2 Peter, 3:17-18

Let's do it all together. I missed that. I don't know. Last time I tried not to do it because no one else does it, but I don't care. I like it. So let's just read it all together. Ready? One, two, three. You, therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, be on your guard so that you are not carried away by the error of unprincipled men and fall from your own steadfastness. but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity. Amen.

I teach to Korean youth groups and they always say, teacher, if you took everybody's face and put them together, you know, they've got those things where you can put two faces together on a computer program now. If you put everybody's face on earth and put it together, would you get Adam's face?

I don't know. Let's go through Genesis again. I have no idea. I was thinking about that when you hear lots of voices reading the word. It's like, when God talks, is it like bigger than everybody talking? Yeah, it's amazing. So anyway. Everyone here has a computer or has some access to a computer at some level? I don't know if you're Windows people or Mac people. If you're Mac people you can disregard this. Isn't that wild? I can't wait to hear it. It's so loud you can almost not bear to hear it, but it's so beautiful that you have to listen. I don't know, it's wild. It's a wild thing, so wild. You know with the computer, especially Windows based folks out there, and I don't know about Vista because I've never seen it. You open up your start menu and you can go to like my computer, and see this huge intricate web of different folders. Just so you can keep everything organized, you've got all these different folders to put information in.

But then for the people like me who aren't very good with organization, they have that wonderful sweet simple little recent documents menu. You just pull up into the recent documents and open up whatever you were working on last. As long as it wasn't too long ago, you can find things without having to go through that huge intricate system. In any event, I feel like Peter has been kind of knocking home the idea that this is recent documents.

This is supposed to be in our constant attention. This is information for us that doesn't need to be filed away in with all the other, yeah I might need that file later, I'll put it three layers back in the possible resources file. This is the recent document stuff. This is the stuff that Peter wants us to keep constantly at the front of our mind, in our consciousness, in our available memory.

Sometimes people ask you a question like, What does the flood have to do with an argument against evolution? I'd go, well I really have to do some research and get back to you on that. I couldn't give you a full, without doing some reading. That's in the back a little bit. I think this is information that needs to be towards the front. This is information that is day-to-day, rubber meets the road information for us. just to say that it's not enough to read God's Word, nor is it enough to study God's Word in depth, but it's all for naught if the Word's not applied to our lives. So, I know I probably sound really redundant, because I say that just about every week, but I'm pretty convicted about it.

You guys haven't done it? It looked like you were on the edge of it, the cusp of a statement. I didn't want to squelch you. Alright, so we step into 2 Peter 3.17. It says, You, therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, be on your guard so that you are not carried away by the error of unprincipled men and fall from your own steadfastness.

Okay, so, therefore, does anyone have any idea? It depends if your Bible is open or your memory is really good. What is the therefore pointing back to, do you imagine? Do you have any intuition where that therefore might be going back to? I have to say, it's kind of important because I think I took a wrong twist on it the first time and then sent it off to Vern and he said, did you read? Oh yeah, well he didn't say that, but so much as to say that, I said, did I read? Because I missed it. Is the therefore pointing back towards everything? Like everything that he's talked about in chapter 3 or everything he's talked about in the book per se?

Or is it that he's pointing back to the untaught and unstable people who are going to distort Scripture? I couldn't agree more. I think he's talking exactly about, he's going back, he's saying, hey, therefore, because of these unstable teachers who are going to be out there and are going to be distorting the Word of God, So that's the therefore. We're going right back to the immediate verse, I think, for the implications of that therefore. Then he goes on to say beloved, and I've jumped over this word. I believe we saw it last week. I mean, it was Paul, our beloved brother, but in any event, Weiss continually pounds away this.

He won't let a beloved go by without mentioning it, and he won't let a beloved go by in Scripture without mentioning that it's not just Peter loving them, Now, this is Agapitoi. This is God's love. He's saying, God loves you. And he just keeps on repeating it. And John repeats it and repeats it. And you see it again and again in Scripture. God loves you.

