Power Revealed

2 Peter 3
 
Welcome! Today we are going to talk about all kinds of interesting things: mortality and immortality, nuclear particles and forces, the nature of time… like I said, all kinds of interesting things! To start, I would like to ask you to raise your hand if you know you are going to die. Well, this is kind of a trick question, because it tests what you really believe about the return of the Lord Jesus Christ. If your first response was to automatically raise your hand and think, "Of course I am going to die!" then this reveals that the second coming of Christ is either something you don’t truly believe or it is something you think will happen in some far away future. Well, if this describes you, I hope that today’s message from 2 Peter 3 will give you the biblical way to think about these things.

We simply don’t know when Jesus will return. It may well happen before we die, in which case we will avoid death. But there is one person who absolutely knew he would die before Jesus’ return. Do you know who this is? It is Peter! During Jesus’ meeting with Peter after the resurrection, the meeting in which Jesus restored Peter and called on him to take care of Jesus’ sheep, to feed Jesus’ lambs, Jesus told Peter this:

Power Corrupted

2 Peter 2

Welcome! Last week and the week before we looked at II Peter Chapter 1 which exhorted us to take radical steps in growing our character. Two weeks ago, we learned that God has equipped us with everything we need to live for Him, and we learned that living for Him means, in part, being like a choir-master, actively striving to assemble a choir of “heroic” goodness, knowledge applied to life, Olympic athlete-like self-control, Winston Churchill-like perseverance, godliness based on the continual worship of God, brotherly kindness based on deep caring for one another, and agape, love that delights to sacrifice self for the sake of others.

The Power of Grace

Welcome! Today we will have a shorter message followed by a time of remembering the Lord with the bread and cup, and then a sharing time. Last week we began to explore the book of II Peter and went in detail into Chapter 1. The chapter exhorts us to take radical steps in growing our character. Today I want to talk about God’s grace and how grace is related to the ideas of this chapter. I will start by rereading the first part of II Peter 1 and summarizing the ideas we talked about last time.

Simon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who through the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ have received a faith as precious as ours: Grace and peace be yours in abundance through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. 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 evil desires. – II Peter 1:1-4

Divine Power

 2 Peter 1

Welcome! I encourage you to continue praying the secret prayer. Today we begin a journey into the book of II Peter. The message this week is entitled Divine Power. In my opinion, power is a unifying sort of theme throughout the book of II Peter, and we will touch on this as we go through the series.

This series was prayerfully planned several months ago, and it was then that I first saw this theme of power running through II Peter. As you all know, the world has been witness to a different kind of power in the last week and a half. I looked up information on the Richter scale to see just how powerful a 9 point earthquake really is, to get some kind of equivalent measure that I could compare it to. I found that a 9.0 earthquake has the energy release equivalent to 476 megatons of TNT. By comparison, the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 had an energy release equivalent to about 15 kilotons of TNT. In other words, the recent earthquake in Japan had the energy release of more than 30,000 nuclear bombs of the type that destroyed Hiroshima.

Living to Serve

1 Peter 4:12-5:14

Welcome! Today we finish up our look into the Book of I Peter, focusing on the end of Chapter 4 and all of Chapter 5. I will start by backing up a few verses and looking at the verses we ended with last week:

Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed. If you are insulted because of the name of Christ, you are blessed, for the Spirit of glory and of God rests on you. If you suffer, it should not be as a murderer or thief or any other kind of criminal, or even as a meddler. – I Peter 4:12-15

Living for God

1 Peter 4

Welcome! Today we continue our series of messages in I Peter. Today we look at Chapter 4. Because it starts with a “therefore,” I am going to start with I Peter 3:18 and then jump into Chapter 4.

For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive by the Spirit… - I Peter 3:18

Therefore, since Christ suffered in His body, arm yourselves also with the same attitude, because he who has suffered in his body is done with sin. – I Peter 4:1

Living Water

Welcome! I encourage you to continue to pray the secret prayer. Today I will give a shorter message followed by a time of remembering the Lord with the bread and cup, and following this we will have a sharing time, where all here are encouraged to share what the Lord is teaching them.

Today we are going to talk about thirst. Did you know that the human body is about 60% water by weight? We are constantly losing water in our bodies, through internal processes, breathing, evaporation on our skin, and expelling wastes. As a result, we need to regularly, frequently replenish the water in our bodies. God has designed our bodies such that when we become low in water, we experience a unique sensation of thirst. If we do not pay attention to this signal, it becomes stronger until such point that we do real harm to our bodies. Ultimately, the result of refusing or being incapable of responding to thirst is absolutely certain death.

Living in Harmony

1 Peter 3

"Likewise you wives, be submissive to your husbands, so that some, though they do not obey the word, may be won without a word by the behavior of their wives, when they see your reverent and chaste behavior. Let not yours be the outward adorning with braiding of hair, decoration of gold, and wearing of fine clothing, but let it be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable jewel of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God’s sight is very precious.So once the holy women who hoped in God used to adorn themselves and were submissive to their husbands, as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord. And you are now her children if you do right and let nothing terrify you."--I Peter 3:1-6

Before I begin to explain these verses, I must make one thing perfectly clear. The word submissive in this context does not condone a woman doing anything immoral or illegal because her husband has asked or demanded her to do it. Neither does it authorize the husband the right to physically or emotionally abuse his wife if she refuses to obey a request or a demand regardless of whether it is illegal or immoral. 

The Living Stone

1 Peter 2

Good morning. We get to continue in our study of I Peter this morning. Chapter two is falls into two parts covering two topics. The first half of the chapter will conclude the portion dealing with our position in Christ. The second half of the chapter delves deeper into our response to what Christ has done for us and how He went about it.

Last week, we covered chapter 1. The themes that came out last week were:

--We are God's elect, His chosen ones.
--We can have confidence that we are chosen.
--Foreknowledge (God the Father), sanctifying (Holy Spirit), and obedience (Jesus Christ)
--We are God's elect strangers, we are no longer of this world, but passing through .
--Through faith, we are shielded by God's power.
--Our faith is proved genuine by trials.
--Our salvation is a precious gift not to be taken for granted.
--Therefore, we must prepare our minds, be self-controlled and set our hope fully on grace.
--Do not conform to evil desires, be holy.
--We are redeemed not by gold (perishable) but by the blood of Christ (imperishable).
--As a result of this purification, love one another.
--We are born again of imperishable seed, not perishable.
--All men are like grass, but the word of the Lord stands forever.

A Living Hope

1 Peter 1

Today, we start a new series. We are going to study chapter by chapter the books of I and II Peter over the next 8 weeks, a chapter per week. So, you may like to use some of your daily quiet times to read ahead or read the two books all the way through.

I struggled with where to begin today’s message. Since this is a new series, I feel like I ought to tell you a bunch of details about the author, the timing, the recipients, the geography, the themes, and … and … and. While those details are not bad things, I’m afraid that it might possibly distract us from the message and what it might say to us today, right now, and how we can apply these truths in our lives.

So, I apologize if you came in this morning looking for a history lesson. I think you’ll pick up a little history as we go along, but I’m going to skip the lecture and jump straight in to the Word of God.