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  February 12, 2006
2 Peter

Pastor Brian Shimer

"My Lord and My God"
 2 Peter 1:1-2; Jn 20:24-31

  1. In our relationships with people, we greet one another and bless one another day by day.   You do not go through a day without bidding someone "Have a good day." Now, I know, sometimes that greeting and blessing is offered as the "thing you ought to say," but at other times there is a great depth in meaning in what we say.   Whichever it is for us in the moment, the fact is that we offer it.   We also know that these greetings have come to us over the centuries from all manner of greetings usually invoking God's blessing upon a person.   In Spanish "Adios" is the contraction meaning: 'Go with God' and our English "Goodbye" is the contracted form of what was "God be with Thee."

    Still today in Swiss German and in greetings used in Southern Germany, the common greeting is "Gruess Gott" which almost can be translated "Salute God" or "Praise God" although for most people it just is like saying "hello".

    In written communication we also give greetings usually in our closings, blessing someone, saying we love them, care for them, or uphold them in some esteem.   Even at the start we give the date, write "dear so and so" and then something like "I am wondering how you are doing…" as we continue.

    Nothing is new under the Sun, the Bible tells us, and with this pattern there is indeed nothing new.   Whatever the level of actual literacy for the people of the First Century, letters still were written, sent and received then as now, except no emails.   The proliferation of New Testament documents alone tells us that there was a vast need to have things "written down" to be read to the gathered community or studied in a small house church setting.

    The authors of Scripture did not know they were writing for us when they wrote these early communities of Christians often answering their questions, but God "carried them along by the Holy Spirit" and speaks to us through them.  

    You can see the pattern of a typical letter here in 2nd Peter.   The sender gives his name, identifies to whom he is writing and then greets them with a greeting.   Here we have already noted Peter is writing to those in Asia Minor (a detail we know from his first letter to them), whose faith is of equal value with his.   And then follows his blessing to them.

    He writes: "May grace and peace be yours in abundance through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord."


  2. A quick read through the beginning of the New Testament letters will reveal that most every one of them that begins with a greeting begin with this same blessing of grace and peace.   Never are the two words reversed and it seems there was a general understanding that when you are in relationship to the Living God through Jesus Christ that grace and peace are evidently yours as well.   Peter notes that they are ours in or through the Knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord - our faith includes how we think, it is a rational belief we have.  

    (As a side note Peter uses this word "knowledge" 11 times in three short chapters for the people he writes are being led astray by the errors of false teachers and need to use their "minds" not just their hearts in relationship to Jesus in order to stand.)

    Today we are looking at this blessing found in relationship to our Lord and our God - a blessing of grace and peace.   Grace always precedes peace in Christ.   The only peace found outside of Jesus is nothing like what God can give.   The writers of the NT had experienced this.   The words grace and peace took on a whole deeper and more far reaching meaning because of Jesus.  

    So, why is it you cannot experience God's peace without His grace?  

    Grace is the word assigned to the undeserved favor of God that precedes faith.  God is working in our lives long before we can experience the work of God.   God's grace goes before.   It is by grace you have been saved through faith, Paul penned in Ephesians.   God's Prevenient grace precedes salvation, God's justifying grace comes to our lives by faith as we trust God and it becomes just as if I never sinned.   God's sanctifying grace carries us throughout our lives as we grow up into this One who now indwells us and leads us.  We become mature.   And God's glorifying grace will lead us into heaven.   Yes, God's grace comes before.  

    I have been reading St Augustine's Confessions and have been so riveted by the work of God upon this great heart.   Augustine lived in the 4th century and let me tell you he lived a wild and wooly life.   His mom, Monica, prayed incessantly for her wayward son who into his thirties was pursuing lust in sexual desires and many other diversions.   He had prayed as a young man, begging God, "Give me chastity and continency, only not yet," and continued down his wayward path (confessions, p 125).

    His mom's prayers were answered years later when he was grief stricken with a longing for meaning and joy in his life.   His heart was set upon with conviction of his sins and with a longing to be free, but still he increasingly felt he could never live without the lusts of the flesh.  

    This grief and struggle alone is a picture of God's grace at work upon his heart.   He could not stand to continue in the path he was upon.   For Augustine this ended when in the garden at his mother's home, while crying out to God he hears children playing at a neighboring house chanting "Take up and read; take up and read."

    The words cause Augustine to wonder if a child would ever repeat such a phrase.   His tears stop and he seizes a book of Paul's writings there with him in the garden, "opens it and in silence read that section on which [his] eyes first fell: 'not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy.   Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the sinful nature." (p 131, Confessions, quote from Romans 13:13-14 from NIV translation not the translation from Latin Vulgate as in Augustine's writings.)

    Augustine read no further.   The grace of God moved through the verses read and shook to the core.   "Instantly at the end of this sentence, by a light as it were of serenity infused into my heart, all the darkness of doubt vanished away" (ibid.  p 131).  

    Notice, grace (conviction and grief, and direction to 'take up and read') precedes peace, serenity in his conversion.   You cannot find peace without conversion.   Hence peace follows conversion.


  3. This is the pattern in Thomas' story as well.   We are well acquainted with Thomas called the twin, the doubter.   Thomas was not present with the other apostles when Jesus appeared to them.   He found out about it and was indignant: "I won't believe he really showed up to all of you until I see him myself.   Until I put my finger into his hand and thrust my hand into his side, I won't believe it.  

    What happens?   Jesus comes again when Thomas is there - Jesus shows grace, undeserved favor to Thomas.   Before this appearance Thomas has no peace.   He cannot be at peace wondering whether or not Jesus is truly alive.   But as Jesus shows this grace, and repeats to Thomas what he has just said to his brother Apostles, his response is to fall down before Jesus, his Lord and his God, worship Him and in that there will be found peace.  

    Peace is the other of the two words.   When the NT writers used the word for peace they were using it in the idea and context of the OT usage of the word.   The society at large only knew of one kind of peace, the absence of war, but the idea of a spiritually real peace, a peace of the heart was virtually unknown among pagan nations.  

    In the OT peace means a wellbeing that comes from God.   Clearly you can see in the NT how this then is connected to grace - we need grace to rescue us from the death that keeps us separated from God and from His peace.  

    Peace is the gift of God's presence in our lives, a comprehensive fulfillment, a perfection of the gift of God.   It is the opposite of disorder for our God is a God of peace, Paul wrote to the church in Corinth.   Indeed we gain peace with God through salvation, for Jesus himself is our peace.   He is the wholeness which we enter in Christ.  

    IT is the peace of the presence of God had descended upon the campus of Asbury College 26 years ago on February 3rd.   That year the chapel service that began on a Tuesday morning did not stop for 186 hours.   At that time the President of Asbury College, Dr.  Dennis Kinlaw was on a preaching mission in Canada and received a notice that he needed to phone back to campus quickly.   His first thought was that the students there had begun rioting as was happening on college campuses across the nation.   But what his academic dean told him was somewhat of a shock and brought with it the tangible presence of God.  

    I would like you to hear him tell of this experience for himself.   (showed video clip from When God Comes the story of the first Asbury revival).

    This past Monday the Asbury College chapel service began and was still ongoing on Friday.   It had not stopped.   The same thing is happening as before.   People are filling the altar, giving testimony, confessing sin and the presence of God is thick and tangible.   The revival is an action of God's grace, manifest in the tangible presence of God in the auditorium, and God's peace follows in the lives of individuals as people receive His grace and enter His peace.   Already this revival has impacted many people far from the school and students phone family members and many of them have experienced God's saving grace and peace as a result.

    A student on Friday encouraged students to "take this rev