Our Gracious Resources in Christ 2 Peter 1:1-11 (Part Two)
Pp. 4-5 Knowing the truth and doing the truth
HEART GARRISONED BY PROMISES: The transition between verses 4 and 5 is a very seamless transition. So Spiritual happiness is not merely knowing the things of the Gospel and its promises, but doing them. It is not of knowing in theory or abstraction, but in a spiritual sense of tasting, partaking, feeding upon, communing with, so that your life direction is carved out by these promises. One Divine described it this way, “my heart is cast into the mold of doctrine and my mind has embraced this doctrine. Therefore, my spiritual sense of these promises turns as a dynamo in my heart. Consequently I commune with God and my heart is guarded, garrisoned and protected from the assaults of temptation.”
So do you see how that works? The truths of these promises shape the heart. And the sense of these promises turns like a powerful dynamo in the heart and you are communing with God and the heart is guarded against temptation as a result. This is what it means to serve God as a living stone in His temple.
Now here is the connection that must be made, especially as a way to overcome how young men are thinking today even at our own college. When you serve God as a living stone in His temple, THE ROLE OF ‘ESCAPEES’ AS GLORY REFLECTORS: as an escapee from the corruption that is in the world by lust, your life exists to display God’s glory. It exists to display His moral majesty. You are a reflector of what God is like in His character. That means in your relationships, your personal holiness is bringing honor to God’s holiness. This happens by means of communing with the Lord. And it’s very sad that believers that are deadly serious about doing this are sometimes accused of being legalists. Brethren, it’s all about the fact that we perceive God’s glory, we behold God’s glory and then we become like our Lord. This is a principle of transformation described in 2 Corinthians 3:18.
Now, in some ways many of these young men may not be to blame because they have grown up in churches where there is tremendous weakness in these things today. The very Greek word used for “knowledge of the Lord” is epiginosko. That means a deep, familiar, personal knowledge of the Lord. And that is the exact opposite of having your head crammed with notions. I think of a funny story, and I hope it’s not a cruel story, about a Christian couple I knew when I went to seminary with the guy. They had a newborn baby and in order to sleep at night, and not be awakened every hour, they would feed as much oatmeal to their little baby as he could possibly eat before going to bed and his stomach was so full that they wouldn’t get a wakeup call for feeding until about 3 or 4 in the morning. So they were at least guaranteed 5 or so hours of uninterrupted sleep. In some ways this is like some of our young men in their churches today. Their heads are crammed with notions and they are too full of academic information to have any hunger for good spiritual food. There ought to be a warning about this. If you are interested in academic things but you don’t have a passion to obey Christ and walk closely with Him, that’s a dangerous place to be. If there is no soul yearning and no panting after God, then perhaps you are just controlled by notions (by a vague ‘God concept’). That’s a far cry from what the Bible spells out: we must be transformed by our knowledge of the Lord.
Our second weakness in the church today is that it is assumed that if you know the truth, you are fine. Of course this presents a huge disconnect between knowing the truth and actually living the truth. And so we must close that disconnect; we must close that breach. Because in reality, as John Frame says so well, “You only know what you do. You only know that truth you are living, doing and practicing. Other than that it’s simply an abstract idea, you don’t really know it.” And so the Psalmist tells us in numerous places, “how I love Thy testimonies. I love to do Thy testimonies.” To truly know them is to do them.
Then number 3, another weakness in the local church today is that if we don’t have members who are absolutely diligent about being conformed to the truth through proactive obedience so that the truth keeps intersecting their life and making penetrating applications and becoming a very crossroads in their life over and over again. Your redeemed heart was created anew to take in beams of divine glory from the Word of grace.
YOUR RE-CREATED HEART WAS FORMED TO TAKE IN BEAMS OF GLORY: If you don’t have assiduous meditation on the Word, if you don’t have fervent prayer, if you don’t exercise intensity in dwelling upon the truths of Scripture, there will be no streams of glory flooding into your mind and heart. And the whole prospect of Christianity’s proposals will just be way too tasteless for you—you will likely settle back into a vague God concept and then take your hunger for glory to created things.
For God has created yearnings for glory and excellence in us that can only be fulfilled by Himself. And if we take these God-created yearnings for glory and excellence to created things, to something finite in the creation, that immediately becomes idolatrous. You see idols are ready and waiting. They make their sensual overtures to us. They make their appeal to our soul’s hunger and then our flesh proposes these idols as if they can actually satisfy.
A fourth weakness in the church today is that the pursuit of Christian character is seen as pushing the envelope perhaps further than is needed. And so there is a real disconnect between Christian character and the glory of God. There is a real disconnect between Christian character and actually caring for and maintaining our relationship with God. Now this is an indispensable aspect of communing with Him so as to make sure that your life is ordered as to reflect His glory. Scripture tells us in numerous places that we are to cultivate a lowly spirit, a lowliness of mind, humility. A spirit of contrition is described in Isaiah 57 and 66. And this commitment to holiness is absolutely vital to our reflecting the glory of God. But this commitment to holiness is not simply private piety. It is to be carried out in our relationships. We are cleansed unto brotherly love, according to I Peter 1:20-25. So we just want to repeat here that pursuing Christian character and the care of our relationship with God belong together.