You are the beloved of God. You're the beloved of God. You're the beloved of God. You're the beloved of God. Oh, by the way, if you forgot, you're God's beloved. It's just amazing that they won't let a second go by without reiterating. Do you know who you are? Do you know your position? Do you know that you are God's beloved, not because of what you do, what you did, you're not earning God's love, you're not earning God's approval, but God loves you. You're God's beloved.

I feel remiss. I actually work with some Korean youth groups, and you can always tell when someone finds a new girlfriend or boyfriend. They just come with a special little smile and their questions are a little bit different. What's God's will for my life and marriage? Okay, what's her name? How does this go? That's just a little earthly example, but the reality is that the fact that we're loved affects our outlook on everything.

You see people get into a car wreck, but they just fell in love. They're on the emotional high of having fallen in love with their new boyfriend. So they're just skipping out of the car, exchanging insurance information. Thanks so much. Have a great day. I mean, it affects your attitude and your outlook on everything. Absolutely, every day. Last car accident I was in, I was unconscious, there was no skipping. But I was that in love, there's no question. So in any event, there's that constant hammering away and for me at least, it constantly slides by. Okay, fine, just grease the tracks, move on.

It's a manner of speaking. It's just a way that we write. I don't think it is. I think they're very intentional. I think the apostles were very intentional in writing that. Okay, knowing beforehand. Peter starts by alluding to this, you know, knowing beforehand, and this ties into the therefore. So it's really fascinating. He doesn't just say, therefore, and, you know, we can deduce from the rest of the verse that he's kicking back to what he was talking about before. He says, therefore, because of this, and because you know it, because you're aware of it, because you're keeping it with you, because you already know it beforehand, you know it's coming.

I think that's a really interesting thing to me anyway. It's kind of like when you read James chapter 1, 2, and 3. It's not if trials come, it's when trials come. It's not if false teachers come, it's when false teachers come. I like that. Forewarned is forearmed. Absolutely. That's it. That's it. So I think that's it. So I think the question comes, where do we go from there? Where do we go from there?

Should we have a doctrinal witch hunt? Should we go burning down churches because they have bad doctrine? Because I think you'd run out of matches before you'd run out of churches. What's the response to that? What does Peter say the response to that is? Is it going spiritual headhunting and trying to find people with bad doctrine, or when you meet someone, immediately start probing them? Okay, let's find out exactly what this person's doctrine is.

What's suggested? Be on your guard. Yeah. It's not so much actively going out there and finding out how everyone else is wrong. As we'll learn, it's a careful and intense guarding of yourself. Guarding your own doctrine, guarding your own heart, being on guard. I think part of me would like to go find out what's wrong with everybody else. Part of me would like to say, okay, well I'm supposed to look out for these false teachers, so I'm going to be aggressive, I'm going to be proactive, I'm going to go find them and take them out before they take me out.

I don't think that's really the Lord's way. So, but I think there's a handful of people out there who do feel that way. I've met a certain number of hard believers who feel like it's their sole job in life to go and tear everyone else down who's wrong. And that's just, that's not what I see in scripture.

All right. So, this knowing beforehand though is the same word as God's foreknowledge. It's knowing before. It's progenosko is the word in Greek. It's really cool to me that we get to do some foreknowing in scripture. God does most of the foreknowing. God foreknows, God foreknows, God foreknows. Here we get to foreknow. What we get to foreknow is what God reveals to us to foreknow. And God has revealed that there are going to be false teachers out there and that we need to look out for them and show discernment there.

And this is also, as you look in the second paragraph here, very similar to something that Paul said to the elders in Ephesus in the Acts 27-28. Now, all the Greek words aren't the same, but the principle here is exactly the same. Verne pointed this out to me. He says, For I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole purpose of God. Be on your guard for yourselves and for all the flock. Among the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. to shepherd the church of God, which he purchased with his own blood." So here again, we see it.

The apostle is telling them, look, I've told you, I've told you, I've told you, you know. You can't say that, you know, like you said, forewarned is forearmed. You can't say that nobody told you that there were going to be false teachers out there. You can't say that someone told you. Anybody who comes to you and claims to be a teacher, accept that person, accept what they say. We can't claim that. Naivety is not among the things that we are, among our character traits, or should be. So, moving on to en garde. I love this image of a soldier.

