a sermon series through 1st and 2nd Peter. Jumping into this as it seems timely, we are scattered and somewhat discouraged in a way, and that's the audience that Peter's writing to, so we found this to be helpful through these days and finishing up today. 2nd Peter chapter 3, page 1019, if you're using the church Bible, we're picking up with verse 15. He's been talking in this chapter about the false teachers about the second coming of Christ, about us focused on our God and focused on His coming, and so that we are those who are encouraged in this passage to grow in knowing Christ even as we wait for Him to come. So this is God's word, verse 15. and count the patience of our Lord as salvation. Just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction as they do the other scriptures. You, therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, take care that you are not carried away with the error of lawless people and lose your own stability, but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory, both now and to the day of eternity. Amen. As far we read from God's holy word, my privilege to bring a message to you from these verses. The apostle Peter is our author, and Peter himself grew. Peter, however, first fell. You remember the story of Peter, one of the first things you could say about Peter, if I asked you to say, what do you know about Peter? You'd say, oh yeah, well he's the guy that messed up. Peter is a front page failure. We remember that about him, and there's something about that we need to hold in mind as we study these last verses. the last words we hear from Peter. On the night of Jesus' death, Jesus said to his disciples, you will all fall away because of me this night, Matthew 26, 31. And Peter is the disciple who replied, though the rest of the disciples all fall away because of you, I will never fall away. I will not deny you. And then Peter did deny Christ. Following that, Peter denied Christ again. And to top it off, before the rooster crowed, Peter denied Christ a third time. However, Jesus had prayed that Peter's faith would not fail. Falter, yes, but not fail. Christ had also commanded that Peter, after Peter had recovered, should strengthen his brothers. Here in this letter of 2 Peter, Peter's doing a lot of that. He's strengthening us as his brothers and sisters. He's strengthening his original audience, those who first received this letter. And Peter here is much older than the Peter of the story I just told you about. The Peter here of the writing of the 1 and 2 Peter is much older than the Peter who failed by the fire. And Peter's nearing the end of his own life here as he writes. Seems that the writing of 2 Peter is one of the last occasions of Peter fulfilling Christ's command to strengthen his brothers. In other words, Peter is teaching us how to grow. Before he lays down his pen, before he lays down his life, he's teaching us one last thing, grow. You could summarize it with one word, grow. How do we know that this is his main thrust? Because the same word Christ said to Peter in Luke 22, 32, that passage I was just telling you about, that Christ would tell him, after you have been restored, strengthen your brothers, The word strengthened there is the same word that Peter wrote here in 2 Peter 3.17. Here it's translated in verse 17 as stability. Furthermore, Peter put that same word at the beginning of the letter in chapter 1 verse 12, 2 Peter 1.12. the same word. So the word's translated there in our English translation, which is a great translation, but it's translated a third and different way. There, it's used as the English word established. Listen for it as I read 2 Peter 1, 11 and 12. There will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Therefore, I intend always to remind you of these qualities, though you know them and are established. in the truth that you have. So what I'm saying to you is that the same word is translated three related ways in English, but it's the same word that Peter remembers from when Jesus told him, when I restore you, go strengthen your brothers. It's translated three ways, strengthen, stability, or established. And the concept is plain. that we keep on growing until we reach a point of strength and a point of stability. And the word is a description of steadfastness. It's a description of Christian perseverance and our firm position of inner stability because we know Christ. The book is about knowing Christ and because we know Christ, at times like this or times worse than this, we can be stable. we can be persevering people because we know him. It's a state of security. It's a place of safety. It's a place free from spiritual dangers of falsehoods like the false teachers, like the scoffers he's been writing to us about. It all comes together in this final passage. It's a state of security. Now I'm not saying, I just have to nuance here, I'm not saying we reach a stage of perfectionism in which we obtain a sinless state. Some people have taught that in the past and they're wrong. That's not what I'm saying. That's not what Peter's writing. But just saying this, that we keep on growing, aiming for that strength and that stability, and we can get a measure of strength, right? We can get a measure of stability, and we can always get better in it. But Christ commands us to keep on growing until we get there. a place of strength. The command is to keep growing. So that's my main point if you're looking at your outline. Christ commanded us to keep on growing in knowing Christ. First point, we grow in understanding the productivity of