More Precious Than Gold

If God sent you a letter in the mail, would you read it?

Who wouldn't read it?

And that's what we have here in Sacred Scripture.

God has spoken to us.

He has revealed himself clearly in his word.

As R.C. Sproul just said,

it's like God has sent a letter to us in the mail.

Do you see Scripture that way?

Most of us, if we're honest,

don't treat the Bible that way at all,

especially in the West,

where Bibles are so widely available,

and in many translations,

we just don't apply Scripture and study it

as much as we should.

Hi, I'm Nathan W. Bingham,

and I'm glad you're joining us today

for this Sunday edition of Renewing Your Mind.

Last week, we began a short series in Second Peter,

and this week, we're continuing that study in chapter 1.

This Dr. Sproul considers the importance of true knowledge,

that knowledge that comes to us from God.

As I said last week,

we'll only be studying a portion of this epistle,

but you can study the entirety of both First and Second Peter.

When you request Dr. Sproul's hardcover commentary,

you give a donation at RenewingYourMind.org,

but be quick as this offer ends at Midnight.

Now, grab your Bibles and open it to Second Peter chapter 1.

Here's Dr. Sproul.

We'll continue now with our study of the Second

Epistle of Saint Peter at chapter 1 verse 2.

Grace and peace be multiplied to you

in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord,

as divine power has given to us all things

that pertain to life and godliness

through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue,

by which have been given to us exceedingly great

and precious promises that through these you may be

partakers of the divine nature,

having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.

Now, in the greeting,

Peter uses a phrase that is commonplace

in the salutations of the epistles of the New Testament.

He says, grace and peace be unto you.

The idea of grace and peace is deeply rooted

in Old Testament history.

You recall that in the Hebrew benediction,

both of these are enjoined in which God is asked

to grant them to His people as integral to His benediction.

May the Lord bless you and keep you.

May the Lord make His face to shine upon you

and be gracious unto you.

And then may the Lord lift up the light of His

countenance upon you and give you peace.

This concept of peace was so important to Jewish people

that it became the basic way of greeting one another.

And to this day, the Jew will greet his friend by saying,

Shalom, Aleikum, to which the response is, Aleikum, Shalom.

Peace be unto you and unto you peace.

But Peter does something a little bit different here

when he gives the salutation instead of simply saying grace and peace to you.

He says grace and peace be multiplied to you

in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord, comma.

Here he speaks of a multiplication of grace and peace.

Now notice that what Peter links the multiplication of grace and peace to

is part of that which is the central thesis of this old epistle

and it has to do with the knowledge of God.

If you recall when we first started this study that one of the obvious threats to the

early Christian church in her purity was the threat brought to bear

by the Nostyck heretics who claimed to have a superior knowledge.

Remember the word Nostyck comes from the Greek word noces which means knowledge.

And so these heretics believed that they had a knowledge that was higher than that which

was given to us by the apostles. Kind of a mysterious esoteric mystical insight

that ordinary mortals do not have at their disposal.

And so over against that heretical view of knowledge, Peter now talks about true knowledge.

That knowledge that comes from God which is perhaps one of the most important if not

the most important grace that he disposes upon his people.

That God gives us knowledge that comes to us from himself. He gives us his very word.

Our God is not silent. Our God is not mute. Though we may not see him,

we hear from him in his word. And this is the thing that's always amazed me

is why it seems so few professing Christians have a passion to know him in his word.

Well, let me ask you this if God sent you a letter in the mail and you went to the

mail box and you saw your name on the front of the envelope and then the return of a dress was

heaven and the sender was God himself and you knew that you had in your hand a letter addressed to

you from God. The simple question is this. Would you read it?

Who wouldn't read it? Who would read it and throw it away?