It's a military word, and it's a military word for a soldier who is told to stand guard. So why do soldiers stand guard? To protect themselves. I mean, wildly enough, even if you go, now correct me if I'm wrong, because I know I'm not actually military, I don't have a military history, but even if you go to a base on friendly soil, you'll still have guards, right? There'll still be guards there. Why? It's not like the people of Oklahoma are going to rise against the military base there, or we hope. Why? Why would that be?

Exactly, you never know. Did anybody see, I think it was called Red Dawn. It's a movie about the Russians. Yeah, you saw it. Wasn't that great? Oh yeah, was it, they filmed it in Montrose? I think you're right. Having not been to either, but oh Patrick Swayze and the Russians came in, and everyone was saying, oh they'll never get there. Russians came in and took half of America, like overnight, and the Cubans came. Anyway, it was really good. I don't know if you can find it anymore. It wasn't like, yeah. Maybe somewhere between Casablanca and I don't know. It's not quite that high up there. Anyway. I don't think Bogey would say Wolverine. That's right. That's it.

Okay, so what percentage of the time would you say as a soldier, as a guard, you're allowed to sleep? Of your watch. What percentage of your watch are you allowed to sleep? None. Zero percent sleeping time. Zero percent, you know, I was on break. It's okay, they got through, but it was my break. I have a five-minute break. I get a five-minute break. That's okay. No, that's not at all.

It's a vigilant, constant watching. In the church, we find that false teachers can poison an entire congregation and take from them their means of growth, undermining their confidence in the Word of God. their peace by undermining their understanding of their eternal security or the character of God, and even take away their looking to the blessed hope by teaching some sort of amillennialist Christ-isn't-returning system. And so I saw in the Windy's parking lot, one of the bushes, some little thing by a certain heritage type Christian church that said, oh, why you should tie? Got out my black marker pen, made a few comments here and there, and then just put it back.

Isn't that it? Isn't that it? Well, I mean, it's like you say, even someone with the best intentions, I mean, even I obviously can teach something that everything needs questioning. I sent this off an email to Vern earlier this week, I think last Sunday or last Monday, and he sent it back with, do you want to look at this again?

I mean I was way, way, way off and thank the Lord he was there, because otherwise it would have been just really embarrassing, because it was that plain. You would have really noticed. So in any event, I mean even just in terms of people making mistakes, I can tell you, I remember the first time I came to Holly Hills, I was sitting right there, and it was the church history elective, first elective I ever came to. Maybe it was the second week, even still. Josiah Matthews was teaching, and he was teaching about church history in regards to either the rapture or Christ's second coming.

And I just, I just rat along and fought with him for all he was worth. I didn't know what I was talking about, ultimately. Had the best intentions in the world, but my information was just way off the mark. I was just convinced that you couldn't know eschatology, that eschatology was something that was just shrouded and veiled and that's where I sat.

Now my heart, at least I'd like to believe my heart, was in the right place. I wanted to learn, I wanted to know, I wanted to be here and yet it was the patience of Josiah Verne and some of the other people who took the time to just straighten out my thinking there that really helped. So much the more so, you know, as you hear me teaching here. I make mistakes. A lot, a whole lot, I make mistakes. So please, I always appreciate any comments.

And we need to have that discrimination towards people who we know, oh, his heart's great, and people who we think, you know, like the televangelist. Actually, he seems so nice, but something's out of place. Oh, you know, he just asked for 30% of my income. That makes sense then. Okay. So the stakes are pretty high.

And you know, also, as we get into another thing, I'm sure we've all been to a church or met a believer who says, well, my pastor says, my pastor teaches, and he has a doctorate, or my pastor teaches, my pastor, my pastor, or whoever. I mean, some people will latch on to a public figure.

Well, R.C. Sproul says, well, C.S. Lewis says, and not to denigrate those people at all. But the reality is that we as humans will have a tendency to latch on dogmatically to someone's teachings. John MacArthur, it's this person, it's that person, and say, okay, well, they say this and that makes it authoritative. Well, no, it's the word that makes it authoritative, right? And that's the reality that a false teacher who comes in and they just believe the teacher, even if they're not even, like I say, a malevolent person, they just have the wrong idea. If the body is not discerning, if the body is not able to hold it up to the word of God, we get into a series of trouble. Do you have another comment? Okay. As we move forward.

