May 18, 2008
Sun Oak Baptist Church
Introduction
Please see Parts 1 & 2 for the background to today’s message.
George Müller’s life testimony vividly illustrates Peter’s remedy for our tendency to settle and to forget. Shortly before he died, wrote these words: “I became a believer in the Lord Jesus in the beginning of November, 1825. For the first 4 years afterwards, it was for a good part in great weakness; but in July, 1829 it (referring to his Christianity) came with me to an entire and full surrender of heart. I gave myself fully to the Lord. Honors, pleasures, money, my physical powers, my mental powers, all were laid down at the feet of Jesus, and I became a great lover of the Word of God. I found my all in God, and thus in all my trials of a temporal and spiritual character, it has remained for 66 years. My faith is not merely exercised regarding temporal things, but regarding everything, because I cleave to the Word. My knowledge of God and His Word is that which helps me.”
George Müller’s Christian life turned a corner and the reason for that change is exactly the remedy Peter gives us to settling and forgetting. Müller says he became a “great lover of the Word of God.” He “found his all in God…because he cleaved to (bear-hugged) the Word. His “…knowledge of God and His Word is that which helps me.”
I. A 2-part problem: we are prone to settle. See 3:1.
II. Part 2: we are prone to forget. See 3:1-2.
A. Numerous passages in Deut. illustrate this tendency; one of the primary reasons why God established the feasts, special days like the Sabbath and so on was because He knew that we have this tendency to forget.
B. In a nutshell, the Book of Judges exemplifies this bent to settle and prone to forget – and the tragic results – over and over all the way through the book. See 2:7-10 and 8:33-35.
III. The remedy.
The opposite of “settling” is “stirring” – and the opposite of “forgetting” is “remembering.” How does Peter say we stir our minds – by remembering. And Peter specifically zeroes in on remembering the Word of God – that they “may be mindful of the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets, and of the commandment of us, the apostles of the Lord and Savior.”
George Müller’s legacy is not how to live our best life now or how to be a better you – his simple solution; Peter’s solution; the apostle Paul’s; and our Lord’s remedy is being in the Word of God: being in the Word; abiding; spending time in the Word. See John 1:14 and John 15:1-8.
Peter breaks the remedy down into 3 elements:
A. Element #1: define “stir” and the term “pure minds.”
1. “Stirring” in the NT means: to agitate; shake awake; to fan the flames of our Christian campfire – as it were.
2. “Pure (or “sincere”) minds” as some translations have literally means to be “examined by the sun’s light and found genuine.”
3. It appears Peter was trying to nip a problem in the bud – to deal with it before it could take root. The burden of his heart could very well have been that these Christians were already beginning to settle and forget because he was fully aware of human nature.
4. It is absolutely necessity for us to appreciate, believe, and understand the critical and paramount importance that the mind plays in terms of living a fruitful Christian life. (Note: please see message #2 in this 3-part series).
B. Element #2: how do we stir? By way of reminder; by remembering – memory is a function of the mind and stirring the mind is done by remembering.
C. Element #3: we stir by remembering and specifically remembering what: in the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets, and of the commandment of us, the apostles of the Lord and Savior.” See 3:2.
1. We cannot emphasize enough the importance of the Word of God in a Christian’s life; “Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God;” the critical importance of knowing what the Bible says; of knowing what it teaches; of knowing its central doctrines; and so on – the importance of both knowing God’s Word and remembering it. Ignorance of God’s Word inevitably leads people to make bad decisions; it leads and contributes to their inability to resolve problems and conflicts; to being drawn away and enticed by false teachers; to questioning key doctrines such as the Second Coming and list goes on and on.
2. The issue that Peter on Peter’s heart is the incredible importance of daily feeding upon the Word of God – of constantly and consistently reviewing and affirming God’s truth in our thinking. See 1st Peter 2:1-3 and 2nd Peter 1:21.
Conclusion
On May 9, 1841 George Müller recorded this entry in his diary:
“It has pleased the Lord to teach me a truth, the benefit of which I have not lost for more than 14 years. The point is this: I saw more clearly than ever that the first great primary business to which I ought to attend every day was to have my soul happy in the Lord. The first thing to be concerned about was not how much I might serve the Lord, or how I might glorify the Lord; but how I might get my soul into a happy state, and how my inner man might be nourished.…
Before this time my practice had been, at least for ten years previously, as a habitual thing, to give myself to prayer after having dressed myself in the morning. Now, I saw that the most important thing I had to do was to give myself to the reading of the Word of God, and to meditation on it, that thus my heart might be comforted, encouraged, warned, reproved, instructed.…
The first thing I did, after having asked in a few words the Lord’s blessing upon His precious Word, was to begin to meditate on the Word of God, searching as it were into every verse to get blessing out of it; not for the sake of public ministry of the Word, not for the sake of preaching on what I had meditated upon, but for the sake of obtaining food for my soul. The result I have found to be almost invariably this, that after a very few minutes my soul has been led to confession, or to thanksgiving, or to supplication; so that, though I did not, as it were, give myself to prayer, but to meditation, yet it turned almost immediately more or less into prayer. When thus I have been for a while making confession or intercession or supplication, or have given thanks, I go on to the next words or verse, turning all, as I go, into prayer for myself or others, as the Word may lead to it.…
By breakfast time, with rare exceptions, I am in a peaceful if not happy state of heart.”