We have these several months been working our way through the book of 2nd Peter We are on chapter 3 of 2nd Peter, and this is the second sermon from that chapter I Beloved, I now write to you this second epistle, in both of which I stir up your pure minds by way of reminder, that you may be mindful of the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets and of the commandment of us, the apostles of the Lord and Savior, knowing this first, that scoffers will come in the last days, walking according to their own lusts and saying, Where is the promise of his coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation. For this they willfully forget, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of water and in the water, by which the world that then existed perished, being flooded with water. But the heavens and the earth, which are now preserved by the same word, are reserved for fire until the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men. But, beloved, do not forgive this one thing, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. 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. 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. Nevertheless, we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. Therefore, beloved, looking forward to these things, be diligent to be found by him in peace, without spot and blameless, and consider that the long-suffering of our Lord is salvation, as also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given to him, has written to you, as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things, which are some things hard to understand, which untaught and unstable people twist to their own destruction, as they do the rest of the scriptures. You, therefore, beloved, since you know this beforehand, beware lest you also fall from your own steadfastness, being led away with the error of the wicked. But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory both now and forever. Amen. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Some years ago, I was reading a account of a man who had committed murder. He had been convicted of murder. He was obviously a murderer. He was in jail for murder. But while he had been sentenced to death by electrocution, he wouldn't have that. He was going to throw up every possible legal impediment, try to get any loophole he could He sought the courts trying to keep that from happening. And after several years of this, actually found a loophole that let him get out of it. He would still be in prison, but he had beaten the electric chair. And then the night after this had been decided, He was shaving in his cell, and his electric shaver slipped and entered the toilet, and he died by electrocution. He got shocked that very night. It has a kind of a man bites dog kind of element to the story, and that's why people are reporting on it. But my take, after I had read it, was, well, that was poetic justice. You know what I mean when I say the term poetic justice. You don't picture people coming into his cell, surrounding him, reading verses of Chaucer and throwing things at him. You know that poetic justice isn't poetry, but it has a poetic aspect to it. The punishment fit the crime. This really was very justly deserved. It was poetical. There are a number of things in scripture that are poetical, but they are not necessarily poetry. What jumps to mind is things like the concept of the framework hypothesis that people have thrown up about origins in Genesis. They have pointed out that in the first chapter of Genesis, there is a political structure to how the days of creation work. You've got The first three things kind of correspond to the next three things. There seems to be an order to it that is almost artistic. And some have put forward that this order, which really is there, obviously means that God didn't do it the way he said he did for some reason. And I have no idea why. But they want to say, well, this is poetry. But it's clearly not. It's written in a historical narrative kind of way. Nobody would read this as just lined poetry like Hebrew would have. But God did poetically create the world with meaning and purpose. He did it in six days. He did it about 6,000 years ago. But yeah, there's something poetical to the way things are set up. And in our own text, you can see a poetical use of language. When Peter says, now with the Lord, a day is as 1,000 years, and 1,000 years are as a day, anyone reading that without an extra grind would say Peter is speaking poetically. He is not saying one day is 1,000 years. He's not saying 1,000 years is a day. But he's saying the implication of what happens in a day could have the same implication as 1,000 years, or it could feel like 1,000 years, and vice versa. This is all poetical language. Now, you may be wondering why I'm belaboring this. Well, the answer is because we're at the end of the book of 2 Peter, and from this vantage point, you can look back over the epistle, and you can realize that the Holy Spirit has led the apostle to write the book in a really kind of poetical way. If you know anything about the structure of Hebrew poetry, It's dominated by the concept of what's called a chiasm, which is a fancy word for saying it looks kind of like an X. You've got proposition A in line, and then you have proposition B that comes next, and the second proposition is related to the first, but it's not the first. You've got A, B, and then you'll have C, which is kind of the middle of the structure. And it's