Sermon Tone Analysis

*On Partaking of the Divine Nature*

/2nd Peter 1:2-4/

 

 

July 22, 2007

Sun Oak Baptist Church

 

 

*Introduction*

 

          A.

Please turn with me to 2nd Peter 1:1 and take out your sermon notes as well.

B.

By now we should have a pretty good handle on the basics of 2nd Peter – the “big picture” so to speak.

We should be able to tell a friend or neighbor that this epistle is about 3 “H’s”:  holiness, heresy, and hope.

Chapter one (1) is a call to holiness and a warning against false conversion; chapter two (2) is a warning against the heresy of false teachers.

And chapter three (3) is confirms the hope every Christian has:  Jesus came once and He is coming again.

The rope that ties the letter together, or if you liked fractions in elementary school, the common denominator of the letter is the theme of “certainty.”

Chapter 1:  be certain of our foundations; chapter two (2) – be certain that false teachers will be in the church; and chapter three (3) – be certain that Jesus Christ is coming again.

C.

Verse 1 is a charge to be certain we have the same precious faith that Peter and the other apostles had – a charge to be certain we are truly saved.

*Read 1:1.*

 

                   1.

And this morning, in verses 2-4 we come to an incredibly profound statement and truth about the Christian life:  the admonition that we are to be partakers of the divine nature – to share in, or be a companion to, God’s nature.

*Read 1:2-4.*

2.

This is incredible:  Peter’s charge is for Christians to share in the very nature of God and if we don’t understand what he means here a statement like this can choke us.

But choking on a piece of steak doesn’t mean we don’t need it or that it’s not good for us.

The thing to do is to take a knife and cut the steak into more edible sizes and that’s what I want to do this morning.

We need to get our arms around the incredible truth of what Peter is saying here and one of the first things we can to do to cut partaking in the divine nature down into bite size morsels is to understand that the idea of God’s children being like Him is a proposition that cuts through all of God’s Word.

Write this down:  God want us to be like Him.  God’s will for us is to be like Him.

When people look at His children God’s desire is that they manifest or reflect Him.

Years ago a senior saint told me:  John, if you really want to know someone – watch their children.

And I really didn’t quite understand this statement until I became a parent:  every parent lives with the knowledge that their children, character and all, reflects them.

And God wants the lost people in this world to see Him in His children.

The truth is, to the extent that I manifest God’s divine nature, is extent to which my life convicts the world of its sin and corruption, and attracts men and women to Jesus Christ.

*Pray.*

D.

God is holy; God is love; He’s merciful; He’s just; He’s patient – these are part of His nature and when it comes to cutting the challenge to reflect God’s image down into bite size pieces one of the first things we need to do is to understand that what Peter says here is not new:  before the Fall God’s original plan for man was for him to partake in His divine nature – and it hasn’t changed.

In Gen. 1:26 God said:  “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness…”  What’s this mean?

God originally created man to reflect His image – meaning to partake of His divine nature.

Lev.

19:2:  “You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God /am/ holy.”

What’s this mean?

God is holy and He desires His children to also be holy – to partake of His holiness.

Turn with me to Rom. 8:28.

We can go to passage after passage after passage in God’s Word and we will find cutting straight through the Bible from Genesis to Revelation is that God’s plan for His children was and always will be for them to reflect His image – and sin corrupted that plan – but it didn’t change it.

*                   Read Rom.

8:28-29.*

God’s plan for Christians is to be in the process of becoming like Christ – which is synonymous with the process of being a partaker of the divine nature.

Let’s go back to 2nd Peter.

E.

In verse 1 Peter wants us to be certain of our foundation – to be certain we have the precious faith, but then he tells us that the Christian life doesn’t stop there:  faith without works is dead – just having the precious faith in verse 1 is not valid unless we go from there.

There’s more and it goes something like this:  verse 1 tells us that believing and responding to the Gospel results in obtaining the faith.

Verse 2:  tells us that the result of having this faith means we now have grace and peace – but the Christian life doesn’t stop there either:  grace and peace must be multiplied in our lives; and then verses 3-4 tell us how this process works out so that we might become partakers of the divine nature and live out the precious faith God has so graciously given us.

How does a Christian share in God’s divine nature – what steps must we take to fulfill God’s will for our lives and become partakers of the divine nature?

*I.

First of all, partaking of the divine nature /requ//ires/ that grace and peace be multiplied in our lives.*

See 1:2.

*Read 1:1-2.*

In verse 1 God does His part in saving us, in giving us the precious Christian faith, and in verse 2 we begin to respond by seeking more and more knowledge of Him.

Partaking of the divine nature requires that grace and peace be in the process of multiplying, or growing, in the life of a Christian.

A.

Grace and peace are two (2) foundational attributes of the Christian life, meaning if someone doesn’t have them they don’t have the precious Christian faith.

