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Again, 2 Peter 1, beginning in
verse 10. 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. For this reason, I will
not be negligent to remind you always of these things, though
you know and are established in the present truth. Yes, I
think it is right, as long as I am in this tent, to stir you
up by reminding you, knowing that shortly I must put off my
tent, just as our Lord Jesus Christ showed me. Moreover, I
will be careful to ensure that you always have a reminder of
these things after my decease. May God add a blessing to the
reading and to the hearing of his word, and let's pray again. Lord, we thank you for these
revealed truths. We thank You for speaking, communicating
to us on a level that we can understand, even as a parent
will often stoop and speak in a language a child can understand. You have spoken to us in Your
Word. Allow us to have illumination.
Give us light to be able to see these truths and to embrace them.
We ask this in Christ's name, Amen. You may be seated. I think
I pointed out a couple of times that in 2 Peter 3 and verse 1,
Peter had put forward the purpose for this little letter, and that
is to stir up your pure minds by way of reminder. So he writes to prod the saints
toward greater faithfulness. And we all sometimes, don't we?
We all sometimes need a kick in the seat of the pants, don't
we? To get going. We need to push forward in the
right direction. And God has provided, through
the inscripturation of His Word, a prod. I know when I was a child,
my father would raise some cattle, and we'd go to the cattle market,
and they had those electric prods. And boy when they hit the rear
of those cattle they moved. And Peter's word here is a prod. to move us on toward godliness. Now, the passage we're looking
at this morning is a classic challenge to those who profess
to be believers. And that challenge is that we
are to make our calling and our election sure. We are to make
our calling and our election sure. That is, we are challenged
to prove that what we profess to be a fact is in reality true. Now, we hold unashamedly to the
great doctrine, one of the five points of the doctrines of grace
called the perseverance of the saints. And that doctrine teaches
that if you are authentically converted, even though for a
season you may sin, you may backslide, you may grieve the Spirit, you
will not, if you are authentically converted, in the end, fall away
ultimately from the love of God in Christ. And so, we uphold
our belief today in the perseverance of the saints. And yet, on the
other hand, we need to take seriously what Peter is challenging us
with this morning. And that is there ought to be
seasons of examination, seasons of testing and proving when we
make our call and election sure. When we show that we have what
we call the assurance of salvation. and that is the confirmation
internally and externally that we are indeed in Christ. Make your call and election sure. And it's interesting, if you
look through the New Testament, you see several times over where
this prod occurs. It occurs several times in Paul's
writings. In 1 Corinthians 10 and verse
12, Paul wrote, Therefore, let him who thinks he stands take
heed lest he fall. So, there are some people who
think they stand in the faith. But they should take heed, lest
they fall. And then, another classic one
in the end of the book of 2 Corinthians. 2 Corinthians 13, verses 5 and
6. Paul says, Examine yourselves
as to whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Do you not know yourselves that
Jesus Christ is in you? unless indeed you are disqualified. But then Paul says, but I trust
that you will know that we are not disqualified. But the challenge
is, examine yourself, test yourself to see whether or not you stand
in the faith. One commentator on this passage
in 2 Peter said, God's grace does not lead to moral relaxation,
but to intense effort. We're prodded on. Some people
picture the Christian life as being like a process of climbing
a mountain. and there's a mountain of doubt,
and disbelief, and sin, and you scale all those obstacles, and
you make it to the top, and you profess faith, you shout it from
the mountaintops, I believe, maybe you're baptized, and you
say Jesus is Lord, and then they begin to think that after that,
I mean that's the pinnacle, and then after that, everything else
is just downhill. You just profess faith in Christ. You walk the aisle. You raise
your hand. You pray the prayer. And then
after that, it's just coasting. It's just coasting the rest of
the way. Well, Peter is telling us, listen, you may think you're
coasting. You may think you have your fire
insurance against hell. You may think you have your get
out of hell free card. because of what you did, because
you walked an aisle, because you were baptized. But Peter
is here telling us that you may be deluded. You may have thought
you were in the faith when you really were not. And you may
really be in the faith, but you may be confused, thinking that
the Christian life is just a matter of coasting. It's just a matter of moral relaxation
from that point on. And Peter is telling us, yes,
there may be times when you're cruising down the incline. There
may be times when you walk peacefully through plain valleys. But he's going to tell us as
well, there are times in the Christian life when there are
steep uphill climbs. that require determination, that
require intense effort, that require struggle, that require
sacrifice, that require pain. Maybe some of the kids have heard
their parents say, you know, they used to walk uphill both
ways to get to the schoolhouse. It's almost as if Peter is telling
us here, sometimes you have to walk uphill both ways to get
to heaven. You have to make your call and election sure. You have to work at and struggle
to attain the living of the Christian life. That it is a life of constant
readiness and effort. Make your call and election sure. He's telling us if you call yourself
a Christian, if you profess to be a Christian, then you must
give some evidence of that reality. Believe as Christians believe.
