God’s Provision for Our Justification

Introduction:  The Apostle Peter addresses his second epistle to a group of people that he identifies as sharing with him a “like precious faith.” His goal is to encourage them to resist false teachers. He begins preparing them to do so by skillfully covering some fundamentals of the faith, starting with how God has provided them faith for their justification. Let us ask and answer three questions about this “like precious faith” that God has provided.

I. In what do we have faith? The Promise of God! (2 Pet. 1:1; Gen. 2:17; 3:1-24)

A. God promised the ultimate victory of His Son and the defeat of Satan (Gen. 3:15; Heb. 2:14)

B. God made provision to defeat the consequences of sin’s presence (Gen. 3:21-24)

1. The consequence of death (Gen. 2:16-17) – the promise of God—Eternal Life (John 3:16; Rom. 6:23)

2. The consequence of shame (Gen 3:7) – the promise of God—Honor (1 Pet. 2:9-10)

3. The consequence of fear (Gen 3:10) – the promise of God—Power (2 Tim. 1:7; Heb. 13:6)

4. The consequence of guilt (Gen. 3:12) – the promise of God—Innocence (Rom. 8:1)

II. With whom do we share this faith? All fellow believers! (2 Pet. 1:1)

A. With us could refer to just Peter

B. With us could refer to the Apostles

C. With us could refer to Peter and all Jewish Christians (Acts 11:1-4, 16-17; 15:8-9)

III. How did we obtain this faith? Through the righteousness of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ! (2 Pet. 1:1)

A. It was a gift – the Greek word used here means to obtain by lot (Acts 1:17-26; Eph 2:8; Titus 3:5)

B. It is available to us because Jesus was righteous (Rom. 6:23; Titus 3:5; 1 Pet. 4:13; 2 Pet. 1:1)

Conclusion: Stephanie Fast is a product of the Korean Conflict which began in 1950. In his book, The Case for Grace, Lee Strobel documents her story as he learned it through a personal interview with Stephanie.

What struck me most about Stephanie’s story are a few key moments that she described in her journey. The first was when she was about 3 or 4 years old. It was the day her mother took her on a long walk down a dirt road into the city. Her mother told her that she was going to her uncle’s home. They stopped at the train station, and when the train arrived, her mother got on with her, put a satchel with a lunch and a couple of extra sets of clothing on the shelf above her seat, directed her to get off the train when the other people did, and left.

You see, Stephanie’s young, unmarried mother was being offered marriage to a man who could provide a future for her, but bringing along her young, biracial daughter conceived out of wedlock was not an option. Her mother was at a crossroads, and she had made her decision.

Little Stephanie obeyed her mother, and she got off the train when the other people did. She waited on the platform for her uncle to come and pick her up, but no one came. Finally, the trainmaster came out and asked her what she was doing there. “I told him I was waiting for my uncle—and that was the first time someone called me a toogee,” she said. Toogee being the Korean word for half-breed and carrying with it the connotation of such sad words as garbage, dust, bastard, and alien devil all rolled up into one.

Imagine the shame that Stephanie felt. She is sure that her mother gave her a name, but she cannot remember what it was. In her mind, her identity began that day with that horrible word.

So, at that tender age, this vulnerable, young girl began her existence as an orphan, living off the land by stealing fruit from fruit fields, vegetables from vegetable fields, and supplementing that with captured locusts and field mice.

She began to suffer too: being raped and treated like a plaything by fellow street people; thrown into an abandoned well and tied to a water wheel by farmers who caught her stealing.

After about four years of existing this way, Stephanie was finally rescued by a Swedish Nurse—picked up off a literal garbage heap, more dead than alive with Cholera. The nurse brought Stephanie to a World Vision Orphanage where she was allowed to stay and help take care of the babies.

After about two years of this, Stephanie remembers that it was announced by the director that an American couple was coming to pick out a baby boy. Stephanie described her own appearance at the time.

