Tag: Precious & Magnificent Moments

Podcast: Play in new window

Subscribe: Android | Podcast Index | RSS

Sermon: Precious & Magnificent Moments – Grow in Grace and in the Knowledge of Our Lord
Speaker: Pastor Val Watkins
Scripture Text: II Peter 3:15-18
Duration: 20:50
Size: 9.53 MB

Precious & Magnificent Moments
Grow in Grace and in the Knowledge of Our Lord
II Peter 3:15-18

I. The Age of Salvation

The human mind desires to see meaning and direction and coherence in history.

Let’s be a people who key off of God and see the times in which we live from his perspective.

II. Paul’s Letters as Scripture

So by calling in Paul’s support, Peter shows that there is agreement among the apostles.

The apostles are united with each other and with the Old Testament in one great inspired book of God.

III. Scripture Can Be Hard to Understand

The mind of God is vastly greater than our mind and will often be perceived by us as strange and complex, not familiar and simple.

IV. Misinterpretation Can Lead to Destruction

Another way to put this is that the interpretation of Scripture is a matter of life and death.

V. Guard Yourself from Error

The antidote to deception and destruction is growth in the grace and knowledge of Christ.

After “Jesus” there is no sweeter word in all the Bible than “grace.”

The best fertilizer for our hope and godliness is the knowledge of our future in God’s grace.

To him be glory both now and forever!
Amen.

Podcast: Play in new window

Subscribe: Android | Podcast Index | RSS

Sermon: Precious & Magnificent Moments – What Sort of Persons Ought You to Be?
Speaker: Pastor Val Watkins
Scripture Text: II Peter 3:10-14
Duration: 23:09
Size: 10.6 MB

Precious & Magnificent Moments
What Sort of Persons Ought You to Be?
II Peter 3:10-14

I. Just What the False Teachers Need to Hear

His picture of the end is very simple: fire will destroy the sky, the earth and everything on it, and new heavens and a new earth will stand in their place.

Peter would have blunted the attack of his warning if he had given a long and detailed picture of how all the events of the end of the age fit together.

II. The Coming Day of the Lord

In the Old Testament the day of the Lord was the future time when God would vindicate his holy name, bring judgment on the unbelieving, and gather his people into a new kingdom of righteousness and peace.

So Peter was not saying anything new or unexpected.

III. New Heavens and a New Earth

When Peter emphasizes that this new world will be one in which righteousness dwells, he implies that the cause for destroying the old world was man’s unrighteousness, and that those who swerved from the righteousness of faith will not be included in the new world.

IV. What Will and Will Not Remain

Most people try to find meaning in life by building something that’s not just here today and gone tomorrow.

A life lived for the world will go naked into judgment; a life lived for Christ will be laden with eternal riches.

V. Without Spot or Blemish

How can we sinners hope to be found without spot or blemish?

And where shall we find power to walk in the light, to stand in the love of God when godless pleasures entice us, and to zealously pursue purity and peace?

Next Week
Grow In The Grace And In The Knowledge of Our Lord
II Peter 3:15-18

Podcast: Play in new window

Subscribe: Android | Podcast Index | RSS

Sermon: Precious & Magnificent Moments – Where is the Promise of His Appearing
Speaker: Pastor Val Watkins
Scripture Text: II Peter 3:1-10
Duration: 20:11
Size: 9.23 MB

Precious & Magnificent Moments
Where is the Promise of His Appearing
II Peter 3:1-10

In chapter 3 Peter returns in part to the theme of chapter 1, namely, that God has given his people precious and very great promises, so that if we hold them in front of us and trust them, we will have power to resist temptation and remain in the way of righteousness.

I. The Denial of the Second Coming

If the promise of Christ’s second coming and the new world of joy and righteousness is going to fill us with hope and power for godliness, we have to really believe it’s going to happen.

He says in verses 1 and 2 that he wants the believers to have a sincere and lively memory of what the prophets predicted and what Jesus commanded.

Then in verses 3 and 4 he introduces the false teachers again. They themselves are part of prophetic fulfillment, and their presence shows that the last days had arrived.

II. God Creates and Upholds by His Word

The first thing the false teachers ignore is that the world was made by God and that its order hangs on his word.

In the past he did it with water. In the future it will be with fire at the coming of Jesus Christ.

