Well do keep your Bibles in hand and turn with me in them now to the New Testament, to the second letter of the apostle Peter, chapter 1. If you’re using a church Bible, that’s on page 1018.
We are continuing this morning our series looking at the teaching of this important New Testament book. Chapter 1 is focused, we’ve seen, on the theme of growing in Christian maturity. Growing in Christian maturity. And at the heart of his argument, Peter has emphasized the importance of knowledge. We must know Jesus personally. Over and over again, he has spoken to us about the knowledge of Jesus Christ. According to verse 4, this knowledge is mediated to us by His “precious and very great promises.” And last week, when we looked at verse 7, we saw Peter urge that we supplement our faith with virtue, and to virtue we are to add knowledge. This time, knowledge has a reference to growing in understanding the truth as it is in Christ from the apostolic Word. In other words, Peter wants us to grow in Christian maturity by knowing Jesus through holy Scripture. That, in sum, is the message of the first part of chapter 1.
And now having laid that foundation, in the remainder of the chapter, Peter focuses on the apostolic Word itself. If the Word is the instrument by which we come to know Christ, if we grow in Christian maturity by means of the precious and very great promises of the Word, then the reliability and the origin and the character of that Word become matters of vital importance to us. Don’t they? We’ve got to know the “why” and the “what” and the “how” of the Word of God. Can it be trusted? Where did it come from? What is it’s purpose and it’s message? And so it is to these questions that Peter addresses himself in the rest of the chapter. Today, we are considering the first part of Peter’s teaching about the apostolic Word in verses 12 through 18; verses 12 through 18. Here is Peter explaining why he is writing to them and why they should listen to him.
And if you look down at the text for a moment with me, chapter 1 verses 12 through 18, let me highlight two themes in particular. First of all, in verses 12 through 15, Peter talks to us about what we will call the ministry of reminders. The ministry of reminders. The Bible itself is an instrument of memory, of bringing to remembrance the great truths. It wants us to remember the good news. And Peter’s letter is part of that. It is intended to call the truth to mind. The ministry of reminders. And then in 16 through 18, Peter outlines the message to be remembered. The message to be remembered. He has us look back specifically at the life of Christ and to one incident in His life in particular, in order to bolster faith and hope as we look forward to the life yet to come. And so those are the two themes we are going to be considering. I hope you can see them already in the passage. The ministry of reminders and the message to remember.
Before we look at them together, let’s pause as usual to pray and ask for God to help us and then we will read His holy Word. Let us pray.
O God, as the Scripture is read, we hear Your voice. Give us ears to hear so that more than noise falling upon our ears, truth might penetrate our hearts and illuminate our minds and change our lives. We know that we meet Christ in the Scriptures, and so we pray that today as Your Word is read and proclaimed we may meet Him afresh, for Your glory and our everlasting good. For we ask it in His name, amen.
2 Peter chapter 1, beginning at verse 12. We’ll read through to the end of the chapter, though we’re focusing on verses 12 to 18:
“Therefore I intend always to remind you of these qualities, though you know them and are established in the truth that you have. I think it right, as long as I am in this body, to stir you up by way of reminder, since I know that the putting off of my body will be soon, as our Lord Jesus Christ made clear to me. And I will make every effort so that after my departure you may be able at any time to recall these things.
For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For when he received honor and glory from God the Father, and the voice was borne to him by the Majestic Glory, ‘This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased,’ we ourselves heard this very voice borne from heaven, for we were with him on the holy mountain. And we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts, knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.”
This is the Word of Almighty God. Amen.
The Ministry of Reminders
Well memory is a fickle thing. I was talking to someone the other day on a pastoral visit who is recovering from a stroke and they were expressing frustration at the way their memory has been affected – simple, everyday things we would never otherwise forget, get overlooked. It’s fragile, memory – isn’t it? One of my worst nightmares is when, performing infant baptisms here on a Sunday and I can’t remember the gender of the baby! In my defense, sometimes you can’t always tell from their name. They’re wearing these precious little white baptismal gowns and I find myself awkwardly praying for, “this child and it’s parents” – it’s dreadful; horribly embarrassing! Of course sometimes forgetfulness doesn’t matter all that much. Does it? It can even be endearing to see someone’s absentmindedness. But when it comes to spiritual things, forgetfulness is a disaster. Forgetfulness is a disaster when it comes to spiritual things. That’s why Peter engages in what we’re calling “the ministry of reminders.” The ministry of reminders.
