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Weimar University

Thoughts on 2 Peter

Don Mackintosh

Thoughts on 2 Peter 1:1-4

Today we have a moment to spend in your Word.

We ask that your Spirit would be with us to guide and lead us.

Have a message individually for each of us in our lives.

If you were about to die, who would you want to talk to and what would you want to communicate?

2 Peter 1, verse 13 and 15 tells us that this was actually what Peter was talking about as he was writing the second book of Peter.

We've gone through 1 Peter 1 and we've discovered how to live as aliens in a world that does not follow Christ And now in 2 Peter we're beginning our journey through 2 Peter.

And as Peter starts this second section of his book, he says there in 2 Peter chapter 1, verse 13 through 15, yes, I think it is right as long as I am in this tent to stir you up by reminding you, knowing that shortly I must put off my tent, just as our Lord Jesus Christ showed me.

Moreover, I'll be careful to ensure that you always have a reminder of these things after my decease." So what is Peter saying?

This tent, this body is about to give out.

And I want to talk to you and communicate some things that hopefully you'll remember.

And with that in mind, let's look at chapter 1 and verse 1.

First of all, Peter says, I want you to remember my journey.

Simon Peter, a bond servant, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who obtained like precious faith with us by the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ.

First I want you to remember I started out as Simon, a big mouth fisherman.

Jesus called me Simon Johnson, Simon the son of John.

And I became a follower, a servant of Jesus.

At first, I tried to tell him what to say or not to say.

I used to try and lead, but now I follow.

I used to make my own promises, but now I trust in his promises.

Ultimately, I realized that I was not the greatest, but that he was the greatest.

And ultimately I was sent to be as a result an apostle of Jesus.

I don't start by telling you I'm an apostle because I'm really no different than you.

I humbly am here to share his righteousness, the righteousness of our God and Savior.

And I humbly admit to you that I need faith just like you do.

We all need to obtain precious faith, something we don't have in and of ourselves.

First Peter 1 verse 2, I want you to know God And I want you to experience the benefits of such knowledge.

I want you to realize that it's not just about amazing facts or amazing opinions.

It's about an experience that you need to have with God.

And I want you to understand that grace and peace can be multiplied to you, and I want it to be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.

John said, you search the scriptures daily and they are they that testify of me.

And Romans 10, 17 says, faith comes through hearing and hearing through the Word of God.

And I want you as you read those books, as you read about God, to experience multiplied grace and multiplied peace.

Don't settle for a small amount of these.

Plethuno, to increase, to abound, to multiply.

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

Don't settle for a small amount of grace.

Because a small amount of grace is really a disgrace.

True grace teaches us to deny ungodliness and unrighteousness and live righteous and sober in this present age.

Well, what happens when true grace is multiplied?

Second Peter chapter 1, Verse 3, as His divine power has given us all things that pertain to life and godliness, the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue.

In other words, when you have God's grace multiplied in your life, when you have his peace poured into your heart, you will have divine power in your life and you'll have everything you need that pertains to Life and godliness.

Knowledge will be increased about life, natural life, all types of anything you need to know about life and godliness.

Not just a natural life, but a God-like life, a life that demonstrates you know God.

You know, here at this university, we have a degree called natural science.

And I'm kind of wondering why we call it natural science.

Why don't we call it supernatural science?

There have been attempts throughout history to separate natural from super and science from religion or science from God.

Pythagoras encouraged all to worship infinity.

Plato said, worship the perfect abstract world of the forms.

Friege said, and Bertrand Russell and Alfred North, they all attempted to prove that every mathematical fact could be proven on the basis of logic, trying to get people to believe that the natural sciences were not supernatural at all.

Math was created by man, said these philosophers.

So I'm wondering why we call our degree natural science when we really know it's supernatural.

David Hilbert claimed that mathematics was self-dependent.

It did not need to refer to any authority outside itself in order to prove any of its truth claims.

And he called his philosophy of math formalism.

This all came to a crashing halt, all these notions and all these amazing opinions came to a crashing halt when an amazing fact was discovered and spoken of by Goodall in 1931, all these theories crumbled when he proved what he called the undecidability theorem.

No logical system, if they include counting numbers, can have all 3 of the following properties, he said.

Validity, all conclusions are reached by valid reasoning.

Number 2, consistency, no conclusions can contradict any other conclusions.

All statements made in the system are either true or false.

He summarized his undecidability theory, which I have to admit I had a hard time understanding or deciding what it meant.

So I read it 3 times, but I liked his summary statement Anything you can draw a circle around cannot explain itself With referring to something outside the circle Something you have to assume but cannot prove So in other words what he was saying was all of these notions by Pythagoras onwards, they didn't work.

Math cannot play the role of God as infinite and autonomous.

Logic itself proved that mathematics could not be its own ultimate foundation.

