Well, let's read together from God's word as we find it in the New Testament and in the second letter of Peter. Second Peter, chapter one. It's on page 1,224 if you're using the Church Bible. 2 Peter chapter 1. We're going to be looking this evening in a few moments at verses 3 and 4 of this chapter, following on from where Paul left off at verse 2 last week. But let's read now the first 11 verses. This really forms the first section of 2 Peter. So let's see where our verses come in this context. 2 Peter 1 1. Simeon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who have obtained a faith of equal standing with ours by the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ. May grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence, by which He has granted to us His precious and very great promises. so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire. For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue. and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, They keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For whoever lacks these qualities is so short-sighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins. Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to make your calling and election sure. For if you practice these qualities, you will never fall. For in this way, there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen. This is the word of the Lord. Well, please turn again with me in God's word to those verses that we have read together in 2 Peter 1, verses three and four. And the title of our sermon this evening is Fully Equipped for a Godly Life. Fully Equipped for a Godly Life. It is a great thing to be fully equipped, isn't it? For any and every eventuality. To have the perfect gadget, just the right tool to deal with any issue, any problem. To have the right clothing and the right footwear for a hike in the morns, or the right kit for a camping trip. That was brought home to me at least at the beginning of the summer when we borrowed a friend's tent and decided to camp overnight in our garden. After all, it was early July and the weather was warm. Surely it wouldn't really matter all that much that we didn't have any proper camping equipment. And at 3 a.m. in the morning, I certainly realized that it did matter very much indeed, because it was probably the most uncomfortable night that I have ever passed. Freezing, very, very uncomfortable. And I had the camping bed actually, so I was probably better off than most of the rest of the family. And then I remembered a photograph that Garth had shared with us of James camping in their back garden in the middle of January. And this photograph was of James's tent, half buried in snow. You remember all that heavy snow that we had back in January? freezing sub-zero temperatures, but Garth assured me that James was cozy and warm inside because he had the right tent, and more importantly, the right sleeping bag for that kind of weather. Sometimes the right equipment is a matter of life or death. I'm sure that many of you have heard of Operation Barbarossa. It was the largest and the deadliest military operation in history. Hitler was trying to capture Moscow in the winter of 1941. And the only reason that that failed, humanly speaking, was because of the harsher than usual Russian winter. Almost one million German soldiers perished by December 1941 as temperatures plunged to minus 40 degrees Celsius. It was so cold that the German tanks and their diesel froze, their equipment froze, but of course, more importantly, the German soldiers froze because they weren't rightly equipped. They didn't have the proper coats and hats and boots and gloves and all the other kit that is absolutely necessary for a winter campaign in any part of the world, but especially in Russia. It is a great thing to be fully equipped. And in our text for this evening, the Apostle Peter tells us that God fully equips us with all that we need to live as Christians in this world. And he highlights two things in particular that God grants to every Christian. Just notice the repetition of the word granted in verse three and verse four. This is an unusual word in the New Testament. I think this is the only place these two verses where it's used in the New Testament. It's a word that describes the abundant provision that comes from a king, or from a high official, or from God himself. It's used, for example, in the Greek translation of the Old Testament, in Esther 8 verse 1, to describe King Artaxerxes, this mighty emperor to whom everything belongs, granting Esther the house of Haman, her enemy. In other words, not just the building, but all his houses, all his wealth, all his possessions. This is the word that is used there, the abundant, lavish granting of a generous king. And we're told in each of these verses that the Lord grants something to his people. What are these two things that the Lord liberally, royally bestows? Well, first of all, in verse 3, he gives power for the present. Power for the present. Let's look again at verse 3. His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness through the knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and excellence. In other words, the Lord has liberally given us all things, every single thing, every last thing that pertains to life and godliness. this translation in the ESV pertain to, a better translation might be necessary for. The Lord has granted us all things that are necessary for life and godliness. God gives us everything that we need. He doesn't give us everything we want. He doesn't give us everything that we might think we need, but he does give us everything we really do need. This phrase life and godliness is really just a Greek way of saying a godly life. God has given his people everything that is necessary to live a godly life. Just think about that. I know that this is a familiar verse, and so familiarity can make us despise it a little bit and not think about it, but just let that sink in. That is a remarkable statement, isn't it? God has given to us, his people, everything that is