Look with me at verses 12 through 15 please. We touched on these four verses briefly in our first message in this series, but they do deserve a closer look now, I think. Verses 12 through 15:
“Therefore I intend always to remind you of these qualities, though you know them and are established in the truth that you have. I think it right, as long as I am in this body, to stir you up by way of reminder, since I know that the putting off of my body will be soon, as our Lord Jesus Christ made clear to me. And I will make every effort so that after my departure you may be able at any time to recall these things.”
Now notice Peter’s readers are already mature Christian disciples. “I intend always to remind you of these qualities, though you know them and are established in the truth that you have.” They know the truth and are established in it. And yet, Peter is unconcerned about going back over the basics of the Gospel and spelling out it’s implications. He’s not worried about it wearying them or frustrating them. He’s not concerned that they will yawn and shrug and say, “Hey Peter, tell us something that we don’t know.” No, Peter understands this is what they need and it’s what we need. No matter how mature you get as a disciple of Jesus Christ, how far you come, how accomplished in Christian service you may be, “I intend always to remind you,” Peter says, “this is my ministry to you – the ministry of reminders.”
So verse 13. “I think it right to stir you up by way of reminder.” The word for “right” there means “fitting, suitable, helpful, appropriate.” This is what fits the need of our heart’s best, he’s saying. We need to be reminded of what really matters. And the Greek word that’s translated in verse 13 as, “to stir you up – I think it right to stir you up by way of reminder,” it’s actually a very ordinary word. It just means, “to cause you to do something.” In this case, to cause you to remember. But “stir you up” is a more graphic English idiom. It’s as though Peter were saying memory has a way of stagnating like a swamp unless the water is constantly stirred up with reminders. And how is Peter going to do that for us, given how prone we are to forget the truth? Verses 14 and 15, “I know that the putting of my body will be soon, as our Lord Jesus Christ made clear to me. And I will make every effort so that after my departure you may be able at any time to recall these things.” At any time, you will be able to remember them because Peter is making a particular effort to ensure their remembrance. He’s going to die soon, and so what does he do? He writes this letter to them; he puts pen to paper so that they will have an enduring instrument of memory. That is what the Scriptures are – an enduring instrument of memory.
Implication: What Rules Our Thinking
And there are two implications that I want to draw from all of that before we move on. The first has to do with what rules our thinking. Peter is reminding us that what is in our own heads is never an adequate rule for faith and life. What you can remember, what you recall, what you imagine to be true, what you wish were true, your own deductions and preferences and inventions provide no sure foundation for the Christian life. You and I, we are not our own standards of conduct or conviction. That may seem to some of us a self-evident idea, but we do live in an age of radical, expressive individualism when each one does what is right in their own eyes. Where what I believe is now elevated from the provisional realm of mere opinion. What I believe is now “my truth,” and my truth is being absolutized so that no one is permitted to challenge it. To challenge my truth or for me to challenge your truth is to risk being unmasked as a bigot and an oppressor in our particular cultural moment. “You do you. You live your truth.” Those are the slogans of the day.
But Peter is calling us who follow the Lord Jesus Christ to a radically different way of knowing. He rejects the idea that we invent our own reality. And instead, he calls us to epistemological humility. He calls us to a kind of intellectual modesty that submits to the givenness of the truth once for all delivered to the saints, contained in the apostolic Word and preserved for us in the pages of holy Scripture. Peter wants his readers, he wants you and me, to be like Luther at the Diet of Worms. “My conscience is captive to the word of God. Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me!” Does the Word rule in your mind and in your heart and in your conscience? Or do you only permit it to rule in so far as you like what it has to say?
