2 PETER Men's Bible Study
Soundcloud Audio from 2 PETER Men's Bible Study
(JANUARY 7th, 2014 to JANUARY 28th, 2014)
Notes from Men's Bible Study on 2 PETER
DATE: 2014-01-07
SCRIPTURES USED: 2 Peter 1:1-11
SPEAKERS:
- Richard Eutsler, Sr.
- Steven Atherton
- Paul Muller
- Charles Hocker
- Richard Eutsler, Jr.
2 PETER 1:1-11 NOTES
- Peter, a servant – referring to the fact that he has given up his life for Jesus Christ
- Apostle – his position
- Us – means Peter and the other Apostles
- We can attain like precious faith as Peter and the other Apostles
- Can never be satisfied or complacent – always pressing forward – it is not comfortable for anyone.
- How can you go for a target if you cannot see it. Once you see it then you can get there because “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me” Philippians 4: 13. All of us can get there.
- If you believe that God sent Jesus Christ his only son to this earth born of a virgin, that he lived and then died for your sins and if you believe that God has raised him from the dead and that his blood is sufficient to wash away your sins and reconcile us to him – if you believe that and are seeking to obtain like precious faith – you already have it. Maybe not as much as Peter, but you have it.
- Grace – covers sin, Peace – no longer at war with God (not the U.N., not those who try to bring peace between people but rather people)
- The more knowledge you have the more grace and peace are multiplied to you
- Knowledge – precise and correct knowledge of God– God wants us to know him – and when we receive it we can then minister it to others
- Promises given unto the Apostles aren’t for them, they are for others
- Glory – the same glory God gave unto Jesus, Jesus gave unto his Apostles
- Virtue – power
- Lust – covetousness
- Now you can serve him and walk in his divine nature – the same works he did you can do too. The only limiting factor is your faith
- You can go from the lowest private up – it takes faith, humility and obedience to do it
- We are to give all diligence to add to our faith:
- Virtue – taking your place in the body of Christ and walking in it
- Knowledge – being aware of what is going on around you, correctly perceiving and understanding what is going on in the battle – then you can act in accordance with that knowledge
- Temperance – no longer moved by flesh but moved by the Spirit of God – don’t fly off the handle
- Patience – steadfast and constant in the faith – mustard seed faith that knows there is a sun and it knows it is going to break through
- Godliness – to know mercy and rightly minister it to others
- Brotherly kindness – the kind of familial love we are supposed to have – ministering unto one another, fellowship with one another, loving one another, a recognition of being accepted. Mindful of another and their weaknesses and strengths
- Charity – the agape love of God, it is the bond of perfectness, that which seals us in Him. We are to become the embodiment of God’s love.
- Just because you go to church does not make you part of the body. Must abide in the vine, need to be connected, partaking of the ‘sap’ of the vine.
- If you feel you are on the outside, not welcome, etc. the problem is with you, not with others. You can belong. It is like the seat is set at the table, you just have to go in and take the seat.
- Barren – idle, slow, lazy, shun labor which we ought to perform – obedience a key as to how this works
- He that lacketh – key is knowledge – not going to be able to see things
- Forgotten that you were purged from old sins – being overtaken by your own badness and think God cannot use you. Get shed of this. The blood of Jesus Christ is sufficient for all these things. Go forward in His grace.
- Rather – give diligence to make our calling and election sure – it requires diligence (His calling is not to be a pew warmer)
- Never fall – never fall from grace and it is by grace that we are saved.
- If you do these things an entrance will be ministered unto you – now you can take your place in Him. If you can do it here you can do it there forever. You can be in a place of rest at the same time.
DATE: 2014-01-14
SCRIPTURES USED: 2 Peter 1:12-21 and Matthew 17:5
SPEAKERS:
- Richard Eutsler, Sr.
- Steven Atherton
- Paul Muller
- Charles Hocker
2 PETER 1:12-21 & MATTHEW 17:5 NOTES
- If you want to walk and know you are going to heaven, you have to do verses 1-11.
- Like precious faith – believing in the sufficiency of His blood.
- Flee (your soul and spirit) into the Body of Jesus Christ.
- You have to stay in His body continually knowing your flesh is under the curse.
- Grace and peace are multiplied in accordance with a proper knowledge of Jesus Christ.
- Doesn’t mean you are not going to fall but you are not going to fall from grace.
- Good to bring back to remembrance, it is easy to fall from grace.
- When connected to the vine you are a partaker of its sap (blood of Jesus). When you are not connected to the vine, you are not a partaker of its sap and you die.