necessary to live a godly life. And that is wonderful news, isn't it? Because if you're a Christian this evening, that is what you want more than anything else. That is what you need more than anything else. You want to live a godly life, don't you? You want to live a life that pleases the Lord. Well, here we're told God gives us everything we need to do that. Living a godly life is a hugely challenging calling, isn't it? It's far more testing than climbing Mount Everest or going on a military expedition to Russia in the middle of the winter. There are so many obstacles, so many temptations on every side. There is the world, for one thing, that stops us or tries to stop us, makes it difficult for us to live a godly life. Remember Paul told us last Sabbath evening who the readers of 2 Peter are. They're the same as the readers of 1 Peter. These exiles who have been scattered, and they've been scattered where? In a world that hates God. A world that hates everything to do with God. You remember what Paul says to Timothy in 2 Timothy 3, 12. He says, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be, what, honored, blessed? No, persecuted, hounded down. And we were reminded of that here at our midweek meeting on Wednesday evening, weren't we, by the Christian Institute. We're reminded about all the pressures that there are on Christians to give up the truth, to pull us away from living a godly life, to compromise on issues like sexuality and gender and abortion and euthanasia and assisted suicide. We heard about the efforts to stop an evangelical adoption and fostering agency from using evangelical Christians to adopt and to foster children. Efforts to stop Christians even having a conversation or praying with someone who's struggling with same-sex attraction. Our young people at school and at university know all about the challenges, don't you? Of standing for Christ in a hostile world. The attitudes of our world that we live in, that we're called to live in, that we're called to engage with. It would be so easy if we could just withdraw from the world and go and live in the desert, pull up the drawbridge and live in some sort of gated community just for Christians. That would be much easier, wouldn't it? But we're called to live in the world and to interact with the world and to be salt and light to this world. And it's a world that hates God and hates God's people. A world whose attitudes are at odds with everything that we believe just about and more and more. So there's the world on the one hand that makes it hard to live a godly life. And then there's the devil. We have an implacable enemy, and he's powerful. He is the prince of this world. He has power. He has authority. God has allowed him that power and that authority. He is the prince of this world. The Bible describes him as being like a roaring, hungry lion hunting for prey. This enemy is utterly ruthless. He wants to devour. He wants to destroy. He shoots flaming darts at Christians. This enemy is clever. Never ever underestimate the devil. He is incredibly clever. Far cleverer than you or me. He is good at what he does. He has had a lot of practice. He is very experienced. He's been practicing attacking Christians for thousands of years. He's highly motivated because he knows that his time is short. And he wants to do the maximum amount of harm that he possibly can. He wants to inflict as much damage. He knows that he can't stop a single Christian from getting to heaven. But he wants to make it as difficult and as unpleasant as possible for Christians on the way to heaven. He's invisible. He's cunning. We're told that he masquerades as an angel of light. There are men who claim to be pastors, men who claim to be Christians, and really they're just spokesmen for the devil. He is the tempter, the Bible says, constantly trying to seduce Christians away from what is good and what is right. Hard to live a godly life when you have an enemy like that on the loose. The world, the devil, and then of course there's the flesh. And this is worst of all, isn't it? We have a traitor inside of us. A fifth column looking for an opportunity to help the devil. It's called the flesh in scripture. Or sometimes the old man, or the sinful nature. When we become Christians, we are made new, but we're not made perfect. And so our sinful nature, our flesh, needs to be put to death continually. It's like a dangerous wild animal that has been shot and that is dying, but is not yet dead. The death blow has been struck, but you need to keep beating it, keep hitting it until it is completely dead. And if you relax for a moment, if you give it any respite, it will revive and it will leap up and it will pounce on you. And the Bible warns us that's what our flesh is like. And so we have to keep on killing the flesh, mortifying the sinful nature, saying no to self again and again and again. It's not easy, is it, to live a godly life when we have these three enemies leagued against us. And yet that's what God calls us to do. We're called as Christians to live godly lives. in public and in private, in our homes, in our families, when our guard is down, when we're relaxed, when we are completely ourselves, as well as in the workplace and in the school and in our universities and colleges. To live a godly life means to do all that God calls us to do. And to say all that God calls us to say. And to think the thoughts that God calls us to think. To feel the feelings, the emotions, the affections that God calls us to feel. To be the people that God calls us to be. He doesn't just call us to live a godly life outwardly. That's what the Pharisees did. They were brilliant at it. They were far better at it than you or I. They lived flawless outward lives. But we're not just called to outward godliness, to have a form of godliness. We're called to live inwardly godly lives as well. And that's far more challenging, far more difficult. because that speaks to our motives, it speaks to our attitudes, and our values, and our desires. All of this is bound up with living a godly life. We're to love God with all of