Helping Others Understand
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Please turn in your bibles for our Key Scripture or, if you wish, you may read along with me on the overhead.
Key Scripture: 2 Peter 3:15a Remember, the Lord is waiting so that people have time to be saved. (NLT)
Hold your place in 2 Peter; we will be coming back there in a moment.
In 459BC Ezra the Scribe, led a group of about 5,000 Jewish exiles from
In 446BC Nehemiah joined Ezra in
The beginning of the seventh month, coinciding with the Jewish New Year, Ezra is asked to bring the word of God to all the people who have gathered in a public place, both men and women, all who were old enough to understand.
Nehemiah 8 Ezra the scribe stood upon a pulpit of wood, which they had made for that purpose, and opened the book in the sight of all the people and read from the morning until midday and the people paid attention to the Word of God. (vs. 4,5&3)
All Ezra did was read. He stood on a pulpit and read from the Word of God while the people listened.
We are told in verses 6, 7 & 8, that the people responded by:
· Answering Amen
· Lifting Up Their Hands
· Bowing Their Heads
· Worshipping The Lord
Afterwards the message became the topic of the day in that leaders among the people took it upon themselves to make sure all the people understood what the Word of God meant and how it applied to daily life.
Nehemiah 8:8b they clearly explained the meaning of what was being read, helping the people understand each passage. (NLT)
In light of this example, I would like to offer you a similar experience this morning.
I have long believed that there is no substitute for the simple reading of an accurate and understandable translation of God’s Word. No preacher, and certainly not me, has the ability to say it any better than it has already been said by those who said it in the first place.
I have chosen the book of 2 Peter to read this morning. It is a short and simple letter meant to be read in one sitting. It is the inspired Word of Almighty God to His Children.
Your part will be to play the part of the attentive congregation listening to the reading of God’s Word and to, when appropriate to you:
· Say Amen In Agreement
· Lift Your Hands As A Witness
· Bow Your Heads In Contemplation
· Worship The Lord In Amazement
· At The End Of Each Chapter, Discuss The Scriptures We Read, Clearly Explain In Efforts To Help Everyone Understand Each Passage. Be Ready!
Now let’s get back to 2 Peter, remember … The Lord is waiting so that people have time to be saved.
2 Peter NLT
Chapter 1
1 ¶ This letter is from Simon Peter, a slave and apostle of Jesus Christ. I am writing to all of you who share the same precious faith we have, faith given to us by Jesus Christ, our God and Savior, who makes us right with God.
2 May God bless you with his special favor and wonderful peace as you come to know Jesus, our God and Lord, better and better.
3 As we know Jesus better, his divine power gives us everything we need for living a godly life. He has called us to receive his own glory and goodness!
4 And by that same mighty power, he has given us all of his rich and wonderful promises. He has promised that you will escape the decadence all around you caused by evil desires and that you will share in his divine nature.
5 ¶ So make every effort to apply the benefits of these promises to your life. Then your faith will produce a life of moral excellence. A life of moral excellence leads to knowing God better.
6 Knowing God leads to self-control. Self-control leads to patient endurance, and patient endurance leads to godliness.
7 Godliness leads to love for other Christians, and finally you will grow to have genuine love for everyone.
8 The more you grow like this, the more you will become productive and useful in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
9 But those who fail to develop these virtues are blind or, at least, very shortsighted. They have already forgotten that God has cleansed them from their old life of sin.
10 So, dear brothers and sisters, work hard to prove that you really are among those God has called and chosen. Doing this, you will never stumble or fall away.
11 And God will open wide the gates of heaven for you to enter into the eternal Kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
12 ¶ I plan to keep on reminding you of these things—even though you already know them and are standing firm in the truth.
13 Yes, I believe I should keep on reminding you of these things as long as I live.
14 But the Lord Jesus Christ has shown me that my days here on earth are numbered and I am soon to die.
15 So I will work hard to make these things clear to you. I want you to remember them long after I am gone.
16 ¶ For we were not making up clever stories when we told you about the power of our Lord Jesus Christ and his coming again. We have seen his majestic splendor with our own eyes.
17 And he received honor and glory from God the Father when God’s glorious, majestic voice called down from heaven, "This is my beloved Son; I am fully pleased with him."
18 We ourselves heard the voice when we were there with him on the holy mountain.
19 ¶ Because of that, we have even greater confidence in the message proclaimed by the prophets. Pay close attention to what they wrote, for their words are like a light shining in a dark place—until the day Christ appears and his brilliant light shines in your hearts.
20 Above all, you must understand that no prophecy in Scripture ever came from the prophets themselves
21 or because they wanted to prophesy. It was the Holy Spirit who moved the prophets to speak from God.
Now, what have you heard so far? Take a moment and tell someone
Chapter 2
1 ¶ But there were also false prophets in
2 Many will follow their evil teaching and shameful immorality. And because of them, Christ and his true way will be slandered.
