| |
February 19, 2006
|
2 Peter
|
Pastor Brian Shimer
|
|
"Everything? Yes, Everything."
2 Peter 1: 1-3; 2 Kings 4: 1-7
- So much of my life gets based upon what I can see - is there money in the checking account? Is there food in the fridge? Are there people in the pews? Is there a typed message in the computer? -- rather than upon faith, what I cannot see. My life can be based upon feelings more than upon the very real provision of God for my every need. I can look around and despair because I do not "see" what I think I need, rather than trust in God's promised provisions.
When I am not trusting in the abundance God has granted me, then I get frantic to make it happen. Perhaps I need to eat something, buy something, plan something, see a movie, read another book, or something else, to feel better. The supply for the felt need is always just beyond reach when I live in this way, when I live without faith.
The great Christian apologist CS Lewis wrote:
"That is why Faith is such a necessary virtue. Unless you tell your moods "where they get off," you can never be either a sound Christian or even a sound atheist, but just a creature dithering to and fro with its beliefs really dependent on the weather and the state of its digestion."
- But there was a woman who once chose faith above what she could see. She was a widow whose creditors were coming to take her two boys into slavery if she could not pay her debts. She knew she was up against impossibility. There were no funds. Never could she have enough to pay what she owed. So she cried out to the Prophet Elijah, believed what he said and did what he asked and God provided.
In essence in speaking to the prophet this woman had cried out to God in her desperation and God had told her the answer lay in what He had already provided. Incredulously she believed. She did not argue. She believed what the prophet said to do and did it.
The disciples looked at Jesus as if had had lost his mind when he told them to feed the multitudes and thought they had solved the conundrum when they told him they only had 2 fish and five loaves of bread. But Jesus answered: "bring them here to me," and told them to direct the people to sit down for a meal.
Incredulous the disciples did what Jesus told them to do. They did not know how God could supply the demand with just that meager meal, but God knew, Jesus knew, the prophet knew that with God the demands of life do not rest upon our supplies but His.
The widow and the disciples admitted to God, "this is all we have" and believed it could never meet the need, but God knew differently. God's economics are far different from ours. We tend to judge whether we have enough or not, based upon what we can see or what we feel, but God uses a heavenly standard. God's supplies are unlimited, His storehouses never run out.
With God we have everything we need already for life and for godliness - for the fullness of a life of meaning, for a life of depth and joy, for a life that lasts to eternity and for godliness, that is a life of right relationships, which fulfill our hearts' deepest desires and meet our deepest needs. The phrase "life and godliness" encompasses all that we long for most in life. And God said through Peter that by God's power we have been given everything we need already.
And How has God already supplied all that we need, how has God supplied this "everything"? Peter tells us it is through our knowledge of God who has called us to His own glory and goodness.
Remember "knowledge" is what Peter emphasizes in this book. We need to know the living God in order to battle against all the false beliefs that will come against us. Like bankers used to be taught how to recognize counterfeit bills by spending days dealing only with the real thing, so we are to know God.
You no doubt remember that to be a banker once meant that you had to deal only with real bills for about 3 months of training. Your fingers were taught the feel of real cash, so that when a counterfeit bill came across your hand you would immediately recognize it as a lie. Today they have felt tips instead of training.
The knowledge of God needs to move far beyond this analogy, for God is a person, what we enter is a relationship when we accept Jesus, and what God does is pour out himself into our clay vessels. Like the vessels filled from the woman's cruet, so God's spirit is poured into us, God Himself comes down into us, we are filled to the measure of God's fullness.
No wonder Peter can write we have been given everything we need through our knowledge of Him, for when we enter into life in Jesus, all of God is poured into us. Once dead and empty, now alive and full, we have all we could ever need for "life and godliness" for that life filled with meaning.
God has called us to such a life, called to God's own glory and goodness. Most translations use the word "by" here, for it is also indeed true that God's glory and goodness is the instrument by which God has accomplished all he has done for us. However, in this context where it goes on to say in the next verse that we will become participant's in God's nature, the call of God is to become LIKE Him, so we are called "to his own glory and goodness".
All that said, how do we walk in the abundance of God? The woman sent her boys out into the village collecting empty clay vessels and bringing them all into the house. Then she began to fill the vessels from her own small cruet, itself down to the last drops. Jesus began handing out baskets filled with bread and fish to the incredulous disciples having asked God to bless the 5 and 2, so they could feed the multitudes.
Once the last jar was filled and the last person had eaten this amazing supply ended for that situation. What God has is enough. Then there are two last commands. The woman is told to open her own business - sell the oil, pay the debts and live life off the surplus. The disciples are told to collect the surplus for future meals, enough to feed each of their families at home.
For us it is the same - we walk in abundance by faith. And to walk by faith takes the action of faith. Believing God is not just a statement we make but in the same manner that we go to all lengths to meet our own needs through things that never satisfy, we must put the same effort into our faith.
We believe by obeying what God says. Like the woman and the disciples we believe by action.
Like Paul wrote to the Christians living in Philippi, we must work out our own salvation with fear and trembling for it is God who works IN YOU both to will and to act according to His good purpose (2:12-13). In our obedience we work out what God has worked into our lives. The daily walk of relationship with the living God is not so much a matter of my achieving something to please God, but it is a matter of my living out what God has put in.
So, Instead of disbelieving that God has already given us all we need for life, we position ourselves to act on faith. We ask for what God has already given, we seek His provision by setting up disciplines to go after what God says He has given, we knock at the door of His provision, knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt, the door will open.
God's provisions are like a man who gave his son a blank check and said, write in any amount and I will supply your needs. My supplies are yours. Unless the boy wrote in the amount, he would not receive what had been supplied.
God's provisions are like the electricity made available to a woman in Norway, but she refused to flip a switch in her home, instead, kept living by candlelight. Why? She did not really believe the power was there in a switch on the wall, when to have tapped into the power she only needed to flip the switch.
God's provided you with everything you need - nothing is left outside the scope of that word, everything is already provided. When you find yourself fishing for life somewhere else, when you find yourself disbelieving that God meant what He said, take action.
Set up the disciplines to seek God more fully.
Get with friends to pray for you.
Pursue the God who has promised to give you everything you need.
Ask, seek, knock for your God will abundantly supply.
One Easter I spoke from the passage in Luke where the angels ask, "Why do you seek the living among the dead?" paralleling that to our tendency to seek to find the life promised to us in all the wrong places.
Rather, let us be like the woman and disciples who simply did what Jesus told them to do.
Ask, seek, knock for your God has abundantly supplied everything you need.
|
|
|