Today’s message is from the first 15 verses of 2 Peter—2 Peter 1:1-15 (actually, just the first two verses today, but we’ll read the entire passage). The apostle Peter wrote 2 Peter near the end of his life. He wrote in verse 14 that he was expecting to soon lay aside his “tent” (which was his body) as Jesus had shown him. 2 Peter is a warning against false teachers and an admonition to hold on to the word of God.

So, as we read the passage, let’s also be warned to hold onto the word of God. There are many false teaching floating around out there today—ideas that are ideas of men and are contrary to the word of God—really, ideas that are taught by demons. Many of them sound reasonable, but are actually destructive because they lead you away from Jesus. Some even seem to be supported by scripture, but by scripture that is taken out of the context of the entire Bible. So we must have the entire word of God to be able to discern what is true and what is false and destructive. So, as always, I admonish you to study your Bibles every day. Have the word of God written in your heart.

³For His divine power has given us everything required for life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and goodness. ⁴By these He has given us very great and precious promises, so that through them you may share in the divine nature, escaping the corruption that is in the world because of evil desires. ⁵For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with goodness, goodness with knowledge, ⁶knowledge with self-control, self-control with endurance, endurance with godliness, ⁷godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. ⁸For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they will keep you from being useless or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. ⁹The person who lacks these things is blind and shortsighted, and has forgotten the cleansing from his past sins. ¹⁰Therefore, brothers, make every effort to confirm your calling and election, because if you do these things you will never stumble. ¹¹For in this way, entry into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ will be richly supplied to you.

¹²Therefore I will always remind you about these things, even though you know them and are established in the truth you have. ¹³I consider it right, as long as I am in this tent, to wake you up with a reminder, ¹⁴knowing that I will soon lay aside my tent, as our Lord Jesus Christ has also shown me. ¹⁵And I will also make every effort that after my departure you may be able to recall these things at any time. (2 Peter~1:1-15)

Verse 1 says, “Simeon Peter, a slave and an apostle of Jesus Christ: To those who have obtained a faith of equal privilege with ours through the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ.” This is the To/From part of the letter. The HCSB translators call it “the greeting”. Most formal letters that we write today have this information up at the top just as Peter’s letter does. In verse 1 the writer, Peter, identifies himself—who he is (the From part), and also who he is writing to, those who have obtained a faith of equal privilege with ours through the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ (the To part).

Peter identifies himself as “Simeon Peter, a slave and an apostle of Jesus Christ.” (“Simeon” is an alternate form of Simon, Peter’s given name. Jesus gave him the name Peter, which means “Rock”, when he first came to Jesus. A rock is something that is solid. And in just a minute I’m going to review Peter’s life so that we all will remember who he is and see what it means to be a rock.)

Peter says that he is a slave and an apostle of Jesus Christ. A slave is someone who is constrained to do the will of his master. He works for his master first and then for himself. What he does for himself is only what is necessary in order that he will be able to do the work his master has for him to do.

Peter is a slave of Jesus Christ. He is also an apostle. An apostle is a person who has been sent by someone else with a mission, a missionary. Peter is an apostle of Jesus Christ. Jesus sent him on a mission—a mission that lasted his entire life. Here’s the summary of his mission. This is what Jesus told the apostles: “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matt. 28:19, 20) (It’s called The Great Commission.)

Peter says that his letter is to “those who have obtained a faith of equal privilege with ours through the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ.” Who are they? Who has obtained a faith of equal privilege with the apostles? This is a general letter. It is not addressed to a particular church or to a particular group of churches or to a particular person. It’s not addressed to the church at Corinth or to the church at Philippi or to Timothy or Titus, but to those who have obtained a faith of equal privilege with ours through the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ.

(“Obtained” in this context means that you got it by no effort of your own, by the way. You know, some people believe that God determined who would accept his salvation and who would reject it before the beginning of creation. It’s called predestination. Some are predestined to be saved. Others are predestined to be lost. There’s nothing anyone can do about it. Others believe that we are free to choose whether or not we accept God’s salvation. It’s called free will. Some say that there is both predestination and free will. Yet, I’ve noticed that pretty much everyone seems to be willing to pray for the salvation of others. Also, Jesus says in John 6:44, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day.” So it depends on God drawing us to Jesus.

