Welcome to The Daily Platform from Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina. Today's sermon will be preached by Dr. Ted Miller, a professor in the Division of Biblical Studies and Theology at Bob Jones University. 2 Peter 1, verse 3, 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 you might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust. Beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge temperance, to temperance patience, to patience godliness, and to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness charity. For if these things be in you and abound, they will make you that ye shall be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
But he that lacketh these things is blind and cannot see far off, and hath forgotten that he was purged from his old sins. Wherefore, the rather brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure, for if ye do these things, ye shall never fall. For so an entrance shall be ministered unto you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Wherefore, I will not be negligent to put you always in remembrance of these things, though you know them, and be established in the present truth. Yea, I think it meet, as long as I am in this tabernacle, to stir you up by putting you in remembrance, knowing that shortly I must put off this my tabernacle, even as our Lord Jesus Christ has showed me.
Moreover, I will endeavor that you may be able, after my decease, to have these things always in remembrance." So here we are in a very unique Western kind of place, the university. Our college is inherently a time of preparation with a particular goal in mind.
It's certainly possible for any of us to get our minds off the ultimate target now and again. But it doesn't take a whole lot for a college student to remember that there's an end of a semester coming, and then of course the end of the end of all semesters. And whether you're close by your graduation, or still measuring your distance to that in years, you're all on some kind of track that way. We are very eager for you all when the time comes, as the Lord provides, for you to achieve what I like to think of as exit velocity and break out of college orbit. In the meantime, staying in orbit can be pretty intense. There are a lot of particulars to pay attention to.
This week especially, I know for many of you, is the absolute crunch week, the week before Thanksgiving where you are careening down a hill without steering wheels, without brakes, and just hoping to land safely somewhere in the bottom, in a heap. There are a lot of particulars to pay attention to, and so much so that it's really easy to lose a perspective of the whole. I learned this a little bit with my dad the summer after I graduated from college here.
My parents moved down to the area and some years later started building a house. My dad said that there were two kinds of workers that he was hiring. You could differentiate between them by asking them, what are you doing? And some of you might say, oh, I'm hammering this board, or I'm pulling this line, or I'm doing some plumbing here, and the other would say, I'm building a house. Now, fair enough, if you're a subcontractor, you're focused on the very job at hand.
If you're the foreman on a job, or an owner, it's a lot easier to keep track of both the individual pieces, while not losing sense of the whole. Just as in yesterday's message, Dr. Benson alluded to Nehemiah's mindset. He had his focus on many, many individual tasks.
The building of this part of the wall, the protection from immediate long-term dangers, even while he had his mind very much on the big picture. He was, under God's leadership and by God's authority, re-establishing a nation and a culture according to the covenant that God had made with Israel. In this passage of scripture, I find a similar kind of combination.
A combination of understanding an overall view of what the big goals are, and yet still thinking about the details and how they relate, in fact, to the whole. I'd like to start here at the end, verses 12 through 15. Peter indicates that this may very well be the last time he writes. In this regard, his letter reads like several other last speeches in God's word.
Perhaps you can think of some of these. In Deuteronomy 32, Moses gives his last public charge to the nation of Israel. At the end of it, he concludes by saying, I want you to set your hearts onto the words which I testify unto you. This gives a hint that there's not just a matter of keep them in your mind, but a setting of one's hearts upon one's word.
What does that mean? When Joshua does a similar thing at the end of Joshua 24, he recounts, it's not quite as long as what Moses does in Deuteronomy 32, but he recounts again the blessings of God and some of their history. And at the end, he sets their minds to the terms of the covenant, so much so that he has the elders reaffirm the covenant, and he sets up a stone as a marker to remind them all of their re-agreement to something they had previously agreed to. When Jesus was in the upper room, not the last thing he ever said, but the last address that he gave to his disciples before, later on, his subsequent arrest that evening. He tells his disciples that he's telling them things so that they can bring them back to mind. In their case, they'll realize, hey, we're not off track, we're not faltering, we're actually being treated just as Christ was treated.
We must, as a matter of fact, be okay because we're facing the same spiritual opposition that he faced. And furthermore, in Paul's final work, 2 Timothy, he makes a similar kind of entreaty to his young mentor, his son in the faith. Some of the verbs here in chapters 1 and 2, hold fast, be strong, remember, and since Paul was teaching Timothy, who was himself an elder, put them into remembrance. Here in chapter 1, 2 Timothy, 2 Peter 1, verses 12 through 15, Peter is burdened by their remembering. But it's a certain kind of remembering, and that's what I'd like to think about today.
Remembrance shows up three times. He talks in verse 13 about stirring you up to put you in remembrance. He talks about establishing them in verse 12 in the things that they remember.
