1275. Preservation and Perseverance

Welcome to The Daily Platform from Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina. The school was founded in 1927 by the evangelist Dr. Bob Jones, Sr. His intent was to make a school where Christ would be the center of everything so he established daily chapel services. Today, that tradition continues with fervent biblical preaching from the University Chapel platform.

Today on The Daily Platform, we're continuing a study series entitled Our Great Salvation, which is a study of the doctrine of salvation or soteriology. Today's speaker is seminary professor Dr. Leighton Talbert. BGU President Dr. Steve Pettit will introduce him.

This morning we are honored to have Dr. Leighton Talbert who will be speaking. He's one of our seminary professors at the Bob Jones University Seminary. He's taught courses like Old and New Testament Exposition, Hermeneutics, New Testament Theology, Apologetics, and other courses. He's one of our favorite teachers in the seminary. He's authored two books, two outstanding books. The first, Beyond Suffering, Discovering the Message of Job, and secondly, Not by Chance, Learning to Trust a Sovereign God.

He's written over 200 periodical articles, journal articles, and book reviews. And he's always brought a fantastic message. And as we are coming close to finishing up this semester on our study of our great salvation, I believe it's been a help to many of you. I think today's message will be another outstanding challenge entitled Preservation and Perseverance.

Dr. Talbert. If you open your Bibles please to 1 Peter chapter 1, and we'll begin reading in verse 3. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and unfading reserved in heaven for you who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. The range of soteriological realities that this series has explored can really be divided pretty much into two major categories. God's objective acts, the things that God alone does in order to save us, grace, atonement, propitiation, election, calling, regeneration, justification, and our subjective acts, the things that God commands of us in order to save us, in order for us to be saved, and that we are held responsible for, repentance and faith. So yeah, but those two, doesn't God also have to enable those as well? Aren't those in a sense something that God has to do? Well that's true in a sense, the New Testament does teach that, but the fact remains that God doesn't repent for us. He commands us to repent and holds us accountable when we won't. God doesn't believe for us. He commands us to believe and holds us accountable when we won't. On the other hand, God provides atonement for us. He doesn't command us to do that. He provides propitiation for us. He doesn't command us to do that. God calls and elects and regenerates and justifies not us.

That's the point, that's the difference. Two weeks ago, Dr. Oberlin took us into the doctrine of sanctification. So where does that fit? Objective or subjective?

The answer is yes, right? Sanctification is a process that combines both God's ongoing objective work in sanctifying us as well as our ongoing subjective obedience and growth in grace. And our topic today is an extension of that same chemistry between God's activity and ours, between God's promise to preserve and my responsibility to persevere. And you can see it spelled out very plainly in the verse itself, in verse 5, you are kept by the power of God through faith. So this morning we'll spend just a few minutes exploring God's preserving power and my persevering faith.

And obviously we barely have time to skim over the surface of this issue, but if you want to do some further reading in this area, here are a couple of recommendations that you can jot down. The preservation is fairly clear, I think, to most of us. Actually, the word that Peter uses here literally means to keep secure. It can be used of keeping a prisoner in jail, to keep under guard, but it can also be used with reference to something like a treasure, to keep safe, to safeguard, to secure, to protect. You say safeguard, protect, does that mean that nothing hurtful or harmful will ever happen to me? Well, yeah, actually it does.

Nothing lastingly hurtful, nothing ultimately harmful. You say that doesn't sound very reassuring. Well, all I can say is then you need to start thinking the way God teaches us to think about time and eternity. And the fact is, Peter's not trying to hide anything from us about the potential for suffering. Look again at verse 5, you are kept by the power of God unto salvation, that's final, ultimate, eternal deliverance, ready to be revealed in the last time, and in that salvation you greatly rejoice, though now for a season, if need be, you are in heaviness through manifold temptations or manifold trials.

That the trial of your faith being much more precious than of gold that perishes, even though your faith be tried with fire, that it might be found unto praise and honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ, drop down to verse 9, receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls. I want to comment just briefly on that because I think sometimes when we read language like that in our Bibles about heaven and about the salvation of our souls, that there's a disconnect between what we envision and what God is actually saying, what God actually means. Because your soul isn't just some ethereal, immaterial, shadowy, leftover part of you once your body is gone. Your soul is the whole real you in your entirety, all of you. You are a soul.