This is in the present tense, the middle voice, and the imperative mood. So it's a now and continuing type of thing. To be now and continuing on your guard. The middle voice gives the sense of the subject is doing the action and receiving the results of the action all at once.

So you're intensely involved. It's not just you're guarding, you're also guarding yourself. You guard yourselves. It's as if to say, you know, you are intensely, you are to be involved in this. And it's an imperative. It's an appeal to your will. Wake up every morning, you can choose to be on your guard or you can choose to not be on your guard. It's up to you.

And we'll reap the benefits or consequences of that as we walk. Once again, just lay it out. We're not talking about losing our salvation. We're not talking about losing our relationship with God. But the reality is that there is a result. in our growth, in our spiritual growth, as we'll talk about.

So to expand that out, you might say something like, you yourselves are to be, right now and continuing into the future, careful to be constantly guarding yourselves, or careful to be constantly on guard. Kind of conveys some of the Greek. Absolutely. I think most certainly the same Paul talking about the same things that Peter talks about. That's fantastic. That's fantastic. Okay, we move forward. So what's the result of not being on guard? What's the result? Huh? There it is. It's right in the text. I love this book. This is fantastic. Okay, so carried away is this word sunapago, sunapago. Put the accent wherever you like because I don't know. I forgot to put the apostrophe in there to tell us. So anyway, I'm presuming on sunapago.

It's a compound word combining words for together and to lead astray. So it's not simply that the teachers will carry you away, but you're in danger, but the danger of being carried away by them. So in other words, this is in the passive voice. The last one we talked about was in the active voice and it was an imperative. You actively be on guard in the imperative. I mean, you are the one. Be on guard. You be on guard. And then here in the passive voice, or you can passively be carried away. It's kind of the choice that you make.

There's not a third option here to, well, I'll just stay 35% on guard. I'll just discriminate 10% of the time. I'll let a lot of the worldly stuff in. I'll let a lot of the everything else that everyone else has to say in and not hold that up to the Word of God, but 10% of the time, when I'm at church, I'm going to be serious about it.

No, this is a constant thing. This is an everyday thing. Yeah, that's in the passive voice. So we find that if we are to do as we are told, then we will be able to stand firm in the faith. However, omission of disobedience on this point will result in our being carried away passively. So then it gets into the error of unprincipled men. Error here has the idea of wandering or straying about, aimlessly kind of wandering, poking around.

It's kind of interesting. We've got to lead astray, and wandering aimlessly about. Couldn't that be it a lot of the time? You ever go to a church or hear a pastor or a preacher or someone on the radio who just seems to hit the same thing every day and maybe even the doctrine is right, but the balance that they're giving to it is wrong. They're not keeping it in balance with the rest of scripture.

I mean, I think that's right. I think that these people can be well-intentioned. I've certainly taught them. I've gone back and if the Lord's brought it to mind, something that I've taught someone in a small group Bible study or something, or something that I took up with them, and I always feel convicted to call them and say, hey, remember when I told you that thing that time?

No, not that thing. I mean, it's certainly a thing that you can do without, or that can be done without even malevolence. So you can't just trust someone because they're nice, ultimately. You can't trust their doctrine, I should say, because they're nice. All in love though, right? All our rebuke and correction, all of our talk is in love. We don't correct someone because, you're wrong and I'm right and God has ten points for me and two points for you and I win.

No. It's, I think you're wrong about this and I think you're missing out on some of the blessings. We meet with someone who doesn't believe that Christ is coming back. Say, I think you're missing out on a huge blessing, on a huge hope. The Bible called Titus the blessed hope. You're missing out on this. I don't want to see you miss out. As a brother in Christ, or as a sister in Christ, I don't want to see you miss out on that. That's definitely something to be done with an attitude of love. Okay.