I once had a fascinating conversation with someone who made an appointment, came to see me in my study here at the church. He was struggling with my preaching a free offer of Christ to all people everywhere, equally, and at the same time my insistence that God is sovereign in salvation and only the elect, chosen by Him before the foundation of the world, ever will believe in Christ. Now that’s a common struggle; it’s a struggle that I’ve had myself. And so I was sympathetic and eager to try and help as best I could. And I sought to walk him through a number of key Scriptures that assert both truths, holding them both together without reconciling or explaining either away. “Look here,” I’d say, “this verse tells us, ‘No one comes to Jesus except the Father draws him.’ But now then look at this verse. Jesus calls all the weary and heavy laden to come to Him. This verse says, ‘I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.’ Well this other verse says, ‘Whoever wills, let him come and take of the waters of life freely.’ Now both are true,” I said to him. “We must hold them both together and not explain either away in favor of the other. I feel no constraint at all to reconcile them, but seek to preach them both equally and boldly. Both are true.” “That cannot be!” he said to me. “Well why do you say that?” He said, “Because my god isn’t like that. He would never do that.”
Look, Peter is warning us to let the Word rule and not our own preconceived ideas of who God must be and how He must act and what He must do. We are not the only rule to direct us how we may glorify and enjoy Him. What does the catechism say? “The Word of God contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments is the only rule to direct us how we may glorify God and enjoy Him forever.” So Peter presses us back into the Scriptures, you see. He reminds us of these things. He makes every effort. He presses us back into the Word. The first implication here has to do with what rules our thinking.
Implication: What Shapes Our Ministry
Now the second implication has to do with what shapes our ministry. What shapes our ministry. Peter is committed to the ministry of reminders because it is being reminded of the truth of the Word that really matters and makes all the difference. He’s not committed to the ministry of innovation or speculation or imagination. He reminds us of the same old truths they’ve “known and been established in,” he says. And he drives them home and presses them home. That is his disciple-making strategy. Charles Hodge, the great 19th century old school Presbyterian theologian of Princeton, once boasted that no new ideas would ever come out of Princeton while he taught there. He was exaggerating, of course, but his point is a good one. “No new ideas will ever come out of Princeton while I have anything to do with it,” he said. What he was saying is, when it comes to preparing men for Gospel ministry, he has no interest in novelty. He’s committed to the ministry of reminders and he wants others to be committed to the ministry of reminders. Stay in the old paths. They are tried and true. They are safe.
What I need from you, what you need from me, what we need from one another in the crisis, as well as in our moments of celebration, is not a display of creative insight so that you all wonder at my genius. What you need, what I need, what we all need isn’t me and my ideas, you and your ideas; it is the Lord Jesus Christ and His infallible unchanging Word entrusted to His apostles, preserved in the holy Scriptures. Do you practice the ministry of reminders, stirring one another up by way of reminder? Reminding each other of the ABCs of the Christian Gospel? Taking each other back into the Scriptures? Do you open the Bible with one another and speak Scripture to each other? Interesting intellectual bypaths may provide a distraction along the way, but if we follow them too closely they may well lead us far from the narrow path that leads to life. We need to help each other stay on the old narrow way by practicing the ministry of reminders.
In the course of my own pastoral ministry over the years so far, I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that every one of the spiritual maladies that I’ve come across in the lives of God’s people have at their center a fundamental failure to grasp the Gospel, the basics of the Gospel, or to let the Gospel have its way in our lives. And the ministry of reminders Peter is modeling for us here knows that about our fickle hearts. He knows that’s how we’re wired. We’re wired to forget the Gospel, even after walking with Christ for years and years, to wander from it, to distort it, to ignore central parts of it. And so it keeps the ministry of reminders, keeps pressing the same old truth home until we get it, until we get it. We need to practice the ministry of reminders.
The Message to Remember
And then in the second place, I want you to see in verses 16 through 18 the message that is to be remembered. The ministry of reminders. Now, the message to remember. What is it that Peter reminds them of precisely? Well, negatively, verse 16, first of all he says, “We did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” The Gospel is not make-believe. Christianity is unique amongst the religions of the world in resting all its weight on objective, historical fact. That’s the fundamental claim at the root of our message. Not just that there is a set of philosophical or dogmatic claims about spirituality or the nature of ultimate reality, but the revelation of God has taken place in the history of the world so that the whole fabric of our faith stands or falls with its historical reliability. If Moses did not lead the Israelites out of Egypt, if Solomon did not build the temple, if Nehemiah did not rebuild Jerusalem and Jesus did not rise from the dead, then there is no Christianity. Unlike the false teachers, about whom we’re going to learn in chapter 2, the apostolic message is not cleverly devised myth.