Now this is something I just recently noticed. The Greek word translated draws (No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him) is “elko”. It occurs eight times in the New Testament. There are only two other place where it is translated “draws”. One is similar to John 6:44. It’s John 12:32. Jesus says, “As for Me, if I am lifted up from the earth I will draw all people to Myself.” The other place is John 18:32 where Peter drew his sword to cut off the servant of the high priest’s ear when they were arresting Jesus. I’m going to read the other five places:

“Haul” and “drag”? Did some of us have to be hauled and dragged to Jesus? An alternate translation of John 6:44 might be, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me drags him. And I will raise him up on the last day.” What do you think? Maybe we should pray for God to drag some of these people to Jesus. Anyway, the faith of equal privilege that we have obtained was not obtained by our own efforts.)

And just what does “equal privilege” mean? It means that we have the same forgiveness of sins and salvation that the apostles who knew Jesus 2000 years ago have. This letter includes us. If you believe in Jesus... If you know him and have trusted him for salvation... If you have entrusted yourself into his hands, you have a faith that is of equal privilege with that of Peter and the apostles. And that faith, the faith that saves us, comes through the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ, not our righteousness (we don’t have any). Salvation is found in no one else! (If you don’t have that faith, go to Jesus before it’s too late.)

Well, according to Peter’s greeting, all we need to know is that he is a slave and an apostle of Jesus Christ. But I want to say more. Who was Peter before he was a slave and an apostle of Jesus Christ? Initially, he was a fisherman. And he was almost certainly a disciple of John the Baptist before he was disciple of Jesus. His brother Andrew was. And Andrew was the one who brought Peter to Jesus. (A disciple, by the way, is a student. Peter was taught by John the Baptist and then he was taught by Jesus.)

After Peter had become a disciple of Jesus, there was the incident where Jesus borrowed Peter’s fishing boat so that he could stand (or maybe sit) in it and preach to the crowd that was on the shore at the sea of Galilee. When Jesus was finished speaking, he told Peter to put out into deeper water and let down his nets for a catch. Peter told him that they had been fishing all night and caught nothing (and obviously didn’t expect to catch anything). But he said to Jesus, “Because you say so, I’ll let down the nets. Have you ever been in that situation? ...someone tell you to do something and you know for sure that it’s not going to work, but you do it anyway just to satisfy that person? That was Peter’s situation. Peter obeyed Jesus “just because you say so” and they caught such a large number of fish that the nets began to tear!

When Peter saw what was happening he fell at Jesus’s knees and said, “Lord, go away from me because I’m a sinful man.” Peter knew that he was in the presence of God and that he knew that he was a sinful man. At that point he realized that Jesus could see into his heart.

Nevertheless, Jesus told him, “Don’t be afraid. From now on you will be catching People.” Peter left his fishing and began to follow Jesus. So did his partners James and John. Jesus works through sinful men. (There aren’t any other kind.) He was starting to work through Peter.

Peter followed Jesus for at least three years after that until it was time for him to go to the cross. The disciples didn’t want Jesus to go to the cross. But if Jesus didn’t go to the cross, there would be no forgiveness of sins and no eternal life. Jesus had to go to the cross.

The night before Jesus was to go to the cross he said to the disciples, “Tonight, all of you will run away because of me, for it is written, ‘I will strike the shepherd of the flock and the sheep will be scattered.’ But after I have been resurrected, I will go ahead of you to Galilee.” (The fact is, at that point they didn’t really think he would be resurrected.)

