As we begin, please open your Bibles to 2 Peter chapter 1. I've been, like Steve, I've been battling a cold and cough this week, but I think I'm on the downside of it, so hopefully we'll get through this. This is a letter which is known for its important truths about dealing with false teachers, but there's more here than simply instruction about avoiding heretics. This book is filled with rich truths, and so I'd like us to take some time to think about some of them this evening. At the end of the 19th century, a man by the name of J.C. Ryle, who lived in England, wrote a book Whereas his ministry encompassed the last part of that century, his life covered a good part of the 19th century. He was a bishop in the Anglican Church and was a very biblical and godly individual. He wrote a book entitled Holiness, which was published in 1879. It's been republished. It's available today. In fact, the entire book is available to read online for free. So I would encourage you to get a copy or go online and take the time to read it. I want to read you some excerpts from it. I don't like reading long quotes, but what Ryle wrote is significant. And I think you'll find it very pertinent to what we're going to be talking about this evening. In the portion I want to read to you, Ryle wrote about the condition of the church in his day. He wrote this almost 130 years ago. But I think you'll agree that except for the older style of writing, it sounds like it was written yesterday about the American church. Now, I'm not going to be reading consecutively. I will not take the time to tell you where the breaks are, but I will read what is pertinent. I will not violate the context of what he is saying. Ryle writes, there's much in the attitude of professing Christians in this day which fills me with concern and makes me full of fear for the future. There's an amazing ignorance of scripture among many and a consequent one of established solid religion. In no other way can I account for the ease of which people are like children tossed to and fro and carried about by every wind of doctrine. There is an Athenian love of novelty abroad and a morbid distaste for anything old and regular in the beaten path of our forefathers. Thousands will crowd to hear a new voice and a new doctrine without considering for a moment whether what they hear is truth. There is an incessant craving after any teaching which is sensational and exciting and rousing to the feelings. inability to distinguish differences in doctrine is spreading far and wide, and as long as the preacher is clever and earnest, hundreds seem to think it must be all right, and call you dreadfully narrow and uncharitable if you hint that he is unsound." Now that was from the first part of the book. Let me read you from the last part. The times require at our hands distinct and decided views of Christian doctrine. I cannot withhold my conviction that the professing church of the 19th century is as much damaged by laxity and lack of distinctiveness about matters of doctrine within as it is by skeptics and unbelievers without. Today, a myriad of professing Christians seem utterly unable to distinguish things that differ. Like people afflicted with color blindness, they are incapable of discerning what is true and what is false, what is sound and what is unsound. They are destitute of spiritual sense, apparently, and cannot detect error. These people live in a kind of mist or fog. They are eaten up with a morbid dread of controversy and an ignorant dislike of party spirit, and yet they really cannot define what they mean by these phrases. The explanation of this boneless, nerveless, jellyfish condition of soul is not difficult to find. Above all, the natural heart generally likes the praise of others, shrinks from collision, and loves to be thought charitable and liberal. For your own soul's sake, dare to make up your mind what you believe. Dare to have positive, distinct views of truth and error. Never, yes never, be afraid to hold decidedly doctrinal opinions, and let no fear of man and no morbid dread of being thought party-spirited, narrow, or controversial make you rest contented with a bloodless, boneless, tasteless, colorless, lukewarm, undogmatic Christianity. Mark what I say. If you want to do good in these times, you must throw aside indecision and take up a distinct, sharply cut doctrinal religion. If you believe little, those to whom you try to do good will believe nothing." I would echo those words regarding our churches today. That is the same danger that today's believers face in those churches where they get very little biblical teaching. They're going to raise a generation that believes nothing. Ryle continues, he says, the victories of Christianity, wherever they have been won, have been won by distinct doctrinal theology, but depend on it. If we want to do good things and shake the world, we must fight with the old apostolic weapons and stick to dogma. Without dogma, there will be no fruit. Without positive evangelical doctrine, there will be no evangelization. That is a reminder that things have not changed. These comments sound like they were written to the Church at the beginning of the 21st century, not at the end of the 19th century. And we're reminded that the devil does not change his tactics. He is constantly working to move the Church of Jesus Christ away from its solid, doctrinal, biblical foundations. That is what Peter is concerned about as he writes this second letter. He is concerned about the infiltration of false teaching and false doctrine. He's concerned enough to remind believers of the truth that has been given to them, because the best defense against error and false doctrine is a thorough knowledge of the