Your mind, your emotion, your will, your spirit, and your body. All of that is part of the biblical teaching of what a soul is. Because the New Testament teaches that salvation includes resurrection and glorification and eternal existence in a very real, very material, very physical body forever, just like Jesus. And I think our scripturally under-informed imaginations sometimes cheat us of that reality when we think about heaven and eternity and our souls. But that's what Dr. Horn is going to be preaching about in the final message of this chapel series and I don't want to get in trouble for poaching on his property.

So, what were we talking about? Preservation. Peter points out, verse 4, that believers have an inheritance, an undecaying, undefiled, unfading inheritance reserved in heaven. But as one writer points out, it's not much use to carefully preserve an inheritance if the heir is not going to live to receive it. So, in view of the tribulations that they're facing, Peter reassures his readers that they are being kept safely by God, by the power of God, Peter says.

The inheritance is reserved for them and they're being preserved for the inheritance. But then Peter adds this in verse 5. Believers are kept through faith.

We're kept by the power of God, but we're also kept through our faith. Both of those are tied together right there in the text. Both of those are essential elements of the formula.

You can't remove one or the other. Water equals hydrogen plus oxygen. Unless both those elements are present and bonded, there is no water. Salvation, verses 5 and 9, what he's talking about, equals God's preservation and my perseverance. Unless both those elements are there and present and bonded, there is no salvation.

So how exactly are they bonded? Well, you could say it this way. God's preservation enables your perseverance and your perseverance is the evidence that God is preserving you. So let's explore the second half of that formula a little bit more, human perseverance. And there are plenty of passages that don't just include it, they actually emphasize it, although that emphasis may kind of go by us sometimes in some of these passages.

I'm going to mention just three. 1 Corinthians 15. Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also you have received and wherein you stand, by which also you are saved, if you keep in memory... I'll come back to that... if you keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless you have believed in vain. Most of the translations that you're looking at capture this idea of holding fast. By this gospel you are saved if you hold fast what I preach to you.

There's an if there and there's a continuation implied there. Colossians chapter 1. And you that were previously alienated and enemies in your minds by wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled to present you holy and unblameable and unreproveable in his sight if you continue in the faith. Grounded and settled and be not moved away from the hope of the gospel which you have heard.

Hebrews 3. Beware, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God, for we have become partakers of Christ if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast to the end. In other words, faith secures salvation because God guarantees what he promises. And the evidence of saving faith is perseverance. Our perseverance doesn't save us. It simply proves that God is saving us. Perseverance doesn't mean sinlessness.

It doesn't necessarily mean immunity from serious sin. It doesn't even necessarily mean total permanent victory over besetting sins. Perseverance simply means continuation. Continuation in a direction. Persistence in a persuasion.

Persistence in a pursuit. Because saving faith isn't just a static event like a birthday party where you get stuff and then it's over. It's a relational change of life event like a wedding where you actually enter into a relationship. In fact, that's a metaphor that God uses for the nature of his relationship with his people. Saving faith isn't an end. That's done.

Got that taken care of. Now we can go on to other things. Like a marriage, saving faith is a beginning. It's the beginning of following Christ and becoming more like Christ. That's why Peter says what he does in his second epistle. Would you turn over just a couple of pages or use your thumb a little bit on your electronic bible if that's what you're using and look at 2 Peter chapter 1. Dr. Oberlin brought us to the doorstep of this passage two weeks ago.

I want to just take us, walk us through the door that Peter opens here. 2 Peter 1, I will start in verse 2 but we're headed a little bit later than that. Grace and peace be multiplied into you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord as his divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness through the knowledge of him who has called us to glory and virtue by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust. Now verse 5, but also for this very reason, giving all diligence add to your faith virtue and to virtue knowledge and to knowledge self-control and to self-control patience or the word can be translated perseverance to perseverance godliness to godliness brotherly kindness to brotherly kindness love. How do you do that? How do you just add something like moral excellence? How do you just add self-control to your life, your faith? How do you just add perseverance, endurance, constancy, steadfastness, godliness, love? How do you just add those things?

