Summary: As Peter closes his letter, and we close our study of this book, we want to hear everything we can. God has given us everything; He has lavished everything on us, everything we need, so apply all diligence. If you do not, you have forgotten the cross of Christ and been short sighted. Peter has continually reminded us of these things because he wants us to remember these things after he is gone.
1. A. As we have studied II Peter, think back to how many times we have already referred to verses 3:17-18. Why is that? Jeremiah 3:15, John 21:17, II Peter 3:17-18
B. What are the two imperatives in II Peter 3:17-18?
2. A. How does Peter view those he is writing to? II Peter 3:1, 8, 14, 17 B. Christian living flows from Christian knowledge. Read the verses from 2A again and notice this principle. Philippians 3:10
C. II Peter 3:17 says “knowing this beforehand.” Knowing what? II Peter 1:3, 5, 9, 12-14, 17-19, 2:1, 3:3, 9, 16, 18
3. Make the direct connection between II Peter 3:17 and 3:16. Connect “knowing this” to those who are “the untaught and unstable.” What is it to be taught and stable? Jeremiah 31:33-34, John 6:45, Acts 4:13
4. A. As we have seen, there are two imperatives in II Peter 3:17-18; “be on guard” and “grow.” What are we exhorted to guard against in 3:17? James 1:13-16
B. What, or rather, Who are we to cling to as our strength? Isaiah 45:24, II Peter 3:18, James 1:17, 5:8
C. What did Peter know, and by extension, want us to know, about being “carried away?” How does this reflect on Peter’s final exhortation to us? Matthew 26:69-74, Luke 22:31-32, I Peter 5:10, II Peter 3:18
5. A. “Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” Have you taken this lightly or maybe drifted away from this single purpose in life? Has your love for Him grown cold? Has reading His word meant more to you in the past than it does now? Jeremiah 9:23-24, Philippians 3:10, Revelation 1:8, 21:6, 22:13
B. “Grow in grace;” feed on His grace. Romans 5:1-2, Ephesians 2:8, Titus 3:5-8, Hebrews 13:9
C. Grow in “the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” Be reminded why God the Holy Spirit came. Are you daily asking God to teach you? Psalm 119:18, Daniel 11:32, John 16:7-15, Philippians 3:10 Make it your personal aim to know Him. Have you drifted away from your first love? As a final exhortation, on Father’s Day, men, have you made it your ministry aim to teach your children the knowledge of Christ?
Jeremiah 3:15, II Peter 3:18
“To Him be the glory, both now and to the day of eternity. Amen” “I am the Lord, that is My name; I will not give My glory to another, nor My praise to graven images.” “So that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
APPENDIX
Scripture taken from www.esv.org.GENESIS
GEN. 1.1-3
1 In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
2 The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.
3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.
GEN. 1.26-28
26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
28 And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
GEN. 2.16-25
16 And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden,
17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”
18 Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.”
19 Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. 20 The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him.
21 So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh.
22 And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man.
23 Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.”
24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.
25 And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.
GEN. 3.18-19
8 And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.
9 But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?”
10 And he said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.”
11 He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?”
12 The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.”
13 Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”
14 The Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field; on your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life.
15 I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”
16 To the woman he said, “I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.”
17 And to Adam he said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life;
18 thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field.
19 By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
GEN. 6.5-13
5 The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
6 And the Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.
7 So the Lord said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them.”
8 But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.
9 These are the generations of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God.
10 And Noah had three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
11 Now the earth was corrupt in God's sight, and the earth was filled with violence.
12 And God saw the earth, and behold, it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth.
13 And God said to Noah, “I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence through them. Behold, I will destroy them with the earth.
GEN. 19.1-5
1 The two angels came to Sodom in the evening, and Lot was sitting in the gate of Sodom. When Lot saw them, he rose to meet them and bowed himself with his face to the earth
2 and said, “My lords, please turn aside to your servant's house and spend the night and wash your feet. Then you may rise up early and go on your way.” They said, “No; we will spend the night in the town square.”
3 But he pressed them strongly; so they turned aside to him and entered his house. And he made them a feast and baked unleavened bread, and they ate.
4 But before they lay down, the men of the city, the men of Sodom, both young and old, all the people to the last man, surrounded the house.
5 And they called to Lot, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us, that we may know them.”
GEN. 19.23-29
23 The sun had risen on the earth when Lot came to Zoar.
24 Then the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire from the Lord out of heaven.
25 And he overthrew those cities, and all the valley, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and what grew on the ground.