truth which you are to implement every day of your life. In 2 Peter 1 verses 12 to 15, Peter places a strong emphasis on his responsibility to remind these believers of biblical doctrine and of their responsibility to remember it. And we will see in this passage that God's plan for His people has not changed. His plan is that we are to be continually focusing on the truth that He has given. We need nothing new. We need nothing more. We need nothing else, rather we need constant reminders of the old truth. Look at verse 12 and notice the word, therefore. What he's going to say is built upon what he has said in the first 11 verses. The first 11 verses give us a summary of Christian doctrine. We have come to the true knowledge of the living God and His Son only because God, by His grace, sovereignly has given us the faith to believe in Jesus Christ. And it is in this salvation, in the true knowledge of God, that we are given everything that pertains to life and godliness. Verse 3. We've became partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that's in the world through lust. Verse 4. We now are diligent to grow to maturity in this new life that we have in Christ, verses 5 to 7. And it is essential that we be growing, because this marks us off as true children of God in whose lives God is working. Now beginning in verse 12 and down to verse 21, the focus is going to be on the importance of God's Word as the foundation and center of their lives as God's people. But we're only going to consider verses 12 to 15 tonight. And the first thing we see is his readiness to remind them. His readiness to remind them. Notice how Peter starts verse 12. He says, therefore, I will always be ready to remind you of these things. He's using the future tense. He is saying, whatever ministry I have with you now or will have with you in the future will be a continuation of the ministry that I had with you in the past. It will be a presentation of the same truths. I am going to be reminding you. I will always be ready to remind you. There's an emphasis here. The verb to remind is in the present tense and it denotes that you are continually doing something. So as they move into the future, Peter will always be in the process of reminding them. So what is he going to be doing in the future? The same thing that he's doing now. Reminding them. He wants them to have these truths well in hand. And in verses 13 to 15, Peter tells them that he will constantly remind them of the truths that Christ has made clear to him, so they will be able to remember these truths after he dies. And he says the same thing over a page in chapter 3, verse 1. This is now, beloved, the second letter I'm writing to you in which I'm stirring up your sincere mind by way of reminder. They are to remember the word spoken beforehand by the apostles and prophets. Here is a man at the end of life's road. If he had anything new to give, any alternatives, anything additional, now is the time. But he says, all I want to do is devote the rest of my life to reminding you of those same great truths. Now in verse 12, the term these things refers to the things of verses 1 to 11. It doesn't mean that those verses contain everything that could be said, but that this is a basic summary of God's truth. From God's salvation right on through your growth as a believer in preparation for the coming eternal kingdom. These are the things on which Peter wants you to focus. verse 12 continues says even though you already know them and have been established in them he's saying I want to remind you and I will be reminding you but that doesn't mean that I think you don't already know them or not already established in them but it is absolutely essential that we go over them again and so he gives two participles even though you know them and are established in them those are what are known as perfect participles. In the Greek language, the perfect tense denotes something which has happened in the past, but the results continue in the present. So this is truth that they have known and continue to know, that they have been established in and continue to be established in. But Peter still wants to tell them this truth again and again and again. Perhaps the simplest illustration of this, to which we can all relate, is the way we are with our children. When we warn children, don't get in the car with a stranger. If someone pulls over to the curb and wants to talk to you, run to somebody's house. And we crank up those warnings if we get a note from a school that says, please warn your children that the police have told us that there's someone in the neighborhood trying to lure children into cars. So all of a sudden we have to tell them again. And what's the attitude of the children sometimes? Oh mom, you've already told me this a hundred times. But you say, I don't care, I'm going to tell you again. Why? What are you afraid of? Are you afraid that they will say they haven't heard it or that they don't know it? No, we know that they know it. We're just afraid that they will let down their guard and our warnings will not be on their mind when the danger confronts them. That's the way Peter is with the believers to whom he is writing. He doesn't think that they don't know it. He doesn't think that they aren't firmly rooted in the truth. But he is concerned that they will not keep it right in the front of their minds, so to speak. And false teachers will come, and you know how easily people can be lured into false teaching. Let me use the analogy about your children again. You don't want your child to stop and listen to the person in the car. You don't say to your children, You can listen to him and if you think he's a nice man, it's okay. If you think