Grow in Grace
Week 3
Dean Pollard
April 21, 2024
  • Peter tells us that the reason God gives us grace is not so that we can disobey and feel like it’s ok, but so that we might be enabled to obey

2 Peter 1:3-4 His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, 4 by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises…

THE THREATENING GRACE OF GOD

  • When does God threaten?
  • What is the threat?
  • Why is it grace?

When does God threaten?

“God’s threatening grace is for when there is a threat. When there is a threat to God’s people, against God’s people. God then has a threat FOR God’s people.” —Hamlin Suh

2 Peter 2:1-3 But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction. 2 And many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of truth will be blasphemed. 3 And in their greed they will exploit you with false words. Their condemnation from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep.

2 Peter 2:1 …there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies…

Who are these false teachers?

1) They claim to be Christians

2) Pursed the passions of the flesh

2 Peter 2:14-15 They have eyes full of adultery, insatiable for sin. They entice unsteady souls. They have hearts trained in greed. Accursed children! 15 Forsaking the right way, they have gone astray.

2 Peter 2:18-19 For, speaking loud boasts of folly, they entice by sensual passions of the flesh those who are barely escaping from those who live in error. 19 They promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption. For whatever overcomes a person, to that he is enslaved.

3) Likable

WHAT IS THE THREAT?

2 Peter 2:4-6 For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment; 5 if he did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a herald of righteousness, with seven others, when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly; 6 if by turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes he condemned them to extinction, making them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly;

2 Peter 2:20-22 For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first. 21 For it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than after knowing it to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them. 22 What the true proverb says has happened to them: “The dog returns to its own vomit, and the sow, after washing herself, returns to wallow in the mire.”

1 John 2:19 (ESV): They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us.

Why is all of this grace?