“But Grow...In Grace”

A sermon based upon 2 Peter 3: 10-18

By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, BA, MDiv, DMin.

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership, 

Sunday July 5th, 2020 (Growing In Grace, 1/18)

Did you see that video a year or more ago, about the child in New York City, who had been talk by his mother a ‘mantra’ to say every day on the way to school?  The child was talk to say to himself over and over:  “I am smart,  I am blessed, I can do anything! 

We all know what that mother wanted her child to know, from the very beginning.  She wanted that child to know he was loved, and already had the most important knowledge he would ever need to succeed in life.

In our text today, Peter reminds us of another kind of important ‘knowledge’.  It’s the spiritual knowledge of Jesus Christ---the source of all love and all blessings.   But isn’t it sad how short people are of this kind of simple, basic knowledge today?

Before Jay Leno, the comedian retired back in 2014,  he used to do street routines, where he would go out on the streets of LA and ask simple questions.  Sometimes he would even ask about the Bible.  Once he asked, ‘Who wrote the 4 gospels?”  Many people just didn’t know.  But once came this interesting reply: John, Paul, George, and Ringo!”

GROW...IN THE KNOWLEDGE OF JESUS CHRIST

The world has all kinds of knowledge today.  For many generations the focus in higher education has been IQ, Intellectual Quotient.   But in more recent years,  colleges and universities have also been looking more and more at another kind of knowledge, called EQ, Emotional Quotient.  They have learned that EQ is just as important in predicting and determining potential and success as IQ.  Sometimes even more.

We all recall the breaking news story about General David Petraus, and Paula Broadwell, the woman who was writing a book about his great achievements.  During their time together,  Petraus, one of the smartest people in the world, conducted an affair with her, and he ended up losing everything he had worked and obtained; even what she was writing about in the book.  

We could make a long, long list of very smart people who have done some very dumb things, as well as, making a list of some people who weren’t that smart or successful, but have done some really great things.   There’s always more to ‘knowledge’ that just knowing ‘facts’ and ‘figures.  

But what about SQ, Spiritual Quotient?   There’s really nothing I know of being written about this, but I do know a lot has been written about how Emotionally and Spiritually strong Jesus was.   What does it mean to have ‘knowledge’ of Jesus Christ that can help us ‘grow’ in God’s grace and live the kind of ‘abundant’ life, Jesus says he came to give (John 10:10). 

I’ll never forget, at my very first day on the job in a new church, that someone came to the church as we would concluding the service and told us how a person, who had grown up in the church, in a family, that should have been at church, but weren’t; how the young teenage girl in the family, with a sister, only a couple of years younger, had just committed suicide by putting a rifle down her throat and pulling the trigger.  Why did she do it?  Well, they told us later that her younger sister had been very popular and successful, and everyone was bragging on her.  It made her feel inferior, unloved, and unworthy of life, so she got everyone’s attention.  She took her own life.  This was the only way she felt that she could win the love she needed from her family.

We can all ‘know’ about Jesus, but we can still not ‘know’ Jesus in a way that the value of everything changes and gets reordered and rearranged.  That’s what wasn’t happening in this family.  It’s also what wasn’t happening in this young girl’s life.  She got all her values mixed up, because the values of her family were focused on the wrong things.  Fortunately, the rest of the family had a chance to get refocused.  The older brother became a pastor.   But that one, poor girl, never got ‘her knowledge’ right she lost everything.

Interestingly, when they were establishing Harvard University,  back in the 1600’s, on the School Logo, it stated in Latin,  “To the Glory of Jesus Christ and for His Church”.   That was the original slogan or motto for Harvard.  Today, the logo has only one word: “Veritas”, which means ‘truth’.   It’s not a bad word, but it lacks direction, focus, and connection.   It’s like a lot of stuff that goes on in American life these days.  It all started well, but some how the focus get’s off track.  It happens in schools, in politics, in governments, in businesses, and in communities and homes too.  Some people are seeking ‘truth’, but it’s there own truth, not THE TRUTH.

