Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

Good Morning, Have you ever been excluded from something?

Maybe you didn’t get the wedding Invitation.. or you were out of the loop… Maybe everyone else in your family got the memo but it missed your inbox…

We don’t like to be excluded?

And if we are honest… being excluded hurts…

God’s plan in salvation was one of inclusion…we were chosen in Him from the foundations of the world… Paul tells us in Ephesians that God has blessed us with every Spiritual blessings in heavenly places.. God’s plan has alway s been one of inclusion.. God says I chose you..in eternity past from the beggining of time ....from day one.

What the doctrine of Election teaches is that we did not influence God’s decision to save us; he saved us according to his plan… God has always chosen us… Salvation is all God none of us… but it is a bit of a paradox because we still have to receive the gift by faith in order to make our election sure.

We are in a Sermon Series entitled - The Generous life....

The conversation of Generosity has to begin with the nature of God himself… We have to decide for ourselves whether we have a God who is Generous or we have God who is stingy.. God with open hands towards us or a God who is withholding from us…

The Generosity of God is foundational to living the Generous life..

We need to remember that...Generosity doesn't mean that God gives us everything we want… God love towards us parental ….Most of us like big portions of food…I remember when I was in college in 1990’s everything was Supersized… you get go to McDonalds.... you would say supersize your order... and everything doubled.

… the problem with that kind of Generosity is it can be dangerous for our health.. God’s generosity is always for our good ...

James 1:17 Every Good and perfect gift comes down from the Father of lights whom there is no shifting or change.

God gifts and perfect and unchanging..

When God give he gives everything that could possibly be needed; he gives everything without holding back.

His giving is always exactly appropriate to what is required: his gifts are perfect...

God’s Purpose in essence is to Display his goodness..

One of the great Prayers In the Bible is the prayer of Moses.

- Moses had been dealing with Israels continual failure and disobedience…

Moses was a little tired and warn out, but he enters into the Tent of meeting outside the camp of Israel and He prays this.. BIG HAIRY AUDaCIOUS PRAYER..

.... Moses asks God, “Show me your Glory”

Show me the REAL YOU? Moses had seen God’s glory … His omnipotence …He had witnessed the drowning of the Egyptian Army in the Red sea; He had seen God provide water from a Rock… He witnessed the miracle of manna and quail feeding the million plus Israelites..

But here in this prayerMoses wants to see the Real God...

Moses wants to see a different side of GOD,Show yourself to me..

Here is the Problem.

The Bible says that nobody had ever seen God and lived… But God in His Grace… passes before Moses on Mt Sinia and shows Moses His goodness -

Exodus 34:6-7

God goes before Moses… declares hisShows his Eternal qualities....The Lord Yaweh… The God who is.. (these qualities never change) — God is...

-Always Merciful… Always Gracious… slow to anger… abounding in steadfastness....God is always Faithful… Steadfast in love for thousands… Forgiving.

Now what we are going to see this morning is that ther

fundamental Difference between How God interacted with Israel in the OT and How God deals with his church…In the OT everything is distanced… you come with a sacrifice.... only the priests could serve in the Temple--- only the Hight priest could enter into the Presence of God…

In the NT.. it is all about our participation..

In the NT… We are no longer spectators of Glory of God --- we have are participants in the Glory of God.

There is this exchange in Salvation……We are new creations in Christ and we participate in the the very nature of God… Salvation… is the first of the New Creation… there is going to be a New Heaven and New Earth…

In God’s Generosity we Partakers in His very nature…WE are going to look at our Text in the book of 2 Peter 1.

Peter is writing to a church that have been displaced by the persecution of the Roman Emperor Nero.. On top of that there is false Doctrine taught by a group called the gnostics…who deny the diety and the second coming of Christ...Peter encourages the church to hold onto what they have been given - what is already in their possession.

Tradition tells us that Peter was executed in Rome by Nero in AD 67 and so the book of 2 Peter would have been his last words to the church before his death… So this is an important message that Peter is giving..

T/S Peter tells us four things that we participate in..

1.

We have Received Genuine Faith.

Several years ago Scotland Yard conducted a private exhibition of forged paintings for art dealers.

The objective was to send a warning to their select audience about the sale of forgeries, which some experts estimate make up 40 percent of the art market.

The sale of these fakes can undermine the value of the genuine articles...

One of the problems that Peter is dealing with in our passage is false doctrine… those who are faking it…Some of you might know Bob Goff from Thrive… but he said “God was a lot more concerned about people who faked it, than blew it.

- Bob Goff”

Love that…the problem is that your are always going to get fakes.. we need to make sure we know the difference…

The Gnostics were pretentious… the were the spirtual elites that taught special knowledge and what it did was created an overwhelming feeling of inadequacy on the part of the Christians… These teachers taught that they had a special annointing… to know God..

Peter calls it a destructive teaching-… instead of dealing in truth they tell fables and stories that they have made up.

What is interesting is that Peter spends the majority of his time laying down the Truth… its important to point out error…but its even more important that we faithfully teach the truth.