And so secondly and positively, it is founded on eyewitness testimony. “For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty.” Verse 18, “We ourselves heard this very voice borne from heaven, for we were with him on the holy mountain.” It’s the same claim made by the apostle John. First John chapter 1 verse 1, “That which was from the beginning which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands concerning the word of life. The life was made manifest and we have seen it and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life which was with the Father and was made manifest to us; that which we have seen and heard, we proclaim also to you.” The apostolic Gospel rests upon the testimony of people who were there, who saw Jesus, talked to Jesus, touched Jesus, were changed by the Lord Jesus. And their testimony could be verified or falsified by other people who were there. The freight that the Gospel carries does not rest on whether it is true for you, but on whether it is true absolutely for everyone. If it’s not true for you, it’s not true for anyone. But if it is true, it is true for everyone, everywhere, at all times.
That’s the claim that Peter is making. The Son of God was born of the virgin, lived a perfect, obedient life, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead and buried. He descended into hell. The third day He rose again. Right now He lives and reigns in the same glorified body with which He was crucified, at the Father’s right hand, from whence He shall come to judge the living and the dead. These are statements about history, about facts, about the real world, not just the baseless, private speculations of religious believers.
An Implication for Non-Christians
And that also has at least two implications, the first of which speaks to those of us who are not Christians. Peter’s teaching here means that we cannot relegate the Christian Gospel to just another message in the marketplace of ideas. You don’t have room to say to your Christian friends, “I’m glad you’ve found something that works for you, but it doesn’t work for me.” The Gospel is not just another option on the smorgasbord of worldviews out there. It is, as Francis Shaeffer famously put it, “It is true truth.” It can’t be relativized or dismissed. Christianity is like gravity, you know. You don’t have to believe in it, but no amount of disbelief in gravity can prevent you from ending up as a greasy smear on the ground were you to walk off a cliff. It’s true, so don’t shrug. Please don’t shrug when you hear invitations to come and follow Jesus as if we were merely inviting you to dinner. God Himself is calling you to believe the one thing that makes sense of everything else; the true truth that puts all other truth in its proper relation and proportion. You can’t make sense of the world, you can’t do it, until you come and bend your knee to the One who made it and gave His life up to the cross to redeem it and restore it.
An Implication for Growing Christians
And then secondly, Peter’s teaching here speaks to growing Christians. It invites us to look back to the facts upon which the Gospel rests in order – I want you to notice this carefully in Peter’s teaching – look back in order to bolster faith and hope for days to come. Look at verse 16 again. “We did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you” – here’s the phrase – “the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty.” Now look carefully at that phrase, “the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” We naturally read that, I think, as a reference to the power of His first coming because Peter goes on to speak about the transfiguration in the verses immediately adjacent to this one. Peter was an eyewitness of the transfiguration. The problem is, the word, “coming,” is used of Christ 18 times in the New Testament and in every single instance it is a reference not to the first appearing of Jesus but to His final return in glory.
So here’s what Peter is saying when he speaks about “the power of the Lord Jesus Christ,” he’s speaking about His earthly ministry. And when he says, “We have made known to you not only the power but also the coming,” he’s speaking about His final return. And in the remainder of this chapter and again and again throughout the rest of the book, Peter is insistent upon the truth about the final coming of Jesus to judge the living and the dead. Jesus is coming back. Do you live as if that were not true? Does the return of Jesus play any role at all in shaping your thinking, your living, your decisions, your behavior? Do you live as though the Savior were coming soon? That’s how Peter wants us to think – to take seriously the return of Jesus.
And to help us bolster faith in His imminent return, he points us back to that historical moment on the mount of transfiguration. You can read the transfiguration account in Matthew 17, Mark 9. Jesus, remember, was about to go to Jerusalem. The momentum in the story is building towards the sufferings of the cross. First of all, however, He ascends the mountain with Peter, James and John. There, Matthew says, He was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun. His clothes became white as light. A bright cloud overshadowed Him and a voice came from the clouds saying, “This is My Beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased. Listen to Him.”
Just as an aside, please don’t miss the Trinitarian notes that are sounding in Peter’s account. Verse 17 – “He received glory and honor from God the Father.” And the voice was born to him by the majestic glory. “This is My Beloved Son.” The majestic glory is an echo of the glory cloud that filled the most holy place, indicating the presence of God in the temple. It’s an image of the Holy Spirit. So here is the Father speaking to His Son, the Lord Jesus, through and by the Holy Spirit whose glory overshadows Him. It’s a little glimpse into the marvelous communion of the three persons of the unity of the blessed Trinity.