really what the whole line setup is really about. It focuses in on the middle. And then as you come out, you've got point B again, but with a slightly different way of phrasing it. And you've got point A, again, with a slightly different way of phrasing it. So if you outline the Hebrew, it looks like an X. It's called a chiasm. Well, the whole book is kind of set up that way. It is not a poem. Peter didn't write a poem, but if you look at the order of the way he wrote things, you've got a very clear A, B, C, B, A kind of approach to his thinking, which enlightens the question we looked at the last time we were in St. Peter. The tip of the spear here at the end of the book is, What kind of persons ought you to be? Peter is giving his last message to the Church of God. He is trying to impress upon us principle, basic Christian truths that we're to hold on to. And he leads us to that question, what kind of persons ought you to be? And when I preached this, I emphasized that, and it was against the backdrop of the fact the world is going to be judged. It's going to be remade. There's going to be a whole different new world. The things that are in this world are not going to last. So what kind of person ought you to be against that backdrop? And Peter is doing that, but he is also asking it in this poetic way. because he knows that you know he's already answered it, and he wants you to remember how he's answered it. See, this is Proposition A, and back at the beginning of the book, Peter has already given us Proposition A as he introduced himself and his message to us. It's in Chapter 1, and In the first couple of verses, Peter has said, you have been given a faith. It's a gift from God. You didn't create it. It's a supernatural gift, and it's a gift equal to the faith of even the apostles. The apostles have been called by God to be the highest office in the Church of Jesus Christ. They have walked with Christ personally. I mean, that's very highfalutin and very important. But when it comes to faith and you having it, your faith is as God-given and as significant as any faith given to Peter, Paul, or Mark. You have that. But then he tells us to build on that faith, to be given that. So what should you lay upon that foundation? And that's verse five through 11. But also for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, and to perseverance godliness, to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love. For if these things are yours and abound, you'll be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For he who lacks these things is short-sighted, even to blindness, and has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins. Therefore, brethren, be even more diligent to make your call and election sure. For if you do these things, you will never stumble. For so, an entrance will be supplied to you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. So Peter, as he closes, asks us, what kind of person ought you to be? And we go, now, did we just cover this? And the answer is yes. You are supernaturally given faith. This is a foundation for building a life. Grace has been given. Your salvation is not of you in any way. But you are to lay upon this foundation significant things. You are to lay these things. You are to bring to bear virtue upon your faith. Virtue is basic common goodness, which I know isn't terribly common, but nevertheless, it's being a good person. If God has given you faith, then what ought to grow out of that faith is you should be You know, this is kind of where nice fits in. Nice is not really a Christian virtue per se, but this is where, you know, just good is better because it's nicer. If having been given faith doesn't change you in any moral way, the odds are you're not a changed person. So you should be that kind of person. And then to this virtue, out of this virtue should grow knowledge. This is experiential knowledge. This is growing and experiencing God. It's also just knowledge. You have been given a spiritual life. You've been brought to life from the dead. You have been made into the kind of person that God is wanting to make you into. Now you grow in knowledge. And again, the order here is kind of significant. If you go directly from faith to knowledge and jump over being a morally good person, it's not really glorifying to God. God wants people not who can spout off spiritual truth but then not live it. He wants people who know spiritual truth because they live it, and it comes out of that. So that's the kind of person you ought to be. You ought to have virtue. You ought to have knowledge. You ought to have self-control. The irony of that is hard to put into words. The Arminian says, look, the fruit of the spirit is self-control. So it's self-control. It's not God controlling you. You should be self-controlled. You should be disciplined. You should, of your own will, kind of begin to control yourself. And yet, ironically, the Arminian has quoted the most famous place it comes up, which is the end of Galatians, where it is literally a gift of the spirit. It's not of the self at all. And here, Peter is answering the question, what kind of person you ought to be? Well, in growing in your knowledge of the Lord, knowing him in an experiential way, that ought to produce the fruit of self-control. How can you be in his presence day in and day out as a disciple of Christ, growing in goodness, growing in knowledge of him, and not have that begin to really impact you and become a more self-controlled person? Again, it's