Moving Forward(22May2011)

2 Peter 1 M4
Speaker: Ken Shigematsu
Title: Moving Forward (after getting hit)
Text: 2 Peter 1:1-8
BIG IDEA: By expecting suffering, embracing in the faith that God will use it, and by having our eyes on Jesus Christ we can persevere through trial and suffering and remain faithful to him.
As a kid one of my favourite movies was Rocky 1. In that movie Rocky is a struggling boxer who dreams of making it to the big time. When the heavy weight champion of the world Apollo Creed visits Philadelphia, his managers want to show how kind he is by giving a struggling boxer, who goes by the name the “Italian Stallion” or simply Rocky, a chance to fight the champion of the world. They advertise this fight as a chance for a “nobody” to become a “somebody.” The match is supposed to be won easily by Apollo Creed but Rocky takes it seriously and trains with all his heart. He gets up early, eats raw eggs, runs in his grey hoodie and grey track pants… He works at a meat shop and trains by punching the slabs of beef that hang in the shop.
In the final Rocky movie, simply entitled Rocky Balboa, Rocky is now in his fifties and ESPN features a virtual fight (SHOW IMAGE)



between the current heavyweight champion of the world, Mason Dixon and Rocky, when they would have both been in their prime, and the virtual fight shows Rocky winning the fight.
Mason Dixon, who sees this virtual fight, retaliates by challenging Rocky to a boxing match. To the surprise of his friends and to the dismay of his son, Rocky agrees to come out of retirement and face an opponent who is obviously much faster, stronger, and 30 years younger than he is. The odds are stacked against him and his son pleads with Rocky to not get in the ring and to not embarrass him, his son:
One evening Rocky meets him on the street and says (SHOW CLIP).
Rocky and his son:
Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain't all sunshine and rainbows. It's a very mean and nasty place and I don't care how tough you are it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain't about how hard ya hit. It's about how hard you get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward.
Rocky was not only a good boxer, he was great preacher, too. He says to his son, “The world is a mean and nasty place. I don’t care how tough you are. It will beat you to your knees and it will keep you there permanently if you let it. Nobody’s going to hit as hard as life, but it ain’t about how hard you get hit. It’s about how hard you get hit and keep moving forward.”
As Lee pointed out last Sunday, Peter's name had been Simon – which means shifting sand – but Jesus renamed him Peter which means rock or Rocky.
Peter knew that life has a way of hitting you hard.
He knew that his brothers and sisters, that is, those who were also following Christ with him, were getting hit hard in life. In 1 Peter 2:18-19, he says he is aware of their brutal working conditions. In that same chapter, Peter says he knows how they had been falsely accused and blamed for things they had never done. He says he knows that he knows they have been mocked by their neighbours who see their faith as crazy (1 Peter 3:3). Peter says he knows how disappointed that they are with a God who seems to be slow in keeping his promises (2 Peter 3:9).
This morning, as we continue our series in 2 Peter, we are going to look at how God through Peter calls us to perseverance.
If you have your Bibles, please turn to 2 Peter 1:1.

1 Simon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ,
To those who through the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ have received a faith as precious as ours:
2 Grace and peace be yours in abundance through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.
3 His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. 4 Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.
5 For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; 6 and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; 7 and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love. 8 For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Let me briefly review the context. If you haven’t been here the last few weeks you can download the sermons off our website.
Peter begins this passage (verse 1) by saying, “You can have a faith as precious as mine.” A remarkable statement. Peter was one of Jesus’ closest friends. He saw Jesus, heard Jesus’ voice, was touched by Jesus, was powerfully forgiven by him, used by him. And Peter is saying you and I can have a faith, a connection with Jesus, just as close, just as life-changing as his.
How does this happen?
As we see in vss. 2-4 it’s through grace or sheer gift, through the gift of a friendship with Jesus Christ participate in the divine nature, as Lee spoke about last Sunday, we enter into the circle or the family that is God, and by being enveloped by God--we can become like Jesus Christ.
So there is grace, a gift that enables us to become like Jesus.
But, as Lee said, it is also a role that we play.
We can to add to our faith--perseverance.
Peter says for this very reason respond to God’s grace by adding to your faith goodness, knowledge, self-control, and to self-control perseverance.
This morning I we will focus on perseverance.
Why is perseverance in this particular list? Because Peter knows that the people he is writing to are experiencing the world, as Rocky points out, as a mean and nasty place. The people that Peter was writing to had decided to follow Christ at a time and place where it was dangerous and costly to follow him. People around them were suspicious and hostile towards them. They regarded them as strange. Cannibals maybe, because they had these meals where they talked about eating the flesh and blood of their leader.
