Introduction to Second Peter (Part B)

It says in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. Well, of course, this knowledge is going to protect them from the false knowledge. Christians who are ignorant of Scripture are a delicacy for Satan. The only way to stay off that platter is to have the knowledge of the Word. Word of God, breastplate of righteousness, the shield of faith. You can't get those two without the Word.

How else would you know? This is Cross Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the book of 2 Peter.

Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. And now here's Pastor Rick as he continues to introduce the book of 2 Peter. Paul, when he got to, he's heading towards Jerusalem, he calls.

He doesn't want to go into the city of Ephesus because he wouldn't get out. So he calls for the pastors to meet him in a place called Miletus. And they come.

And he lays it out to them what's going on, how he's worked and labored. Well, I'll just read this section that I have. Acts chapter 20 verse 27. This is a powerful section.

If you read it, you cannot, again, have a ho-hum approach to it. He says, I have not shunned to declare to you the whole counsel of God. That means all of it.

All that he could. Therefore take heed to yourselves and to the flock. Watch yourselves. Watch the congregation.

Watch over them, that is. Among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. That's anointing. That's ordination. To shepherd the church of God, which he purchased with his own blood. Which so many Christians are so indifferent about. You know, when we have communion, we are saying, we agree that Christ died for we sinners and we love him back. We're not worthy, but we're in.

We'll not be moved off of this. So he says here, which he purchased with his own blood. Not that of sheeps or goats or anybody else, his own. For I know this, that after my departure, savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. Don't look for mercy from Satan.

You'll never get it. He continues. Also, from among yourselves, men will rise up, speaking perverse things to draw away the disciples after themselves. Therefore, watch and remember that for three years I did not cease to warn everyone night and day with tears. You see, when I said, you can't read this without passion because it was said with passion. He says, I warned you with tears.

You could see it in my eyes tearing up when I'm telling you they're coming. And if you stop believing what God has said and start believing what men disagree with God about, then you're done. Well, that is the introduction, some of it, to 2 Peter. His audience, who were they? The same people of 1 Peter.

It's not a different group. How do we know that? Well, he tells us in chapter 3.

He says, Beloved, I now write to you this second letter. The authorship has been challenged, unfortunately, by many scholars, and it certainly is contested by others, too. But there's no reason to doubt that this is Simon Peter. There's nothing unusual in his doctrine. There's no new doctrine.

There's nothing weird in this. It all agrees. It is consistent with that unbroken testimony from Genesis, and it is prophetic, confirmed by, for example, Jude and John's revelation. It is irrational, as it has been charged by some, that some false teacher wrote this. So a false teacher wrote about watching out for false teachers. That's kind of dumb.

I don't know anybody, if he did, you'd be able to pick it apart. It wouldn't be consistent with the rest of the Scripture. So it's easier to just accept this as being from Simon Peter, as it says in verse 1. It's date. We're about 35 years almost after crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension of Christ.

And what goes with that? Crucified, risen, ascended, coming again. He's not done.

He's not abandoned anything. It's a self-imposed exile to carry out his plan, that faith would operate in populating heaven, a place where we are going. And so this letter, this second one, is likely written just before his own martyrdom, 2 Peter, verse 14, chapter 1, knowing that shortly I must put off my tent, that's his body, flesh and blood, just as our Lord Jesus showed me. So Peter knew that the persecution was still taking place, physical persecution, and that it would end, he started now realizing this is going to end in my own death, this is the real thing. And he writes this letter to the saint saying, okay yeah, they're persecuting us physically, now they're infiltrating the church trying to get us there too. You say, why would a false prophet want to associate himself with a church being persecuted? That's pretty easy. It's two-fold, or maybe three-fold.

I feel like Proverbs, you know, there's five reasons, six reasons, maybe seven. Anyway, one of course they're energized by Satan, and so that means they're stupid. The other thing is, they're going to profit off the believers monetarily, the prosperity teachers of their day. And the third one is, they're not worried about persecution because should the authorities engage them, they'll just deny the faith, that's all, and get out of it. They have no conscience, they have no commitment to Christ, so why not?

And here they are, opportunists. They see this flock being attacked, and they join it. 1 Timothy, the theme being false shepherds, this second letter, 1 Timothy 4, now the spirit expressly says, Paul says this is clear, that in latter times some will depart from the faith.

We just saw one. Some of you may have that book, you should have burned it a long time ago, Kiss Dating Goodbye. He's now a full-fledged, unashamed apostate. He's left Christianity. He has attacked it.

So this is very serious. Anyway, I said to myself I wouldn't put too many of my feelings into that, not the apostate part, but previous writings. Anyway, here we go, back to Paul's quote, the spirit expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons.

You see that? The demons have a system of teaching, and it's found in the religions and spirituals of the world, not of scripture. It is outside of scripture.

It is organized. John Wesley warned against that reasonable devil. He reasons, he has his ideas. I don't know about you, sometimes I end up on the internet looking at something Christian, and I always regret it, always. And this, you know, Christian gets owned by question and then watch the video and say, what, that was it? That was it?

