Good morning and welcome to Walking with Jesus through the Word, one chapter per day. I'm Pastor Jason Van Bemmel from Forest Hill Presbyterian Church. 2 Peter 1 is on tap for us today on our 1066th day together in the Word of God. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank you so much for your Word, every part of it. We thank you for the wonderful book of Habakkuk that we looked at yesterday, and now for 2 Peter that is before us this morning. We pray that you speak to us through your Word. Write it on our hearts. Help us to see the truth and to know and to follow Jesus, our Savior, to be made more like him by your Spirit working in us day by day. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, 2 Peter chapter 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 to 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 increasing, they will keep you from being ineffective and unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins. Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election. For if you practice these qualities, you will never fail. For in this way, there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Therefore, I intend always to remind you of these things, of these qualities, though you know them. and are established in the truth that you have. I think it right, as long as I am in the body, to stir you up by way of reminder, since I know that the putting off of my body will be soon, as our Lord Jesus Christ made clear to me. And I will make every effort, so that after my departure you may be able at any time to recall these things. For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For when he received honor and glory from God the Father, and the voice was born to him by the majestic glory, this is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased. We ourselves heard this very voice born from heaven, for we were with him on the holy mountain. And we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you will do well to pay attention, as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns, and the morning star rises in your hearts, knowing this first, that no prophecy of scripture comes from someone's own interpretation, For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit." That is 2 Peter chapter 1. This is a packed chapter. First of all, this is from Simeon Peter or Simon Peter. He is, of course, one of the first disciples who was called to follow Jesus. He and his brother Andrew were fishermen. And they were friends with James and John, who were also brothers and who were fellow fishermen who had a business headquartered in the Capernaum area on the Sea of Galilee. And he's been a slave and an apostle. That means he serves Jesus and he's sent by Jesus. He is an eyewitness to the sufferings and the glory of Jesus. And he's one who's passing along these important words to the church because he knows that he's about to die. Jesus, at the end of John's Gospel, we read that Jesus had told Peter that when he got old, someone was going to lead him away he did not want to go, and that he was going to have to lay down his life for the Lord. which he already sworn that he was going to do before he denied Jesus three times. So Peter knows that this time is coming. The time for his departure is at hand. And so 2 Peter is like 2 Timothy. It's kind of a final word from an apostle, a faithful apostle, who is getting ready to go home to be with the Lord. So what does he say? Well, he wants the church to keep on growing. And he wants the church to not forget the sure foundation upon which it stands. Those are the two main parts of 2 Peter 1. Keep growing in the Lord and don't forget the sureness, the steadfastness, the trustworthiness of the foundation on which you stand. So first of all, keep growing. How can we keep growing? Well, his divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness. And so he's given us precious and very great promises. He's called us. He's equipped us. We are partakers of the divine nature. We have escaped the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desires. Does that mean we don't sin anymore? No, but it means we're no longer prisoners to sin and death. We are slaves of Jesus Christ who has overcome sin and death. And so we are no longer enslaved to those things. We've been given everything by his By His divine power, by allowing us to be partakers of the divine nature, because we are in Christ, and Christ is fully man and fully God. We are in Christ, Christ is in us, we partake in the divine power of God in salvation. So with that divine power, we are to make every effort. I love this section because it helps to balance out where people get very imbalanced in their understanding of the Christian life. Some people are very passive. Let go and let God. It's passive and it's entire sanctification that's just a miraculous work of God and we are just recipients of it. You pray for the second work of God's grace to sanctify you entirely and then you are free from sin. It's a passive. That's not scripture. Make every effort is not passive. But also, on the other hand, there's a legalism that says, well, if I do these things, I will become holy by my free will, by my willpower. That's a legalistic approach. It's self-centered. It's self-dependent. So what we need is the divine power. What we need are the precious and very great promises. What we need is the divine nature. And then by that strength, by that power that we've been given, we need to make every effort. What do we make every effort to do? Supplement our faith with virtue. That is excellence, goodness. Virtue with knowledge, knowing God and his will for us. Knowledge with self-control, which is a fruit of the spirit, to be able to control our impulses and acting on our desires. Self-control with steadfastness. A reliability through varying seasons of life. Steadfastness with godliness. That is an earnest desire to love the Lord and to want to be more like the Lord. And godliness with brotherly affection. That's a tender heartedness that keeps us from being sort of harsh. And love. Love is the one that binds everything together. If these qualities are yours, if you have faith and virtue and knowledge and self-control and steadfastness and godliness and brotherly affection and love, if you have these things genuinely and they are increasing in your life, you're not at perfection. This is not perfectionism. But if you have these genuine qualities and they are yours and growing in your life, they will keep you from being ineffective and unfruitful. You will keep growing. If you don't think you need these things, if you think, well, I'm trusting in Jesus for my salvation, I don't need to know the Bible. I'm trusting in Jesus for my salvation, I don't need self-control. I'm trusting in Jesus for my salvation, I don't need virtue and excellence. No, if you don't have those things, you're blind. You've forgotten what God saved you from because you're not wanting to distance yourself from the things that God saved you from. So be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election, for if you practice these qualities, you will never fall. There are two kinds of Christians in the world. Those who are making a profession of faith but making no progress in growth in godliness. And then those who accompany their profession of faith with genuine growth in godliness. By God's grace, day by day, not perfect, but genuinely growing. Those are the two kinds of Christians. The first kind are hypocrites. They are nominal, in-name-only Christians. They're not genuine believers. The second kind is the only kind of genuine believer there is. If Christ isn't transforming you from the inside out by his grace, then he doesn't live in your heart by faith. And this is not a call to perfectionism, and I'm not trying to heap guilt on anybody, but this is important. Make every effort. Be all the more diligent. You must keep growing. It's all by grace. It's all by the divine power. But we are called to cooperate with that divine power, to make every effort and be all the more diligent. Now, as we're doing so, we need to remember the firm and clear foundation that we stand on. And Peter reminds us of this. It's Jesus Christ, the beloved son of God, who was seen, glorified by Peter and other eyewitnesses. And he's referring to the baptism. When the voice spoke from heaven, this is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased. He's referring to the Mount of Transfiguration. When he saw Jesus transformed and was brighter white than any bleach could make him. With Moses and Elijah there with him. He also is probably referring to the ascension when Jesus ascended into heaven, but probably the specific reference here of when we were with him on the holy mountain is the transfiguration. But you could point to the baptism and the transfiguration and the ascension as all being points in which Peter and James and John and the other apostles saw Jesus heard the voice of God from heaven and were confirmed. But they said, you know what, we have something even more than that. We have the prophetic word more fully confirmed. So we have the eyewitness testimony of multiple eyewitnesses who on multiple occasions saw Jesus affirmed by God. But we also have the prophetic word. All of the prophecies about Jesus that are fully confirmed. And so this is the foundation we stand on, who Jesus is and what he has done as we grow to be more like him day by day. May the Lord be pleased to grant us the grace to stand firmly on the rock of Jesus Christ and to grow by grace into his likeness day by day. Let's pray. Father, thank you for Jesus our Savior. Thank you for his salvation of us through the work that he did. It's his glory and not ours. That is our hope of eternal life. Make us more like Jesus by your grace. Transform us into his likeness day by day. Conform us to the image of Jesus our Savior. It's in his name we pray. Amen. Well, that is 2 Peter chapter 1. Tomorrow we're going to another minor prophet, Zephaniah. Zephaniah 1 is on tap for tomorrow. Have a blessed day in the Lord.