an emphasis. It's a beating of a drum. It's a, it's one thing. And one thing only I want, this is, this is, this is where I'm going to teach. And I'm not going to go through expositionally looking through scripture and teach all of the council of God.

What's very interesting and we're not going to be able to get there. What's very interesting about chapter two. Paul, if you, if you look at the, on the second side of the page under miscellaneous notes under the outline, there is the nature of the false prophets and he speaks, it's all listed there about their damnable heresies.

They deny the Lord that bought them. They speak the evil of the way of truth. They walk after the flesh. They despise governments and so on. Eyes full of adultery. They entice those who aren't steadfast.

They are wells without water, swelling words. They speak evil of dignitaries. They make merchandise of men and so on and so on and so on. What's very interesting. If you read all of chapter two is that Peter mainly describes them, not their message.

It's interesting. He describes them, their immoral lifestyle, their immoral character, but he describes them more than he does their false doctrine. And MacArthur said, the quality of the fruit reveals the soundness of the tree or reminds you of the Lord Jesus in Matthew 7 16.

He says, you shall know them by, by their fruits. And really Paul is saying, there's going to be false doctrine and the ones that teach false doctrine or hold to these heresies, you're going to know them because of their lifestyle.

You're going to know them by the way they treat other people. You're going to know them by their motivation, by what they're looking for to receive in their lives. And he, and he describes them and not necessarily their message.

I mean, he does get into that, but more so he describes them. And I find that very interesting. That's what we need to be looking for. And isn't it so true when you see, and we've seen historically over the past 10 years, if you look at those that have fallen, the immorality, the, the, the people that are blown out of pulpits, you can trace it back somewhere, someplace.

Many times you can trace it back to false teaching, to focusing on the wrong thing, the teaching for teaching that has gone in the wrong direction. And Paul says, know your savior. And then he goes on.

He says to know your salvation. It's sustained in the power of God chapter one. It's confirmed by the graces in verses five through seven of chapter one, pastor Mike, you could get the tape or go back and look at this.

I believe that he taught through this and, and elder pastor Steve Cooley did also, as far as these Christian virtues, adding, being diligent to add to your faith, virtue or character, knowledge, self-control, endurance or perseverance, godliness, brotherly kindness, and so on.

And, and, and then he comes up to the point where he says this in, in verse 10, he says, wherefore the rather brethren give diligence to make your calling and election sure. And how do you do that? Well, I believe what, what he's saying up to this point, wherefore he's saying, go back and look at these things.

If you pursue diligently these spiritual qualities to be in your life, I think this is what Peter, I believe this is what Peter is saying mentioned there in verses five through seven. If you do that, it will give, it will guarantee to yourself that the spiritual fruit that you have, the spiritual fruit that you have in your life proves the fact that you are called of God, that you are one of God's elect, that you are one who God has saved.

And that way it makes your calling and election sure. Because if you don't pursue these things, he says that you will be barren or useless, verse eight. And I'm fruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

And if you lack these things, you're blind. You can't see a far off and forgotten that you were purged from your old sins. There'll be a, there'll be a, a, a, a, a, a lack of assurance. There will be an unwavering this in the life of the person who, who hasn't nailed this down and isn't diligently pursuing these qualities.

So when you know your savior and you know your salvation, part of that is, is that your salvation is confirmed by God in his word through these, through these, uh, evidence of these Christian graces. And then he goes on in this chapter and he says, not only know your God and savior, not only know your salvation, but know, and in your salvation, know what God has done in your life and, and revel in that and being excited about that, knowing that it is a work of God.

And then he goes on and say, no, your scriptures, no, the scriptures, verse 16 of chapter one, Peter says, we have not followed cleverly devised fables or cunningly devised fables. When we made known unto you the power and coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, but we, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty for he received from God, the father, honor and glory.

When there came such a voice to him from the excellent glory, this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased. And this voice which came from heaven, we heard when we were with him in the Holy Mount.