2/3/08 Promises! Promises! Pt. 2

We have been studying the first few verses of Second Peter during the past few weeks,

and last week our study brought us to the 4^th verse in that letter,

a verse in which Peter begins to reveal to us

how we can, well... as he puts it, “...become partakers of the divine nature...”.

In other words,

how we can literally become more and more like God Himself.

But just so that we keep this whole thing in its right context,

let me just remind us again of how we got into this study

and what Peter has said to us so far.

We’re actually involved in a study of spiritual growth...

what it is and how it takes place in our lives.

And in the first few weeks of our study

we saw that spiritual growth is nothing more and nothing less

than our growing in our personal friendship with God Himself.

That’s what it’s all about.

That is what He has been seeking from us from the very beginning.

But what He wants is not just that we bow before Him

and worship Him because He’s bigger than we are

and we’re just the terrified, lowly created beings.

What He wants,

what He has always wanted

is a means by which we could truly discover who He is, what He’s like.

He wanted a way in which we could literally see into both His heart and His mind.

And the only way for that to happen

was for Him to give us real free will

and then allow us to rebel against Him

and then see how He responds to us in the face of that rebellion.

He wants us to love Him

not because loving Him is the only option on the table,

but because our spirits have seen His Spirit

and what we’ve seen has made us realize

that He is what we hunger for,

what we long for more than everything else in life.

Now, that discovery process begins

when we first dare to listen honestly

to what He is saying to us through the death of Christ -

when we look at the cross of Christ

and understand at some level

that this is God Himself offering Himself willingly

as the full payment for all of our sins.

Paul says it so vividly in his letter to the Colossians.

COL 2:13-14 When you were dead in your transgressions..., He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions, having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.

That’s where our discovery of the true nature of our God always begins,

and all He asks of us

is that we choose to believe

that He’s telling us the truth

when He tells us that He has paid our debt in full forever.

But that’s really just the beginning,

the doorway into our discovery of our God.

It’s a little bit like our being told

that an incredibly rich relative that we’ve never met

has chosen to give us a million dollars tax free.

It’s great news, of course,

but our receiving the gift

doesn’t mean that we have any real, personal friendship with this remarkable relative.

If, on the other hand,

we were to move in with him,

and live with him,

and interact with him on a daily basis,

then the friendship would really develop and grow.

And that’s what Peter is telling us in these opening verses of his second letter.

What God wants

is a means by which we can get to know Him,

to grow in epignosis - real, personal, deep knowledge of Him.

I’ve had an idea in the back of my mind for a number of years now.

I’m not saying it’s true,

I just find it an interesting thought.

There are places in the New Testament

where the writers talk with us about God’s commitment to us

to make sure that all of the scales are ultimately balanced.

That is, He tells us that what happens on this earth here and now,

and especially the choices we make this side of the grave

will have huge consequences in the eternity to come.

Paul says things like

1CO 3:11-15 For no man can lay a foundation other than the one which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if any man builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each man's work will become evident; for the day will show it because it is to be revealed with fire, and the fire itself will test the quality of each man's work. If any man's work which he has built on it remains, he will receive a reward. If any man's work is burned up, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire.

OK, now it’s obvious that Paul is simply using a word picture

to attempt to communicate an important principle to us.

He’s not talking about a literal foundation

or our building something on that foundation

with literal gold and silver.

He’s talking with us about the way we approach our lives

and our walk with God,

about the choices and the priorities we bring to our Christian lives.

And the principle he’s wanting to communicate to us

is that what we do here and now

and the choices we make here and now

will have an impact on our lives literally forever, and certainly beyond the grave.

But here’s the thought that has been tucked away in the back of my mind.

I started asking myself what could possibly serve as rewards

when we enter into the presence of God?

Obviously gold and silver and precious stones in heaven mean nothing.

Certainly there is nothing in eternity even remotely like our chaotic economy here on earth.

There are no ghettos,

no slums,

no poverty line,

no unemployment,

and no stock market or investment portfolios.

And no one is saving for retirement.

There is never a need for an economic stimulus package,

and no one ever has to call for an emergency meeting

to discuss a reduction in the prime rate

in order to help stabilize heaven’s economy.

There’s never a depression,

never a recession,

never an unmet need.

So then what in the world could there be in heaven

that could possibly set us apart from one another,

what is there that could be of value there

that would be comparable to gold, silver, and precious stones here?

Well, what’s it all about, folks?

Why do we exist?

What has it always been about,

from the very beginning?

Friendship with God - our entering into the never-ending discovery of who He is,

what He’s like,

how He feels about each of us.

Do you know how He feels when you hurt?

