We Can’t Obey Jesus and Ignore Paul

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I wonder if any of the rest of you have ever tried to tell somebody something only to have them give you a response along the lines of, why should I care about that? Has that ever happened to you? Told your kids I need you to do something?

They say, they might not say it with their words, but they might say it with their eyes. Why do I care about that? Several weeks ago, we were driving through downtown Bossier City, and my daughter asked me, why are there so many Republicans here?

I thought it was an odd question, but I started explaining to her about demographics and voting patterns and things like this. I went into about a five-minute spiel. Y’all know I’m not short-winded, but I went through this with her, and she kind of looks at me at the end and has that face on her.

Why do I care about any of that? And finally, she says, that’s interesting, and points out the window to the statues on the street corners and says, what does that have to do with pelicans? I misheard her and thought she said Republicans.

She said pelicans. But her response, I thought it was brilliant political analysis, but she’s looking at me saying, why do I care about anything you just said? That is the same approach.

That response is the same response that the world has to a lot of what’s found in Scripture, particularly the writings of the Apostle Paul. I’ve known for some time, I felt led for some time, that when we finished the book of Mark, that we needed to go into the book of 1 Corinthians. 1 Corinthians deals with some things that are not issues in our church specifically, but 1 Corinthians has good practical and theological teaching for a church that is in the midst of a culture that is hostile to what it teaches.

Well, that sounds kind of familiar. So there’s a lot we can learn from 1 Corinthians. But over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been reminded that there are a lot of people out there, there are a lot of people even in churches that say, why should I care what the Apostle Paul says?

There are people that want to pit the Apostle Paul against Jesus and say, well, Jesus said this, but Paul said this and try to make it out that what they said, the things that they taught were different. When that’s not the case, the Apostle Paul came and under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, came and expounded on what Jesus taught. Jesus had a very specific mission during his three years here.

It was to prepare the people for the coming kingdom of God that he was bringing. It was to be crucified as the one and only sacrifice for our sins. It was to rise again, and it was to ascend back to the Father.

And then he left the Apostles here with the Holy Spirit, to teach us the implications of that. And yet there are people that want to say the writings of Paul say this, the Gospels say this, and they’re not together. By the way, these are often the same people that say the Gospels don’t agree on what they teach.

And I feel like I’ve shown you over the last year and a half or so as we’ve gone through the book of Mark piece by piece and compared them against the other Gospels, that’s not true. But when it comes to all sorts of issues, whether it’s salvation by grace through faith alone, as taught in the book of Ephesians by the Apostle Paul, people want to object to that. Whether it’s leadership and gender roles in the church, as taught in 1 Corinthians and 1 and 2 Timothy, people want to object to that.

Whether it is sexual morality, as taught in Romans 1, people want to object to that. All sorts of things that are taught throughout Paul’s letters, people want to say, well, that’s just Paul. I’ve even heard it said by people in churches, not any church that I’ve pastored, but I’ve heard it said by people in churches.

I don’t care what Paul says. So as we come to the book of 1 Corinthians, starting next week, Lord willing, we are going to deal with some things that are taught in 1 Corinthians that are counter to the way the world thinks. We’re going to deal with, the book of 1 Corinthians deals with some things that are uncomfortable to me to talk about.

It may talk about some things that are uncomfortable to you to hear. So we need to remind ourselves, Lest we go the way of so many others, why is it that we need to care what the Apostle Paul says? And so this morning I want to look at what Peter, who walked with Jesus for three years, said about the Apostle Paul and what he had to say.

As a reminder of just what the importance is of these things that the Apostle Paul has written to us in 1 Corinthians and elsewhere. Because there is this recent willingness to ignore the Apostle Paul. And so this morning we’re going to start our series on 1 Corinthians and 2 Peter of all places.

2 Peter 3. If you would, turn with me there so we can read together from God’s Word. If you can’t find 2 Peter 3 or don’t have your Bible, it will be on the screen for you this morning.

Once you find it, if you’d stand with me out of respect for God’s Word as we read it together. 2 Peter 3, starting in verse 14. It says, Let me repeat that part for you.

Verse 15. and regard the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given him, wrote to you, as also in all his letters, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which the untaught and unstable distort as they do also the rest of the scriptures to their own destruction. You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, be on your guard so that you are not carried away by the error of unprincipled men and fall from your own steadfastness, but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity.

