2021 Series: “Live Like a Champion: Victory Through the Promises of God!”

“The Promise of Eternity!”

2 Peter 1:10-11 (NAS95)

In the first three weeks of this series, we have learned how to live like a champion by learning how to live in the victory of the promises of God. Our guiding image for this series is being a member of an NFL team who wins the Superbowl. As God’s athletes we must do four things to live like champions:

(1) Know God’s playbook—the Bible—by learning the promises of God.

(2) Train ourselves for godliness by learning to live according to the promises of God.

(3) Learn how to listen to the Coach’s voice so that we play the right play at the right time.

(4) Work together as one team—we are members of God’s family—His Church.

Never forget, the Superbowl celebration is in our future and we are invited to play like a championship team.

This truth is our emphasis for today’s foundational teaching on the promises of God: we have the promise of eternity. This is an overarching truth for living a victorious life because this is the foundation of all our hope.

“Therefore, brethren, be all the more diligent to make certain about His calling and choosing you; for as long as you practice these things, you will never stumble; for in this way the entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ will be abundantly supplied to you.”

Today, we are going to cultivate our hope in Jesus so that we may live by faith and not by sight, as Paul commands us in 2 Corinthians 5:1-10,

For we know that if the earthly tent which is our house is torn down, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For indeed in this house we groan, longing to be clothed with our dwelling from heaven, inasmuch as we, having put it on, will not be found naked. For indeed while we are in this tent, we groan, being burdened, because we do not want to be unclothed but to be clothed, so that what is mortal will be swallowed up by life. Now He who prepared us for this very purpose is God, who gave to us the Spirit as a pledge. Therefore, being always of good courage, and knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord— for we walk by faith, not by sight— we are of good courage, I say, and prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord. Therefore we also have as our ambition, whether at home or absent, to be pleasing to Him. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may be recompensed for his deeds in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad.

In light of this truth, how then shall we live? As we examine 2 Peter 1:10-11, we observe the progression of Peter’s thinking.

First, we, the “brethren”, the members of Christ’s body, are to “be all the more diligent to make certain about His calling and choosing you…” This is in the imperative form meaning it is a command—Be diligent to not forget “[your] purification from [your] former sins” (2 Peter 1:9), by remembering your calling!  

In other words, using our metaphor of being a part of a Superbowl winning football team, you need to be diligent in knowing that you have been called to the team by the Coach because He chose you. The original language is saying, “to make this a permanent experience” or to be diligent in “securing” this truth in you.

Jesus has unapologetically told you this truth in John 15:16, “You did not choose Me but I chose you, and appointed you that you would go and bear fruit, and that your fruit would remain, so that whatever you ask of the Father in My name He may give to you.”

You have been handpicked to be a part of God’s team! How can you be “all the more diligent” to know this?

Through your effectiveness and fruitfulness “in the true knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 1:8). It is through fruit bearing that we are certain of God’s choosing. As Jesus said in John 15:8, “My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be My disciples” (cf. Ephesians 2:8-10).

As a “partaker of the divine nature” you are sharing in His nature, a partner of God in His purposes and plans. Jesus spoke this to an agricultural community in not only those words of being a fruit-bearing branch abiding in the vine, but also in words of a being fruit-bearing trees in Matthew 12:33-37,

Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad; for the tree is known by its fruit. You brood of vipers, how can you, being evil, speak what is good? For the mouth speaks out of that which fills the heart. The good man brings out of his good treasure what is good; and the evil man brings out of his evil treasure what is evil. But I tell you that every careless word that people speak, they shall give an accounting for it in the day of judgment. For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.

You produce (manifest and so prove to be) according to your kind—as Peter states in 2 Peter 1:4, if you are sharing in the divine nature of God, then you have escaped the corruption of this world (cf. Romans 12:1-2).

Earlier in John 8:31-32 Jesus made it very clear what that meant to those who believed in Him, “If you continue in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” Did you hear that, His abiding truth will MAKE you free! You have escaped! Now escape…

There is something very beautiful in the original language of 2 Peter 1:10 here; the verb for “to make” is in the middle voice. Listen to this quote from a Greek Grammar book, “the middle voice signifies that the subject performs the action of the verb and participates somehow in the results.”^[1] You both perform the action of making certain and participate in the certainty of God’s action to secure you as His own.

As Peter says in 2 Peter 1:10, “for as long as you practice these things [the virtues of 2 Peter 1:5-7], you will never stumble.” The promises of God come with daily invitations to practice what you believe; to put into practice the faith you have received. You are saved by faith alone, absolutely, but faith never stands alone! You are known by the works of your faith, as James stated in James 1:22-25,

But prove yourselves doers of the word, and not merely hearers who delude themselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks at his natural face in a mirror; for once he has looked at himself and gone away, he has immediately forgotten what kind of person he was. But one who looks intently at the perfect law, the law of liberty, and abides by it, not having become a forgetful hearer but an effectual doer, this man will be blessed in what he does.

The logic of scripture is irrefutable as James’ words harken us back to last week’s sermon when Peter said in 2 Peter 1:8-9, “For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they render you neither useless nor unfruitful in the true knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For he who lacks these qualities is blind or short-sighted, having forgotten his purification from his former sins.”

So, we are to build our lives on the words of Jesus. We are to practice “these things” so that we will never stumble. This is the promise of Jesus Christ as the benediction of Jude 24-25 proclaims the power of God through Jesus Christ, “Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, and to make you stand in the presence of His glory blameless with great joy, to the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.”

John says something strikingly similar in 1 John 3:1-3, which pulls together this whole sermon:

See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we would be called children of God; and such we are. For this reason the world does not know us, because it did not know Him. Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we will be. We know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is. And everyone who has this hope fixed on Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.

Both of these scriptures bring us back to Peter’s logic in 2 Peter 1:11, “for in this way the entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ will be abundantly supplied to you.”

I love the visual of this promise regarding eternal life: the entrance into the eternal kingdom will be abundantly supplied to you. How is that possible?

Jesus taught us very clearly about the entrance (or gate) to life in Matthew 7:13-14, “Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it.”

How is the entrance abundantly supplied, yet the gate be small and the way be narrow?

These two truths are brought into perfect unity through the exclusive means of Jesus Christ, as He said in John 14:6, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.”

The hope of entering the eternal dominion and authority of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is abundantly supplied to us through a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. It is in Christ alone! Jesus is the most inclusive exclusive entry point into eternal life. Jesus gives us His abundant life with the Father! Apart from Him, there is no entry way—He is the only mediator of the covenant between God and humanity.

 
Jesus Christ returned to agricultural imagery to make this point very clear. Listen to John 10:1-10,

“Truly, truly, I say to you, he who does not enter by the door into the fold of the sheep, but climbs up some other way, he is a thief and a robber. But he who enters by the door is a shepherd of the sheep. To him the doorkeeper opens, and the sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he puts forth all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. A stranger they simply will not follow, but will flee from him, because they do not know the voice of strangers.” This figure of speech Jesus spoke to them, but they did not understand what those things were which He had been saying to them. So Jesus said to them again, “Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. All who came before Me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not hear them. I am the door; if anyone enters through Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”

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