Obey as Christians obey. Love as Christians love. And so that's what he's laying
before us. The primary challenge he's laying before us. So we
look at our text, and we walk through the text a little bit
this morning. I think we can break this passage down into
two sections. First of all, in verses 10 and
11, Peter challenges the believers to possess what we were just
talking about, an assurance of their salvation. To possess it
by making their call and election sure. And in the second part
of the passage, verses 12 through 15, we get an insight into why
Peter feels that he must urgently deliver this challenge. And it's
because he's reaching the end of his physical life. He knows
that the gateway of death is ahead of him. And this is supplying,
this is fueling the urgency that he has. So, let's look at these
two parts. Let's first meditate on verses
10 and 11. And that's Peter's challenge
to the believers to possess the assurance of their salvation.
And so he starts off in verse 10. Therefore, brethren, Be even
more diligent. Let me just pause there for a
second. I don't know if you picked up
on this, but diligence is a theme, one of the themes of this opening
chapter. You remember this? We talked about this last week.
Look back at verse 5. But also, for this very reason,
giving all diligence. And if you look forward to verse
15, what is translated in the New King James Version, moreover
I will be careful to ensure, really in Greek it's the same
exact verb. It would be translated, moreover
I will be diligent. And so three times, verse 5,
verse 10, verse 15, there's a note about pursuing diligence. We might even say hyper-diligence. And last week I pointed out how
isn't it interesting how we have a tendency to display great diligence
in pursuing worldly things. I mentioned diligence in pursuing
sports, or recreation, or our health, or entertainment, or
technology. But here, Peter is calling on
us to give diligence in spiritual things. Our spiritual life can
become an add-on, an accessory. Something we do if we have some
spare time. If it's convenient for us. If
we get all the important things done, then we can pursue something
spiritual. But Peter is telling us, listen,
we must get our priorities right. We must be diligent about the
things of God. And what he's calling back to,
what he's harping back to, again, are the eight graces or virtues
of the Christian life. faith, knowledge, self-control,
perseverance, godliness, brotherly kindness, love. We are to be
diligent again in pursuing these things and he says our diligence
in pursuing these things will result in the making sure of
our calling and our election. Let's meditate a little bit on
these two realities that Peter points to. First of all, what
does he mean when he says, make your calling sure? What is our
calling? Well, what he's referring to
is what the theologians sometimes call the effectual or the efficient
call of God. And it's the idea, by calling
you, he's not talking about your vocation, whether or not you
want to be a plumber or a doctor or something like that. He's
talking about the call of God. Make the call of God sure in
your life to become a believer. All those who are in Christ have
at some point heard the call of God in the preaching of the
gospel. Sometimes we talk about the external call and the internal
call. The external call is what we
receive with our physical ears. We go to church on Sunday, a
preacher stands up, he opens the Scriptures, he talks about
the Gospel, and if your physical ear is in good working order,
you can receive the audio waves and you are receiving the external
call. But there's a second call, isn't
there? There's the internal call. And that's what you hear in your
heart. And so there are people who can receive externally lots
of sermons. Man, you can listen. These days
with the internet, you just listen to sermon after sermon, load
them on your iPod. You can listen and listen and
listen. You can receive lots of external stimuli. Maybe you've
sat in church your whole life and you've heard lots of teaching
and lots of preaching. But you can receive all of that
and never receive the internal call. That's the preaching of
the Holy Spirit, knocking on your heart, saying, what this
man is speaking about is true. What Jesus said about Himself
is right. What He accomplished on the cross
is a reality. What He's warning you of is accurate. What He's promising is true.