Interesting thing here, though, is that fall... Oh, unprincipled men... I think it was Thayer that says that it's the idea of someone who violently breaks free of the law in order to fulfill every lust of his flesh. So someone who just has no restraint. A lot of the time. No restraint for anything that they'll do or say, as the idea behind that one.

Fall here, this is really interesting to me. Fall is in the active voice. So you've got this active imperative to guard yourself. And then you've got a passive, like, or you will be passively carried away, which is paramount to be saying you'll actively be falling. Sorry, I want to read the quote exactly. you'll fall away from your own steadfastness. You'll actively be falling away.

So any choice is a choice, right? You're actively choosing to guard, okay? You choose not to actively guard. You choose against that. So then all of a sudden you're making this choice that you'll be passively carried away, but you're in essence actively choosing to fall away from your steadfastness. So even your passive choice, even your lack of choice is a choice.

We see this when we share the Gospel with people, right? Share the gospel with someone and they go, yeah, I don't know, I think it's true, but I'm just not ready. I'll just stay in the middle and then make a choice a little bit later. Did you ever have that?

The responsibility, right, is to tell them, if that's where you want to sit, that's fine, but I want you to know that where you're sitting now, you've made a choice. It's also dangerous. You may not have later. Later could never happen. So it's dangerous and the choice is always made. You choose to have faith in Christ, believe and trust Him for your salvation, you choose not to. And choosing to say maybe is choosing not to, right? It's a similar thing here. Choosing to be on guard is choosing not to.

Alright, as we burn forward. So steadfastness. your own steadfastness, which Vines defines as being firm condition, steadfast of mind. And isn't that what the Lord has for all of us, wants for all of us? He talked about bringing us to this point of being, in the Greek, teleos. Teleos, right?

Mature, mature believers. That's what God wants for every believer, not just for the pastors, not just for the teachers, not just for the super-christian. He wants every believer to be brought to maturity, and that's why. I love coming here every Sunday to see all these mature believers who've been fed on the milk and the meat of the word for years and years. Although, it doesn't look like years and years. Y'all look like you're 28. But to see this kind of maturity in believers, it's life-giving. It's life-giving to see that kind of maturity that the Lord brings about by His word.

Moving on into 2 Peter 3.18. But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory, both now and to the day of eternity. Amen. OK.

I'm sure we've all been here long enough, or some of us have been here long enough to know that there's two ways in Greek that they express what we use with our English word, but. And actually kind of three, because sometimes chi gets brought across as but in a weird case. In any event, the two typical ones are day and Allah. Who can tell me the difference between day and Allah? Great! I love that. How concise. That's fantastic. I couldn't have done it that fast. Day is a soft contrast, but moreover. It's just a slight change in direction. And Allah is the firm. Not this, but this. Oh, it was a natural distinction for you?

I didn't know that. I had no idea. I failed German. No, I got a D, but still I didn't take as much as I should have from the class. It was difficult. Okay, so if you had to use your intuition as you're reading through these verses, this spot here, Does anybody want to chance a guess? Is it a day or a law? I'll tell you, I guessed wrong. Anyone have a feeling? That's exactly what I wanted to say. I was all ready to write my whole law thing, just cut, paste, a law. Sweet!

But no, I mean it's a day, and I was like, well why in the world would he use a soft contrast here, because it looks like such a thing. Okay, don't be in the air of the unprincipled men, your own steadfastness, but, cut, grow, don't be carried away, but this. Okay, don't this, but that, I mean, that's the way that I read it.

And then I thought, you know, we'll give Peter the benefit of the doubt and look at the larger context. And I think that he's been going with this These ideas of spiritual growth. He's been talking about this last week, and the week before we talked about growth and maturity, and he's moving that way. So this, you could say that his mention of Paul and people distorting the scriptures and distorting Paul and this verse 17 here is a sort of parenthesis. He's kind of putting in a little parenthesis like talking about growth, talking about maturity and, oh by the way, here's the negative and we're back into the positive.

So it's not a huge, it doesn't have to be the huge, I guess I was just thinking too locally. No, I think about it that's rather academic. I can't think of a practical application for that. Alright, so in any event this is a day. So this is a soft contrast as we move towards the principle or talking about growth.

