All right, we'll go ahead and
get back here. I'm glad I wasn't recording when
I said that just a second ago. All right, turn with me if you
would to, if you're still back in the back of the book, 2 Peter.
2 Peter 3.18. Was that on whenever I said that? Okay. 2 Peter. What's another
relationship that the child of grace has with grace or that
grace has with them? 2 Peter 3. Verse 18, but grow in grace and
in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. To
Him be glory both now and forever. Amen. But grow in grace and in
the knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Peter gives
us an admonition and an encouragement here to grow in grace and in
the knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. That's something I was studying
this week, and I posted, I think it was yesterday, this verse. Put your finger there, because
we want to come back to 1 Peter here in a minute. Turn with me
over to Mark chapter 4. I mentioned last week about how
sad it's been to see brothers tearing each other apart over
things, not considering each other, ridiculing, calling each other
stupid and ignorant and all these things, or just Instead of going to them and
talking to them about things that they might have a disagreement,
they're just lambasting them all over the world to everybody,
online or YouTube or wherever the case might be. And how patient
that we should be, with each other because it is
God who teaches and it is God who gives us the grace to grow
and to know. See, without grace, we can't
grow and we can't know. And that's kind of the point
of 2 Peter 3. grow in grace and knowledge of
Jesus Christ. We need that grace. And Jesus set down a principle whenever
He was speaking about the parables of the kingdom. And if you look
with me in Mark 4, and go down to verse 26, And He said, so is the kingdom
of God as if a man should cast seed into the ground and should
sleep and rise night and day, and the seed should spring and
grow up, he knoweth not how. For the earth bringeth forth
fruit of herself, first the blade, then the ear, After that, the
full corn in the ear, but when the fruit is brought forth immediately,
he putteth in the sickle, because the harvest is come." Now this
is a principle Jesus was laying out about how things work in
the Kingdom of God. The child of grace is like that
seed that's been cast. As a matter of fact, in other
places, Jesus said that He has cast good seed and bad seed into
the world, okay? But He's casted this seed, and
the seed begins to sprout, right? And if any of y'all have ever
watched, I remember whenever I was a little kid in school,
we used to put a seed down in a little cup, and put some dirt
in there and we put that seed in there and we'd water it and
we'd put our names on the cup and sit it in the window sill
there at school and every day we'd come in and check on it
and each day you'd come in, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing and
all of a sudden you'd come in one day and you see the dirt's broken
forth and here's this little blade that's shot up And then
after a little while that blade comes up and then there is a
stem and then a little whatever it is that you've planted, bud
it out and then whenever it's full grown then it's all there
and you can pick it and now you've got it, okay? Jesus is using
that illustration here as it is of the children of grace.
They are planted into this world And sometimes it don't look like
anything is happening. Night after night after night,
you wake up, and then all of a sudden, the earth brings forth
fruit, it says, of herself. The grace of God, the purpose
of God, the work of God, the salvation of God, whatever you
want to term to this, brings forth fruit. God brings forth
fruit to Himself. He's the sower. We're the seed. He's planted us into the world.
And just like that seed, night after night, he may look and
doesn't see nothing. But then comes the blade. Just a little sprout. And then
it grows and grows and then it brings forth the year. Now, if
you've ever seen corn grow, you see that that's kind of what
he's talking about here. And then whenever it's fully grown,
then you see the full corn, everything is there. Then at that point,
what happens? The harvest time comes up. So
in every believer's life, there is this principle. There will
be a time of ignorance and unmoving, unknowing, nothing there. Dormant. But all of a sudden,
there'll be this little spring of blade show forth. When quickening
takes place, this little blade comes forth. And then there might
be a little ear that begins to pop out. Brethren, that's how
it is with all of us. And we need to remind ourselves
that we can't hurry that along. That the earth is bringing forth
fruit unto herself. God's bringing forth fruit unto
Himself. He's determining how fast that
blade pops out, how fast that ear forms, and then how fast
that full corn comes to fruition. And so in the Christian's life,
we see that there are periods of time as we grow in the grace
and the knowledge of our Lord and Savior, we first are very Childlike. We don't know. We
don't have a lot of understanding. We just have a little bit there.