In Peter’s first letter he mentions suffering 17 times. In fact, it is arguably the theme of the 1 Peter.
Peter says to these brothers and sisters who share a common faith in Jesus Christ, “Persevere.” The word that Peter uses for persevere is hypomone, which literally means stand your ground…maintain your position. Hypomone was typically used as a military term to describe a soldier holding a position. A soldier, of course, then as now, might be tempted to abandon their post when either all hell was breaking loose or when nothing seemed to be happening, and days were stretching on and on. Peter is saying, either way, when all hell seems to breaking loose or when nothing of spiritual significance seems to be happening to you, stand your ground and hypomone, persevere.
How do we become people who persevere? That is, people who hold our ground and who even keep moving forward when we are hit hard in life?
First, as we said in vss 2-4 it is by receiving the grace of God by entering into a life-changing relationship with Jesus, allowing the divine nature to envelop us, and give us a new heart.
That’s God’s part.
What’s our part in the coming people who persevere?
Part what we can do to become people who persevere is to expect suffering.
First, Peter would say, expect suffering.
As Rocky says, the world can be a mean and nasty place.
In 1 Peter 4:12-13a, Peter writes: “Dear friends, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that has come to you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice inasmuch as you participate in the sufferings of Christ…”
Peter goes even further in 1 Peter 2: 21. He says that were called to suffer: “To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps.”
Peter wasn’t just talking about suffering as some kind of armchair theoretician. He knew what it was to suffer firsthand for Christ. He had been beaten for his faith, imprisoned, and he would eventually die as a martyr for Jesus Christ, crucified upside down.
We too will face some kind of suffering if we live long enough: we may go through a relationship conflict, a breakup, some kind of illness, some kind of financial challenge, the death of a loved one, the loss of a baby, the sense of God being absent. And when we go through something really painful, we will have the temptation to run, to desert our post.
Part of the way we become people who persevered is by simply expecting suffering. But when I ran the Vancouver marathon, and about 30 K in the race, I'm running up the second Narrows Bridge (coming in to Vancouver from North Van) just gassed, totally exhausted, but I remember how people who have run marathons have told me that you will likely “hit the wall,” but then you get a second wind. Anticipating that I would hit the wall at about 30 K, didn't make that part of the race easy, but it help me persevere and at about 32 or 33 K, sure enough I felt the second when I came into the Vancouver siding could see the downtown skyline I felt a surge of energy was able to finish strong.
Something about being able to anticipate suffering life, that enables us to keep moving forward.
How do we persevere?
One of the ways we stand firm and keep moving forward is by expecting suffering. This why Peter says, “When you are suffering, don’t see suffering as if something strange—this is part of your calling.”
How do we persevere? By expecting it and second by embracing suffering in the faith that God would use our suffering to make us more like him.
One of the many gifts of offering our life to Jesus is that none of the suffering that we experience in life as a friend of Jesus will be wasted – he will take that suffering and shape us into the kind of people that we long to be.
This is why Peter says to this group of people who are friends with Jesus in 1 Peter 1:6-7: “In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a while you have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith –of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.”
Peter is saying here that suffering can act like fire that refines our faith… (use lighter) purifies it like fire purifies gold…removing the dross, making it more precious. Suffering has a way of transforming us.
Often we want God to deliver us out of suffering, but God may have a different plan. Instead of delivering us out of our suffering, he may deliver us, in and through our suffering, that is. In some cases he does not save us from our suffering, but he saves us in the midst of suffering; that is, he refines us through the suffering. This why Peter says in first Peter, that suffering is part of our all in following Christ.
Many would ask why would we ever follow someone who might call us into suffering?
Why would anyone voluntarily suffer? Some of us do it on a regular, voluntary basis in another sphere of our lives. Going to gym is a kind of voluntary suffering of sorts. Through our “suffering” we become stronger.
I was at one of the Mt. Pleasant gyms some years ago before I became a parent and I had a little more time to go to the gym. One of the fitness instructors walked up to me and said, “Hey, Ken, I have been watching you work out. Can I give you some advice?” I said, “Sure. I have never really received any kind of training on weightlifting.” He said, “I notice that you are starting with relatively light weights and then you gradually are moving up toward heavier weights. I don’t know what it is like to be a pastor, but I imagine that you must be really busy. You probably want to be into the gym and out of the gym as fast as you reasonably can and get a good workout.” I said, “Yeah.”
He said, “This is what I would advise you to do. Instead of starting with the light weights, start with the heavy weights. After a brief warm up, put on the heavy weights and then lift the weights 10 or 12 times, whatever the number is until you just feel absolutely exhausted and tired and you can’t lift any more. (In other words, voluntarily suffer.) And then, if you want to get an even better workout, go on to slightly weights and lift those until you feel absolutely exhausted and tired. Then you will have had a good workout in a short period of time.”