Christ's delay. Second, we grow more stable because of wise cautions. And thirdly, we grow in the grace and knowledge of Christ himself. First point, we grow in understanding the productivity of Christ's delay. We get this out of verse 15. Count the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him. Here Peter has taught us that Christ is coming and we need to be eager and yet patient. Peter's teaching us about patience. We studied that last time. However, this patience is not yet fully understood. So Peter's encouraging us to grow in understanding of God and delay the patience of waiting for him to come. We don't yet properly regard or consider the patience of the Lord, Peter discerns. So if God is patient, it means we have to be eagerly waiting and yet patient. Our days are spent waiting, not aimless waiting, not pointless waiting, but we need to understand God's design for meaningful days of waiting. We often think of waiting, just when the word is brought up, as what we do in a waiting room. sitting down, waiting for the doctor, waiting for someone that we love to come out of the doctor, but there's a different kind of waiting that's harder and more productive. The waiting that requires the clarity and energy to work well while under stress and waiting. There's a waiting that shows strength. to continue under hardship. That's the kind of message that Peter is bringing across to his audience and to us at the end of this letter, the kind of waiting that gives us power to have anguish inside and still perform our daily tasks. The hardest thing about waiting is that we're called to wait not in a waiting room, but in our workplaces, in our schools, and in our homes where there's a lot of stuff to do. While we wait, even in quarantine waiting, we're expected to be productive. Productive how? by growing in understanding of God, understanding Christ, getting to know him better. Peter asks us to grow specifically in understanding the patience of waiting for God. Verse 15, count the patience of our Lord as salvation. Lord, why not end it all today? I had a Christian once ask me, why didn't I just get transported to heaven the moment I was converted? That's the question. He got it. He understood what Peter is addressing here. Count it as patience of our Lord as salvation. Because more people need to be saved. You need to testify, is what I said to him. Because the Lord has placed us intentionally and placed us well in our relationships, in our schools, in our homes, in our workplaces, alongside of our neighbors, extended families, to shine the light and give out the good news that results in salvation of more people. How do we regard or consider the delay of Christ's return? Peter tells us how to regard and count the patience of our Lord as salvation. It's all about salvation. While Christ is patient, he's saving people. While Christ is saving people, Christ is productive. While Christ delayed his return, he sent his spirit to bless more people with knowledge of him. What should we be doing in our waiting? Since Christ is productive in delaying, we ought to be productive in waiting. Ephesians 5.1, to be imitators of God, his beloved children. We must do as Christ our Lord is doing and be about the work of salvation. Expand the kingdom, it's all about his gospel and his kingdom. We know what's asked of us. Go into all nations and proclaim this good news and baptize in the name of the Father, Son, and Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I've commanded you, the Great Commission in Matthew 28, 18 to 20. Sharing the gospel, supporting churches that do, supporting missionaries who give away the gospel. We know that God has more people to be introduced to him through our efforts. Three times we had the word waiting. Verse 12 we saw, verse 13 we saw, again in verse 14. Waiting, waiting, waiting. Each time the waiting is full of deliberate and purposeful intention for our time spent until Christ returns. Peter has filled these two letters with instructions for us of what to do while we're waiting. 1 Peter 1.14, we're to grow in holiness or sanctification. 1 Peter 2.22, expressing love for Christians. 1 Peter 2.11-12, being subject to authority, being obedient, good citizens, right? 1 Peter 1-6, embracing suffering with hope. 1 Peter 4.7-11, lovingly serving your family. For 2 Peter 1, 6-7, I'll read this passage. That's what we're to be about. And here, in 2 Peter 1, verse 3, we also read God's divine power has granted us all things that pertain to life and godliness. Everything you need for living a life for Christ, you have. and so live a life for Christ. That's what we do while we are waiting. So number one was we grow in understanding the productivity of Christ's delay. We're moving to number two. We grow more stable because of the wise cautions. Here you might get a kick out of this. If you've seen, as I've gone through 1 and 2 Peter, we see how Paul is supporting Peter, constantly quoting Paul, making the same point Peter is making. Here we get Peter doing the same thing. Peter, referring to Paul's letters, writes this in verse 16, He uses the word ignorant, which simply means unlearned, uneducated, untaught, somebody who's not acquired a formal education. Unstable. He uses the word unstable. That's persons not settled in their thinking. They're not sure. They're swayed and influenced. They go back and forth. They're unsteady. He uses the word distort, which means to twist, to misinterpret words to a false meaning, to change the meaning of something in communicating it to others. The same scoffers that he