Good morning, we’re going to be in 2 Peter this week, 2 Peter chapter 1, and we’re going to pick up where we left off there in verse 12, 12 to 15, 2 Peter chapter 1, verse 12, and the apostle writes, therefore I intend always to remind you of these qualities. Though you know them and are established in the truth that you have, I can’t write as long as I’m in this body to stir you up by way of a reminder. Since I know that the putting off of my body will be soon, the 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.
The case of Judas Iscariot is not really, I think, as perplexing or mysterious as we often think it to be. We often think, well, man, Judas is just one of the guys, he’s one of the twelve, how come Judas, how come he, you know, drew the short straw, he pulled the short straw for Judas, for Judas, he just, he was there with the rest of them, and man, he got got by the devil. That’s just too bad for Judas, that’s terrible. And it’s not, that’s not the story of Judas, because if we read about Judas in the Gospels, we see very plainly throughout the text that while he was with Christ, while he was listening to Christ, he was listening to Jesus, and he was listening to Jesus, he was in no way knowing Christ. We read of his secret bank account, we read of him aggravated when Jesus would choose the generosity of a woman, breaking perfume rather than having the money of it in his own pocket. Judas was Judas, and he was not careful to guard his own heart, so that Judas was, as any of us are. Judas was not careful to guard his own heart, so that Judas was, as any of us are, and not for the grace of God, ready and primed to depart from Christ. That’s the story of Judas. And I think it’s interesting because Judas and Peter aren’t so different in their sins, but they are in the response of their sins, because where Judas goes deeper in that sin, look what I’ve done, I’m horrible, and he’s swallowed up by war. Worldly sorrow. Peter is, by grace, by Christ, able to come back to Christ. He’s able to repent, he turns, and he sees that. And that’s not anything different than what that same apostle is talking to us about. It’s a willingness and it’s a carefulness to look into my own soul and say, is this the real thing? Do my words and my labels on my life, are they matching really what it means to be called a follower of Christ? Judas presumably did miracles, as we’re told all the apostles did. Judas let the gospel, the good news of the kingdom, off his tongue as they went around the towns like others. Yet Judas, while he knew, he didn’t know. And so I think Peter has a special carefulness here in what he’s saying, and it’s a lesson learned. The hard way to keep one’s heart. Have a special daily concern for one’s heart. And this is why Peter says, I will remind you always. I will remind you always. He says, I intend always to remind you of these qualities.
You know them and you’re established in the truth that you have. So we labored up to this point, and up to this point, it’s kind of big, grand theology. You remember, it’s what God’s done. It’s the work that he’s done. But because he’s done this work, he’s changed my nature so that it can be said, I have responsibility in my own life to work out all the graces and the faith that God’s given me. And that’s, that’s true as much as it’s true that God gets the glory. His spirit is working in my new nature. And so Peter comes to this point and he says, therefore, because that’s so great, because that’s so important is you can’t put a premium on that because that’s the most important thing for anyone, the eternal weight of your nature. Peter says, I’m essentially going to bother you today. about it. That’s what Peter says. He says, I care that much. We’re not just going to have one conversation and move on. That’s not what Peter says. He says, I’m keen to put it in your mind all the time.
But then it doesn’t make sense if you go on to the second half because he says, though you know them and you’re establishing the truth that you have. So on the one hand, I’m going to remind you because it’s so important, but then on the other hand, you already know it and you’re fully established in it. Well, how can that make sense? How can that be? And it’s drawn us to this really important truth, spiritual truth that we have to be very keen on all the time, and it’s this. You and I always are at risk of regressing, going back in our spiritual walk with the Lord. The potential for a going down, though we were once going up, it’s always there. It’s always there.
And so these are precious truths here that he talks about, and they’re practical exhortations. So if we did kind of big theology on the grandness of God’s salvation plan for us, there are, I think, in this just some practical spiritual truths here to take note of as we go.
So Peter reminds us always of these great and grand truths and who we are, all those qualities of the person of Christ, because we are ever at risk of the potential for regression.