TO HAVE SEEN THE GLORY OF GOD IN THE PROMISES IS TO NEVER BE THE SAME PERSON AGAIN: If you have seen the glory of God, you will never be the same person. To have seen the glory of God is to have your self love will receive a deadly wound. To see the glory of God is to repent of your idols and your false treasure. To see the glory of God is to begin treasuring God as your true treasure. So the question we are seeking to answer this morning is this: how is your resolute pursuit of holiness tied to the glory of God? Answer: you exist for His glory and honor. You exist to know His glory, you exist to reflect His glory, you exist to have a passion for His glory and you exist to find your highest delight in His glory. It is for this reason you were created, it is why you are here. This is an all-consuming life direction. To know Him and make Him known is the only way to be God-ward.
One of the main areas young men find that their progress in holiness is countered is in the area of sexual purity. Men certainly acknowledge that this is a place in which they are neutralized so easily. In fact discouragement in this area blocks many men from attempting to serve Christ and the discouragement can be so strong that it can greatly impede their growth. This is why we need to be in each other’s lives.
THE INFINITE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE LURE OF THE WORLD AND ETERNAL GLORY: We live in a culture that worships sex, youth, self-esteem, vigor, beauty, brains, power, possessions, pleasure and especially self-esteem, fame and celebrity status. Now all these things deny the glory of God. All these things are temporal values that are ego based and idolatrous. They all deny the very glory of God and God revealed. So the issue today is, for young men who are following Christ, how can we pass through this life and pass through this world without being ensnared by these things. It says in Psalm 49 that if we are occupied with temporal values that we are like the beasts that perish. We are ‘beast-like’, like an animal, because we have not been controlled by eternal values. But we agree with the witness of the apostles that Christ, the eternal life, has invaded time, space, mass, history to give life to dying men and women (1 John 1:1-3).
So what is the true Church? It is a body of believers who have life in Christ in common. We are to speak into each other’s lives constantly and on a regular basis. And one of the things we exhort one another in is the Gospel itself. We must be always explaining to one another that the Gospel gives us permission to keep going to God for more grace. Especially when you feel discouraged, defeated and unworthy, you must keep going to God for more grace. This of course is taught in the last two verses of Hebrews 2 and Hebrews 4. We have a great High Priest who is willing to pour out mercy and grace upon us in time of need. He is willing to run to our cry. So we could express it this way: we need to encourage each other to excel at receiving God’s love. We need to encourage one another to believe these gracious Gospel promises. For God has created yearnings for glory and excellence in us that can only be fulfilled by Himself. And if we take these God-created yearnings for glory and excellence to created things, to something finite in the creation, that immediately becomes idolatrous. You see idols are ready and waiting. They make their sensual overtures to us. They make their appeal to our soul’s hunger and then our flesh proposes these idols as if they can actually satisfy.
This is misdirected worship, it is dysfunctional worship, it is misdirected soul hunger. We need to know that our hearts are restless. They can commit truancy so easily. And God warns us that if we fix our minds on sensual and temporal things we become and enemy of the cross of Christ because the cross of Christ is designed to disengage us from the love of the world and to actually connect us to the love of God, which is taught in Galatians 6:14. And so when we fall into lust we are actually worshiping a glory pointer and not the God of glory. In other words, there are many beautiful things in the creation, one of which is a woman’s body. We are not to worship the glory pointer, but the God of glory.
Well let me just briefly recite the steps that take place when a young man, or older man, falls into sensual lust. The first thing that’s done is that the sexual, sensual pleasure; the erotic cord is untangled from the other cords which God has given in marital love. That would be covenant spirituality: one flesh, the bond. Second, you reach out to touch the erotic in your mind, or physically, and it’s like touching a mirage. Your hand passes through it; there is no content there. And like a mirage, it cannot satisfy any thirst. There is nothing but hot, dry sand there. Number three, by objectifying the gift, pulling it from its covenant context, and demanding that it deliver glory, demanding that it deliver transcendence, demanding that it deliver glory to your soul’s hunger only can bring ultimate dissatisfaction, shame and guilt. Number four, if you go after the gift for its own sake rather than appreciating God’s legal pleasures for His own glory, it can become a bond upon us as well. And number five, every legal gift that God has given, every legal pleasure, can become a false integration point if we try to make it stand on its own and we don’t love it of appreciate it for the sake of Christ.
We can sum this up by saying if you bring your soul’s hunger for beauty, unity, integration, joy and excellence to finite created things that can easily become and idolatrous lust or a ruling lust. Well the answer to all this is to aim your faith at God and then through the Gospel to receive the fact that God is communicating Himself to us in Christ. He wants to give us Himself. He wants to satisfy us with Himself, He is giving us His majesty. Our hearts are created to be captivated, thrilled, awed and brought into wonder by God Himself, the One who loves the saints.
THE DIVINE CAPITAL STANDING BEHIND GOD’S PROMISSORY NOTES: And so we would close this morning by saying this, that all the promises, all these magnificent and excellent and glorious promises that God has given us of being partakers of the divine nature, of being escapees from the corruption of the world by lust, promises which take us from dust to glory, promises of love and glory and reconciliation, adoption, justification and acceptance. These are like a series of promissory notes, like a check you write from the bank. These promissory notes or checks depend upon the fact that there is a principal in the bank, there is a deposit. There is capital that stands behind the promissory notes. And according to the Word of God, all the promises of God are yes and amen in Christ. In other words all the promises of God are like promissory notes, which have the atonement of Christ standing behind them. That is the principal. That is the capital. If you do not possess an ongoing interest in the capital, if you don’t possess an ongoing interest, and by interest there I don’t mean attraction or curiosity, but I mean possession. If you do not possess the blood of Christ on your conscience, you have nothing. If you do possess the blood of Christ on your conscience you have everything and all those promissory notes to you are good.