Sometimes we have the opinion, or the understanding I should say, that as soon as the books of the New Testament were written, they were immediately accepted by everyone as being a part of the Bible, part of the canon of Scripture, as we say. But that is not the case in church history. Some of the books in the New Testament were actually not fully accepted as being inspired by God until as late as the fourth century after Christ. And the book of 2 Peter is an example of that.
In fact, it was the last of the 66 books to be acknowledged by the church that it was in fact inspired by God. And there were certain rules or measurements by which they determined which of the writings of the apostles were in fact inspired. That's where we get the word canon of Scripture. It means measurement or the rule. And by examining the books in the light of these standards, they determined in fact which ones had been written by men inspired by God's Holy Spirit.
Even until this very day, there are some seminary professors who argue about the author of 2 Peter. Most of them of the more liberal persuasion who try to tell us that in fact Peter didn't write this book. It had to be written much later than Peter's life. But we do accept it as having been written by the apostle Peter. There are some interesting similarities between this book of 2 Peter and the last book that the apostle Paul wrote. Does anybody know which book that is? Thank you, 2 Timothy.
That's right. The book of 2 Timothy was his last letter. 2 Peter is the last letter that Peter wrote. You remember as each of them penned these words by God's Spirit enabling them, they were facing martyrdom. Paul was, as much as we know, beheaded in Rome after writing the book of 2 Timothy. And he writes in the last chapter of that book about his anticipated departure that he is expecting very soon to go to be with the Lord.
And Peter, after finishing this book, at some point tradition says was crucified upside down outside of Rome. Both of these men wrote the books somewhere around 67 or 68 AD during the last part of the reign of one of the most infamous of all the Caesars, a man by the name of Nero who most likely burned Rome and then blamed it on the Christians. It is interesting that as both of these men come to the end of their lives, they foresee a troubled future.
They foresee what is called the last days, a time when there would be a falling away from the truth or an apostasy among those who are professing Christians. That apostasy actually began right there in their day, but it has certainly accelerated. The day in which we are living, we see apostasy on every hand. It is so interesting, isn't it, to read the accounts in the press of some of the denominational meetings that take place about this time of year.
In fact, some of the major ones are meeting during this month of June and they are making major revisions and decisions regarding their beliefs and their creeds and their statements. And almost inevitably, you find that these revisions are steps away from the truth revealed in the Word of God. Both of the books, 2 Peter and 2 Timothy, contain a current, however, of exuberant joy despite what they were anticipating in the difficult days of the future.
Both Paul and Peter knew that there was something worth looking forward to beyond the troubled days that they saw in the future. Now, as we come to the book of 2 Peter, I think it kind of helps to get a verse that can serve as a theme verse for the book. And for this Bible study, we are going to use as the theme verse the very last verse of the book, chapter 3 and verse 18. It is here that Peter says, grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
Grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ. That seems to be what he is writing about in these three chapters as we have divided the book. In addition to using the word grow here, throughout the book, Peter uses words like multiplied or increase or add to or supply in addition to or abundantly or increasing.
Those are the ideas that are flowing through Peter's heart as he writes to believers in that day and to us that we are to be multiplying and growing and increasing and adding to our faith and being abundant. He tells us that God has given us life and that inevitable with life comes growth. Those two things go together. Right now we have, well I will make it more general, somewhere in our church property a duck. A duck which is sitting on nine eggs. I counted them when she was off the nest.
And she has been sitting on those eggs now a long time. Does anybody know how long it is supposed to take for those eggs to hatch? I was raised on the farm and I never learned that. 28 days, that's what I was afraid of. I do believe this dear mother duck has a problem. Because it seems like more than 28 days that she has been sitting on that nest. Now it probably seems 158 to her.
But as I have just kind of watched her, she has been there a long time and I am wondering if there is really life in those eggs. Where there is life, there is going to be proof of life. In the case of eggs, there is going to be a hatching and some ducklings, maybe up to nine of them running around here one of these days. But if there is no life there, then there is not going to be anything happening. How do we know that we are saved? How do we know that we have eternal life?
The answer to that is that there is evidence. And in Peter's terms, as we are studying this book, we will see that Peter says that the evidence of genuine spiritual life is growth. Now in almost every growing thing, there can be periods of dormancy. There can be latent periods. Growth can occur at different speeds. That's true throughout nature. But there is some evidence of growth and continuance.
Someone in the church a year ago gave us some beautiful sprouts of rhubarb to plant in our backyard. We did and they managed to make it through the summer and through the winter. And it was fun to go out there this spring. All the green dies off and you don't see anything there. But if you dig down, you can see these sprouts coming up. And sure enough, they have leafed out, two of them have leafed out just beautifully. And we've enjoyed some of the rhubarb from them already.
