Now What?

This morning we are finishing up our series in the book of Second Peter and whether this is your first sermon in the series that you're hearing or you've been at all of them.
I think it's a good reminder for all of us that the book of Second Peter was written by none other than Peter, who is reminding the Christians in the churches in Asia Minor to guard against false teaching, to live lives in line with the righteousness that God has granted to us and to wait with patience and with hope for the day in which in which Christ returns and all things are made new.
In our passage today, this is Peter's final appeal to these Christians as he reminds them of the coming day of our Lord.
And so for us too, Christian, brother and sister, we are living in this same era of God's story as these Christians in Asia Minor living in.
We're waiting for Christ to return and these words may not have been written to us, but these words are for us.
And they are good and they are true.
And so if you would, please stand with me for the reading of God's word from 2nd Peter chapter 3:14 through 18.
Therefore, beloved, since you are waiting for these, be diligent to be found by him without spot or blemish and be at peace.
And count the patience of our Lord as salvation just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him.
As he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters.
There are some things in them that are hard to understand which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction as they do the other scriptures.
You, therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, take care that you are not carried away with the error of lawless people and lose your own stability, but grow in grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
To him be the glory glory, both now and to the day of eternity.
Amen.
The grass withers and the flowers fade, but this the word of God will stand forever.
This is the word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God.
You may be seated.
If you were walking down the street and someone came up to you, screaming about how there would be a snowstorm tomorrow, you'd likely not believe it.
You would continue on your way, would not change how you lived, or what you did, because the snowstorm at the end of May seems quite unlikely, and a screaming person on the street is no credible source of news.
But now on that same day, if you were on your phone or you were on the internet and on social media, some random content creator said, "Oh, there's going to be a snowstorm tomorrow." You might pause and say that's quite the coincidence.
But it would not maybe convince you that there would be a snowstorm tomorrow.
However, if you turned on the TV and every main news channel was reporting it and the weather app showed it and you went outside and it was getting colder, you might do whatever good Oklahoma does and go buy all the milk, bread, and eggs at the store and then go salt your driveway.
See, because when we believe something, when we're convinced of a reality, it must change how we live.
Especially when that reality impacts something about our future, we have to live in accordance with it or we risk lives of hypocrisy.
Or we risk being caught unprepared for the implications of that reality in which we believe.
And in our passage today, Paul is saying something similar to Christians about living in this era of redemptive history.
We know and we believe that Jesus lived, Jesus died, Jesus rose again and one day he's coming again soon for the final judgments to make all things new.
And this is not the ramblings of a madman on the street or the posts of a social media trend.
This is a fact and it is a fundamental truth of this world.
And that being true and all of us being those who profess faith in Christ and believe it, if we believe what scripture tells us about the world, Well then, how do we live?
What is the impact that that truth has on us?
What must our lives look like?
How do we prepare?
In short, what now?
What do we do in this time between Christ's redemption and is coming again in the recreation of all things, that's what Peter answers for us in our passage today.
We're going to consider this passage through three points.
One, do not be carried away.
Two, do not lose your stability and three, grow in grace.
Do not be carried away, do not lose your stability and grow in grace.
So first, do not be carried away.
At the beginning of Peter's end to his letter, he calls for Christians in verse 14 be diligent to be found by him without spots or blemish.
It's the same language that Peter uses actually in the beginning of 1 Peter 1 in verses 18 through 19, he writes that we were not ransomed with gold and silver.
We are not bought with real money, but we were bought with the precious blood of Christ like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.
It's the same language.
And Peter is is reminding his audience here at the end of his letters that that we must live out of what God has already made true of us.
Jesus has already covered us in his blood and washed us clean and so we must live as those who are a new creation.
To be found as those who actually believe it and live that out.
Peter writes that knowing that you are a new creation and knowing that you are washed clean and called to live as the righteous people that God has has made us to be then what verse 17 He says, "You, therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, take care that you are not carried away with the error of lawless people." Now, throughout the whole letter, if you've been with us as as you've been reading this, you know that Peter is aware of the attractiveness of false gospels.
And he knows they have power to convince people of their falsehood and lies and to draw them away from the good news of what Jesus has done.
