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Peter: Standing on the Promises

CONNIE: Are you standing on the promises of God today? There are literally thousands of promises in the Bible. Which are you claiming? Join us today as we look at some of the most important promises in the Good Book

Giving God’s trumpet a Certain Sound for more than 70 years, this is the Voice of Prophecy.

CONNIE: Hello, I’m Connie Jeffery,

LONNIE: and I’m Lonnie Melashenko. Our program day focuses on the book of 2 Peter, and we’ve titled it “Standing on the Promises” because in this little book the apostle Peter mentions promises in every chapter.

CONNIE: Promises that are intended to help us rise above the problems of this world, for example.

LONNIE: And especially THE greatest promise in all of the New Testament—the promise of Jesus’ soon return.

CONNIE: That’s the promise all Christians hold dear—because that’s when we’ll really rise above the things of this earth. Once and for all.

LONNIE: For sure. And as we launch into this topic, we have a song we’d like to share—it’s a fun look at the promises of God, brought to us by Ponder Harp and Jennings: “You Can’t Stand on Promises, if you Don’t Know What They Are!”

CONNIE: How true it is. If we really want to be able to claim God’s promises, we need to be studying His Word daily in order to know what those promises are. So now to help us dig into the book of 2 Peter, we have Ken Wade and Professor Teresa Reeve to give us an overview of the book.

KEN: I want to welcome today to our program Professor Teresa Reeve of the theological seminary at Andrews University, welcome to our program.

TERESA: Think you, it’s good to be here.

KEN: You’re in the New Testament department there I understand and as we look at the book of second Peter, clue us in a little bit. What is this book about, what should we expect as we begin to read this book?

TERESA: Well, 2nd Peter is a letter, and you’ve been looking at several different letters, and one of the things that we need to keep in mind with these letters is that they are written for a particular purpose, they are not a general theology book. Peter had in mind some particular things that he wanted to get across, so we need to keep that in mind as we begin to look at the book.
KEN: It’s pretty easily organized for us in the chapter divisions, isn’t it?

TERESA: It is. We have 3 chapters in 2nd Peter and in the first chapter Peter jumps right into his main theme, which is the importance of striving to live a life that’s right before God, and in the second chapter he warned them that there would be false teachers coming that are going to try and lead them away from what Jesus and the apostles were teaching. In the third chapter he mentions that some are going to scoff and probably already are, and laugh at the idea that God is coming, because He hasn’t shown up yet, and Peter reassures them that God truly is coming and can be a motivation for them to hang on and to keep working towards knowing God and to be right with Him.

KEN: Godliness is a very important idea here, isn’t it?

TERESA: Peter begins by right out at the opening verses of the book talking about Godliness, and he points out that God is providing us with everything that we need to be godly before Him.

KEN: How would you define Godliness in his eyes?

TERESA: For the people in the Greek and Roman world at that time it was important for them to do their duties before their God. Most people in that world had many different gods but they understood the idea of duty before God. For a Christian, duty before God meant to live a life of goodness and kindness around them and love towards their God.

KEN: So, he start’s out with an appeal towards a godly life and he warns about the things that might side track someone from leading a godly life, and then maybe the third chapter is the motivation, remember there is a reason why we are doing this.

TERESA: Right. He doesn’t just say be godly, he dresses a way of godliness all thru the book. He goes to the word knowledge, knowing God in all 3 chapters which come back again and again to knowing God.

KEN: So that’s a theme a person sitting down to read this ought to watch for, this idea of the importance of a personal knowledge of God?

TERESA: Exactly! It’s really interesting to read the book with a couple of pencils in your hand, and when you find the word knowledge or know just circle it or underline it with a colored pencil and see how he comes back to that. He begins by talking about godliness and says that we get thru it a deep knowledge of God, and he has a fascinating list of steps basically, of steps to becoming a godly person. What he says at the end of that was just really interesting, and that is, if your not growing in godliness in these behaviors it’s because your blind or short-sided, in-other-words, if your not growing it’s because your not growing and knowing God. If you’re growing and knowing God you will grow as a Christian.