(It has changed the way I work out now. I don’t spend a lot of time in a gym these days as the parent of a toddler. But this is what I do to increase the weight resistance at home when I have a minute or two. If I am doing a regular push-up like this (DEMONSTRATE), I use a chair (PROP) and put my feet on it, and then start doing push-ups. If I want a little more resistance to start with, I will look for my 2 year old Joey and do it in front of him. Then I will say to Joey, “Joey, Daddy not a horsey,” and that will be his cue to jump onto my back….38 pounds. Then I will start doing push-ups. Start with the heavyweight and then go lighter.)
In the gym of life when we suffering, it is then we become stronger.
And here is the paradox. When we feel really weak, when we are lifting weights or exercising, we are actually becoming stronger.
So it is when we feel weakened by suffering, it is then we are actually in a position to grow. The apostle Paul said, “When I am weak, then, by God’s grace I become strong.”
How does this actually work out in life?
You get a roommate, or housemates, or you get married, or you have children, you really embrace community life a place like Tenth, and you’ll find yourself getting irritated, your selfishness is exposed, and you have the opportunity to grow: to pray “God envelop me” before I kill someone and have an opportunity to grow in patience and love.
This is why the ancient monastic talked about living in community as a “school of love.” There's something about entering into the irritation, and the suffering that inevitably occurs when were living in close relationships with people that creates a school for us to grow in love.
Or take suffering through an illness.
As a pastor, I had a kind of front row seat gracious, winsome, unforced, but he's clearly an unashamedly testified to the difference that Christ has made him in his suffering people have gone through cancer, heart attacks, significant physical suffering.
There someone in this community (who has given me permission to share his story). He has been diagnosed with cancer, gone through chemo. As I have observed him, suffering though he would've never chosen it has given him priceless gifts. His wife, has remarked that while her husband did read the Bible before being diagnosed with cancer, he's reading the Bible more than ever before. When he comes home from work, after dinner he stood edge out by watching TV. These days she sees that he's opening his Bible and reading it. He's a person who's always loved his wife and his daughter – but through this cancer he cherishes them now more than ever. He works for a famous that you all have heard of, but I've observed that since he's had the cancer, his witness for Christ has become bolder – graciously, winsomely, and naturally he has freely shared about how Christ has enabled him to walk through this very difficult chapter of his life.
Praise God is now cancer free.
A woman named Anne spent helping me in my life as a student had a friend named Pam who was dying. Pam's doctor always gave Anne straight answers whenever she asked about Pam's condition. When Pam was going through some distressing developments, and talk to Pam's doctor hoping that her doctor would put a positive slant on what she was going through. She didn't – she couldn't. But this is what she told Anne, “Watch Pam carefully right now because she is teaching you how to live.”
People who suffer particularly those who were dying (the truth is were all terminal on the bus of life), can teach through their lives how we are to live.
And if you're wondering if a loving God would ever really call you to suffer, chances are he will.
Even though I started to follow Christ when I was 15 or 16, quite young really. At 15 or 16 from the perspective of a teenager, I felt like I had come late into the game. I said, “God, you know how mean I can I can be and how much of a snob I can be and how I tend to cheat in sports (God‘s still working on that one). God, I know that you have come into my life. I feel like my sins have been forgiven, but, God, please put me on the fast-track. Please transform me more quickly than you are, because it feels like it is really, really slow.”
Let me give you some context here.
Up to that point, God had come into my life in a powerful, tangible way. If you never experienced that, the only analogy I can offer is falling in love. When you fall in love, if you have ever had that experience you know that actually you feel more physical energy, not just emotional energy. You have this joy and this silly grin on your face…this glow. Food tastes better. When the clouds in Vancouver part, you can see the mountains and the beauty of the ocean. They seem even more beautiful when you are in love.
That is exactly how I was feeling when Christ came into my life. I felt more alive…a sense of joy…a greater sense of security…and more comfort in my own skin. Amazing! And then I prayed, “God, you are not changing me fast enough. Please do something dramatic to change me.” The very next day or the next week, within a few days, I felt that God was completely absent. Up to that point, I had felt God so strongly that I had more energy, I had more joy. The world seemed more beautiful. I was happy, but somehow God seemed completely and totally absent. I had committed no sins that I had not confessed. I hadn’t committed any willful sins. As far I knew, the absence of God’s presence was not because of some sin. It was not like I was physically sick. I just felt like God was completely absent.