just a matter of what life will look like if you're around Christ. This is what happens. You grow in self-control. In self-control, well, growing out of that is perseverance. You may be self-controlled, but you find it's very hard to continue in that. This is the beginning of growing in discipline. The kind of person you ought to be is somebody who'll be in it for the long haul. You don't hear a whole lot of sermons on perseverance. It's not a popular topic. But it's very definitely a gift of God's spirit. God wants people who will endure. And so you ought to be that kind of person. You ought to be perseverant. You need to be godly. You add godliness to perseverance. That really means being around God and in God's holy presence, having his holy peer pressure kind of mold you into being like God. How can you not know God in a personal way and not have his nature really begin to impress itself upon you? What kind of person he should be? He should be godly. People should see God in you. You should desire the presence of God. In your godliness, you should have brotherly kindness. Again, order is important. If Peter had told us, now you ought to really love the brethren and then move on to love God, human beings are terribly lovable. We're just not. I mean, we're still sinful, and if you're looking for validation in human beings, you're looking at terrible spots. But if you look to love men because God made them, and God loves them, and no matter how much they may let you down, you love them out of your love for God, that's a totally different setup, and that's what Peter's put before us. You ought to be the kind of person who loves people, even though you know people are jerks, and honestly, you as people, so you know you're a jerk, too, But you are growing and loving people, because people are also what God sent his son to die for. And to this brotherly kindness, you add love, which is the highest of all virtues. It could be its own sermon, and it was, kind of. It's the nature of God encapsulated in a word. If you have to look for a word that describes God, which includes things like holiness, righteousness, hatred of sin, and that sort of thing, Nevertheless, it is the word love and so Peter's walked us through this and he said if this isn't what you look like Well, you're a blind man God has forgiven your sins, but you've completely forgotten that you're walking to the world like that didn't happen You are an absolute oddity. You've been brought to spiritual life. This is what spiritual life looks like If you do have these things, God will put you to work. You will not be unfruitful in your knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. And you will also, quote, have your calling and election made sure. As reformed Christians, those words kind of make our ears pick up because calling an election is very near and dear to our heart. Salvation is of God alone. He calls, he elects. The frightened Arminian says, How do you know that you're called or elect? I mean, doesn't this make it kind of a crapshoot that you're a saved person because everything is in God's hands? Well, the apostle looks back very pragmatically and says, saved people get changed. They're given faith, and then these things begin to grow out of faith. They begin to produce fruits for the Lord Christ. And there is evidence that you can point to and say, look, this is not rough. Russ is Not good like this but God has begun to sanctify Ross God has begun to produce fruits in Ross and When I look and ask has something spiritually really happened I can look and say look, you know, this validates the fact that I have been chosen by God I am walking in this kind of growing sanctification That's the kind of person you ought to be So the apostle is effectively, at the end of the book, reminding us what he said at the beginning. This is the kind of person you ought to be. And each of these virtues could have their own sermon. The implication of these virtues could have their own sermon. All of these virtues can be seen in the life of the Lord Christ in its perfection, and so that could be its own sermon. And Peter is wanting to leave us meditating on just that sort of thing. He has told us he's going to die, he's going to put off this tent. He wants to give us a final message, a message that we can really stand on when things get tough. You've been given faith. Really meditate, grow, think about who you ought to be. That is A. Point B of the chiasm is Where's all this growth going to come from? You can say, well, it's going to come from the presence of the Lord Christ in the human life, and you will be correct. But God tends to use means and there are lawful usual means that God tends to use. And in chapter one, we ended the chapter with the apostle pointing us to the written word of God, the prophetic word of God. Here at the end of chapter one, he said, after he talks about the fact that he's heard a voice from heaven saying, this is my beloved son, and you would think, you know, why don't you just stand there? That seems like perfect evidence. But then he goes on and says, and so we have the prophetic word confirmed which you will do well to heed as a light that shines in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts, knowing this first, that no prophecy of scripture is of any private interpretation, for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit." So that's the ending of chapter one, and again, that had its own sermon, and we unpacked it, But the significance for