Jesus said to Peter, “I assure you, tonight—before the rooster crows, you will deny me three times.” (Matt. 26:31-35, Luke 22:31-34, 54-62, John 18:15-18, 25-27) That night, after Jesus was arrested, Peter denied that he knew him three times—even with an oath—even to a slave girl, just as Jesus had told him he would do. ...and all that even though he was absolutely confident that he was ready to go to his death with Jesus. He was not even willing to say that he knew Jesus. Did his faith fail? Jesus prayed for Peter and all the other disciples, too, for their faith not to fail. God the Father always answered Jesus’s prayers. Peter’s faith didn’t fail. Neither did the faith of the other disciples fail.

After Jesus was raised from the dead, he met the disciples in Galilee. He fed them breakfast beside the Sea of Galilee. After they had eaten breakfast, Jesus asked Peter if he loved him. He asked him three times—the same number of times Peter had denied him. Each time Peter answered, “Yes, you know that I love you.” Let me read it:

Jesus told Peter, “Feed my lambs,” “Shepherd may sheep,” “Feed may sheep.” And then Jesus said to Peter, “‘I assure you: When you were young, you would tie your belt and walk wherever you wanted. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands and someone else will tie you and carry you where you don’t want to go.’ He said this to signify by what kind of death he would glorify God. After saying this, He told him, ‘Follow Me!’” (John~21:18, 19) (Peter was going to be crucified.)

Forty days after Jesus was crucified and raised from the dead he was taken up to heaven while the disciples watched. After he was gone, two men dressed in white appeared and promised the disciples that Jesus would come back in the same way that they had seen him go. About a week after that, Peter preached at the feast of Pentecost. This is what it says. This is from Acts 2:41 and 42: “So those who accepted his message were baptized, and that day about 3,000 people were added to them. And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, to fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayers.” (Suppose some of us went down to 15^th and High or to the Oval and preached the way Peter did at Pentecost. What do you think would happen? Well, a lot of people have done just that, but I’ve never heard of a case where 3,000 even gathered let alone repented and believed. What happened at Pentecost was by the power of the Holy Spirit. (Nevertheless, many have repented and believed even through preaching on the oval and at 15^th and High. And that’s the power of the Holy Spirit, too.

Near the beginning of his ministry Peter healed many people. He raised Tabitha from the dead. And the message of the gospel spread. Peter was also the first one to take the Gospel to the Gentiles and to realize (really to be shown) that salvation was not just for the Jews. And Peter was the one that put his word in when they were deciding that the Gentiles didn’t need to keep the ceremonial laws that God gave to the Jews through Moses. (The ceremonial laws are the laws that have to do with rituals, observing the various festivals, staying away from certain foods, and so forth. We don’t need to keep them. Jewish Christians don’t need to either, although some do. But keeping these laws or not keeping them has nothing to do with our salvation. Salvation is only through faith in Jesus.)

You know, later in his ministry Peter began to be afraid of being looked down on by some the Jewish Christians. Peter, who had strongly defended the status of the Gentile believers initially, began to avoid eating with the Gentiles. The apostle Paul rebuked him. Listen to this. This is from Galatians 2:1-14:

¹¹But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face because he stood condemned. ¹²For he used to eat with the Gentiles before certain men came from James. However, when they came, he withdrew and separated himself, because he feared those from the circumcision party. ¹³Then the rest of the Jews joined his hypocrisy, so that even Barnabas was carried away by their hypocrisy. ¹⁴But when I saw that they were deviating from the truth of the gospel, I told Cephas in front of everyone, “If you, who are a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you compel Gentiles to live like Jews?” (Galatians~2:11-14)

Paul corrected Peter. You see, God works through others to correct us. It’s the Holy Spirit who convicts us, but it’s not just each of us as individuals before God. We are all part of one body. I keep on saying and will continue to keep on saying that God has designed things so that we need each other. We have been trained (I think by the devil) to be afraid of correcting anyone for fear of offending them. We have also been trained (I think certainly by the devil) to be very offended if anyone tries to correct us. The apostle Paul says that we must speak the truth in love (Eph. 4:15) and encourage and build each other up (1 Thess. 5:11).

Peter’s greeting goes on in verse 2: “May grace and peace be multiplied to you through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.” So, may grace and peace be multiplied to each of you through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.