that what he's offering you as a gift is something you would like, you can take it from him. No, you say, don't talk to him. Well, believers get into trouble too when they say, well, let me hear what this guy on television has to say. Hey, you know, it sounds pretty good. He says, I can have my best life now. Yeah, I'd like to have that. I'd like it to be that way. And that's how they're lured away. So Peter wants them to have this truth right at the forefront of their minds. We're never beyond the need to be reminded of what we already know as God's people. This is especially important when we're faced with false teaching and false doctrine. Turn over for just a moment to the little book of Jude, please. Jude and 2 Peter, are like a match set of bookends. They're so similar in their instruction. Look at what Jude has to say in verse 5. Now, I desire to remind you, though you know all things once for all. Jude, like Peter, is saying that he has to tell them what they already know well and have in hand. Why? Because they are being faced with the danger of false doctrine and false teaching. That's why we need that warning to be fresh in our minds all the time. All the time. Now turn back to 2 Peter and look at the second half of verse 12. Not only do they know these things, they're standing firm in them. Peter says, even though you already know them and have been established in the truth. Established is a strong word. It denotes that they have a firm stability in their faith. He doesn't want them to be shaken, though, from that firm stability. Turn over a page and look at the end of 2 Peter 3. In verse 16, you'll see the negative side of this concerning false teachers. Right in the middle of 2 Peter 3.16, he identifies these false teachers as being untaught and unstable. Notice that word unstable, it is the same root as established, but it's from the negative side. They are not stable, they are not established in the truth. Verse 17, You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, be on your guard so that you are not carried away by the error of unprincipled men and fall from your own steadfastness. Steadfastness, that's the exact same word as the word established in our text. That's stability. But just because I know these things and am established in them, does not mean that I'm not susceptible to being lured away and losing that stability if I become careless. We have a master opponent, the devil. He is brilliant, he is clever, we should never ever underestimate him. That's what Peter is concerned about. He says, you know these things, you're established in them, but I don't want that to change. At the end of his first letter, In 1 Peter 5.10, he said that after they're brought through their suffering, God will Himself perfect, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. So they have already been established. That has been done and is ongoing. But He's giving this reminder. He's not reminding them because they know less or have less stability than some others and so they need reminders. He says it's important that you be reminded. Notice that the end of verse 12 says, they have been established in the truth which is present with you." Jude's way of referring to this in his epistles found in verse 3 where he refers to it as the faith which was once for all handed down to the saints. What was handed down is the truth of God, the gospel of God, the revelation that God has given through his servants to his people. It's interesting to see how many times through just the New Testament that God's Word is called the truth. Remember what Jesus said in his high priestly prayer in John 1717 as he prayed to the Father, sanctify them in the truth. He didn't say all truth is your truth. He said sanctify them in the truth. Your Word is truth. Over the past several years the church has been passing around this little cliche that says, all truth is God's truth. You say, well, what's wrong with that? The problem with that thinking is that the assumption behind it is that there is some type of valid truth about man that is found outside of the Word of God. When the people who promote that idea talk about it, they're not using that cliché to talk about things such as mathematics or physics. They aren't saying, well, it's true that 9 times 9 equals 81, and that truth is not found in the Bible. If that's what they meant by what they were saying, I would agree with them. But when they say all truth is God's truth, they are using it to refer to truth about man's nature and character. In other words, they are claiming that the things that godless psychologists have allegedly discovered about the character of man that are not found in Scripture are true and that it's God's truth. That goes contrary to the basic foundational reality of the Word of God. So we shouldn't even go down that road. God's Word is sufficient. Peter says in verse 3 that it contains everything pertaining to life and godliness. So we don't need to be mixing human wisdom with divine wisdom. All we need to know is that only biblical truth is salvation truth. Only biblical truth is sanctification truth. You can't take biblical truth and mix it with human wisdom and claim that the end result is all truth. But many people who haven't thought through these issues are not prepared. They are, in effect, lured by the stranger in the car. They haven't carefully considered and kept before them this basic foundational matter that we know and have been established in the truth which is the faith which was once for all delivered to the Saints and as a consequence all kinds of corruption have infiltrated the church under the slogan all truth is God's truth we could spend our time looking at a dozen or so passages in