Turn back to 2 Peter chapter
3. 2 Peter chapter 3. I titled this,
Grow in Grace and in Knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, or
how to keep from falling from your own steadfastness. That's
what Peter says there in verse 17. Ye therefore, beloved, seeing
that you know these things, you know that the scoffers are going
to come, you know the Lord is going to return. Beware lest
ye also, being led away with the error of the wicked, fall
from your own steadfastness in Christ. But grow in grace. We are never encouraged to be
stagnant, but always to grow. Grow in grace and in knowledge
of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him be glory both
now and forever. After Peter mentions the return
of our Lord and the destruction of this world, that's going to
happen, just as sure as we are here, that's going to happen.
God's going to destroy this earth one last time. He did it once
with the flood. He saved eight people in an ark.
But this time, he's going to destroy everything that has to
do with this world. This creation is going to be
dissolved, he said. Over in Hebrews, it said it's
like an old garment that you fold up, you put it away. God's
done with it. God's done with it. There's going
to come a time when God is done with it. His purpose has been
accomplished in Christ. That eternal purpose that he
purposed in Christ before the world began, It'll come to an
end, and this will all be done here. So after saying that, telling
us that, he ends with, but grow in grace and in knowledge of
our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be glory, both now and
forever, that is throughout eternity. That's what that means. Amen. We know this. that whatever has
life grows. If it has life, it grows. We come into this world ourselves
as babes. Then we grow in body and in mind. We go from being a babe to a
young person, to an elderly person, That's how we grow. We grow mentally. We grow in
the way we think. You know, we don't think like
children no more. We don't. I want to turn over here to 1
Corinthians and read something to you in 1 Corinthians chapter
13. Paul said this, when I was a
child, I spake as a child. I understood as a child, I thought
as a child, but when I became a man, I put away childish things. You ever have anybody say to
you, I've had dad to say to me, grow up, just grow up. We are to grow up in the Lord
Jesus Christ and we are to grow up in grace and in knowledge
of Christ. In knowledge of Christ, not just
facts, but in knowing Christ. We grow in knowing Him. It's
the relationship we grow in. You know, if we have a healthy
relationship, a marriage, take a marriage. If you have a healthy
relationship in a marriage, it's one that grows together. It's
not stagnant. It grows together. That's what
makes for a healthy marriage. But the most important growth
that we could ever have is spiritual growth. It's spiritual growth. It's to grow in grace and in
knowledge and in knowing of Christ. And Peter tells us here, first
of all, what to grow in. And he says, grow in grace. This
does not mean that we grow in favor with God. You know, there
are some things we cannot grow in. We don't grow in favor with
God. Grace is what? Unmerited favor. If God has saved us in Christ,
we have God's favor. We have the fullness of God's
favor. We cannot grow in God's love.
I was reading someone, I don't remember the person's name, and
he said, as we grow in grace, we grow in God's love to us. No, we don't. God loves us with
a perfect love. He's loved us with an everlasting
love. God cannot. He cannot love me more than He
loves me. He can't do it. He loves me completely. He loves me intently. He loves
me purely. He can't love me any more than
He loves me. If God can grow in love, if God
can grow in anything, He's incomplete. You see, we grow because we're
not complete. But listen, we can't grow in
justification. We are justified in Christ. We
don't grow in that. We are justified in Him. We cannot
grow in acceptance. We are accepted in the Beloved.
I've never become more acceptable as I live out my life on this
earth. I am accepted in the Beloved. I cannot grow in righteousness.
BECAUSE MY RIGHTEOUSNESS IS THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF JESUS CHRIST.
I CAN'T GROW IN THAT. IT'S A PERFECT RIGHTEOUSNESS.
IT DOESN'T NEED GROWING. I CAN'T GROW IN THAT. I CANNOT
GROW IN ELECTION. YOU KNOW, ELECTION IS WHAT IT
IS, ISN'T IT? GOD CHOSE THE PEOPLE. A MULTITUDE OF SINNERS NO MAN
CAN NUMBER. HE DID. IF HE DIDN'T, WE'D ALL BE LOST.
Christ said, you will not come to me that you might have life.
If he doesn't draw me with cords of love, if he doesn't call me
by his grace, if he doesn't reach down and take a hold of me, if
he does not save me, I'll be lost. I don't want anything to
do with God by nature. I don't. God is too opposite
of me. He's light, I'm darkness, I love
sin, I drink iniquity like water. That's what scripture said, man
drinks iniquity like water. God's holy. He's gotta do something
for me at the cross and God do something in me in regeneration.
