Word of Salvation – Vol. 26 No. 22 – March 1981

 

Christ’s Power – Our Life And Godliness

 

Sermon by Rev. John de Kievit on 2Peter 1:3 & 4

Scripture Readings: Psalm 147 & 2Peter 1:1-11

Psalter Hymnal: 192; 121; 470; 316

 

This whole passage, up to and including verse 11, is all about:- living the Christian life in a godless world, remaining certain of salvation even when many in the church itself start denying the Lord Jesus Christ. Peter exhorts us to confirm our call and election and to be zealous about it,and so proving also to the world that we belong to Jesus. Peter’s whole letter is really about our living a life of faithfulness to the Lord Jesus and living a life of good works in a rotten environment.

“For before long”, Peter tells these Christians here, “all kinds of evil will be practised even by people who call themselves by the Name of Christ!”

Chapter 2 tells us about False teachers, Greed, Immorality, on top of a world which is hostile to the Gospel of Christ, scoffing at His living Presence, and His coming again in Glory! It sounds a bit like the 1980’s, doesn’t it – Brothers and Sisters? A world sunk in materialism confronts us TODAY. Greed and immorality threaten the very existence of the Church just as much as, or even more than they have ever done before. Not to speak of the false teachings which flow like rivers even from many pulpits today, godless Jesus is being proclaimed in many places:- Marxism for the problems of this world, stones instead of bread. Well, “what you need in a situation like yours”, writes Peter in this letter, is: (see verses 5-7) faith, goodness, knowledge, self-control, perseverance, godliness, brotherly kindness, LOVE.

That is the only way to stand up to the influence of the world. That is the only way to stop the Church from falling apart. That is the only way to stop the Church from disappearing altogether. BE and REMAIN sure of your salvation.

“Well… that is not for me then.” – you can just imagine that reaction from some of these Christians. “I’ll never be a good enough a Christian for all that”. And can’t we hear that response from some among us today too, brothers and sisters? It’s hard enough as it is – look at how slack everything is getting…. look at the younger generation…! Aren’t there so many things which we see going downhill? Whether we always see it the right way, or the right reasons for it, is another thing.

Young people today are probably no worse than before. Perhaps they are under more temptation. But many people can only complain about things they see around them today – and for the rest they EITHER allow these things to bring them to pessimism and despair, OR they give up altogether. If nobody else cares, why should I? If cold weather or the television keeps others away from church, why should I bother? If others do not give a freewill offering, or do not give for collections, why should I bear the burden?

It’s not for me…!!! I am not able to keep loving in a loveless situation! Even with the best will in the world, I am not a good enough Christian, and never will be! Do I paint the picture a bit too black, brothers and sisters, or is it right on the mark?

Well, that is exactly why Peter DOES NOT say that those members of the Church should be good or better Christians. And he does NOT imply that any of us TODAY should become “better” Christians either. He knew that it is impossible for any of us to be Christians at all in any kind of way, or to live ANY kind of Christian life.

No, “His Divine Power” (see verse 3) has GIVEN us EVERYTHING we need for a life of godliness. If we are Christians at all – in other words – it was not on account of our being better than other people. If we heard the Word of God’s Salvation in Jesus Christ if we believed it and drank it in – if we fell on our knees, confessing our sins – if we fell on our knees in adoration and thanksgiving for the forgiveness of our sins – then that took place by nothing less than a miracle of the Divine Power of God.

And that word “power” (in Greek “dynamos”) is where we get our word “dynamite” from.

The POWER of God – The DYNAMITE of God. That POWER is what made us Christians! And we had better remember that RIGHT FROM THE BEGINNING and ALL ALONG the way. Our faith is PURE GIFT. There is nothing at all that WE did, or could have done to bring it about. How could we, if we were “dead (as Paul says) in sins”? You might as well tell a dead body to get up and walk all by itself, which is altogether impossible. But that is EXACTLY WHAT HAS HAPPENED to all who now believe in Jesus Christ. A MIRACLE happened! The dead have come to life! By the Divine POWER of Jesus Christ, through His Holy Spirit we have been given life; we have been given all we need, and it was all given as a gift!

Praise the Lord, Hallelujah! In His own love and mercy He went to the bitter death on the cross, not because any of us asked for it, or even less because we deserved it! By His Divine Power He rose mightily from the grave and lives now for evermore! And now by this same DIVINE POWER He has made His Life flow into us who were dead. That is why we are Christians, congregation!

“He chose to give us birth”, writes James in chapter 1 verse 18, “through the WORD OF TRUTH”. You see how GREAT HIS MERCY has been to us who now believe? You see how He has made to come about that which was utterly impossible? It was done by HIS DIVINE POWER BY HIS DIVINE HOLY SPIRIT!

Well, brothers and sisters, it is that very same DIVINE POWER which still makes it possible for you and me to live godly lives; to stand up to temptations; to stand up to the influences of our evil world which would try to infiltrate also the church today. We do not have to do it all or any of it ourselves, you see. That is the message here. Because… that same explosive dynamite is at work TODAY: to give us all that we need for godliness; to give us all that we need to make our calling and election sure.

If this was not the case, we might as well pack up right now! You and I will never be good enough Christians to even begin to succeed on our own – the world will simply take over the church will just fold up.

Only as we RECEIVE – absolutely as a GIFT from the Hand of God, through Jesus Christ, will we have everything we need for godliness. Oh, isn’t this perhaps the hardest lesson of all to learn, brothers and sisters? So often we rely on all kinds of things for our spiritual welfare or spiritual assurance – other than God’s Divine Power.