addressed in this chapter, chapter three, are the same as the false teachers he addressed in chapter two. They're both groups of people, probably the same people, twisting the scriptures. And what does it mean? There's preachers on the radio, preachers on TV, preachers on the internet, books in the bookstores, articles on websites, on the internet that teach we don't have to live a holy life. How about that for an example? You don't have to live a life according to the ethic that God says in his book, the Bible. That's what the false teachers and scoffers are saying. And they start off with difficult passages. And then they go to the rest of the Bible, and they change the meaning of plain messages of the Bible. Plain passages that are so clear. You know the Bible is clear. It's very clear. There's some hard passages, as Peter says in this very passage, that there's some things in Paul that are hard to understand, and we could say amen, but there's some. See, the key word is some. Peter grants that there's some things that are hard to understand, but he said the bulk of it is clear. False teachers say the Bible's not clear. If you have a true Christian teacher, they're gonna say the Bible is very clear on that. They're gonna say that a lot. False teachers like to say, well, it's kind of hazy. We're not really sure. And Peter says that Paul's writings have some things hard, but most of Paul's writings are clear enough, easy enough, that we can all understand them accurately. And Paul is echoing what Peter's writing here. Verse 17 tells us how to respond to the situation that there are false teachers out there twisting the meaning of the Bible. This is what you're supposed to do. Are you ready? It's right there in verse 17. Take care. Does that sound like something your grandmother would say? Take care. What he's saying is be very careful. what you believe, because there's people all around trying to get you to believe false things about this book. Don't be carried away by wrong teaching. He says it right there in verse 17. They will all tell you. The false teachers will tell you, relax. It's all right already, they'll say. And they'll make it seem like the apostles Peter and Paul were old-fashioned and intense and were advanced beyond that ancient and elementary thinking in our modern day. But that's a lie. All that little speech is a lie from false teachers. If you fall for the error of false teaching, what do you see? What you see is you lose something. What do you lose? Do you lose your salvation? No, we can't lose our salvation. Thanks be to God, he saved us well. There's nothing in all of heaven and all of earth that can cause us to lose our salvation. But what we lose is our stability. We lose that stability that he's talking about. We lose that strength, that point of strength, that place of strength where we know what we know and we're confident in it. We can share with family, we can share with coworkers, we can share with others and we know in our hearts when we lay down at night what we know is true. We lose our stability, we start to wonder. You say, give me an example. I'll give you an example. Peter himself. Peter's our example. His whole life is our example. And as he writes this last verses that he's going to write, Peter's biggest concern in this letter is your stability, your place of strength. Are you going to lose it? Are you going to keep it? Peter gives us the solution. Grow. Get to know Christ better. The more you know Christ, the more stable you will be, the more insulated from error, the more protection enabled, the more established in the faith. Why would Peter fail? because he didn't know Christ well enough to trust that Christ would give Peter the strength on that night to be arrested or to be killed or whatever else was needed if he were going to say to that young girl, let's return to the scene. Let's return to the scene of Peter's big failure. How did he not know Christ well enough? If Peter had succeeded, if Peter had said to the servant girl, yes, I do know Christ, he's my rabbi, he's my teacher, he's my everything, I belong to him, what of it, right? What would have happened then? Would she have reported it to somebody and somebody reported to somebody and somebody would come and arrest Peter? Maybe he would get killed alongside of Jesus, we don't know. But what we do know is that Peter trusted himself to get through that night. instead of Peter trusting Christ to get him through that night. And to know Christ better is to know that Christ is able to get me through every night. Christ is able to get me through every day. To know Christ better is to trust Him with everything, no matter the situation surrounding us. That's what's so encouraging to us in our difficult situation today. It's good to keep in mind in a pandemic and all the troubles that it has brought, right? To know Christ better is to know that He gets us through every situation. The better we know Christ, the more we're established. We're on solid ground, sure footing. That's how Peter ended his life. That's how Peter, looking back, wishes that he had spent that night. He failed and Christ restored him. That's okay. You can fail and Christ can restore you, but what he's eager for, what he's pushing for, is for you to grow so that you can attain stability and strength. We're told from the reports of church history how Peter's life ended, that Peter was executed, and he did not shy away from the execution then. So if we can believe those reports, and I think we can, how do we know that this is the same Peter because he had