Greetings everyone and thanks for joining me for this week’s Sunday School preview. This week’s lesson entitled “Stick To Your Faith” is taken from 2 Peter 1:1-15. In this letter Peter continues to encourage Christians to keep the faith and to remind them that they are not alone.
He begins by greeting them in both the name of the Father and the Son and emphasizing that they all share a common faith. Peter tells his readers that by this faith God has given them all things that pertain to life and godliness and has call us to glory and virtue by the knowledge we have received through Jesus Christ.
Along with this knowledge we have received precious and great promises. Taken together these give us the incentive to take on the divine nature in order to escape the corruption in the world through lust. In order to actualize the divine nature and receive these promises, he tells us to add virtue, knowledge, temperance, patience, godliness, brotherly kindness and charity to our faith.
These are the attributes of the divine nature or holiness of God. Peter repeats this important message of being made over and becoming a new creation by shedding the former things that dictated and guided and informed our behavior and embracing all the attributes and characteristics of God we have received through our knowledge of Him.
These holy features when applied to our lives will cause us to be fruitful and ready for the kingdom. But if they are not applied, we may have the knowledge, but without application we are like barren or fruitless trees full of leaves neither do we understand what God has done for us.
Furthermore, he says if we apply these things, we can be assured of our ability to withstand any trial or temptation that may come our way. He says to make our salvation assured by doing or applying these things.
Finally, in these opening verses of this first chapter, he shares with us that it is his duty and responsibility to remind us of these things seeing how much he cares about us and that he will not always be around to tell us. It is like a farewell letter in which he is saying don’t be careless with the knowledge and faith you have received but add these things to it, apply them and constantly keep them stirred up inside you.
As long as I am with you he said, I will endeavor the keep these things before you and hopefully this letter will be a reminder to you of what I said and your need to persevere. This is part of our mission and calling today – to leave a legacy that others can follow and remember.
Our calling as mature Christians is to help those coming after us and those we will be leaving behind to have access to all they need to make a successful journey in the kingdom of God. While we are here, like Peter, we must make every effort to remind them of who they are, what they are called to and why it is so important.
For we like Peter will have to leave them one day and we will no longer be able to assist them in our present bodies. That’s why it is important to put in place everything we can into their mind and heart and everywhere possible all things to assist them after our departure.
Well, I hope you will attend SS this coming Sunday and share your thoughts with your class. If you have any comments or questions, be sure to place them in the comment section of this preview. So, until next time remember to fear God and keep His commandments.
Pastor Jordan