How do you do that? The New Testament elsewhere specifically identifies some of these as part of the fruit of the Spirit, something the Spirit of God has to produce. So how can Peter say just go add these things to your life? Some of the translations you're looking at may read something like furnish instead of add or supplement or supply. That moves us I think in the right direction of what Peter is getting at with the term that he uses because the word Peter uses here actually had reference to what a wealthy patron would do when a theatrical group for instance would come to a town and want to put on a production in one of the ancient amphitheaters like the one you're looking at now.

This happens to be at Caesarea Maritima on the Mediterranean coast of Israel. What he would do is furnish the money for the production, for the props, for the actors, for the costumes. Today we call somebody that does something like that a sponsor of the production. And to put it more bluntly, what they're doing is bankrolling the production. The sponsor isn't in the production. He's not the one going on stage and actually performing.

He's not doing the production. They're just bankrolling it. They're doing what's necessary to make the production possible.

And no sponsor wanted a reputation for putting on a cheap, chintzy, shoestring budget kind of production. They tended to kind of compete with each other and outdo each other in extravagant provision for these things. Abundantly supplying is the idea of the term here.

So what's Peter saying? Because you can't just add self-control or godliness or love to your life like you would add a can of tomato soup to your shopping cart. But you can bankroll their production by abundantly supplying to the Spirit of God every opportunity to work these things in your life. You can furnish the means by which God accomplishes these things in your life.

How? By investing in what the Scripture, what theology also has identified as means of grace. By spending not money, but time being regularly in the Word of God.

Because that's the means he uses to produce these things. By seeking God's face in prayer, asking him to produce these things in you because ultimately he's the only one that can. By spending the time, sometimes maybe the money, to expose yourself to Christian literature that motivates you to pursue these kinds of Christian virtues. By putting yourself in the kind of church and the kinds of relationships that are conducive to, that foster your growth in godliness. In his book Essential Virtues, which is an extended study of this passage in 2 Peter chapter 1, Dr. Jim Berg describes Peter's command in verse 5 as cultivating the conditions for these things to be grown in our lives.

That's what Peter's talking about. So let me change the metaphor just a moment. I've been investing a fair amount of time and a fair amount of money over the last few weeks preparing my garden for the summer. Moving the rich compost from my compost piles into my garden beds and tilling it into the soil and adding fertilizer and so forth. In other words doing everything I can to ensure a richer more abundant harvest of tomatoes and potatoes and beans and corn and cucumbers to make dill pickles and sweet pickles which I make every summer. The fact is I can't make any of that stuff grow.

I can't. And if I just throw all those seeds out in my front yard onto the untilled surface of that hard orange clay that people around here call soil, guess what I get? Same old thing I already get out of my front lawn.

Crabgrass, dandelions, wild violets and about a dozen other weeds I don't even know the names for. I might get a little pathetic corn thing that starts to sprout. I might get a couple of bean plants that start to sprout but I'm not going to get any harvest if the soil isn't prepared. But if I compost and cultivate and fertilize and prepare the soil and then sow the seed, I'm still not the one making it grow.

I can't do anything to make it grow. Even in my garden only God can do that. But I can do a lot. I can invest a lot. I can bankroll a lot to provide an environment that is conducive to growth. I can't do anything to make these Christian virtues grow in my life. Only God can do that but I can do a lot to sponsor, to supply, to cultivate an environment that is conducive to their growth. That's what Peter's talking about.

Or I can do nothing. And Peter will talk about that in a moment as well. But another word for what he's talking about is sanctification. Another word for what he's talking about is continuation, perseverance, because those are inextricably connected.

Now what does he say next? Verse 8. For if these things be in you and abound, they make you that you shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. Your knowledge of Christ is supposed to grow and produce fruit in your life.

It's not just static mental data. Verse 9. But he that lacketh these things is blind and cannot see afar off and hath forgotten that he was purged from his old sins. You say so well at least he was purged from his old sins. That has to mean that even if he's not persevering he still has to be preserved, right?