KEN: That’s a central part of our relationship with God, as it is with a relationship with anyone else.

TERESA: If we know Him we will change, that’s what Peter is saying.
KEN: I think that the book comes across very positively. Sometimes I think that the main verses we think about from Peter, 2nd Peter, are the ones about the destruction of the earth and the end, but really that is just a small part. Even that description of the destruction of things at the end of time is to remind us that we can live godly lives as we prepare for that.

TERESA: Yes, and for believers the idea of destruction and judgment and the end is not a negative one. The judgment is good news because we have assurance in peace knowing that He has chosen us and taken us as His own, so we don’t need to fear the judgment, and Peter stresses the idea that the world is corrupt, it’s decaying. So to have something decaying and rotten be made brand new is not bad news.

KEN: As we wrap up here remembering 1st Peter who was writing to people who had suffered a lot of persecution and so forth, and the knowledge that their righteous judge is going to take over soon is not bad news is it?
TERESA: Not at all.

KEN: Well, thank you very much for your comments. It has helped me to understand this book a little more clearly, and I’m sure for our listeners as well, thank you!

TERESA: Thank you!

CONNIE: Thank you, Ken and Teresa. The promises of God are indeed precious—to those who walk with Him and claim them.

LONNIE; But there is another side to that promise of the Second Coming—for those who don’t take it seriously and don’t give their lives to the Lord—well, the judgment day isn’t exactly good news.

CONNIE; I guess you could say that about most of the promises found in the Bible. If you’re friends with the One who’s making the promises, they’re good news. But it’s important to maintain that friendship with God. Because there is a day coming when He’s going to make good on all He’s promised, and that’s going to involve some bad news for those who didn’t choose to be a part of His kingdom.

LONNIE; Well, I trust that it won’t be bad news for any of our listeners. Let’s make sure that we give ourselves to the Lord every day, so that we can be the recipients of the good things He’s promised.

CONNIE: That’s a good idea. And here’s another good idea: Right now let’s listen to Lonnie’s message, 2 Peter, Standing on the Promises.

2 Peter—Standing On the Promises

Oh, Peter and Paul, you sure had your times together, didn’t you?
Two men—two apostles—two inspired spokesmen for the Lord Jesus Christ. Yet they sometimes didn’t see perfectly eye to eye. In fact, in this last epistle of Peter— perhaps written just days or weeks before Peter’s death—the prince of the apostles can’t resist getting one last little dig in at his friend.

Do you know what I’m talking about? You’ll find it right down at the end of 2 Peter, in chapter 3, verses 15 and 16. Notice what Peter has to say about his friend and co-apostle Paul’s letters: “regard the patience of our Lord as salvation. So also our beloved brother Paul wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, speaking of this as he does in all his letters. There are some things in them hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other scriptures” (NRSV).

Then in the next verse, Peter reminds his readers that he’s forewarned them against twisting Paul’s writings to their own destruction: “You therefore, beloved, since you are forewarned, beware that you are not carried away with the error of the lawless and lose your own stability” (2 Peter 3:17, NRSV).

Peter here, in his last letter, is still concerned about something that must have worried him all along. Is it just possible that some of what Paul was teaching had taken the idea of freedom in Christ too far—could the correct teaching of his fellow-apostle be twisted and made to say something Paul never intended?

The interaction between Peter and Paul goes back a long ways. Peter, on the one hand, couldn’t have helped but be aware of Paul’s activity back when he was known as Saul—the persecutor of the church.

When you get a chance, go back and read the stories in Acts chapters 9-11. That’s where you’ll find the story of Saul/Paul’s conversion and God’s call to him to go as an apostle to carry the gospel to the Gentiles. And as you read, notice something else. Right when all this was happening, the Lord was opening up Peter’s mind to the importance of sharing the gospel with the Gentiles. It’s in chapter 10 that you find the story of Peter baptizing the Roman centurion Cornelius in Caesarea.