But grace is there giving us everything we need for what we
understand at that time and has given us the understanding that
we have at that time. And see if I come down and I
injure that person at that state, that could be very detrimental
to them. That don't mean it's going to stop what God's doing,
but it's very detrimental. I can wound that. If you go to
a plant that's just fixing to shoot up and expect, well, you
know, it's maybe curving over this way and you think it should
be straight up and you go over and bend it up, you might break
it off. You know, you have to slowly, you know, trees that
grow, sometimes you have to put little wires on there and you
got to slowly tug it and let it grow. And so we ought to be
like that with each other. So not only should we realize
that we're all growing by grace in the knowledge of Jesus Christ,
but so are your brothers and sisters in Christ. and to not
expect that you may have a full ear of corn coming to fruition
and they may just be the little blade that just broke up out
of the ground. Now, what happens at the end? Well, it continues this development
process. It continues this growth process
until when? Until the harvest, right? The
child of grace continues this process of growing in grace and
knowledge of Jesus Christ until the harvest. Well, when is that? Well, some said it was last week,
September the 23rd. Whenever Jesus comes again or
until you go to be with Him, one or the other, that's when
that process is going to go. So what does that tell us? That
tells us that from birth until death or when Jesus comes back
again, that it is God who is governing the growth and grace
and knowledge of Him, of each one of His people. It's not the
preacher that's making them grow faster. It's not the mom or daddy
that's making them grow faster. It's not the hard-nosed theologian
debater on Facebook who can take down any foe that comes against
him and his theology and ideology, idiotology most likely. No, that's
not the one who's going to make you grow faster. That doesn't
mean that God doesn't use people in our growth, but you're not
going to hurry that along. I can sit and yell at a plant
in Lori's planter out on our front porch. I can yell at that.
I can just dump tons of fertilizer on that. You know what it's going
to do? It's going to kill it. I can, instead of sprinkling a little
bit of that, whatever that is, Miracle-Gro that she uses, instead
of sprinkling a little bit of that on there, I can just dump
the whole bottle on there and say, there, that'll get it to
come up faster. And what's it going to do? It's going to kill
it. Oh, it takes water? Okay, well, I'm just going to
leave the water running on it, never let up. What's it going to do?
It's going to drown the plant. Oh, it needs sun? Well, let me
put it out here in the sun. Going to burn it up? No, it takes
a little water, a little sun, a little fertilizer, a little
pruning. It takes those things. And so,
grace is all about that in the child of grace. a little water,
a little pruning, a little sunshine, a little heat, those things. So we need to keep mindful of
that. So grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord and Savior
Jesus Christ. Any thoughts on any of that? All right. One Peter, if you held your place
back there. I failed to hold my place. Let
me go back here. Chapter 3, verse 7 says, Likewise, ye husbands
I tell you what, we better back up so everybody kind of knows
what we're talking about here. Let's go back to verse one and
read down, get the context. Likewise, you wives be in subjection
to your own husbands, that if any obey not the word, they also
may without the word be won by the conversation of the wives.
While they behold your chaste conversation coupled with fear.
Man, I'm in trouble. whose adorning, let it not be
that outward adorning of plating the hair, or of wearing of gold,
or of putting on of apparel, but let it be the hidden manner
of the heart, in that which is not corruptible, even the ornament
of the meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God
of great price. For after this manner, in the
old time, the holy women also who trusted in God adorned themselves
being in subjection unto their own husbands, even as Sarah obeyed
Abraham, calling him Lord, whose daughters ye are, as long as
ye do well, and not afraid with any amazement. Likewise, ye husbands,
dwell with them according to knowledge, giving honor unto
the wife as unto the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of
the grace of life, that your prayers be not hindered." So,
now I won't go into all the other stuff about husbands and wives
there, but here we see that one of the relationships between
the believer and grace is that we are heirs of that grace, that
we have inherited that grace. And we've inherited that grace
because we are... How does someone become an inheritant
of something? An inheritor. Is it an inheritant
or an inheritor? How does someone become a recipient
of someone's inheritance? Well, the normal, natural way
is by being the child, the offspring, the family member, right? The
Bible says that we are children of God. that we are heirs according
to the promise of God. The Bible says that we are the
sons of God. And so we see that this is what
this is speaking of. We are heirs together of the
grace of life. The fact that we've been given
life. Now, it's another grace, and I'll just say this in response
to the husband and wife issue that's going on here. To have
a husband or a wife that also is a child of grace and loves
and believes the gospel is also a work of grace. For God to give
us that, because not everybody has that. Not everybody has a