us right now is that's the foundation for growing a spiritual life. God has given us the prophetic word, the spiritual experiences we have in relation to God. These are not the foundation, but they do confirm the written word. That's where spiritual life will come from. And as chapter three begins, He brings us back there. In the first two verses, he talks about the written word. He talks about the apostles and the prophets. Beloved, I now write to you this second epistle, in which both of which I stir up your pure minds by way of reminder, that you may be mindful of the words which are spoken before by the holy prophets, which he mentioned, and of the commandment of the apostles of the Lord and Savior. He takes us back to the written word. This is really the place to build your life. It is not spiritual experience. It is not the product of human imagination or reason. It is certainly not the product of human tradition, where mere humans hand you doctrines and tell you, OK, this is the truth. But the foundation for your spiritual life is the written word. And he returns to it twice in chapter three. The second one is, for our purposes, the most interesting. And consider that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation, as also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given to him, has written to you. As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which the untaught and unstable people twist to their own destruction, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures." So, it is deeply on the heart of the apostle that we realize, if you want to have spiritual advancement, the Word of God has to be it. The Scriptures are it. And then, if you're looking for C, which everything is built around, That's Chapter 2. Chapter 1 and Chapter 3 orbit around Chapter 2, and in Chapter 2, everything is about, but there were false prophets among the people, there will be false teachers among you, and then he goes on at length and describes the fact that the greatest threat to the Christian Church is almost always not from outside, but it's from inside. It is from people who teach saying, thus says the Lord, and they're lying. They are breaking the third commandment. They're taking the Lord's name in vain. They have reason to do this because they are devilish people. They intend to harm the church. They do teach false doctrines. You should not give them the benefit of the doubt. They are at war with you, and they are trying to destroy your soul. And so that's really the focus of the epistle, because that's what's going on as Peter is passing from his life scene. He sees the kingdom of darkness infiltrating the kingdom of light, and he is telling them, grow as God calls you to grow. Grow upon the word of God. Realize that there are attackers. And if you look at where the attack upon God's church almost always comes from, the successful attack, this is not the Muslim group who grabs you and, you know, guns down your family, that doesn't really have much effect on the Christian church. If you look at that sort of thing, outward violence to the Christian church almost always kind of makes it grow rather than shrink. Now, emphasis on always because, you know, in God's providence some things have happened, but generally attacks from outside don't really harm the gospel. It's a text from within, and it's variations of, did God really say? That's why the apostle is emphasizing the Word of God, the written Word of God, so much. It's because these false teachers are like the false prophets, and notice they call themselves prophets. brought their attack to bear on the Word of God, and they tried to twist the Word of God to make it say something it didn't say. And so Peter is countering that. Consider how many times Satan has used this tactic. When I use the phrase, did God really say, what portion of Scripture am I quoting from? I'm quoting from Genesis chapter 3. It's one of the earliest passages in the Bible. We meet the first emissary of Satan, and one of the first things he says is, did God really say it? So that's his first line of attack on us. In Judaism, the religion of Judaism today is not the religion of the Old Testament scriptures. They carry them. You might hear them read in synagogue, some of them. But the real authority in Jewish religion today is the rabbis, and specifically the Talmudic rabbis. It's a whole body of literature that has been created basically to replace the Word of God. If you've ever seen the Babylonian Talmud, it's this library of books. It's the size of a bookshelf. And if you're Jewish, the devil wants to make sure you never get to the Old Testament. You never read it, because the authority in religion is all these other men talking, so you never hear what God says. Now, before you feel superior, realize that the history of Roman Catholicism is about the same thing. You had human tradition inserted over the scriptures, for thousands of years to the point where honestly church-canon law is something that you could get lost in for the rest of your lives and never ever read the Word of God because this has replaced it. Satan's attack on God's church is to attack the Word. To say, did God mean this? Did you really understand it right? Or to take it away from you so that something else is given to you. What do you think modern liberalism with its You know, we have a Darwinistic approach to the text. We believe that the text has been corrupted, and we're going to go back. We're going to try to recreate the text. What