Tag: knowledge

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2 Peter

Because this world isn’t forever

Man in prayer

If there’s one thing that’s crystal clear in this passage, it’s that this world will not last forever.

Peter says,

But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare…

That day will bring the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat. (2 Peter 3:10, 12)

Most of the time, we don’t even consider this. Instead we waste our lives on things that don’t matter. We waste our lives on temporary pleasures, on work, on money. But in the end, all these things will burn.

Yet not only will the earth be laid bare, so will our hearts. And God will judge us for how we lived our lives here.

And so Peter says,

Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming. (2 Peter 3:11-12)

In short, keep your priorities straight. Since these things will be destroyed, don’t set your hearts on them.

Instead set your heart on God and his kingdom. Live lives pleasing to him. And each day, seek to expand his kingdom. Touch the lives around you, sharing the love of Christ with them.

It’s hard to imaging that we can “speed” the day of Christ’s coming. But in a sense, we can.

For when the final person God has called receives Jesus as Savior and Lord, the church’s work is done, and there is no reason left for God to delay Christ’s coming.

Before we worry about bringing peace between God and mankind, however, we need to make sure that we ourselves are at peace with him. As Peter puts it,

Make every effort to be found spotless, blameless, and at peace with him. (2 Peter 3:14)

But we cannot be at peace with God if we are living merely to please ourselves. Nor can we be at peace with God if we distort his teachings.

That’s apparently what some people were doing with Paul’s writings as well as the other scriptures, “to their own destruction.” (16)

Too many people pick and choose what they like from the Bible. And if something God teaches makes them uncomfortable, they ignore it or try to explain it away. In some cases, they outright change it.

But we can’t do that and be at peace at God. We need to accept him as he is, not as we would like him to be.

So Peter tells us to be on our guard against people who would distort God’s word in that way.

And then he closes the same way he started, saying,

But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. (2 Peter 3:18)

Put aside any teachings that would diminish Jesus or his Word. Rather draw near to him and learn from him, and as each day passes, he will seem bigger to you than he ever was before.

And grace and peace will abound to you.

To him be the glory both now and forevermore. Amen. (2 Peter 3:18b)

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2 Peter

If we truly know him and love him

3 Servants

I’ve been reading Luke 19:11-27 in preparation for a message I’ll be giving in a few weeks at church. And as I read this passage in II Peter, it caused me to reflect on that passage in Luke.

In Luke 19, Jesus tells the parable of the minas. And in it, Jesus talks about three servants who were given money by their master to invest. Two did, and were richly rewarded. The third merely hid the money. And in giving his excuse, he showed just how little he knew his master.

He portrayed his master as a hard man, a man who exacted much from his servants, and who profited off of others’ labors while doing nothing himself. And for these reasons, he refused to do anything with the money his master had entrusted him with.

Many people today are the same way. They may go to church and call themselves Christians, and yet they carry grave doubts about the very character of God. They think him harsh and unfair. And they find it hard to believe that God actually knows what is best and is looking out for their best.

In short, they doubt in their hearts that God is good. And because of that, they refuse to live for him and his purposes. Instead, they live only for themselves.

But for the person who truly knows and loves God, can they live that way?

No.

Certainly, as a young believer, you don’t know God very well, and your love for him is far from developed. But as you grow in your faith, these things should change.

And as Peter says in this passage, as you come to know God more, grace and peace will be multiplied to you. Why? Because you will see that God is good. And you’ll see all the gifts that he has given you. The gift of forgiveness. The gift of eternal life. The gift of his Spirit.

And as you see these things, you can’t help but to love him all the more and to long to be like him.

  • You see the utter goodness of God and long for that goodness in your life.
  • You see the wisdom of God and long to learn from him.
  • You see the self-control that Jesus displayed when facing temptation, and long for that in your life.
  • You see how he persevered even to the cross, encouraging you to persevere under trial too.
  • You see how Jesus related to his Father, listening to and following his voice, and you long to do the same.
  • You see the kindness of God, and his love for you, and it causes you to want that kindness and love to be reflected in your life as well.

And Peter says,

If you possess these these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of Jesus Christ. (Nahum
2 Peter 1:8)

And like the faithful servants in Jesus’ parable, Peter says,

You will receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. (11)

But Peter also tells us,

If anyone does not have them, he is nearsighted and blind, and has forgotten that he has been cleansed of his past sins. (9)

That’s what the third servant was like. He had forgotten all about the goodness of his master. And because of that he was nearsighted and blind, totally oblivious to the cliff he was about to fall off of when his master returned.