grown? Peter had come to know Christ better and he was ready. Right side up, upside down, whatever they did to him, he was ready to do anything for his Savior and to face his fears and to suffer for Christ. And Peter is saying to us, just like Paul said, just like I wrote through the books, both of these letters grow. Trust in Christ. Become more stable. Be cautious of false teaching. Third, our last point, we grow in the grace and knowledge of Christ. Verse 18, but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory, both now and to the day of eternity. Amen. I love this passage. It's the favorite illustration. Half of you probably heard this from me before. I just love, love telling about this. The fact that we are to grow is so essential for Christians. It's like riding a bike. Imagine yourself riding a bike. And you stop pedaling. And you're on level ground. You're not on a hill. Don't mess with my illustration, okay? You're on level ground. And you're slowing down, and you're slowing down, and you're slowing down. Eventually, it comes to a stop. Now, if you don't pedal anymore, what's going to happen? You can't stay up. You either fall to the left, or you fall to the right. You fall. The only solution on a bike is to keep on pedaling. You've got to keep growing. That's the illustration for the Christian life. If you don't remember anything else for the whole books of 1st and 2nd Peter, remember that. Bike illustration. You've got to keep pedaling. You've got to keep growing. Get to know Christ better. Get to know the Word better. Find ways to serve Him. That's the Christian life. Peter's saying that. How do you reach a place of strength? How do you reach a place of stability? Keep on growing. Pedal forward so you don't fall into error on the left or error on the right. Now, my folks are usually watching. Hi, mom. Hi, dad. I've always wanted to say that. I'm going to use the illustration, which is why I did that. Sorry, mom. Sorry, dad. But my folks do email, okay? They're in their mid-80s. They do email. They don't do Twitter. They might not know what it is. Sorry, mom, dad. Sure they know what it is. But they don't tweet, okay? They wouldn't know the first thing about how to tweet. Maybe this week they'll start. I don't know. It remains to be seen. But track through their lives, and some of you will resonate with this, right? They went from a point before phones, right? Where the way you communicate people is you shout across town. You walk over to your neighbor's house and knock on the door. And he went from that to a rotary phone. Remember those? Some kids are wondering, what is he doing right now? He's dialing his friend, right? And you've got to wait for it to go back. And my mom would let go, and my dad would keep his finger in there. He was one of those, right? They went from that to digital phones and then cell phones. Now they're using email. We learned about silly beliefs, the end of the world time, and Y2K, remember that? Have you conquered the world's teaching about being overly tolerant? As soon as someone catechized by Hollywood comes to you and says, you're being judgmental, do you back down just for that reason? What's grace? What is he talking about growing grace? He's saying through the changes of life, through the difficult things that come, through whatever errors that people present to us in each generation and each time, we need grace from God for that. We need to seek him afresh. What do we do in this situation? Grace is a gift from God purchased by the death of Christ. Our session had to wrestle through we have the Lord's Supper. What do we do when some people can't join us yet? They're members of the church. And so we had to think it through. We have to grow and ask God, and search the scriptures. Grace is a gift from God for today, purchased by the death of Christ 2,000 years ago. Grace is given by God, received by us. It's something in which we grow, and it's an ongoing gift from God. We breathed air yesterday, right? Why do you need to breathe more air today? Can't you just use the air that you breathed yesterday? What's the matter with you, right? because air is an ongoing gift from God. We already used all the air that we breathed yesterday. We need new, fresh, more air to breathe today. That's how grace is. We already had grace yesterday, but we need more new, fresh grace today for what we're facing today. Grace is an ongoing gift from God, and you've got to keep growing to stay in God's grace and receive it and download it. Don't you ever get tired? You know what that means, right? It means you need grace. I'm not talking about physically tired, take a nap. I'm talking about spiritually tired. We need grace. If you find yourself not caring as much as you used to care, and you're a little concerned about it, trying not to think much about it, you need grace. You ever get actually tempted to actually consider sinning in ways you'd never considered sinning before? Guess what you need? Grace. Ask an older Christian if it gets easier to be a Christian as you age. Ask them, they're around, they're available to you, you could ask. Can I get an amen from the older Christians that we need grace as we age? H.C. Morrison spent his best years in the Christian mission field in China. He finally returned to the United States. He was on the same ship as President Teddy Roosevelt. Missionary H.C. Morrison, which you've never heard about. President Teddy Roosevelt. Guess what happened when they arrived? President Roosevelt had signs of welcome everywhere. Bands were gathered and were playing live