And when he's constantly calling them to remember, he refers to, for you grammar lovers out there, with a wonderful, demonstrative pronoun, these, or we supply in English, these things. Verse 9, he that lacketh these things is blind. Verse 10, if you do these things, you shall never fall. Verse 12, I will put you always in remembrance of these, these things. Again in verse 15, to have always these things in remembrance. So what exactly are the things that he wants us to remember? Let's go back to verse 3 now, and follow a line of thought about not just the content of remembering, but the kind of remembering. And that's the key thing, if you take anything away from a one more chapel message, I want you to remember the kind of remembering that Peter is talking about. Verse 3, 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. You know because of God's word that the state you were born into is not a good state.
C.K. Chesterton said once that in fact the depravity of man is probably the one doctrine that we don't have to appeal to divine authority in order to treat as legitimate. We can in fact prove human depravity by other more immediate means than appealing to God's word, not that God's word doesn't teach it. In fact the ancients knew in fact that there was something wrong with us, and that's why a good deal of their thought was focused on what exactly were the virtues? And how do the virtues become part of a person? Do we just discover them and follow them because we know them? Or these habits that we try to acquire so that we can regularly practice the virtues?
All these things in some way sense that there's something wrong with us, that we need something more than what we have. And verse 3 in fact says that the path here is not just some mystical or taking on habits, it is in fact a divine gift. Peter teaches that this knowledge or that God is portrayed here as a powerful powerful being who has at his disposal the ability to give us something. We could not acquire it on our own, we certainly could not earn it, but God in fact can give it. And it is in fact knowledge of God.
You say that sounds really basic, why would you even bother coming up here and telling us? Well the passage says that we have all things that pertain unto life and godliness through the knowledge of him that has called us to glory and to virtue. What is glory? And what is virtue? If this is the ultimate thing that you and I are in fact aiming for, we need to think about what it is that would be in Peter's mind when he refers to glory and virtue.
Now glory is probably easiest to understand, perhaps in contrast to something else. Peter has actually spoken of glory earlier in his first epistle. If you look in chapter 2 of 1 Peter, if you look in verse 21, he's been talking for some time about the present condition of suffering, which should come as no surprise, because the servant is not greater than his lord, and if the lord suffers, surely the servants who come after him will suffer. Verse 21 says, for here unto are ye called, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example that ye should follow in his steps. We are in fact called in some way to suffer. But the situation of suffering is not a permanent state, it is in fact only temporary.
The degrading treatment that Peter describes, that God's children endure at the hands of those who hate God and by extension hate his citizens, does not last. And it is this in fact that is the reason why he says that we can in fact perform what later on is the response to suffering. We don't render evil for evil, we don't render railing for railing, but contrary, blessing, because there unto are ye called. There's the same word called as what we have in 2 Peter 1, verse 3, that we are called to glory and virtue. We're called to blessing that we should inherit this kind of blessing. What does it look like when someone who's been railed upon and castigated and reviled and insulted, and then the God of all time and all eternity steps in and speaks a word of blessing?
All the insults, it all silences. God's word in this case is final. And Peter refers to this near the very end of the book as an eternal glory. It's not simply eternal because it lasts forever, although it does, it's eternal because after God speaks that word, there's nobody else who gets the word edgewise. It is the last thing that ought to be or could be said when God gives that statement of eternal glory. But the God of all grace, he says in 1 Peter 5, verse 10, who hath called us unto eternal glory by Jesus Christ, after that ye have suffered awhile, he makes you perfect, established, strengthens, and settles you. So glory in this sense is a kind of favor from God that could come only from God, and once he says his favor is on you, there's nothing else to be visited.
It is in fact an eternal glory, something which is possessed forever. But we're called not just to glory, to the statement of God's ultimate favor that silences all the insults and the railings that his people may endure for the time as God wills, but he also calls us to virtue. All right, the ancients cared a great deal about virtue, and I would hardly say that they get it all wrong. I'd like to think about what God says virtue is.
In the first book of Peter, the word virtue also shows up a number of times and is often translated with two other words. Sometimes it's called praises, and sometimes it's called excellencies. If you ever imagine a situation where things are just a mess and someone walks in and does exactly the right thing, they speak just the right word. They act in just the right way.
They treat someone with the proper honor or the respect. That is, they do something which oftentimes in the point of great darkness shines like a piercing light. God has called us not just to glory, his favor, but also to a kind of virtue that is built in fact on a kind of knowledge. Again, to 1 Peter 2, he says that we have a kind of knowledge particularly of Jesus Christ. That is Jesus Christ in verse 5. We're told, Behold, I lay in Zion a chief cornerstone, elect, precious. He that believeth on him shall not be confounded. Undo you therefore to believe he is precious, but to those that believe not, he is disavowed. God made him the head of the corner. What Peter does here is he takes Jesus Christ and imagines Jesus Christ like a stone in two regards. We know him, those of us who believe, as the cornerstone. When you build a house, you better get that cornerstone right.