First thing, first thing, we don’t know near as much as we think we know. We haven’t grown as much as we think we have grown. And this point is best given by Peter. And I think oftentimes I speak straight from the heart for myself. I can go, well, I grew up in a Christian home, and I’m pretty sure I’ve been hearing sermons since I was nine months before I was born, and I’ve read some great theology books, and I even have a degree in biology, and Bible, and theology, and these kinds of things. And I think that I’m good to kind of, you know, ride out tomorrow based off of yesterday’s, you know, improvements. And it’s a very dangerous and even deadly sort of mindset. There was a battle on me years ago, and it was just hilarious because I identified with it. And the headline of that satire website was, first-year Bible college student so ready to step in for senior pastor if anything happened, you know? So it’s this, like, put me in there, like, I’m ready, I know, right? So friends, we have kind of that risk of thinking because we’ve gone some way in the faith, or even we’ve gone a very long way in the faith, therefore, I have mastered it.
And I want to guard, again, myself from that in seasons where I’m like that, but I think we all have to guard ourselves from it. And I think the longer that we’re Christians, there is kind of a risk of that swollenness of I’m this far along in the Christian life. What is that? What is that thing? I think that Peter’s guarding us from here. I think he’s guarding us from a place, you know, where there’s a fleshly attitude dressed up as spiritual maturity, all right? It’s a fleshly attitude dressed up as spiritual maturity, both in Christian character and Christian moral and spiritual growth. Think about Peter in Mark chapter 14, verse 29.
Peter says to Jesus, even though they all fall away, I will not. And Jesus said to him, truly, I say to you this very night, before the rooster crows twice, you will deny me three times.
Peter tells Jesus he’s wrong, but he said emphatically, if I must die with you, I will not deny you. And they all said the same. Peter is swollen with pride. Oh, how strong, how immovable, how resolute, how committed to Christ is Peter. And put yourself in your shoes. I’ve walked with Jesus for three years. You know, we’ve been talking late night talks and, you know, and, you know, into the early morning about this and that, and we’ve done ministry together. This idea, this idea that I’m not around yet. What is it? What is that? What is it? It’s a delusion of the flesh, friends.
Peter knew, but he did not know as he thought he knew, even to disagreeing with Jesus.
And in the same way, we must guard our own hearts when we feel like we have feelings of having arrived. Ah, we think, I’m learned here. I’m equipped there. When we say, ah, I’m learned here, or ah, I’m equipped there, surely it’s not true at all.
It’s like the man who says, you know, I am the most humble guy in the room. I’ve never met a more humble person than myself. I just want everyone to know how humble I am, right? So there’s a sort of arrogance that we can have if we’re not watchful as we go along, lest we consider ourselves wise, but we’re fools. We think we’re spiritually strong, but we’re anemic. We think we’re on top of the mountain, but really we’re just sitting down in the valley, babbling in the dark. Charles Spurgeon has said, blessed be God for the reformation, but we must not rest in the past. He says, we need new victories. We need new victories, but you can’t go along to Christian faith and go, that’s it, I’ve done it. I’ve arrived. No, friends, it’s one foot after the other in humility. And I think if we think we’re like, you know, I’m pretty, pretty far ahead here. I can slow down. I think I’m pretty far, you know, past everybody else here. It’s not like I’m in danger here. I think this means I’m nowhere near the finish line. Man, I’m nowhere near the finish line.
Think about it from an Old Testament perspective. And this comes out in the beginning of the Bible. What does God say to Cain? Cain who had no faith, who was a man of flesh, right? He resents any sort of humble, steady growth, commitment to the Lord. It is not this man. He says what? He says, Cain, sin is always crouching at your door. Sin is always crouching at your door. So if you are not careful on your, over your own soul, especially in the seasons, you think that you are really something.
Friends, the Lord gives us a reality check.
Assumptions about spiritual progress are just that, they’re assumptions.
Proctal dispositions, lift a man’s ego so high, but brings his soul so very low.
The scriptures only tell us to run. They tell us to persevere. They tell us to discern. They tell us to labor. They tell us to grow, keep hoping, keep believing, keep our eyes on Jesus. Which is to say, faith. Faith in Jesus. Faith in Jesus. Not faith in, how far you think you’ve come. Faith in how much you’ve grown. Proudness at all the things you think you’ve not done wrong in life. Pride says, look at me. Pride says, look at me. Faith says, look at Christ. Look at Christ.
There are 352 quintillion gallons of water in the ocean, which is a lot. And we’re so often, like we’ve got this big cup of water. We might look at this, like look how much I have here. Look how much I have here. Because we need a humility to go down and see the greatness of Christ and how much work left God needs to do in each of our souls.
