Tag Archives: 2 Peter 1:1-21

November 27, 2014 Bible Study — God Has Given Us Everything We Need to Live a Godly Life

For today, One Year Bible Online links here. I want to wish everyone reading this today a Happy Thanksgiving.

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Proverbs 28:17-18

    Some of those who have committed murder will seek to escape their conscience in death. Those who attempt to convince them that their guilt is not great enough to deserve death are doing neither them or society any favors.
    Those who lead a blameless life will find that others will seek to protect them from harm. On the other hand, people will be hesitant to warn the wicked about a coming trap. The former is because people do not want to see such a person come to harm. The latter is because people are afraid to come to the attention of those who are wicked.

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Psalm 119:97-112

    Studying God’s word and following His instructions will make one knowledgeable and wise. Thinking about how we can please God and then following through by doing so will make us wiser than any of our enemies. The reason for this is that if we have enemies, either they or we (or both) are not being faithful to God. If we meditate on God’s word we will not live our life as if we are walking in darkness. Each step of our life will be clearly marked out for us.
    I would like to add here that this year I believe I have found the theme which runs through this psalm. I would like to add that my failure to identify this theme is due to my own obtuseness (and failure to have read through this psalm with any frequency before starting this blog). The theme is the benefits, wonders, and joys of studying and following God’s instructions.

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2 Peter 1:1-21

    Peter begins his second letter by telling us that God has given us everything we need to live a godly life. This does not mean that it is easy to do so. And since God has given this to us, He will give it to others. Furthermore since our ability to live a godly life is a gift from God, our doing so does not indicate that we are better than others.
    Peter does more than tell us that God has given us what we need to live a godly life. He tells us the template we need to follow in order to do so. The very first step is faith. We must then add moral excellence, or goodness, to our faith. Once we have started practicing goodness, we need to seek knowledge. As we gain knowledge we must exert self-control. Once we start to have some self-control, we must learn to patiently endure, to persevere. As we learn to persevere we must become godly, because otherwise we will become bitter. As we persevere with godliness we must learn to have mutual affection for our fellow believers. Finally, as our mutual affection for other believers matures, we are to exhibit love for everyone.
    As we develop in this way we will become ever more productive in our service to God. If we fail to develop in this manner, we are shortsighted, or perhaps even blind. There are no shortcuts to being faithful. We can not skip over goodness and knowledge to love of everyone. If we attempt to do so, we will fail to act in ways that are loving because we do not have the knowledge to do otherwise. For that matter, we cannot truly exhibit love for everyone until we have learned self-control. Yet what good is self-control if we do not know in what ways we should control ourselves? For that matter, what good does it do us to know what is right, if we do not actually act in that manner? Applying just a little bit of logic shows us that we must follow the path Peter laid out here.

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Daniel 4:1-37

    Nebuchadnezzar experienced something that happens to every person who becomes powerful and believes that their power and wealth are purely a result of their own skills and effort. When someone is filled with such hubris and pride that they fail to recognize the role which God played in their rise (even if they attribute it to chance), they will experience a great fall. If they are lucky, God will give them a second chance to honour Him for their success. However, if they fail even then to acknowledge God they will be cut down and thrown into the fire.

November 27, 2013 Bible Study — Study God’s Will To Acquire Wisdom

     I am using One Year Bible Online for my daily Bible study. For today, One Year Bible Online links here. I have found that by writing this daily blog of what I see when I read these scriptures, I get more out of them. I hope that by posting these ruminations others may get some benefit as well. In order to make that possible I read the passages and write my thoughts a day in advance. If you have any thoughts or comments regarding these verses or what I have written about them, please post them.

