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2 Peter |
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| Chapter 1 | Prayer | Devotional | Chapter 3 | Prayer | Devotional | |
| Chapter 2 | Prayer | Devotional |
Prayers
Our Father, help us to remember that You are with us even now. You have granted to us all things for life and godliness. May we take responsibility for our growth in faith, knowing that it is only by Your grace that we will be fruitful in the knowledge of Your Son. Help us to see the blessing that comes from earnestly striving toward the goodness that You have for Your church. Thank You for the message of Your Son through those who were eyewitnesses of the glory of His transfiguration and the amazing fact of His resurrection. We thank You for the written Word of apostles and prophets recorded for us in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments.
Great Master, protect Your church from false teachers. They bring destructive heresies and immoral sensuality upon Your beloved bride. Surely evildoers will be judged for the trouble that they bring upon Your loved ones. You know how to preserve us and how to stop the evil works of ungodly men. As You rescued Lot and his daughters from Sodom, rescue Your church in our weakness day by day. Teach us not to speak proudly about things that we do not really understand. Keep us in Your word and protect us from greed and adulterous lust. Restrain the madness of those who are bent on the destruction of Your church. Despite the troubles that we may face now, grant that we would be joyful servants of Jesus Christ and not slaves of sin. Teach us to move forward in holiness, and not to look back longingly on our former lives as something to be desired.
Lord God, teach us to remember what the Scriptures say about the new age that is coming. There have been prior ages that are now completely gone. What was life like before the flood? Those days are gone forever. One day this gospel age of gathering through the Word will be entirely over. When Your Son returns He will bring the fullness of a new day, a day that has already begun in His resurrection and in the spiritual life that we have been granted from on high even now. He will judge the world. He will also bring with Him the new heavens and earth, that great place where righteousness dwells. Grant that we would be nourished in Your Word day by day, that we might grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Devotionals
Peter is both a servant and an apostle of Jesus Christ. He has the teaching authority of one who has been sent out as an ambassador of the greatest of all kings, but this authority is exercised by a man who knows that he is a servant, and that God opposes the proud. Peter's standing before God is based on the gift of faith, a faith that trusts in someone else. In this way he is like every Christian. He is trusting in the righteousness of another, his God and Savior, Jesus Christ. When he prays that grace and peace would be multiplied to the whole church in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord, he is seeking for others what he knows that he needs himself. Our standing is based on the one who came as God our Savior. He has done all things well.
Not only have we been granted faith in this Jesus, if we make progress in that faith or in any other aspect of obedient living, it is because the divine power of Christ has granted to us, not only a beginning in His household, but also growth in His service.
Everything related to new life and godliness comes to us through this one Source, which we are able to receive through the mystery of knowing Jesus by the hearing of the Word of God with faith. Through the Word we know who Jesus is and what He has accomplished. Through the Word we know of the existence of a place of the most supreme blessing. God is calling us to that place of His glory and excellence through His Word. By the knowledge of these important spiritual matters, we have been granted precious and very great promises. We live in a world of corruption, and our own souls have been full of sinful desires. But now through the Word we have the presence of God in us, so that we are actually partakers of God's nature, for we are in Christ and Christ is in us forever.
With this confidence that God Himself is at work within us, we are not told to be passive about the life of faith, but active and expectant. We have faith, and there is no reason that we should not move ahead in a life of virtue. Are lazy people just supposed to accept that they are lazy? What about those who struggle with inappropriate affections, greed, or sinful anger? Not at all. They should look for and labor toward true spiritual growth that will lead to definite change in their lives. And why not, since Christ is in us. To this virtue, they should add knowledge, self-control, steadfastness, godliness, brotherly affection, and love, which is the fulfillment of the Law. All of these good things are now within the line of vision of the eyes of our souls. We see them, we want them, and we should take pains to get them. This is Peter's instruction, and his confident expectation.
We look not only for some small quantity of these good gifts. We should anticipate and work toward an increasing measure of all the wonders of heavenly living. To have growing self-control or heavenly love is a miracle of the Holy Spirit. How exciting that this life is near to us and in us even today. Like the disciples who were sent out two by two in order to heal and to cast out demons by the power of God, the church has been granted a new capacity and a divine mandate to be agents of Christian growth in our own lives and in the lives of others. These evidences of sanctification are not to be viewed as optional, but as required provisions for effective and fruitful use of the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
This is the way that genuine faith is to be lived out. To do less is to hear the good news of the power of the cross, and then to immediately forget the power part. It is true that we are weak, but the cross of Christ is strong. There is resurrection power in a cross that meets all the requirements of God's justice. Do you want to know that you are chosen by God and called to be a citizen of heaven? Then live as a person who hears the Word of God and follows it.