In order for me to come to him, in order for me to actually be
willing to come to him, for me to actually love him, to fall
in love with him. Peter, do you love me? Lord,
you know all things, you know I love you. But there was a time
he didn't. You know why Noah was in the
ark? Was it because he was better
than anybody else in his generation? He's in the ark because Noah
found grace in the eyes of the Lord. That's why he was in the
ark. And that's why you're in Christ.
If you believe in the reason you're in Christ is you found
grace in God's sight. And that's of God. It's not of
us. It's not of us. We are to grow
in grace and in knowledge of Christ. And what we are to grow
in are these. It's the gifts of the Spirit.
It's the gift of the Spirit. We're to grow in grace, in the
grace of the Spirit. Let me go through some of these.
And I believe we have to start with this. We are to grow, we
are to grow in love. If love is absent, forget everything
else. Paul said, you're nothing but a sounding brass and a tinkling
cymbal. If love is absent, that's the
reason Paul, that's the reason the Lord asked Peter, do you
love me? He didn't say, do you believe
me? He said, do you love me? You know, you can believe the
right doctrines and perish. You can honestly receive them
intellectually and believe them, but you cannot love Jesus Christ
and perish. You can't do it. That's an impossibility. The Pharisees believed God chose
them. They believed they were the chosen
people of God. They believed particular redemption. They believed
that. But our Lord said to them, you know what he said to them?
You love your father, the devil. He said, if God were your father,
we saw this here a week or two ago. If God were your father,
what'd he say? You would love me. You'd love
me. If God's your father, here's
the evidence of it. You'd love me. You'd have that
fraternal family love to Christ is what you'd have. So we are
to grow in love. We can love God more. We can
love God more. We can love one another more.
This is my commandment that you love one another as I have loved
you. Our Lord, listen, our Lord is
not jealous of us loving one another as much as we love Him.
As long as we don't love Him more. You see, we don't love
these things more, we don't love one another more than we love
Christ. But He says, as you've loved Me, so love one another
with that same love. We can grow in love to God, we
can grow in love to Christ, we can grow in love to one another. If we do not grow in the grace
of love, can we really say the Lord has saved us? Think about
that. If we do not grow in the grace
of love, one to another, to God, to Christ, Can we really say
God has saved us? Now let me read you a definition
of the love I'm talking about over here in 1 Corinthians 13. Listen, here's a definition of
love. Paul says, Though I speak with
the tongues of men and of angels, Have not love, I'm become a sounding
brass and a tinkling cymbal, and though I have the gift of
prophecy, I can tell you what's coming, I can tell you when Armageddon's
gonna happen, or this gonna happen, or whatever's gonna happen, and
understand all mysteries, and all knowledge, and though I have
all faith, so I can move mountains, and have not love, I'm nothing,
I'm nothing. And though I bestow all my goods
to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned and
have not love, it profits me nothing. Now here, listen, here's
a description of the love we can grow in. Love suffers long,
it's kind. Love envies not, love vaunteth
not itself. It's not rash, it's not puffed
up, does not behave itself unseemly, seeks not her own, is not easily
provoked, thinketh no evil that is of one another. You think
the best of one another. Rejoice is not in iniquity. You
don't rejoice in another's fall. But rejoice in the truth, bears
all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all
things. Love never fails. But where there's prophecy, it'll
fail. Where there's tongues, they'll cease. Where there's
knowledge, it'll vanish away. But love never fails. That's
the love we are to grow in. That's it. That's the love we
are to grow in. When I was putting this together and reading these
things, and looking through the scriptures, I found it to be
very convicting. I want to grow in these things,
because this is what makes us conform to the image of Christ.
The fruit of the Spirit, what we're looking at this morning,
this is what it is to be conformed to the image of Christ. We can
grow in joy. I don't expect a young convert,
a baby in Christ, to have this real joy in the Lord when trials
come. You know, when you're a baby
in Christ and you fall down, you skin your knee, what do you
do? You cry like a baby. That's what you do. But you know,
when you get older, you don't cry like a baby no more, do you?
