Let's pray. Oh Lord, again, we ask for your help. We have no interest in wasting our time and just marking the minutes until seven o'clock. We want to learn something from your word. We want you to teach us. Perhaps it is a simple reminder. Or maybe something even more. Maybe today is the day of salvation for someone or in these next moments you will speak in a powerful way to bring us back from the path of wandering to the path of life. Help us, Lord. Give me humble heart and lips as I speak and give us ears to hear in Jesus' name. Amen. We come to the end of second Peter, reading the last several verses from chapter 3 verses 14 through 18. Second Peter 3 verses 14 through 18. Therefore, beloved, since you are waiting for these, be diligent to be found by him without spots or blemish in that peace. And count the patience of our Lord as salvation. Just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters, there are some things in them that are hard to understand which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction as they do the other scriptures. You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, take care that you are not carried away with the error of lawless people and lose your own stability, but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and save your Jesus Christ to him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity. Amen. This morning we looked at three questions about the day of the Lord, this day of judgment and salvation that is coming. We asked the question, why has it not yet come, what will happen when it does come, and how are we to live and view of its coming. And these last several verses, really direct our attention again to that third question you see in verse 14, since you are waiting. And it tells us what we ought to do as we wait, be diligent, to be found by him without spot or blemish and to be at peace. Or as verse 11 put it earlier, since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness. Both verse 11 and verse 14 underscore the big theme which hopefully you have gotten by now in this book that we are to grow in godliness. That is the theme of this last paragraph and the big theme for the whole book. We are going to come back to that in a bit, but I want to start by taking a bit of a detour and I think it's a warranted detour because Peter takes this detour and speaking about Paul in verses 15 and 16. Look there, right in the middle of this closing summons to holiness, Peter veers off to talk about the writings of Paul. And so let's go off track with him for a moment. Now on one level, Peter is simply saying, Paul agrees with me and not with the false teachers. That's the big point. But in the course of saying that he makes some very crucial claims about scripture. We have in these two little verses some massively important truths about the doctrine of scripture. Look at four of them quickly. Number one, we see that Paul's writings are to be regarded as scripture. Look at verse 16 says, some people are twisting Paul's letters into the verse as they do the other scriptures. The Greek word is graffiti. It occurs 49 other times in the New Testament and in every instant it refers to the Old Testament scripture. So it's remarkable that Peter writing probably some time in the 60s, AD, would place Paul's writings alongside the Old Testament as equally authoritative. They're on the same plane. That is some claim to me. In what's even more remarkable, did you notice? It doesn't seem to be a controversial statement. With everything else that Peter is saying and defending and proving, he just sort of throws this out as if everyone agrees with it already because they must have. He's stating the obvious in his mind. In other words, this was not a point of contention in the early church. He didn't need to convince these churches that Paul's writings were authoritative on the level of Old Testament scripture. Apparently they already recognize that. Assume that already treated Paul's writings in that way. So when Peter refers in verse 15 to the wisdom given to Paul, his divine inspiration, he can then say in verse 16, you know, just like the other scriptures. That's an amazing thing to say that already this, we see the Old Testament canon is going to be expanded and it's going to include these other writings, chiefly in his mind here, the writings of Paul. Second, notice, scripture can be hard to understand. Take some comfort in that. Someone as impressive a church leader as the apostle Peter says, here are some things that Paul writes. They're kind of tough to understand. That should be some encouragement for us. Have you ever found some things in Paul's letters that are hard to understand? As Christians, we believe in what's called the clarity, or the fancy word, is the perspicuity of scripture, which simply means clarity, and for a word that means clarity is not very clear, but the perspicuity of scripture. Now that doesn't mean that everything in every verse of the Bible is immediately obvious. That without any training, without any study, you just can fold open your Bible and some obscure passage in Ezekiel. There it is, it makes sense, or you can just open to any of Paul's letters, and it's obvious what he's talking about. That's not what we believe about the clarity of scripture. Rather, it means the basic, most central points of the biblical storyline are going to be understandable. So we can see, as I heard one pastor say, one time that the plain things are the main things and the main things are the plain things. And yet, that doesn't mean that some