3 ¶ In their greed they will make up clever lies to get hold of your money. But God condemned them long ago, and their destruction is on the way.
4 For God did not spare even the angels when they sinned; he threw them into hell, in gloomy caves and darkness until the judgment day.
5 And God did not spare the ancient world—except for Noah and his family of seven. Noah warned the world of God’s righteous judgment. Then God destroyed the whole world of ungodly people with a vast flood.
6 Later, he turned the cities of
7 ¶ But at the same time, God rescued Lot out of
8 Yes, he was a righteous man who was distressed by the wickedness he saw and heard day after day.
9 So you see, the Lord knows how to rescue godly people from their trials, even while punishing the wicked right up until the day of judgment.
10 ¶ He is especially hard on those who follow their own evil, lustful desires and who despise authority. These people are proud and arrogant, daring even to scoff at the glorious ones without so much as trembling.
11 But the angels, even though they are far greater in power and strength than these false teachers, never speak out disrespectfully against the glorious ones.
12 These false teachers are like unthinking animals, creatures of instinct, who are born to be caught and killed. They laugh at the terrifying powers they know so little about, and they will be destroyed along with them.
13 Their destruction is their reward for the harm they have done. They love to indulge in evil pleasures in broad daylight. They are a disgrace and a stain among you. They revel in deceitfulness while they feast with you.
14 They commit adultery with their eyes, and their lust is never satisfied. They make a game of luring unstable people into sin. They train themselves to be greedy; they are doomed and cursed.
15 They have wandered off the right road and followed the way of Balaam son of Beor, who loved to earn money by doing wrong.
16 But Balaam was stopped from his mad course when his donkey rebuked him with a human voice.
17 These people are as useless as dried-up springs of water or as clouds blown away by the wind—promising much and delivering nothing. They are doomed to blackest darkness.
18 They brag about themselves with empty, foolish boasting. With lustful desire as their bait, they lure back into sin those who have just escaped from such wicked living.
19 They promise freedom, but they themselves are slaves to sin and corruption. For you are a slave to whatever controls you.
20 And when people escape from the wicked ways of the world by learning about our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and then get tangled up with sin and become its slave again, they are worse off than before.
21 It would be better if they had never known the right way to live than to know it and then reject the holy commandments that were given to them.
22 They make these proverbs come true: "A dog returns to its vomit," and "A washed pig returns to the mud."
Ok. What did you hear in Chapter 2? Explain it to someone now.
Chapter 3
1 ¶ This is my second letter to you, dear friends, and in both of them I have tried to stimulate your wholesome thinking and refresh your memory.
2 I want you to remember and understand what the holy prophets said long ago and what our Lord and Savior commanded through your apostles.
3 ¶ First, I want to remind you that in the last days there will be scoffers who will laugh at the truth and do every evil thing they desire.
4 This will be their argument: "Jesus promised to come back, did he? Then where is he? Why, as far back as anyone can remember, everything has remained exactly the same since the world was first created."
5 They deliberately forget that God made the heavens by the word of his command, and he brought the earth up from the water and surrounded it with water.
6 Then he used the water to destroy the world with a mighty flood.
7 And God has also commanded that the heavens and the earth will be consumed by fire on the day of judgment, when ungodly people will perish.
8 ¶ But you must not forget, dear friends, that a day is like a thousand years to the Lord, and a thousand years is like a day.
9 ¶ The Lord isn’t really being slow about his promise to return, as some people think. No, he is being patient for your sake. He does not want anyone to perish, so he is giving more time for everyone to repent.
10 But the day of the Lord will come as unexpectedly as a thief. Then the heavens will pass away with a terrible noise, and everything in them will disappear in fire, and the earth and everything on it will be exposed to judgment.
11 ¶ Since everything around us is going to melt away, what holy, godly lives you should be living!
12 You should look forward to that day and hurry it along—the day when God will set the heavens on fire and the elements will melt away in the flames.
13 But we are looking forward to the new heavens and new earth he has promised, a world where everyone is right with God.
14 And so, dear friends, while you are waiting for these things to happen, make every effort to live a pure and blameless life. And be at peace with God.
15 And remember, the Lord is waiting so that people have time to be saved. This is just as our beloved brother Paul wrote to you with the wisdom God gave him—
16 speaking of these things in all of his letters. Some of his comments are hard to understand, and those who are ignorant and unstable have twisted his letters around to mean something quite different from what he meant, just as they do the other parts of Scripture—and the result is disaster for them.
17 I am warning you ahead of time, dear friends, so that you can watch out and not be carried away by the errors of these wicked people. I don’t want you to lose your own secure footing.
18 But grow in the special favor and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be all glory and honor, both now and forevermore. Amen.
Ok, once again, what is Peter talking about? Make sure each person around you understands.
May God add a blessing to the reading of His Word.