So, you stand in faith. You stand in me, stand at me to be reminded because the potential for regression is always there. Because one, as I said, you don’t know as much as you think you know. But secondly, because we do not revisit the fundamentals of the faith as often as we should. And this is an important one. We do not revisit the fundamentals of the faith as much as we should. I remember talking to, years ago, a friend of mine that is a high level, engineer and was working on complex stuff. And, you know, I can’t tell you because it’s classified kind of things. And super duper, you know, complex stuff. And I asked him, do you ever have to go back and like relearn like the basics of math when you’re doing things? And he said, all the time. He said, I’ll be in something complex and I’ll forget how a simple problem is done. And he said, I’ll actually get pulled out of my college textbooks and I’ll revisit the basic building blocks of that body of science to get myself back up to that complex problem.
Kobe Bryant passed away a few years ago. I remember reading once that he would be a, you know, superstar. He would get up at like 4 a.m. earlier than anyone else, go to the gym, stand in one place, shoot a jump shot 500 times in a row, go home, come back to practice. He’s like, what? He does all that crazy stuff on TV. He practices the crazy stuff, the big stuff, the cool stuff. Let’s talk about the doctrine of substitutionary atonement. Let’s talk about theories of the atonement. Friends, if we lose the basics of what it means to be a Christian, of who Christ is, what we’ve been called to, we’ve got nothing. It’s a house of cards. Re-learning the basics of the Christian faith is so important. And the reason it’s important is because you and I, again, this comes back to pride, we make prideful miscalculations about ourselves. We think about ourselves, what I know I can’t ever lose or forget. Which is patently unbiblical.
You stand tall today, what does Scripture say? You’re going to fall tomorrow. Who among us has said, this one time I was angry, and someone said, hey brother, the Bible says you shouldn’t have unjustified anger. And I never had anger again. It was great. Who can do that? Who’s been told that lesson a thousand times? A thousand times. And do you know what the Bible says? Don’t do that. Yet what do you do? That. So don’t miscalculate, friends, how forgetful, how much your sinful nature plagues you, that you’ve got to constantly go back to the groundwork and the building blocks of the Gospel. The problem is when we think about the Gospel and these qualities that Peter’s talking about, remember he gave us all these qualities, like a checklist. What did that? Alright, I’ll do that one. I’m generous. Whatever. I’m kind. I’m affectionate. I’m steadfast. Great. That’s not the Christian life. It’s much more like a muscle. And I’ve got to work out that muscle, right? You’ve seen those dudes who look like almost gross. You know, they’re like it’s coming out of their eyeballs. So they’re just like muscles everywhere. And what if said guy was like, I did it. I’m here. I’m done. I’m done. I did it. I’m done. Give him a few weeks. Give him a few months. Give him a few years. And he would be completely out. He would be completely out of shape.
That says to Timothy,
practice these things. Practice these things. Immerse yourself in them. So that all may see your progress. Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. Persist in this. For by so doing, you will save both yourself and your heroes. So we don’t get rock stars in the Bible and the rock stars. They moved on from simplicity of the gospel simplicity of the truths. We find them seeing in themselves and need to go back to gospel doctrine over and over and over again. Because again, the Christian life is a process. It’s not a checklist. It’s a relationship, right? The Christian life is knowing Christ. So guess what? The more time you spend with Christ, the more you’re what? Like Christ. And the more time you don’t spend with Christ, the more you’re not like Christ.
If you go back up to verse nine, where we were previously, Peter says it flat out. He says for whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he’s blind. Having done what? What is Peter said happens to such a person? Having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins.
If someone said, please raise your hand if you’ve mastered some subject and you know it perfectly well. I’m keeping my hands down. I’m keeping my hands down. I know the wrist I run. I’m thinking I’m so far along. I figured it out, all I have is a dull sword. It’s got dull edges. And the first fight, the first battle, my pride is going to find me on the ground. As we need to hear the very gospel itself. self and all this beautiful simplicity over and over and over and over as the basics of even the gospel of believing in Christ believing all my sins are covered that itself is a constant challenge to my faith that itself is a lifelong struggle so back so it’s a basketball and somebody knowledge while they take great effort and work they take growth let us remember their sanctification which is what we’re talking about largely here that’s the work of the Spirit the Spirit uses basic gospel doctrine as well as he may use a deeper things of the faith and we say deeper things we don’t just mean oh I bought myself a systematic theology book and now I can you know sing big words and over there when we talk about I think the deeper things in the spirit we’re talking about the ability to be selfless as we weren’t five to eight years ago absolutely I’m putting up someone with just a Bible against somebody with multiple degrees and all kinds of stuff and saying this person very likely are likely to be far more alone in faith because they’ve known the person of Jesus. So this is not about knowing. Again, this is about what? It’s about becoming. And so I’m going to walk in humility and say, man, the Spirit may have something for me today that I’m not proud to think I don’t need. And the question is, do I have the humility to hear whatever that thing is?