One of the great sufferings that those who know Christ can that God sometimes leads us through is a sense of God being utterly absent. According to people like St. John of the Cross, someone whom I had never heard of at the time, this is part of God’s plan for us—to suffer from a sense of his absence so that we are not following Christ just because we have these groovy sort of vibes around him; so that we are not just following Jesus because of all the benefits we get from the relationship with him, but we are following Jesus because we love him.
It is also true that in a marriage, typically early in a romantic relationship, you are in that in love phase. It is really easy to be creative, to be thinking about dates, things that you will do with your partner. It does not take a lot of effort. But when you have been together for a number of years and that initial glow wears off, you maybe have some fights, you have a baby or two, you maybe lose a job, at times you just don’t feel that glowiness any more. But if you really love your partner, you will love them in spite of the fact that you feel you are not receiving a lot in this moment. That gives your relationship an opportunity to mature. The feelings of love can return, but in a different more mature way. It is an important part of the progression of a relationship.
So it is in our relationship with God. One of the ways we can suffer his absence. God may allow that into our lives—or may allow some other kind of suffering--as part of his plan for us, so that our relationship with him deepens, and it isn’t just about Hey ! I love you because of how I feel around you or because what you are doing for me, I love you because are God.
God may call us into suffering – and by the way don't recommend that you pray for suffering as I did – now I'm too much of a chicken to pray that God would increase my suffering…
But God will call us into suffering even if we don't directly ask for it…
Peter knew about this. After Jesus had died on the cross and risen from the dead Jesus spent time walking with Peter on the beach.
Jesus made it clear that he had forgiven Peter for bailing on him the night before Jesus went to the cross. He loved Peter. But as they're walking, Jesus said when you are old you will stretch out your hands and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go. Jesus said this to indicate the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God.
When Jesus said when you are old will stretch out your hands and someone will lead you or you do not want to go, he was prophesying that Peter would die by crucifixion. According to church tradition, Peter died for Christ as he was crucified upside down… likely not long after he had penned this letter.
Part of the reason that Peter was able to persevere through suffering part of the reason that he was able to get hit and keep moving forward, was because he anticipated suffering – Jesus had warned him and the other disciples that they would suffer for following him and Jesus and Peter's case went to far as to predict the kind of death he would die. The Peter was also able to move forward after being hit the suffering because he embraced his suffering when it came. As Jesus told him the end of John suffering would be an opportunity for God's glory to be more fully manifest in and through. Finally Peter was able to endure his suffering because he kept his eyes on Jesus and followed him.
When Peter was walking with Jesus on the beach and Jesus predicted that he would suffer in his death that he would be led somewhere he did not want to go Peter looked over his shoulder and noticed that another student of Jesus name John was following Peter pointed to him and said “What about him?”
And Jesus replied, “What is that to you?”
“Follow me.”
And he calls us to do the same. He says there will be times in life where you will be led to a place you don't want to go. And some of us are there now or will be one day. Some of us are physically in a place where we do not want to be. Were suffering from some kind of chronic pain. Or some of us are socially in a place where we do not want to be. Maybe we long to be in a certain kind of relationship and that just doesn't happen for us. Or maybe we are in a relationship with someone that we wish were different. Or maybe were not in the place we want to be spiritually. Perhaps we sense this absence of God's presence or absence of his action.
Jesus says to us expect suffering. When it comes (assuming that you're not being led to step out of the suffering and you may be led to step out of the suffering different sermon) embraced allow me to refine you through the suffering. Finally he says as she suffer keep your eyes on the, don't compare yourself to John or Jane, follow me.
How can we stretch out our arms and follow Jesus and through our suffering?
We can do this because Jesus stretched out his arms for us on the cross and he suffered for us he bore our sins in his body, he allowed himself to be utterly separated from his father God for us for us and when we realize that Jesus has stretched out his arms and suffering for us so that we could be forgiven so that we we could be reunited with God when we realize that that is what he has done for us then we can stretch out our arms and be willing to follow him through suffering…
And as we do so we do so in the faith that is the Scriptures tell us if we suffer with him we will also rise and reign with him.
As Rocky said, "you can get a hit hard in life.”
But as the first century Rocky said we can keep moving forward as we expect suffering, as we embrace it in the knowledge that God will transform us through the suffering, and as we keep our eyes on Jesus and follow the one who suffered for us.
Pray:

Knowing God(8May2011)Mothers' Day

2 Peter 1 M2 11 05 8 (Mothers’ Day)
Title: Knowing God
Text: 2 Peter 1:1-8
BIG IDEA: By adding “heart and head knowledge of God” to our faith we can grow more like Jesus Christ.