That's what owned him? Someone's saying, so what are you saying? All people that don't believe in Christ go to hell? All people who have heard the gospel and have chosen to reject it, the true gospel, yes. Those who have not heard it, God will deal the right way with them.

That's a simple answer. Why is everybody, oh, there's no answer to this, or so shaken by this? There's nothing to shake, God or the universe will always do right. Well, again, our God, I want to be careful that we understand when we say scripture, we're talking about God, his word, we don't worship, we don't have a paper idol in the scripture, we don't worship the words, it's the God, the author and finisher of our faith whom we worship.

His mode of communication is the scripture, his primary mode. And it does not support inclusiveness, it does not look for a way to bake in to what we believe that which others don't believe. Tolerance of error, spiritual error, we can tolerate those who fail, who sin, who stumble and repent, we can work with them.

We cannot tolerate those who refuse to repent and want to be received and given platform. This willingness to embrace false teachers in the name of human love and human activity is false and it's all going to fall apart. And it's going to fall apart with a roar unlike humanity has ever seen before, such as the world has not seen, it is coming.

Don't be here to watch it happen. If God has been right in all of his other prophecies, why would we doubt any of the future prophecies? Even the world knows better than that but they just refuse to face it. Scripture harshly condemns false teachers because they lead people to hell forever. There's no candle you're going to light to get someone out of hell. There's no money you're going to pay to a church to bribe God, to let people who reject him into his presence forever so that they can start corrupting everybody else and heaven become like earth a cursed place. And so why would false teachers join the church?

To destroy the faith of church goers and to capitalize on it. Well with that we now come to verse 1. This is incidentally, I don't know if I'll be able to deliver it that way but the way I feel, 2 Peter and Jude, they're right down, that's my favorite dish you could say. Dealing with these charlatans, these scoundrels. But it's hard to be this way as a pastor. When God called me to the pastor he gave me a choice. Do you want to be more of a, have a prophetic calling?

Deal with, you know, like Dave Hunt? Deal with the things that are wrong in Christianity? Or do you want to be a pastor? And I chose pastor which means I had to shave down a lot of my approach. There's certain things I just cannot keep reading because it will show up in the pulpit and come out harsh because I'll be right but not delivering. As the work of a pastor. Since then I have learned that the problem in the Christian church is almost unfixable. That it is a severe sickness that comes into churches to kill them and it's brought in by church goers.

And it's going to take everything we have because no one man can stand against these things just to defend our bean field. And God, he prunes out those who are not interested in rowing in that direction. Not that I'm saying sending them to hell or anything like that. They're just some Christians that won't fit in some churches and God moves them on hopefully to other churches. Unless they become so that he can't even find a place for them. That would be a tragedy. So you get a body of believers like-minded. The work is just beginning because you're going to have to fight to keep what you have every step of the way.

Somebody and some things are going to try to move us out. So he says Simon Peter. What did that do to a town of Christians or where Christians were when Simon Peter showed up and word got around?

He's going to be speaking Sunday night or Sunday morning. What Christian would not want to see the man that walked with Jesus? Hear the man whom Jesus loved so much, said so many things too, singled out more often than anybody else we know.

He was a crowd drawer. When he says Simon Peter to this audience before him, they were very interested in what he has to say. He was the apostle who opened the door to the Jews at Pentecost, the primary. He was also the apostle who opened the door to the Gentiles in the house of a Gentile.

Which if you know anything about the Jewish people and the Gentiles of that time and that region of the world, that was miraculous by itself. And so he was welcomed. And because of his history with Christ, his time with Jesus, what he had to say lionized the believers. When Peter said face the fight, face the temptation, yep, that's what we're going to do. It wasn't, well, yeah, that's you. There was not that pushback. They wanted to hear this from this man.

I mean, when Paul lays out all the things he suffered for Christ in 2 Corinthians, after hearing that, what could any true believer say against him? The only thing you can say is what a man. How does he fit his cape into his robe and it doesn't show up? He's like a super saint. Bond servant, he says. A bond servant is a slave by choice.

He's free to go, but he opts out of that kind of freedom for another kind of freedom. He is an apostle by divine appointment. He is sent by the lamb of God.

That's what an apostle is. A bond servant is one that says he is at the disposal of his owner, his master. All his energy is spent in the interest of the master. His choices are now in accord with his master, his owner.

And he is unashamed, or she is unashamed. In fact, every Christian is called to be a bond slave. What is the alternative? You're a co-master? You're free to serve somewhere else, someone else? We are supposed to be willing slaves of Jesus Christ. He says an apostle of Jesus Christ. There it is, sent by the lamb. Incidentally, where's Silas? He wrote the amanuensis of the first letter.

Well, he was dispatched. And that's the last time we hear of Silvanus or Silas in the New Testament. And the reason why I point that out is second, Peter is not so eloquently written in the Greek, classical Greek that Silvanus offered.

Peter has to settle for another amanuensis or writes it himself. And it's just a, that's a side note. It has nothing to do with the content. It's an interesting human fact about the scripture that these men were not those who lived in ivory towers and everything for them was isolated and perfect and polished. It was down, it was gritty. The word of God, it is down to earth. It's where the people are. And it is, it's tough, you would say. It's tough stuff.