And so that's the internal call of God. I heard a report not
long ago that pointed out that younger people, people who are
chronologically younger, actually have the capacity to hear some
high-pitched sounds that older people are not able to hear.
Maybe you've heard this also. And apparently you have it when
you're younger, but as you age up, you lose the capacity to
hear a certain high pitch sounds. And so there was a major city,
I think it was in the UK, it might have been in London, where
they had a problem with young people loitering on certain corners. And so they set speakers up and
they transmitted this high-pitched sound so that when young people
got together, they would just disperse because they could hear
the sound. But older people, people my age,
walked by and they would never hear it. It would never bother
them. They would be completely oblivious
to it. You see, they were receiving
exactly the same external stimuli, but they couldn't hear it. They
couldn't hear it. We can draw an analogy, can't we, here as
to what happens when the gospel is preached. In this case, the
call goes out, and it doesn't drive people away who hear it. It calls them to come to Christ.
The call goes out when the word is preached. Some hear it, and
some do not. The difference is not whether
you are young or old, but whether you are among the elect or not. That's why Jesus said in Matthew
20.16 and Matthew 22.14, many are called, but few are chosen. And this leads us then to the
second term that is placed in tandem with calling, and it is
that of election. Those whom God calls are among
the elect or the chosen of God. Sometimes we overlook that word
elect. Get a concordance and look it up and see how many times
in the New Testament the word elect or election shows up. It is all over the place. In
1 Peter 1 and 2, the first letter that Peter wrote, it was written
to whom? To the elect pilgrims of the dispersion. To the chosen
pilgrims of the dispersion. I remember a few years ago I
was talking to a man who is from Iran and not a native English
speaker and I was telling him that I was going to be preaching
on Sunday on the topic of election and he asked me whether I was
going to encourage the people in my church to vote for Bush
or Gore. It tells you how long ago that was. I had to explain
to him that by preaching about election, I wasn't going to be
preaching about a political election, but I was going to be preaching
about the election of God. But there is a parallel with
human elections that helps us understand the election of God.
When we have an election, the people get together and they
choose among candidates. I had the privilege when I was
a missionary to be serving in Hungary right after the fall
of communism and to be in that country when they had some of
their first rounds of free elections and people were going to cast
ballots who hadn't voted for 45 years. There's going to be
an election in this country in November and there's a lot of
talk about what's going to happen with the country, who's going
to be chosen to be our leaders. But when the Bible talks about
election, it's not talking about what we're talking about with
these political elections. Although, again, there are some
parallels. The word election means choosing. When the Bible
talks about election, it's not talking about men choosing God. It's talking about election in
which there is one voter. And the voter is God, a sovereign
all wise, all powerful, all merciful, all loving God. And He should reject everyone. He should reject everyone. Because all sin and fall short
of the glory of God. And He is so holy. The Prophet Habakkuk said, he
cannot bear to look upon wickedness. He should reject all. But in his mercy, he chooses
some. He chooses some. It's inscrutable
to me. I can't explain it. I don't know
it. I know some people tell me, Jeff,
because you believe this, you're a fatalist. Or what about freedom? I can't explain it. I just believe
the Bible teaches it. And because the Bible teaches
it, I have to believe it. Maybe the place where this great
doctrine is explained best is in Ephesians chapter 1. If you
haven't discovered this chapter, it's one you ought to read and
meditate upon over and over again. Ephesians chapter 1 and verse
3. Listen to how Paul describes
it. He says, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the
heavenly places in Christ. Listen to this, verse 4. Just
as He chose us in Him before the foundation
of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before
Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus
Christ to Himself according to the good pleasure of His will. to the praise of the glory of
His grace by which He has made us accepted in the Beloved. Somebody asks you, do you believe
in that doctrine of predestination? Isn't that a Presbyterian belief?
