This Year I’m Moving My Mark

A Sermon By Jim Hammond from 2 Peter 3:14-18

Conclusion of the “Make Every Effort” 2 Peter Series

It’s a common experience to see a child you’ve not seen for months, perhaps a distant relative or the child of a friend, and to say, “My, how you’ve grown!”

Will anybody be able to say of us one year from now, “My, how you’ve grown”? We need to make a commitment to grow spiritually in 2003. 

Like many parents we make marks on a wall by the door to indicate how much our children have grown. The marks on our measuring wall have the names Luke or Karissa with the dates next to the marks.  We’ve been in our house 12 years now, and the shortest earliest mark on the wall is only about this high (mid thigh height), and now the tallest mark reaches this high (5 feet 7 inches).  My youngest is now second tallest and catching up to me fast.  When this year is over I wonder if there will be some in this room that our heavenly father will have to say as he measures our spiritual growth, “I’m sorry to say you are now shorter than you were last year.”  Spiritual growth is not automatic. 

Focus:  This year I want to make sure that I have grown in spiritual stature when my heavenly Father measures me.

I.  Effort is Required to Move your Mark Spiritually

2 Peter 3:14 So then, dear friends, since you are looking forward to this, make every effort to be found spotless, blameless and at peace with him.

We’ve already seen how it takes confession and repentance, and a life given over to Christ to be found spotless, blameless, and at peace with God.  Now we see that there is some effort required to grow.  We must …

A.  Use God’s Truth (Scriptures) To Move & Measure Your Mark

2 Peter 3:14 So then, dear friends, since you are looking forward to this, make every effort to be found spotless, blameless and at peace with him. 15Bear in mind that our Lord's patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him. 16He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.

17Therefore, dear friends, since you already know this, be on your guard so that you may not be carried away by the error of lawless men and fall from your secure position. 18But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and forever! Amen.

Paul writes some things that are difficult to understand in his letters.

Ignorant and unstable people distort what Paul has written.

Farmer or Botanist

Treat the Bible like a farmer treats his seed, not like a botanist.  A botanist will dissect a seed and discuss its curious characteristics, whereas the farmer will plant it, water it, tend to it, watch it grow, harvest it, and eat it to his own practical good.  He doesn’t claim to understand it completely, but he is more intimately and personally familiar with it than the botanist.

Spurgeon said, “A critic dissects it [the gospel], raises a mountain of debate about the structure of the whole, and relation of its parts, and when he is done with his argument, he is done. To him the letter is dead. He neither lives on it himself, nor spreads it for the good of his neighbors; he neither eats nor sows. The disciple of Jesus, hungering for righteousness, takes the seed whole; it is bread for today's hunger, and seed for tomorrow's supply.”

Be like the farmer not the botanist in your relationship to God’s Word, the seed.

An example of how this works:

Hendrick’s Disciple

   We had one of the Cowboys come to Christ a few years back. What a testimony! He came to me one day and said, "Howie, I'm going out to Thousand Oaks for the training camp and need an assignment."

   I said, "Okay. I want you to read the Book of Ephesians."

   "The what?"

   "The Book of Ephesians."

   "How you spell it?"

   I said, "Have you found Matthew?"

   "Yeah, yeah," he said, "I got it right here in the front."

   I said, "Okay, find Matthew, go right, and you'll run into it."

   So he gets out to Thousand Oaks, California. I found out later he read the Book of Ephesians six times, every single day. When he came back he called me up and said, "Hendricks, I've got to get together with you. You know that assignment you gave me?"

   I said, "Yeah."

   "Man," he said, "it blew my mind! That's a wipe out."

   I said, "Okay. Come on over."

   So he comes over, he opens the book--isn't it wonderful to work with people who have no idea what you know?--"Here ... here it is right here! Here: 'Husbands, love your wives even as Christ also loved the church.' Whooo!" he said. "That's impossible!"

   I said, "Fantastic, man! You have made the greatest discovery in your Christian life, and that is that the Christian life is not difficult; it's impossible. Let me ask you a question. What does your wife do that you appreciate?"

   Typical male fashion, he says, "Oh, lots of things." "Well," I said "name one." "Well," he said, "for example, she's a good cook." I said, "Great. That's your assignment. I want you to go home and tell her how much you appreciate her cooking." "Oh, man," he said, "I--I couldn't do that. That'd take a miracle." I said, "Great. That's what God specializes in." "Well," he said, "we'd better pray about that."

   We got down. I'll never forget this guy's prayer, "Oh, God, you've got a rough assignment here." Then--you know, the Lord's so beautiful--the guy gets up from his knees and goes home. His wife knocked out the best meal he'd ever seen: six courses, beautifully spread table, candlelight, the works.