It's not something that is overdone. He says to those who have obtained like precious faith and received the salvation. We never earn salvation. You cannot earn salvation.

It can only be received. Without repentance, it's not received. Like precious faith, that word for like precious, it is in the Greek equal of value. That means that your faith is the same, has the same value as Abraham's faith. Your faith, my faith, is the same value as Peter's, as Paul, as anybody in scripture who was righteous before God.

It is made of the same stuff, cut from the same cloth, cast from the same mold. For the Jew, for the Gentile, for the male, for the female, for the slave, for the free. Regardless of your ethnicity, nationality, if you come to Christ, receive his salvation, you're in.

And nobody can take that away from you. And so true faith is precious because of where it comes from and who it goes to. It gets, it is my and yours, passport into heaven. By righteousness of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ. A righteousness is supposed to distinguish the lost from the saved at the very least what we believe. 2 Corinthians 5, 21. For he made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God. Christ taking our sin on us. Verse 2, grace, peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus Christ our Lord. He begins the first letter the same way, but this word multiplied to you. Multiplication is addition gone wild. And so he is saying, God, heap up the blessings on you at an accelerated rate.

Today we use the phrase gone viral, it's just gone. And that's what he's saying. I want God to just pour blessings on the people of God. He still knew they were being persecuted. Where Christ is magnified, the church is multiplied. And this is one of the great lessons.

Here's a good study. Look up the word multiplied in your concordance in the book of Acts and read it in context and you'll see what I'm saying. He says in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. Well, of course, this knowledge is going to protect them from the false knowledge. Christians who are ignorant of scripture are a delicacy for Satan. The only way to stay off that platter is to have the knowledge of the word. The word of God, the breastplate of righteousness, the shield of faith. You can't get those two without the word.

How else would you know? Mere resolve is not enough. You cannot just insist on following God by itself. Again, integrating these false things with God's word, only knowledge would be able to... My mother worked at...

I know I just cut off my own self, but what I had to say was more important than what I was saying. My mother worked in the U.S. Mint. She did not bring samples home. We begged her, but I wasn't even around then. Anyway, she told us as kids, you know, she had stories too.

Not as good as my stories because she wasn't an iron worker. Anyway, she said the way they taught them to work with, discover counterfeit was to just let them continuously handle that which was real. And you'd learn so much what the real stuff felt like. Anybody slipped something in there, you'd detect it right away.

Your senses would pick up on it. Well, that's how the story was told to me. You may say, well, that's not accurate.

Well, that's fine, but it's working my point. So the more you know God's word, the definite article, the real thing, you'll be able to pick up the, wait, wait, wait, I don't know that. I've never seen anything like that before. That's crazy stuff.

And Antichrist, again, he builds the apostate bride off of demonic doctrine and experiences. I experienced it. I felt it.

It has to be real. You're being set up. Philippians 3, 10, that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, fellowship of his sufferings, being conformed to his death. That's going to take knowledge of the word and experience that instead of this warm, fuzzy feeling. Anyway, getting to the point, these, here, you young Christians, memorize this verse if you can. Colossians 2, verses 8 through 10.

Because, again, when you go off to university or go off to the workplace, there are going to be those who are going to try to drown your faith to death. Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ. For in him dwells the fullness of the Godhead bodily, and you are complete in him who is the head of all principality and power. When Jesus said to his disciples, you're going to leave too? Peter said, where are we going to go? Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. John 4, 24. Those who worship God must worship him in spirit and in truth.

You'll need that to fight the false ones. John 7, 38. As the scripture has said, words of Jesus, he who believes in me as the scripture has said. John 14, 16.

I will send you another helper. He will abide with you forever, the spirit of truth. You see that word knowledge? It's epigonosis.

It's pronounced a little differently. It shows up elsewhere in scripture. It's a little bit more than just knowing. It's realizing.

It's getting it. When Paul wrote to Timothy, he says, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge? It's the same Greek word there.

Let's say it's this way. It's knowledge upon. Desires all men to come to knowledge upon the truth. Then again, 2 Timothy 3, 7. There are those that are always learning, never able to come to the knowledge upon the truth. That doesn't stop them from demanding that they are Christians.

Acts 24, 14. But this I confess to you, that according to this way, which they call a sect, so I worship the God of my fathers, believing all things which are written in the law and the prophets. Paul says, I'm a man of the word.

I'm not going to be moved off of that, simply because they call me names. That's all we have time for on today's edition of Cross Reference Radio. You've been listening to Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville in Virginia, as he teaches through the book of 2 Peter. If you'd like to listen to more messages from this series, or if you'd like more information about this program, please visit our website, crossreferenceradio.com. We also encourage you to subscribe to our podcast, so you'll never have to miss a program. Just search for Cross Reference Radio in iTunes, Google Play Music, or your favorite podcast app. What a great way to keep God's word with you wherever you go. We hope you'll tune in again next time as Pastor Rick continues studying through the scriptures, right here on Cross Reference Radio.