It's just a biblical belief. It's what the Bible teaches.
We don't understand it all, but it's what God has chosen to reveal
about Himself, and we're in rebellion against Him if we challenge it. This is the truth that God has
revealed about Himself. You will never understand. Isn't
it great to see secular people singing Amazing Grace? Willie
Nelson used to sing a great version of that. And you can sing Amazing
Grace, John Newton's great song, and you can never understand
a single word about what he was writing about until you understand
Ephesians 1. You don't understand a word of
it. What this man was writing about. Until you understand Ephesians
1. Paul also describes these two
concepts of call and election in Romans 8, 29 and 30. A passage that is sometimes called
the golden chain of redemption. In there, he deals first with
election and then with calling, which seems to make more chronological
sense because his electing act would happen prior to his calling
act. In Romans 8, 29, Paul said, For
whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image
of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.
Moreover, whom he predestined These he also called. And whom he called, these he
also justified. And whom he justified, these
he also glorified. And now we come back around to
Peter's exhortation. Peter is saying, if you claim
to be among the saints of God, prove it! Prove it to your own
conscience, subjectively. Prove it to those who are around
you. Make your call and election sure. One commentator points out that
the Greek word here for sure Bebeon was a legal term that
meant to make valid, ratified, or confirmed. Peter is saying,
place the stamp of authenticity. Go to the notary and place the
stamp of authenticity upon your profession of faith. Then, after this exhortation,
if you look at verse 10, make your call, election sure. Peter
provides this. He says, 4. If you do these things,
you will never stumble. What does he mean by that? I
want to offer two interpretations of this promise that I think
are wrong. And then a third one that I think hits the mark. If
you do these things, you will never stumble. First, I think
Peter is not saying that if you live the Christian life, this
means that you will never sin. That's not what he's saying.
He is not teaching perfectionism. If you become a believer, if
you profess faith in Christ, it doesn't mean that you will
never sin or you will be able to live a holy life seven-eighths
of the time. And one-eighths of the time you won't be able
to. Or eight-eighths of the time you will be able to live a perfect
life. I don't know. The reason we know
that that's not what Peter is teaching is revealed if we turn
our Bibles probably over just one page to 1 John 1, verse 8. If we say that we have no sin,
we deceive ourselves. And the truth is not in us. We do not achieve full sanctification
in this life. Peter, the man who had denied
Christ three times, and who had been forgiven of Christ and recommissioned
of Christ, knew this truth more than most. The Scottish minister
Robert Murray McShane prayed, Lord, make me as holy as a pardoned
sinner can be. Make me as holy as a pardoned
sinner can be. He's not teaching perfectionism.