Do you know how your pain, your suffering affects Him?

Listen to this!

PSA 56:8 You have taken account of my wanderings; Put my tears in Your bottle. Are they not in Your book?

Here it is again - another vivid mental picture

to help us understand the heart of our God -

David pictures God as saving each of our tears in a bottle,

and then keeping an eternal written record of what caused that agony in our lives.

Now you know that truth intellectually,

you know it because I just told you.

But do you know it in your heart?

Do you know it in your relationship with your God,

and do you relate to Him

as if that was really true?

And where am I going with all of this?

Well, here’s my thought -

I think that the only thing that could ever distinguish between us in heaven

is the knowledge - the epignosis we possess of our Creator,

and I am certain that there are things about our God

that we can only learn here and now, on this side of eternity,

there is an epignosis of Him

that we will retain for eternity

that can only be gained through our personal interaction with Him

in this utterly corrupt, evil-filled world in which we live on this side of the grave.

And each new thing we discover about Him here and now

will add a richness, and a depth, and an intensity to our enjoyment of Him

in the endless eternity before us.

I think those discoveries of our God that can only take place in this world now

are the gold, and silver, and precious stones on the other side.

Maybe this will help.

Sandee and I were married in 1976.

Though I don’t think either of us realized it at the time,

we were poor.

We simply had very, very little money.

I was working as an electrician’s helper for the first few months,

and then the job ended

and for the next few years we had very little income.

We had no credit cards so we had no debt,

but we also had almost no money.

We were living in Kenai at the time,

and for dates we would walk over to Bookie’s Restaurant

and get one order of fries and split it.

There were experiences that Sandee and I shared together during those years

that are among the richest memories we share together,

things that deepened our relationship with one another

as nothing else could ever do.

There was the time when Big K Grocery had an incredible sale

on a discontinued brand of soda

and we bought a whole case of it

and felt so wealthy seeing all of those cans in our apartment.

There was the time when we were dating

when we went out for pizza and the kitchen kept making mistakes with the order

until we ended up receiving pizza after pizza after pizza for free.

On a storage shelf in the basement of our home today

we still have a box containing the wood-handled knives and forks and spoons we ordered out of a catalog.

The picture made them look so incredible,

and the price was so cheap.

We thought they were so elegant

and we were amazed that we could actually afford such great treasures.

I remember how thrilled I was

when I discovered that I could patch holes in the exhaust pipe of our Ford Pinto

by cutting a Campbell’s soup can lengthwise,

putting it around the hole and then clamping it on both sides.

A great deal has changed in the past thirty years.

We built a house,

met all the needs of our family,

put our daughter through college,

and now have all that we need in abundance.

But there were things that happened in our relationship with one another during those early years

that are now and will forever be

among the greatest riches we possess.

We learned things about one another,

we grew in our trust of one another and our love for one another

in ways that could never ever have happened had we not gone through those times together.

And I believe it’s the same way in our relationship with our Lord.

There are eternal memories

that can only be created with Him here and now,

memories that, if they are created, will have a deep impact on our enjoyment of our God

and the intensity of our own personal joy forever.

Let me make it personal.

I believe that a hundred years from now

I will be talking with my Lord Jesus Christ

and I will say, “Lord, do you remember that time when I was in such terrible pain,

that time when all I could do was cry out to You over and over and over again.

And do you remember what You did -

do you remember what You said to me,

and how You found exactly the right way to reach through all of my pain and confusion

and give me hope and healing?

No one else knew what You’d done,

but I knew, and You knew, and that’s all that mattered.

And remember that time when I was filled with fear.

And remember how you brought that person to me,

the one who spoke to me the truth I so desperately needed,

the truth I could never have told myself.

And Lord do you remember...and do you remember...”

And those memories will be my riches, my great wealth throughout all of eternity.

Every time I look at my Lord forever

I will look at Him with that shared knowledge of who He really is,

and who He was to me in the few years I spent on this side of the veil.

We’re involved in a study of spiritual growth,

but in a very real way

spiritual growth is simply the process of our building our own personal history with our God,

a history in which we discover more and more about the true nature of the love of our Lord for us.

Now, last week our study of Second Peter brought us to the 4^th verse of the first chapter,

a verse in which Peter tells us

that (God)... has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, so that by them you may become partakers of the divine nature...

And as we’ve seen so far,

this process of becoming a partaker of the divine nature

is the great life-long adventure we share with Him

that allows us to get to know Him better.

And the first great key ingredient in this growth process

are the promises our Lord has made to us -

not the promises we’ve made to Him,

but the promises He’s made to us.

It is those promises

that allow us to begin seeing Him as He truly is.