the New Testament that refer to the Word of God as being God's truth but for the sake of time we're not going to do that right now but I do want to call your attention to a couple of them Colossians 1, 5 and 6 says, Because of the hope laid up for you in heaven, of which you previously heard in the word of truth, the gospel, which has come to you just as in all the world also, it is constantly bearing fruit and increasing, even as it has been doing in you also since the day you heard of it and understood the grace of God in truth. So the gospel is the word of truth. Now these days, if you ask the average American evangelical, the question, what is the church supposed to be? The answer you'll probably receive is, oh, it's like a spiritual hospital. It's a place for healing everyone's hurts, where everyone goes away from church feeling good about themselves. That's not at all what God's Word says it's to be. First Timothy 3.15 says the church is the pillar and support of the truth. The church is to be a truth center. This is the place where the truth is to be proclaimed. This is the place where we are to constantly and incessantly remind ourselves of the truth. And as people hear the truth and obey the truth, they find that they are less concerned about themselves and more concerned about God's glory. Verse 12 of our text says, You already know and have been established in the truth which is present with you. That's the Word. And Peter follows it in verse 13 by saying that he wants to stir them to remember. He says, I consider it right as long as I am in this earthly dwelling to stir you up by way of reminder. Peter is saying that it is his God-given responsibility and obligation as a servant of Jesus Christ to constantly remind them of God's Word. That phrase is, as long as I am in this earthly dwelling, is a picturesque way of saying this physical life. The word translated earthly dwelling is simply the word for tabernacle or tent. Peter is saying as long as I'm living in this tent. In other words, he views his physical body as a temporary residence and it will soon be folded up and set aside because he's going to be moving out. Notice his attitude as he says, in effect, as long as I am in this physical body, I must be serving my Lord. I consider it right as long as I'm in this earthly dwelling to stir you up. I know the opportunities for serving the Lord on this earth will soon be past, so I want to take every occasion to remind you to stir you up. He uses that phrase in a picturesque way and it's in the present tense, to be stirring you up. It's a word that carries the idea of awakening someone from sleep or to alert someone who's become drowsy. The picture is that he wants to keep them spiritually alert and ready. The danger is that spiritual drowsiness will overtake them and they will become insensitive to the danger of the false teaching. Again, we can use the analogy of your children. You're not so concerned about someone enticing them when you know that they're alert to the danger. Then you know that when the car slows down by the curb and the window goes down, they're going to take off. But what you are concerned about is the time when they get so caught up with the other things of life that they will become insensitive to what you have warned them about. They'll be lax and in a sense drowsy and thus vulnerable. Peter says, I don't want that to happen to you. These reminders are a way of shaking you, of keeping you alert. Because we do tend to get drowsy. And we get drowsy about spiritual things. You remember how it was when you were first saved? You just couldn't get enough Bible teaching and listening to the gospel. It was new and you wanted as much teaching as you could get and you were at church every time the doors were open But after you were a believer for a while you began to think Well, I don't see why we need to be in bible study during the week After all there's a lot going on with our family Kids are busy with sports. I have to work long hours We're just so busy. We need to spend time together as a family. So I think we'll just cut out sunday night church And when we do that, we fail to appreciate that it is no less important to be reminded of the same truths after we have been Christians for 25 years than it was when we've been Christians for only two days. But we become somewhat lax. We were willing at the beginning to alienate friends and relatives left and right, Now we say, well, now that I've been a believer for 25 years, I realize I don't want to alienate everybody around me. They have their beliefs. I have mine. It's best we not get into it. So I'll just be a good witness to them while we watch the game on Sunday night rather than going to church. That's what Peter doesn't want to happen. He's saying, you keep this constantly before you. Keep constantly alert. Look at verse 14. Knowing that the laying aside of my earthly dwelling is imminent as our Lord Jesus Christ has made clear to me Peter knows that the end is near in John 21 18 Jesus had told Peter in the presence of the other disciples Peter when you were younger you used to gird yourself and walk wherever you wish but when you grow old you're gonna stretch out your hands and Someone else will gird you and bring you where you do not wish to go. I And right after that in verse 19 it says that by those words Jesus was saying to Peter that he was going to die an unpleasant death as a martyr, most likely by crucifixion. Now at the point in time that Peter is writing this letter, more than 30 years have passed since Jesus spoke those words. Peter is not a young man anymore. He senses and knows that the end is near. He sees what is taking place around him. He realizes the animosity and