Escape...The Corruption

A sermon based upon 2 Peter 1:3-11

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

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership, 

Sunday, Nov. 22th, 2020 (Growing In Grace)

I Heard You Paint Houses is a non-fiction book written by Defense Attorney Charles Brandt, about the murder of the 1970’s labor union leader Jimmy Hoffa.   As you may remember, Jimmy Hoffa disappeared in 1975 and was declared dead in 1982.  Hoffa’s murder was linked to his involvement with the mob.  Frank Sheeran, the hit man for the Bufalino crime family, confessed to the crime.  Even though the body was never found, he served prison time until he was finally released to spend his final days in a nursing home.   

Sheeran was decorated WWII veteran who went from being a family man and truck driver to becoming a cold, calculated go-to killer for the mob.  The story is an account of his continuing downward spiral of corruption, crime and killing.  The book ends with him finally confessing his sins to a priest in hopes of absolution and with him also desperately trying to restore his broken relationship with his daughter.

You don’t have to ‘paint houses’— code for ‘contract killing’—-to fall into what Peter calls ‘the corruption of this world’.   This ‘corruption is all around us.  It can easily enter our own living rooms through televised or streamed media.  It can also get into our emails and other online activities through phishing or spam.  You used to have to go out into the world to enter the world’s darkness, but now the darkness can come straight into homes and into our most private spaces, which aren’t as private as they once were.   But the truth is, since the very beginning of human life, we have this tendency to be corrupted by what the Bible calls the ‘cosmic forces of this present darkness’ (NRSV, Eph. 6:12).  And I certainly don’t have to tell you that what Peter calls ‘the corruption of this world’ is still with us. 

Today, we come to the final message in this long series on growing in the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.  We started with 1 Peter, and now, we are ending with 2 Peter. Both letters provide fitting bookends for this series.

CONFIRM YOUR CALL AND ELECTION... (10)

In today’s text, Peter addresses the ‘corruption of the world’ that is in the world because of human ‘lust’.   Here, lust means any kind of untethered, wayward and harmful human desire, which crosses the boundaries of what is healthy and right for human beings.   Now, of course, the world can’t agree where these right ‘boundary lines’ are.   We human beings often insist that we can make up or live by our own personal ‘rules’ and ‘standards’ as long as we don’t hurt anyone.  We are often like the man that used to be my wife’s childhood neighbor when she was growing up.   Every time they went into the field to work that fellow kept moving the boundary markers. 

We often try the same feat with morality and norms.  We are indeed given a lot of ‘wiggle room.  We need room to grow, develop, and mature, both socially and morally.  But we don’t really move God’s boundary lines, just like that man really wasn’t moving the line either.  He only thought he was.   The lines were written down on deeds in the court house and were firmly established.

Many people want to only fulfill their own ‘desires’ in life, thinking that God has no boundary lines, or that we can move these moral laws anywhere we wish, according to our own desires without having consideration or compassion for others.  This kind of disrespect and destructiveness agrees with the biblical meaning of ‘lust’.   As James says,  “But one is tempted by one's own desire (lust, KJV), being lured and enticed by it;  15 then, when that desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin, and that sin, when it is fully grown, gives birth to death.  16 Do not be deceived, my beloved. (Jas. 1:14-16 NRS).

So, where is the ‘line to far’, between was is healthy and unhealthy human desire?  Again,  God gives humans a lot of wiggle room, just like he gave Adam and we’ve the whole garden, except for one tree.  God still gives us all the goodness of life with the basic boundaries of the 10 commandments, which draw some very healthy boundaries, both spiritual and social.  But as Jesus and Paul rightly interpret God’s laws as also inward and spiritual,  God’s moral laws are also written ‘on our hearts’, not simply on paper or in legislative courts.  When we go against these common-sense moral principles of life, and especially when we go against the relational principles of love which are found in the intent of God’s law and the gospel, we cross a boundary and corrupt the very gift of life God has given us.  Even modern psychology and literature often reminds us of the dangers of valueless and self-centered living.

I recently was recommended to watch a movie by a pastor friend entitled ‘The Fortunate Man’.  It was a story written about a 19th century Genius in Sweden, who had a tremendous vision and plan for an engineering project that would change his world.  He went to the University and proved to be a star student, captivating the engineering minds of Europe.  But his intellectual genius, gave him an over-sized ego at a young age,  and he rebelled against his simple and strict Father, who was also a pastor.  Indeed, some rebellion was understandable, as the men were more alike in their respective egos than different.  However, even as a self-made and successful man, he never once attempted to reconcile with his father.  Even when his Father tried to make  contact him, before he died, and also when he learned his father had died, he refused to go back to the funeral or be with his mother. 