Amen. And you may be seated. And my intention in this is not to call out anybody specifically, but to remind us that when we’re reading the words of the Apostle Paul found in Scripture, we’re not just reading a guy’s opinion, but even Peter, even Peter, who was one of Jesus’ closest disciples, said, listen to Paul.

He says that Paul wrote according to the wisdom given him. That’s a euphemism used throughout the New Testament for wisdom being given from above. We’re talking about the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, which Peter also affirmed the Scriptures having.

Now, sometimes skeptics will say, well, we don’t know for sure. How do we know for sure that Peter wrote 2 Peter? Okay, we can get into the place where we question everything, what a friend of mine calls the philosopher’s playground.

Granted, there is less evidence that Peter wrote 2 Peter than there is that Paul wrote 1 Corinthians. But there are still plenty of people from the early churches who were around and wrote about Peter being the author of this book, who quoted this book as though it was Scripture. There’s plenty of evidence, and I don’t have time to go over it this morning.

I would encourage you to look at Daniel Wallace’s treatment on the subject at bible. org, and I can give you the the link to that if any of you are interested. But he goes through the evidence for and against and concludes that there’s plenty of evidence that Peter wrote this.

And so we have somebody who was as close to Jesus Christ as you can be saying, you need to listen to Paul because what he has written is stuff that the Lord gave him. And so let’s take this a little bit at a time and see exactly what Peter is saying here with this. He starts in verse 14 saying, therefore, beloved, since you look for these things, when he says these things, we’ve picked up in the middle of an argument here.

And so we have to go back and consider what is he talking about with these things. He’s referring back to what he’s just written in the verses prior to this where he’s been talking about the second coming. He’s been talking about God’s judgment.

He’s been talking about the new heaven and the new earth. He’s talking about all of God’s promises, or depending on where you stand with those, God’s promises or God’s warnings. He’s referring to all of these things, and his point, he prefaces everything else he says here by saying, therefore, because you believe these things.

In other words, he’s telling his original readers and us, because we expect God to keep his promises, because we expect these things to happen, because we expect God to do what he says he’ll do, we should live like it. If we believe that God is just and holy and righteous, If we believe that God will judge sinners, if we believe that Jesus is coming back, if we believe that there is a heaven and a hell, if we believe that there is the promise of eternal life in Jesus Christ, then it should have implications for the way we behave and the way we live. And we get that out of the first half of verse 14.

All these other things that follow are because you look for these things. Not just believe that they’re going to happen, but they were actually looking with anticipation for these things to happen. And so as a result of this, he says, be diligent to be found by him in peace, spotless and blameless.

We are expected to make a consistent effort to reflect the change that Jesus has made in us. We could look at this and say, wait, he expects me to be perfect. Perfect is the goal. God’s word says, be holy because I am holy.

God also knows that that is outside of our grasp. If it were within our grasp, the cross wouldn’t have been necessary. Jesus Christ came and paid for our sins because we’re sinners.

But as believers in Jesus Christ, He’s given us the Holy Spirit to enable us, to empower us, to serve Him and to be faithful. And to the extent that we can, with the help of the Holy Spirit, He tells us to be diligent, to work at it, to strive for it, to be found by Him in peace, spotless and blameless. That phrase, in peace, means that we’re not fearful, we’re resting in His promises.

We’re not diligent and striving in the sense that we are afraid that we’re going to fall short and we’re going to be lost from Him and He’s no longer going to love us. But we’re in peace that we are resting in His promises and walking with Him. And then He says spotless and blameless.

That’s the condition of lambs for sacrifice in the Old Testament. You couldn’t just sacrifice any old animal. God saw that trick coming. oh, I’m supposed to sacrifice a lamb?

Well, there’s that one that’s missing legs, and it’s scrawny, and it’s underweight, and it’s the worst one in my flock, and we’ll just get rid of that one. No, you were supposed to bring God your best, a spotless, flawless, blameless lamb, as a picture of Jesus, who had no sin of His own, and took our sins on Him when He cried out at the cross, as we studied a few weeks ago, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? It’s because that sin came upon him and separated him from the Father for the first time.

So for him to tell us to be diligent, to be spotless and blameless, to work toward that, is not saying, hey, you’ve got to be perfect or no deal. He’s saying that our behavior, our teaching, everything about us should reflect the Lamb. Not just the Lamb that was brought for sacrifice, but the Lamb that God provided for the ultimate sacrifice. And the only reason we can do this is because of the change that Jesus Christ has made in us.