Peter is not saying here that the saint could possibly lose
his salvation. That's the way some would interpret
2 Peter 1 and verse 10, for if you do these things you will
never stumble. They would say, well that implies
that you could stumble and you could lose your salvation. Some
believe that you can jump in and out of the Christian faith
in the same way as you jump in and out of the shower in the
morning. Why would Peter not be saying that here? Again, he
would not be saying that because it would run counter to the whole
counsel of Scripture. The whole counsel of God. In
John 10, 29, Jesus taught, No one is able to snatch them. Meaning the Father's sheep is
beloved. No one is able to snatch them
out of my Father's hand. And in Romans 8, starting in
verse 33, Paul said, Who shall bring a charge against God's
elect? Who will be the prosecuting attorney
against the saints of God? Who will sling mud at the saints
of God and tell them that they are sinners who are going to
go to hell? Paul said, it is God who justifies. Who is he who condemns? Those are two false options,
but then third, what then is Peter saying? when he says, if
you do these things, you will never stumble. I think Peter
is saying that there is a reward given to the person who makes
his call and election sure. He has the reward of living the
Christian life without haltering, without stumbling, without bumbling,
without limping, without backsliding. Make your call and election sure. Walk, Peter would say, in bold,
noble, glad assurance that you have full citizenship in the
kingdom of God. John Calvin said of this verse,
the meaning then is labor, that you may have it really proved
that you have not been called or elected in vain. Peter continues then in verse
11, Peter is here providing one of those exceedingly great and
precious promises that he alluded to in verse 4 of 2 Peter 1. And really it's the promise here,
we could say, of heaven. of the promise of the entrance
into an everlasting kingdom. And so, if you make your call
and election sure, you are promised entrance into heaven. We can
notice just two things quickly about the language that Peter
uses here in this verse. First of all, I was struck by
the word entrance. In Greek, it's the word eis adas. And it's a compound word, it's
made up of two Greek words. One is the preposition AIS, which
means into. And then secondly, it's the word
HADAS, which means way or road. AIS HADAS. And the New King James Version
translates it as entrance. What Peter is saying is if you
make your calling election sure, a way into heaven has been provided
for you. An entrance into heaven has been
provided for you. Maybe you remember that story
a couple of months back about a couple who crashed a White
House reception. They didn't have an invitation,
they didn't have a ticket, but they just showed up and somehow
they were able to talk themselves into the party without a proper
invitation. But Peter is saying here that
if you are among the chosen of God, and if you have heard the
internal call of God, and if you are striving toward living
a life in Christ, including striving toward receiving and supplying
to your faith those graces and virtues that he described earlier
in this chapter, then you have been given an entrance, an official
entrance, an invitation properly. You're bona fide. You are in
the faith. And you can enter into the everlasting
kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Secondly, I'm struck
by Peter's use of this word, to supply. For an entrance will
be supplied to you abundantly. And actually in Greek it's the
very same verb that was used back in verse 5 when he said,
add to your faith virtue. That verb add is exactly the
same in Greek. I don't know if some of you remember
this. It's the verb epikoregeo. And it was a verb that was used,
a word that was used in Greek to describe a benefactor or a
patron of the arts who would put up the money for some artistic
event like a chorus or something like that. And so in verse 5,
Peter's point was, you are to not leave your faith in Christ
naked, but you are to supply, you are to add these other supporting
companion virtues to your faith. But here, Peter turns it around
and he says, you should not act like the benefactors, but you
should understand that you are the recipients of the largest,
of the patronage of the God of the universe. Notice that it's
in the passive. Verse 11, for an entrance will
be supplied to you. You won't supply it for yourself.
You won't add this to yourself. It will be supplied to you. It
will be given to you. And it won't be given in a miserly
manner, will it? He says it will be given abundantly.
The Greek word there is plousios, which literally means richly.
We have been given all the riches of Christ. Let's move on to the
second part of the passage. And I really dealt with some
of this in the introductory message I did on 2 Peter and I don't
want to belabor some of that so I just want to call to your
mind some of this. You might remember that earlier
when I preached that first message I described the whole book of
2 Peter as something like a farewell address or a last will and testament
of the Apostle Peter, because here in this passage, verses
12-15, he talks about the fact that he's anticipating that his
life is soon going to come to an end. And I believe God gave
that sense to some of the Apostles before their death. We know he
gave it to Paul. Paul writes to Timothy in 2 Timothy 4-6.
And he says, I am already being poured out as a drink offering.
