A Reminder from God

RIVERSIDE INDONESIAN FELLOWSHIP
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A Reminder from God

Riverside Indonesian Fellowship
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2010 · 5 December 2010

We're going to study 2 Peter 1:12-15 tonight. This is one of those passages that really gives us insight into the author's heart. It's kind of going behind the scenes, a little bit, in the life of Peter to find out what makes him tick, as it were.

So let us examine now God’s word in 2 Peter 1:12-15, “For this reason I will not be negligent to remind you always of these things, though you know and are established in the present truth. 13 Yes, I think it is right, as long as I am in this tent, to stir you up by reminding you, 14 knowing that shortly I must put off my tent, just as our Lord Jesus Christ showed me. 15 Moreover I will be careful to ensure that you always have a reminder of these things after my decease.”

Let us briefly look again at the context of this passage. Peter wants to give us all the weapons we need to fight false teachers and their lies. If we are to defend ourselves against false doctrine, heresy, we are going to have to have knowledge.

We need to know our salvation and we've already discussed that in the first eleven verses of chapter 1. We need to know the Scripture, and Peter is going to get into that starting in verse 16 in our next lesson. And finally, in chapter 3, we must know our sanctification.

But before Peter goes into that second area of knowledge, he digresses a little bit in these few verses to let us look into his heart. He shows us the most caring part of him in this whole letter and really reveals his pastoral passion. Here is why he wrote the letter. Here we get an insight in to what was motivating him.

And as he speaks about his ministry, four things flow out of this text. He reveals the urgency of ministry, the spirit of ministry, the duty of ministry and the brevity of ministry. That's what's underlying this letter. This is the passion that moves him and that should move us also.

This letter is a final statement from the beloved Apostle Peter, a legacy, a statement of divine truth which set in pen and ink under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and is included in Scripture which will go on bearing eternal fruit as long as time exists. And it will lead people to holiness, virtue, obedience which will result in eternal reward.

But why does Peter start talking about reminding us? Because God knows that we are easily distracted and any good teacher also realizes that people easily forget what they hear. Way back in Deuteronomy 6:6-9 God said, "I am the Lord and I am one and I am your God."

And He then said, "Don't forget. Talk about Me when you rise up and when you sit down and when you lie down and when you walk in the way, teach about Me to your children. Bind My law on your forehead between your eyes, on your arm, put it on the doorpost of your house, do not forget." Don’t forget me in your daily life!

In Deuteronomy 8:19-20 we read, "And it shall come about if you ever forget the Lord your God and go after other gods and serve them and worship them, I testify against you today that you shall surely perish, like the nations that the Lord makes to perish before you, so you shall perish because you wouldn't listen to the voice of the Lord your God."

When God gave them the Passover, it was to be an annual reminder, the symbol of remembrance to remember not Egypt but to remember the God of redemption, the God of deliverance, the God of salvation, the God of grace and mercy and the God of judgment and justice. Even now when Passover is observed, the Jews remember Egypt and they remember escape but many do not know the God of salvation.

Jesus said to the Twelve in John 15:20, "Remember the word which I said to you." Paul said, "Remember the words of the Lord Jesus," in Acts  20:35. And he said in 2 Timothy 2:8, "Remember Jesus Christ born of the seed of David, risen from the dead according to my gospel."

And he wrote in 2 Peter 3:1, "This second epistle, beloved, I now write unto you in which I stir up your pure minds by way of remembrance." James put it another way but meaning the same thing, said, "Do not be a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work."

We don't have the time to go through all of those Old Testament texts in which God said "do not forget Me, do not forget Me, remember Me, remember Me." Nor do we even have time to go through all of them in the New Testament in which we as believers are reminded to remember. We as Christians all forget so easily.

Michael Griffiths says in his book “God’s forgetful Pilgrims”, and I quote: "Christians have a strange amnesia. A high proportion of people who go to church have forgotten what going to church is all for. Week by week they attend services in a special building and go through specific routines but give little thought to the purpose of what they're doing.