- Only way to partake of the blood of Jesus is to be a part of the body of Jesus. We have to have faith on his terms, come under the line of authority, then stand and walk in it.
- No way to receive Christ and reject his Apostles, or his prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers.
- When God shows you something it is not because you are special. Very easy to forget who you are after the natural. You receive things by His grace so you can take them and freely share with others.
- It is also easy to forget what He has shown you.
- You need to know who you are in the natural and put it off. You need to know who you are in Christ, then all the glory goes to Him. Jesus himself did this, he did not claim a single work of himself.
- Peter is not going to neglect his duty to keep others in remembrance of these things.
- It is critical – important to never forget and hopefully pass on to others.
- People see things, even in churches, as fables – not being literally true, just good moral lessons.
- God’s Word has never changed. People think it has. They write different words claiming they are The Word. People run to these false words.
- Reference to the transfiguration, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him.” (Matt 17: 5).
- More sure word of prophecy – the Word of God (Bible). It has nothing to do with men but everything to do with the Holy Ghost who moved them.
- Written Word the most sure thing. So it is important to know which Word it is.
- Before we know Christ our hearts are full of darkness, not light. When you understand who you are, by nature, and know who God is, by nature, you want to take on His nature. This happens when you accept Christ.
- If you choose the Lord, choose to serve him, now you can partake of the Word, give up your former way and take on His way.
- Christian means ‘Christ like’. How can you take that name and not go forward, study His Word to show yourself approved, taking on His divine nature?
- Studying the Word is profitable to you and to others. How can the Word be in you if you haven’t read it? If it is in you then He can bring it back to your remembrance in context and now you can use it and apply it.
- You are going to struggle with it but God is bigger than that struggle. He will withhold nothing if you will step out. We need to know His purpose in writing the Word.
- God says a thing, the first thing people try to do is change it. What makes us think we know better than God as to what He wants to say?
- We change it because of pride. It is actually quite simple if you will hear the Word and do it. People interpret everything instead of just hearing what is said and accepting it. You have to have faith as a little child, hear it and accept it, then you can be raised up in the truth. This is why He says he reveals it to babes.
DATE: 2014-01-21
SCRIPTURES USED:
SPEAKERS:
- Richard Eutsler, Sr.
- Steven Atherton
- Paul Muller
- Charles Hocker
- Richard Eutsler, Jr.
2 PETER 2 NOTES
- Even then there were false prophets – in just the same way we see them in the Old Testament you will see them now.
- How do they come in privily – they come in the name of Jesus but lack the credentials of the Holy Spirit. They have wordly credentials.
- Denying the Lord that bought them – denying what he did. Referring to the concision. You have to walk, eat, dress, etc. a certain way to be worthy. This is denying the Lord who bought them.
- Damnable heresies – read The Vision of Two Revivals (http://www.thefishermenministry.net/teachings/a-vision-of-two-revivals/) it lays out many of them.
- Roman Catholic church – one of the tools they have used so powerfully for centuries is the doctrine that Christ only died for original sin. The rest you have to pay for in purgatory. But you can pay them to do a mass or do something they decide for you to do to buy forgiveness or a shorter time in purgatory.
- Bring upon themselves swift destruction – when it comes it is going to come swiftly. When the true men of God confront them, judgment comes swiftly.
- The majority of people are going to follow their pernicious ways which lead into Hell fire. They speak evil of the true followers of the Lord.
- Boils down to those who follow the law are accepted, those who don’t are evil spoken of.
- Result – those in the highways and byways see a false Gospel and want nothing to do with it
- Covetous – making merchandise of you. Examples: doctrine of purgatory, the selling of books, saying if you don’t tithe to me you’re going to hell.
- Feigned words – well crafted to deceive. Politicians are a good example of this.
- Old Testament examples of what God does with these people: example of the angels who left heaven and took the women of the earth, this after seeing what happened to Lucifer when he fell. They are reserved in chains for judgment. Noah, the 8th person from Adam, a preacher of righteousness. Because the people rejected Noah’s preaching God was righteous to bring judgment on them. Sodom & Gomorrah, they not only had the preaching of Lot but also the testimony of Abraham rescuing them from the kings who had taken them captive. They still refused to turn, continued in their filthy conversation (way of life), they acknowledged no restraint at all, not ashamed, did it out in the open. God was righteous to destroy them.
- The Lord knoweth how to deliver the righteous – you see it in each of these examples.
- Having both out there, the true followers of Christ and those who bring in damnable heresies, gives people a chance to choose.