Peter's words about living out the Christian life are as serious as can be. He tells us that he uses every occasion to make this point, and he is writing this all down so that after he is gone, people will still have to respond to this instruction. Devote yourself to real progress in moving from a bare profession of faith to the full perfection of love.
The stories of the coming of Christ, His suffering death, and His resurrection majesty, these are not tales that the apostles invented. The fact of heaven is not some cleverly constructed fable. Peter was on the Mount of Transfiguration. He saw what took place there, and He heard the voice of God from heaven. Jesus is the beloved eternal Son of God. He has pleased the Father in every way.
Yet the eyes of men can deceive them. Peter has something far better than any appearance of God to the faithful. He has the prophetic Word of God, so sure now in the coming of Christ, His suffering, and His glory.
The Hebrew Scriptures of the Old Testament are filled with words, titles, characters, stories, episodes, and prophesies that prepared the Jews for the coming Messiah. Now He has come, making the prophetic Word much clearer in the light of the cross and resurrection of Jesus. Peter insists that this is more certain to Himself and to us than even the Transfiguration experience when Moses and Elijah appeared with a suddenly glorified Jesus.
One day Christ will rise in our hearts at the renewal of all things. Until that day, we are already partakers of the divine nature. We also have a Word from heaven's God that will never fail. Let us add faith to our hearing, and may that faith blossom more and more into glorious Christian love.
The true Scriptures are given to us by God, though spoken by holy men of old who wrote as they were told by the Holy Spirit. God not only inspired these writings, He uses them now by that same Spirit to direct and empower us in the way of the cross as we trust and obey. Unfortunately, there have always been evil imposters who insist that they too are true prophets, when they are not. The church cannot safely follow someone who claims to speak for God just because he says that he is a prophet, nor can we blindly receive every ancient Word that claims to be spiritual.
False prophets and teachers not only harassed Israel and the early church from outside the ranks of the people of faith. Even more troubling, purveyors of heresy and immorality also come from within. We may think it very strange that someone would insist that he is a messenger of God and a servant of Christ while promoting teaching that is a denial of our common historic and biblical understanding of who Jesus is, what He has done, and what He commands the church. But we have been warned by the Lord Himself, by the Old Testament prophets, and by many apostolic writers of the New Testament epistles that this very trouble will be a dangerous plague upon the church until Christ returns. The Lord is awake to those who try to sell their mischief to His children, and He will swiftly bring His own answer upon them as He sees fit.
Think of the many examples we have been given of how God has stopped the mouths of those who would claim to be His friends while they speak and work against His good purposes. Fallen angels cast out into the lowest realms of the world of the dead, the world of Noah that faced the judgment of the great deluge, the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah turned to ashes, all these remind us that God will judge the wicked. Yet Noah and his family, and Lot and his daughters were kept for life. During our days here, we may feel like Lot or Noah, that when we are trying to walk in the way of righteousness, our souls feel the torment of what we see and hear all around us. If our guard is down we may soon be those who get drunk and are mixed up in some immoral mess. Yet God knows how to rescue His people from trials, though we ourselves may have almost forgotten up from down. Both Noah and Lot fell into very serious trouble after they had been rescued by God. But they were alive. They woke up from their stupor. What can we say about those that died in the flood, or those who saw fire come from heaven upon their cities and had no extra time to turn away from the biggest mistake of their lives? God help us to escape the lust of defiling passion and to listen to His warnings and respond now.
Yet in every age of the church, bold and willful men talk about things that they claim to know. Better to say nothing than to act like we have visited heaven and hell and know all about angels and demons. Is it God who is telling you to speak against great powers on earth and beyond this earth, or are you on your own in very dangerous territory, leading the church on some trail that you insist on blazing, despite the fact that we all seem to be heading toward Mordor?
If people are not adding virtue to their faith, no matter how well they speak, or how pleasant they are, we may not be safe in following them. Those who have been given the duty of protecting the church need to keep people like that away from any teaching authority. Not everyone in the church is equally stable, and smooth talkers hurt people that are just trying to follow the Lord and to find some measure of happiness in a complicated world.
Watch out for those that are always ready for another collection that ends up going to them, or who present themselves as gatekeepers into secret spiritual realms of knowledge and freedom. If they do not add virtue to faith in a way that quietly moves them further on the pathway that leads to the love of the cross, then they are not ambassadors of the Lord of love.
Balaam was a super spiritual man, but he had to be corrected by his own donkey. He gave some of the most interesting (and true) prophesy in the Old Testament about Israel and the Messiah, but he also enticed God's men into a trap with some dangerous women. Yes, he was very spiritual, but not the kind of spiritual that is safe to listen to and to follow. People like that lead others to their death.