You're not supposed to anyway. Some do, but not shouldn't. We should be more mature than
that. There are things I cried about
as a child that happened to me as I got older. I didn't cry
about it. Paul said, when I became a man,
I put away childish things. I put those things away. But
as we grow in Christ, we should grow in joy. No matter what comes
our way, we have a deep-seated joy knowing that this came from
my heavenly Father. His hand is in this. All things
are of God. I don't see how His hand is in
this, but it's in this, whatever it is. He doesn't let anything
come our way that's not for our good. And in that, we find real
joy in the Lord Jesus Christ at all times. And then we are
to grow in peace. peace of heart, peace in our
hearts. We grow in this. We find real
peace. When the world is falling apart,
people are wringing their hands and are worried about what they're
going to do. I find peace and rest. Don't you? You do too.
We are to grow in these things. We can grow in the knowledge
of the peace that we have in Christ, and we can grow in the
peace, the real experience of peace, peace with God, Peace
in our conscience, our conscience not accusing us, been washed
in the blood of the lamb. We can grow in patience. Boy,
we an impatient people, aren't we? Just let somebody cut you
off out there. How fast it take you to blow
the horn. We can grow in patience. I mean
patience with everybody. Patience in every situation.
not so quick to react, not so quick to say something. I was telling somebody the other
day, I said, I think a good rule of thumb is if you haven't thought
about it, don't talk about it. If you haven't given it some
thought, don't talk about it. We can grow in long-suffering,
forbearing, forgiving one another. We can grow in this. We are to
grow in this. We're going to be like Christ.
You want Christ to forgive you? How often you want Christ to
forgive you? That's how often we forgive one another. We are
to grow in repentance, faith, believing God. Look over in 2
Corinthians. chapter 1 not 2nd Corinthians
I'm sorry 2nd Thessalonians over here in 2nd Thessalonians look what Paul writes to these
Thessalonians we are bound to give we are bound to thank God
always for you brethren as it is meat because that your faith
groweth exceedingly and the love of every one of
you all toward each other abounds. But your faith groweth exceedingly. Look in chapter four. I was going to say chapter four,
but I think I wrote the wrong one down. Let me see here. I
think it's 1 Corinthians four. I mean, 1 Thessalonians four. Let me see if I've got the right
one. If not, we'll move on. He says in verse 9 of 1 Thessalonians
4, but as touching brotherly love, you need not that I write
unto you, for ye yourselves are taught of God to love one another. You're to grow in love, you're
to grow in joy, you're to grow in peace, you're to grow in patience,
you're to grow in faith. And as you grow in faith, you
know what else you grow in? Repentance. You have a deeper
sense of your sinfulness and your need of Christ as you grow
in grace and in knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. And we
are to grow in temperance, self-control. You know, Paul said this, and
this is one statement that Paul said that just sticks out to
me. He said, I keep my body under
subjection. lest when I preach Christ, I
myself be a castaway." Hmm. He said, I watch over myself.
Temperance. That's one of the things he preached,
I believe, to Felix. Temperance. And Felix trembled. One of the things was temperance. We can grow, and we are to grow
in these things. Fruit of the Spirit. You know,
fruit is a sign of life and health, or the lack thereof. Good fruit
comes from a healthy tree. A bad tree cannot produce good
fruit. It may look good for a while, like my green tomatoes this past
summer. I mean, I had big green tomatoes,
and I was just waiting, waiting for those things to ripen, and
every one of them rotted. Every one of them rotted. I didn't
get to eat one of those big green tomatoes. I mean, they looked
good for a while. But something was wrong. And
whatever the wrong was came through the roots. If the root is bad,
the fruit's going to be bad. But if the root is good, the
fruit's going to be good. Now, how is growth in grace and
in knowledge of Christ, how is it promoted? Peter, you tell
us to grow in grace and in knowledge of Christ, how is it promoted? First of all, by the Holy Spirit
of God. I prayed this morning before
coming out here that the Holy Spirit would take the things
of Christ and show them to us. If you just hear me this morning,
it's not going to do you any good. But if the Holy Spirit
takes the Word of God, He takes the things of Christ and reveals
them to you again. You know, I've been, I have believed
the gospel for nearly 50 years. I still need Him to reveal these
things afresh to me, week by week, day by day. I still need
it afresh. I still need a fresh view of
Christ. What did the Lord write to the
church at Ephesus? You have left your first love. After mentioning all the good
things that they did, I mean, they had some real high marks.