The Bible talks about the church as the bride of Christ, who is pure and chaste, but the church seems more like a ragged Cinderella, hideous among the ashes who have forgotten she's supposed to be a beautiful lady."

How about you here in our church? Are you really learning something that is changing the way you live? I’m glad that some of you save the sermons and from time to time read them again and do this so they can remember God’s word for them and then try to put this in practice in their daily life.

There's another reality that all good teachers also know and that is the issue of familiarity. While you must remind them over and over and over of the same thing, if you do it in the same way using the same words they will think they heard it before and they'll tune you out. So the challenge of teaching is to repeat Scripture in a different way using the same great truth so people hear it freshly.

Now the first thing that we note as we sense the heart of Peter for his people is the sense of the urgency of ministry. Notice the beginning of verse 12, “For this reason I will not be negligent to remind you always of these things.” And I don't want you to ever forget how marvelous it is to have the assurance of salvation and so I am going to be always ready to remind you about these things.

He is anticipating that everyone who reads his letter knows that he again ready is to remind us of these things. So every time 2 Peter is picked up and the first chapter is read, Peter is reminding us of these things. And so both preaching and writing are both reminding.

He wanted to leave a legacy; he wanted to leave a final will and testament to remind people of the greatness of salvation and the blessedness of assurance and to prevent false teachers and false doctrine to steal any of that away. And Peter is not the only one to do that.

It is frankly discouraging if you think about it how fast we forget. There have been surveys done in the past that say that within an hour after a given sermon, people have forgotten ninety percent of it. That is a frightening statistic.

"How do we overcome that?" By repeating the same things over and over again in different ways, just as the Word of God does. And any faithful minister feels the urgency of doing just that.

Secondly, Peter not only understood the urgency of ministry which is to remind people against the hazards of error and sin, but he also understood the spirit of ministry. While you are reminding people you have to recognize that they already know a lot of things.

Peter shows that you have to have a proper spirit, a spirit of graciousness, a spirit of gentleness, a spirit of meekness and a spirit of tenderness. And so he speaks in that way, look verse 12, "I shall always be ready to remind you of these things," that's the urgency of it, but look at the spirit of it, "even though you already know them and have been established in the truth which is present with you."

There's a sweetness in that as he says to his people...I know you know these things, I know you've heard these things, I know these things have been built into your life and I know that they are present with you, but please let me still remind you of them.

There isn't any condescension here. Remember he is the one who said you're not to lord over the flock. I'm not here to tell you something you don't know, I have great confidence and great trust in what you already have learned, what you have already come to believe, what you have already affirmed. But I just want to remind you.

And Paul does the same thing. In Colossians 1:6 Paul says, "Which has come to you just as in all the world, also it is constantly bearing fruit and increasing even as it has been doing in you, also since the day you heard of it and understood the grace of God in truth."

Here he writes this letter to the Colossians full of exhortation, full of calling them to a higher kind of life and yet he says, "I know you've heard the truth, I know you've believed the truth, I affirm all of that, I'm just reminding you, I'm trying to increase your devotion."

1 John 2:27 says, “the anointing which you have received from Him abides in you, and you do not need that anyone teach you; but as the same anointing teaches you concerning all things.” And he is speaking there about the Holy Spirit. In 2 John 1:2 he says that the truth abides in us and will be with us forever.

When you come to know Christ, John recognizes it, Paul recognizes it and Peter recognized it. When you come to know Christ the truth is in you, the truth abides in you. And Peter is saying I know that. I'm not questioning your salvation. I'm not questioning your faith. I'm just reminding you because of the urgency since you stand in the path of oncoming false doctrine.

Do you know this is true now more than ever? Satan knows that we are living in the end times and he is working his utmost to attack us. Have you seen the billboards from the atheist now just before Christmas? They say, hey wake up, there is no Christ, there never has been a God and there never will be. They say don’t be deceived.