Who would read it and put it on the shelf to collect dust? If you got a letter written to you

personally from God, you would read it over and over and over again until you began to pay attention

to every tiny word, every subtle nuance in the text because you were being informed

by a knowledge that comes from God himself. And that's what we have. I'm firmly convinced that

that's what we have here in sacred scripture. And that's why we never graduate from the school of

Christ as we are ever learning more deeply, more carefully and hopefully more accurately

the things that are contained in this word. We remember that Jesus in His high priestly prayer

when He prayed for the sanctification of His disciples and of all who would believe through

their testimony which includes you. Our Lord prayed, Father sanctify them by your truth. Your word

is truth. This book is given to us not to press flowers or to make us feel good.

But to reveal the truth of God to us, not as an abstract exercise in intellectual pursuit,

but it is given to us that we might know Him and that we might know the Savior in the fullness

of His glory. I've spent my life studying theology and I wish I had 10 lifetimes in this world,

the study theology because in the study of theology we're studying the knowledge of God

and the more we learn of God, it's the old saying, the more we know Him, the greater capacity

for us to love Him. Oh, I know that there are people who have the creeds in their head,

but no love in their heart. I don't understand how that can be.

For them theology is established as a defense against the piercing of the soul by God,

but that's not what the word is given for, but it is given to define for us who Jesus is and if

you say all your concern about His relationships, how do you determine what a good relationship looks

like? How do you determine what a healthy relationship is except by the truth that God gives us,

that teaches us what true relationship should mean? And so the multiplication of grace,

the multiplication of peace that Peter enjoins is to be found in the knowledge of God

and of Jesus our Lord, comma, as His divine power has given to us all things that pertain

to life and godliness. Up in the first verse part B, we read that the greeting was to those who

have obtained like precious faith with us. And I stressed that the faith that you have is not

something that you generated from your flesh. But rather, it is a gift of God as the apostle

teaches us in Ephesians 2 so clearly that the very faith that you have by which you are linked

to Jesus is not something that arises spontaneously by your own decision. Nobody can decide

to believe in Christ. You can decide to follow Christ. You can decide to obey Christ,

but you can't decide to believe something that in fact you don't believe

that faith is a gift that we receive from the mercy of God. Somebody told me, I was your

student 40 years ago. And he said, what changed my whole thinking was when you wrote on the board,

the words regeneration precedes faith. You said it opened up a whole new understanding of

biblical Christianity to me because I was always taught that in order to be born again,

you must first believe. And that rebirth is the result of faith. No, it's just the other way around.

People who are dead in sin will never have faith until first the spirit of God changes the

disposition of their heart and renews them from the inside so that the work of the spirit in

regeneration is the first step. It's the divine initiative. It's the work of God that produces faith

in your heart. Peter hinted at that in the second part of verse 1 and now whatever was left

in ambiguity is made abundantly clear when he says as his divine power has given us all things

that pertain to life and godliness. The word power in the New Testament, different Greek words

that are used, they can be translated by the English word power. One of the most frequent,

in fact, the most frequent word that is used is the Greek word dunamis. And I think you can

guess what English word derives from that Greek word. You guessed it.

Dynamite, that the power that God works in your soul to bring you to faith is dynamite. It's an

overwhelming power. It's not a human potentiality that is realized by the flesh, but rather it is as

Peter tells us a divine and supernatural work that God works in your soul.

Regeneration is a result of the immediate supernatural work of God in your soul, a work that

only God can bring to pass. Here's what it means that if you are a believer in Christ,

if in your soul you have an inclination towards the things of God which inclination or

disposition is utterly foreign to the natural inclinations of your flesh. If you have a

desire for God, that means that in your life at some point you encountered the touch of the divine

in your soul. That inclination did not arise from your own bosom. That came when the spirit of God

as the Apostle Paul said, quicken Jew, made you alive and changed you from the path of following the

course of this world that marked your humanity prior to your conversion. His divine power

has given to us all things that pertain to life and to godliness through the knowledge of him

who called us by his glory and virtue. Wow. The vine power through the knowledge of the one who called us

and he called us by his glory, by his majestic power, by his righteous activity.

He has made us alive and by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises.