do you think that's all about? I mean, really, that's Satan, in another way, saying, as God really said, it's an attack on the scriptures. It's an attempt to take it from you, to make you believe that you can't trust it. Today, at this very moment, you have this attack taking place on the evangelical church, specifically in the PCA and in the Southern Baptist Convention. You've had a series of sexual scandals in those two bodies, and you've got a bunch of people who have piggybacked on those scandals. And they have come along and they have said it's really terrible that you have corrupt, conservative Christian ministers in this body who have used their position to harm people. What we need to do is we need to change the teaching of the Word of God. People like Amy Byrd and her ilk, it's hard for me to believe that she really cares about victims. Now, she might, and she's not here to defend herself, But one thing that I'm actually positive of is her real desire is to take the Word of God from the Church of God. The PCA and the Southern Baptist Church have really emphasized that the Scripture should be the foundation of religious life, but we're having these scandals. The way to fix the scandal is to take the Word of God away and substitute something else. Or maybe you didn't really understand it right. Even though it reads conservatively, it reads very straightforwardly, That's the problem. It's that straightforward message. We need to take the word away. So Satan's attack upon the church is always, did God really say? Modern liberalism with its statements like, don't put a period where God put a comma, is basically saying the word of God is not sufficient. And we have had 2,000 years of growing in spiritual understanding. We are 2,000 years advanced from the Holy Scriptures. Don't put your foundation there. Put your foundation somewhere else. All of this is, did God really say, can you stand on this foundation? Well, Peter wants us to know that, yes, you can. You have a final shot at telling The Christian Church, one last message. You have invested your entire life in being an apostle of Jesus Christ, so this is probably the most important thing you can think of to yourself. What are you going to talk about? Well, Peter chooses to overwhelmingly talk about the written Word of God and its importance. This is the foundation for the Christian life. Nothing else even comes close. even when God speaks from heaven and we have a vision of Jesus himself where he is glorified, that's not our foundation. Rather, we have the Word of God made more sure by that, but the Word of God is the foundation. So you need to really take to heart that in the minds of the apostles, there is nothing more significant than the Word of God as it has been given. It is absolutely given to be the foundation for spiritual life And if you want to answer the question, what kind of person ought you to be, the only way you're going to build the right answer is out of the Word of God. And then he opens up the floor to an amazing amount of spiritual implications that are just right before our eyes if we're looking for them. In that passage where he talks about Paul. Peter says, now, unstable and unlearned men twist the scriptures. What can we draw from that? Well, this is gonna sound like kind of a no-duh statement, but if you can twist the scriptures, then there has to be a right interpretation of the scriptures. If there is no interpretation of the scripture, if it's all up for grabs, you literally couldn't twist it because subjectivity, right? I mean, how do you twist subjectivity? But the apostle tells us the scripture can be twisted. There is a certain kind of Protestantism that is not Reformed Protestantism that glorifies the idea, isn't it wonderful that we live in a country where we can attend any kind of church we want, any sort of doctrine that we're drawn to, we can worship God in the way we choose, and that is a moral good. I mean, we can approach God any way isn't that great. How do you think the apostles would respond to that? Peter says you can twist the scriptures, and when you twist them, you do so at hazard of your spiritual destruction. That sounds like a bad thing. I really honestly think we have to put that in the bad thing category. And so Peter says, now, just because you have somebody talking the scriptures to you, does not mean that what they're saying is the Scriptures. The same spiritual being who said, did God really say, what was his line of attack on our Lord Christ when he was in the desert? Well, if you know the account of his temptation there, there's a really, really creepy part of it where the devil quotes Scripture. He quotes Psalm 91. He has it word-for-word memorized. He's been around for a while, so he has time to memorize, I guess. But he quotes the Scripture. He does not quote it correctly. There is no question, if you go back to Psalm 91 and ask, did the Holy Spirit mean for you to take from these words that you should be autonomous of God's provision, the answer would be absolutely no. But the devil used the Word of God to make it sound like Yes. And so it's not that great of a thing that we all can interpret the Bible any way we want to. That is not a Christian virtue. That is not a happy thing. The devil likes that. And the false teachers of chapter 2 are coming out of that. They will twist the scripture. They will bring the scripture to you. They will sound like it's the truth. And you have to be in a position to not twist the scriptures. The scriptures