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Daniel 4:1-37

     Today’s passage describes Nebuchadnezzar having another dream. The dream foreshadowed Nebuchadnezzar abandoning his throne for a period of time (seven “periods of time”) and then returning to take it up. The account tells us that Nebuchadnezzar became arrogant and took credit for his success. He came to believe that he was a god and could do anything he desired. In response to this, God struck him with some form of madness so that he left human civilization and lived as a wild animal for some period of time. At the end of the time chosen by God, Nebuchadnezzar looked up to the sky and his sanity returned. When his sanity returned he praised God and acknowledged His power.
     This is a lesson for us to remember that everything we have accomplished in this life has happened according to God’s will. When we begin to believe that we are the masters of our own fate and stop humbly honoring God for the gifts He has given us, He will show us the limits to our ability.

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2 Peter 1:1-21

     Peter began his second letter by reminding us that God will give us grace and peace in proportion to our knowledge and understanding of God and Jesus Christ. He then wrote about the structure of our lives in Christ. There is an order to how we should build our relationship with God. It starts with faith in Christ and a recognition that without Him we can be nothing but slaves to sin. Once we have come to this faith, the natural reaction is to allow God to replace our sinful desires with the desire to do good (and to actually do good). Once we have received the desire and willingness to do good, we next add knowledge of God’s commands and will. It gives us no benefit to know God’s commands if we have not yet received the desire to follow them. As we are given a knowledge and understanding of God’s will for us, we begin to exercise self-control, which leads to embracing patience. As we patiently endure the trials which God sends our way we acquire godliness. Godliness expresses itself as brotherly affection for our fellow believers and as love for all we meet. As we acquire these characteristics in increasing measure we will become more effective at carrying out God’s will in this world.
     If we discover that the ministry we are involved in is unproductive and/or ineffective, we can look at this list and examine whether we are approaching some aspect in our lives in the wrong order. For example, are we seeking more knowledge before we have applied what knowledge we already have in order to do good? Or, are we attempting to express love and brotherly affection before we have learned to exercise self-control? It is never wrong to express love and brotherly affection. However, if we have not yet learned the appropriate self-control for the situation, our attempts to express those may fail and instead of love and brotherly affection we may exhibit selfish control and interference.

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Psalm 119:97-112

     The key to wisdom is studying God’s instructions. If you want to be wiser than others, meditate on God’s word. However, it is not enough to just meditate on it, you must also put it into practice. In this passage is a phrase that we must make a touchstone for our lives:

Your word is a lamp to guide my feet
and a light for my path.


As we study God’s word and apply it to our lives we will discover that it provides guidance for our path helping us to see obstacles before we trip over them and stumble. Of course we can still trip and fall if we refuse to adjust our course according to what the light of God’s word reveals to us. O Lord, give me the humility to accept the need to adjust my course according to Your will to avoid the obstacles that are before me.

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Proverbs 28:17-18

     The perverse will find themselves falling into traps of their own making.

November 27, 2012 Bible Study

     I am using One Year Bible Online for my daily Bible study. For today, One Year Bible Online links here. I have found that by writing this daily blog of what I see when I read these scriptures, I get more out of them. I hope that by posting these ruminations others may get some benefit as well. If you have any thoughts or comments regarding these verses or what I have written about them, please post them. I hope that the Spirit is moving in others through these posts as the Spirit has definitely been convicting me. I am striving to improve these devotionals, so from time to time I am going to take note of countries from which I have seen a significant number of visitors and ask how those from that country think I can improve my blog. Today I have chosen Hong Kong. If you live in Hong Kong and are visiting my site today, please tell me why you visited my site and how I could improve it. Thank you.