Tradition can be good, especially if it is based solidly on God’s Word. But tradition can also become a snare or a trap by which we stifle the Spirit of God. We let our rules and experiences become a substitute for that miraculous POWER of GOD.

Things that may have worked well in the past, do not always fit any more in the pattern of God today. And the way certain things were said and done may have fitted perfectly in times past ― but that does not always mean that our new ways are necessarily bad! As long as the Word of God is still our standard, new ways might be adapted,

And that is the question, brothers and sisters:- Do we still depend solely on the POWER of God to guide us ???? …to lead us even though the future is uncertain? Or is that too scary for us? Do we rather have the security we have built up for ourselves? A lot of us are rather surprised at the sudden collapse of the moral fibre of much of Western society, and of many churches as well.

But could it be that for years everything has gone so well that there was no longer that utter dependence- all along – on the GRACE and the POWER of our SAVIOUR?

Pride in our way of doing things has come first. Pride in our confessions rather than in God who gave us our creeds. With what result? That what had once been LIVING became just a HOLLOW FORMALITY. For a while you can hide it, perhaps, but where the LIFE, has gone, there the godliness will collapse before long too! And how dramatic that collapse is when it comes! And if we, today, are experiencing difficulties…. could it be due to the same “hollow formality”?

What did it mean to us to start a church here? Was it just a nice get-together? Or was it a serving of the Lord in utter dependence on His Power? If it was only for a “Nice get-together” and if that still is so, then we have good reason for pessimism and despair. Then the harder we try to put things straight, the further off the track we go. And we get even more depressed and more despairing.

There is NO OTHER WAY of living as a church in the 1980’s and beyond except by that DIVINE POWER of Jesus Christ our Lord. There is NO OTHER WAY as a Christian, personally, apart from that Divine Power of Jesus Christ our Lord. He alone can give us what we need; He alone can give us ALL we need; He alone had indeed given all we need for life and godliness.

There was hope, you see, for those Christians there; they could be certain of their salvation! There IS hope instead of pessimism and despair…. even in our situation as we head further into the 80’s. And how has He given – and still gives us these things then? “Through our knowledge” – Peter writes in verse 3 – “of Him who called us by His own Goodness”.

By our knowledge of Jesus Christ our Saviour… that means through our faith in Him first of all. Peter makes this clear in verse 5. Through faith which God gives us – praised be His Name for ever – we are grafted to our living Lord, like a branch is grafted to a young tree. That is how the life we have in Christ Jesus flows through TO us. In Christ we are alive to God and dead to sin.

And now, as Peter states it clearly: through our knowledge of this Saviour you receive also everything you may possibly need to live in your difficulties or terrible circumstances”. AND TO-DAY in the difficulties and temptations of the 1980’s we can have the divine power just as well!! “Exactly because you are not good enough Christians, I just GIVE it to you”, says our Lord. “All you have to do is simply accept it through faith and through your knowledge of ME”.

The first thing we need, brothers and sisters, is NOT to ask: “Am I a god enough Christian”. For the answer to that will always be “NO”. Or to ask for example: Do we have enough rich members in our congregation in order to meet our quota payments? The answer to that may also be “NO”. And even if we had – and I am not so sure whether over-all we are as poor as we like to think – no number of rich members can guarantee that we meet our commitments, financial ones included. No, through faith, we must look at the rich grace of Jesus Who became poor, that we may be rich. We may hold up our hands to Him in prayer for His Divine Power. For only He can and does give us what we need.

Through faith…! That means that the Bible must be open in our midst and must be known in our midst, first of all. We must BE where God’s people gather for worship. We must BE where His Word is proclaimed.

It is through hearing the Word of God that He gives us faith and Life. Give that a miss, and it cannot help but impoverish us, open the way for temptation, open the way for attacks from Satan.

In verse 4, Peter says:- “Great precious promises have come to us”. These are: Promises of forgiveness, promises of the Power of God in sanctification, promises of our Eternal Home in the new heaven and earth. And these promises are not just like the promises of so many politicians of today especially in election years. No, GOD’s promises are at work ALREADY NOW…. in our being. So precious are these promises that already NOW – by that DIVINE POWER – we are being transformed, brothers and sisters, back into the image of God. That is what Peter means that we participate in the Divine Nature.

Here then is the assurance of our faith, in the midst of a godless world. — NOT that we are good enough Christians in our ourselves, — BUT in His Divine POWER through faith in Jesus Christ.

To put it in a nutshell, the Christian life is so terribly impossible and yet so terribly simple! That is what Peter is saying here. Because it comes from the Divine POWER of our Saviour, Jesus Christ. The greatest struggle that we will have is NOT to produce the fruits of faith which our God wants to see in our lives. BUT is not our MAIN struggle to recognise and confess at all times that it is really impossible for us?

And THEN to surrender ourselves to THIS DIVINE POWER of God, to wholly trust the goodness of this Lord Jesus — to live in Him? When we try godliness by ourselves, If we do not receive it as His Gift then – we refuse His Glory and His Goodness, and we will finish up in nothing but doubt and despair.

Then Satan and the world will simply swallow us up. We, the church and its members will not be spared. BUT, by faith, brothers and sisters, we can have confidence as we face the present and also the FUTURE!

By faith we can have confidence in the younger generation, and let God lead through them as they come to maturity. Through faith we can keep going. Through faith we stand up to the materialism of this world.

For has He not given us – and is He not giving us still – everything we need for life and godliness? Our church life and its future will only be as good as our utter dependence on the goodness of our Saviour.

Let us then keep our eyes upon Jesus and live in His Power by His Holy Spirit.

Amen.