But then he said, you have left your first love. Your heart's
not in this. Your body's here, you're going through the motion,
but your heart's gone. Your love for me has, the fire
of your love for me has dwindled down. It's burning out, it's
going out. You ever see a fire go out? You see it blazing, burning,
and then all of a sudden you watch as the time goes by and
it burns up the fuel, it goes out. It goes out. We need the
spirit of God to apply these things to quicken us. How many
times have we been going through the Psalms? How many times have
we heard the Psalmist say, quicken me, quicken me. We need quick, I need quickened
this morning. Do you? I need God to quicken me this
morning. Get my attention. Get my attention. That's what
I need. And then secondly, that which we use to promote
these things you know God's a God of means God uses means and he's
given us means and he's given us his word over here in uh first
peter let me see first peter chapter two look at this first
peter chapter two he says wherefore laying aside all malice all guile
and hypocrisies and envies and all evil speakings put those
aside put them in the trash can as newborn babes desire the sincere
milk of the word that you may grow thereby we grow by the word of god it's
like to fertilize to the soul what it's like It gives nutrients,
spiritual nutrients to grow by, is what it does. Anyone who ignores
the Word of God cannot, cannot grow spiritually, if they're
even alive spiritually. I know there are times, I know
there are times when God's children ignore His Word. You get so busy
caught up working. You get so busy caught up with
your family, raising your family. I know what that's like. I've
been through it. That you ignore the word. You
don't read it. You just, you know, you're here
on Sunday and you take it home, you lay it down. You don't pick
it up again till next Sunday. That can happen. That can happen. And we miss a lot of spiritual
growth by not diving in to the Word of God. I assure you, you
study the Word at home, privately, and you come here and you listen
to the preaching of the Word, you're gonna get more understanding.
It'll happen. You'll get more understanding.
You'll understand more and more. In God's Word, we learn the truth
of God. We learn the truth of Christ.
We learn the truth about ourselves. We learn the promises. We learn
the future. Didn't I just read that to you
here in 2 Peter 3? He's coming. The Lord is coming. And when he comes, he's going
to burn this place up. Now the scoffers are going to
laugh at that. They're going to say, you've been saying that
for a long time. You know, things haven't changed since the beginning.
Well, they have changed. Like I told you last week, the
Garden of Eden is not here anymore. That's a change. This is not
a perfect earth no more. That's a change. God flooded
this world, killed everybody in it at one time, except eight
people. That's a change. That's a change. And he did it by the same word,
the Lord Jesus Christ. He did it by him. But it's in God's Word that we
learn these things. We learn the truth. And now Peter, Peter connects growing in grace
with growing in knowledge of Christ. You see, we don't, we
don't say grow in grace. We want to grow in grace. You
can't separate grace and Christ. You can't do it. Paul said, Oh, that I might know
Him. and the power of His resurrection,
that is the power of His resurrection, His resurrected life in me as
I live out my daily life. And I know that by experience. Christ, we sing a song, Christ
liveth in me. Sometimes, sometimes the reality
of that hits me. I mean, it really hits me that
Christ liveth in me. I'll tell you the truth. It makes
me more careful of what I say. It makes me more careful of where
I go when I think of Christ living in me. It makes me more careful
of the company I keep because the friendship of the world,
he said, is an enemy with God. It makes me more careful of the
company I keep. I want this to be said of us,
that was said of Enoch. Enoch walked with God, and he
was not, when the Lord took him. He had this testimony, the Lord
took him. He pleased God, and the Lord took him. One day, Enoch
went out for a walk. I can just see this in my mind.
He went out for a walk, wife's at home, a family, you know,
he got the whole family around there. And one day he just goes
out for a walk, but not by himself. Not by himself. Christ said,
I'll never leave you nor forsake you. He's not by himself. He
goes out for a walk and I can just, I just picture him meditating. upon God. He's meditating upon
the word, whatever word he had, he's meditating upon it. The
revelations he's been given of God, he's meditating upon God.
And God was so pleased with him, he took him. I just wonder this, did they
send a search party out for him? I have to wonder that. I have
to wonder if they said, well, Enoch hasn't been back. He's
been gone for eight hours. He's been gone for 15 hours.