What Peter was saying was that only the ‘truth’ and the ‘knowledge’ about Jesus saves and gives us God’s grace.   Only in the truth about and in the truth of Jesus, who said “I am the way, truth, and the life”, can the right kind of knowledge be found.   But even a lot of church people get mixed up about this.  But I saw a sign on a little independent Baptist church over in Yadkin County recently, that was trying to keep the ‘truth’ in the right place.  On their sign, as we head to this next election, the sign read, “If you’re following a Donkey or an Elephant; and you’re disappointed.  Why don’t you come on inside and return to follow the Lamb!”  

That’s the kind of alternative ‘knowledge’ Peter was talking about; but who’s listening?  Do we really want this kind of knowledge?  Besides bearing a name like “Jesus”, what is this knowledge really about?

GROW IN THE GRACE...OF JESUS CHRIST

If you want to know what lies at the core of the knowledge of Jesus Christ, it is the

‘grace’ of God that is given to us, through the knowledge of Jesus Christ.   And this is what Peter recommends for life; a true Christian life?   You’re only growing in the knowledge of Jesus Christ when you are growing in the grace of Jesus Christ.

Elsewhere in the New Testament,  we are told that we are saved ‘by grace, through faith in Jesus Christ’.  But what kind of ‘grace’ is this, that saves us through faith?  In his letter to the Romans, Paul describes this ‘grace’ as the act of this God who freely ‘adopts’ us as his own children.  Anyone, like me, who is an adopted child knows immediately what this kind of ‘grace’ is.  We’re no naturally someone’s child, but because they want to love a child, they choose us, and have loved us, just as if we are they’re own natural child.  Other people might not see us that way, but God sees us this way.  God’s grace is the love that ‘adopts’ and makes us his own children.  When you begin to understand that kind of love then you are on your way to understanding what God’s grace is about.

Recently in the Charity and Children, and in the Biblical Recorder too, there was a story of two children, two boys, who were dreaming of being around a campfire, having marsh-mellows, and going fishing with their Father.  It was just a ‘dream’.  They had no father and they had no family.  That is they had no family until the Baptist Children’s Home became their ‘family’ and they were given a home, a name, an identity, and a love that would never leave them.

What Paul means by Adoption and Peter means by Grace, is that you don’t really have anything in life that matters, until love seeks you and finds you.   Grace is a ‘gift’—that’s part of what the word ‘grace’ means, a free gift.   And in the Scripture, God gives us a home with him, by making his home with us, and making us a home with him; as Scripture says,  “Jesus became a curse for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God.”

This revelation of our place in the heart of God, even while we are sinners, is the knowledge of grace that Jesus gives.    It’s the kind of knowledge we can’t live without, and it’s the kind of knowledge we must not die without.

A famous preacher told how his own father never cared about church.  When the preacher was just a boy, his Father was always ‘knocking down’ the church, saying ‘all they want is another dollar,  another pledge.’  His father was always against, even his wife and son going to church.  He was always complaining about having to have his Sunday Dinner late, because they went to church.   “The Church doesn’t care about me,” he say.  “Why should I care about the church?”   He’d said this a thousand times, but one time he didn’t.

This time his father was in the hospital, dying with cancer.  Throat cancer.  They had to cut out his tongue.  He was in the VA hospital, and was down to 73 lbs..   They’d put a metal tube down his throat.  Xrays had burned him to pieces.   On one occasion, the preacher, now a professor at a University, flew in to see his Father one last time.  His Father couldn’t eat or speak, but flowers and cards were all over his room.  And who were they from?  They were all from the people in the church he had always been against.  

This time, when the Son came in,  the Father, motioned for something to write on.  He wrote down a line from Shakespeare and handed it to his preacher son. “In this harsh world, draw your breathe in pain to tell my story?”  The son, looked up and his father and asked,  “What is your story, Daddy?”   Then, the father wrote, three simple words: “I WAS WRONG!”