26 But Lot's wife, behind him, looked back, and she became a pillar of salt. 27 And Abraham went early in the morning to the place where he had stood before the Lord.
28 And he looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah and toward all the land of the valley, and he looked and, behold, the smoke of the land went up like the smoke of a furnace.
29 So it was that, when God destroyed the cities of the valley, God remembered Abraham and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow when he overthrew the cities in which Lot had lived.
GEN. 22.15-18
15 And the angel of the Lord called to Abraham a second time from heaven 16 and said, “By myself I have sworn, declares the Lord, because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son,
17 I will surely bless you, and I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore. And your offspring shall possess the gate of his enemies,
18 and in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because you have obeyed my voice.”
GEN. 39.1-9
1 Now Joseph had been brought down to Egypt, and Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh, the captain of the guard, an Egyptian, had bought him from the Ishmaelites who had brought him down there.
2 The Lord was with Joseph, and he became a successful man, and he was in the house of his Egyptian master.
3 His master saw that the Lord was with him and that the Lord caused all that he did to succeed in his hands.
4 So Joseph found favor in his sight and attended him, and he made him overseer of his house and put him in charge of all that he had.
5 From the time that he made him overseer in his house and over all that he had the Lord blessed the Egyptian's house for Joseph's sake; the blessing of the Lord was on all that he had, in house and field.
6 So he left all that he had in Joseph's charge, and because of him he had no concern about anything but the food he ate. Now Joseph was handsome in form and appearance.
7 And after a time his master's wife cast her eyes on Joseph and said, “Lie with me.”
8 But he refused and said to his master's wife, “Behold, because of me my master has no concern about anything in the house, and he has put everything that he has in my charge.
9 He is not greater in this house than I am, nor has he kept back anything from me except yourself, because you are his wife. How then can I do this great
wickedness and sin against God?”
GEN. 48.15
And he blessed Joseph and said, “The God before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked, the God who has been my shepherd all my life long to this day,
EXODUS
EX. 3.1-15
1 Now Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro, the priest of Midian, and he led his flock to the west side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God.
2 And the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. He looked, and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed. 3 And Moses said, “I will turn aside to see this great sight, why the bush is not burned.”
4 When the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.”
5 Then he said, “Do not come near; take your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.”
6 And he said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.
7 Then the Lord said, “I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters. I know their sufferings,
8 and I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the
Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites.
9 And now, behold, the cry of the people of Israel has come to me, and I have also seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppress them.
10 Come, I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.”
11 But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?”
12 He said, “But I will be with you, and this shall be the sign for you, that I have sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God on this mountain.”
13 Then Moses said to God, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?”
14 God said to Moses, “I am who I am.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel, ‘I am has sent me to you.’”
15 God also said to Moses, “Say this to the people of Israel, ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’ This is my name forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations.
EX. 4.1
Then Moses answered, “But behold, they will not believe me or listen to my voice, for they will say, ‘The Lord did not appear to you.’”
EX. 4.10-13
10 But Moses said to the Lord, “Oh, my Lord, I am not eloquent, either in the past or since you have spoken to your servant, but I am slow of speech and of tongue.”
11 Then the Lord said to him, “Who has made man's mouth? Who makes him mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the Lord?
12 Now therefore go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall speak.”
13 But he said, “Oh, my Lord, please send someone else.”
EX. 20.1-7
1 And God spoke all these words, saying,
2 “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.
3 You shall have no other gods before me.
4 You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
5 You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me,
6 but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.
7 You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.
EX. 33.18-19
18 Moses said, “Please show me your glory.”
19 And he said, “I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name ‘The Lord.’ And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy.
LEVITICUS
LEV. 10.3
Then Moses said to Aaron, “This is what the Lord has said, ‘Among those who are near me I will be sanctified, and before all the people I will be glorified.’” And Aaron held his peace.
LEV. 11.44
For I am the Lord your God. Consecrate yourselves therefore, and be holy, for I am holy. You shall not defile yourselves with any swarming thing that crawls on the ground.
LEV. 18.22
You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.
LEV. 20.7-8
7 Consecrate yourselves, therefore, and be holy, for I am the Lord your God. 8 Keep my statutes and do them; I am the Lord who sanctifies you.
LEV. 20.13
If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an