And how in the time time between now and the new creation, this will be an issue for Christians.
And what I believe Peter is referencing here when it comes to lawless people is specifically those who are outside of the Christian world who attempt to promote enticing world views and draw people into their falsehoods or even taking the difficult to understand words of Paul, like Peter says, and taking advantage of that difficulty to draw people away from the gospel.
Paul himself actually warns us of this, the same thing in 2nd Corinthians 11.
He writes this, "But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and a pure devotion to Christ." For if someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed, or if you receive a spirit from the one you receive received or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it readily enough.
Paul's warning is the same as Peter's that being drawn into false gospels is not just a problem for Christians in Asia Minor, it's a problem for all Christians.
It's something that we have to be wary about today.
I have a I have a friend who works in the corporate and political world and he sent me a podcast recently and asked me to listen to it because he thought it did a good job of understanding the dominating world view of our culture and where we are at.
But now these two men on the podcast, they are both atheists, both very successful in their respective fields, very influential, and they spend this whole podcast discussing how our world and our culture is centered around the internet and social media.
But how both of these things are currently being overseen and controlled by a short list of tech CEOs and billionaires who have researched the human mind and the human body and figured out not only how to draw people into addiction to their products, but how they fill their products with certain algorithms to try to entertain us or draw us into a worldview.
And now according to these two men, that worldview on this podcast was nihilism.
Nihilism.
And if you will bear with me, I want to to use this worldview of nihilism as an example for how we might be carried away from the gospel because it's a world view that is so regularly presented to us whether we know it or not.
Nihilism, if you don't know what that is, it comes from the Latin word meaning nothing, nothing.
It's an expansion on atheism to say that not only is there no God for these people, they believe that there's no meaning to life, no purpose.
No value.
There's no life after death.
There's no objective truth and there's no point to the human existence.
To the nihilist, this actually frees them if they believe it to create meaning for themselves, purpose for themselves, morality for themselves so that they make the most out of their short lives and because to them there's nothing else to live for.
This leads to conclusions like prioritizing profit over people.
people or might makes right, or the ends justify the means as long as you win.
And you combine that world view and that prevailing world view and these people in charge with the ability of these people to to hold it, who hold it to dictate how our media functions and and what we're presented with and the content and the news that we see every day, Peter's warning about being carried away by the error of lawless people, I think is applicable here.
And the overconsumption of this media that many of us fall into.
And I think one of the greatest struggles of my generation right now and as the data shows, I think one of the greatest struggles of many generations other than just Gen Z is the addiction to something called doom scrolling.
And if you haven't heard of that before, you may have just heard it as a slang term and maybe you even roll your eyes a little bit at it, but it's a real thing.
And what it means is it's used to describe this the mindless act of constantly intaking social media content for the sole purpose of just shutting our brains off and wasting time.
Continually doing it to the point where you don't even realize you've been doing it.
It's quick and it's easy and it's comforting.
And like I said before, it's those things for a reason because these algorithms are designed to make it feel that way.
They they know how the human brain works.
Not only is it to absorb your time, but the algorithms they've developed actually are used to influence you and the content that you are being shown.
So, yes, you might get cute animal videos and quirky comedy routines when you're on social media or the internet, but you also get constant news and opinions on how on on these types of things, how those people are your enemy.
Why you should be dissatisfied with your body, why your body doesn't look as good as those people's body, and here are the things you need to do to fix it.
How you need to have a passive income or you're falling behind.
Then a funny cat video, distraction, right?
Then Christians need to take back our country or the job market is failing and the housing market is a bubble or the food is poisoning you or you should be afraid of others or you need to prioritize yourself over all things because nobody else will do it for you.
Now, I know that you have seen these things whether you know it or not because I promise they're there.
And sometimes they're just hidden very well amongst the humor and the distractions and and don't you hear the message of nihilism and all of that.
Be so disillusioned and angry about the world that you retreat further into yourself and get whatever you can for yourself before your life ends.
And I think that's one of the greatest struggles for Christians today it's apathy and pessimism and despair the future which then draws you right back into that comfort of doom scrolling and turning your brain off and the cycle continues.