passages aren't going to be difficult or require some intense study or be helped by reading commentaries or learning from the tradition of the church or understanding the original languages. Some doctrines are complicated, and some parts of the Bible, though the main message of scripture is so simple that a child can grasp it, there are parts that are difficult. That should give us some comfort. There's the third thing, and it's the flip side of that second point. Even with the hard parts in the Bible, there still are right interpretations and wrong interpretations. So you notice what Peter says. There are some things that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction. To notice, Peter does not say, as if he were a good postmodern, well, some things in Paul are hard to understand. So who's really to say what is right and what is wrong? After all, we all have our own interpretations. That's not what he says. He says, some things are difficult, and the ignorant, the unstable, they twist them. In other words, yes, they're hard, but he knows that their interpretation is a wrong interpretation. The labor of this point, because it's easy, and sometimes we can wear it as sort of a badge of Christian humility. Just say, well, you know a lot of smart people disagree about this. Well, it's true, but you're going to find smart people with degrees who disagree about every verse in the Bible, and every doctrine that you hold precious in the scriptures. So if you just say, well, you know, predestination, that's a tough one, and I guess I'm never really going to come to a decision on that. Or you know what? It seems like there's a lot of disagreement about homosexuality. Or I just can't make sense of what the Bible says about men and women and gender. So I guess we just all have our own interpretations. Not so fast. Is that humility, or is that perhaps intellectual laziness? Now, listen carefully. There are certainly points of doctrine and points of our understanding where we have to say, I don't fully understand how this all comes together. Here's, you know, you could listen to a month worth of lectures on the Trinity and still have questions because God is beyond our complete understanding. So that's not what Peter is saying. But he is telling us that we should not give up too easily. That though these false teachers have their own interpretations, he says quickly, those interpretations, they're wrong. Now, obviously, there are going to be some things that we do have to agree to disagree. It doesn't mean that every disagreement and point of doctrine is equally serious, but it does mean that we must press in intellectually, thoughtfully, to try to discern what is the best interpretation, which leads to a fourth point about Scripture. Some wrong interpretations can kill you. There is certainly room for disagreement among Christians about some issues. You see this for example in Romans 14 and Paul says there are some disagreements about holidays and about foods that you can eat, and there are some certain things that you have to say let each person be convinced in his own mind. We don't have to be lockstep on every debatable matter. But there are some issues where wrong interpretations are not just wrong, but they're deadly. Look again, verse 16, some things hard to understand which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction. He doesn't just say, well, they got a wrong interpretation, but it's not a big deal. He says, actually, their wrong understanding of Scripture is on a pathway to destruction. I've been in debate settings before where both sides use Bible verses, and sometimes it happens that good people get sort of confused and say, well, if they both use the Bible, then I guess both sides must be okay. But if you study church history, you know that Augustine and Polesius or Athanasius and the Arians, they were always using Bible verses on both sides. Peter says, you can use Scripture. You can have a Bible verse, but be using it in such a misguided, unfaithful, twisted way that it's not God's fault. It's not Scripture's fault, but you've twisted it to your own destruction. Some wrong interpretations can kill you. Again, not every issue is this serious, but certainly they are when we are talking about the sort of issues that undergird Peter's lessons for us in this letter. Remember, he's talking often about sexual sin, about moving away from the authority of God and his word to twist the Bible in these matters is profoundly serious, to call light darkness or darkness light, to call what the Bible says is sin and make it a blessing is to spin the Scriptures to your own destruction. Which leads us back from that detour, which Peter gave me permission to take, because he did it first, now back to the big theme in the conclusion of this book, which is, as we've been hearing week after week, godliness. I wonder if most of us do not take seriously, certainly not as seriously as we should. The Bible is called to personal holiness. Now I know I caught us all off guard when I asked you at the beginning to give a New Year's resolution, and maybe you haven't given any thought to that in the first three days, and that's fine, and maybe you don't even have one, that's okay. I do wonder if any of us have, as a goal in this New Year, that we might become more like Christ, that we might pursue growth and godliness. Many of us are too at peace with worldliness in our homes, too at ease, with sin in our lives, too content, with spiritual immaturity in our churches. Have you ever noticed all the passages which spell out so