our heart, and soul, and mind, and strength, and we're to love our neighbor as we love our very selves. And we're to do all of this while the world, the flesh, and the devil are constantly, relentlessly attacking us. How can we do that? It's overwhelming, isn't it? How is this possible? It's a superhuman task, surely. And it is a superhuman task. But this is why our text is such good news. because we have superhuman strength. Listen again to what Peter says. He says, his divine power has given us all that we need for a godly life. No matter what Christ calls you to do, he has given you what you need to do it. The tense of the verb here is very encouraging. His divine power has given us. It's a tense that describes something that God did in the past that has an ongoing, abiding, present effect. To put it in less grammatical terms, it's as if God has given you a rucksack packed with every single thing that you could possibly need for your journey. And all you need to do is to get out the thing that you need and to use it. Whatever you need to live a godly life, it's there packed by God in your rucksack. Maybe it's desire, maybe it's will, courage, joy, love, stamina, self-denial, compassion, repentance, patience, meekness, humility, whatever it is, the list goes on and on and on. But this rucksack, it's like Mary Poppins' carpet bag. It's amazing, all the things that she brings up out of her bag, standard lump, a birdcage with a bird in it, huge things that couldn't possibly fit into the bag. Hopefully the children know what I'm talking about when I describe this carpet bag of Mary Poppins. That's what this rucksack is like. Everything that you could possibly need, God has packed it. He has given us all that we need for life and godliness. All these things have been provided by Him. They come from Him, by His divine power. Not human power, not even angelic power, but divine power. The power of God Himself is at work in you to enable you to live a godly life. We need to believe this. We need to hold on to this. We need to claim this by faith. Well now how can we be so sure that this supply is available for you and for me? Maybe it's only really special Christians, really important Christians that this applies to. Well, look again at our verse to see how this is granted. His divine power has granted to us all things that are needed for life and godliness. How? How does it come? How is it available? Through the knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence. This grant comes through the knowledge of Jesus Christ. This grant of whatever you need for life and godliness comes through the knowledge of Jesus Christ. Now what does that mean? What does it mean to know Jesus Christ? What kind of knowledge are we talking about here? Well I'm sure you don't need me to tell you that this does not mean knowing lots of facts and information about Jesus. That's not the kind of knowledge of Jesus that's being referred to here. It's not knowing that he was born in Bethlehem, that his mother's name was Mary, that he lived in Egypt when he was a baby and a young child and then moved to Nazareth. It's not even referring to knowing lots of theology about Jesus. It's not talking about knowing that Jesus had two natures in one person. It's not that he was the second person of the Godhead. It's not that he executes for us the offices of a prophet, a priest, and a king. It's not that kind of knowledge either. No, the knowledge of Christ that Peter is talking about here means a personal intimate, saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. It means knowing him as Savior and Lord. In other words, this divine power has been granted to anyone who knows Jesus personally as Savior and Lord. There's a scene in a famous film where a shy bookseller wants to speak to the most famous actress in the world. She's filming in a place in London, one of the parks in London, and he wants to speak to her. He wants to go over to her, but the security guard won't let him past. And so he says to the security guard, I do actually know her. And by that, he doesn't mean that he can rhyme off a list of facts and figures and statistics about her. What he means is that he actually knows her. He has a relationship with her. He's friends with her. In fact, it's more than that in the film. They're in love with each other. And as soon as she sees him, she smiles and she waves him over. There's no problem because he knows her. That's the kind of knowledge that Peter is talking about here. His knowledge of that actress was personal and close and loving, and that knowledge gives him access to her. How do we get access to all that we need for life and godliness? It's by becoming a Christian. It's through knowing the Lord Jesus Christ personally. There is no inner circle of Christians who have extra hidden secret knowledge of Christ that other people don't have, and those on the outside are doomed to live a kind of second-rate Christian life. It's not like that. If you know the Lord Jesus, if you're a Christian, if you've come to know him as your Savior and Lord, then his divine power has given you all that you need to live a godly life. There may be all kinds of things that you don't understand about the Bible and about theology. Of course, you should be trying your best to improve your knowledge of those things. But the most important question is this, do you know Jesus as your savior? And if you do, if you can say, yes, I do know Him personally, savingly, He is my Lord, He is my Savior, then His divine power has granted you all that you need to live a godly life. This is a memory verse, surely, that we should commit to our minds and our hearts. You want to live a godly life, don't you? But here's how you do it. You don't do it on your own strength, because you don't have any strength of your own. You do it by His divine power. Don't say about anything that God calls you to do, I can't do that. Rather say, by His divine power, I can, I can, and I will do this. Perhaps for some of you, that means coping with illness and chronic pain and weakness and seeking to do it