The time of my departure is at hand. I have fought the good
fight. I have finished the race. I have
kept the faith. Paul knew that the end was coming
soon for him. And in a similar way, Peter has
a sense of his impending death. He knows that he will soon finish
his course. And so he wants to speak with
urgency. And what if you found out today
You had some terrible disease and your life was going to end
within a few days or a week. What would you want to say? Who
would you want to call next to you? What would you want to say
to your wife, or your husband, or your children, or your parents?
And so Peter has that kind of urgency. And so in verse 12 he
says, For this reason I will not be negligent to remind you
always of these things though you know and are established
in the present truth. And what Peter tells us is, listen,
I'm not going to be negligent in my duty. I'm not going to
shirk my duty. I know I've got a short time and I'm going to
make the most of it. Have you ever worked in a job with fellow
employees where some people were just kind of lazy employees?
They clock in to do the job and then they spend all their time
trying to avoid work. There's a character in the Dilbert
cartoon, I forget his name, but he's kind of like that. He's
always on the job, always drinking coffee, but he never does any
actual work. And some people are like that.
They bide their time, they go through the motions, they hide,
and then in the end they want to get the reward, the paycheck.
But Peter is saying, I'm not going to be like that. I will
not be negligent to remind you. I am going to use every moment
and every opportunity for my Master. I'm going to serve Him
as much as I can, in every way I can, with every bit of my energy
that I can. And he also expresses here in
verse 12 that his purpose in writing this letter is not so
much evangelistic, not so much to share the gospel, but really
for the end of seeing men sanctified in Christ, because he says, though
you know and are established in the present truth. He's writing
people he knows who are believers. He continues in verse 13, Yes,
I think it is right, as long as I am in this tent. By tent,
of course, he's using a metaphor for his own physical body. As
long as I am in this tent to stir you up by reminding you. The word here for stir can have
the sense of to rouse or to awaken. To rouse or to awaken. In fact,
one commentator said it had the sense of stabbing someone awake. That is, jarring a man so forcefully
that he must wake up. So Peter's saying, you're sort
of in a spiritual coma, and I'm writing to you to stir you, to
jab you awake, so that you become fully conscious of the spiritual
realities that are before you. And then in verse 14 he says,
knowing that shortly I must put off my tent, just as our Lord
Jesus Christ showed me. The Lord had given to Peter a
sense that he was soon going to die. I believe earlier in
that initial message on 2 Peter, I took you to John 21, verses
18 and 19, where Jesus had told Peter There was a day when you were
young and you were led places where you wanted to go. And when
you become older, men will take you by the hand and they will
take you to places where you don't want to go. And then John
explains to us that Jesus told him this to reveal to him the
way in which he would glorify God in his death. And then Jesus
says to Peter, follow me. Peter knew that he was soon going
to run his course, that his life would soon be over and so he's
trying to put his house in order. He wants again to make the absolute
most of every opportunity in this life that Christ has given
him. He wants by the help of the Holy Spirit to have an impact
on future generations through the writing of these very words
that we are reading now that will become part of the New Testament
Scriptures. Have you ever thought about that? Have you ever thought
about not just the impact your life has on other people right
now, but what it will have for generations? Have you ever thought
that how you live your life right now will make an impact on your
unseen grandchildren and great-grandchildren? Maybe in your life, maybe you
have a heritage where there's a string of broken marriages
and upset and alcoholism and addiction and excess and poor
behavior and there's a string that just comes down to you.
And you have an opportunity to be a circuit breaker and stop
it. And you have the opportunity to live a godly life. To be a
faithful man. To be a faithful woman. And then
to see God use that should the Lord tarry through future generations
to be a blessing to others. Peter had a vision for that.
