Jesus, Priceless Treasure

If you would turn with me please to the second letter of Peter.

Second Peter will be reading the first four verses of chapter one. Peter writes, 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 Jesus our Lord. According as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue. Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises that by these we might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.

Let's pray together. Father, thank you that in Jesus Christ you have poured out blessings beyond measure upon us. You have given us, as Paul says, every spiritual blessing in Christ in the heavenlies. We marvel at the wonder of what you have given. And above all else, Father, you have given us your only son.

You sent him to die in our place. You sent him to live a perfect obedience to you that you now count to us. And you have promised that he will come again and receive us to himself that we will forever be with him. Thank you, Father, for the wonder of your goodness and grace to us. We pray that your spirit would teach us even to now that we might know you more deeply, more fully.

We ask it in Jesus' precious name. Amen. What is your most valued treasure? The thing that you cherish above everything else. The thing that is to you most precious. You know, we all have stuff that we cherish, things that we value, and yet we know that all the stuff is replaceable.

When disaster strikes, we talk about the fact that things are replaceable. It's the people that we're concerned about. We are grateful and we thank God when no one is hurt, no one dies, it's just the stuff. Because we value people, we value relationships. We value our family, our friends. We value intangible things. We value our reputation. We value our standing in the various associations of life. We value what we deem to be good in society.

And we are greatly concerned when we see our culture and our society and our nation headed in wrong directions. In fact, we are currently in the middle of an election cycle and we hear politicians talking about things like our American values and our family values and but what is it that we truly esteem above everything else? What do we value more than anything else? What is for you your most priceless treasure?

Is this something that you pursue with all your might? The apostle Paul made it crystal clear of what he sought more than anything else. In his letter to the church at Philippi, he wrote, I count everything is lost because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord. Knowing Jesus was for him the pearl of great price, that hidden treasure for which he gave up everything. He wanted to know Christ above everything else. In our text tonight, Peter points us to the true value of this precious faith and the exceedingly great and precious promises that are given to us through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.

This knowledge is one of the main ideas that Peter is concerned with in this second letter. At least six times, he refers to this knowledge of God, grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord, he says in the very opening salutation. His divine power has given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness through the knowledge of him that have called us. We are diligently to add knowledge to our faith. So we will be fruitful in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. It is through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ that we escape the pollutions of the world, he tells us in chapter two. And the final exhortation of the letter is to grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Why such a focus on knowing our Lord? Well, the best answer is in what Jesus said in that high priestly prayer in John 17, as he was praying and he said, and this is life eternal, that they may know thee the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you've sent.

The secret to life, the way to grow in grace and peace, the fountain of everything we need for life and godliness is the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. So with that backdrop, let's dig into some of the specifics of these first four verses. The author of the letter is Simon Peter. If you have the ESV, it may say Simeon Peter, various ways that that name is used in different manuscripts, but it's the Peter, the apostle, the one who was the leader among the disciples. Peter was a leader and yet he presents himself here not as the apostle, but as an apostle, just one among many. He is an apostle, but he is also, and first and foremost, a servant.

He identifies himself as the servant of Jesus Christ as well as an apostle, a slave to Christ. He also places himself among all believers when he addresses the letter to those who have obtained like precious faith with us or as the ESV translated, to those who have obtained a faith of equal standing. We have to be careful as we read this word obtained. Sometimes we read a connotation into that as if this were something that we acquired in some way through our own effort. The Greek word there really has the idea of receiving something.

And so we need to recognize that this is something we have received. It is a gift from God by faith, but it is something that as Kistemaker puts it, he said, faith is a gift from God by the will of God. Jesus pointed us to this in the opening chapter of John's gospel when he said that we are born in faith, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

This is a gift from God. And this word that is used here as Peter introduces this when he says we have obtained this faith like the faith that he has, it's a word that really has kind of the idea of receiving something in a lottery. The same word is used back in Acts chapter one when they are replacing Judas as one of the disciples. And it says that Judas was allotted a part in the ministry.

It's that kind of thing. It's something that is given and received. So we receive this faith as a gift.

Peter is writing to believers, to those who have received the gift of faith, and it is a faith which comes through the righteousness of God and our savior Jesus Christ, he says. Now there's something interesting in the Greek text there that we can't quite grasp in the English language and we're trying to translate it this. There's an idiom there where in the Greek there's actually a definite article, the God. And when two nouns are put together in connection like that with a definite article, they just use the definite article one time, but it connects the two as being equal.

And so we might translate that. This is through the righteousness of the God, our savior Jesus Christ. And it identifies Christ as being God. That's something that's clear throughout the New Testament. It makes it very clear that Jesus is equal with God. In fact, that's the very reason that the Jews wanted to put him to death was because he claimed equality with God for himself.

But this is something the disciples proclaimed early on. In fact, shortly after his resurrection, when Thomas saw the risen Lord for the first time, he cried out, my Lord and my God. We recited this morning in our worship the Nicene Creed in which we declared our belief in the triune God, Father, Son, and Spirit equal in substance. So Jesus is our savior and he is God. He, as Paul says in his letter to the Colossians, in Christ dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.