Now, I don't mean to be fatalistic about tech or cause anxiety for you about the dangers of social media, but I I you know, I don't think that we need to cast our phones into the fires of Mount Doom.
I went to sometimes.
But I do believe God has granted us spirits of wisdom and discernment so that we can partake in media and not just be a sponge that absorbs it all, but we have to be aware of what we're hearing and what we're reading and what we're being told.
So, I don't believe that complete rejection of media is a solution, but I do believe however that Peter reminds us in this passage what we started this sermon with is that we, you and I, Christian, have placed our faith into someone and something greater than ourselves who has named us as righteous and new creation.
And that God has granted us again spirits of discernment so that we might be grounded in a truth greater than ourselves.
And it's a truth that unlike something like nihilism says that there is a God.
There is meaning to our lives because God gives us one.
There is a hope because we have a hope for a future and we live for something other than ourselves and how quickly we we can forget all those things when we listen to other voices.
We have to be aware of what voices we allow to have a place in our lives.
Unless we allow them to drown out the truth.
Again, there will always be false teachings.
However, there is only ever one true and good gospel.
We have to know its voice.
We have to hear its truth and let it be the loudest thing we hear that the loudest thing we hear is this better story amongst all of the false ones that were told.
But the good news about this better story is it's not just up to us to hear it on our own.
Jesus himself said in John 10 that my sheep hear my voice.
And I know them.
And they follow me.
I give them eternal life and they will never perish and no one will snatch them out of my hand.
Know your savior's voice like he knows you.
Let it be the loudest voice in your life and hear it more often and more more loudly and more clearly than any other.
Hear truth among the lies.
Believe that truth and know that God will not abandon you as you navigate the false gospels of this world and that try to carry you away.
Point one, do not be carried away.
Do not be carried away by false teaching, but rather know the voice of the true gospel.
Which leads us to our second point, do not lose your stability.
Do not lose your stability.
Peter warns Christians that we must also not lose our stability in verse 17.
And this word stability, it's a Greek word, they read most that only exists one time in the whole Bible.
It's right here, 2nd Peter 3.
And though this word for stability exists only one time, the idea of steadfastness And having a firm foundation is found all throughout scripture.
Multiple times in the Old Testament we're we're told that God's love is steadfast and it will not fail.
And Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 3 that it is Christ alone who is the foundation of the Christian life.
And of course famously in Matthew 7 Jesus tells the parable to remind us of that the wise man builds his house upon the rock.
The rock is the foundation of Jesus' words.
And no matter the rain that pelts the house or the storm that shakes it and the winds that blow, the house stands firm because the foundation is firm.
And the stability that we have is that our salvation is secure.
Meaning our salvation is actually the beginning of our lives as Christians.
It is secured when we confess faith and believe it's secured at the start.
And so if that is true and we believe it because it is true and we do believe it, then we get to live the rest of our lives in in the freedom and security that we already know our destination.
The ending has already been written.
And so different than the last section when Peter warns of outside lawlessness that tempts Christians away, when when Peter One way is to consider this, the lies that come from within from our own lawlessness.
The lies that we convince ourselves of which make us question our firm foundation.
What are those lies for you?
Well, I think we all lie to minimize our own sin and find reasons why it's not so bad.
I think one of the main ways which we lie to ourselves is questioning whether we really actually have a secured salvation.
That that is actually true for us.
And I think for many of us when we first experience the goodness and the radical life changing nature of the gospel, we have some kind of spiritual revival or we have something like a camper conference that changes us or a major life event that draws us near to God.
Every part of faith is exciting in those moments.
Until eventually, it becomes routine and the luster and excitement fades a little bit.
But I think that's not just true about our faith sometimes, it's true about all human experience that things are most exciting when they're new.
But they don't always stay that way.
We fall into that pattern I do at least with new hobbies.
And if you're like me, you might have a graveyard of your best hobby intentions lying around your house.
You buy a guitar promising I'm going to practice this every day.
You buy a new art set thinking I'm going to paint all the time.
You buy a new running shoes thinking I'm going to wake up early every morning and I'm going to go for a run.
But what happens?
Learning a new instrument is difficult and maybe you aren't as good as it as you thought you'd be and you get frustrated.
Painting takes time and space and it's messy.
Running is hard work.