One of the reasons that would have compelled Peter to remind us would have been his own failure, right? In the history of the world Peter had a greater opportunity to know truth than anybody else. Not only was he included among the twelve disciples, all of whom had that great opportunity, but he was included among the inner three, Peter, James and John, who were most intimate with Christ.

And he was without question the most outspoken of the Twelve and thus in many ways the most immediate confidant. He must have felt the closeness to Jesus because he was so brash, he made such major assumptions about what he could say in His presence which indicates that he felt very comfortable there.

No man had been in greater proximity to the truth, having walked with Jesus for those years, having heard everything that He had taught, having seen all of the miracles that He did, having experienced everything in the life and ministry of Jesus Christ that isn't even recorded in the Bible. He experienced all that truth and was reminded of it again and again.

If you read the gospels you will find that our Lord Jesus taught the same truths over and over again, sometimes in the same words, sometimes in different words. That's why you may read an expression by our Lord in one context, in one gospel and see it appear in a completely different context in another gospel. That is not proof of editing of the gospels; that is proof that Jesus was an excellent teacher who knew to repeat the same things over and over in different ways.

That is why Jesus was distressed when toward the end of His ministry they still hadn't got His message. He says John 14:9, "How long have I been with you," to them in the Upper Room, "and you still don't know who I am?"

And there is Peter after all of that firsthand exposure to truth defecting at the time of crisis, denying Jesus Christ. In Luke 22:31-32 Jesus said, "Simon, Simon, behold Satan has demanded permission to sift you like wheat. But I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail and you when once you have been turned again strengthen your brethren."

And Peter said to Him in verse 33-34, "Lord, with You I am ready to go both to prison and to death." And He said, "I say to you, Peter, the cock will not crow today until you have denied three times that you know Me." And we know that Peter denied Jesus three times.

See, Peter knew firsthand that even though you have a lot of truth and it is present with you, you need constant reminders lest you defect. The teacher never holds back truth because it is known that truth bears repetition. That's how you build the blocks of the wall of strength.

And so he says in verse 13, "I consider it right, I consider it proper, I consider it my duty as long as I am in this tent." Your body is only a tent, a temporary, transitory place for your soul to live and some day it will be folded up and your soul will move to another place abandoning that tent. But Peter says as long as I am this temporary, transitory passing place to live, I consider it right to stir you up by way of reminder.

He was saying there's no retirement. I do this till I leave my tent. I want to keep doing what I do until I die or lose my mind. If I lose my mind, you can shuffle me off to the home. But Peter had a lifelong perspective here. What was he going to be doing as long as he lived? He was going to stir you up to grow more like Jesus Christ.

Believers can become lazy and sleepy and drowsy, failing to be a alert, clear minded. There's a sense in which every preacher and teacher knows that his responsibility is to stimulate you, to awaken you from your lethargy and your laziness and apathy and spiritual drowsiness.

Lastly, he understood the brevity of ministry. And this becomes compelling...notice verse 14, he says, "Knowing," that is--I have no doubt--"that the laying aside of my earthly dwelling, my tent, is imminent." Look at the end of verse 14, "As also our Lord Jesus Christ has made clear to me."

What? You mean the Lord Jesus made it clear to him that his death was going to be sudden? Jesus told him that in John 21:18, and in verse 19 John says, "He said this signifying what kind of death he would glorify God."

The tradition of the early church says he was crucified as Christ predicted he would be. Before he was crucified, though, he was forced to watch the crucifixion of his wife. It is said that he stood at the foot of her cross, continually encouraging her with the words, "Remember the Lord, remember the Lord, remember the Lord." And after she died, he willingly died only he insisted that he not be allowed to be crucified like his Lord because he was not worthy, and he insisted that they crucify him upside down, which they did.

Peter is not concerned that you remember him. He's concerned that you remember what he taught. So Peter said I'm going to do it in such a way that I leave a legacy so that after I'm gone you, as Christians, you may be able to call these things to mind and you keep adding virtues to your life.

So is this driving you guys to remember that? Are you making changes in the way you live? Are you growing closer to God as Peter is reminding you? Do not ignore the Word of God!



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