When Peter returned to Jerusalem after that trip, he caught all kinds of flak from the brethren—the other apostles. “We heard that you were associating with Gentiles up in Caesarea!” they said—accusing him. “And not only that, you even sat down at the same table and ate with them!”

That, believe it or not, was still considered a sin in the early Christian church—Jewish Christians still thought it wrong to associate closely with Gentiles.

But Peter had a ready answer for his critics—he had been given a dream, and had heard a direct command from the Lord not to make distinctions—not to call Gentiles common or unclean. And not only that, he had witnessed the power of the Holy Spirit coming upon these Gentile believers. How could he possibly deny them the right to baptism? How could he possibly exclude them from the church? And since they were baptized brothers and sisters in Christ, how could he possibly refuse to sit down and eat with them?

In this experience, the Lord was preparing Peter to accept the ministry of Paul to the Gentiles. And you can read in Acts 15 about how Peter defended Paul’s baptizing Gentiles and bringing them into the church on the basis of the grace of Christ rather than on the basis of keeping the law.

But the controversy over accepting Gentiles didn’t end there. In his epistle to the Galatians, Paul reveals that there came a time when Peter backed off from his grace-centered acceptance of Gentiles—he even stopped eating with them. And Paul had to rebuke him for his hypocrisy.

Do you sense a creative tension here? Between these two great founding fathers of the Christian Church. It truly is a creative tension. Two men, both 100% committed to the gospel as revealed in Jesus Christ, but operating in different spheres. Peter’s main ministry was to Jewish Christians. Paul’s was to Gentiles. And so their preaching had different emphases. But there’s nothing wrong with that. These two, together, give us a stereoscopic view of the gospel—fleshing it out in three dimensions.

Paul knew that by putting too much emphasis on the law, some apostles were making the grace of God worthless. He was concerned that this type of preaching would lead people to fall into the trap of legalism.
Peter, on the other hand, worried that because Paul preached so much about grace and so little about law, some of his converts might fall into the opposite trap of lawlessness.

That’s one of the issues he’s concerned with here in 2 Peter. He was writing to people who were living in a corrupt and lustful world where prostitution, sexual abuse of children, and adulterous affairs were regarded as normal aspects of life—particularly among the wealthy.

He reminds his readers that they have been redeemed from that type of licentious lifestyle. But he recognizes that many of them are being tempted to fall back into it.

In particular, it seems, he is aware that many Christians have become discouraged with waiting for the return of Jesus, and as a result are ready to abandon faith in favor of freedom—freedom from any restrictions that the law of God might place on their lives. They are in danger of turning the grace of God into license. And so he reminds them that God has given us “his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may escape from the corruption that is in the world because of lust” (2 Peter 1:4, NRSV).

The gospel is a way of escape from the entrapment of the lusts of the flesh!
Hmmm….that sounds like a message that might be just as important in our day as in Peter’s—doesn’t it?

In chapter 2, Peter writes about false prophets who “promise . . . freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption; for people are slaves to whatever masters them” (vs. 19, NRSV).

In one of Jesus’ last conversations with Peter, the Lord admonished His wayward disciple to be a watchful shepherd—carefully tending the flock of followers entrusted to him. Keeping them from going astray, protecting them from the lions and wolves that would want to prey on them.

And so Peter—good shepherd that he is—admonishes us not to wander and fall into the trap of easy religion. Rather, we should be striving daily to add virtue to virtue. In a memorable passage in chapter 1, he urges us to “add to [our] faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness, to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love” (2 Peter 1:5-7, NKJV).

His list is almost like a ladder of virtues, wouldn’t you say? We all ought to check the progress of our faith against this list from time to time.