opposition to the gospel is going to catch him in a snare and result in his execution. So it's all the more important that he devote himself to reminding these people who will be left behind to stand firm in the face of the deceitful teachers of false doctrine of corrupt lifestyles. They must defend the truth and be faithful. Peter's like a parent who's dying while his children are still young. What do parents in that situation do? They want to call their children around them and talk to them and exhort them. They'll say things like, remember to do this, promise me you'll do that, and it's important. You won't be there for them to fall back on, you won't be there to remind them, so you have to do it now. Sometimes it's hard for them to appreciate how important it is that they hear it again, but it is important. So Peter says, my life is near its end, I have to keep reminding you. Sometimes I wonder how I would have reacted if I knew how I was going to die like Peter did. How would you have reacted if you knew about your life what Peter knew about his? I think it would probably have been downhill from John 21 for many of us. All we would have been able to think of was, oh boy, I sure don't have a lot to look forward to. They're going to martyr me. I'm going to die a painful, unpleasant death. You know what the average American church would do today if Peter showed up one Sunday? They'd say, Peter, tell us how you feel. What emotions are going through your mind? Are you scared? What does your wife think? What have you said to your kids in light of the fact that you know you're going to go out of this world in a not very pleasant way? Are you able to sleep at night? Have you read a copy of Your Best Life Now so you can feel better about your situation? And they would have Peter in counseling. If it was one of us, we'd say, oh, how can I ever serve the Lord? I've got this awful prediction by the Lord about my death hanging over me. And you know, I don't like pain. I know what they can do to people. And with the passing of the years, it had gotten harder. Because every knock on the door, Every time they knock, it makes me jump. I'm afraid to share God's Word because I think that could be the event that triggers it. You don't get that attitude from Peter. And the Apostle Paul didn't take that approach either in his last letter, 2 Timothy. They had a much more biblical view of death. Let me read to you what one writer said. He writes, we have much to learn from Peter's attitude towards death. He had for years been living with death. He knew that his lot would be to die in a horrible and painful way, yet he can speak of it in this wonderful way, apparently without fear and regret. I've often thought that all I want to do is to be able to be faithful to my ministry until I die. But sometimes I start thinking, oh man, Even if the Lord grants me long life, I only have 15, 20 years to go. So I need to start traveling and relaxing and simply enjoying life. I have to get to the point in my life where I don't have to do anything but relax and do nothing. And we here in America have people retiring at 50 or 55, idling the rest of their life away. And somehow we justify becoming idle and pleasing ourselves because life is short. It is short, but do you know the difference between believers and unbelievers? Believers are strangers and pilgrims here. We are servants of the living God going diligently about his business until he calls us to glory. Yet, when we know we're going to die or when we get near the end of life, what do we think? I have got to take advantage of all the remaining time I have. I've just got to go out and see all the scenery and enjoy life and do all the things I couldn't do when I was younger. Frankly folks, that's the world's perspective. The world says eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die. They ought to live like that because that's all they have. But if you've been living in a dirty, torn, ragged tent, and you're about to move into a $50 million palace, you don't say, well, I've just got to spend as many years as I can looking around this tent and the weeds all around it. I don't want to miss anything here. It's just so wonderful. If that's the case, I don't think you have the right perspective. Is it any wonder the world doesn't see us as being any different? We've adopted this lifestyle. We might not say it, but we often think, I've got to go for the gusto. I've got to get all I can here, because you know life is short. Well, praise God that it is short, because then we finally get to glory. I'm not saying that we should be anxious to die, but I'm saying that we ought to view death differently than the way it's viewed by the world. If you've ever read some of the old writers like John Calvin, you'll find that they drew a line between believers and unbelievers on the basis of how they viewed death. We ought to learn something from them and from the Apostle Peter. What really matters? Is he thinking about taking a trip to see all the sites around the Mediterranean during his final days on earth? No. He was writing a letter to remind them of what they already knew. What about his grandkids? I assume that he had children and by this time he probably had grandchildren. If I was the one writing this letter, it would be to my kids and grandkids. But that's why Peter was an apostle and I'm not. He talked about the urgency he felt for the church because he was about to lay aside his earthly dwelling. He's about to fold up his tent. Turn over to 2 Corinthians 5 where Paul uses the same analogy in the first four verses. In fact, He says in verse 4, while we are in this tent we groan. We're looking forward to what God has prepared for us and for the time