April 27, 2008
Sun Oak Baptist Church
Introduction
Web visitors: please see previous week’s notes for background to this week’s message.
2 of the biggest stumbling blocks to Christian growth and maturing is our tendency to settle and to forget and these 2 core problems are found in the first 2 verses of 2nd Peter chapter 3.
Chapter 3 is the culmination of this letter – just like the return of Jesus Christ will be the culmination of human history. This chapter seems to be of utmost importance to Peter indicated by his use of the word “therefore” 3 times in this chapter but only 1 other time back in chapter 1, and his use of the word “beloved” 5 times in this chapter, but again, only once in the rest of the letter.
In verses 1-2 Peter identifies 2 human characteristics that have consistently and dramatically affected man’s relationship with God throughout human history.
I. We are prone to settle. See 3:1.
A. Notice how Jesus illustrates this bent of human beings in the Parable of the Ten Virgins. See Matt. 25:1-13; 26:36-45; and Mark 15:32-37.
B. Now: what’s the solution – what’s the remedy to being a Christian couch potato? See 3:1.
1. Stirring – and specifically notice that it’s stirring our minds – our “pure minds.”
2. What does it mean to stir? Last week we looked at some examples of what Peter doesn’t mean by stirring our minds – things like meditation in the eastern mystical sense of the word or the new age: contemplative spirituality.
3. Most of the time in NT referred to “stirring” up a crowd of people – getting them upset. But in the context of living the Christian life the word refers to fanning the flames of a fire; to shaking someone in order to wake them up; or to agitating water. See 2nd Tim. 1:6; Heb. 10:24-25; and 2nd Peter 1:13.
C. Which is where we left off last week: if contemplative spirituality isn’t what Peter means, if thinking the right thoughts isn’t what Peter means by stirring our minds – then what does he mean? And the answer to this question leads us right into the next core problem that human beings have dealt with since the Fall:
II. We are prone to forget. See 3:1b-2.
A. See Deut. 4:9; 4:23; 6:12. If we had the time, we could read the relevant passages and soon find out that one of the primary purposes of the feasts, the days of remembrance, and so on was because of this hard-wired tendency of man to forget God and the things of God.
B. 6 times in Psalm 119 the psalmist prays: “I will not forget Your Word; I do not forget your statutes; I will never forget Your Law; I do not forget your precepts; I do not forget Your Law…” and on and on.
C. See Judges 2:7-10 and 8:34.
In a nutshell the Book of Judges is a Oscar winning dramatization of the true story of man being prone to settle and prone to forget – and the tragic results of these tendencies – over and over – and all as an example for us. The only thing we learn from history is that we don’t learn from history.
III. The remedy. See 3:1-2.
Peter tells us the problem and then gives us the solution.
3 aspects, elements, or ingredients: Peter’s readers would first of all have immediately understood that his primary purpose for writing them was to stir and to stir what: their pure minds; second they would have understood how he intended to do that – by way of reminder; and third the stirring would be done by remembering and specifically the “remembering” that he was calling them to was: the words spoken by the holy prophets and the commandment of the apostles – the Word of God.
A. First: define “stir” and “pure minds.”
1. Understand the importance and role of our minds in the Christian life. The importance and role of the mind in living the Christian life is under-estimated, neglected, or twisted.
2. Words like mind, thoughts, thinking, meditate, know, knowing, knowledge, remember and other words similar to this and related to our minds or the function of our minds, get this, appear well over 600 hundred times just in the NT alone and thousands of time in the OT.
See Matt. 22:37; Rom. 1:28, 7:23, 7:25, and 12:1-2; 1st Cor. 1:10; 2nd Cor. 10:4-5 and 13:11; Eph. 4:23; Phil 2:5 and 4:8.
3. The word “pure” (or “sincere” as some Bibles have it) is an adjective that literally means to be “examined by the sun’s light and found genuine” – something that is without blemish or free from falsehoods.
B. Now second: we stir by way of reminder – by remembering.
Conclusion
A. The rainbow after the flood that was meant to serve as a reminder; God used the covenants as reminders; the Passover; the Sabbath; offerings; Absalom used a pillar in place of a son to remember; the widow in 1st Kings 17:18 was reminded of her sin simply by the presence of the prophet Elijah in her home; the Lord’s Supper is intended to serve as a reminder.
B. Management-consultant Ken Blanchard retells the story of a little girl named Schia. When Schia was 4-years old, her baby brother was born. She began to ask her parents to leave her alone with him. They worried that, like most 4-year-olds, she might want to hit or shake him, so they said “no.” Over time, though, since she wasn’t showing signs of jealousy, they changed their minds and decided to let Schia have her private conference with the baby.
Elated, she went into the baby’s room and shut the door, but left it open a crack – enough for her curious parents to peek in and listen. They saw little Schia walk quietly up to her baby brother, put her face close to his, and say: “Baby, tell me what God feels like. I’m starting to forget.”
How many of us have grown older and forgotten God? It’s never too late to return to the One who created you. Jesus taught that to enter the kingdom of God, we must simply receive it like a little child.
Please note: Lord willing this message will be completed in an upcoming Lord’s Day service.