How about you? How do you see God? Do you see him as he truly is? Or do you have a warped view of him?

How you see him will shape your life. And it will show in your attitude toward him on judgment day.

What will God see in you on that day?

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2 Peter

That grace and peace may abound

2 Peter

One of my favorite passages in C.S. Lewis’ Prince Caspian is when Lucy meets up with Aslan, and she says, “Aslan! You’re bigger!”

And Aslan replies, “That is because you are older, little one.”

“Not because you are?”

“I am not. But every year you grow, you will find me bigger.”

How true is that in our relationship with God. He is already as big as he ever will be. But as we grow in our knowledge of him, he becomes bigger in our eyes. Not because he actually grows bigger, but because we see him more as he truly is.

I believe that is why Peter says,

Grace and peace be yours in abundance through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. (2 Peter 1:2)

He expands on this in verses 3-4.

His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.

Through these, he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by sin. (3-4)

How can we know grace and peace in abundance in our lives? Through knowing God more. Through coming to know his glory and goodness more deeply.

That same glory and goodness by which he called us to be his own children. That same glory and goodness through which he has given us his very great and precious promises.

Promises of eternal life. Promises that the Holy Spirit will indwell us, counsel us, lead us, intercede for us, and day by day transform us into Christ’s likeness.

And because of these promises, we can actually participate in his divine nature, such that when people see us, they see our Father in heaven.

Through his grace we have already escaped the corruption in this world that destroys people. (The new NIV translates verse 4 more accurately: “having escaped the corruption in the world.”)

But now his power gives us everything we need to to live life to the fullest and to become the godly children he created us to be.

And as we live this way each day, God’s grace abounds to us and so does his peace.

Do you know that grace and peace today? If not, draw near to God. The word “godliness” has that very connotation in it. It was used of people who kept in close touch with the “gods.”

But here, Peter applies it to Christians and says that we should keep in constant touch with the one true and living God.

Moment to moment, day to day, we should be aware of his presence in our lives, and to let that awareness shape our thoughts, our actions, our very lives.

And as you do, you will know his grace and his peace in your life, multiplied many times over.

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1 Corinthians

How we wield the knowledge we have

1 Corinthians

This passage in many ways is very similar to Romans 14. Because of this, I want to put more of my focus on the first few verses and how it relates to the rest of the passage.

Paul writes,

Now about food sacrificed to idols: We know that we all possess knowledge.

Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. The man who thinks he knows something does not yet know as he ought to know.

But the man who loves God is known by God. (1 Corinthians 8:1-3)

Paul was dealing here with a situation in which some of the Corinthian Christians were bothered by other believers eating meat offered to idols. They felt it would be wrong to do so, and as Paul wrote in Romans 14,

The man who has doubts is condemned if he eats, because his eating is not from faith; and everything that does not come from faith is sin. (Romans 14:23)

But there were others in the Corinthian church who knew that eating such meat had no effect on their spiritual life, that Jesus had in fact said that all foods were clean. (Mark 7:19)

The problem was that knowledge led to pride, and that pride led them to flaunt their freedom in front of their weaker (in faith) brothers and eat this meat that was sacrificed to idols.

This in turn was leading some of the brothers to break their conscience and eat this meat too. And because they weren’t eating from faith, they were sinning.

And so Paul really gets on these Corinthians who were causing their brothers to fall.

He told them, “Yes, you know that eating food offered to idols is okay because the idols are nothing and are not real gods.”

But Paul tells them,

The man who thinks he knows something does not yet know as he ought to know. (1 Corinthians 8:2)

What is Paul saying? I think he’s saying it’s not enough to just have knowledge. You also have to know how to wield that knowledge. And if you don’t know how to wield that knowledge, then your knowledge is incomplete.

How are we to wield the knowledge we have? With love.

Paul tells the Corinthians,

Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. (1 Corinthians 8:1)

Knowledge in itself can be a source of pride. “I know! You don’t.”

It is that kind of pride that often leads people to argue theological issues that go round and round but never go anywhere.

Even worse, it’s the kind of pride that causes people to look down on and judge other people.

And it’s the kind of pride that causes division in the church and tears it apart.

That’s what was happening in the Corinthian church. And so Paul reminds them, “Your ‘knowledge’ is not what pleases God. It’s what you do with that knowledge.

Are you building people up with that knowledge? Or are you tearing them down?”