Just one thought, that if you look at the starting thought there, be on your guard is the same kind of positive statement as grow and break. They're both imperatives. So he's really taking a comparatively minor side trip into falling and carried away. The main thought is be on your guard. So but grow is not a massive contrast. There it is.

So he says that just in case folks in the back didn't hear, the point, the purpose, the focus of the previous sentence was to be on your guard, and the rest was that being carried away was just an aside, and then we're getting right back into growth. So both of those are imperatives. Those are the things that I was trying to convey that okay? Didn't get it out as clearly but still.

All right so grow. Here, it's interesting to notice that GROW is in the active voice and it's an imperative. Seriously, how does that even work? If you want to silence the accusation that some principle of man, that some kind of growth has to happen first, then you don't just save it up for your benefit and get bugged up by it. Yeah, you're already growing. You've got something to show. For me though, this is pretty fantastic.

Can you imagine, I tell Cadence, grow. It's time for you to grow. I mean, what do you do? Oh no, the Bible told me to grow. Nope. By the way, that's not a method of growth to try after a baked bean dinner. Don't do it. Don't do it. You've been warned.

So it's as if a kid who wants to make the basketball team is hanging from his ankles and drinking lots of milk upside down because he thinks that's going to make him grow. It seems a little bit difficult. And this is where I need you to make a correction to hear it. to your handout, because as excited as I am now, I was that excited writing it, and I typo'd.

So it says here in the middle of that paragraph, is it fair of Peter to command us to do something that is usually something that simply happens when a living thing is healthy? I said, no, this is not fair at all, and I meant to say this is not unfair. So please do, because I don't think Scripture tells us to do things that are, I don't think it's unfair. So, not unfair at all.

So that was my error, and I apologize. However, the key to understanding this command is found in Peter's first letter. It says, like newborn babies, long for the pure milk of the word, so that by it you may grow in respect to salvation. That's 1 Peter 2. So the word grow is the same in both of these verses.

But in the 1 Peter 2.2, we see the imperative is in the longing.

The imperative in 1 Peter 2.2 is in the longing for the spiritual, the milk of the word. That's where the imperative is. And here it's in grow. So if Peter's telling him to grow in his second letter, he's saying, and I told you how to grow last time I wrote you. It's in the pure spiritual milk of the word. That's that. That's where it comes from.

But it wouldn't be Obviously just enough if we fed Cadence, just fed her milk, right? She needs to stretch her limbs, move, exercise. She needs to go out and live it, right? She just ate, she just become a little blob, which she seems like now, but she won't be, I hope, for much longer. You need to get out there and live it.

We can't just, you know, read the Bible for two hours every night and then just go about and absolutely lock it away in this other part of our mind. It needs to be something that's active and in our thoughts and in our hearts and being applied in our lives. Applied constantly, day by day. Just the knowing isn't good enough. just the knowing makes it stuck up, but the actual application of the word, and that's where I get stuck up, to be honest.

I like to read, I like to know, I like all this, and then I'll be sitting at work, grousing about everything, and get myself all in a tizzy, and think, Okay, so here I spend all this time trying to learn and know and focus and study God's Word, and then spend all this time in my day not applying it, not resting in Him, not trusting in the hope that He's coming back, not casting my anxieties, casting my worries on Him. Spend all this time not doing it, not applying it.

What's the advantage? Who's getting cheated? Who's getting shortchanged? Me? I'm the one who is not getting to grow in Christ. I'm the one who is not enjoying the life and peace and joy. There. Comments on that? Questions? Okay. So. Brilliant. Okay. Moving on to Christ be the glory. run short of time, but not as short as we usually run at this point in the handout. To Christ be the glory. This brings us to an understanding of where we're all heading. Who can give us the standing definition at Holly Hills of what God's glory is, Christ's glory? Absolutely, the radiant essence of who he is, his essence, his attributes, who he is, what he's about.

I've been reading through Schaeffer's systematic theology and something that I would have thought was extraordinarily dry before. I said, okay, I know that. Yeah, I know that. Yeah, I know that. Now to go through and read it and say, oh wow, God is loving. God is all-knowing. God is in control. I love that, knock your socks off loving. It's to the top degree, it's full to the complete measure and it's not running out. I'm just going to stop because it's just going to be a ramble. Nobody wants that.