This ‘fortunate man’ also fell in love with a young woman, who was very wealthy.  Indeed, it her position and wealth that helped him get where he wanted to go, but even though she loved him dearly, his life continued to be only about his genius, his dream, and his work, not making or having any loving space for another person.  

In the end, he died, as he had lived, all alone.  His wife traveled to come to him him before he died with cancer, but he still died, as this ‘fortunate man’ who most ‘unfortunate’ because he was unable truly love anyone but himself.  His own great genius had corrupted him and robbed him of being able to love.  It’s a fitting picture of what wayward desire can still do to corrupt the human soul—-to rob us of what matters most to us all; to love and be loved. 

It is in a world of such human, moral, social, and spiritual ‘corruptibility’’, Peter reminds Christians to ‘confirm’ their ‘call and election’.    If you do this, he says, ‘you will never stumble’.   If you do this, you will enter ‘the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ’

But this is an confusing word, ‘election’, isn’t it?   What does it mean that God ‘elects’ us to be his people to ‘call’ away from the ‘corruption’ of this world?   Does it mean that God elects only certain people to be saved?   Does it means, as some insist, that God also elects in a two-fold way, called ‘double predestination’; saying that while God elects certain people to be saved, he elects other people to be eternally lost.   What does Peter mean to ‘confirm your call and election’?  

HIS DIVINE POWER HAS GIVEN US...EVERYTHING NEEDED (3)

Comedian Garry Shandling once commented on the phenomenon of wake-up calls in hotels. He says: “Here’s a little tip from me to you as an experienced traveler: Wake-up calls--one of the worst ways to wake up. The phone rings; it’s loud; you can’t turn it down.” Then with impeccable timing Shandling adds, “I leave the number of the room next to me, and then it just rings kind of quiet, and you hear a guy yell, ‘What are you calling me for?’ Then you get up and take a shower. It’s great.”

God’s call is a ‘call’ about which there should be no confusion.  Peter answers for all of us what God’s it means   We don’t have to speculate.  It’s a call that comes to all who will answer.  Peter reminds his readers for those who are ‘called’ and ‘elected’ God’s ‘divine power has given us everything needed for life and godliness’ (v8).  And what God has ‘given us’ comes ‘through the knowledge of him who called by his own glory and goodness’.  

Here we can clearly see God’s call and election isn’t based on God calling certain people and condemning others.  We don’t have to wonder or worry about who’s in or who’s out?  No, the call and election of God is based upon those who will and do answer God’s call and are then elected to receive ‘everything needed for life and godliness’.   As Peter goes on to say again, ‘he has given us, through these things his precious and very great promises, so we can escape from the corruption that is in the world...’, and become ‘participants of the divine nature.’   Anyone can receive this call and election in many different and varied ways that answers God’s ‘glory’ and ‘goodness’.  

Those of you who saw the film Amazing Grace, remember the story of William Wilberforce. Wilberforce was a British politician who, after his conversion to Christianity, became England’s greatest anti-slavery advocate. It was through his tireless efforts that England eventually outlawed slavery, paving the way for the end of the slave trade in the Western world.

But William Wilberforce almost missed his calling. He almost didn’t answer it.  After his conversion, Wilberforce considered leaving politics for the ministry.  He wasn’t sure how a Christian could live out his faith in “the world.” 

Fortunately, Wilberforce turned to a man named John Newton for guidance. Newton, of course, was the author of the much-loved tune, “Amazing Grace.” Newton was a former slave trader who had renounced the trade after his conversion. Newton convinced Wilberforce that God had called him to remain in politics and exert a Christian influence there.  It was John Newton who physically ‘voiced’ the call for William Wilberforce to champion the cause of freedom for Britain’s slaves.  Newton reinforced the calling, but Wilberforce still had to personally answer and confirm the call to ‘participate’ in who God was calling him to be and what God was electing him to do.

There is certainly nothing that goes against anyone’s own free will when God calls.  Peter says we still have to answer and choose to how we will live our lives, saying in the most simple terms, ‘for this very reason’, ‘SUPPORT your faith with goodness, your goodness with self-control, your self-control with endurance, your endurance with godliness, and godliness with  mutual affection and love.   Peter gives God’s people a unmistakable list of things they, and we too, are called to ‘MAKE EVERY EFFORT’ to support within ourselves. 