The middle one, however, there are three of them. And the middle one isn't doing quite so well. Had the same time, had the same basic soil, which is pretty lousy. It had the same winter to go through, the same amount of moisture. All the exteriors the same, the externals are the same. But something inside that plant is different and though it's growing, it's not growing as fast. My point is that growth is there. It may come at different speed.
You see, that's the way it is with some Christians too. There are some Christians that just, they spurt and they grow quickly. And there are others that are more slow in their growth. But the fact is, where there's life, there's change and there's growth. Growth and maturity are expected in a Christian walk. I think it might be helpful for us to think for just a moment about growth. What is growth? What do we mean by that?
We talk about growing in Christ, growing in our Christian life, our Christian walk. What does it mean to grow? Well, it's not merely increased knowledge of the Bible. There are people who don't even believe in Jesus Christ, who have a greater knowledge of the Bible's facts than some Christians. So Christian growth is not merely knowledge about the Bible, nor is it increased knowledge of a doctrinal statement where we learn about God. But growth is a maturing of one's experience with God.
A maturing of one's experience with God, which is evidenced by the manner in which one responds to the trials of life. That's growth. It is a maturing of one's experience with God, which is then made evidenced by the way that one responds to the various trials that come in life. Warren Wiersbie says, spiritual growth is not by addition, but by nutrition. Interesting statement. What he's saying there, I think, is that growing as a Christian is not like playing with Legos.
It's not like snapping on new Legos so that the object grows. It's not like putting more bricks into the wall so the wall grows. It's not by adding things, but rather spiritual growth is by nutrition. Like a flower, like that rhubarb I was talking about, like a human body that grows because of nutrition. It grows from the inside. Now it seems to me in our text tonight, which is the first three verses of 2 Peter, we see that growth as a Christian is supported by a root system.
He's going to give us the very foundation of it all here. He says there's a root system that has to be in place before there can be growth. Well let's read his words.
He says, Simon Peter, a bond servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who have received a faith of the same kind as ours by the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ, grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord, seeing that his divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness through the true knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and excellence.
I believe that the root of it all that Peter is pointing out in this brief paragraph is genuine salvation. He doesn't use the word salvation. I grant you that here. Salvation is used however one time, and only one time in this book, the word salvation, chapter 3 verse 15. He talks about the patience of our Lord as being salvation. However the word savior is used several times in the book. We've already read it in verse 1.
We see it in verse 11 where he talks about our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. We see it in chapter 2 verse 20 where again he mentions our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. We see it in chapter 3 verse 2 where he mentions our Lord and Savior and once more we see it in verse 18, the key verse that we read earlier. So the whole idea of saving, of salvation, of the saviorhood of Christ is certainly in Peter's mind as he writes this book.
I believe he's telling us here that this root of salvation that produces the growth, this root of salvation in the first place involves what he calls here a faith in verse 1. To those who have received, he says, a faith of the same kind as ours. When he says received of faith, he's talking about the action of believing. What he's saying here is that the enablement to believe, to trust in Christ is something that we, you notice, receive. It's something we receive.
This ties together with what Paul says in Ephesians 2, 8 and 9 that salvation, all of it, the whole package is the gift of God including the faith to receive it. Our faith is not something that we conjure up. It's not something that we devise or that we develop within ourselves, but faith itself is a very gift that we receive. And he calls this faith, notice, the same kind as ours. So we ask the question, who's ours? Peter is undoubtedly talking here about his fellow apostles.
For he's introduced himself, not only as a bond servant, but an apostle. And he is writing to people who have received the enablement to believe in the same way that he and the other apostles had. Isn't it wonderful to know that you and I today, almost 2,000 years later, have experienced the same thing with God that Peter experienced, that John knew. We have experienced the same act of believing on Jesus Christ that Paul did on the road to Damascus.
The very same thing has brought us into God's family, has brought them into God's family. It's not that they have some kind of a special place, although they have a special office to be sure in the church, but it's not as though God has this inner crowd and then there's the rest of us. But we all have that same relationship with God that comes by faith in Christ. And he says that this faith is by the righteousness of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ.
By the way, this is one of those verses that you can show to people like the Jehovah's Witnesses who have a hard time believing in the deity of Jesus Christ. The construction here at the end of the verse in the language makes it, it seems to me, very clear. He is calling Jesus Christ, not only Savior, but God. You notice that? Our God and Savior, Jesus Christ, an affirmation of the deity of Christ. Now he says our faith comes to us through the righteousness of God.