Props—tin soldier, 2 Maps, compass
INTRODUCTION
Rory was a pediatrician. He led the hospital’s intensive care unit for babies. He was also a workaholic who was hardly ever at home – he typically slept at the hospital on average 20 nights a month. He didn't know the names of his children's friends or even the name of the family dog. When someone asked him where the back door to the house was, he turned to ask his wife, Lisa.
When Rory and Lisa went to see Dr. John Gottman, a highly respected marriage therapist, for counsel – Dr. Gottman encouraged Rory to create what Gottman calls a “love map.”
A love map is Gottman's term for the part of our brain that stores all the relevant information about our spouse’s (or partner’s or friend’s) life. A love map contains information about your partner's life history, daily routines, likes, and dislikes, hopes and dreams.
For example, if a couple hopes to meet up for dinner at a restaurant and he's running behind, if your love map is well-developed, she'll know what kind of salad dressing he would like. Or if he's on his way home and decides to swing by Blockbusters, he'll know what kind of DVD she wants to watch. If his love map is well developed and they are about to participate in a family reunion together, he will know what relative she feels closest to and the ones she feels most uncomfortable around. She'll know what his hopes and dreams are.
According to Gottman’s extensive research, if we have a detailed love map into our partner (or friend’s) lives, we will have a happier relationship and will be able to weather difficult life passages such as having a baby or losing a parent. The knowledge a person has about their partner (or friend) makes a huge difference – it acts as a powerful predictor as to whether the relationship would thrive or fail.
And so it is in our relationship with God – a powerful factor that will help us determine the quality of our relationship with God is our love map or personal knowledge of God –and we will unpack more of what knowledge of God means in this sermon.
If you have your Bibles please turn to Second Peter, Chapter 1:
2 Peter 1
1 Simon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ,
To those who through the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ have received a faith as precious as ours:
2 Grace and peace be yours in abundance through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.
Confirming One’s Calling and Election
3 His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. 4 Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.
5 For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; 6 and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; 7 and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love. 8 For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
In verse 1 Peter says: “To those who through the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ have received a faith as precious as ours…”
This is a remarkable statement. Here in verse 1 Peter is saying that we can have an experience with God as life-changing as Peter did—extraordinary. As Mardi noted last week, Peter was one of Jesus’ closest disciples, along with James and John. He had seen Jesus in the flesh. He had heard his voice. He had touched him with his hands. He had seen Jesus raise a man named Lazarus to life after he had been dead four days.
On the night that Jesus was betrayed by Judas, it was clear that Jesus’ life was in grave danger. Peter followed him. But then when he was approached by three different people who asked “Are you one of Jesus’ followers?” Peter denied three times that he knew Jesus and wept bitterly as a result. And yet after Jesus rose from the dead, he experienced Jesus’ forgiveness.
And then on the day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit was released on the earth, Peter was filled with the Spirit and preached a bold, impromptu sermon about Jesus Christ. 3000 people gave their lives to Jesus Christ. 3000. And a church of about 150 at the time grew to more than 3000.
Peter is saying in verse 1, “You can have a faith just as life-changing as mine through the work of our God and Savior Jesus Christ.” Peter clearly affirms here, by the way, that Jesus Christ is God. Then he says, “Grace and peace to you to many times over through the knowledge of God and Jesus Christ.” In verse 2 the way that Peter is using the word “knowledge” is not just head knowledge, but it implies personal knowledge, experience with Jesus Christ. Sometimes the Scriptures use the word “knowledge” in a kind of an intellectual, cognitive knowledge. (We will talk more about that later.) The Bible also uses the term “knowledge” to mean to “know intimately and personally. And that is the way Peter is using the word “knowledge” here. He is saying, “Grace and peace to you many times over as you deepen your personal knowledge and experience with Jesus Christ.”
Having affirmed the role of God's grace in their lives, he now calls on them to respond to God's grace. He says: “For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; 6 and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; 7 and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love.” Peter then writes, “My brothers and sisters, make every effort to confirm your calling and election” (1:5-7).
On our own, we cannot come into a deep personal knowledge of Christ, but God has invited us to play a role in our spiritual progress.
On our own, we cannot manufacture a relationship with another human being. But as Gary Chapman has pointed out in his popular book, The Five Languages of Love, there are certain practices that we can engage in that can help us foster a deeper connection with someone: we spend quality time with the person; we can offer them words of affirmation, appropriate touch, gifts, and acts of service.
In the same way we cannot manufacture a deeper relationship with God, but there are certain things we can do to encourage a deepening relationship with him.
This is why Peter, after he talks about the grace of God flowing freely into our lives, encourages us to make every effort to do what we can to build on the grace that God has given us.
Peter is saying we have received grace, an unmerited gift from Jesus Christ that can and will change our life, so now build on what we have been given, complementing our relationship with him, our trust in him by becoming a good person – not just a person who does good things, but a person who is good – Mardi talked about that last Sunday.
