2 Peter 1:1-4 - NOTE: There will be no audio streamed during our evening time of prayer, audio will resume when the message commences.

Order of Service

• Call to Worship — Psalm 93
• Hymn — How Great Thou Art (#44)
• Westminster Shorter Catechism — Question 1
• Hymn — Hallelujah, Thine the Glory (#179)
• Prayer of Invocation
• Scripture Reading — 2 Peter 1:1-4
• Sermon
• Prayer
• Hymn — Man of Sorrows (#246)
• Benediction

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Sermon Title: True Knowledge of God

Scripture: 2 Peter 1:1-4

I. True Knowledge Is Dependent upon God

A. The source of true knowledge is divine power, not human effort

1. 2 Peter 1:3 — "His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness through the knowledge of him"
2. The vehicle of God's power is the gospel — Romans 1:16 — the gospel is the power of God unto salvation

B. True knowledge and salvation go hand in hand

1. Unredeemed man cannot truly know God or creation because he is dead in sin — the noetic effects of sin
2. Cornelius Van Til's presuppositional apologetics rightly understood that man must be regenerated before he can truly know anything
3. Van Til contrasted with Thomas Aquinas's evidentialism, which sought to reason upward from empirical observation to God; Van Til argued this cannot bring us to knowledge of the triune God
4. True knowledge requires regeneration — the passive reception of God's saving power uniting the sinner to Christ by faith

II. True Knowledge Is Manifested in Godliness

A. God grants all things pertaining to life and godliness through knowledge — knowledge is the instrument God uses to produce godliness in redeemed man

1. The false teachers infiltrating the Asian churches reflected Greek dualism — spiritual world good, material world bad
2. This produced two responses: Stoic asceticism or Epicurean hedonism; the false teachers in 2 Peter appear to reflect an Epicurean tendency, using supposed knowledge to indulge the flesh

B. Becoming partakers of the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4) is God's act, not man's achievement

1. Greek mystical thought taught that man could work his way up to share in the divine nature through discipline
2. Peter reverses this: God by sheer grace makes the Christian a partaker in his glory through Christ
3. This is not deification in being (as in some Eastern Orthodox teaching) but sharing in God's moral character — his holiness

C. True knowledge is evidenced by having "escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire"

1. Faith union with Christ has definitively and objectively broken the chain of sin — a past-tense reality
2. This manifests progressively as the believer is conformed into the image of Christ and dies to sin experientially
3. Practical warning for the Reformed tradition: every theological concept is practical theology — it must make us look more like Christ

III. True Knowledge Is Focused on God

A. Peter bookends the epistle with the theme of knowledge

1. 2 Peter 1:2 — "grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord"
2. 2 Peter 3:17-18 — "grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ"

B. The object of true knowledge is Jesus Christ

1. Peter calls himself "servant of Jesus Christ" — a Jewish writer deliberately applying the Old Testament phrase "servant of Yahweh" to Jesus, affirming his deity
2. 2 Peter 1:1 — "our God and Savior Jesus Christ" identifies Jesus Christ as God

C. Jesus is not merely the way to truth and life — he is the Way, the Truth, and the Life (John 14:6)

1. False teaching throughout the New Testament reduces Christ to a means to something beyond himself:
   • Judaizers (Galatians): Christ as the way to Jewish ritualism
   • Mystics (Colossians, 1 John): Christ as the way to mystical experience
   • Today: Christ as the way to social justice, material prosperity, community flourishing, etc.
2. Christ is both the path and the destination — he is the way to himself; he is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Hebrews 13:8)
3. All truth flows from Christ and returns to Christ; he is the fullness of deity (Colossians 1:19); to see Christ is to see the Father (John 14:9)
4. Application: We are to have our minds transformed by the knowledge of God (Romans 12:2); Christ and Christ alone is to fill our paths, focus, aspirations, and goals