He's thinking he's soon going to die, but I better quickly
write down by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit this book,
so that 2,000 years from now some people in Charlottesville,
Virginia will gather and read it and be edified by it. That's
an incredible vision that God gave to Peter. What did he say
in verse 15? Moreover, I will be careful to
ensure that you always have a reminder of these things after my decease. Was he successful? It's right
here in our hands today. We're reading it. We're hearing
it. We're listening to it. I want to look at one more word. Look at, in verse 15, the word
that's translated decease. The New King James Version, there's
a little note, and it says literally, Exodus. Departure. Two words. Preposition X. The word Hadass. Way. Isn't it
interesting to compare that back to the previous verse that we
looked at? In verse 11, Peter will say that the saint will
be given an entrance, an eis hadass, into heaven. And here
Peter says he's about to experience an exodus, a way out. And Peter's telling us something
here, isn't he, about how the saint is to look at death. On
the one hand, it is an exodus. It means a leaving, a crossing
over, just as the Israelites left the bondage of Egypt to
enter into the promised land, to go to the land that God would
show them. And so when we leave this life, it is also an exodus. But Peter is telling us here
within the span of this one passage, it's also an eisadas, it's also
an entrance. It means entering into the glorious
presence of our God and taking up our eternal vocation, the
bliss of being lost in wonder, worship, full satisfaction and
admiration of our God. We tell some people that life
in heaven is going to be a life of worship. They say, it's going
to be boring. You've never worshipped. If you've
caught ever in your moment one millisecond of bliss or blissful
enjoyment of God, imagine that stretched out for eternity and
you experience it for all time because you're in the presence
of God. An entrance into an everlasting
kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. some concluding
thoughts on this passage as I looked over. I was struck by the fact
that, again, once again, we're hearing the testimony, the last
words of a dying apostle. One of the old appearances, Richard
Baxter, said that preachers, when they preach, should preach
as a dying man to dying men. See, every time you preach, preach
as a dying man to dying men. And that's what Peter is doing
here. I was also thinking about how
Throughout church history there have been, it's an old custom
and I think it's something we've lost touch with because we're
so afraid of death these days, but in the old days they used
to really be intent on listening to the final words of men as
they died. And we have records of this all
throughout church history of men, godly men coming in their
lives and having something important to say to people before they
leave. There's a story in the early
church about a man named Polycarp. He was 86 years old. And the
Roman authorities found out that he was a Christian, a Christian
pastor. They arrested him. And they told him, you need to,
you need to denounce this Christian faith. They called the Christians
atheists because they wouldn't worship false gods. And he said,
we want you to say away with the atheists. He turned to all
the Roman pagan guards that were there. And he said, away with
the atheists. That wasn't exactly what they
wanted him to say. They said, listen, if you don't reject Christ,
then we're going to burn you alive. And Polycarp responded,
Eighty and six years have I served him, and he never once wronged
me. How then shall I blaspheme my
king who has saved me? And he went to his death. We
got His last words. If God gave you eighty and six
years, would you come to the end of that and say, oh, eighty
and six years has He given me, He's never wronged me. He's never
wronged me. Why would I deny Him? When Martin
Luther, the reformer, died, it was recorded that he prayed among
his last words, Lord God, I thank you that you have willed me to
be a poor man upon the earth and a beggar. I do not have home,
field, possession, or money that I relinquish. You have given
me wife and children, and I give them back to you. Nourish, teach,
and keep them as you have me thus far, O father of orphans
and widows. What if your children, your wife,
heard you pray a prayer like that on your deathbed? What would
it do for their faith? Just before John Calvin died,
he called in the ministers of Geneva, and he talked to them
from his sickbed, and he recounted to them First time he had come
to the city of Geneva to be their pastor, and he said, when I first
came, there was no reformation. All was in confusion. And then
he recounted all the struggles he had had. He said, I have lived
in marvelous combats here. He described how he was mocked,
how men shot guns off at his doorstep to intimidate him. How
at one point he was hunted from the city and fled to Strasbourg.