But it's so exciting that we get to be a part of that. We get to be a part of the radiant essence of who He is and lifting Him up for that and glorifying that for all eternity. And I think the thing that excites me most about it is that even though that is indeed where we're heading, that's where we are as well. Every day, every moment of every day, for me, can be about me expressing God's glory and giving glory to Christ.

Do I? Why not? But could we? Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Isn't that what it's about being here? Coming here, learn more about Him, behold Him more, lift Him up more. Do you go home after every sermon and say, oh, thank you. Thank you, Lord, for who you are. Thank you, Lord, for who you've made yourself to be.

I've met handfuls of people who, you give a sermon on God's sovereignty or God's, you know, a characteristic or an attribute of God, and they say, well, that's fine, but it's just really not practical. Well, it's not practical? What could be more practical? What could be more practical than knowing who God is and knowing whose hands you're in and knowing who you're going to be with? What could be more practical than that as we do our dishes, or clean our houses, or whatever it is we do. Go to work and push paper like me, whatever it is. What could be more practical than knowing the one who you're in, and then knowing your destiny.

How quickly the world will melt away. and show itself for what it really is when we gaze lovingly at our Lord and remember that everything is for His glory and not ours. How insignificant the pains, rewards, and luxuries of this world when we think that Jesus is going to share His glory with us. So there it is. Alright, Peter ends with Amen. Amen, of course, is a Hebrew word that the Christians borrowed or assimilated, I guess, or a Hebrew custom to end a letter. So it is or so be it.

So just in point of fact, how difficult is it to get caught up in and rely on our own feelings in a situation or in life? Quite difficult. Does anybody ever get overtaken with feeling like, I don't know if God even cares. I'm sitting here struggling in this job or this thing that I don't like or whatever. Sometimes I just wonder if God even cares. And then that other part of your brain goes, no, stop being an idiot. But that part is still there. That temptation is still there to rely on that, isn't it? This word, Amen. So it is. This is the way it is. This is the way it is. Not your feelings, not your emotions, your feelings, your thoughts about God.

You might, I mean, just depending on, they say, it being Father's Day, they say that we get a lot of our innate image of how we like imagine God from our father, our dad, our earthly dad. So you meet someone who has a rather authoritarian, fair-as-fair person, and ask them, well, what's God like? They'll have a tendency to describe God, if they don't know Him from the Word and from the Spirit, as being authoritarian. But I have a feeling that in our flesh we have a tendency to kind of default to see, well, God's just, you know, whatever it is. And rather than going to our Word and saying, no, God's loving, God deals with us on grace, not on principle of law or what we say is just or not just in our own little myopic view.

This is the point of taking God's word over our perception, God's word over our feelings, over our personal experience. So on days or weeks when we have walked in the flesh and it would feel as if God has given up on us, we need to realize that the Bible is where the truth is and not our feelings or experience. Regardless of how things seem at the time, you should always try to rely on the divinely revealed facts.

And that's what I got. Does anyone have any other questions or comments? It's all the same, because that's why I'm spoiled, by the way. I've learned this early set of lyrics was a great melody, but we'll just stick with the lyrics. But it goes like this. Now, to him who is able to keep you, who is able to keep you from stumbling and prevent you from listening to the prophet, be glory forever. Amen. Amen. Does anyone else have anything to add about these verses? I know I didn't, you know, plumb the depths by any stretch of the imagination.

There's a lot more to be said about them all. Any other applications that we'd personally draw out of it? Wow! How cool is that? We read the last one. Okay, let's praise the Lord. Heavenly Father, thank you so much that we got through this study today. We praise you and thank you for your wonderful word and the exciting truth that you've given us the command and the ability to grow in you, Lord, that you don't just take us against our will, but Lord, you ask us to long for the spiritual milk of your word and long to behold you and long to grow in you. Lord, please let us apply this to our lives. Don't let this stay in our available memory or available knowledge, but let it be applied to every step as we go. Lord, let your word ring in our hearts and through our lives. In Jesus' holy name, Amen.