Isn't that what justification is all about? God declaring us righteous before him in his sight? Salvation, this root of salvation that produces growth involves faith. He also tells us in this paragraph that this salvation that produces growth and this root involves a knowledge. Not only faith, but a knowledge. We have to know something in order to believe. Knowledge. He calls it in verse 2, the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.
Notice there that he is making a distinction between our God, the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. So in verse 1, he is calling Jesus God. In verse 2, he is pointing to the Father and then mentioning Jesus our Lord. This involves of course the mystery of the Trinity. He says in verse 3 that God has given us everything we need through the true knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and excellence. Salvation not only involves a faith experience, it involves a knowledge.
A true knowledge. The word in both places here in verse 2 and verse 3 is the very same. It's not just a typical word for knowledge in the Greek language, it means a full knowledge. The kind of knowledge that is specific. The kind of knowledge that is directed toward a particular object. The kind of knowledge that brings a relationship, that brings a union between the knower and the object which is known.
It's not merely an academic subject like you go to school and you learn math or you learn science or you learn whatever. He's talking here about a rich personal experience. That kind of a knowledge. It is one thing to read in the newspaper facts about a certain thing, a certain place. It is another thing to actually experience that place. For many years I have read about Mount Rushmore and I have seen pictures of Mount Rushmore. And in that sense I knew about it.
I knew the faces on Mount Rushmore. But I had never experienced it until a couple of years ago when we stopped in the Black Hills and saw it. And we stood below this mountain ledge. Which a man climbed up there with some ropes and some tools and he began to hammer away and to fashion the faces of four of the presidents of the United States.
I want to tell you there's all of the difference in the world between reading about Mount Rushmore and seeing pictures of it and standing there looking up at that monumental work. When you've been there you've experienced Mount Rushmore. That's the kind of knowledge that Peter's pointing to. He says if there is growth it's because there is a root that has knowledge with it. Personal knowledge of God. True knowledge.
Not just theological understanding, not the ability to quote verses for someone who has experienced God. That's what he says. He tells us that this root that supports Christian growth is also a salvation that involves a call. In verse 3 he speaks of him who called us by his own glory and virtue or excellence. The idea in this word is to summons someone. It's the idea behind that little piece of paper that you can get when you are summons to a court hearing.
How many of you have ever received a piece of paper like that in your life for one reason or another? We understand you weren't being tried for murder or anything, but you just got a summons at some point. That's not exactly an invitation. It's not exactly a piece of paper that says come pretty please. The piece of paper says here's the date, here's the time, be there. That's exactly what the call of God is. The call of God is more than an invitation.
We speak of the general call of God by which he invites whosoever will to come. That is a very sincere offer of God. God invites any who will to come to him, but the fact is those who will be saved will be saved because they have received a summons from God, a call from God. Theologians call it an effectual calling. What that means is that it's more than an invitation. It's a call that has with it the power to enable the person who hears it to respond. That's the calling of God.
The kind of root we're talking about that produces growth is the kind of a root where there's been a call from God to the sinner. Peter talks a lot about this. Just look back at 1 Peter for a moment. Look in 1 Peter 1.15. He says, like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves. Chapter 2 in verse 9, we'll just look at the end of the verse. He says that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who has called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.
In verse 21 he says, for you have been called for this purpose. Chapter 3 in verse 9, not returning evil for evil or insult for insult, but giving a blessing instead for you were called for this very purpose that you might inherit a blessing. In chapter 5 in verse 10, after you have suffered for a little while the God of all grace who called you to his eternal glory in Christ. See this is a big deal with Peter.
Peter wants us to understand that if there is going to be growth, Christian growth in our lives, it's because we've been called by God as part of the foundation. It's possible to have religious growth. It's possible to have the kind of growth that comes with wanting to meet social needs and just being a caring, good person, wanting to do one's part in society and all of that.
But friend, there will be no growth in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ unless there's been genuine faith, a true knowledge and experience with God. But one has heard the call of God to salvation. That's all a part of this root that produces the growth. And finally he says that this root of real growth which is salvation also involves a grant. In verse 3 he says, seeing that his divine power, whose power?
Christ's. That Christ's divine power, his dynamo, his dynamic has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness. Peter has prayed for us and his readers, he says in verse 2, grace and peace be multiplied to you. Grace and peace be increased in your lives in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord seeing that his divine power has granted to you.
The reason that you and I can have an increase in the experience of the grace of God and the peace of God in our lives is because God has done something inside. He has granted something to us by his power. And what he's granted to us is a possession or an inheritance. He says it's, well he just uses one word. He says it's everything. That's pretty neat isn't it? Because God's given you everything pertaining to life and to godliness. We sometimes sing that chorus that all of us like, I like it.
