“Be Diligent & Grow”
[II Peter 3:14-18]
August 10, 2008 Second Reformed Church
These are dangerous days; the Christians of the first century were living in dangerous days. Do we know why? Well, in the first century, the Roman army was hunting down Christians and killing them. And in our circumstance, we’re living in an area where there is a significant amount of violence. And while such things are dangerous, and God has given us brains to do what we can to keep ourselves out of harm’s way, Peter explains that these are not the greatest dangers facing us. The greatest dangers facing us, which he addresses in his second letter, is thinking you’re a Christian when you’re not and coming under the teaching of false teachers.
Peter began his letter urging the exiles to make their calling and election sure. Peter urged them to make sure that they believed that there is only One Salvation and that is by Jesus Christ Alone. We cannot do anything to earn our salvation; it is completely the Gift of God. If we do not believe that Salvation is all of Jesus and nothing of us, we are not Christians. If we believe that our works, our offerings, our volunteering, our showing up to worship, the worship of Mary and the saints and the sacraments, etc., add anything to our salvation, we have not understood – we have not believed in Jesus, Who Alone, by Himself, grants salvation.
Peter said it was the most important thing to be sure of, and I tell you this morning, if you are unsure of everything else in all of creation, be sure about this. Know whether you truly believe that Jesus – Alone – is your salvation. If you truly believe that, you are one of the elect, you are one of the chosen of God, and you cannot be lost – you are Jesus’ forever.
Then Peter warns the exiles and us that there are false teachers – there are people who purposefully deny what God has said. Peter described them as “the ignorant and unstable [who] twist [God’s Word] to their own destruction” (II Peter 3:16b, ESV). And that’s why we can never say that we have been to worship enough, we have prayed enough, we have read the Bible enough. In this life, we are continuing to grow in our faith and understanding – but we do not possess the fullness of faith, nor complete knowledge – so we can be mislead, so we need to keep going back, keep hearing the Word of God read and preached and taught and seek the guidance of the Holy Spirit in prayer.
The false teachers, Peter tells us, “are blots and blemishes, reveling in their deceptions” (II Peter 2:13b, ESV). We all make mistakes in interpreting and understanding God’s Word. But the false teachers purposely distort God’s Word and they love doing it – they love to see people believing lies and not following after God and His Truth.
So, Peter tells us to return to the Bible. Again and again, until Jesus returns. Trust the Bible, God’s Word. It contains eyewitness testimony – and there is no contradiction in anything that is written in it. And that’s because this is not a human book – yes, human beings wrote the words down, in time, in their own styles and languages, but God inspired them to write it – in other words, He made sure that everything they wrote down was accurate. Look at the prophecies that have been fulfilled accurately. See that not a single prophecy has turned out to be false. Trust that Jesus is returning as Judge, and then there will be the restoration. Keep reading it, keep looking things up, keep checking it against what our teachers and ministers tell us to see if they are speaking the truth.
Then, in this morning’s Scripture, Peter writes, “Therefore, beloved, since you are waiting for these” – go back up a verse – “according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and new earth in which righteousness dwells” (II Peter 3:13, ESV) – since we have believed in Jesus Alone for our salvation, since we believe He is returning as Judge, since we believe He will purify us and the entire creation and cast sin and death and all those who follow the devil into the lake of fire, since we are confident in the hope of new heavens and a new earth and a new Jerusalem, come down out of heaven from God – Peter tells us: strive, as our pew Bible has it, or, be diligent, and grow.
Peter says, in response to our salvation and that great hope which we are awaiting, we ought to strive – be diligent – to do three things:
First, we are to strive to be without spot or blemish. Unlike the false teachers, who are, themselves blots and blemishes, we are to do everything we can to keep ourselves pure and clean for when Jesus, the Bridegroom returns.
And we wonder how to do that, since every sin we commit – and we continue to commit sin – is filth upon us. And the answer is found is trusting our salvation to Jesus Alone. If our works had any bearing on our salvation, we would be lost, but since Jesus’ Works are credited to us and the Holy Spirit now lives in us and works through us, we can believe, as Paul wrote, “[Jesus will] present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle, or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish” (Ephesians 5:27, ESV). What good news is that? We are to strive to be spotless – that is our response to Jesus’ Salvation – but in the end, part of the gift of that Salvation is that Jesus will fully cleanse us before He receives us as His bride.
Second, we are to be diligent in counting “the patience of our Lord as salvation.” What does that mean? Remember last week, we considered that God’s Time is not our time and that one of the reasons that God seems to be slow in returning is to allow time for every person who will believe in Him for Salvation to come to belief in Him. God is not slow; He is patient, and when the last person believes who will come to belief, He will return. The date is set, and the Father knows it well.
So, when we are wondering how much longer it will be, when others are taunting us for believing Jesus will return, even though it is two thousand years later, let us remember what Jesus said, “Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance” (Luke 15:7, ESV). When someone asks, “Do you really believe that Jesus is going to return after all these years?”, we can answer, “Yes, He is patiently waiting for the last person who will come to belief in Him, and then He will return – perhaps that person is you ”
And let us just quickly note, that Peter says that Paul says these same things in his letters. And notice at the end of verse seventeen, Peter calls Paul’s letters “Scripture.” Paul’s letters, from the beginning, while Paul was still alive, were recognized by the Church to be the Word of God, Scripture with the same authority as the Old Testament. There are false teachers who will tell you that Paul’s letters were not considered Scripture until the fourth century – that’s a lie – here’s the proof.