“Grace,” as Dallas Willard observes, “is not opposed to effort, but earning.”
We will focus in on the word “knowledge” today.
The word “knowledge” shows more than once in our passage. Let's look at the way the word “knowledge” is used in verse 2.
If we go back to verse 2, we see the word “knowledge.” Peter speaks of the knowledge of God and Jesus our Lord. Here, the way Peter is using the word “knowledge,” as we alluded to a few minutes ago, refers not only to intellectual knowledge, but to an intimate relationship with God which is a result of being transformed through a personal encounter with Jesus Christ.
It is a knowledge that enables us, as Peter says in verse 4, to participate in Jesus’ divine nature. This means, that while we do not become God as Mardi clarified last Sunday, but, in a mysterious way, as our lives are joined to Jesus Christ's we are filled with his Holy Spirit and begin to take on some of the essential qualities of God. Participating in Jesus’ divine nature means that we actually become like him.
In Mere Christianity C. S. Lewis writes, “God doesn't want to make us ‘nice people’ but ‘new people.’”
Did you ever think, when you were a child, what fun it would be if your toys could come to life—sort of like in Toy Story?
Lewis says take a tin soldier and turn it into a real in-the-flesh human being (use prop).
I can become nicer if I'm making an effort, studying etiquette and manners. When Robert was a trader at Goldman Sachs, he was told by a superior that he was very talented and had great potential to advance in the firm but that he was seen as a jerk. He was impatient, abrupt, and rude. So he worked on being nicer and as a result he was promoted and eventually became a senior executive in the company. But Robert became nicer out of self-interest and as a result of self-effort.
But God's intention isn't to make you a nicer person, but a new person – a new person you can become through a relationship with him. In Peter's words a new person because you are a "participant in the divine nature."
Let me now give a couple of examples of what becoming a new person looks like:
John Wesley, the famous preacher and founder of the Methodist Church, was in many ways a very devout undergraduate student at Oxford. He connected with a number of his fellow students who wanted to seek God and organized them into a group called The Holy Club. No joke…The Holy Club. Not the most marketable name today. The name of the club suggested that they wanted to live lives of disciplined purity before God. They regularly prayed. They studied the Scriptures. They regularly took Holy Communion. They went to the local prisons to visit the prisoners. They prayed with people who were dying from tuberculosis, which was a deadly disease in their day.
After John Wesley graduated from Oxford, he went on a mission to the mission field of Georgia which was at the time a relatively newly inhabited colony. He was preaching to the First Nations People, but on his trip back to England on the ship he wrote in his journal: “I went to America to convert the Indians, but, oh, who will convert me?” Back in England he was sitting in a small group and someone was reading Martin Luther’s preface to the book of Romans, which was actually so boring, but God used the reading of those words to open up Wesley’s heart, and allowed him to sense God ‘s forgiveness of his sin. He wrote in his journal: “My heart was strangely warmed.”
His conversion was summarized well in his brother Charles’s famous hymn, And Can It Be. Verse 4 begins
Long my imprisoned spirit lay,
Fast bound in sin and nature’s night;
Thine eye diffused a quickening ray—
I woke, the dungeon flamed with light;
My chains fell off, my heart was free,
I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.
My chains fell off, my heart was free,
I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.
The knowledge of God that Peter speaks about refers to an intimate and personal knowledge of God so that we become a new person, a participant in God's very nature.
Let me give an example that is a bit more contemporary.
My friend, Joanna Mockler, shared with me about her own conversion to Christ. Joanna had attended an elite women’s college on the East coast. She was very sophisticated and skeptical about religion. She married a man named Coleman who went on to become the Chief Executive Officer of the Gillette Corporation.
While Joanna was in her 30s, a mother of young children and a full-time homemaker, she told me she was a little bit bored. So when someone in her neighbourhood invited her to participate in a small group Bible study, Joanna thought, “I am too smart and sophisticated to believe in this stuff, but this would be a good way to have some adult conversation.” So she joined. They began studying the gospels and Joanna told me that she, for some reason, believed in the resurrection and Jesus, but could not believe in the miracles. But she was deeply impressed by Jesus.
One day she was in her kitchen and she just started to weep. She said to Jesus, “I believe in you, but I don’t love you.” In that moment her heart was opened and changed. Now she is person who deeply loves Jesus and makes a profound difference in the world with the lives of underprivileged children. She serves as an active trustee for World Vision International.
Joanna experienced a personal, intimate knowledge of God, which enabled her to become a participant in God's nature, a knowledge that made her new.