This is not about us and our goodness, but if you belong to Jesus Christ, if you’ve trusted Him as your Savior, then He’s made something new in you. He just says, make sure your behavior reflects that. Like when I tell my kids, your burns act like it.

My dad chuckles when he hears me say that because, you know, 40 years ago that meant something different. We have changed the trajectory of things here. That means something.

They’re as much burns as they’re ever going to be. But we went somewhere Friday night and we had the talk with them ahead of time. Act like you’ve been places before.

They’re my children no matter what, but I just need you to act like it. For a couple hours, then you can go back to acting like the wolves who so obviously raised you. No, I have basically good kids, but they’re kids.

He’s telling us to reflect what he’s done in us. God is making us to be more like Jesus Christ. We just need to go act like it. And he says in verse 15, and regard the patience of our Lord as salvation.

Now this is a little bit difficult to understand unless we go back further into what Peter has just been talking about. And if you go back and look at verse 9, it’s a verse that’s familiar to a lot of you, I’m sure. It says, the Lord is not slow about his promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish, but for all to come to repentance.

There were people in the early days of Christianity, just as there are now, who thought, well, if he hasn’t come and judged sin by now, maybe he’s not going to. And Peter’s saying, the Lord, his delay here is not because he’s unjust and he’s suddenly okay with sin. His delay doesn’t mean that he’s never going to follow through on what he said.

I had no idea about the song that was going to be sung this morning, but eventually at some point the belt is going to come off. The fact that the Lord has delayed is not saying that he’s okay with sin. The delay of God’s judgment is a function of His grace, giving people the space and the time to repent.

So when he says in verse 15, regard the patience of our Lord as salvation, he’s hearkening back to verse 9 saying, God is giving you an opportunity. God is giving you an opportunity to trust Him and turn to Him. Verse 15 goes on to say, just as our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given to him, wrote to you.

Verse 16 says, as also in all his letters, speaking in them of these things in which are some things hard to understand. We take this all together, and Peter says here that Paul has written on this subject, because there were people in the early churches who thought, well, he hasn’t judged sin up to this point, maybe he’s not going to. They thought we have this grace, this forgiveness, this salvation, maybe that means we just go out and live however we want.

And by the way, churches like ours are accused of that all the time. I’m not saying that you have a reputation of living however you want, But sometimes people will say the idea of security is a license to sin. It’s not.

And that’s what Paul wrote about. Paul wrote against this idea when people said, well, maybe I can sin as much as I want. No, that’s not an indication that he’s changed you.

And so Paul wrote in Romans, should I continue in sin that grace may abound? Hey, if every time I sin, God gives me grace, then the more I sin, the more grace there is. Isn’t that wonderful?

Paul says, God forbid. That’s not how any of this works. like the old lady from the Geico commercials.

That’s not how any of this works. So Paul has written on this subject throughout his letters, not just in Romans. God’s grace is not an excuse to continue in sin.

And Paul’s writings point us clearly toward obedience to the Lord. Paul does write about grace, but he also talks about obedience. Our default setting should be to walk in obedience, and the grace is there for when we fall short.

But if we’ve decided to walk continually forever and ever in disobedience because we can, it’s a sign that something is not right here in the heart. And he refers here to these things that are hard to understand. Overall, Paul’s letters point us clearly toward obedience, but there are some things in Paul’s letters that are hard to understand.

Peter even says that. Anybody who tells you the Bible is never difficult to understand, I don’t know where they’re coming from on that. I don’t want to say they’re lying to you, but they’re confused at the very least. There are things in the Bible that are difficult to understand.

There are things that I’ve been preaching for 20 years. that sneaks up on you real fast. I’ve been pastoring for 15. And there are things that now, as I study through them to teach them again, I’ve gotten that wrong.

Thankfully, it’s not been anything that’s put anybody’s salvation in jeopardy. But I realized, wait, I misunderstood that before. I mean, there are things that are a challenge.

Peter even acknowledges that. But what these people were doing, these false teachers in their day, they were taking things that were clear in Paul’s writing, and they were ignoring them because they were taking things that were difficult to understand, and they were twisting them to try and undermine the things that were clear. It’s very dangerous, and it still happens today.

And he goes on to say in verse 16, which the untaught and unstable distort as they do the rest of scriptures. Notice that he’s referring to Paul’s letters, and he says they do it to the rest of scripture. By the time that Peter writes this near the end of his life, people had already begun to collect and circulate Paul’s letters, the ones that he had already written, the ones that we have today.