That's not Peter's conclusion. Look at verse 10. Wherefore the rather, brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure. For if you do these things, you shall never fall. We've talked in this series about calling and election, gracious acts of God in salvation. But you can validate the reality of your calling and election. In fact, Peter positively charges us to validate the reality of our calling and election by seeing to it that we are cultivating our lives for God to grow these Christ-like qualities in us. This is a relationship, remember.

A life-long one. And the promise that God attaches to this is astonishing. Look at verse 11. For so an entrance will be supplied to you. Sorry, I'm behind on my slides. There we go.

Not paying attention to my little codes here. For so an entrance will be supplied to you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Guess what that word supplied is? Same word as verse 5. Because God is not the one making this entrance.

We are. But he's going to furnish, he's going to bankroll, he's going to lavishly supply everything necessary to make your entrance into his presence. Into that incorruptible, undefiled, unfading inheritance, a spectacular production beyond anything you can imagine. You will be jaw-droppingly stunned at the lavishness of the stage God sets for your entrance into his presence. You will weep for joy and for overwhelming beauty and for the embarrassing undeservedness of your welcome into his presence. Imagine Bunyan's description of heaven at the end of Pilgrim's Progress when Pilgrim actually goes into the celestial city.

Add to that C.S. Lewis' description at the end of the last battle. Pull in yubilate deo sung by a million voices and you're not even close to what it's going to be like. Because Paul puts it this way, no eye has seen, no ear has heard, neither has it entered into any human heart what God has prepared for those who love him. We spent most of our time at the feet of Peter this morning and it's not surprising that he was the Holy Spirit's choice to give us some of the most important passages on these twin teachings of preservation and perseverance. I'm going to close with asking you to consider a brief tale of two disciples, Judas and Peter.

We're in the middle of Easter week when both of those men distinguished themselves in surprisingly similar ways. Judas knew Jesus, heard Jesus, followed Jesus for three years, but in the end he betrayed Jesus for personal gain, regretted, even despaired to the point of suicide, but he never returned to Christ or continued in the knowledge that he had. Instead he became the New Testament's most notable example of what it means to be an apostate.

If you want to know what the opposite of perseverance is, that's it, it's apostasy. Peter too, knew Jesus, heard Jesus, followed Jesus for three years, and on the same night that Judas left to act out his betrayal of the Lord, Peter was the object of Christ's warning, you will deny me thrice. But he was also the object of Christ's intercessory preservation. You will deny me thrice, but I have prayed for you.

It's a singular pronoun. I've prayed for you in particular, Peter, that your faith fail not, and when you have turned back around again, strengthen your brethren. It was Peter, in an hour of intense pressure, who fell so low as to deny that he even knew who this Jesus of Nazareth was.

And when that hour was over, he went out and wept bitterly. And he was the disciple whom Jesus, after his resurrection, specified by name, go and tell my disciples, and Peter. Peter knew what it was to struggle, to falter, to fail miserably, to question his own genuineness, but to continue after Christ, and to return to Christ, and to find forgiveness and restoration. Peter fell but Peter persevered because Christ was interceding for him and preserving him. And the proof that Christ was preserving him is that he persevered. Wouldn't it be awesome if you knew, if you knew that Jesus was praying that way for you? That your faith would not fail for your preservation.

If you're Christ's, if you have come to God through him and repented and put your faith in him to become a disciple, a follower, a continuer, he is. He is praying for you, he is interceding for you just like he did for Peter. Read the verse.

It's right there. Just like he prayed for Peter that night, he prays for you. He preserves you to persevere in following him. So your hope, our hope, is to cling to Christ and to follow him all our life. That is what it means to be a Christian.

Let's pray. Lord, when we consider what you have done to save us, it is astonishing. The condescension, the self-sacrifice. Lord when we consider what you will do in welcoming us into your presence, it is astonishing.

The things that you have promised to those who love you, who follow you. We freely admit because of your gracious working in our lives. Help us, oh God, to be confident in your preservation by your power and to persevere in following you all of our lives. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. You've been listening to a sermon preached by seminary professor Dr. Leighton Talbert. Thanks for listening and join us again next week for the final sermon in the series Our Great Salvation on The Daily Platform.