And that leads us to the third point to be diligent about – that is, we are to be diligent in rooting out “the error of lawless people.” We are not to tolerate what is seen to be false teaching in the Church. Jesus told us how to approach persons who sin – and purposely teaching false doctrine is a sin – and if they ultimately will not repent, if they will not submit to the teaching of the whole Church – they are to be excommunicated and banished from the Church until such time as they truly repent.
The twenty-first century Church does a very poor job of rooting out the false teachers. This is part of Church discipline. It is not fun or enjoyable, but it is necessary. We cannot allow teachers – pastors – to continue to purposely teach things contrary to what the Church has always believed. If we do continue to allow them free reign, people will become confused and go far astray from the Only Way to Salvation.
Understand, Peter is talking about those doctrines which are necessary for salvation, not just any disagreement. We can disagree as brothers and sisters in Christ about whether or not musical instruments should be used in worship. We can disagree about whether or not infants should be baptized. We can disagree about whether or not hymns should be sung in worship. And so forth. There are matters that different persons of faith and different churches will have different understandings of – we are sinners and we do not know everything, so we make mistakes and misunderstand.
However, there are things we cannot disagree about if we are to call ourselves Christians: We cannot disagree about whether or not Jesus is completely human and at the same time completely God. We cannot disagree about whether or not Jesus is the Only Way to Salvation. We cannot disagree about whether or not Jesus rose from the dead. And so forth.
Persons who teach these type of things in the Church must be stopped, and if they will not change their belief, they must be removed. For the sake of the Gospel and those who have come to hear it preached and taught.
Then Peter says that we are to “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” Well, how do we do that?
Let us understand, first of all, what Paul wrote, “What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God gives the growth. He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labor. You are God’s fellow workers. You are God’s field, God’s building” (I Corinthians 3:6-9, ESV). And D. M. Lloyd-Jones commented on verse eighteen in today’s text, saying, “I cannot make myself grow but I can observe certain conditions which promote growth, and which are essential to it” (Expository Sermons on 2 Peter, 235).
In other words, you and I cannot make ourselves grow – that’s God’s Work. What we can do, both for ourselves and each other, is to maximize those conditions which we know promote growth. A plant need sunshine, water, nutrients – so we make sure that it gets those things if we want it to live and grow. The same is true for us: we can maximize those conditions which we know are necessary for growth in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
What are these conditions? Lloyd-Jones is quite thorough on this, so I will borrow his categories (cf. Pp. 235-239):
If we desire to grow in grace and knowledge – to maximize the conditions through which God may cause us to grow, we ought to:
Read our Bibles. This is the most important. We cannot grow if we are not reading our Bibles. Yes, there are difficult sections – even Peter admits that – but that is no excuse for putting God’s Word down and not picking it up again.
We ought to receive the sacrament of baptism – once – and the Lord’s Supper frequently.
We ought to meditate. When Lloyd-Jones says this, he is not thinking of the hippies and Eastern religions. What he means is we ought to have a time to reflect – on the Word of God – and on life more generally. We ought to have a time to think through and think over what God has said, what we have understood, what we didn’t understand and need to seek out a brother or sister to get help in understanding. We need time to be quiet and think.
We ought also read good Christians books – all kinds of good Christian books – theology, fiction, literature, etc. Reading what others have written helps us to better understand and appreciate all of God’s Creation and all of God’s Actions. If you don’t know what a good Christian book is, tell me what type of thing you would like to read, and I will recommend something or find out what might be good for you. Pick up good books.
Then, we ought to avoid those things which are harmful to our growth. And these things will be different for each of us – we need to know ourselves and what keeps us from God and the growth He may cause in us. Lloyd-Jones tells that he decided he needed to stop reading the newspaper. What hinders your communion with God? What keeps you from spending time with Him?
The next condition, he calls exercise. That is, we ought to live out what we believe. If we say we believe something, our lives ought to reflect and not contradict that belief
Then, we ought to take time to rest. Rest is part of the holy cycle that God has put into the day, week, month, etc. We are constructed such that we need time to rest and recuperate – to heal, to mend, to become strong again. If we go and go and go and never take time to rest – and that doesn’t just mean sleep, though sleep is included – we will burn out. If we never rest, we will become sick and eventually become useless to anyone. It is a great temptation in the ministry to be at your beck and call – and to work – twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week – and it’s easy to do. But it is not good for you or me. I need to take time to heal and prepare for the next day, and so do you. We must allow each other to get an appropriate amount of rest that we might be as effective for God as possible.
Lastly, we ought to be disciplined. We ought to have routines. We ought to read the Bible daily, not just “now and then.” We ought to attend worship at least weekly. We ought to rest daily, and set aside at least one day to spend in the presence of God, etc. If we are disciplined enough to keep ourselves in all these conditions that promote faith, God may well be pleased to grow us and teach us of Himself.
So, let us understand from our brother, Peter, that these are glorious days: God has completed the whole Work of Salvation, and He is now working through we who believe. We respond to Him by doing good works. And we are waiting – longing – for Jesus’ Return and the restoration of all things, as we work diligently and seek to grow in grace and in the knowledge of Jesus. And “to him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity. Amen.”
Let us pray:
Almighty God, we thank You for the witness of Peter. We thank You for Your Work of Salvation, and we ask that if any here have not believed, that You would be pleased to call them to salvation. We ask that we who are Christians would be diligent in hope and holiness and in rooting out error, and we ask that we would also maximize the conditions for growth, and we ask that You would be pleased to give us growth. For it is in Jesus’ Name we pray, Amen.
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