But it’s more than just that.

It is those promises that also give us a basis for hope,

and for healing,

and practical steps in finding a way through.

If you were here last week

you will remember that I compared those promises

to a situation between a father and a son

in which the son has fallen off of a hiking trail

and onto a small ledge below.

And we saw how the boy’s frantic efforts to fix things himself were worthless and even dangerous.

The only thing that could give the boy hope

was the voice of the father from above him

telling him to stop thrashing about and listen carefully to what his daddy was saying.

And I want us to return to that illustration again before we close this morning

because I want us to see that Peter’s focus on the promises of God

as the means by which God brings real change into our lives

is certainly not intended to suggest that we play no active role in the changing process.

Far from it!

But there’s a huge difference between the approach to change our Lord offers us through His promises

and the approach to change we so often attempt through our own human efforts.

And that boy on the mountain ledge can help us see what I mean.

Before the father began to speak to his son from the trail above,

the boy was one frantic mass of fervent activity.

He was driven by a combination of guilt, pain, and fear,

and he was attempting to do anything within his power to rescue himself.

His efforts were useless,

but they were all he had to offer

and the only thing that gave him any hope.

But once he heard his father’s voice

the boy faced his hardest choice -

would he let go of his own plan for rescue

and trust and obey the words of his father,

or would he continue to hang on to his own plan for deliverance?

His decision to turn around and sit down on the ledge

was a whole lot harder in some ways

than all of his clawing and screaming

because he had to let go of his attempts to solve his problem

and choose to trust his dad.

Once his dad lowered the rope

the boy not only had to trust his dad’s voice,

but he also had to do exactly what his dad told him to do.

The father couldn’t place the rope around his son,

he couldn’t hold onto the rope for him.

The choice the boy faced throughout his ordeal

wasn’t a choice between doing something or doing nothing.

The choice he faced was between doing what he thought was best

and doing what his daddy told him to do.

Before our Heavenly Father’s intervention into our lives,

we approach our mountain ledges

in the same way that little boy did

immediately following his fall.

We’re filled with guilt, or pain, or fear,

and we just naturally plunge into a frantic attempt to rescue ourselves.

We make promises and resolutions.

We redouble our efforts.

We stretch ourselves and our energies to the limit

desperately trying to make everything better.

Our one hope rests in finding some way to undo or cover up the mess we have created.

It’s futile, of course, but it’s the only answer we’ve got.

But then, if we’re willing to listen,

into this agony our Lord offers us His voice - His promises,

and through those promises He,

just like that daddy on the trail,

tries to turn our minds and our eyes off ourselves

and fix them squarely on our King.

He wants us to see who He is and what He is doing in our lives.

Sure, we got ourselves into this mess.

We chased the squirrel,

we made the choices that put us on the ledge.

But remarkably, the words we hear from our Heavenly Father

are not the words of wrath and judgement we expect.

‟There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 8:1)

“Therefore having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ...”(Romans 5:1).

‟He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” (2 Corinthians 5:21).

Promises, promises from the voice of God Himself.

Promises designed to calm the terror inside us

and allow us to risk taking our eyes off of ourselves, and our problems, and our futile efforts to patch things up

long enough to turn them onto our Lord.

And remarkable as it may seem,

our God is involved in a great campaign

designed to restore our trust in Him.

The thought that a created being

would not trust his or her Creator seems ridiculous,

and yet we don’t.

He has the rope, the plan, the strength, the love, the means by which to bring us back to safety.

All He needs from us is our willingness

to listen carefully to His instructions and obey what He says.

The crucial ingredient, though, is trust -

our choice to trust what He says, to trust who He is.

And the heart of His trust-rebuilding campaign

is found in His precious and magnificent promises to us.

It’s through those promises that He introduces Himself to us,

using them to quiet our suspicions of Him,

and to encourage us to risk following His lead.

The process of spiritual growth

is most of all simply the process

of growing in our ability to trust our Creator.

That trust develops one step, one ledge, one growth issue at a time

as we share with Him the adventure of becoming a partaker of His divine nature.

But the foundation of the whole process

is found in the remarkable promises He has given to us through His Word,

promises that call us to take our hands off the rock wall

and wrap them around the rope He’s placed beside us.

It’s the promises of God that separates true faith in Christ

from all the little religious systems in our world.

Religion calls to us on the ledge and encourages us try harder,

to climb faster,

to dig our fingers more deeply into the dirt and rock.

True faith has nothing to do with trying harder.

It’s that process of listening carefully to the voice of our Lord,

choosing to trust who He is,

and then on the basis of that trust, choosing to obey what He’s said to us.