- God is going to punish the unjust. The time to repent is now.
- Despise government – this is referring to God’s government, his line of authority, these are the dignities spoken of here also, God’s Apostles and prophets, those who occupy the highest places in God’s kingdom.
- These people love the law, not because they love God but because they love people thinking well of them.
- If you walk trying to look good you are walking after the flesh in the lust of uncleanness.
- They promise liberty though they are people completely under the curse and are not free at all. “For of whom a man is overcome, of the same is he brought in bondage.”
- Those who knew the truth and those who are beguiled by them, their latter end is worse. Jesus is the only way of righteousness. They minister the broad and wide way which leads to destruction.
- They reject the way of righteousness which is Jesus and make their own way.
DATE: 2014-01-28
SCRIPTURES USED: 2 Peter 3
SPEAKERS:
- Richard Eutsler, Sr.
- Steven Atherton
- Paul Muller
- Charles Hocker
- Richard Eutsler, Jr.
2 PETER 3 NOTES
- Stir up – awaken out of a sleep. It happens because we get complacent, take things for granted.
- Pure – free from falsehoods. You have to yield to what the Word says to get free of falsehoods.
- Mindful – at the forefront of your minds.
Of the words which were spoken by the holy prophets (Old Testament), and those which the apostles of the Lord spoke (which is the New Testament) – their words are on the same par as those of Moses, Isaiah, Jeremiah, etc. The same Spirit operating. - Shall come – a guarantee.
- Scoffers – to them the Word of God is a joke – their ideas are better than God’s.
- All things continue as they were from the beginning – basis upon which false science comes. They don’t acknowledge the flood upon the first earth, they do not put together there were two floods with a great time period between. They miss the separation of the continents took place at once, etc.
- Willingly – act of their will – they will believe anything but the Word of God.
- Out of the water and in the water – refers to the first earth.
- World that then was perished – no survivors – proves it was not the flood of Noah because they did not all perish (see Jeremiah 4: 23-26).
- The heavens and earth which are now – in contrast to the first earth. It is reserved unto fire (Revelation 20).
- One day is with the Lord as a thousand years – misunderstood. The Lord is eternal and sees across generations.
- Not slack – He is longsuffering towards us. This is an expression of His grace and mercy. Every one of us is a beneficiary of His longsuffering that we might come to a place of repentance.
- God’s conversations with Abraham shows God sees across generations.
- Day of the Lord – when the final destruction of the earth comes.
- When you look at the atom it defies all scientific law. The grace of God holds it all together. When He pulls it back everything is destroyed that we can observe, it will be all gone in an instant.
- Only thing which will remain is God himself and those that are in Him.
- When we realize not a single thing that we take so seriously will remain it ought to change our focus to things eternal and ought to cause us to get ready to meet the Lord.
- What is of value? Love, the agape love of God.
- Godliness – walking in the divine nature of God.
- You cannot do this yourself – you can only do this through Jesus Christ which strengtheneth you. All the vanity is what we do.
- If you are in Christ Jesus then by Him you can do all things.
- This is where we say, I don’t want any of me left, I want to be all about you. He is the only thing that will remain.
- New heaven and new earth – not going to find it here.
- We look according to His promise, we are pilgrims on this earth, this is not our home, we look for a new place.
- We get to practice here, amongst ourselves.
- How will they know you are my disciples indeed? By your love one for another. This is what we need to do.
- We cannot excuse ourselves and continue where we are.
- Wherefore be diligent – it takes effort on our part – we let it slip. This is where love the Lord with all your strength comes in – that is the diligence.
- Peace – your whole hope resides in the Gospel of Jesus Christ because there is nothing else you can do.
- Beloved brother Paul – Paul had been to the Jews Peter is writing to. Peter is letting these people know in no uncertain terms what Paul has written is the very Word of God – you better take heed.
- Unlearned – don’t even know what they believe, don’t have a correct understanding of the Lord Jesus Christ so are unstable.
- Wrest – turn them in all different directions to suit themselves – to their own destruction.
- This is why the need is critical for Apostolic revelation and the line of authority. Provokes to press unto the mark – they are living examples saying if I can do it you can do it.
- Beware – you too can be lost, you too can fall from your own steadfastness.
- Lord help me so that I can remain steadfast and don’t take it for granted.
- Peter knows he is going to die – that is why he is being so forceful – grow in grace.
- We need to be a blessing to others, be about others being blessed, not ourselves. Got to be that conduit blessings flow through, let your steadfastness strengthen others.