If we miscalculate the world’s greatest knowledge; the knowledge of God’s love and grace, we too will be wrong. 

YOU THEREFORE, BELOVED...GROW

Perhaps the most important message in all that Peter is saying, is what we will be talking about these next few weeks, is that this knowledge of Jesus and this knowledge of God’s grace, is something we have to ‘grow in’.  It doesn’t come all at once.  It’s not that kind of knowledge.  It’s not instant or automatic, but it’s applied knowledge, that comes through the experience of grace that should be growing in us each and every day.

I recall when I was injured in that car wreck as a 17 year old,  I received a ‘Sunshine Box’ from my home church.  The ladies in mom’s prayer circle, had put together items, wrapped gifts, that I could look forward to every day for 30 days.  It sure helped me pass the 2 months I was in the hospital.  But more than that, it gave me knowledge that I wasn’t in this all alone.  And in this way, through the love of those ladies, I got to open a little of ‘Jesus’ and ‘love’, and ‘sunshine’ too, each and ever day.

This is what Peter means by ‘growing’ in grace.   In the context of these words, Peter speaks of a world that is that will ultimately be ‘dissolved’ by fire.   He speaks of a judgement day that is coming, but he says today is still the day of grace, so seize it, learn it, and live in it, while you still can.   Now, the time to experience grace and to know that even in a world that will one day ‘dissolve’, God’s love, grace, and the knowledge of Jesus Christ, is all that really matters.

I recall once how a confused pastor consulted with a more experienced pastor in Statesville, who was then the pastor at First Baptist, Dr. Frank Campbell.  I read about this in Dr. Campbell’s book on Jeremiah, where he told how a confused young preacher came to him, disturbed by the things he had learned about the Bible, and what he had learned about people in his church.  All the ideals that he used to believe in, where endangered.  He was thinking about leaving the ministry.  He didn’t even know what to preach the next Sunday.

The wise pastor, Dr. Campbell asked him a few questions:  Do you still know that God loves you?  The young pastor answered, yes.  Do you believe that Jesus died to save you from your sins?  Well, yes.  The pastor answered again.  Then finally, Dr. Campbell asked, since God loves you and saves you, do you believe God loves others and that you should love and serve others.  “Yes, of course,” the man answered again.  Then, Dr. Campbell said to him.  It’s sounds like you still believe in the most important things.  Go.  Keep believing, and keep preaching this.   Preach what you do know, and worry less about what you don’t know.

Isn’t that what Peter is saying here.  We are to grow in the ‘knowledge and grace of Jesus that we do know.   We don’t know everything, but we can know the most important things.  This is the kind of knowledge Jesus brings. 

Once, the great scholar Karl Barth, in one of his classes, drew a circle on the board and he said to his students.  “You are in that circle.  God his revealed himself to you.  The people who are on the outside of that circle don’t know what you now understand.  And you too didn’t understand, until the Spirit drew you into that circle.  

That’s the kind of knowledge Peter is talking about.   We are going to talk about growing in this kind of knowledge in the weeks ahead.   It’s the kind of knowledge that doesn’t start out there with what’s in somebody’s head, but it’s the kind of knowledge that starts right here, within your own heart.   You can’t sell this kind of knowledge.  You can create this kind of knowledge.  You can’t even give this kind of knowledge away.  At least not, directly.   No, all you can do is point others to the knowledge that came to you, and hope it will come to them too.   It’s the kind of knowledge that is real, but it resides it anchors itself in the heart of God.  It’s the kind of knowledge that remains outside until we open the door and let God’s love and grace come in.

 “To him, be the glory both now and to the day of eternity,” Peter says.   What Peter means is that earth and eternity depends on this kind of knowledge.  This is the kind of saving knowledge God’s grace intends to give to us, right now, right here—if you are open to it.   Amen.