God’s call and election can be sure and firm, but even the clarity of God’s call doesn’t mean this ‘election’ is automatic, and it’s certainly not realized or fulfilled in us unless, or until, we choose to make these answer with virtues and behaviors that become realized and real in our own lives.  God chooses us, but we also have to choose God.    God calls and elects us as we are willing to receive his ‘divine power’  while we are making every effort to live into his own ‘divine nature’ he has revealed to us throughJesus Christ   Again, we don’t escape the ‘corruption of this world’ only by God choosing us, but we also must answer choose God, and choose to answer God’s call to live in the ‘knowledge’ given to us as Jesus has called us to live.

  (3). ‘IF’ THESE THINGS ARE YOURS

In a true story, a man had fallen away and gotten out of the habit of being in  church.  A friend of his decided to give him a call about a tennis match they were scheduling later that week.  He made the telephone call from a phone at his church, which was ‘Christ the Lord Lutheran Church’ where he was, at the time,  attending a meeting.   The man who had fallen away from church,  looked at his Caller I.D. When the call came through.  The I.D. came across his phone in big letters:, “Christ the Lord.” His repressed guilt made him think that Christ himself was calling for him. This turned out to be a clear and specific wake-up call to him in his own personal life.  It’s amazing the things God can use to call us too, that is, ‘If’ we want to and are willing to answer.

This brings us to how Peter concludes this whole discussion with a big ‘IF’.  “IF” these things are yours...,  that is, if God’s ‘goodness’ and ‘glory’ are  being realized in you, this will ‘confirm’ that you are ‘increasing’ and maturing in Christ, and it will, he says,  keep you from being an ‘ineffective’ and ‘unfruitful’ Christian.  It will also affirm that you haven’t become ‘blinded’ by this world, and ‘forgetful of the cleansing’ of your own sins, by his precious blood on the cross.

Notice, here in the conclusion that Peter expresses the most obvious.  If we fail to follow through with our initial faith in Jesus with an openness to keep growing, developing and maturing spiritually, we will either prove that we are becoming an ineffective, unfruitful Christian, or, even worst than that, we may ‘confirm’ that we haven’t sincerely responded to God’s calling, choosing, and electing love.  The question that remains is why?  Why aren’t we growing in our life, our faith and our moral and spiritual maturity? 

There is an interesting story that comes out of the Second World War. England and Germany both had state-of-the-art fighter planes. Germany had the Messerschmitt, which was considered to be the world’s fastest fighter plane. The British had the Supermarine Spitfire. The Spitfire was slower than the Messerschmitt. Nevertheless, German pilots were envious of their British counterparts.

You see, the Messerschmitt had been designed to hold the perfect German. Who was the perfect German? Who else but Der Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler. Hitler was little more than five feet tall. However, the German pilots who guided the Messerschmitt were considerably taller than 5 feet. So the Germans had to fly in very cramped quarters. But who was going to tell Adolf Hitler that he was not the perfect German? The Messerschmitts were faster, but their pilots were not happy men. (Leonard & Thelma Spinrad, Speaker’s Lifetime Library (Paramus, NJ: Revised & Expanded, 1997, p. 526).

Why were those big men flying little planes? Because of a big ego in a man with a very little soul.  He was the man who thought he had already ‘arrived’, was already who he wanted to be.  That’s what can happen spiritually, emotionally, and morally, when we don’t ‘make every effort to support’ within ourselves, the good that God has made, called and elected us to receive and develop within.  God wants us to stand tall by humbling ourselves as he humbled himself and by giving our lives as he gave his life to save and to serve the world.

So, if you want to answer God’s call and grow in your life and faith, Jesus is still the blueprint to make you a better person and this world a better place.   Let me conclude with the words one of the greatest people who followed Jesus in our modern world,, Dr. Albert Schweitzer, a missionary doctor who lived in the last century.  He once said: “I don’t know what your destiny will be, but one thing I do know, the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve.”

IF you aren’t ‘increasing’ in your faith growing to be like Christ, this may mean that you never really ever ‘picked’ up the phone to answer to what God has called you too.  

But you can do this starting today.   You can begin to make your ‘calling and election’ sure, and  ‘confirm’ it by affirming and acting God’s great offer of grace and love today.   That’s what today is for: “Today is the day of Salvation!”  Today is the accepted time.  “How will we escape, if we neglect this great salvation?”  That’s how another New Testament Writer put it.  This is what Peter means too: How will we escape the corruption of this world that can lead to the destruction of any human soul, unless we answer the call of God’s goodness offered to us, which must continue to grow in us, through the grace of Jesus Christ?  Amen.