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Difficult & Distortable

God's Holy Book

Aug 20, 2017


by: Jack Lash Series: God's Holy Book | Category: Scripture | Scripture: 2 Peter 3:15–17
  1. Introduction
    A. The gospel is the hub of Christian truth. Every aspect of Christian theology is linked to the gospel, and the significance of any Christian doctrine is in its link to the gospel. 
     B. The gospel has many different facets:
      1. God as the creator of the world and mankind
      2. Mankind’s fall into sin and death
      3. God’s unwillingness to let man’s sin and penalty for that sin to be the end of the story
      4. God sending His Son into the world and into our humanity in order to redeem His people through His substitutionary sacrifice upon the cross. 
      5. And then conquering death through His resurrection
      6. His ascension into heaven to sit at the Father’s right hand, from where He reigns over the world, though His reign is hidden from the world.
      7. His pouring out His Holy Spirit from there upon His church to help her grow and keep her safe until the end of the age
      8. His revealing all this in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments
      9. And His promise to come again to this earth in final victory to take His people home and bring judgment upon the world.
     C. All through history – & continuing today – there have been attacks on various aspects of the gospel.
     D. Even in the days of the apostles they knew these attacks on gospel truth were coming. 
      1. One of those attacks is anticipated in the second epistle of Peter. It was an attack on the promise of Christ’s coming. The apostles knew that it would take a lot longer for Christ to come than people were expecting. 
      2. Listen to the words Peter writes in 2Pet.3:1–4: “This is now the second letter that I am writing to you, beloved. In both of them I am stirring up your sincere mind by way of reminder, 2 that you should remember the predictions of the holy prophets and the commandment of the Lord and Savior through your apostles, 3 knowing this first of all, that scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own sinful desires. 4 They will say, ‘Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation.’”
       a. So, “ scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing.” (v.3) What will they scoff about? 
       b.  v.4 “They will say, ‘Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers (the apostolic generation) fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation.’”
        (1) In spite of all these promises of Jesus coming and fixing everything, nothing’s changed. Everything goes on as it always has. 
        (2) They will mock the notion of Christ’ return. 
       c. And so Peter is warning believers to not buy into this mocking, but keep trusting & keep waiting.
      3. One of the reasons 2Peter was written, it would seem, was to address this coming eschatological heresy Peter knew would arise in the church.
    II. Explanation of 2Peter 3:15–17 
     A. The end of Peter’s last epistle, just before he dies a martyr’s death (2Pet.1:13-15)
     B. 15 And count the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, 
      1. Peter is making a point: “count the patience of our Lord as salvation”
       a. Why is it taking so long for Jesus to return? Because the process of salvation needs to be completed before He does. 
       b. 2Peter 3:9 “The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.”
       c. Delay of Christ’s return doesn’t imply divine tardiness.
       d. Delay of Christ’s return doesn’t imply divine softness.
       e. Delay of Christ’s return implies divine patience, giving man the opportunity to repent & be saved.
      2. “our beloved brother Paul” — Competition between Peter and Paul?
       a. Movies, documentaries 
       b. The Gal.2:11-14 incident when Paul corrected Peter: Paul writes of it as an exceptional incident.
       c. Peter didn’t reject Jesus when Jesus rebuked him. Neither did he reject Paul. He needed rebukes.
     C. 16a as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. 
      1. Paul’s letters
       a. 13 letters, almost half of the books of the NT 
       b. recognized as Scripture very early on: immediately it would seem, along with the gospels&Acts. 
       c. They were known and acknowledged by the apostles 
       d. Not someone else’s epistles
      2. In Romans 2:4, speaking of the riches of God’s kindness, forbearance and patience, Paul says, “Do you not know that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?”
     D. 16b There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures.  
      1. Paul’s writings were already regarded as Scripture in the days of the apostles.
      2. Scripture can be hard to understand.
       a. Some things
       b. Not impossible to understand, but not always easy
      3. Scripture can be twisted, it can be mishandled. 
       a. That may be obvious from experience. 
       b. Just as we were reminded recently from 2Peter 2:1 that there are false prophets, so there are false interpreters of Scripture. 
       c. This shouldn’t surprise us. Satan disguises himself as an angel of light (2Cor.11:14-15). 