clearly that one of the main purposes for which Christ saved you? Is that you might be holy? Second Corinthians 5, 15, Christ died, that those who lived might no longer live for themselves, but for him who for their sakes died and was raised. That's one of the reasons Christ died, so I would not live for myself. Ephesians 1-4, we were chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy, the purpose clause. Titus 2-14, Christ gave Himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and purify for Himself a people for His own possession who are zealous for good works. JC Ryle, the bishop of Liverpool from the 19th century, put it well, we must be holy, because this is one grand end and purpose for which Christ came into the world. Jesus is a complete savior. He does not merely take away the guilt of a believer's sin. He does more. He breaks its power. In other words, Christians do you understand not only what Christ has saved you from, but what Christ has saved you too? Oh, we all like the from. He saved us from wrath. He saved us from the devil, but he has saved you too. Holiness, and don't think, well, I'm not really interested in that, that's to want only half a savior, only half of the blessing of our union with Christ, which is to have both justification and sanctification. I wonder how intent most of us are to really pursue holiness. I think you've heard me say before that it's no way for me to know this, but I just imagine that if Christians from an earlier century were to come and see Christians in this land today, I have to think that one of the things that would most surprise them is how at ease we are with worldliness. It's quite often easy to look in the past and see the mistakes that others have made, and we've become more aware perhaps in the past year than any time. It how often our spiritual forefathers and mothers, especially those whose perhaps skin color was white in this country, how often they didn't think the way we wish they would have thought about minorities or the way that they treated black people was not the way that we wish that they would have. And it's relatively simple to look back in the past and see that especially on these issues of which we are very, very sensitive in our day, to look back and see where they missed it, and they were wrong, and we should be honest about that. But just be aware that as easily as we can see their sins, if they were to visit us, they would just as easily see ours. It's relatively easy to see the sins in someone else's day, but we can be blind to the common sins in our own day. And surely one of those is a lack of daisicle attitude toward holiness, especially concerning the two sins that keep appearing in this book, which is sensuality and disregarding God's authority. If ever you had two sins which are accepted in our day, it's those two things, sensuality, disregarding God's authority. It's easy to find Christians today who are really excited about, say, social justice or transforming the culture, or Christians who are very passionate about evangelism, or Christians in our circles who believe very passionately about precise theology and all of those things are very good. They should be, we should be concerned about them. But will there be Christians? And maybe I'm thinking even in particular of those in younger generations, which always means people my age are younger. Will you be known for your zeal for holiness? Is that what Gen X, Gen Y, I Gen, is that what you're known for? Is that what people think? They go, I'll tell you about those people. Now they might think those people are passionate about other people's sins, but are you known for your zeal for your own holiness? Where are the Christians who will take seriously verses like Ephesians 5, 4, let there be no filthiness, nor foolish talk, nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving. When it's the last time we took a verse like that and even began to try to apply it to our conversations, to our movies, to our YouTube clips, to our Netflix binging. If you go online and you can find these sites, I'll go to the, what is it, the International Movie Database, IMDB, you've probably gone there, you can look up any of these TV shows, any of these movies, it's not a Christian site at all, but there's always a parental content advisory. And it's not so much for my kids, I look at it and say, okay, what is this? And I'm amazed to see the sort of shows that I just seem to hear lots of Christians, if Facebook and social media is any indication, just watching with great enjoyment, I'll click on those because I think, oh that's good, I'm looking for something that would be fun to watch. I can't even read the paragraphs of what happens with sex and sensuality in some of these shows without feeling embarrassed. I wonder how many of us have really considered how attuned we have become with the world. The fact of the matter is there are very few commands in the New Testament that actually tell us to evangelize, very few commands that actually tell us to go take care of the poor outside of the church community, but there are dozens and dozens of verses in the New Testament that enjoy us in one way or another to be holy as God is holy. Will your generation be known for such a passionate pursuit of godliness or have we fallen sway to the false teachers, even though there's maybe not one false teacher that we point to, it's just the air that we breathe. This letter here, a second Peter, is all about this one thing. You see it in the very last verse, but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The