It all begins, of course, with faith. The fundamental starting point in our relationship with God is basic faith in His existence. Peter urges us to go beyond that, though. For even the devils believe and tremble. Add to that basic belief, virtue—living well. Living a godly life that reflects what you know of the character of your God and Savior. The basic meaning of the word is actually manliness—or valor—excellence. Do your best, whether you’re a man or a woman, to live out your faith with power as an example to the world.

And to faith and virtue, add knowledge. How important this is. To really know God on a personal level. It’s not enough to simply claim Jesus as your Savior. Do you really know Him? Do you spend time in the Bible daily, reading, praying, meditating on the life of Jesus and what He teaches? This is an essential part of your growth in Christian grace and virtue.

Peter then urges us to add something else to our lives: Self-control. Remember—you’re a slave of whatever controls you. Whether it’s lust, the quest for money, the desire for fame. Whatever you pursue in life will eventually capture you and enslave you. Be in control of yourself. Be a slave to no one and no thing except Jesus. Give yourself wholly to Him, daily.

After self-control, Peter mentions perseverance. Particularly in his day, there were people who were abandoning their Christian faith because they were losing hope that Jesus would return soon. Peter dealt with that problem in greater depth in chapter 3, reminding people that the seeming “delay” of the return was actually just a sign of God’s patience with His wayward children. God isn’t slow, He’s just waiting for more of His children to come to Him and be saved. But in the meantime, Christians need perseverance to keep running the race of faith.

Then, at the end of his list, Peter includes two items that form the capstone of the Christian experience. In Greek they’re philadelphia and agape. The New King James Version translates these “brotherly kindness” and “love.” And to fully understand what Peter is referring to here, it helps to go back to his last recorded conversation with Jesus. It’s found in the gospel of John, chapter 21, and in telling the story, John makes a very fine distinction between these two Greek words for love. Jesus asks Peter whether he has the deeper, fuller agape love, and Peter insists on responding, Lord, you know I have philadelphia love—brotherly love—for you..

In other words, Peter recognized then—just days after his threefold denial of Jesus—that he had some growing to do. He needed to grow into this fuller, deeper experience of agape love.

Maybe that’s why Peter puts this “ladder of virtues” right at the beginning of his last letter—his last will and testament to the church. Because at the end of his life, he realizes that that’s what it’s all about—learning to love as Jesus loves. Reaching out and touching the world with the love of Jesus.

And for those who have begun to lose their faith in Jesus—to question whether Jesus ever will return—Peter challenges them. Don’t lose faith in the promises. These are good, solid, biblically founded guarantees—not just “cunningly devised fables” (1:16, NKJV)

Jesus will return. 2 Peter 3:10 paints the picture graphically: “But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, in which the heavens will pass away with a great noise, and the elements will melt with fervent heat; both the earth and the works that are in it will be burned up” (NKJV).

And not only that—there’s something we can do to be involved in seeing God’s promises fulfilled. In the very next verses, Peter challenges us: “Therefore, since all these things will be dissolved, what manner of persons ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness, looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be dissolved, being on fire, and the elements will melt with fervent heat?” (2 Peter 3:11-12, NKJV).

The godliness he exhorts us to; the virtues he challenges us to develop; the love he urges us to have—they all have a purpose. To prepare ourselves for the Second Coming. But also to help prepare others—to hasten His coming by sharing the good news of the kingdom and inviting others to be a part of it. God is not being slow our undependable. He’s being patient, “not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance” (3:9, NRSV).

Isn’t that amazing? Jesus is waiting for you, and for me. Waiting, holding open the door to heaven—just a wee bit longer. Waiting to make sure that just as many souls as possible can come in.

Oh, friend, don’t you long for that day when Jesus will return? Don’t you want to go home with Him to live for all eternity? And don’t you want just as many others there as possible? That’s what God wants. And He challenges us to stand by His promises. To stand ON His promises. While we wait for, and hasten in every way we can—the coming of His kingdom.