And Peter compares those to the other scriptures. He’s talked about the wisdom, writing according to the wisdom that was given to him. So we’re talking about God inspiring them.

We’re talking about the early church comparing them with the scriptures, meaning the Old Testament, and saying they are on equal ground. And that’s coming straight from the pen of Peter. He says, untaught and unstable distort as they do also the rest of scriptures to their own destruction.

So these false teachers, as I said, they ignored the clear writings because they misused the difficult writings. Why would they ignore the clear writings? Because they didn’t want to do it.

Are there things that are in the Bible that it would be easier to not have to do? That’s where we were in this whole debate over gender and leadership at the convention. Oh, well, it’s just what you want to do and you want to perpetuate.

Are you kidding? Do you know how exhausting it is to go against the stream of culture every day? Do you know how exhausting it is to swim upstream every day?

I think salmon die after they spawn because they’re worn out. My life would be so much easier if the Bible didn’t say these things and we didn’t have to worry about it. The only reason to care about any of this is because God’s Word said so.

So there reason for ignoring, and again, I don’t mean to keep harping on that issue. That’s just been the latest. And as I said at the beginning, there are numerous things that people want to take a scalpel and cut out of the scriptures. The only reason to care about any of this is because God’s word says so.

And the reason to ignore the clear teaching of what Paul said is just simply these false teachers in Peter’s day didn’t want to do it. But it wasn’t just Paul’s letters. He said they did this with the other scriptures as well.

The false teachers in Peter’s day were willing to cut and twist and distort the books of the Old Testament as well. We saw that with the Pharisees all the time. Jesus would go to bat against the Pharisees and have to correct their misunderstanding and misinterpretation of Scripture.

By the way, that word Pharisees gets thrown around a lot. The problem with the Pharisees was not that they stuck closely to the Scriptures. So if you get called a Pharisee for sticking close to the Scriptures, that’s not what that word means.

The problem with the Pharisees is that they twisted the Scriptures. They added to the Scriptures. They took away from the Scriptures.

That’s why Jesus took the Scriptures and corrected them. They did this with the other Scriptures. Peter says they endangered themselves by doing so.

Listen, there is real danger in twisting and distorting and ignoring Scripture. If I do that, it is dangerous to you because I can mislead you. If I do it, it is dangerous to me because I believe it’s the book of James who says, don’t desire many to be teachers, for ours is the greater condemnation.

We’re held to a higher standard. somebody started teaching Sunday school and ran across that verse and said what have I gotten myself into exactly that Peter’s affirmation here should be of some concern for people who try to pit Paul and Jesus against each other and say I don’t care what Paul says I just want to go by what Jesus said I just want to go by what the gospels say I love the red letters in our in our Bibles they make it easy to find the quotes of Jesus but that may have been one of the most dangerous things that’s ever happened with our Bible production and translation because there are people that act like if it’s not in red, it doesn’t count. But if you believe as we do that God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are three persons and one God, and no, I can’t explain to you how that works, I just believe it’s what the Bible teaches.

The Holy Spirit, excuse me, inspired the black words just like the rest of it. And so if Paul, speaking by the Holy Spirit, said it, then Jesus may as well have said it. And again, my intent in this this morning is not to attack anybody.

It may sound like that because these are charged issues. My intent in this is for us to understand we can’t take Scripture and pit it against Scripture and act like Jesus and Paul are miles apart. And so we can just ignore this part over here.

He tells us, in fact, in verse 17, Therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, you know what’s happening, be on your guard so that you are not carried away by the error of unprincipled men and fall from your own steadfastness. To be on your guard, that word in Greek was used to describe when soldiers would guard a prisoner in custody. And for Roman soldiers, they were required to guard a prisoner with their lives.

They were required to guard the prisoner like their lives depended on it. We’re told to guard ourselves and what we believe and what we understand of God’s word like our lives depend on it. We have to keep a watch on ourselves to stay in the truth.

And the reason for that is because it’s easy to fall into error if we’re not deliberate about the truth. He says to be on guard so that you are not carried away because that’s what’s easy to happen. If we’re not rooting and grounding ourselves in God’s truth, if we’re not studying it for ourselves and learning it and listening to it and applying it, if we’re not doing that deliberately, we will drift by accident.

You think of a ship. What’s the default setting of a ship without its anchor down? It doesn’t stay in place by accident.

It drifts by accident. You have to purposely anchor the ship to something in order to get it to stay where it belongs. So that’s what he tells us to do with what we believe and what we understand and what we teach.