“Although I was almost nine years old and had been in the orphanage for about two years, I still had dirt on my body, especially my elbows and knees — it was ground into my skin. I had lice so bad that my head was actually white. I had worms so bad in my stomach that when they got hungry they’d crawl out of my throat. I had a lazy eye that sort of flopped around in its socket. I couldn’t see very well at all, probably from malnutrition. My face was devoid of expression. I weighed a little less than thirty pounds. I was a scrawny thing. I had boils all over me and scars on my face.”

Being very curious, Stephanie had unconsciously inched forward, closer to the American man as he picked up and snuggled the babies. As he put the third baby down, he saw little Stephanie out of the corner of his eye, came over to where she was, and gently touched her cheek with his enormous hand.

As the man stroked Stephanie’s face, she remembers thinking “Oh, keep that up! Don’t let your hand go!” But experiencing unconditional love for the first time, Stephanie was overwhelmed. She finally yanked the man’s hand off her face, looked him in the eye, and spit on him—twice! Then she ran and hid in a closet.

In spite of this incident, the couple returned the very next day. Stephanie feared that she would be punished or beaten for what she had done. She was astonished to learn that the couple wanted to take her home to their house.

“At the time, I didn’t realize that I was being adopted,” Stephanie said. “I thought I was going to become their servant. that’s basically what happened in Korea: when a child got a certain age, he or she was sold as a bond servant to rich people.”

The American couple were missionaries. They lived in a house that, though modest by American standards, seemed immense to the little Korean girl with no name as yet. Although they had planned to adopt a baby boy and name him Stephen, they had wound up with a young girl, so they named her Stephanie.

Stephanie continued the story in her own words: “I had never seen a refrigerator, a flush toilet, or a bed before. I thought, Wow, this will be a fun place to work! They even had eggs, which only affluent Koreans could afford. they cleaned me up, gave me antibiotics, and got me healthy. They kept feeding me, tucking me into bed, buying me new clothes, but never putting me to work.”

“I wondered why for several months, but I was afraid to bring it up to them. We’d go into a village, and everybody would treat me like I was something wonderful. I couldn’t understand — I had been a toogee, but now I was being treated like a princess. “Then one day a girl said to me, ‘You smell American.’ I said, ‘What do you mean?’ She said, ‘You smell like cheese.’ Korean children always said foreigners smelled like cheese. I said, ‘No, I’m not an American, but those Americans are really funny. they haven’t put me to work yet. they’re really treating me nice.’

“She looked at me with a surprised expression and said, ‘Stephanie, don’t you realize that you’re their daughter?’ That idea had never occurred to me. I said, ‘No, I’m not their daughter!’ and she said, ‘Yes, you are! You . . . are . . . their . . . daughter.’

“I was astonished! I turned and ran out of the room and up the hill toward my house, thinking to myself, I’m their daughter, I’m their daughter, I’m their daughter! Oh, that’s why I’ve been treated this way. That’s why no one’s beating me. That’s why nobody’s calling me a toogee. I’m their daughter!”

“I ran into the house to my mom, who was sitting in a chair, and I declared in Korean, ‘I’m your daughter!’ She didn’t speak Korean yet, but a worker said to my mom, ‘She’s saying she’s your daughter.’ With that, big tears began to run down my mommy’s face. She nodded and said to me, ‘Yes, Stephanie, you’re my daughter!’”

Can you picture yourself—ugly with boils, scars, lice, and worms? Can you picture yourself—not dirt, but sin so ground into you that it is part of your very human nature? That is what you are like, yet God, in his radiant holiness with tender love, reaches out to you and invites you to become his child—to be adopted into his family!

If you do not possess this faith which removes your shame, which overcomes your fear, and which pardons your guilt--this faith which defeats even death itself--I humbly encourage you to talk to the Pastor after this service so that you too can know the peace that this faith brings. Don’t yank God’s hand off your face! Don’t spit on him and his offer of unconditional love!

To those of you who are already part of this group that have obtained this wonderful faith, let us go out this week to share our faith with others who need it. Let us go out this week to live in joy, because Jesus lives. Because although the serpent temporarily bruised His heal, we know that our Savior crushed the serpent’s head, dealing him a death blow. Because we know He holds the future, and life is worth the living just because He lives!