But even more germane to our point, for Peter, this moment in the life of Jesus, the transfiguration, is a glimpse ahead of time of the glory and honor that God the Father will bestow upon Jesus after His resurrection and ascension. It’s a preview of the exaltation of the God-Man after He finishes His work and secures salvation for sinners by means of the cross and sits down at the right hand of the Majesty on High, adorned with a name that is above every name, “so that at the name of Jesus, every knee must bow, every tongue confess, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.” This is the glory that will one day split the skies, Peter is saying, when He returns again to judge the living and the dead. And every eye will see it on that day. Yes, during the days of His earthly ministry it was a ministry of power, but it was power veiled behind the sufferings of the servant of the Lord who must bleed and die for sinners. But one day that power will blaze forth in undimmed glory when He comes again. Peter says, “I saw it. I got a glimpse of it ahead of time in advance. I know what’s coming! And so you need to remember the truth of the Gospel – who Jesus is and what He’s done. You need to remember this moment in particular so that you may look forward with eager anticipation to what yet lies ahead.”
I wonder if as he wrote this Peter was like a mom or dad on Christmas Eve. All the presents are wrapped under the tree. There are big boxes and little squishy presents. Things that rattle when you shake them. Things you can’t lift they’re so heavy. You’ve snuck in there when mom and dad aren’t looking to try and guess what’s under the wrapping and the anticipation is killing you. It’s nothing compared to what mom and dad feel because they know what’s coming. They know what’s under the wrapping. They know how much you’re going to love what they’ve got to give you.
Isn’t that sort of what Peter is saying here? “I’ve seen what’s behind the wrapping, you know. I know what’s in store and I can’t wait. I was there on the mountain. I saw His glory and you are going to see it too one day soon!” So how do you keep going, keep on believing, keep on obeying when life gets hard and long and wearisome? In those moments, shortcuts and innovations and so-called new insights from flashy teachers, they sound awfully attractive. But Peter says, “No, no, what you need is a reminder of the Gospel, a reminder of the old, old Story.” What you need is to recite and recall the facts about Jesus – His person, His work, His message, His glory, His grace, His power and His coming. “You need to climb the mountain of transfiguration with me,” he’s saying – “with me and James and John, and see again the glory cloud that covered Him and hear again the voice from heaven and know, that glory, the glory that shone then, was just a little glimpse and one day it will fill the earth as the waters cover the sea and we will all see it blazing from the majestic face of the Lord Jesus Christ, King of kings and Lord of lords when He comes.”
What’s he saying? He’s saying look back in order to look forward. You find fuel to propel your forward movement in the Christian life by looking back to the Gospel of grace to the life and ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ. Look back in faith, he’s saying, in order to look forward in hope. Are you losing hope? Perhaps you’ve stopped looking back in faith. Look back to the basics. There you will find strength, not just for today, but for tomorrow and the days to come until the Savior comes to bring you home. So Peter is engaged in the ministry of reminders. It’s a ministry we badly need today, isn’t it – to be reminded of the faith once for all delivered to the saints. Not innovation, not novelty, not the latest new fangled psycho-babble but the old paths. And Peter presses home the message we need to remember. I wonder if you’ve lost hope for tomorrow because you’ve lost sight of the historic claims of the Gospel. Look back in faith, he’s saying, so that you can look forward in hope.
Let’s pray together.
Our Father, please forgive us for privileging today above all other moments as if our own generation and our own insights are superior to those of our fathers and mothers in the faith, that we can discover what they never knew, or that there is yet more to be gleaned that we can mine that they’ve never found in two millennia of Christian reflection. Instead, help us, please help us to put aside our arrogance and in humility stick to the old paths, to engage in the ministry of reminders, to go back to the old, old story of Jesus and His cross, Jesus and His love, Jesus and His glory, so that looking back we may have grace to cling to hope as we look forward – not just to tomorrow and all its challenges, but to that great final day when the clouds will part, the sky will tear, and the majesty of our glorious King will shine brighter than the sun. How we long for that day. Even so, come Lord Jesus, is our heart cry. For we pray all this in Your name, amen.