Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 427
“But grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him be glory both now and forever. Amen.” 2 Peter 3:18.
BEHOLD, Beloved, our perpetual dangers. Where can we go to escape from peril? Where shall we fly to avoid temptation? If we venture into business, worldliness is there. If we retire to our homes, trials are there. One would have imagined that in the green pastures of the Word of God there would have been perfect security for God’s sheep. Surely no lion shall be there and no ravenous beast shall go up from there! Alas, it is not so. For even while we are reading the Bible we are still exposed to peril. Not that the Truth of God is dangerous, but that our corrupt hearts can find poison in the very flowers of Paradise.
Mark what our Apostle says of the writings of St. Paul, “Wherein are some things which are hard to be understood.” And mark the danger to which we are exposed, lest we, being unlearned and unstable, should wrest even the Word of God itself to our own destruction. With the Bible before our eyes, we may still commit sin—pondering over the hallowed Words of Inspiration we may receive a deadly wound from “the error of the wicked.” Even at the horns of the altar we need that God should still cover us with the shadow of His wings. It is a very pleasing reflection that our gracious Father has provided a shield by which we may be sheltered from every ill and in our text the evil of heterodoxy finds a suitable preventative.
We are in danger, lest misinterpreting Scripture we should make God say what He does not—and lest by departing from the teaching of the Holy Spirit we should wrest the letter of the Word and lose its spirit—and lest from the letter draw a meaning which may be for our soul’s ruin. How shall we escape this? Peter, speaking by the Holy Spirit, has in the words before us, pointed out our safeguard. While we search the Scriptures and grow in acquaintance with them, see to it that we grow in Divine Grace. And while we desire to know the doctrine, long above all to grow in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ—and let our study of Scripture and our growth in Divine Grace and in the knowledge of Christ still be subservient to that higher object—that we may live to bring glory both now and forever to Him who has loved us and bought us with His blood.
Let your hearts say evermore, “Amen” to the doxology of praise, so shall you be kept from all pestilent errors and you shall not fall from your own steadfastness. It appears, then, that our text is adapted to be a heavenly remedy for certain diseases to which even students of Scripture are exposed. I am persuaded it may serve also as a most blessed directory to us through the whole of the coming year.
I might divide my text, this morning, as good old Adams does. He says there are here two trumpets. One is blown from Heaven to earth—“Grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” The other sounds from earth to Heaven—“To Him be glory both now and forever.” Or I might quote him again. He says here is first a point of theology, “Grow in grace.” Secondly, a point of doxology, “To Him be glory both now and forever.”
We will take the text in the same natural divisions with other headings and notice, first, that we have here a Divine injunction, with a special direction. And secondly, a grateful doxology, with a suggestive conclusion.
I. To begin, then, at the beginning, we have here first of all, A DIVINE INJUNCTION WITH A SPECIAL DIREC-TION—“Grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”
“Grow in grace.” What is this? It must be, in the outset, implied that we have been quickened by Divine Grace, otherwise this text cannot apply to us at all. Dead things cannot grow. Only those who are alive unto God by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead have in them any power or capability of growth. The great Quickener must first implant the seeds of life, then afterwards those seeds can germinate and grow. To you, therefore, who are dead in trespasses and sins, this text has no application. You cannot grow in Divine Grace, because as yet you are under the curse of the Law and the wrath of God abides on you. Tremble, repent, believe—and may God have mercy on you!
But being alive from the dead and quickened by the Spirit of God which is in you, Beloved Brethren, you who are born again are bid to grow, for growth shall prove your life. A post planted in the earth grows not—but a tree, rooted there, increases from a sapling to a forest king. Drop a pebble into the richest soil and it will be a pebble still of the same size, but put in there the grain or the seed, and it will spring up and produce its stalk and its flower. You who are alive unto God, see to it that you grow in all the Divine Graces.
Grow in that root-grace, faith. Seek to believe the promises better than you have done. Go from that trembling faith which says, “Lord, I believe: help You my unbelief,” upward to that which staggers not at the promise, but which, like Abraham, believes that He who has promised is able also to perform. Let your faith increase in extent, believing more, the Truths of God—let it increase in firmness, getting a tighter grip of every Truth. Let it increase in constancy, not being feeble or wavering, nor always tossed about with every wind. Let your faith daily increase in simplicity, resting more fully and more entirely and more completely upon the finished work of your Lord Jesus Christ.