Everything else has to line up on that or nothing else is going to work. But the same stone that's the cornerstone for us is the rock of offense. Some people look at Jesus Christ and they literally trip over him. They look at Jesus and they think, I've vetted him thoroughly. He is not the Christ. He is not God's son. No one who follows him can in any way have God's favor. And yet we know, as we follow after Christ, that we now put ourselves through our knowledge of him, not just on a path of knowledge toward him, but now our knowledge has produced a kind of conflict.
You say, what do you mean it produces conflict? If Satan ruled this world without any adversary from the proper owner of this world, and I'm not saying Satan rules the world in an absolute sense, just saying he's the prince of the power of the earth. That's what God calls them. But if Satan had no opposition, there would be no conflict. But God is in fact rescuing what he made. And that rescue for all those who follow after that rescue, it puts us into direct moral conflict. This knowledge that we have of Christ is not just a matter of putting information in our head, hitting save, and there lies a life of undisturbed tranquility.
I know that Jesus is the Christ. This is a moral knowledge that in fact puts us into conflict, into great resistance, both within us without us. He refers to this in verse 11 of chapter 2. Dearly beloved, I beseech you now as strangers and pilgrims, abstained from fleshly lusts, which war against your souls, having your conversation honest among the Gentiles, where as they speak against you as evildoers, they may by your good works, which they shall behold, glorify God in the day of visitation.
And doesn't that remind you of the Sermon on the Mount? Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven. Virtue is like a light that pierces through the darkness. The darkness neither understands it, nor can it withstand it.
And it rises up in opposition to this. But this kind of moral conflict is in fact one of the things that Peter wants to remind us of in 2 Peter 1. If you go back to 2 Peter 1 verse 3, I'm going to travel through scripture again and arrive back here. Whereby are given unto us exceeding in great and precious promises that by these you might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust. When Moses gives his final charge, he starts it in a wonderful, beautiful way.
Matter of fact, those of you taking Bible doctrines, remember Deuteronomy 32 4. He is the rock. His work is perfect. All his ways are judgment, a God of truth. Without iniquity, just and right is he. What a great way to start a sermon or a final public address.
Well, it goes downhill pretty quickly after that. He starts talking about what Israel is going to do in all its rebellion. By the time he gets to verse 15, he talks about that they are actually waxing fat. They forget the God who created them. They lightly esteemed him. They treated him as if he were nothing, which is the opposite of the weightiness of God's glory. And near the end of the chapter it says, Oh, that they are wise, that they would understand this, that they would consider their latter end.
Their knowledge of God as the rescuer from Egypt apparently was not sufficient by itself to keep them on the track that God started them on. For Joshua, likewise, he says, Look, you cannot just serve the God like he's some local warlord or petty regent here in the area. He is a jealous God. He controls all things.
If you forsake him, you've started something that you simply cannot resolve to your own benefit. And that's why he brings them back to a certain kind of remembrance. Matter of fact, we watched this happen at the tragedy at Kadesh Barnea where the 12 spies come back.
And as Dr. Oberlin mentioned in his message earlier in the semester, we have this awful, awful tragedy of evil leadership where the 10 encouraged the people to actively forget things that they knew. They knew God was powerful. They knew God had promised them the land. They knew that God had promised to go into the land with them. And yet they simply forgot. They forgot so much that they forgot what Egypt was like and they said, What a plan. We're going back to Egypt.
How are they even going to get there? God was the only reason that they were sustained enough to get to that point to even try to cross the Jordan. And so for many of us, as it says in verse 4, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust, many of us need in fact to remember something that maybe was not part of your experience. If you grew up in a Christian home, you were blessed with something. And yet God says that your state was one of a child of disobedience. You were characterized by a will that was wholly set against God. Yes, you're an image bearer, but you're a corrupted manifestation, a hopeless manifestation of what God made the human being to be. Nothing in you could earn his favor.
In fact, trying to earn his favor would probably make it worse. And yet even all these rebels who enjoy God's creation, enjoy the benefits of it, they don't give him thanks. If they even think about the goodness in some way to attribute the goodness to something, they probably are attributing it to their own self-effort or perhaps even an idol, which whether ancient or modern has the same spiritual effect. How is it that we were brought so low?
What deceived Eve in the first place? Ye shall be as gods. That perverted desire, that lustful desire, that covetous desire is actually something that sounds like what God actually wants to give us. Not that we're absorbed into God, not that we become gods, little g gods, but look at verse 4. These great and precious promises that whereby ye are partakers of the divine nature, having now escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.