It says, more of you, more of you, I've had it all but what I need is more of you. And there's a certain twist of truth to that. But the fact is we don't really need more of him, he's already given us everything. I need to experience it more, I need to open the package more and to see what's there but I've already got it. You see this salvation that produces the growth is a salvation that involves a grant from God to you and me. It is a complete package.
God gives us everything we will ever need pertaining to life. Life with all of its circumstances and all of its trials and its successes and its disappointments. How are you going to handle life? The answer is God's given us everything we need to handle life. Did God know what was going to happen in my life when he gave me this grant? Of course. He knew what I was going to experience before I was even born.
When he saved me he gave me everything that I would need to handle what life will bring to me. But also he's given me everything I need pertaining to godliness. Piety, in the best sense of the term. He's given me everything that I need to learn how to respond like God wants me to so that I'll be like God. God like. So that I will reflect Jesus Christ to those around me. He's given me everything. Now what does everything include? Well let me just suggest quickly three or four things and we'll go.
First of all it means my spiritual blessings. I love that passage in Ephesians 1. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has given us every spiritual blessing in Christ Jesus. Our standing before God with all of the rights that that includes protection in this world by God, the Bible, God's word, all of our spiritual blessings. Everything also includes our spiritual privileges. The right to pray. Access to God's throne.
It includes our spiritual gifts that God's given us which are to be exercised. It includes spiritual enablement on the inside, the power of the Holy Spirit. Let's never take for granted what God has given us. Let's back off for just a minute and understand what we're doing here. Peter wants to talk to us about growing in our faith. Growing in Christ. Now he says if there's going to be growth it's got to start right at the very foundation.
He says there's a root and if that root is there it will produce growth. It may come at different speeds. There may be periods of dormancy along the way but there will be growth over the long stretch. And he says that root involves a faith that God gives to us so that we can respond and trust in Jesus Christ. It involves a true and personal experiential knowledge with God. He tells us that it involves a calling by which God has said, you come and we go.
We are awakened from our death, quickened by God's Spirit so that we follow. It involves finally a grant. This genuine faith brings a grant. It's just like a seed that is planted and inside that seed is everything that is needed to get that plant going. The seed is planted, the outer shell of it decays, an amazing thing takes place as it begins to sprout. It's all included inside that seed when you plant it.
The farmer doesn't have to go down to the store and buy the seed and then later go back and get something else and then something else. It all comes with the seed. You just put it in the ground and it happens. Well God says, I'm granting you everything you're going to need. It's all right there. Now he's going to tell us as we go on with the chapter, you've got to be diligent about it. He says, here's what you need to do to grow. He says, it's all there, I've given it to you.
There's the root, there's the grant, there's the genuine faith of the knowledge of God, and now here is your responsibility so you will grow as a Christian. That's what we're going to be looking at on some of the Sunday nights through the summer. I hope that you will be joining us as we do that and talk about growing in Christ. I'd like for us to sing in closing a verse of number 380 that talks about higher ground.
I had a hard time coming up with a closing hymn that dealt with the picture of the roots, so we'll talk about this picture of pressing on the upward way, emphasizing our responsibility, our diligence in growing in Christ. Let's stand together as we sing. Lord, lift me up and let me stand. Verse 1, 380. I'm pressing on the upward way, new heights I'm gaining every day. Still praying as I'm onward bound, Lord, plant my feet on higher ground.
Lord, lift me up and let me stand, by faith on heaven's table and a higher plain than I have found. Lord, plant my feet on higher ground. I'd like for us to bow together. Would you bow with me as we close in prayer? We've talked tonight about what is the very foundation for Christian growth, and that is a genuine root.
I hope you have that root in your life of faith in Jesus Christ and experiential knowledge of God, that you've heard the call of God and you've responded, that you have the grant of everything that you will need in this world. I hope you have that root, because that root is necessary for Christian growth. And if you don't have it, if there's not that root of God in your life, would you tonight hear his voice and trust the Savior?
And if you've heard it, would you just whisper a prayer to God as we close and ask him to work in your life through the messages of 2 Peter to help you to grow, to press on the upward way? Maybe you've been in a period of dormancy in your life and what you need right now is a spurt of growth. Ask God to give that to you. Lord, work in our lives to that end. May we truly grow. Make us discontent to go on in the status quo.
Get us through the periods of dormancy and get us on the move growing, Father, so that when we arrive one day in heaven we will not be an unfruitful people. Bless I pray our study of this wonderful book this summer. May it enrich our lives and help us in our growth. In Jesus' name, amen.