without grumbling and without bitterness. How can I do that? You can't on your own strength, but by His divine power, you can. Do you need the grace to forgive people who have hurt you? who are still hurting you? How can you do that? Not on your own strength, but His divine power has given you everything that you need to live a godly life. Do you have sin that needs to be confessed, that you need to repent of, that you need to humbly ask for forgiveness for? How can you do that? Not on your own strength, but His divine power has given you everything that you need to live a godly life. Do you need the strength to trust God with your circumstances? Do you just feel as if it's all too much? There is just so many things that have piled up on top of you, all these pressures, all these burdens, and you just feel like you cannot cope a minute longer, that you can't go on. You can't in your own strength. But His divine power has given you all that you need for life and godliness. How am I going to resist this temptation, this besetting temptation? It's fierce. It's relentless. It's there every day, every night. Here's how you're going to resist it. By His divine power, which has granted you everything that you need for life and godliness. Here's how you're going to take a stand for Christ in your school or in your workplace. Here's how you're going to endure in the face of grief that threatens to swallow you up at times. Here's what you're going to do when your friends at school are mean to you and slander you, when you're excluded and lonely. His divine power. Not your pathetic little power. His divine power has given everything that you need for life and godliness. Here's how you'll return grace. Here's how you'll return blessing for evil and kindness for cursing. by His divine power. Here's how we'll have the strength to love one another in church, even when our fellowship, even when our very friendships have been strained in recent months by different views about COVID and face masks and lockdowns and all of those trivial things. Here's how, not on our own strength, but by his divine power. That's how we move on. That's how we heal. It's not by anything that we can do or we can work up ourselves. His divine power has given us all that we need to live a godly life. Power for the present. But then secondly, in verse four, Peter highlights promises for the future. promises for the future. And we'll look at this more briefly. Just look at the first part of verse four. By which, that's a reference to his glory and his excellence, which is really just another way of saying his glory. By which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises. Peter highlights something else here that the Lord has granted to his people. In a sense, this is really just a subset of the first point, because this is something else that God has given us that enables us to live godly lives in the present. Precious and very great promises. Promises, by definition, are about the future, aren't they? Promises are forward-looking. You don't promise to do something yesterday. You promise that you're going to do something tomorrow. The precise content of the promises isn't spelt out here by Peter. But the end result of them is, and we have it in the rest of verse four, he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them, whatever they are, you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire. Christians, by these precious and very great promises, are going to escape the corruption that is in the world and become partakers of the divine nature. Now, I wonder if you didn't know that this came from the Bible, would you be a wee bit suspicious of language like this? It sounds very mystical, doesn't it? It sounds new agey. It sounds a bit weird. Partakers of the divine nature. What does that mean? Well Peter is not saying that we will become divine. That's not what it means to become a partaker of the divine nature. He's not saying that we will one day become divine, that there will be lots of mini gods with a small g running around. That's what Mormons teach. That's not what Peter is teaching here. What does it mean that we will be partakers of the divine nature? Well, it means something like what John says in the more familiar language of 1 John 5 verse 1, where he says, everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God. If you're a Christian, you have been born of God. That's not very different from saying that you're a partaker of the divine nature. Or the way Paul puts it in Romans 8 verse 9, you, however, are not in the flesh, but in the spirit. If, in fact, the spirit of God dwells in you, the spirit of God dwells in you, you have already become a partaker of the divine nature. Or Galatians 2 verse 20, I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. All of these verses are saying the same kind of thing that Peter's saying, but using different language, different imagery. We are partakers of the divine nature. God has done something, not just supernatural in us, but something divine in us. His divine power has done something in us. Christ dwells in us. The Holy Spirit of God dwells in us. And this process of partaking of the divine nature, it begins when we become Christians, but it isn't yet completed. And one day, Peter is saying, it will be completed. One day it will be brought to perfection. One day in the future, we will partake perfectly of the divine nature at our death or when Christ returns, whichever comes first. We have already begun to escape the corruption in the world because of sin and partake of the divine nature that started when we became Christians. It's happening little by little, day by day. We've already begun to turn away from sin. We've already begun to do good works. We've already begun to love holiness and to resist temptation. We have already begun to experience eternal life. Eternal life is not something that starts the moment that we die or the moment that Christ returns. Eternal life is what we're already experiencing here and now. The life of the age to come has broken into the present and we're