Jonathan Edwards, the great preacher and theologian in New England in the 18th century, wrote in his book, Religious Affections, that it is possible to have a deep respect for the power of God, and yet not know him personally. The only way you can truly love God’s holiness is if you know him personally.
So the question I want raise gently is not “Do you respect for God’s power?” It is possible to have respect for God’s power and to not know him personally. But do you truly love him and his holy purity in a personal intimate relationship with him? Is he precious to you?
When the apostle Peter talks about knowledge in vs. 2, he is talking about this personal, intimate, life-changing knowledge that springs out of a relationship. Here in verse 5 this personal intimate knowledge of God is assumed by Peter. Then he says, “…add to your faith goodness, and to your goodness knowledge.”
The Greek word Peter uses for knowledge here in vs. 5 is a general one. Knowledge can apply to almost any area of life. A person can be knowledgeable about history, cars, or snowboarding. Here, he is not talking about just knowledge in general, and not even the intimate knowledge of God he speaks about in verse 2.
Here, the best commentators point out he is likely referring to the ability to discern God’s will and to align one’s life in accordance with God’s will. Knowing and doing God's will is part of what enables us to grow deeper in our relationship with God. In John 14 Jesus said, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments and I will love you and show myself to you.”
The path to knowing God personally comes primarily through prayer…surrendering our self to him…over and over… attuning ourselves to his voice.
But because our capacity to discern God's voice through our intuition is limited, if we rely only on prayer to know God, we may find ourselves spiritually drifting into a kind of amorphous spirituality.
While personal knowledge of God does come primarily through prayer, our knowledge of what God's will is comes primarily through the Word.
We need both. We need the heart knowledge of God that comes through vital prayer life, but we also need what we might call an intellectual knowledge of God's will which comes primarily through the word of God.
To put it in simplistic terms, there's a danger in being all heart – a danger of drifting into a vague subjective spirituality... There's also a danger in being all head… Having a perfect theology, but a frozen heart. So we need both: prayer, but also the Word. We need prayer to warm our hearts and we need the Word to ground and guide us.
I am just a beginner sailor, but I remember being out on the water with my instructor Bob – who is truly a master sailor – and asking him if it would be possible – way down the road – if he could teach me how to navigate by the stars.
I remember him saying, "I know it sounds great to be able to navigate by the stars, but it's not a good way to find your direction. Depending on the time of year, where you are in the world, the stars slightly may appear different to you.” You are better off with a compass and map." (use prop) "What about a GPS?" I asked. "GPS is good– but sometimes a satellite is down or your battery may die or lightning may harm your GPS—so you're actually better off mastering the old way – use the compass and map to locate yourself.”
So it is for us. It may sound romantic and cool to navigate our life "by the stars" – I don't mean in a New Agey kind of way, but by using our powers of observation and intuition to make our way through life. But as is true of the sailor, sometimes our observations and intuition are skewed by our life circumstances so we make a poor judgment, a judgment not based on reality, but on our perception of reality.
So we need a compass, we need a map to guide us.
And the Scriptures are a God-given time-tested life map for us.
Now I'm aware that certain people have a knee-jerk reaction against the Bible. They find that it is filled with all kinds of offensive things. A couple weeks ago, for example, I heard someone object to the Bible because of the story about a man named Jephthah in the book of Judges who asked God to help him in a battle against the Ammonites and then promised to offer the first thing he will see him when he returned home from battle as a sacrifice to God. The first thing Jephthah sees when he comes back home from his victorious battle is his daughter—who walks out the door to meet him. He ends up sacrificing her to God (which was a fairly common practice among the people who practiced pagan religions in his day).
The person who was offended by this story assumed that it was God's will for Jephthah to sacrifice his daughter. But, as Dan Matheson pointed out last summer in his sermon on Jephthah, Jephthah was not following God's will in sacrificing his daughter, he was in fact clearly contradicting God's word in Deuteronomy 12 to not sacrifice your children. The story of Jephthah is not the kind of story where God says follow the example of Jephthah, go and do likewise. No, it is a tale of warning of what not to do. Or what can happen when we don’t know the Word, but only the practices of our culture.
If we are new to the Scriptures, we need to be careful not to judge Scripture too quickly. Scriptures do have stories of atrocity, examples of people who are full of contradiction – but the Bible is not necessarily endorsing these things or people—someone is just describing them.
Part of what it will mean for us to grow in the knowledge of God is to not too hastily dismiss Scripture because of things that appear on the surface to be problematic.