No grace and peace equals no faith.

1.

In Rom.

5:1-2 the apostle Paul says it this way:  “Therefore, having been justified by faith (saved – in other words as a result of being saved), we now have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand...”  And there are countless other verses that say the same thing about grace and peace.

2.

This is foundational:  God gives me salvation, I obtain it, by grace through faith, and then from that starting point salvation is designed to multiply grace upon grace and peace upon peace.

B.

And then Peter tells us how to it’s done:  how grace and peace are multiplied in the life of a believer – and it’s through more and more knowledge of God and of Christ.

*Re-read 2a.*

 

                   1.

Now I want to walk us through this because this is huge.

I’ve said before that the word “knowledge” is a key word in this letter – Peter uses it at least fifteen (15) times.

In our day the word “knowledge” has a number of different meanings.

For example:  we can say we “know” someone in a general way…or we can say we “really know someone” in a fuller and more intimate way.

“Knowing” a neighbor that we hardly ever see is dramatically different than “knowing” someone we’ve been married to for 40 years.

2.

However, in Peter’s day they used different words that described different levels of “knowing.”

For example they might have said they “/gnosis/” that neighbor (know him in a general kind of way), but they “/epignosis/” a spouse.

Let’s say those two (2) words together:  /gnosis… epignosis/.

“/Epignosis/” was the word they used to describe a deeper, more precise, or a fuller knowledge of something – and that’s the word Peter uses here in verses 2 and 3:  “/epignosis./”

This is why what Peter says here is so huge and so important to understand:  grace and peace cannot be multiplied by a casual, passing, or part-time “knowledge” of God – it won’t happen.

The foundational attributes of grace and peace can only be multiplied by more and more “/epignosis/.”

In the same way that there is literally a life and death difference between knowing about airplanes “/gnosis/,” and knowing how to fly them “/epignosis/” this difference in our knowledge of God is the difference between stagnancy in the life of a Christian and partaking of the divine nature; it’s the difference between thinking, believing, or hoping we are going to heaven and knowing for certain we are going to heaven – epignosis is the difference between eternity in hell or eternity in heaven.

3.       Don’t miss this:  it’s one thing to have a general knowledge, a “/gnosis/” of God or of Jesus – but it’s quite another to have a growing and deepening “/epignosis”/ of Him.

C.

How do we become partakers of the divine nature?

Take this to the bank because it will earn way more interest than an IRA:  the precious faith given to us by God in verse 1 will not grow in grace and peace unless I am diligent to grow in my “/epignosis” /of God and of Jesus.

In the same way that it is impossible for a garden to grow without daily watering and care, it is impossible for a Christian to grow without daily adding to their knowledge of God and Christ – try watering a tomato plant once a week and see what happens.

Partaking of the divine nature requires that grace and peace be multiplied in our lives and this only happens as our knowledge of God and of Jesus Christ grows.

* *

*II.

Secondly, partaking of the divine nature /requires/ divine power.*

See 1:3-4.

How do we apprehend, seize, or take for our own this incredible truth – how can we partake or reflect God’s holiness, His love, mercy, patience, kindness, and His countless other communicable attributes?  *Read 1:3-4.*

I hope we see this:  what Peter says here about partaking of the divine nature is utterly amazing.

Once we see what Peter is saying here is should have at least the same effect as seeing El Capitan for the first time – or a giant Sequoia.

Unpacking what Peter says in verses 3-4 could be compared to opening a treasure chest and not knowing which treasure to take out first.

A.

Before we look at this treasure there is something that we first need to be certain of – underline this in your mind.

When Peter says we are to partake of the divine nature he is not saying that a Christian somehow becomes a “god” – little “g.”

 

                   1.       *Read 2:1.*

All false religions start with a false teacher – with a teacher or leader that does one of two (2) things.

They either question the authority and sufficiency of God’s Word by asking the same basic question Satan asked Eve in the garden:  “did God really say,” or secondly, they twist the meaning of God’s Word.

This is the “m – o” of false teachers by which all false religions start or the means by which destructive heresies come into the church.

2.

Peter is not saying that we can become “gods” in any way shape or form, even though many branches of the “New Age” movement teach exactly this – the path to their form of salvation and fulfillment is the process whereby a follower of their teaching discovers the “god” in them.

Kenneth Copeland, a popular false teacher in the “name it – claim it movement,” in referring to verse 4 says this, and I quote:  “Now Peter said by exceeding great and precious promises you become partakers of the divine nature.

All right, are we gods (little “g”)?

Indeed – we are a class of gods.”

3.       Heresy, heresy, heresy – false teaching and twisting God’s Word:  this interpretation of what Peter says here twists the grammar, the meaning of the words, and violates what the rest of Scripture clearly teaches about God.