III. A Day Is as a Thousand Years

Here Peter is answering the criticism that Christ has delayed so long that we can’t really believe he is coming back.

When Jesus comes back and stands on this earth to make it his own, he will say, “It just seems like yesterday that I was here.”

IV. The Lord’s Merciful Forbearance

Therefore, we should count the delay of Christ’s coming as an act of mercy and patience until all the sheep are gathered into the fold and not one is lost.

The delay is meant to lead to repentance, not to unbelief.

Next Week
What Sort of Persons Ought You to Be?
II Peter 3:10-14

Podcast: Play in new window

Subscribe: Android | Podcast Index | RSS

Sermon: Precious & Magnificent Moments – Better to Never Have Known the Way
Speaker: Pastor Val Watkins
Scripture Text: II Peter 2:11-22
Duration: 26:55
Size: 12.3 MB

Precious & Magnificent Moments
Better Never to Have Known the Way
II Peter 2:11-22

The chapter intends to do in a negative way what chapter 1 aims to do in a positive way, namely, make us earnest about the business of confirming our call and election.

I. Boastful and Reviling

The false teachers are so brazen and cocky and self-assured that they revile the evil spirits as though they were safe from any supernatural evil influence at all.

So I am inclined to think that the “glories” which the false teachers revile are the glories of God and Christ, especially associated with the second coming.

Their reviling at the glories of Christ is like a wolf howling at the moonrise.

II. Carousing and Greedy

Here the brazen willfulness of the false teachers is seen in their doing in the daytime what other sinners only dare to do at night.

Let’s be a church where we are constantly helping each other to send our roots ever deeper into the rock of God’s truth.

III. Waterless Springs and Mists

O what a need there is in the church for discernment between waterless springs and springs of living water!

IV. Distorting The Gospel of Freedom

The way the false teachers entice new and unstable converts is by promising them freedom.

So Peter blasts the trumpet of warning: they are twisting the Scriptures to their own destruction, and their promised freedom is a bondage to corruption.

V. Storing Up More Judgment

So it is in the Christian life; if you stop trusting the heavenly doctor and disobey his prescription for your redemption, your latter state will be worse than the former.

The whole New Testament is agreed; there is no salvation apart from persevering faith.

Next Week
Where Is the Promise of His Appearing
II Peter 3:1-10

Podcast: Play in new window

Subscribe: Android | Podcast Index | RSS

Sermon: Precious & Magnificent Moments – Destruction Is Not Sleeping
Speaker: Pastor Val Watkins
Scripture Text: II Peter 2:1-10
Duration: 26:09
Size: 11.9 MB

Precious & Magnificent Moments
Destruction Is Not Sleeping
II Peter 2:1-10

The confirmation of God’s Word leads to confidence in his promises, which brings power for godliness, which gives us a personally experienced confirmation of our call and election.

I. Same Goal, Different Approach

If chapter 1 is the carrot, chapter 2 is the crack of the whip over our heads.

Here in chapter 2 he says, if you contradict the doctrine and the character of God’s elect, you will fall, and there will be no entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord, but instead eternal destruction in the gloom of hell.

II. Not Playing Games

This chapter is no accident in Holy Scripture. It is the Word of God, that all of us might become very, very zealous to confirm our call and election.

III. False Prophets Who Deny the Master

Even though Peter says these false teachers will arise in the future, it is clear from the rest of the letter that the prophecy is already being fulfilled.

To be bought by Christ is to be freed from the domination of sexual passions that drive one into sexual preoccupations and illicit sexual intercourse.

There is nothing new about the contemporary assault on the sanctity of sexual intercourse in marriage.

IV. God’s Past Judgment

The point of verses 4–10 is to warn us that since God has punished unrighteousness in the past, he will punish it in the future.

If the case of the fallen angels and the case of Noah’s generation do not deter people from following the false teachers, then surely the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah will wake them up to God’s wrath.

V. Lessons for Today

We must make every effort to keep ourselves rooted and grounded in the Word of God.

There is nothing new about free sex. And we should resist it today as resolutely as the apostles of old.

Heaven and hell hang on whether we follow Christ in righteousness or deny him in immorality.

If you put your trust in Jesus Christ and press on to love what he loves, then you will never fall, and there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Next Week
Better Never to Have Known the Way
II Peter 2:11-22