   I said, "How'd you enjoy the meal?"

   "Aw," he said, "it was horrible."

   I said, "Why? What's the matter?"

   "Oh," he said, "I just sat there saying 'God, you gotta do it.' "

   "Well," I said, "what happened?"

   He said, "Well, finally the Lord encouraged me, and I got up and I ran around to the other side, and I grabbed her."

   I said, "What happened?"

   "She went as white as the table cloth," he said. "I really think she thought I was gonna clip her." And he said, "I lifted her up so that I could talk to her eyeball to eyeball, and I said, 'Woman, that was wonderful!' And I knew we were off the ground."

   He gave his testimony last Friday in Dallas. It just blew the minds of the guys. He said, "Man, I want you to know that I was the most yellow man in America behind a closed door. I'll take on anybody in the NFL. It usually takes two or three in the pits. But, you put me behind a closed door, and I'm yellow." Then he said, "Jesus Christ came into my life. How do I know it's real? I'll tell you. He took a self-centered, great-big football stud like me, who had all of his life revolving around him, and he began to deliver me from myself." [1]

1.  Distort God’s Truth (Scriptures) to your own Destruction

16He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.

Liberal Distortions

Have you ever noticed that you don’t have to have a low IQ to be really ignorant?  I have read some works by very intelligent people that demonstrate just how ignorant they really are about the Bible even though they are Bible scholars.  They may study the Bible, much like the “Botanist” approach above, and come out with “distorted” conclusions. 

The Scientist and the Flea

Here’s a humorous description of a smart person who comes to the wrong conclusion from his studies.

A scientist was using the observation method to study the characteristics of a flea.  Plucking a leg off the flea, he ordered the flea to “Jump”!  The flea promptly jumped.  Taking another leg off the scientist again commanded “Jump!”  The flea jumped again.  The scientist continued this process until he came to the sixth and final leg.  By now the flea was having a little more difficulty jumping, but it was still trying.  The scientist pulled the final leg off and again ordered the flea to jump.  But the flea didn’t respond.  The scientist raised his voice and demanded, “Jump!”  Again the flea failed to respond.  For a third time the scientist shouted at the top of his lungs, “Jump!”  But the hapless flea lay motionless.  The scientist then made the following conclusion in his notebook:  “When you remove the legs from a flea, it loses its sense of hearing.”[2]

There are several different applications to this humorous story.  I’ve seen liberal scholars who have removed not legs, put pages of scripture from their Bible saying the passages were men’s words and not from God and they wonder why the Bible has no power.  I’ve also seen how God tells these folks to Jump, and they stuff cotton in their ears and choose to be deaf to God rather than jump.  I’ve also seen some “scholars” work very hard at proving from their “scientific study of the Bible” their bias presupposition to begin with.  In other words, because they don’t believe miracles are possible today, they prove through their study that these “miracles” are to be understood with a different meaning, one that is allegorical, and has a symbolic meaning.  So when the power of the Bible is gone, the conclusions they draw are all wrong.

2.  Absorb God’s Truth (Scriptures) for Spiritual reconstruction

Peter considers Paul’s work as on the same level as “other Scriptures”.

The authority of the New Testament was accepted long before it was officially canonized by men.  God gave it his authority from the beginning. 

     Jesus taught that scripture could not be broken.

John 10:35   If he called them 'gods,' to whom the word of God came--and the Scripture cannot be broken--

Matthew 5:18   I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.

He was saying not even the smallest stroke of the Hebrew alphabet found in scripture was to be removed.

     The Old Testament was the written documents of the Old Covenant, the Covenant made between God and man at that time.  The first written words of revelation were written by God's hand on stone tablets.  Everything else in the Old Testament was written to explain the history of God's covenant people, the covenant stipulations, their breach of covenant, and the call to return to the Covenant.  The concept of God's Covenant with man explains the diversity and the unity of the Bible.  The Old and New Testaments are the writings that go with the Old and New Covenants.

     Jesus authorized and endorsed the New Testament.  He chose the Apostles to be recipients of the new revelation, the revelation of the New Covenant.  There were two qualifications of an Apostle as Acts 1:21-26 indicates.

Acts 1:21-26   Therefore it is necessary to choose one of the men who have been with us the whole time the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, {22} beginning from John's baptism to the time when Jesus was taken up from us. For one of these must become a witness with us of his resurrection." {23} So they proposed two men: Joseph called Barsabbas (also known as Justus) and Matthias. {24} Then they prayed, "Lord, you know everyone's heart. Show us which of these two you have chosen {25} to take over this apostolic ministry, which Judas left to go where he belongs." {26} Then they cast lots, and the lot fell to Matthias; so he was added to the eleven apostles.