This changes everything. As Paul writes, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. Old things are passed away. Behold, all things are become new.
And Peter wants us to remember this horrific past. We are citizens of a city slated for destruction because of our own willful lust and corruption. This sounds very much like what Augustine writes, that there are in fact sharing the same physical space, two cities.
The city of God, the city of man. What divides them is not the geographical location, but their loves. Their loves cause them to move in opposite directions, and that opposite direction causes real conflict. And Peter wants us to remember the real conflict.
What helps us with that conflict? It's not enough merely to remember the spiritual facts that we are in fact saved, the spiritual facts that we are in fact rescued from corruption that is in the world. But I'd like now just for a minute, look at verse 5. And we're going to skip for just a minute the list, the list that should remind you of other lists of Scripture, most notably probably the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5.
Besides this, give all diligence. Jump now to verse 8. For if these things be in you and abound, they shall make you that ye shall be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. The kind of remembering that Peter wants us to do cannot exist solely in your mind. That sounds odd to say, because quite frankly, when I'm sitting and taking a test, I'm trying to engage in a mental activity of drawing somewhere from the deep recesses of whatever I crammed into my head the night before, some piece of information that will help me get it right. But the kind of remembering that Peter's appealing to is not merely that kind of mental recall. He says, give all diligence.
Alright, this is the same kind of idea as what David says when he says, early will I seek thee. The idea is not just like the time of day, but a mental focus of something I cannot afford to forget. So as I go to the grocery store and I'm tasked with buying certain things, and the clerk will ask me, did you find everything? And my answer is usually, I'll find out when I get home. Because invariably, I get back and I realize the one thing I came for, I forgot.
Well, if you're in the desert, the one thing you better not lose track of is, where's your source of water? And this is more than just a matter of recall. There's a lot more of you invested in the recalling of this information than just a mental activity. Wisdom in Proverbs is, of course, a spiritual matter. And we regard right thinking as an activity of the mind. But when does wisdom in Proverbs ever not manifest itself in some practical outworking? As if wisdom were just like floating around in some disembodied realm of ideas.
Wisdom is of the mind, but it is also eminently practical. What Peter wants us to do, he says, besides this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue. This moral excellence to revert you knowledge, to knowledge temperance, to temperance patience, to patience godliness.
And this list requires a whole sermon in and of itself. But the idea here is that the memory that Peter on his dying bed, we don't know if he's on his dying bed, but he's thinking of this as a final speech. He does not want you to think of the protective memory as merely a mental activity.
The protective memory that he is offering is one of activeness. That is, you build into a life a kind of moral habit that when the war comes, there is more than just recall. There's actually a habit of faith. We're not earning our salvation in any way. The gospel is definitely something that cuts through any kind of worthless self-effort. And yet faith is never dead. Faith is living. And the most natural thing in the world is for faith to in fact grow.
Satan uses many things, but one of the things that he'd be more than happy with for you to do with your life is for God to own your recall and for him to have everything else. And Peter's solution is to remember, but not just a remembering that causes you to bring information back to your mind, but a memory that proves that in fact your faith is alive. And look at the last verses of 2 Peter 3. He therefore, beloved, seeing that you know these things before, boy does that sound like what Jesus said in the upper room, beware lest ye also, being led away with the air of the wicked, fall from your own steadfastness, but rather give all diligence, grow in grace and the knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and forever. You're heading into a break where you're going to get a lot more free time, both Thanksgiving break and Christmas break.
I'd like to encourage you, spend a little bit more time than you're able during the semester because of the crush of just the work of college. Spend some more time in God's word, and particularly if I could encourage you, spend some more time in the Gospels. Because that is where we meet the Lord Jesus Christ, and that is where I say, oh, that's what righteousness looks like in that situation. That's what it means to be angry and sin not. That's what it looks like to be merciful to those who need mercy. That's what it looks like to be pure in heart.
That's what it looks like to hunger and thirst after righteousness. And these things, if they be in us, will make us so that we will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for the rescue that you made, the rescue that you offer us so freely through the work of your son, our Savior, Jesus Christ. We pray that you would help us to remember, not just to recall, but to remember with all of our beings that we would give diligence to add to our faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, and to knowledge brotherly kindness and patience and temperance and all the things, the sowing to the Spirit, the reaping from the Spirit that you have called your people to. We thank you for rescuing us from being citizens of a city of darkness, and I pray that you would fit us as you would to be lights, lights before a dark world as citizens of your kingdom and your children. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. You've been listening to a sermon preached by Dr. Ted Miller, a professor in the Division of Biblical Studies and Theology. Join us again next time as we study God's Word together, featuring speakers from Chapel Services at Bob Jones University.