Paul concludes by saying,

But the man who loves God is known by God. (1 Corinthians 8:3)

How do we know if a person truly loves God? John tells us in his first epistle:

Whoever loves God must also love his brother. (1 John 4:21)

That’s exactly what the Corinthians weren’t doing. They were using their knowledge not to build people up, but to tear them down by eating meat sacrificed to idols in front of their weaker brothers. The result:

So this weak brother, for whom Christ died, is destroyed by your knowledge. (1 Corinthians 8:11)

And Paul warns them,

When you sin against your brothers in this way and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ. (1 Corinthians 8:12)

Paul then shows them how their knowledge should lead them to act in the current situation.

Therefore, if what I eat causes my brother to fall into sin, I will never eat meat again, so that I will not cause him to fall. (1 Corinthians 8:13)

How about you? How do you wield the knowledge you have?

Do you use it to puff yourself up, while destroying your brother or sister? Or do you use it to build them up?

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Romans

A God who is beyond us

Romans

One of the things that amazes me is the people who think that if they were to argue with God, they could win.

More than a few atheists, when posed with the question, “If God exists, what would you say when you stood before him in heaven,” respond by saying they could argue why they didn’t believe in God while they were on earth.

And they seem to think they could reasonably argue their position before God.

But in this passage, Paul shows the utter foolishness and futility of that way of thinking.

In chapters 10 and 11, he talks about how God used the disobedience of the Jews to bring the Gentiles to salvation, and how the result of the Gentiles coming to Christ will be the salvation of the Jews.

In short,

Just as you (Gentiles) who were at one time disobedient to God have now received mercy as a result of their (the Jews’) disobedience, so they too have now become disobedient in order that they too may now receive mercy as a result of God’s mercy to you.

For God has bound all men over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all. (Romans 11:30-32)

It’s here that you see a glimpse of how God’s foreknowledge works with predestination.

He knew how the Jews would react to Jesus, and he thus made plans to bring Gentiles into his kingdom.

But he also knew that if he did that, the Jews would then feel a longing for God, and thus turn to Jesus and be saved as well.

In short, God knows what his endgame is on the chessboard of the universe, and he knows how to achieve it.

God knows exactly what choices we will make, and he knows exactly how he will respond to each of our choices so that his will will ultimately be done.

People thus retain their free will and he maintains his.

As he contemplated this, Paul was simply overwhelmed, singing,

Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!

How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out!

“Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?” (Romans 11:33-34)

In other words, no one can match the wisdom and knowledge of God.

It’s hard to match all wisdom and all knowledge, after all.

And because he knows all things and we don’t, it’s impossible for us to understand all his decisions unless he reveals it to us.

And even if he does reveal it, we’re still limited as to how much we can truly understand.

So when people argue, for example, about how a good God could allow evil in the world, they do so from ignorance.

They don’t have all the information that God has, and so all their arguments against him essentially amount to nothing.

Yet people argue as if they do know everything. As if their arguments are unanswerable. And so they boast that they could debate against God and win.

But when they stand before him, he will lay out on the table all the motivations of their heart and all that they knew or should have known had they taken the time to find out.

He will lay out all the facts as they are, not as we perceived them in our pride.

And ultimately, every mouth will be silenced and every person held accountable. (Romans 3:19).

There is nothing that we can bring to the table that will stun God and make him say, “I never knew that.”

Nor will there be anything that we can point to in our lives to say, “Look at what I did. I deserve heaven.”

For as Paul concludes,

“Who has ever given to God, that God should repay him?”

For from him and through him and to him are all things. (Romans 11:35-36a)

Everything we have is from him. All things came through him. And all things will return to him. That includes us.

So we have two choices. We can give glory to him, as Paul did, saying,

To him be the glory forever! Amen. (Romans 11:36b)

Or we can continue to rebel against him until the day come when we are silent before him.

How about you? What will you choose?

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Psalms

How God reveals himself

Psalms

Psalm 19 is another one of my favorite psalms and it powerfully shows how God reveals himself to us.

First, David shows us how God reveals himself through creation.  He sang,

The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.  Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge.

There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard.  Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.  (Psalm 19:1-4)

I think this passage is primarily what Paul was thinking of when he wrote,

What may be known about God is plain to [all], because God has made it plain to them.

For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities — his eternal power and divine nature — have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. (Romans 1:19-20)

Sometimes people ask, “What will happen to those who have never heard about God?  Will God judge them too, when they’ve never even heard the name of Christ?”

The answer to this is, yes they will be judged, but not on the basis of never hearing about Christ.