First, the Apostle had to have known Jesus during the days of his earthly ministry and had to have been a witness to his resurrection in particular.  When Paul's apostleship was challenged at this point he cited his calling as an apostle ("the least of the apostles") by his personal encounter with Christ on the road to Damascus (1 Cor. 9:1; Acts 9).  The second requirement for the Apostolic authority was that the Apostle be chosen by Jesus for his unique role and task.  For the Apostle, the promise of John 14:26, "the Holy Spirit...will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you" commissioned him to teach the church.  Jesus told the Apostles,

John 16:12-14   "I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. {13} But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. {14} He will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you.

The Apostles taught and wrote what the Spirit guided them to teach and write.  What's more, the early church recognized the authoritative role of the Apostles.  Peter recognized Paul's writings as just as authoritative as "the rest of the scriptures"

2 Peter 3:15-16   Bear in mind that our Lord's patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him. {16} He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.

When it came time to declare officially what books were to be included as the authoritative documents (the "New Testament") of the New Covenant they recognized God's books by Apostolic endorsement.  The Church didn't pick and choose what writings to obey.  That would make the Church a higher authority than the Bible.  The Church submitted to the recognized authoritative documents (that which bore the endorsement of Apostolic Authority).  The Bible is the "Old Testament" and the "New Testament" (the authoritative documents of God's covenants with us), the former now interpreted and explained by the latter.

     The primary cause of confusion today is the lack of a valid authority.  Many churches today in modern liberalism attempt to pick and choose which are God's words.  This attempt places men's authority above God's authority.

     Below is the evidence for the infallible authority of God's Word.  It is a summary of why I believe the early Church's conclusion is more accurate than many modern approaches to the Bible.

10 Reasons to believe the Bible is Infallible:

1.      It's Uniqueness:  This book is unlike any other.  It took 1500 years to write, and 40 different writers were involved.  And although each of these writers were so very different from one another, some writing in Greek, some in Hebrew, some well educated, some simple fishermen, or shepherds, they wrote an inspired text whose author was God using human agency to write his revelation to them.    

2.      It's Claims:  This book claims over and over again to be the word of God.  Other books do also, but they have no credibility compared to the credibility of the Bible.

3.      It's Origin:  Do you know what the first written words of revelation were?  The 10 commandments!  Moses was a witness to how God himself wrote these stipulations to the covenant.  Moses then writes the first 5 books of the Old Testament to explain the history of the people who entered into this Covenant with God.  The rest of the Bible is about the history of God’s covenant with man, and the challenges God gave to the people who were breaching the covenant, and the careful preparation given for the New Covenant to come, then the description of that supreme act of God when he initiated the New Covenant through Jesus.   

4.      It's Accuracy

                                                    i.     Historical:  It used to be in vogue to believe that the scientific viewpoint about the patriarchal period was correct and the Bible was wrong about some matters.  But recent archeological discoveries proved the Bible was accurate and the liberal scientists were wrong.  This has happened over and over again.

                                                  ii.     Manuscript: It used to be thought that since we had no original manuscripts that the ones we did have must be filled with many errors, till the recent discovery of the dead sea scrolls that breached a 1,000 year gap and showed so very little changes that it boggled the scientific community.  There are so many manuscripts available that there is better manuscript evidence by far than any other literary work of antiquity. 

5.      It's Prophecy:  It used to be thought by liberal scholars that the actual date of writing of many of the OT prophecies must actually have been written after the fact, but now with the new manuscript evidence it becomes clear this is not the case.  The specific detailed prophecies were fulfilled miraculously.  It is a proven fact that many of these documents predate the fulfillment in Christ.

6.      It's Permanency:  The anvil of God’s word remains and has remained for 2000 to 3,500 years, depending on which books you are talking about, and many a skeptic’s hammers have taken their swings at it.  But all the skeptic hammer handles are broken with the hammer heads cracked and worn out, yet God’s word remains in tact.  There are still skeptics that pound away, but there has never been arguments leveled against the Bible that do not have good answers supporting the Bible as God’s truth. 

7.      It's Superiority:  No other “revelation” even compares to the External and Internal accuracy and cohesiveness of the Bible. 