Getting up early is even harder work sometimes.
And so the guitar gets set out of sight and the paint dries up and the running shoes are thrown into the closet and all we're left with are these shameful reminders of how we did not stick with it.
And I think when it comes to our faith lives, we might have these moments of conversion or spiritual revival that drive us into regular worship or regular reading of scripture, but then when those sermons don't move us like they want once did, or scripture seems boring and confusing, our spiritual lives start to lack the shine that they once had for ourselves.
And And that's where I think the lies of Satan start to creep in.
We wonder if God really is at work, if we don't see the work.
We wonder if we're truly doing enough to be saved even when our faith feels dull.
And we wonder if we maybe did more good deeds and maybe we would feel better about this Christian life and not feel so much shame and guilt for not producing the works that we thought we would producing or seeing the growth that we thought we would see in ourselves and so we make our faith into trying to be a better person.
Maybe that will bring back the excitement.
And so we operate out of fear or duty or shame hoping to build our own stability when all we're actually producing We're trying to do more or be more or try to create an outcome that we actually cannot achieve for ourselves because it's already been achieved for us.
And so by trying to make our own stability, we forget that our salvation is not secured in how we feel about ourselves or the deeds we collect.
It is only secured in the life and the work of Christ.
It's the only place.
It is the only way.
And that has to be enough.
That has to be enough.
Even when our faith walk seems stale or even when doubts creep in, we have to return to the firm foundation that we have that's set by Christ in his work.
That his grace is enough, even when it doesn't feel like it sometimes.
The work is done.
The work is done.
Our salvation is secured and so we wait for Christ's return with patience not to to attempt to craft our own foundation by listening to the lies that we tell ourselves.
Point two, do not lose your stability.
Do not lose your stability by trying to craft your own.
Do not lose your stability by trying to craft your own.
So we see in the time between redemption and new creation that's coming soon, we we do not fall prey to the lies of the world and do not fall prey to the lies create for ourselves.
Well, then what what do we do?
What do we actually do?
What does What does it look like actively?
point three grow in grace grow in grace Paul ends his letter by writing this but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Growing grace sounds like a simple thing, maybe when you read it or hear it, but I'd wager that many of us, if not, most of us don't really understand what that means.
And I hope you know that it is by grace we are saved through faith, that grace is the unearned expression of God's love that is the foundation of our forgiveness and really the foundation of our faith.
And so you might ask, how do I grow in that?
Well, I've heard it explained this way, we don't grow in grace and that we grow in salvation.
Right?
But rather we grow in grace and that our experience of that grace can grow and its influence influence over our lives can grow.
Okay, well how does that happen?
Well, when I was in high school, many of you know that I ran track and field and every spring season we had this really strange phenomenon that would happen.
We would have a ton of people join in February.
And we have our workouts for a month and then spring break would happen and we'd come back and about 30 people would just leave the team.
And my first year I I was very confused by this, but in my sophomore year when it happened again, I said, "Well, I'm going to have to ask about this." So I I found some people I asked them why, and you know what all of them said?
"Oh, I just joined track to get in shape and look good for spring break." And I always want to ask them, "Did it work?" And and any of you who have tried to get in shape know that it takes quite a bit more than just a month to get in shape to see results.
But But said another way, if you remember my example from the last points about our hobbies and how we give up on our hobbies, if any of you have been successful, if you've taken up a new hobby and been successful, you know that what happens is you have to stay consistent with it.
Even though it's difficult and sometimes not exciting and sometimes you seem to get worse.
Overtime, it gets easy.
It gets easier at least and you get better at it.
Playing that instrument gets easier.
You get better.
It becomes second nature.
Your knowledge of color theory when you're painting becomes just a part of what you know and your mile time starts to get better and quicker.
And I think that's true with our growth and grace.
Because as as Christians, we may want to see results immediately.
We want to see ourselves go one day from sinner to saint and never go back.
So Peter says we grow in grace.
We grow in grace.
Nothing needs to grow if it's already reached maturity.
That's sanctification.
God is growing us in the righteousness that he has already given to us.
Practically, growth in grace is slow and it is daily and it's consistent.