are, in a way, a very dangerous thing as we look at these passages. Have you ever wondered why the Roman hierarchy took the Bible out of the hands of the laity? I mean, if you picture them like cartoonish villains wringing their hands and going, ha ha ha, we're doing this, we're taking the Bible, There's, there's, it's not the truth. They said to themselves, now scripture is very, very dangerous. And if we leave it to just the average person to interpret the scripture, you're going to get wild and various heresies that are going to tear the church apart. We need for the scriptures to be highly controlled because otherwise it's like passing out nitroglycerin and the building, the whole church is going to go up. And so they were afraid of the power of the Scriptures. That's not what the apostle is telling us to do. The apostle has told us to build our lives on the Scriptures. If you are afraid of the Scriptures, if you're afraid of what they might do, that's the opposite of what the apostle wants. But the apostle, by the Spirit, is calling to the disciple of Jesus Christ to be absolutely diligent in handling the scripture, to know that the right, you know who has the right to tell you what scripture means? The author. God has filled the scripture with meaning. And if you have a meaning that the author would go, nah, that's not really right, you don't have the right interpretation. It doesn't matter how near and dear to your heart it is. It doesn't matter how well it would sound on a get well card. The meaning of the scripture is what God himself puts there. And Peter says, now realize, the scripture can be hard to understand. He says that. The scripture can be hard to understand. If there's something hard to understand, what do you need to do? You need to be an absolute diligent student. You need to rightly divide the word of truth, as the Apostle Paul put it. There have been put into your hands the very words of God. You are, before the face of God, required to treat it with the absolute importance it is. There is no more important message on earth. There is no more important book. The words of God are not only life and death, they are eternal life and death. And there are people out there twisting them, says the apostle. But you must know them well enough that that can't happen to you. There's a flip side, by the way, to that picture I was painting of the Roman Catholic clergy. They take the Bible out of the hands of people, but then they realize, okay, we have to give them a message. Well, how do they get the message? Well, they get it from the pulpit and the pulpit alone. the sermon or the homily is going to be your spiritual nourishment. And then they tell you now what is required of you is what's called implicit faith. That's an official title of a Roman doctrine. What that means is there's a huge amount to this Christianity stuff and you're not capable of discerning it. The church is capable of discerning it. The church tells you stuff. And the only thing God requires of you is to point to your church and go, they've got it right. We implicitly believe whatever it is the popes, the cardinals, the hierarchy says. God will accept that. The apostles could not be anywhere close to that. The apostles say that the scripture is your life. You are called to be like the Bereans. Chapter 17 of Acts is where we really ought to bring this sermon to an end. If the apostle Paul were to stand before you and to give a sermon, and it's Paul, and he's been dead 2,000 years, so he's back and he's talking, would you just assume every word that he said is the truth? Would you listen with eager ears and say, what I have heard from the pulpit is exactly what I need to know? Would that be virtuous? Well, the apostle is an apostle, and he's giving you the word of Christ, but in chapter 17 of the book of Acts, there is this amazing passage where the church at Berea doesn't do that, and they're actually commended for that. Then the brethren immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea. When they arrived, they went into the synagogue of the Jews. These were more fair-minded than those of Thessalonica. It can be translated noble-minded. It's definitely a compliment. In that, they received the word with all readiness and searched the scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so. Therefore, many of them believed, and also not a few of the Greeks, prominent women as well as men. So even though we are guaranteed by God's providence that the apostles of Christ are going to teach the word of Christ because they're the messenger of Christ. The disciples in Berea are commended because they don't just listen from the pulpit, even though it's Paul. They go to the written Word of God, they say, are these things so? And they judge everything by that. That's noble-mindedness. That's fair-mindedness. God has spoken by the Word, and everything must be judged by the Word, absolutely everything. The Word as given, the Word in context, This is what the apostle wanted to end his life telling you. And you are reformed Protestants. You've heard this message before. It may be basic, but this is where spiritual life comes from. Do you want to build a life worthy of the calling you've received? Do you want to answer Peter's question? What kind of person ought you to be? Well, the basic foundation is that you are standing on the word and growing out of the word because there is nowhere else for that to come from. Here ends the lesson of the apostle. May we take it to heart.