believing husband or a believing wife. Or they may have one who
is a professor of religion, but not a professor of the gospel
of grace. And so, that is an inheritance
that we receive in this lifetime, is that life. Alright, one more here and I
think we'll adjourn for the day. Turn with me back to Ephesians. Unless any of the other brothers
have anything to say, I always want to give opportunity for
that. Ephesians chapter 4. The other thing that the believers
have or a relationship that we can have to grace is, and this
kind of goes back to the blade and the ear thing a little bit
as well, but how we talk amongst ourselves, how we talk about
each other, how we talk before other people. It says, verse
29, it says, let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth but
that which is good to the use of edifying. And I know a lot
of people say that, well, you know, running down that guy or
that guy over here is edifying to those who need to know that
that guy is wrong, you know. And I'm pointing this a lot towards
me because I have a lot to learn in this regards. Let no corrupt
communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is
good to the use of edifying. What's the old adage that we
say, if you ain't got nothing good to say, don't say it at
all kind of attitude? He says, that it may, that what
may? that the speaking of things to
the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers." Now, I don't just think the use
of edifying is in view there, but both those things, the positive
and the negative. The not speaking corrupt things
is also ministering grace unto the hearer, and the saying of
edifying things is ministering grace to the hearer. How is that
true? We all know that we have our
quirks, right? One thing may be quirkier to
me than it is to you. You may not find something to
be quirky at all, but to me it's quirky. And I think that it bothers
me. and it may not bother you at
all. But yet if I find a brother or sister that is doing that
quirky thing that bothers me, There may be a brother and sister
that may not have a problem with that brother or sister. And they
have a good relationship, a good rapport, a good fellowship together. But the introduction of my quirkiness
to everybody may then begin to cause that person to think different
about the other. If their conscience hasn't bothered
them about that person's quirkiness, then let it ride. And keep that
between you and them. So me not revealing something
about somebody else may be to the edification of that person,
to the building up of that person. Now, again, I'm not disregarding
error, okay? Error has to be confronted. Error
has to be rebuked, corrected, talked about. I'm talking about
flaws that we all have. We all have them. We all know
what they are. We all deal with them. Matter
of fact, we can tell each other, you know, hey, I have a problem
with this. I know that. I'm working on that, you know.
Although I can work all day long, unless God gives me grace, I'm
going to keep on working. But then on the positive side,
if I speak only those good things, I remember the story, and I think
I've told you this here before, of the guy over here in the picture,
that he kind of irritated a lot of the people in the church,
which was weird, because They were, it bothered them because
this guy never said anything negative about anybody. Now,
to me that would be a good, that would be a good quality to have,
right? I mean, you think we would praise
somebody for, man, that guy, he never says anything bad about
anybody. But this guy never says anything, said anything bad about,
but always tried to find the positive or something positive
to say about somebody. And when anybody would ever try
to come to him and talk behind somebody's back about one person
or another, he wouldn't entertain that, but would always say something
positive about that person. And everything. Well, there happened to be a
guy in town, that the whole town really didn't like. I mean, he
was a cankerous person. He had attended, he had come
to the church and visited, and my grandpa went and visited him
many, many times and everything, and he just didn't want to have
nothing to do with anything. And I mean, he was a cantaker,
and really nobody in town liked him. And the guy passed away,
and they were all at the funeral. And one of the persons said,
well, you know, let's ask brother so-and-so what he thinks about
old so-and-so, because nobody had anything good to say about
him. So he obviously ain't going to be able to say nothing. And
he said, you know, well, what did you think about old so-and-so?
And he said, boy, that guy sure could whistle good. You know, I think we could use
a little bit more of that, especially in our churches. We could use
a lot of that, being mindful of the fact that our words can
become corrupt in our communication and that we can tear down another,
not just the brother that we may be talking about, but our
speech could tear down one who's listening. And that we should
only speak those things, which is the use of edifying, because
the Bible says, it will minister grace unto the hearers. So one of the relations that
we have with grace is that grace can enable us to have profitable
or good speech from our mouths. We'll stop right there, brothers
and sisters. And we'll look at a couple of
things, Lord willing, next week. And I think we may be done with
this unless the Lord places a couple more things on my heart. Anybody
got anything? Any of you brothers have any
words that you'd like to share? Any comments about anything that
was said today? Anything the Lord has laid on
your heart? Alright.