Christ is God and it is in him that we have received this wonderful, precious faith. So having identified himself then as the writer and identifying those to whom he is writing as fellow believers, Peter then salutes the receivers of this letter with a greeting that is common to almost all the New Testament epistles, grace and peace to you. But here Peter adds an interesting phrase. He says something that is a clue to one of the themes that he's going to be focusing on throughout this letter, grace and peace be multiplied to you.

Peter longs for believers to grow and to mature and he'll give a lot of attention in his first chapter, especially to the development of faith and how Christians should diligently pursue the life of faith and not be negligent to be established in the truth. He tells them right up front then that this multiplying of grace comes through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. It's significant, I believe, that he uses a word in referring to this knowledge that's an emphatic word, not just a simple knowing that we might sort of read through hurriedly and not really comprehend.

It's a compound word in the Greek that some have translated through the full knowledge of God and Jesus our Lord. When my wife and I were headed to the mission field, we had to go to the language school down in Costa Rica. We studied Spanish and we found out that they have two different words for knowing and how you say it makes it a completely different meaning. If you were to ask me, do you know Paris?

I would say yes. And in Spanish, I would use the verb saber. But if I had been there and gotten to know the city and lived there for a while, I might say, yes, I know that city and I would use the verb conosco, conocer.

Conocer, because I know it experientially. I think that's the kind of emphasis that Peter is giving us here with this word where he's speaking of this full knowledge, this experiential knowledge of God. It's not just an intellectual knowing about God, but it is knowing him. In verse three then, he makes an astounding, amazing assertion when he says, his divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness. Yeah, I'm amazed at the superlatives, the nth degrees that are used in scripture when it speaks of what God has given us in Christ. I've already mentioned it, Paul in his letter to the Ephesians said, God has blessed us with every spiritual blessing. Here, he says that he's given us everything we need for life and godliness.

There's another place where Paul talks about the fact that God is able to make all grace abound to you so that in every good work, you have everything you need for every good work. God has given us everything in Christ. And so here he says that as believers, we've been given everything necessary for life and godliness. The NIV puts it like this, his divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness. And again, this is through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. God has given us through knowledge of him, everything that we need for life and godliness. Do we treasure that?

Do we cherish this? Christ is everything to us. So the proposition I would say is this, we are to cherish Jesus as a priceless treasure because in knowing him, we receive the gift of our precious faith. And through knowledge of him, he has granted us precious and exceedingly great promises by which we become partakers of his divine nature.

That's astounding. What God created us to be, what we totally messed up with our sin and our rebellion and our disobedience, God in Christ restores in us and enables us to become partakers, participants in his divine nature. So for the remainder of our time, I want us to focus briefly on two aspects of this treasure that we have in Christ. I read our text in the King James and it repeats this word precious. I like that, this precious faith and these exceedingly great and precious promises that are given to us in Christ.

That word in the Greek language has to do with value, significance. And so we have a precious faith and are given precious promises in Christ. So Peter says that we have received a like precious faith or in your ESV, a faith that is of equal standing as the one that he has.

The word like means that this is something that is common to all believers. There's no place for pride in any walk with Christ. We are given grace by God's gift.

And so as Paul writes to the Romans, by grace given to me, I say to everyone among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. You have great faith, God gave it. You have a little faith, God gave it. Whatever your measure of faith, it's a gift from God.

There's nothing for you to be proud of, just grateful for. It is a precious faith because it is a gift from God. So given and not earned. Some things are precious to us because of who gave them to us. We have some things in our house that if you were to look at it, you would say, why are you hanging onto this, moving it all around the world like you have? We're in our 38th house, I think now in 56 years.

One year on the mission field, we were in three different houses in one year, all because the mission said you got to move here and go there and do this. But we value these things because of who gave them to us. We've got some rocks at our house that one of our grandchildren picked up and gave to Mamu. And it's a treasure because of who gave it. In this case, we treasure this faith, both because of who gave it to us and because of its own intrinsic value. God has given us a faith that is precious. It's precious also because it is a faith that lasts. We talk about precious metals, gold and silver and platinum and all these other metals that we call precious because they don't corrode very easily.

They don't rust away. But this faith is precious to us because it is lasting. It is lasting because of the price that it costs. It is a costly gift for us. Peter writes in his first letter, knowing that you were ransomed from the feudal ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, mentions those precious metals, said they're perishable, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ. What a costly faith.

What a costly gift. But it is something that lasts and will endure because it is God's gift and it is God's work. God gives the faith. We've already mentioned Ephesians 2, where God says to us that our salvation is by grace through faith and it's a gift of God, not of works, nothing to boast about.

It's a gift of God. He gives the faith. He sustains the faith.

In Jude, we have that wonderful benediction in the closing verse of Jude. Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy. God is able to sustain every one he calls to himself and to present them to himself blameless in the very presence of his glory, not in fear, but with joy. God gives the faith. He sustains the faith and he sustains the faith of all to whom he gives it.

You remember Jesus' words in John. He said, all that the father has given to me will come to me. And he says, it's the will of the father that I don't lose any of them.