Instead of drifting, we’re supposed to walk in the truth and we’re supposed to grow accordingly in grace and knowledge. That’s why verse 18 says, But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. to Him be the glory, both now and to the day of eternity. When we walk in His truth, we bring glory to Jesus Christ. And that’s the goal of all of this, isn’t it?

Or it’s supposed to be. When we walk in His truth, we will grow. When we’re ingesting His truth and we’re learning it and we’re making it part of us, we will grow in grace and knowledge, as He says.

If you ever wonder, why am I not growing spiritually? Why do I feel stagnant? A good question to ask is, how much time do I spend in God’s Word?

Another good question to ask would be, what have I done with what I’ve learned there? Because it’s one thing to learn it, it’s another thing entirely to apply it to our lives and walk in it. But as we do that, His Word and the truth that we find in it is one of the tools that God uses to produce the change in us and to grow us and to make us more like Jesus Christ to His glory.

So that He’s glorified throughout our lives and through every generation that follows us, even to the day of eternity, as He says. And there we have why Peter says we should care about what Paul said. This idea that, well, I’m just going to follow Jesus and ignore Paul.

Paul’s letters were all about how to obey Jesus. All about how to follow him. All about how to do this in an orderly way that glorifies him.

And we don’t have the luxury of picking and choosing which commands we follow and thinking God’s going to just be okay with it. Now, to be very clear, that does not mean that every command in Scripture applies to us in the same way. Context is very important.

If you go back to Genesis and read, take your son out to the mountain, that was a command to Abraham, all right? So Benjamin, you’re safe, right? There are commands that were given to Israel.

There are commands that were given to specific people. We have to read in context. But especially when, by the way, we can also learn from each of those commands.

Even if the commands to Israel don’t apply to us directly, we can learn something about the character of God from those commands, and we can learn principles that apply to our lives. But when there are commands that are specifically given to believers and to the churches, we don’t get to just look at it and say, well, I like that and I don’t want that. You know, it’s not Burger King.

When I was a kid, I loved Burger King. I hated McDonald’s because you had to get the onions and the cheese and whatever on your burger back then. Then Burger King came along and you could have whatever you wanted.

Could pick this and that. We don’t have the luxury of saying, well, God, I’m going to follow the red letter words, you know, if it’s in 1 Corinthians, there’s a good chance it applies to us, and we’ve got to take it seriously. And the reason why this matters, even though we deal with, we’re dealing with secondary issues a lot of the time, Peter addresses the fact that people were distorting Paul’s teaching so they could do whatever they wanted, meaning this idea that I can sin as much as I want, and God will just be okay with it, and grace will abound, and they were using Paul’s teachings as an excuse to sin.

And that became dangerous. They were denying through their lifestyle, through their choices, they were denying the change that Jesus had supposedly made in them. They were denying the part of the gospel where he makes us new as a result.

Now I’m not talking about works and fixing yourself and straightening up your own life. I’m talking about once you acknowledge that you’ve sinned and you’re not right with God and you need to trust Christ as your one and only Savior, and then you ask for that forgiveness, He then begins to change you. He saves you and He forgives you, but then He does what the Bible calls sanctification.

He makes us holy. He does that. But they were denying that implication of the gospel.

And when we deny the gospel in our behavior, we will eventually pervert the gospel in our teaching. When we start to twist the scriptures and say, it’s fine, live however you want. God’s cool with that.

When we start to ignore those inconvenient parts of scripture. Eventually it’s going to reflect our teaching on greater things. And the gospel truth is simple, but it’s easy to get off track with it.

It’s easy to distort it and pervert it. And we need to be faithful in little things that we teach and practice so that we’ll be faithful in the big things. And the gospel is very simple.

We’ve sinned against a holy God and our sin separates us from him. There’s nothing that you or I could ever do to fix that relationship. There’s no amount of good that we could ever do to earn back what we had thrown away.

Jesus Christ, God the Son, came to earth in human flesh to live a perfect sinless life and go to the cross not to take responsibility for anything he had done wrong, but to take responsibility for my sins and for yours, and to shed his blood and to die, paying the full penalty and bearing the entire punishment. He was buried, and three days later he rose again proving that he could do what he said he would do. And now God offers forgiveness, a relationship with him, eternal life, and a change of heart if we’ll simply believe what Jesus did and ask God for that forgiveness.

The gospel is very simple, but we have to watch what we believe and teach in little things in order to stay faithful in the big things like the gospel.