Magrat Stalks a Leaf

Daniel 4:1-37

     Today’s passage is about another dream that Nebuchadnezzar had that was interpreted by Daniel. When Nebuchadnezzar woke from his dream he summoned all of the wise men and magicians of his realm and described his dream to them requesting that they interpret it for him. None of them could give him an answer except for Daniel. Daniel was hesitant to interpret the dream for Nebuchadnezzar but the king insisted that Daniel tell him the meaning.
     The dream was of a large tree that soared high into the heavens such that it could be seen from the entire earth. A messenger came down from heaven and ordered that the tree be cut down and that “he” live as an animal for seven “periods of time.” Daniel told Nebuchadnezzar that he, Nebuchadnezzar, was the tree and that he would lose his power and his mental capacity and would live as an animal for seven periods of time (the passage never specifies if this is days, months, years or some other unit of time).
     The passage tells us that twelve months later, Nebuchadnezzar was on his palace roof looking out over the city of Babylon and musing on what a wonderful and powerful ruler he was when a voice spoke from heaven and he lost his mind and was driven from human company. He lived as a beast for seven periods of time. At the end of that time, he looked up to heaven and praised God. His exile ended when he recognized that God was the final arbiter of who will have power and who will be powerless, that no human effort can change the course that God has chosen. Upon recognizing these facts, Nebuchadnezzar was restored to power in his kingdom.

Magrat Watches the Bird Feeder

2 Peter 1:1-21

     I begin reading Peter’s second letter (the second of the two that we still have, I am sure that he wrote many others over the course of his life and ministry that have not been preserved). He starts off with a wish/blessing for us, but it is a conditional blessing. He expresses his desire that God give us ever increasing grace and peace, but he tells us that this will only happen as we grow in our knowledge of God and Christ.
     Peter writes that God has given us everything we need to live a godly life as a result of our coming to know Him through Jesus. In light of this fact we should make every effort to respond to God’s promises. Peter then tells us how to go about that. The starting point is faith. Then we add moral excellence, followed by knowledge. As we increase in knowledge, we need to exercise self-control. We need to exercise self-control with patient endurance. Patient endurance should be supplemented with godliness. We should add brotherly affection to our godliness and then extend brotherly affection to love for everyone. It is a progression and it all fits together. We cannot skip over parts of it and say, “Well, I have love for everyone, so I don’t need knowledge (or moral excellence, or self-control).” In addition, it is not enough to have knowledge and not love for everyone. On the other hand, it is a progression. We are not going to have moral excellence until we have faith. We are not going to grow in knowledge until we exhibit the moral excellence that we know (and so on). The more we grow in this progression, the more that God can use us to serve His purposes. If we fail to develop according to this process it indicates that we are short-sighted, or completely blind to God’s plans in this world.
     Peter reminds us that his knowledge is not that of clever stories, but of someone who actually witnessed the events of the Gospel. He goes on to tell us that the prophesies in Scripture do not derive from human understanding or initiative. The Scriptures came about when the Holy Spirit moved the prophets to convey a message from God.

Magrat Watches the Bird Feeder

Psalm 119:97-112

     The path to knowledge and wisdom is following God’s commands. If we study God’s commands AND follow them we will be wiser than our enemies. There are two pieces to this. First, following God’s commands will give us greater wisdom than those who do not follow God’s commands. Second, we will not be enemies of those who also follow God’s commands since it is a violation of God’s commands to be at odds with those who are following God’s commands. If we are faithful in following God’s commands we will be wiser than our elders who fail to do so. As we follow the Lord’s commands, we will find doing so as rewarding as we find honey to be sweet when we eat it.
     As we study God’s word and follow His instructions we will find that we do not trip over obstacles we did not see coming. We are able to prepare for troubles before they come upon us and navigate around them. We do not need to stumble in the dark with no way to plan for future events. IF we follow the commands of the Lord we will discover that we are prepared for what happens. The path He will lay out for us will take us around obstacles and troubles.

Magrat Stalks the Leaves

Proverbs 28:17-18

     Those who do evil will be hounded by enemies that exist only in their minds (although they may have real enemies as well) until the day they die. Those that are innocent will be rescued from harm as if a hand is held over them (because One is), while destruction will come without warning to those who are crooked and evil. When I read this proverb I envision an innocent walking out in front of a bus which slams on its brakes and stops just short of hitting them. Meanwhile the evil person who has been plotting to harm them is walking along behind and gets run over by the speeding car that swerves to avoid the suddenly stopped bus.