8.      It's Effectiveness:  Let me speak personally here.  It works.  If I am away from the pages of this book for long, people who are closest to me can tell that I have diminished in spiritual stature.  When I live in these pages and plant these truths in my heart, water them, allow them to grow, there is a harvest, and people around me take note that I’m a disciple of Christ.  Now multiply my experience by millions and you get the picture of effectiveness internationally,  and trans-culturally.  It will work for you as well.

9.      It's Approval by Jesus:  There is enough evidence from history and the Bible to believe Jesus truly was God’s Son even if you don’t believe the Bible to be God’s word.  Once you believe Jesus is God’s Son, and you realize he really has authority, and he really is correct, then you believe his assessment of the scriptures as well, that every letter (of the Old Testament scriptures) was God’s word.  And he commissioned the Apostles by his spirit to teach everything Jesus commanded and gave them the authority to teach the New Covenant and they did and wrote it down, and that’s the New Testament, our authority from God on how to live in this New Covenant.

10.   It's Unified Message:  Although many cultures and times are spanned and although the Bible speaks about every conceivable life controversy, the total message is a unified coherent, harmonious whole.  If you were to walk down your neighborhood block and ask just 10 people to tell you their views on 10 controversial subjects, they would all contradict each other.  And they are from our same culture in just one time period.  Imagine 40 writers, 1500 years, and every controversial subject the Bible covers, and it all fits together.  You know it’s a supernaturally conceived and authored Book!  And what is it’s central message?  That God is a covenant making God and he made a way for us through his Son Jesus.

B.          On Guard!

You should be picturing yourself with a sword in your hand, the sword of the Spirit as the Bible calls the word of God.  It is your weapon against the enemy.

2 Peter 3:17 Therefore, dear friends, since you already know this, be on your guard so that you may not be carried away by the error of lawless men and fall from your secure position.

Going against what you know will cause you to be carried away by error, and will cause you to fall from your secure position.  ON GUARD.  Take up your sword!

18But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and forever! Amen.

C.  Grow!—(It’s a command)

This is a command!

1.  in the Grace.

   Ever feel overwhelmed by the Bible's command to love unconditionally? When people ask me, "How can I ever start to love everyone like I should?" I give the same answer I give those who ask how they can start jogging: Start slow, and then get slower! For the first week, the goal is "just to keep moving." Too many people buy new shoes and a fancy running suit and sprint out the door, eagerly chugging as hard as they can for about three blocks. Then their stomachs begin to ache, their muscles cramp, and their lungs burn. They wind up hitchhiking home exhausted, and gasp, "I will never do that again." That's called anaerobic (without oxygen) running. It's caused by a body using up more oxygen than it takes in. Many people try to run that way, and many people try to love that way. They love with great fervor and self-sacrifice, giving 100 percent but without the resources to continue for a lifetime. Down the road they find themselves in pain, gasping and cramped, saying, "I will never do that again." Love, like running, must be aerobic. Our output must be matched by our intake. Running requires oxygen. An enduring love requires God's word, his consolation, his presence. As we love aerobically, we'll build up our capacity to do more and more. And pretty soon we won't be huffing and puffing for half a mile; we'll be running marathons.

   -- Roger Thompson, Leadership, Vol. 4, no. 1.

  Treat man as he appears to be, and you make him worse. But treat a man as if he already were what he potentially could be, and you make him what he should be.

   -- Goethe, Leadership, Vol. 7, no. 3.

2.   and knowledge.

3.  of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

4.  to Him be the glory

   Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.

   -- Edward Abbey, Leadership, Vol. 1, no. 1.

5.  both now and Forever! Amen

Scott Harrison writes,  Sam was my best dog, ever.  A field trial dog who found birds and pointed them with contagious enthusiasm, Sam taught me the joy of becoming part of nature.  If his point said a bird was hiding in a clump of bushes, it was there.  He was so much more than a bird dog, though.  Often we'd share together lazy lunches in an abandoned apple orchard, and the snooze that followed. Late one afternoon, Sam and I became separated.  Neither of us was familiar with the area.  I called and whistled.  No sign of Sam.  I had to get back to town for an important appointment. But how could I leave Sam? If he finally came back and I wasn't there, would I lose him for good?  Then I remembered a trick an old dog trainer had passed on.  I unbuttoned my jacket, removed my shirt and laid it on the ground under the branches of a small bush.  I worried all night.  But when I returned the next morning there was Sam curled up with his nose under the sleeve of my shirt.  He looked up and wagged his tail.  "Where've you been friend?" his eyes seemed to say.  "I've been waiting for you all night.  But I knew you'd come back."  Later I wondered. When I get lost, do I have the trust to look for some part of God's word and curl up in it?  To wait patiently, knowing that my Friend will find me if I just have faith in him?[3]