Math is simply not just natural, it's supernatural.

And as Galileo once said, mathematics is the language that God used to create the universe.

And as Kepler said, we think God's thoughts after him.

Why is it that Newton and the 1 that he argued with about who was the founder of calculus, both came up Leibniz.

Why was it that Newton argued about calculus, but the 1 thing they didn't argue about was they both discovered the same thing.

There's another theory that's in vogue now that makes no sense, that math came up by intuition.

I'm not even gonna try and explain why they think that makes sense.

2 people having the same intuition, multiple people having the same intuition, and it's the only thing that works.

It's simply not natural, it's supernatural.

Even though we may have discovered it, it was there all the time.

Galileo said mathematics is the language that God used to create the universe, and Newton said, when I wrote my treatise about our system, I had an eye upon such principles as might work with considering men for a belief in the deity.

Nothing can rejoice me more than to find it useful for that purpose." So Newton, perhaps 1 of the most profound and influential scientists that has ever known, the discoverer of calculus, was basically saying that heavens declare the glory of God and the earth showeth forth his handiwork.

Let me spend a few years, because there was a pandemic, studying it all out.

Newton hoped his scientific writings would lead people to think about and believe in God.

And when you think about it, without the Bible, they wouldn't even have maybe had a hint about mathematics to begin with.

You Can Be Sure - Thoughts on 2 Peter 1:10-11

Thank you for that wonderful anthem today.

That was written by a 16 year old when he came to know the Lord.

And he wrote a poem about accepting God into his life.

And his aunt saw that poem and said, man, that's a beautiful poem.

And it was made into a song That's changed many, many lives.

Those Peter was writing to at the time of our text we just heard were living in a great time of uncertainty.

Uncertainty because of the calls of the culture and the promises of the culture.

The promises of the culture were for sensual pleasure and success, entering into the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah, the lust of the flesh, and liberty, and there were promises that went with that, and the culture was completely filled with this throughout the Greek culture and the Roman culture.

And so the calls within the culture were totally different than the calls of the gospel, and there was persecution as a result for God's people in Cappadocia and Turkey and all the places where this letter was written to.

Not only that, the uncertainty that would come from the calls of culture and the pressure of culture that we see in 1 Peter, then had an additional problem that was mentioned in 2 Peter, and that was confusion in the church.

False prophets, false promises, the heaping up of teachers who would say what the culture said instead of what God's Word said.

And so there was uncertainty that came from outside, and there was uncertainty that came from within.

Uncertainty that came from the culture, should I follow the culture, and uncertainty that came from within, do I listen to the apostasy and the heresy within the church?

Sounds somewhat similar to what we face in our day, doesn't it?

And it's in the midst of that uncertainty.

It's with that uncertainty in mind that the text we just heard read was penned by Peter.

Therefore brethren, be even more diligent to make your call and election sure.

For if you do these things, you will never stumble.

What a powerful text of confidence, of certainty, of hope.

Look at that person next to you and say, you are called.

So how is it that we can have such confidence?

Our text began with a word, therefore, brethren.

Because there was something before the therefore.

And Looking back in 2 Peter, we see why it is that there's such confidence in these verses.

So turn with me there in your Bible to 2 Peter 1 And look back at verse 3 or verse 2 and 3.

Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus Christ our Lord.

And as His divine power has given us all things that pertain to life and godliness through the knowledge of Him who did what?

So we are called and we are called through the knowledge of God.

In 2 Thessalonians 2, verse 14, turn with me there, we can see that this idea of being called is related to the gospel itself.

He called you by our gospel for the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.

And so the call of the gospel is what was coming to the land of Turkey and the other lands where this epistle was written.

To come under the spell of God, God's spell, the gospel.

The whole world was held under the spell of the wicked 1, it says in 1 John 5.

But there was a new call, a clarion call of the gospel that you could escape the corruption that's in the world through lust.

That you could become a partaker of the divine nature.

And this call, according to Matthew chapter 24, this gospel of the kingdom would be preached to all the world as a witness.

So this call of the gospel would go everywhere.

In fact, in Titus chapter 1 and verse 11 it says, the grace of God has appeared to all men.

And of course in Hebrews we're told that that gospel went out even in the Old Testament, not just the New.

So no matter who you are or when you lived, there was the call of God that came in some way to you.

Everyone, whoever lived, has been called, in some sense, by the gospel.

And though all are called, they are not all that choose to follow the gospel.

Well, you know, there's different texts that we could look at, but 1 of the texts is, And I want to show you something as we look at these texts.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believes in him should not perish but come to but have everlasting life.

And as you look at the calls throughout the scripture or the promises, you have these metaphors that are used.

John 10, 14 for instance, I'm the good shepherd.

I know my sheep and my sheep are known by my own.

As the Father knows me, even so I know the Father and I lay down my life for the sheep.

My sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me.

So there is the call of the gospel that comes and it's a call for belief in Christ.

So when we see the message of Christ, when we hear the call, we still have to make a decision to follow that call.

As many as therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him.

So we receive the call and then we have a choice to make about whether or not to respond to that call.

So 1 response showing that we respond to the call of God, is to put our faith and trust in God.

Have you put your faith and trust in God?

How many of you think you could have an increased faith and trust in God?

To each is given a measure of faith, it says in Romans chapter 3.

And then it can be increased as it's exercised.

Another way to respond to the call of God is found in Acts 17.

Truly these times of ignorance God overlooked.

Now commands all men everywhere to do what?

To repent, which means they change their mind.

Because he has appointed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness by the man whom he has ordained.

And he's given assurance of this by raising him from the dead.

So another way to respond to the call is not just to believe, but to do what?

Another way to respond is found in Romans chapter 10.

Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts and Romans 10.

Let's look there briefly as we look at how to respond to this call.

"'If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus "'and believe in your heart that God has raised Him "'from the dead, you will be saved.

For with the heart 1 believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.

So believing, and then having your mind change, but then actually openly confessing your belief in God audibly.

A More Sure Word Of Prophecy : Thoughts on 2 Peter 1:16-21

Well, tonight we're going to study a little bit in our midweek service from 2 Peter.

So I invite you to turn with me in your Bibles to 2 Peter.

And in 2 Peter 1, we've had this picture of assurance, how it is that we can make our calling and election sure.

So there's a lot of talk about how to have assurance and Peter tells us that our calling and election actually can be sure, we can be sure because of the precious promises and because of Peter's ladder, his process of ongoing multiplied power of God where he will add to our faith this and that and the other and end up with love, faith working through love.

Of course, the fruit of the Spirit is love, peace, joy, long-suffering, faithfulness.

But in Romans chapter 12 verse 3 it says, to each is given a measure of faith.

So you're given a measure of faith, and I would say your faith actually is a gift of love.

And God gives each of us a measure of faith.

I've been studying this week on the will, and of course the will that is the power of choice God gives us, and it actually is innate.

Kids as small as 3 years old understand when someone is telling, making a choice that's true or false and they can point that out.

But each 1 is given a measure of faith and it grows.

Well anyway, so this whole idea in 1 Peter is there's going to be attacks inside the church, or rather, second Peter.

First Peter attacks from outside the church, second Peter attacks from inside the church, and you're going to have to be able to meet those attacks.

And he starts out in chapter 1 by saying the first thing you need to know is that your own salvation is secure.

Make sure your own salvation, your calling and election is sure.

And so he goes through that, verse 10, therefore, brethren, be even more diligent to make your call and election sure, for if you do these things, you will never stumble and an entrance will be supplied to you abundantly in the everlasting kingdom of the our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

So this is the idea of assurance and it comes through what?

This personal relationship that's based on the power of God, His divine power, and verse 4, His precious promises.

So His divine power, His precious promises that you take part of that divine power, and, verse 12, His present truth.

You can be established in the promises and in the power and in the present truth, the 3 Ps.

So now building on that, we come to verse 16.

And it says this, for we did not follow cunningly devised fables when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty.

For he received from God the Father honor and glory, when such a voice came to him from the excellent glory.

This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." And we heard this voice which came from heaven when we were with him on the holy mountain.

And so we have a prophetic word confirmed.

So now you have not just the promises, not just the power, But now you have what?

Not just the present truth, now you have the prophecy.

We have a prophetic word confirmed, which you do well to heed, as a light that shines in a dark place until the day dawns, and the morning star rises in your hearts, knowing this first that no prophecy of Scripture of any private interpretation, for prophecies never came from by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." So this idea of being ready for attacks from within is based on what?

The promises and power of God, the present truth, right?

And by the way, speaking of the Bible, the Bible is a unique book.

It's the only book that is filled with so much prophecy.

How much prophecy does the Quran have in it?

0 how much prophecy do the Vedic scriptures the Vedas which are from India how much do they have?

0 And how much prophecy is there in the Bible?

In fact, those that study that, you know, say that there's 1, 817 prophecies in the Bible, and these prophecies are amazingly amazing in their accuracy.

In other words, one-fourth of the Bible, more than 1 in every 4 verses, are prophetic.

You read the whole Quran, nothing like that.

You read the Vedic scriptures, nothing like that.

But the Bible has prophecy, which it's also falsifiable.

You can say, hey, wait, it said that would happen.

And that's what Peter's pointing us to now.

Saying look, you not only need the power of God, you not only need the present truth, you not only need those things and the promises of God, you need the prophecies of God.

And then he talks about it now in a very personal, practical way.

We did not follow cunningly devised fables when we made known to you the power and the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty.

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