when we will live in a glorified body. It will not be this tattered tent. Look what he says beginning in verse 5. Now he who has prepared us for this very purpose is God, who gave to us the Spirit as a pledge, a guarantee. Verse 6. Therefore, being always of good courage. I sense in Paul's writing that he is of good courage. And knowing that while we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord. For we walk by faith, not by sight. We are of good courage, I say, and prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord. So we see that Paul too was prepared and he's busy about the ministry of the Lord. I grieve for the people who waste the last 10, 15 or 20 years of their lives when they could have devoted that time to service of their God right up to the end. In his wonderful little book titled, Don't Waste Your Life, John Piper gives a very powerful illustration of what I'm talking about. He writes the following words, I will tell you what a tragedy is. I will show you how to waste your life. Consider a story from the February 1998 edition of Reader's Digest, which tells about a couple who took early retirement from their jobs in the Northeast five years ago when he was 59 and she was 51. Now they live in Punta Gorda, Florida, where they cruise on their 30-foot trawler, play softball, and collect shells. At first, when I read it, I thought it might be a joke, a spoof on the American dream, but it wasn't. Tragically, this was the dream. Come to the end of your life, your one and only precious God-given life, and let the last great work of your life before you give an account to your Creator be this, playing softball and collecting shells. Picture them before Christ at the great day of judgment. Look, Lord, see my shells? That is a tragedy. And people today are spending billions of dollars to persuade you to embrace that tragic dream. Over against that I put my protest. Don't buy it. Don't waste your life. In contrast to that story, he also tells the story of two great women of God. He writes in April 2000, Ruby Eliason and Laura Edwards were killed in Cameroon, West Africa. Ruby was over 80. Single all her life, she poured it out for one great thing, to make Jesus Christ known among the unrich, the poor, and the sick. Laura was a widow, a medical doctor, pushing 80 years old, and serving at Ruby's side in Cameroon. The brakes failed, the car went over a cliff, and they were both killed instantly. I asked my congregation, was that a tragedy? Two lives driven by one great passion, namely to be spent in unheralded service to the perishing poor for the glory of Jesus Christ, even two decades after most of their American counterparts had retired to throw away their lives on trifles. No, that is not a tragedy, that is a glory. These lives were not wasted and these lives were not lost. Whoever loses his life for my sake and the Gospels will save it. You say, Bruce, are you saying that it's wrong to retire? That's exactly what I'm saying. I don't mean that it's wrong to retire from your job. In fact, I did exactly that six years ago. I retired from my career of more than 38 years in law enforcement. So I don't mean it's wrong to retire. I just mean it's wrong to retire and do nothing for the Lord. The concept of retiring and just sitting around and relaxing is never found in the Scriptures. I like what missionary and mission organization founder Ralph Winter has to say about this issue. He writes, where in the Bible do they see that? Did Moses retire? Did Paul retire? Peter? John? Do military officers retire in the middle of a war? You see, man was intended to work until the day the Lord calls him home. It may not be in the secular business world, but every one of us needs to be working for the Lord to the best of our physical ability until the day we die. Every mission organization and every church I know has ministry needs that need people who have available time to fill them. We certainly do here at Lakeside. So plan now to work for the Lord throughout whatever years He chooses to give you. Now let's go back to 2 Peter 1.15 and finally we see his diligence to help them recall. Peter writes, and I will also be diligent that at any time after my departure you will be able to call these things to mind. Notice that word diligence there. He used it back in verse 5. Now for this very reason also applying all diligence. And again in verse 10, therefore brethren be all the more diligent. Now he's saying that he will be diligent with them. He will be diligent and apply himself with zeal and enthusiasm that at any time after my departure you will be able to recall these things to mind. That word departure is literally the word exodus. It is used in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, concerning the exodus out of Egypt by the nation of Israel. It's also used in Luke 9, 31, when Moses and Elijah spoke with Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration about his departure, that is, his impending death in Jerusalem. They use the word exodus because that's what death is. The body without the spirit is dead and at physical death the spirit exits. The real person moves out and the physical tent collapses. But one day God will raise that tent. It will be remade in indescribable glory and the spirit will move back in. And Peter wants them at any time and at all times after his departure to be able to call these things to mind so he keeps on reminding them. That's what I want to do. I'm sure that's what all the elders of this church want to do. They want to constantly remind you of the truth, so that in every situation, at all times, whenever the need arises, you will remember it. Because one day, if the Lord doesn't return first, every one of