In Calvin’s remarks, reminders are needful to arouse the faithful. Otherwise, slowness will creep in and come to flesh. Though then they might not have wanted teaching, yet he says that the goads of admonition were useful, lest security and indulgence should weaken what they had learned and at length extinguish it. Excuse me, extinguish it. Extinguish it.
So when you come to church on Sundays, right? Maybe you’re like me. You’ve been doing this. You’ve been doing this, right? Long time. Long time. Long time. I don’t want to come into church on Sunday and go, ah, I’ve heard this text preached before.
Ah, I’ve heard this mess. I’ve heard this thing before. I’m good on the whole, you know, fill in the blank or whatever topic you have now. I need to trust the providence of God that if I’m there that morning and that’s the thing being said, perhaps, perhaps, whoa, the mind of the Spirit is better than the mind of Chad and I need to submit myself to this truth again. Perhaps the Spirit is prepared and preparing me for a soon coming battle. Perhaps the Spirit is addressing a prideful, you know, corner of my heart. I need to trust the wisdom of the Spirit that the Word I’m being taught and retaught and taught and retaught is a grace of God. And that’s not just, that’s not just sermons. How many times have we done that in the Bible? You open the Bible and you start reading like, oh, good Lord. I’ll pray that. Yes, Lord. Help me to trust you all the more. Woo. Trust you in suffering. I’ve read that one before. Yep, that’s a good one. And we go on about our day and we haven’t really settled in the way to it yet, right? You know, you think you’re like nine miles deep and you’re like nine inches deep on that and then suffering comes and you realize, whoa, I didn’t know there was this kind of depth to suffering and my faith in God was this big and now God’s coming and my faith has to go this much. Whoa, how arrogant was I to belittle said text when I read it.
Friends, if one and two are true, one being you don’t know as much as you think you know and two being you’re likely to forget the basics of it anyways,
you may say back to me, Pastor Chad, I would have to have a very good view of myself if you’re saying this is true. You would have to, I would have to concede that my capabilities and capacity, my capacity to improve and maintain myself are all but absent and gone and I can’t do it at all. And I would just have to say back to you, amen. And I would have to say amen to myself on that.
You know who the godliest man in the room is? The God who knows it the least.
He feels his drawness to sin. He feels his inability to, to time and time again correct and stay the course. He lowers himself before the cross, pleading, oh, just your blood, Lord, only it can do it. He feels that in his bones. He has no interest in talking about self. He has an ever deepening grasp of the perfection of Jesus, of how he tarnished his own soul as before God. He rejoices at basic gospel doctrine. It saves his soul. He’s like someone who got the last ticket out of hell to heaven. He doesn’t know how or why he got it, but he’s got the ticket and he’s on the bus and he’s just glad to be there.
He seeks, he seeks Christ in all things. He seeks to point others to Christ. He seeks to encourage others in Christ. He applies himself to the daily rigors of word and prayer. He seeks to serve, not to be seen.
The more he grows, the more he knows how little he knows.
There’s a great deal of humility that perhaps he doesn’t even see he has. He knows he’s vulnerable to false teaching. He doesn’t keep his face pressed against the scriptures.
He keeps his ears open. To the word from the preacher and brothers and sisters. He keeps his eyes open to scripture, godly texts that encourage him. He sees himself as the chief of sinners, who by grace and grace alone was called into the kingdom.
You know, there was a man that used to go to church here. I’m sure a lot of you remember him. David Lawrence. David Lawrence, you know, is a much older gentleman.
But, you know, when I preached, that man would come up to me after, like, he just got saved, and he just wanted to say, wow, thank you for that, thank you. But, you know, man, I love you. No, not really, but I would say, man, please let me know I can do something for you. Please let me know I can serve you. And he would say, you just did, you just did. And I’m gonna be like that when I’m 50, 60, 70, 80, however long the Lord has me go on and be like, wow, John 3, 16, that’s great. Thank you for sharing that with me. That is so much more than I can hold my hands right now. You know, it’s just humility. There’s just a love for basic gospel doctrine found in the mature God who saints among us.
If we wanna get high on the Christian line, we’ve got to get low.