I'm gonna raise them up on the last day, every one of them. God has given the faith. He sustains the faith and he keeps it. In Peter's first letter, he says, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God's power are being guarded through faith. God keeps it. Paul talks about having kept the faith and we are to keep the faith. There's always responsibility on our part, but it's a sure thing because God keeps it. It is kept for us, this precious faith.

But not only does Peter point us to this precious faith, he also points us to the precious promises that are given to us. These promises, he says, are exceedingly great. Some of the modern translations say very great. Yeah, very great.

I like that old line, exceedingly great. The Greek word there is the word megista. It's the word from which we get words like megaphone and megabytes and megalomania.

It means really big, great. God has given us great, exceedingly great and precious promises. These promises are great because of who made them. God always keeps his promises. You remember the words of Joshua as he came to the end of his ministry. And he said to the Israel, not one word has failed of all the good things that the Lord your God promised concerning you. God's promises are great because he made them and he never goes back on his promises.

They are great because of their purpose. Notice in verse four there, he says that these promises are given that by these, you might be partakers of the divine nature. Now, we become like him in character in our nature, not in essence, God alone is God in essence and substance, but we are made like him in character. We begin to reflect the nature of God as he restores in us and renews in us and recreates in us what his intention was from the very beginning. So we are given these precious promises.

They are so great. They are also great and precious promises because of their implications for us and of their revelation to us of God. And I want to close out our time by just reminding you of some of the marvelous promises that are given to us as believers. We have the promise of forgiveness. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from some of those sins, all unrighteousness.

Because he's nailed them all to the cross, every last one of them. Promise of forgiveness, the promise of reconciliation. Paul writes in Colossians, in you who once were alienated and hostile in mind doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him. Reconciled to God because you are now holy and blameless in Christ.

We have the promise of his presence. Hebrews 13 five, God has said, I will never leave you nor forsake you. I had heard about this verse from men who know a lot more Greek than I do, but I was able to look at the Greek and understand enough to realize there are five negatives in the Greek phrase that we just read there in the translation. I will never leave you nor forsake you. We don't have any way of doing that in English very well.

In fact, when we put two negatives together, we say it cancels out each other, it's incorrect grammar to say not hardly or something like that where we do two negatives. I guess the closest we've come to this in English is that wonderful hymn that stands of, how firm a foundation it says, the soul that on Jesus doth lean for repose, I will not, I will not desert to his foes. That soul, though all hell should endeavor to shake, I'll never, no, never, no, never forsake.

Five negatives. We have the promise of his presence. He will be with us to the very end. We have the promise of his power. And before Jesus ascended to the Father, he said to his disciples, but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you. Our pastor referenced that power this morning and talk about how he just kind of stood out of the way and let it happen. It is the power of God in us, at work in us that accomplishes.

In fact, it's such an amazing thing. The New Testament says that the same power that raised Jesus from the dead is the power that's at work in us. We can't comprehend that.

We've never seen anybody raised from the dead. We know Jesus was, but we didn't see it. But just begin to get our minds around that, we can't quite grasp it, but that same power is at work in us and through us. We have the promise of his peace. In Philippians, Paul writes, do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Jesus is our peace, our peace with God, our peace with others, peace within ourselves. You know, we have, Paul says, the mind of Christ. And in the mind of Christ, there's none of this fraction and fragmenting and wanting one thing and wanting another and you can't have both. The mind of God is perfectly at peace because there are no conflicting desires in him.

We have that all the time, our minds are just torn. In fact, Paul says that it's our desires that, James says that it's our desires that create all these wars and conflicts within us. But in Christ, we have peace. We have the promise of glory. Paul wrote to the Corinthians, we all with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. And most of all, we have the promise of himself. In John 17, that high priestly prayer, Jesus prayed, Father, I will that they also whom thou has given me, be with me where I am, that they may behold my glory.

And Paul writes about the second coming, the dead in Christ shall rise first, then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so shall we ever be with the Lord. You cherish him, you treasure him. Knowing him is the pearl of great price, the hidden treasure. It ought to be worth everything we have, everything we can do.

We should pursue him with all that we are. And one day, we will be with him face to face. As I was pondering this during the night, an old gospel song came to my mind. There is coming a day when no heartache shall come, no more clouds in the sky, no more tears to dim the eye. All is peace forevermore on that happy golden shore. What a day, glorious day that will be. What a day that will be, when my Jesus I shall see. I look upon his face, the one who saved me by his grace, when he takes me by the hand and leads me through the promised land. What a day, glorious day that will be. Jesus is a priceless treasure.

Let's pray. Father, we stand in awe of your great love and for the demonstration of that love when you sent your son to die in our place, even when we were in sin and rebellion and disobedience. And we thank you that in Christ we have been given faith, we have been given promises of forgiveness and reconciliation and peace in your presence and in eternity of fellowship with you. We thank you, Father, for the marvelous gift that is ours in Christ. And we thank you for the miracle that you have not only given us Christ, you have placed us in him and you now see us in the beloved, fully clothed with his righteousness. And we thank you in Jesus' name, amen.