Welcome to Delight in Grace. The Teaching Ministry of Rich Powell. pastor of Grace Bible Church in Winston-Salem. This is Part 2 of the message, which was first preached on October 29, 2023. It's the final message in a series from 2 Peter titled, Live as People Who Remember.
If you want to hear this message and other messages in the series, you can visit www.delightingrace.com. It's all about affirming. the self. Christians. that is diametrically opposed.
to the Word of God. It is not the gospel of grace. It is fraud, it is false promises. And Peter says, Look at verse 17. Knowing this beforehand, take care that you are not carried away by the error of lawless people and lose your own stability.
Lose your own stability, carried away, led astray. The verb carried away emphasizes a group or corporate movement.
So, groups of people, and here we are today in an era where whole denominations are. Splintering. Because of the changed definitions. and values and sensibilities in our society. There is a rip current.
Going on. You know what a rip current is? You've been to the beach. We're Americans, of course, we've been to the beach, right? And you're always watched, warned about these rip currents.
And what do you do in a rip current? You don't try to swim against it. For how many, how many? That's new information for how many of you? You don't swim it.
See see we know you know what I'm talking about. You're not going to beat the rip current if you're swimming against it. We live in a rip current today. of societal change, social ethical change. And it's a rip current of contemporary societal sensibilities.
I'm going to use one as an example. I'm going to offer a disclaimer at the end, okay?
So. Please, please listen to this. I mean he's seen. The phrase, love is love. Either in a sign in the yard on a bumper sticker.
Love is love. Rosaria Butterfield, in an article that she wrote. In CT, Christianity Today. She also wrote the book Five Lies of Our Anti-Christian Age. She writes, this love is love became a powerful rallying cry and it produced a mandatory constituency in the gay rights movement, allies, that is, heterosexual people who provided legitimacy, visibility and cover, making the LGBTQ plus movement almost look wholesome.
Love is love. If you're listening online, you're listening in here to me today. Maybe you might identify with some of this. You experience same-sex attraction. I want you to know.
God loves you, and we will love you. We will also encourage you and challenge you to become like Christ. And that's true for every person in this room. We've said many times: come as you are, but don't stay that way. Whether you're a legalist and a Pharisee, Yeah.
Or you have, you're completely irreligious and you know nothing about Jesus Christ and his love. Come as you are, but don't stay that way. This is what's happened. You take a catchy phrase like that, love is love. Is it?
Rosaria continues, the Bible says God is love, and love does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. And here she comes, you know, as an English teacher. In grammatical terms, love is a transitive verb. I had to look that up. Love is a transitive verb.
The integrity of love is found in its corresponding object. If you love what God loves, then love is a moral good. But if you love what God hates, love is a twisted sin. This is the rip current we find ourselves in today, folks. And she is giving us an example of what it means to be faithful to the scriptures.
She continues, Love is love. Demonstrates the rejection of the Biblical God for idolatrous lust. Hard words. Hard words, aren't they? There's not a person in this room, there's not a person in this room that does not deal with lust.
different categories. But every one of us deals with that.
Okay.
So, I'm not elevating this one sin above all the others. What I'm saying is. There is a strong movement today, in fact, a rip current that wants to legitimize. Sin. And there are many in the church.
that are following that current. We cannot. The Word of God sets the agenda here.
Now here's the challenge. Do you have the discernment to understand this? And when you encounter people in the marketplace, when you encounter friends, friends, relatives, associates, neighbors. Who want to insist that you affirm this lifestyle for them. Can you stand?
Truthfully, faithfully to scriptures, graciously But faithfully. This is what requires discernment.
So, for us today, this is exactly what we're dealing with here. Listen to Peter again, knowing this beforehand, knowing what? False truth. Truth is coming at you. Love is love.
And you'll see it plastered in many churches today.
Okay.
Take care that you are not carried away with the error of lawless people and lose your own stability. That's for us today.
Okay.
If anybody has any questions about what I've said. Please feel free to ask. Meet me afterwards. Invite me to lunch, you know, just. Email me.
Give me a call. Happy to talk about it. Like we say all the time, questions are okay here. You will not be judged for asking a question. But we don't want to lose our stability.
You don't want to be guilty of losing your own stability, as it says at the end of verse 17. Who who Who wrote this letter? This is not a hard question. Did he lose his stability once? probably more than once, and it all had to do with his Operation open mouth insert foot, right?
I can so identify with Peter. But in the heat of the moment... He lost his stability, didn't he? When he thought he was personally threatened because he was a follower of Jesus, in the heat of the moment, he lost his stability. And it's that same Peter who is telling us.
Today Don't lose your stability.
Now, why is he telling us that? Because the Lord specifically commanded him to. Do you want to see it? And he uses the same word, very similar word. Luke chapter 22, verses 31.
Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you that he might. sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you. That your faith may not fail. And when you have returned, don't you love the promise in that? When you have returned again, strengthen.
your brothers. Listen, that's exactly what Peter is doing right here. That's what he's doing. Because that word strengthened is a related verb to. The noun stability that he writes in 1 Peter, 2 Peter chapter 3.
Don't lose your own stability. He is doing exactly what the Lord commanded him to do.
So we can look at Peter and say, This is what it looks like when you lose your stability. You cave, you capitulate, because you're personally threatened. You're not confident enough in what you hold to be true. You're not confident enough in that. And so, when you feel threatened, you capitulate.
Because you're scared. You're afraid of saying the wrong thing. You're afraid of what people will do to you. You lose your stability. Loved ones.
This is exactly why our theme for teaching and ministry in 2024 is. Engaging unbelief Let's not be a people who lose our stability. Let's be a people who are faithful. to the Word of God. and yet gracious to our fellow man.
That's what we need to be. The world desperately needs to see the church being the church. It requires of us biblical discernment.
So I'm going to give you some homework here. It's personal assessment, all right? Uh biblical discernment. Biblical discernment gives us Wisdom. That means we have to have biblically informed minds.
I'm going to challenge your Bible knowledge now, okay? Your Bible knowledge, your Bible reading, your Bible knowledge. How are you taking in the scriptures? For I'm going to make a contrast here between felt needs, Bible knowledge, and sound doctrine and theology. Felt needs Bible knowledge.
It looks something like this: This is what I feel, this is what I need right now.
So let me look in scripture and find out what the Bible has to say about this. I'm not saying that's totally wrong, okay? But if your whole knowledge of the Bible is simply built upon what you feel and what you need, I need to find in Scripture something to meet my needs. That's felt needs Bible knowledge. It's random.
oftentimes out of context. You've been listening to Delight in Grace. The Teaching Ministry of Rich Powell, Pastor of Grace Bible Church in Winston-Salem. To hear this message and others, check out WWW dot delight in grace dot com to discover how to live by grace, Tune in with us on weekdays at ten AM. Mm-hmm.