We remind ourselves daily of the good news of the gospel by reading it and speaking it to others so that when lies do creep in because they will from outside influences and from within, we don't lose our stability.
We're not carried away.
Actually, we remind ourselves of the truth daily.
We have to because we forget it, but we need to be refreshed by the truth of scripture and to know that our salvation is secure.
Because when we're told it constantly, it's harder to forget.
And with that foundation, we might actually begin to believe that we are a new creation.
That God's words are true and that maybe, just maybe, as Peter calls us in this passage, maybe we are God's beloved.
Maybe maybe our heavenly father does actually love us.
And if we truly are his beloved, if we truly have a secured salvation and if we know the truth of the gospel, when that's who we know that we are, then from that foundation of our hearts we might actually begin to be able to love others.
Not out of getting something from ourselves, not for personal gain, but for the sake of loving others and loving God.
And we can do good deeds.
We can do the deeds that God has called us to, not having an attempt to earn anything for ourselves, but because we love love God and we love others.
And we can obey God's moral law, not perfectly and not to make ourselves right, but because we were already made right and we are simply living the people as the people who God has already made us to be.
That is what the righteous do.
We can confront sin and darkness in ourselves and in the world with the trust that nothing can actually truly drag us from our faith if our foundation is secure and it is.
And we can tell the world about this truth and the goodness of it because why wouldn't we?
If this is really true and it is good for us, why would we not want it for others?
We see the work of sanctification in ourselves and others get to point it out for us and we get to put our sin to death daily, daily.
It's not a one-time thing.
We have to wake up every morning and do it.
We have to attempt to live the lives of the righteous that we have already been named to be.
And when we stumble and fall because we will, daily we trust that God uses it all for the sake of our growth.
Making us into the people that he already knows we are in his sight.
And you know the number one way in which we grow in grace, this.
The church and also this, the table.
God calls us into community.
It is what Christians do, it is how we live.
We we grow when we grow weary of preaching the gospel to ourselves every day, and when it seems to grow stale, show up and rest and hear it preach to you.
We get to sing it and worship when our hearts don't really know the words anymore.
We get to proclaim it in liturgy.
We get to pray together.
Pray for one another.
Ask God to work in and through us and to work in others and we get to feast together.
And we get to celebrate the reality of what Christ has done for us as he spiritually nourishes us when we feel weak.
And so I plead to you in the midst of outside influences and the business of the world and our inside temptation to try to be a better person to press on in the gospel.
Come to worship even when you don't feel worthy of it.
When you don't feel like you belong, when it seems stale to you because through this God is growing you in grace.
Participate in things like community group.
Spend time with other Christians who remind you of his truth and you remind them of his truth because through this is growing you in grace.
And be willing to let the gospel be the true, the actual center of your life and having been convinced of that reality, let it transform you.
God is transforming you.
Through this God is growing you in grace.
And know this, Christian, brother and sister, that living a life for every day focused on growing in your experience of God's grace and resting in his love, knowing you're his beloved, showing that love to others is actually the only life that has a purpose.
The only one.
Because there is a day coming soon where you and I get to see all things made new together and we will be able to look back on this time and realize that every moment that we stay grounded in truth and every moment we lived in community and every time we showed up to worship and reminded each other of truth, every moment we sought to live for God was a moment with eternal purpose and meaning.
We won't regret a moment of it.
That's the truth that nihilism wants to rip from you.
It's the truth that Satan would love to lead you away from.
Hear this, stay grounded in truth among the lies of false gospels.
Trust the stability of your secured salvation and call out your inward lies, grow in grace.
believing that God is at work in you.
And as Peter says when he closes out, to him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity.
Amen.
Let's pray.
Lord God, in a world that seems to want to drag my attention away from you.
Lord, in a world that seems to cause us to be busy and anxious and to be worried.
Lord, I know that you're good, that you're steadfast, that your love endures forever, Lord, and I pray that we might be a people who actually do believe this, who let it be the song of our hearts, Lord, who let it be the words that we say to others, who let it be the thing that affects every part of our lives so that we might, Lord, grow in the great Thanks that you are growing in us.
Lord, help us to trust your work and your process, Lord, and help us to love one another well.
I pray all these things in your name.
Amen.

Sermon transcript is computer generated.