I mentioned that word precious earlier as Peter used it earlier. I look it up again this morning

in the dictionary. I know what the word precious means, but what is it that makes something

precious? We make distinctions in the common areas of life between rocks and gems and between

gems and precious gems. And that distinction has to do with the degree of value and the beauty

that is found in various natural substances. We just want to relate a little personal anecdote here.

When Vesta and I reached the milestone of our 25th wedding anniversary, I wanted to buy her something

special. I'm a romantic at heart and I talked to a friend of mine who had a good friend in New

York City who has been a jeweler for 50 years. He's in his late 70s and I asked this friend of mine

if he could get his private jeweler to find a diamond suitable for me to give my bride on our 25th

anniversary. And so the man came to Orlando from New York and he opened up this package and

displayed this diamond to me. And he said to me, he said, I've been a jeweler for 50 years.

He said, and I've been called upon to rate thousands and thousands and thousands of diamonds. He said,

and I have never ever rated a diamond as being flawless. And I haven't rated this diamond

as being flawless because he said, I am convinced that within the contours of every precious gem,

there must be a flaw. He said, however, this is the first time in my experience

that I have not been able to detect a flaw in a diamond. And so I have rated it museum quality.

That's perfect. Just what I want for my wife. And she doesn't have to look very hard to find flaws in

me, but she has to look real hard to find one in her ring because it's precious. There are no flaws

in the righteousness of Jesus. There are no blemishes in the lamb who was slain. That's why

in the first five minutes in heaven, I think we'll hear the elders singing worthy as the lamb who was

slain to receive honor and glory, the minion and power because he is precious.

And so this is a part of the vocabulary of St. Peter. And he tells us that through the knowledge

that God has given us, we have been given great promises and precious promises.

What do you live by? What did Jesus mean when he said to the

tempter? Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of God.

What Jesus was saying is that the promises that God gives to his people,

you will be my people. I will be your God. I will be with you even to the end of the age.

There are times in the routine of daily life that we scarcely even think about the promises of God.

But when crunch time comes, when our lives are on the line and whatever problem we have, we can't

buy our way up. There comes that moment when all that we have left to hold on to

are the promises of God. No, he would have been just in striking me dead for what I just said to

you. For intimating that all we have left would be the promises of God. Because what greater

possession could we have in those times than those promises that Peter speaks about here

that are great and precious? Consider the context in which Peter writes this epistle.

This is his once on. Second Peter is to the petrion literature like second Timothy was to the

corpus of the Apostle Paul. At the end of second Timothy, Paul tells his beloved disciple,

I'm about ready to be poured out. And he knows that his life is soon to be taken from him

wouldn't surprise me that the same day Paul was writing second Timothy, Peter was writing second Peter

because in the body of this epistle, he announces his imminent departure from this world.

And it's at a time like that that people begin to think of the promises of God.

Yay, now you walk through the valley and the shadow of death. I will fear no you

for thou art with me. How can you be afraid of anything?

If you know that God is with you, that is a precious promise. That is a great promise.

Were there to be clutch to our bosoms? Were they to die for him?

How can you be afraid of anything if you know that God is with you?

That was our Seasprall, and this is the Sunday edition of renewing your mind.

Dr. Sproul's passion for God's word was evident in his preaching, and you'll find that same passion

and precision when you request Dr. Sproul's hardcover commentary on first and second Peter

with your donation in support of renewing your mind at renewingyourmind.org.

And for our global listening audience, the eBook edition is also available for you

at renewingyourmind.org slash global. Use this commentary in your Bible study,

or as part of your personal devotional reading to help you grow in your knowledge of God,

but don't delay as only hours remain for this offer. Another opportunity to grow in your knowledge

of God's word is through Table Talk magazine. 250,000 people around the world read this devotional

and Bible study magazine every month. It contains weekday and weekend devotionals and thoughtful

articles on that month's theme. If you don't read it, and you'd like to try it free for three

months, simply visit trytabletalk.com. Well, if you had the chance to ask the apostle Peter,

what should my priority be in the Christian life? What do you think his response would be?

Join us next Sunday to find out here on renewing your mind.

You