Tim Keller, one of my teachers and someone who served as an important mentor to me particularly when I was a new pastor here has said:
“Many years ago, when I first started reading the Book of Genesis, it was very upsetting to me. Here are all these spiritual heroes—Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph—and look at how they treat women. They engage in polygamy, and they buy and sell their wives. It was awful to read their stories at times. But then I read Robert Alter's \The Art of Biblical Narrative. Alter is a Jewish scholar at Berkeley whose expertise is ancient Jewish literature. In his book he says there are two institutions present in the Book of Genesis that were universal in ancient cultures: polygamy and primogeniture. Polygamy said a husband could have multiple wives, and primogeniture said the oldest son got everything—all the power, all the money. In other words, the oldest son basically ruled over everyone else in the family. Alter points out that when you read the Book of Genesis, you'll see two things. First of all, in every generation polygamy wreaks havoc. Having multiple wives is an absolute disaster—socially, culturally, spiritually, emotionally, psychologically, and relationally. Second, when it comes to primogeniture, in every generation God favors the younger son over the older. He favors Abel, not Cain; Isaac, not Ishmael; Jacob, not Esau. Alter says that you begin to realize what the Book of Genesis is doing—it is subverting, not supporting, those ancient institutions at every turn.
When I read Alter's book, I then reread the Book of Genesis and loved it. And then it hit me: What if when I was younger, I had abandoned my trust in the Bible because of these accounts in Genesis? What if I had drop-kicked the Bible and the Christian faith, missing out on a personal relationship with Christ—all because I couldn't understand the behaviour of the patriarchs? The lesson is simple: Be patient with the text. Consider the possibility that it might not be teaching what you think it's teaching.”
Because the Bible was written in a time in cultures that were very different from our own, there are certain passages that are very difficult for us to understand. It can be helpful to take time to study some of the historical background and context and the author’s original intent in writing a particular book in Scripture.
But there are parts of the Scriptures that are really clear to understand and bother us. It was Mark Twain who said,
“It ain't those parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand.”
Part of what it means to allow the Scriptures to lead us into the knowledge of God and into the knowledge of his will for us is to allow it to challenge us at some point.
Before I speak or write something that will be circulated in public, I always vet my material past at least one other person – and it's usually a small group of people.
I tell them while I appreciate your affirmation, what is really most helpful is if you would challenge me on my thinking. I will not be able to grow or learn if you don't feel comfortable disagreeing with me and even challenging me.
Many of us here have the same attitude. Whether it's something we've written, whether it's our form as we do Pilates or yoga – we want people to give us their honest feedback and even challenge is so we can improve.
How much more should we allow the God to do that through the Scriptures for us!
If we don't trust the Bible enough to let it challenge and correct our thinking, how could we ever have a personal relationship with God? In any truly personal relationship, the other person has to be able to contradict you. For example, to borrow an illustration from my teacher Tim, if a wife is not allowed to contradict her husband, they won't have an intimate relationship. Remember the movie The Stepford Wives? (show jacket)



The husbands decide to have their wives turned into robots who never cross the wills of their husbands. A Stepford wife was wonderfully compliant and beautiful, but no one would describe such a marriage as intimate or personal.
Now, what happens if you eliminate anything from the Bible that offends your sensibility and crosses your will? If you pick and choose what you want to believe and reject the rest, how will you ever have a God who can contradict you? You won't! You'll have a Stepford God! A God, essentially of your own making, and not a God with whom you can have a relationship and genuine interaction. Only if your God can say things that outrage you and make you struggle (as in a real friendship or marriage!) will you know that you have gotten hold of a real God and not a figment of your imagination. So an authoritative Bible is not the enemy of a personal relationship with God. It is the precondition for it.
The Book of Isaiah reminds us:
8 “For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,”
declares the LORD.
9 “As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.
The purpose of our knowledge of God is not knowledge for the sake of knowledge—that according to the Bible simply "puffs us up” (1 Cor. 8:1), but knowledge for the purpose of knowing God and his son Jesus Christ more deeply and becoming like him.
Peter says:
3 His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness… so that through them we may participate in his divine nature…( 2 Peter 1:3)
Peter was one of the disciples that was closest to Jesus... He walked on water. He was used by Jesus to draw many people into our friendship with Jesus... Peter is calling us into a relationship with Jesus that was as intimate as his…
We can have this by having a heart knowledge of God through prayer and by having a head knowledge of God through his Word….
Do you want a relationship with God as close as Peter’s?
If so, are have you become a new person—someone who participates in the divine nature?
How’s your love map with God? Are you growing in your knowledge of God? Do you know Jesus’ likes, dislikes, what concerns him, what his hopes and dreams are for you, for the world?
Are you growing in your love map of Jesus, your knowledge of him through both prayer and the word?
Let’s pray:
I am offering you a prayer from Peter’s friend and fellow apostle Paul:
Paul in Colossians a writes:
9 For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you. We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives,10 so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God (Colossians 1:9-10).