Great & Precious Promises - 2 Peter 1:4 Series

2 Peter 1:1 Simon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, To those equal to us in the faith they have received in the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ: 2 Grace and peace be yours in abundance through knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. 3 his divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and excellence. 4 Through these he has given us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become sharers in the divine nature having escaped the corruption in the world caused by coveting.

Introduction: Your Relationship with the Future

What is your relationship to the future? Most of us have a love/hate relationship with the future. We enjoy looking forward to favorable things. One of the great pleasures of life is anticipating future pleasure. The way you feel the day before your wedding or right before a great vacation or on the drive to your favorite restaurant. The Bible calls that feeling “hope,” and it’s a gift from God. It’s a gift he didn’t give the animals—the ability to enjoy future pleasure before it happens.

On the other hand, we can also suffer future pain before it happens. That’s called worry, and if you have more worry than hope, life can get pretty dark. When people commit suicide, it’s usually not just because they are in pain right now. People can handle pain right now if they have hope. But when it’s just pain as far as the eye can see, that can feel unbearable.

God didn’t give animals the ability to anticipate the future, but you’re not an animal. God has placed eternity in your heart, and so you cannot make it through life without a lifeline tethering you to future joy. Without a connection to future blessing, future pleasure, future joy, your life will crash and burn. So your relationship with the future (or with what you believe the future will be) has a huge impact on how you feel.

It also has a huge impact on your decision making. If your boss promises you a $40,000 bonus at the end of this year, you’ll probably make some different decisions than if he just said, “You’re fired.” We think and feel and make decisions and set the whole direction of our life based on what we believe the future holds.

So back to the question, right now at this point in your life, what is your relationship to the future? And a bigger question—what kind of relationship does God want you to have with the future? How does he want you to think and feel about what’s coming your way?

The aim of this study tonight is to point you to the answer to that question. And when I say it’s a big question, I don’t know if I can think of a bigger topic in Scripture based on how many statements God makes in the Bible about the future.

There’s a word for statements about the future in the Bible, and it’s not the word “prophecy.” Prophecy can be about the future or present or past. The biblical word for statements about the future is another P word—“promise.”

In English, it doesn’t count as a promise unless you say, “I promise.” But the Biblical word doesn’t mean that. It just means “to affirm something about the future.” Anytime God says anything about the future, the Bible calls that a promise. For example:

Romans 9:9 This was how the promise was stated: "At the appointed time I will return, and Sarah will have a son."

He doesn’t say, “I promise,” or “I swear by myself,” no special vow, he just says it will happen, but Paul still calls it a promise. Whenever God says anything about the future, that’s a promise.

I give you that background about the word because in our study of 2 Peter, we come today to 1:4, which says,

4 …he has given us his very great and precious promises.

He makes a point of saying the promises are very great and precious. That’s like a big, blinking red arrow in your Bible pointing at the word promises. “DON’T MISS THE MAGNIFICNECE AND IMOPRTANCE OF THE PROMSIES!” God’s promises are the lifelines that tether you to real future joy. And it’s those lifelines that will pull you along the path of God’s will for your life. The promises are the key to resisting temptation, communion with God, and every other element of the Christian life. This isn’t a verse we can just gloss over. We need to look at it carefully, so let’s start with the first two words of v.4.

The Source of the Promises: God’s Nature