we elders will be dead and gone. And we want those who are still here to remember the truth. But we get into trouble because we're just like our kids. We say, oh yeah, I know, I know. And then a situation comes along and it catches us off guard and we aren't ready for it. And so Peter says, I don't want that to happen. I want you to call these things to mind at any time after my departure. I hope you've noticed two things as we've looked at these verses. First, there's a lot of repetition. Peter says, I want to remind you, I want to remind you, I want you to remember. Because of that emphasis on reminding and remembering, the importance of the truth that God has given has been strongly emphasized in these verses. Acts 2.42 says, the people in the early church were continually devoting themselves to the apostles' teaching. That was not to change after the apostles passed off the scene. We have apostolic succession, but it is not in a line of men who pass along authority from one to another. It's the passing on of apostolic truth that goes on from one generation to the next in the context of the ministry of the truth in local churches. We don't need something new. These are not different days. We don't even need new methods. In the last century, they called them new measures and it became a disguise to undermine sound biblical doctrine. They said, oh, we aren't going to change the truth, we're only changing the methods. I want to say something I know is going to get me in trouble with some people. I believe the method and the message are inseparable. Many people in the American evangelical community have created an environment where they no longer give sermons, they tell stories. and they provide entertainment and act it out. And all that does is move believers away from apostolic doctrine and create a superficial knowledge of biblical things that does not prepare them and equip them to face false doctrine and false teaching. The only way you prepare yourself for these assaults is by laboring in the word and doctrine, not with skits and drama. Skits and drama can illustrate a point, and they can communicate a truth, but they do not teach the meat of the word upon which you build the foundation that will withstand false teaching. Entertainment can never take the place of biblical instruction. It seems that as churches get larger and more popular and people are more excited about them, the more true, sound apostolic doctrine is removed from those services. So when people say, we're changing some of the methods, but we're not altering the message, my response is, yes you are. You are no longer focused on grappling with scripture and seriously wrestling with the text. You're giving a presentation of truth in a general sense. That is not preaching apostolic doctrine. Now, I'm not saying that you can't use new technology to help communicate truth. Being able to use computers and software to show things on a screen helps people know what you're talking about. But replacing the expositional teaching of the Word with soundbite sermons and a comedic skit is a recipe for spiritual disaster later when the false teachers show up. And believe me, they will show up. Finally, remember what I said earlier. If we're really committed to truth as God's truth, we also have to have the Apostle Peter's attitude towards death. We're called to devote ourselves to the ministry of his truth in the context of his body until he calls us into his presence. In reality, there's no retirement from the service of our God. There may be opportunity for us because of the way our society functions, to devote more time to the Lord's work in certain phases of our life because we're free from other responsibilities such as a job, but we're not free. We are His servants and slaves and this life should be a battle, a war, a daily grind until He calls us into His presence. And then we'll have all of eternity to enjoy glory and to enjoy the fullness of the rest that God has prepared for His people. I pray that both individually and as a church, we will be focused on truth until we are called into his presence by death or the Lord's return. Let's bow together in prayer. Father, thank you for the Apostle Peter, his commitment to reminding his readers and us of the importance of standing steadfast in the truth. We continually need to be reminded of these things. Lord, unless you return first, the day will come when every one of the elders and pastors who are currently here will be gone, either because you have sovereignly moved them to some other place, because they're at home with you in glory. And after they're gone, I know that they would desire that everyone who is still here would remember the truths of your word and to cling without compromise to it. May this church always be satisfied with your word and not cheapen the ministry of it with methods that leave men and women unprepared for the dangers they face from false teachers. Father, the future days are going to be difficult. So I pray that you'll give each one of here the strength to stand for that which honors and glorifies you despite whatever forces Satan would hurl against this church. Lord, I pray that each one of us who would not view death like the world views it, but would see it as nothing more than the casting off of a filthy, dirty, ragged tent, and moving into your glorious presence in complete perfection and beauty. But until that day, let us spend our days diligently and faithfully serving you. May we never waste our lives on the trivial, worthless pursuits of this world. Nothing here has any value when compared to the surpassing value of your dear son Jesus, who is our Lord and Savior, and in whose precious and wonderful name we pray. Amen.