They’ll be judged on the basis that when they looked at creation, they knew in their hearts that it couldn’t have been an accident, nor could it have been created by the idols made by their own hands.  And yet they rejected that knowledge.

When people reject the knowledge that God gives them, he is under no obligation to give them any more.

If he chooses to do so, it’s purely a matter of grace, not of some right to knowledge that we have.

(Actually, any knowledge of himself that God gives to us is purely a matter of grace, anyway).

I will say, however, that if a person, say in Africa, who has never heard the gospel looks up at the sky and says, “I didn’t make this world.  No one I know could have made this.  It’s impossible that the things I created with my own hands have made this.  Whoever you are that made all this, please show yourself to me,” that God will respond one way or another.

Why?  Because it is his desire that all be saved.  (I Timothy 2:4)

If you have any doubts about that, just look at the story of Cornelius in Acts 10.

He knew nothing of his need for Christ. Yet because he acted on the knowledge that he did have, God reached down to him and gave him the knowledge of Jesus that he needed for salvation.

God reveals himself to us through creation, but he also reveals himself through his Word.  And just as with creation, people need to choose to believe his word or reject it.

We can either say that it’s perfect and trustworthy, or that it’s not.  (Psalm 19:7)

We can either say it’s right, or that it’s not.  (Psalm 19:8)

We can believe it is gives joy and light to our lives, or that it doesn’t. (Psalm 19:8)

David, of course, chose to believe the former.  Many others do not.  But how we view God’s Word shapes our view of God for the good or bad.  And if we reject his Word, then we come out with a distorted view of who God really is.

But when we see God for who he is, we love him, and want to please him as David did.  And so David closes this psalm with a prayer, saying,

Who can discern his errors?  Forgive my hidden faults.

Keep your servant also from willful sins; may they not rule over me.  Then will I be blameless, innocent of great transgression.

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, O LORD, my Rock and my Redeemer.  (Psalm 19:12-14)

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Malachi

Your role as God’s priest

Malachi

Some of you may look at today’s title and say, “I’m not a priest. This has no relevance for me.”

But if you are a Christian, you are God’s priest. Peter says of you and me,

But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. (1 Peter 2:9)

And so this passage is very much relevant to you and me as Christians.

Here, God rebukes the priests because they were not doing what he had called them to do.

Their problem was the same as the rest of Israel: they were failing to honor God with their lives. But God particularly rebuked them because of their position.

Because they were priests, they were held to a higher standard than everyone else.

God talked about the covenant he had made with the priests, “a covenant of life and peace” (Numbers 25:12–13). And he told them,

This called for reverence and he revered me and stood in awe of my name.

True instruction was in his mouth and nothing false was found on his lips. He walked with me in peace and uprightness, and turned many from sin.

For the lips of a priest ought to preserve knowledge, because he is the messenger of the Lord Almighty and people seek instruction from his mouth. (Malachi 2:5–7)

What does God expect of us as his priests? And what is our role? Here, it is clearly laid out for us.

First, he expects us to revere and stand in awe of him. In short, to honor him.

Although God calls us his friends, he is much more than that. He is our King and our Lord as I mentioned in my last blog.

Gordon MacDonald once noted that “The most costly sins I have committed came at a time when I briefly suspended my reverence for God.”

As God’s priests, we can’t afford to do that.

Second, he expects us to walk in peace and uprightness before him. This flows from the first expectation. If we honor God, we will walk righteously before him and in peace with him.

Unfortunately, that’s not what these priests did. They had suspended their reverence for God, and as a result had no qualms about offering him sacrifices that were lame and diseased.

What is our role as God’s priests?

We are to be people that instruct others in God’s ways.

People ought to see God in our lives and seek to hear God’s word from us. Obviously, if we are not honoring God with our lives, no one will ever do this.

Our lips should preserve knowledge.

But that will be impossible to do if we don’t know God’s word. So linked with this role is the idea that you study God’s word and know it intimately so that you can share that knowledge with others.

This is not just the role of the pastors in the church. Every Christian should be doing this, because all of us are his priests.

We are to turn people from their sin.

When we see others falling into sin and going down the wrong path, we are not to just ignore it and pretend everything is all right. God calls us to warn them.

They may listen. They may not. But God requires us to warn them. (Ezekiel 33:7–9)

The priests in Malachi’s day failed miserably in these things.

Instead of turning people from their sin, and instructing them in God’s way, they caused the people around them to stumble.

What about you? What kind of priest are you?