And to be clear, I’m not advocating for some kind of
intellectual kind of simplicity or an anti-intellectual sort of movement. Like if you start reading books, you know, that’s bad. God just wants you to know John 3, 16, and I’m not advocating for that. you know, you’re good, but that’s not at all true. And I disagree with everything we’ve talked about, about loving God with our minds. What we’re talking about here is guarding our hearts from the cry that says, ah, look how much I’ve come. Look how far I’ve gone. That’s what we’re talking about. We’re talking about the difference between true spirituality and cold, dead religion. That’s what we’re talking about. So there’s a great blessing. It’s a great blessing of being reminded. And I remember the first couple years of preaching. I was like, Jessica, I preached like, I preached this before. It’s a different text, but I preached about it. I’m going to go up here and say the same thing again? I’m going to go up here and say the same thing again?
Yeah, man, I love it now. If I come up, I’m like, there it is again. It must be all of us aren’t doing it because there it is again.
Because we can’t get over anything. We can’t get over this stuff. Man, until we’re across the finish line in heaven, we need the whole thing from bottom to top, first to last, blessing. And there’s a blessing in being reminded. There’s a blessing in the community of saints who are regarding it. And it’s an act of humility, a conscious choice to constantly put self below it all and walk in that humility. Guard one’s own heart. To be guarded from error. To be guarded from regression. To be guarded from forgetfulness. And ultimately, to guard your heart from trial. That’s what Peter’s getting at.
So verse 13, he says, I think it right, as long as I am in this body, stir you up, I wave a 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 to at any time recall these things. Peter says, I’m reminding you. Why? So that you have the power of recall. I’m reminding you so that you can be reminded. It’s essentially what Peter’s saying. It’s kind of a truism in that way. I’m reminding you so you can be reminded. So you know. So you know. Tom Schreiner, he says, Peter hoped that his words would stab the believers awake so they would reject what the opponents taught. Believers know the gospel, and yet they must, in a sense, relearn it every day. Every day. Every day. I think it does elevate the wonder of the Bible on paper, doesn’t it? Because Peter, he wrote the letter. They got the letter. They could refer to it. They could refer to the letter. And then what can you and I do? We can refer to the letter. And so really, that kind of, whoa, I can refer to the letter. I just read the letter. Like, it’s there. God’s keeping me with these letters. With these letters. And then I think about how the office of apostle has passed, and these scriptures remain.
And even what a privilege it is to stand. To stand up here, and as your pastor and shepherd reminds you. Like, it’s my job to remind you. It’s my job to remind you. To remind you. And that’s heaviness, a good heaviness, but I’m going to remind you. I’m going to keep sharing the truth with you. Because if that’s good enough for Peter, it’s got to be good enough for me not to teach new fancy things. Not to say, well, how can we shake this up and make it more interesting? Or maybe it’s changed with the times. But the thing is, let’s just keep going back here. And I’ll say, Hey, this is what this says. Let’s do this. Let’s just do this. Can we just do this? This is it. Be reminded.
And I was thinking, I was thinking when I was in Scotland, because I was reading through 2 Peter in Scotland. Chase rebounded me in my little travel Bible. Made of green leather. Little travel Bible, all fancy. And so it smelled like real leather, you know. And I was reading this little thing. And so I’m like, I’m going to read and reread 2 Peter. And I’m reading. This very passage here. And the thought came to me and studied. I think sometimes maybe my own church, my people like me too much.
And what I mean is this. My chief job is not to be your friend. My chief job is to proclaim God’s word to you. And expect, expect you to conform to it. Just as you expect me to conform to it. It’s kind of like the parent who thinks their best angle of being a parent is to be their child’s friend and not their parent. And then what do you have in the end of a ruined child, right? So in the same way, what is the role of the shepherd or the elder from the ancient times to now? It’s like, hey, here’s what the apostles said, guys. Like it? You don’t like it? Either way, this is it. This is what we’re doing. This is what we’re doing. Because this is. That body of what God did to save us. And if we want that body of the spirit working in us, drawing us to eternity, drawing us through eternity’s gates. Is this what Peter said last week? Remember Peter said, in this way, you will inherit an entrance. What’s the way? How can I get there? It’s by going that very narrow, difficult road. Carrying my cross, dying to self, staying humble, seeing how forgetful I am. Realizing I know practically nothing. And I need Jesus. The whole way through. That’s how we get there together.
So I will remind you. I will remind you of what the apostles have told us. Dear ones. Let’s be reminded in word ministry. Who Christ is. And who he has called us to be. So that in the end, we will be all that Christ is. And that. We will be one with the Father. Let’s pray together. Amen.