Peter reminds them of the Genuine faith they had…

Peter wants Christians to know with out a doubt that the Faith which they had received, believed, lived and passed on to others is the genuine article and not a substitute.

Peter says that the obtained fait of equal standing of the apostles… they God the real deal…

Peter isolates four areas where we should check what we believe against what he believes:

1. where our gospel came from - Where did this Gospel come from.... it came form Jesus directly and it was passed down to the apostles.-

the apostles were those who had known Jesus personally....Peter was one of the twelve and one of the three whom Jesus had trained personally..

2. whether it is as good as the original - Peter assures them that they had received Christ the same way as the Apostles… What a contrast to the teaching of the gnostics that it was special knowledge attainable by a select few… Peter says that their faith equal standing… and It hasn’t changed in 2000 years..

3. what difference it makes in real life - and the doctrine it teaches -

A person who claims to be saved while remaining unchanged does not understand faith or what God has done for him or her… Not only have we received grace and peace in Salvation.. but as we grow in the knowledge of God grace should be multiplied.

Grace and Peace are renewable… they are multiplied…the word multiplied here means to undergo change.. to become bigger or greater in amount…

More grace, More peace… this increases as we grow in our our knowledge of Jesus Christ… Again there is a little play on word in our text.. gnostics claimed to have special knowledge…

Peter is talking about an intimate and personal relationship.

It is the means by which God’s grace and peace may be received and experienced… the knowledge of a husband or wife or good friend that goes beyond knowing things about them and actually knows them… The more we get to Christ through his word… the more gracious you are going to be… the more merciful… the more of Christ’s nature...

T/S God’s generosity allows us to participate in four things..

1.

We have Received Genuine Faith...

2. We have Received Divine Power.

In his book Rust: The Longest War, Jonathan Waldman takes us chapter by chapter into the world of oxidation and the problem of rust.

He tells the story of how America almost lost the Statue of Liberty to corrosion, the constant struggle needed to maintain oil pipe lines, the development of stainless steel and rust resistant paint, how aluminum cans are treated to deter oxidation, and of the enormous cost and effort needed to beat back rust in the military—especially the navy's ships.

Rust isn't just annoying; it's expensive and dangerous.

But rust happens and we can't stop it.

For instance, on August 1, 2007, a bridge spanning the Mississippi in Minnesota suddenly collapsed during the evening rush hour.

The bridge, identified as Bridge 9340 in official records, was rated as the second busiest in the entire state, with 140,000 vehicles crossing it every day.

One hundred eleven vehicles rode the surface of the bridge down as much as 115 feet to the surface of the water and riverbank, with 13 people killed and 145 injured.

A school bus with 63 children returning from a field trip ended up resting on a guardrail at the bottom.

The collapsed bridge over Mississippi had one cause: oxidation.

Iron (in the soil and the bridge gussets) reacted chemically with oxygen and the result is a reddish product that eats and destroys that we call rust.

Here is the thing we too can suffer from oxidation.

And instead of bringing life…into those in our lives we can bring destruction.

One of the ways that we as Christians can rust out is by ignoring the power of God.

One of the metaphors I have been using to describe the generous life is this pipeline of Grace.

If the Divine life is not flowing into our lives… that flow is powered by the Holy Spirit.

Peter challenged believers to take full advantage of the divine power and promise of God which made it possible to participate in the divine nature and thus overcome the corruption caused by evil desires

Peter starts with His divine power…

Peter tells us that we have everything we need for life and godliness.. and it has been granted by His Divine Power..

What is Divine Power?

Divine Power is Supernatural Power… Divine Ability… We see God’s Divine Power when Jesus was raised from the Dead… … Paul tells us in Romans that Jesus was Promised to be the son of God through what was spoken through the prophets…and also through being descended from the line of David… But was DEClARED TO BE THE SON OF GOD… through power by his resurrection.

As Christians our identity comes from our identification with Christ’s death burial and Resurrection… In Romans 6 we are buried with him by baptism and just as Christ was raised from the dead we now walk with him in new life...

Peter tells us that His Divine Power has been granted to us … Divine ability is working for us and in us..

God has given us: “everything we needed for life and godliness,”

This implies The power to grow doesn’t come from within us, but from God.

Because we don’t have the resources to live as he requires, God gives us everything we need for godly living

Christ’s power manifests itself in the lives of Christians, for that power gives believers everything we need for living a godly life.

Steven Furtick said

“Nothing can stop the power of God in your life, except your unbelief.”

When you are born into the family of God by faith in Christ, you are born complete.

God gives you everything you will ever need “for life and godliness.”

Nothing has to be added!

There will always be people who want to supplement the work of Christ with extra teaching, and convince us that we are living less than Christian lives, while their particular form of teaching is the ingredient missing from traditional Christianity.

It takes different forms: Christ plus healing, Christ plus success, Christ plus prosperity, Christ plus counselling, Christ plus an overwhelming experience.

Anxious Christians may spend many years going through these, searching for an assurance that is already theirs in Christ.

Simply by being Christians we have access to everything we need to live a life that pleases God.

The false teachers claimed that they had a “special doctrine” that would add something to the lives of Peter’s readers, but Peter knew that nothing could be added.