      4. The Scriptures which most frequently get twisted are the ones most difficult to understand. 
       a. Why? These are the ones they can convince others about, because people are confused.
      5. Even though it may be hard, interpretations which twist the meaning of Scripture are not sincere mistakes. They are evil acts of lawless, ignorant, unstable people. 
      6. There is a pattern of twisted interpretation among those who mishandle Scripture like this.
      7. Not only are these twisted interpretations of Scripture evil acts, they bring destruction upon those who come to such conclusions. 
     E. 17 You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, take care that you are not carried away with the error of lawless people and lose your own stability.
      1. Knowing WHAT beforehand? that ignorant and unstable people twist Scripture to their own destruction. Knowing that, you should be careful not to get carried away with their errors.
      2. Believers should know that their stability – and the stability of their salvation – comes from the word of God.
       a. How to face down lies? By standing on the truth of God’s word. “Standing on the promises of Christ our savior.”
      3. So, Christians need to exercise discernment in listening to Bible teaching.
       a. Malcolm&Alwyn: ‘I could tell that he was speaking right by the leather-backed book in his hand.’
       b. Believers should be alert to the danger of buying into error.
    III. Application
     A. The temptation to twist
      1. It means something. And there are other things it does not mean.
       a. Listening well means studying.
       b. What is studying but carefully examining something? 
       c. God speaks to be exegeted. Every word has been carefully chosen by God.
       d. Story of my greatest disappointment with GMU education: the goal of literature classes
      2. Coming to listen, or coming to find something new, or to find justification for your own opinions?
      3. The last option, coming to find justification for your own opinions, has a corollary. 
       a. Your own opinions provide boundaries in which God must dwell. 
       b. There are certain things my mind and conscience won’t let God do or be. (Maybe He can’t punish a child, or maybe He can’t treat people unequally, or maybe He can’t be wrathful.) 
       c. We accept what the Bible says within the parameters of our own sense of what God should do. 
       d. E.g. I’ve had at least two people in my life tell me that if God chooses some for salvation and not others, then they don’t want to worship a God like that. 
        (1) This involves coming to the Bible with restrictions on who we’re going to allow Him to be.
        (2) I can understand finding things in the Bible which trouble you and you feel like you need to do more study and get more input before you feel sure that it really teaches what it seems to teach.
        (3) But you have to let God be God. You have to want Him to be who He is. You have to believe that the way He is is perfect and more excellent than anything else ever could be. He is who He is (Exod.3:14), and we need to say a heartfelt AMEN to that. 
        (4) If God doesn’t match up to our sense of what’s good, then must be something wrong with our sense of what’s good. 
     B. Why is it such a big deal if the meaning of Scripture gets twisted? After all, we live with errors all over the place. In the world of politics, it seems everything gets twisted. In science they keep changing their minds. As long as they preach Jesus, what’s the big deal? 
      1. The gospel
       a. Galatians 1:8–9 But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. 9 As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed.
       b. Romans 1:16 The gospel is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.
       c. 2Corinthians 11:4 talks about “someone proclaiming another Jesus than the one we proclaimed.” 
       d. In certain things we need and demand absolute accuracy. E.g., you’re having open-heart surgery. How closely do you want the surgeon to follow proper procedure? 
       e. We have been given a word which is not only truth, but life. And if you take its truth away, you take its life away. That’s why it says, “to their own destruction.”
       f. We’ve been given a Treasure, with a capital T. And not just a treasure, but THE Treasure. 
      2. This book is different than all the others. It is true as it comes to us, and we must not make it false by our twisting of it. And that means giving it lots of attention and handling it with great care. 
     C. It is very possible to be too hard on people who disagree with you about what the Bible teaches. But it is also very possible to be too soft on people who disagree with you about what the Bible teaches.
      1. The twisting of Scripture to distort the gospel is a very serious error. 
      2. The twisting of the gospel Peter is addressing is so serious that it leads to one’s own destruction.
      3. I’m not talking about the kind of hardness which is disrespectful or mean-spirited.
      4. Philippians 3:18 “For many, of whom I have often told you and now tell you even with tears, walk as enemies of the cross of Christ.”