verse before, do not be carried away with the air of lawless people. There are all sorts of lawless people who are happy to carry you away with their errors and say, what doesn't matter? Really? Do you want to be a prude? Are you just going to not know what's going on in the world around you? What are you going to talk about with your friends? But over and over in this letter, we have seen Peter exhort us to holiness. And here's one of the great things about the Bible, and you see it in this book as much as in any. God gives us many motivations for godliness, many medicines. Sometimes we make this mistake as Christians, and we can do it maybe as spiritual leaders with kids or Bible studies or church. And we tend to think that everyone needs the same medicine, everyone's motivated by the same thing. And so for some people, that motivation to holiness is always just sort of a pick you up by the scruff of your neck and say, you better get it together or else. That works with a few people, or there's some people on the opposite end who think the only proper motivation for holiness is just to get used to your justification. Just know how much god loves you, and if you just soaked in that, then you would be holy. Well, that's a motivation. But have you noticed throughout this book how many different medicines? The god is a skilled physician, the great physician, and he's able to pull down from the shelf all sorts of medicines for you to take, ways to spur you on. There's all sorts of them here in this book. Let me just limit myself to give you 20 of them. Yes, I did say that. I'll just read them. It'll be quick. We pursue holiness so that we might become partakers of the divine nature, chapter 1 verse 4. We make every effort to grow in godliness because God has already set us free from the corruption that is in the world, chapter 1 verse 4. We grow in grace so we will not be ineffective and unfruitful in the knowledge of Jesus, chapter 1 verse 8. We pursue Christ-like character so we will not be blind having forgotten that we were cleansed from former sins, chapter 1 verse 9. We work hard at holiness in order to make our calling an election sure, chapter 1 verse 10, that's 5. We practice these qualities so we will be richly provided an entrance into God's eternal kingdom, 1-11. We pursue godliness because Jesus is coming back again in great power and we know this to be true because of his revelation of glory and the amount of transfiguration, chapter 1 16 through 21. We walk in obedience to Christ because those who wander into sensuality are condemned and will be destroyed, chapter 2 verse 3. We're serious about holiness because we believe God knows how to judge the wicked and save the righteous, chapter 2 verse 4 through 10. We turn from ungodliness because those who revel in sin are called ugly, blots and blemishes, irrational animals, unsteady souls and accursed children, chapter 2 10 through 16 halfway there. We pursue holiness because sin never delivers on its promises, chapter 2 verse 17. We pursue holiness because those who live in their sin and return to it are like those caught in slavery, those stuck in the mud and those returning to their puke, chapter 2 19 through 21. We must remember to be holy because in the last days scoffers will come enticing us to follow our own sinful desires, chapter 3 verse 3. We make every effort to be godly because the world will not always continue the way it does now but the heavens and the earth are stored up for a day of judgment to come, chapter 3, 4 through 7. We must take Christ's likeness seriously because we do not know when the day of the Lord will come, chapter 3 verse 10 that's 15. We pursue holiness because all of our works will be exposed, 3 verse 10. We pursue holiness because whatever we live for in this life is going to be burnt up and dissolved, chapter 3 verse 11. We strive to walk in obedience and repentance because in so doing we may hasten the coming of the day of the Lord, chapter 3 verse 12. We live in righteousness now because we're waiting for a new heavens and earth in which righteousness will dwell forever, chapter 3, 13 and finally we pursue godliness so that Christ might be glorified both now and to the day of eternity. Verse 18. Did you hear? Did you taste a medicine for your soul? Maybe it's to recall what you were and what you are no longer. Maybe it's to think about the day of the Lord that is coming. Maybe it's to consider all that you have in our and Christ or maybe it's to think about the ugliness of wallowing again in your sin. God has many motivations, many medicines for us that we might run hard after this holiness. So we come to the end of this book and in these final words Peter sums up his argument with two basic exhortations. He says in verse 14, be diligent. Be diligent to be found by him without spot or blemish. It's the language of a judicial sentence to be found by him to receive the sentence of innocence, of righteous and without blemish is a sacrificial term referring to moral uprightness. And that we would be at peace, perhaps at peace with god, maybe at peace with one another, perhaps both. God calls us to be found on that last day to be godly and he tells us once again that in order to reach this end it is not a wrong Christian word to say make effort. Be diligent. We are not saved by our works but we are saved unto work. Understanding that is eternally important. We are not justified by our works that is never in the column of why we are declared righteous before god there are no works in that column. We are not justified by