How at one point when he returned he was called a scoundrel and
dogs were set upon him who bitted his cloak and his legs. But then
he said, I admit I have had many faults which you have had to
endure. And then he said, all that I
have done is of no value. This is the man who wrote the
Institutes. This is the man who was the brains of the Protestant
Reformation. He said, all I have done is of
no value. Then he said, the wicked will
seize upon that word. But I repeat that all I have
done is of no value, and that I am a miserable creature. But
if I may say so, I have meant well. My faults have always displeased
me, and the root of the fear of God has always been in my
heart. You can say that the wish has been good, and I beg you
that the ill be pardoned. But if there has been good in
it, that you will conform to it and follow it. As to doctrine,
he said, I have taught faithfully and God has given me grace to
write. I have done it with utmost fidelity and have not, to my
knowledge, corrupted or twisted a single passage of Scripture.
Would you be able to say at the end of your life, I have not,
to my knowledge, twisted a single passage of Scripture? And then
he ended, I have written nothing through hatred against anyone.
But I have always set before me faithfully what I have thought
to be for the glory of God. Some dying words. That's the
last will and testament. The amazing thing about him is
he died. He's the most famous man in the city. He left orders
to be buried in a common grave in Geneva. And we don't know
to this day where this man's gravesite is. Contrast that with
some evangelists who build big monuments to themselves in museums. It's said that before John Newton,
the author of Amazing Grace, died, he said to some who stood
by him, I am but sure of two things. I am a great sinner. And Christ
is a great savior. And the last words, among the
last words of the Apostle Peter were, make your call and election
sure. Peter's drawing us close. I'm
about to leave, friends. The last little bit of counsel
I have for you is make your call and election sure before your
exodus from this earth Make sure of your entrance into the kingdom
of the Lord Jesus Christ. I've been working my way through
a Puritan book called The Almost Christian by Matthew Mead. And he said he wrote this book
in order to awaken sleepy, formal professors and to discover hypocrites. He says at one point, many are
good at wishing, but bad at working. A lot of people wish they could
be Christians. I've done it many times. I wish I could prove in
this way. We're good at wishing, but bad at working. He also adds
that we may have outward reformation. We may not be robbing banks.
We may not be drinking alcohol. We may have reformed externally
our lives. But he says it is good to be
outwardly renewed. But it is better to be inwardly
renewed. Throughout the book, Mead asked
the reader to consider Judas, who was one of the twelve apostles.
Judas was among the disciples. He walked with Jesus. He listened
to Jesus. The external call. He saw what
Jesus did. He saw the miracles. He saw the
works, the deeds of Christ. He was around Christ all the
time. He did amazing things in Christ's
name. According to the record of the
Gospels, Jesus sent out the twelve and they cast out demons. That
would have included Judas. He cast out demons in the name
of Christ. And yet he wasn't converted.
He wasn't actually converted. He was a false professor. Mead
says, Judas was a saint without, but a sinner within, openly a
disciple, but secretly a devil. And Peter is pulling us close
and saying, don't be a Judas. Make your call and election sure. And if you need to make it sure
today, make it sure by calling upon the name of Christ for salvation. And if you believe you know Christ,
run again to Him this morning. Run again to Him. And rest in
Him. Find your rest in Him. Make your
call and election sure. I invite you to stand. Let's pray. Oh Lord, we've been made mindful
this morning of the brevity, the fragility of our lives. Oh
Lord, it's a brief sojourn we have here before we leave. And Lord, I pray that you would
make all of us mindful of our exodus that is ahead. and whether
or not we will have an entrance into your kingdom. I pray that
we would not just hear externally the call, but inwardly the call. And those of us who are saved,
that we would be living a Christian life that would give evidence
of our calling and our election. We thank you for Peter. We thank
you that his labors were rewarded by you by allowing us to read
his words this morning. And being dead, yet he speaks
to us and challenges us. Help us to take this to heart
today. We ask this in Christ's name.
Amen.
Make your call and election sure
Series 2 Peter Series
| Sermon ID | 92010928410 |
| Duration | 52:50 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday - AM |
| Bible Text | 2 Peter 1:10-15 |
| Language | English |
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