We have a better Savior than Balaam. When He came to save us, there were very spiritually aware demons who wanted to tell everyone that He was the Son of God. Yet they were silenced by the true Lord and Teacher of the church. His virtuous death was the greatest display of steadfastness and brotherly affection ever known among men. He became to us a fountain of living water welling up within us to eternal life. He now lives and reigns in the realm of heavenly light, and not in the gloom of outer darkness. He is the King of righteousness and not the slave of corruption.
True teachers of the faith speak of Him, and not just about angels, interesting theologians, or worst of all, themselves. True servants and ambassadors of Jesus help people not only to embrace the Christ who died for us, but also to walk in the way of righteousness that we have learned from the Scriptures. May God give the humble a discerning heart and protect them from greedy and immoral liars. May He grant them a love for Christ, so that they will not only start on the road to eternal blessing, but continue toward the light of heaven's most glorious King.
Something big is going to happen one day. Christians may not always be clear about some of the details, but the consideration of the fact of what Scripture calls the Day of the Lord is important to all who believe that Jesus is the Messiah. In this letter Peter has been deeply concerned to encourage people to live out the Christian life here and now by adding to their faith virtue, and so on. This is not inconsistent with meditating about the culmination of the resurrection in the return of Jesus Christ. In fact a healthy focus on God's promise to us in Christ is a very important part of living a fruitful and useful life today.
The message of the Day of the Lord is all over the Bible. The Old Testament prophets wrote about the judgment and salvation of that day, and when our Lord and Savior came to die for us, He had much to say about a correct understanding of the ultimate plan of God for His kingdom. Thinking regularly about heaven should not be denigrated as some gnostic or Greek anti-material philosophical mistake. Just the opposite. People have overspiritualized heaven, and have missed the material bounty and power of the life that is there now where Christ reigns with men and angels. It is not safe to ignore heaven or to be ignorant about what the Bible says about what is to come. God wants to stir up our biblical consideration of these matters, rather than allowing them to be dormant or quietly hidden in a treasure chest of unused doctrines.
There will always be scoffers who want to minimize the facts of life after death and the coming again of Christ. They enjoy making belief in angels, glorified people, heaven, and the coming resurrection material for their jokes. This is what the Sadducees did to Jesus with their sophisticated attempts at humor at the expense of the one who is the Lord of the resurrection and the final Judge. What a mistake!
There are some touchstones in Scripture and history that should remind us that everything does not always stay the same. We consider the flood in the days of Noah, or the fall of empires that people thought of as invincible. The world as people know it and experience it has faced many cataclysmic events that result in the death of millions, and change life forever for those who survive. Those who accept the truth of the Scriptures know that life will not always be as it is right now. Peter writes about the pre-flood world that “perished,” and reminds us that God has promised that the world will again perish, now by the fire of His judgment at the return of Christ. The ungodly will be destroyed in that coming day.
People have always wanted to know when that day will come, but God will not reveal that detail. It could happen sooner than we imagine, or it could be thousands of years from now. God is patient, and He has His saving purpose in every day of mercy He grants to us. He is not wishing for anyone's eternal destruction, but is sending out the message of faith in Christ to all with complete divine sincerity and purity. When He tells people everywhere to repent, He truly means it. Why should anyone perish today when mercy is so near to us in the good news of Jesus Christ?
But Judgment Day will come, as God has promised. It will come as if unexpected, like a thief. Don't wait another moment to trust in Jesus. Right now give your heart to Him. One day all of the remnants of death in this world will be put to death.
Something very major and sudden will take place, and the created order as we know it will be in some sense eradicated, and at the same time released from the bondage of decay, just as our mortal bodies will be renewed by the Lord of the resurrection. Everything about the earth and all the works that are done on it will be laid bare before Christ, our Judge and Redeemer.
Therefore, devote yourselves together with the church in all ages in heaven and on earth to the perfect holiness and godliness of the King who still says to His people, “Follow Me.” A day of the most profound destruction and rebirth is coming. We wait for that day, and we even hasten the coming of it by quietly and diligently pursuing the work that God has for each of us to do. Somehow when Christians live according to the example of holiness and godliness that has been supremely granted to us in Jesus our Lord, we actually hasten the return of our King.
Do not miss the life that Jesus and His apostolic Word commands us all to live. Have you embraced the Lord Jesus Christ? Then take up this life He has for you, and be diligent to be found by him without spot or blemish, and at peace.
This same message comes to you from every book of the Bible, from every author of every book, and from God, the ultimate Author of His Word. Peter is not saying anything different than Paul urged upon those who read his letters. And both of them have the same message as Moses, David, and Isaiah. There will always be people that twist God's Word into something different than the faith, love, and power of the cross. We cannot listen to them.
May the Lord continue to be patient with us, and save us, for Christ died for our sins. Let us then grow together as His body in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. He is the Head of the church and the true King of the Israel of God, the kingdom of heaven. To Jesus, God the Son, be the glory both now and to the day of eternity. Amen.