works but we are justified unto work that we might be diligent. How diligent are you? How diligent am I? About holiness. I tell you that I can feel as the hymn writer says I can feel my heart prone to wander. I can feel that laziness especially if you seem to be going hard and you get tired and you get to the end of the day or the end of the week or your kids are driving you crazy or your spouse is driving or whatever and you sort of feel like I kind of deserve a little bit of a let up. Maybe I deserve this bit of anger, deserve this little bit of sensuality, I deserve this little bit of gossip we get lazy. I remember reading this years ago and I marked it out as an illustration to use. This was years ago when maybe even when LeBron was still on the Miami Heat and the heat weren't doing nearly as well as people thought and after a win Chris Bosch who played for the heat at the time said quote we got back to getting after it again. I guess Coach Spulstra felt he was loosening up a little bit too much and then he said he knows he has to meet us halfway. He wants to work, we want to chill and I wondered if that sort of describes our attitude with God. Okay God you kind of got to meet us halfway. I know you want to work and you want holiness but we kind of want to chill. Could we just find a sort of equilibrium where we're kind of concerned about holiness? Where we just avoid really really big things that could like get us kicked out of the church or get us arrested or something. You know the sort of sins that you begin by describing nothing illegal happened. Okay that's one way to look at it. Come on God meet us halfway. You want holiness we want to chill. Can we have like a chillaxed version of holiness? Now please don't misunderstand what I'm saying or what Peter's saying this is not okay. Now you're justified and the rest of your life is just nose to the grind. Now God is a heavenly father. He loves us. He sees our efforts. He loves us as any good father would even when our efforts are imperfect or failing or stumbling and bumbling. But he does say I want you to be diligent. And then he wants us to be penitent verse 15. Count the patience of our Lord as salvation isn't that the theme from this morning. He is waiting for repentance. So here's the question I leave us with. Where do you need to grow in godliness? Where have you and I been lacking in real diligence and effort? Where might you need to repent? You know sometimes when you have a good coach and there's a time that he needs to speak and spur you on and be gentle. And there's times he's saying look are you going to get after this or not? And this is one of those passages where God is saying are you going to get after this or not? Now if you just think in abstract terms about being like Christ, that seems daunting and impractical. So just think about is there an area of your body in this new year in which you would like to pursue godliness. Here's what I mean. Think of your eyes. What are you seeing? Think of your ears. What are you listening to? What are you hearing? What are you taking in your mouth? What are you saying? What sort of words do you say to other people? Do they build up? Do they break down? Do they pass on good reports? Do they speak gossip or slander? What about your heart? What are you feeling? What do you laugh at? What are you lusting after? What do you think would make 2021 dreams come true? Where is your heart? What about your hands? What are you doing? Or your feet? Where have you been going? Perhaps take some moments after this service or tomorrow morning in a few moments of reflection in your own devotional time to think through or is it your head what you believe? Just think your head, your eyes, your ears, your mouth, your hands, your feet, your heart. Just think of one area. In fact, I am quite certain that if you and I pray before the Lord, oh God, would you give me eyes to see just one of those areas where I might be more diligent in pursuing holiness that God will be faithful to answer that prayer. And then as He does, let these two closing exhortations ring in our ears. Be penitent, Lord, I am sorry, and be diligent. Help me, Lord, to live for you. I love these words in the very last verse, but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and save your Jesus Christ to him. Be the glory, both now and to the day of eternity. Do you see those three words? They even all start with the same letter in English. You could summarize the Christian life with those three words in verse 18. Grace, growth, glory. Grace to forgive us, grace to transform us. We move from grace to growth. And as we embrace God's grace, and as we grow in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, it redounds to His glory, both now and forever. All three are essential. Don't go after growth without grace. Don't just have grace without some aim of growth and don't have both together except for the final aim that God would be glorified. Let's pray. Our Father in heaven, we thank you for this book. You have inspired. We pray that you would teach us by it and continue to preach by the Holy Spirit. Just the sermon that we need to hear. Oh, Lord, start in my heart. Start in the hearts of the pastors and the elders and the deacons. Start in the hearts of the leaders here and the parents. Oh, Lord, would you move in us? May we not miss this word by thinking for other people what they need to hear but give to us the conviction, the sensitivity of conscience, and then give us the confidence in your grace. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.