experiencing it here and now already. We're being renewed in the image of our Creator. Again, that's very similar to what Peter says here about partaking of the divine nature. These are things that have already started, but God is promising that one day we will experience these things fully and perfectly. That's what these precious and very great promises refer to. That's why they're precious. That's why they're very great. Because they are promising something that is precious and very great. That one day we will fully partake of the divine nature and escape the corruption that is in this world because of sinful desire. So what should we do with these promises that point us ahead to this wonderful reality? Well, we need to know them, and we need to believe them, and we need to pray them, and we need to encourage one another with them every day. And especially we need to hold on to these precious and very great promises. When living a godly life in this world, in this flesh with the devil attacking us, especially when living a godly life is hard. When you're knocking up against the corruption of this world because of sinful desire. Those times when you're so discouraged, when you look at your heart and you look at your life and you're just overwhelmed by the depth and the persistence of sin in your own heart. when you've been damaged by the sin of other people, damaged by injustice, damaged by lies, damaged by grief, damaged by pain. Those times when you're being wearied and beaten down by the misery and the depravity and the sufferings of this present groaning world. It's at those times especially, friends, that we need to lay hold and remind ourselves of these precious and very great promises that one day all of this horrible suffering will be a distant memory and we will be partakers of the divine nature fully having escaped completely and forever from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire. God has promised that one day I'm going to escape forever from all of this. And I will never again, to all eternity, experience any of it. These promises are sprinkled all through Scripture. Far too many for us to look at now. Let me just give you a couple. 1 John 3 verse 2. Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared, but We know that when he appears, we shall be like him because we shall see him as he is. It's just another way of saying that one day we will be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire. And Peter refers to some of these promises later on in this letter in chapter three, and perhaps it's these promises particularly that he's referring to and thinking of here in chapter one. So you might want to just flick ahead and look at chapter three, verse four, and verses nine and 10 and verse 13. Verse four, he quotes the words of these scoffers who say, where is the promise of his coming? So much for his precious and very great promise. But then Peter says in verse 9, the Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. And then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed. And verse 13, But according to his promise, we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. Precious and very great promises. to reassure us that one day we will be partakers of the divine nature in a new universe in which righteousness dwells, having escaped forever from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire. I have to say to anybody here this evening who's not a Christian, if you haven't yet believed the promises of God, And if you don't know Jesus Christ yet as your savior, if you're still a stranger to Jesus Christ, then you have no hope for the present. You're living a Christless life, and that is a tragedy. But infinitely worse than trying to stumble through this life without Christ, infinitely worse is what lies in the future for you. Because for you there will be no escape from the corruption that is in this world because of sin. And far from being a partaker of the divine nature, you will be cast into hell and doomed to utter darkness to all eternity. So lay hold this very night to these precious and great promises of salvation. Jesus Christ offers himself and all his blessings to you, again, graciously, tonight. But for those of us who believe, there is such tremendous comfort and encouragement in these two verses. Power for the present. This week, whatever challenges are in store for you tomorrow morning, His divine power has granted you all that you need to live a godly life this week, and promises for the future. You look so ordinary, and so do I. We look just like all the other people around us. And yet Peter says that if you're a Christian, you are someone who has begun to escape from the corruption of this world. You are someone who has begun to partake of the divine nature. And one day you will completely and perfectly escape that corruption and be like God in the way that human beings were created to be. God Himself has promised in His precious and very great promise. Amen. Let us pray. Our Heavenly Father, again, we close our service as we began by giving you praise and thanks for your gracious and abundant and generous provision for all our needs. We thank you, Father, for your gracious provision of these verses to encourage us and to spur us on as we seek to live for you in this world, to live godly lives as you've called us to live. We praise you, Lord God, for your divine power, granting to us all that we need for life and godliness. We praise you, Father, for your precious and very great promises. And we pray that you will help us to lay hold of these things to receive and experience these things in ever increasing measure, so that we may live godly lives for you this week. And again, our Father, we lift up to you those who are not yet Christians. who have no knowledge of these things, no access to your divine power, stumbling through life blind and deaf and foolish. We pray that this very night, Lord, you would draw them to yourself and that these things would become realities for them. And now may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.