music. Flags were flying everywhere you saw a sea of red, white, and blue. Banners had messages for him. There were firefighter boats spraying water through the air just because. Missionary Morrison was in this moment, and he was in the moment that he needed to grow. He needed a grace for that day. He started to feel sorry for himself, not having such a welcome after his service to his Lord as the president had. And then he jolted himself out of it saying, you're not home yet. We have to keep growing in our knowledge of Christ, and what sort of welcome is there that waits for Him? We read about it earlier. My concluding lessons say, what have we seen? Christ commanded us to keep on growing and knowing Christ. We grow in knowing the productivity of His delay, the stability that comes through wise cautions and our embracing Christ, and we grow in the grace and the knowledge of Christ Himself. Concluding lessons, number one, grow. You're not surprised by that application, right? Grow, one word. How much are you growing? How much are you praying? How much are you reading scripture? Where do you serve? Are you using your gifts? Grow. Secondly, grow in knowledge of Christ. Grow in knowledge of Christ. How do you get to know Christ better? Do you know Him better than you did a year ago? You get to know Him better through the Word and through suffering. I bet you've grown a lot this during 2020. Don't curse 2020. If you've grown a lot in 2020, then Christ has met you here by grace. It's not about cursing a year. It's about thanking God that we know Him. You love him more, trust him more, understand his wonderful character in a deeper way as a result of the pandemic and all of its struggles. Grow in knowledge of Christ. Third, grow in the grace of Christ. What does that mean? Growing the grace of Christ means live a Christian life, live a holy life. Be convinced that the scriptures give you forgiveness, the message of forgiveness. They also give you the message of living a holy life. I'm going to talk about this final sentence, final sentence of the letter. To him be the glory, both now and to the day of eternity. Amen. Last words heard from Peter on earth. Peter's very close to going to glory when he writes this. He almost didn't get the amen written. He's that close. From here, Peter sat down his pen, looked up. It's as if he's in finishing strengthening us, challenging us to grow. Peter had grown ready to enter glory. He had arrived. as he had arrived at the end of this letter. And Peter begins a song, as it were, continues right on into heaven singing the song. The angels pick up the background music as his song continues. He's that close. Peter begins to enjoy knowing Christ and soaking in the presence of Christ and continuing enjoying the presence of Christ as he enters into his very presence. He's saying, we're almost there. And Peter is seeing the closeness of Christ, the Lord of glory, instead of saying, all rise, he says, all praise. All people praise Him. To Him be the glory. Never stop praising Him. Thank Him all day long. To Him be the glory. To Him be the glory now. He says, look, to Him be the glory now. and to the day of eternity. Now, don't miss the now part. This Christmas, we thank Him. This Christmas, we praise Him. We sing the Christmas carols to our Savior. For in the darkness is when the light shines. This is not a time to shut down Christmas, right? That's why we gather each Sunday. We sing and hum the songs in between Sundays. We join with the apostles. We join with the angels and the elders in heaven to praise Him now. And it's not just for now, it's for tomorrow and the next day and the day of eternity. It's forever. Now and to the day of eternity. To Jesus be the glory. To our Savior be the glory. To Christ be the glory. I have one more story. It's about a missionary kid many years ago. a missionary in the jungles of Indonesia at the time of Pearl Harbor attacks, December 7, 1941. When they got the news, they also heard that the Japanese were invading Indonesia. where the missionary was. So the missionary rushed with his wife and children, got onto a boat to leave the country of Indonesia, which turned out to be the last boat leaving without being sunk. As that boat left the dock, not knowing the outcome, the missionary began to sing. One of his favorite hymns, which went like this, I don't know this hymn, I'm just gonna read it to you. We're on the homeward trail, we're on the homeward trail, singing as we go, going home. Well, they made it home. Pastor R. Kent Hughes says it was not until 62 years later, after retirement of the missionary, he had done all the work he was going to do in Indonesia, comes back home and enjoys his family. It was not until March of 2003. Grandpa Missionary's funeral finally took place in the United States. Mountains of Colorado, snow falling, buffalo herds in the distance, a hearse taking his body to a burial site, and walking behind the hearse were his sons and daughters, his grandchildren and great-grandchildren, all singing, guess what? The same hymn. We're on the Homer Trail. We're on the Homer Trail, singing as we go, going home. and they sang that to him as he entered the presence of the glorious Lord. Peter says, wherever you are scattered, wherever you are discouraged, walk that road. Sing that song. A never-ending day of glory awaits all those who sing for Him now, will sing forever. Let's pray. Lord, help us grow in grace and in the knowledge of Christ, and may we, your church, continue the song of praise until Christ returns. In the name of our King, we ask. Amen.