He's been gone for two days, three days, four days. Where's
Enoch? They looked all over for him. He's with God. The Lord
took him. The Lord took him. Maybe they found his body. Maybe
they found it, and they said, Enoch died. No, Enoch went to
be with the Lord. He went to be with the Lord. And Peter connects this. He connects
this growing in knowledge, growing in grace. He connects it with
growing in knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. There's no growing
in grace apart from growing in knowing the Lord. You can't separate. Jesus Christ is the good ground
we grow in. He's the good ground we grow
in. Spiritual growth happens only through our union to the
Lord Jesus Christ. Look over here in John 15. In John chapter 15. Verse 1, I am the true vine And
my Father is the husbandman. Every branch in me that bears
not fruit, he taketh away. Every branch that bears fruit,
he purges it, that it may bring forth more fruit. You wonder
what trials are for? They're purgings, that you bring
forth more fruit. Now ye are clean through the
word which I have spoken unto you. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit
of itself, except it abide in the vine, no more can ye except
ye abide in me. I am the vine, ye are the branches.
He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth
much fruit. For without me ye can do nothing, ye can bear no
fruit." A branch on the ground bears no fruit. A branch in the
vine bears fruit. It's our union to the Lord Jesus
Christ that makes us, enables us to grow in grace, in the grace
of these gifts that I've spoken of, the fruit of the Spirit that
I've spoken of. It's being connected to Him.
The more we learn of Christ, the more confidence we have in
Him. The more you learn of Him, the more you'll be able to say
with confidence, the Lord will provide. Oh, Isaac all shook up. Here's
a fire, here's a wood. Where's the lamb? Where's the
lamb? We've messed up. We don't have
the lamb. He knew there had to be a lamb.
He said, son, God will provide himself a lamb. The Lord will
provide. It doesn't matter how bleak things
look. It doesn't matter how bleak it looks out there in this world
right now. The Lord will provide. You know, I'm not storing up
in my, in a pantry. I'm not, I'm not stocking up
food. I'm not stocking up this. I'm not stocking up that. Here's
what I, here's what I know. The Lord will provide. David
said, I have been young. Now I'm old. I've never seen
the righteous forsaken nor his seed begging bread. I've never seen it. The Lord
will provide. And then the preached word is
a means. What you're doing right now, you're listening to the
gospel being preached. And every time we do, and the
Holy Spirit attends the message, we grow in grace and in knowledge
of Christ. Here's something else that helps.
Here's something else that helps, prayer. Pray to grow in these
things. Don't pray for a new house. Don't
pray for, don't even a better job. ready to grow in these things. Your heavenly father knoweth
what you have need of, doesn't he?" That's what the Lord said.
He said, the birds of the air, they don't have a storehouse,
yet your heavenly father feeds them. You think he forgets to
feed them? Not like my granny. Children, they forget to feed
their dog sometimes. She used to tell me, she said, they forgot
to feed Charlie. Or Charlie. Our Heavenly Father never forgets
to feed Charlie. Or Doug or Judy or Florence. He never forgets to feed you.
He never forgets. Prayer. Pray that the Lord enable
you to grow in these things. And then here's another real
important one. Fellowship with one another. I don't think you
and I recognize the importance of our getting together, and
not just here, but in our homes, that we get together. We strengthen
one another. We encourage one another. That's
what Paul says to do, encourage one another. And I'm going to
close with this. What this growth keeps us from,
it keeps us from being led away with the error of the wicked
and falling from your own steadfastness. You grow in these things, you're
not going to fall. It doesn't say you're not going
to sin. You're not going to fall. You're not going to fall away.
You're not going to fall into error. You're not going to do it. Not if you
grow in grace and in knowledge of Christ. Your path will be
straight. Someone said this, knowledge
is power. You can deceive an ignorant man.
But a man of knowledge is very difficult to deceive. Grow in grace and in knowledge,
knowing the Lord Jesus Christ. Someone wrote this, and I liked
it, and I wrote it down. Even if we grow exceedingly in
grace and in knowledge of Christ, we never grow in excess of them. You never grow in excess in joy
of the Lord. You never grow in excess of believing
God. Does anybody here believe God
too much? I don't think we'd ever be found
guilty of that. We don't love God too much. We can grow exceedingly
in these things, but never in excess of it. Never. Grow in
grace. Seek to grow in grace. Cultivate
that. Pray for it. Pray the Lord enable
you to grow in grace and in knowledge of Christ. If there's anything
that I would want to be a mark of the ministry of my time here,
it would just be this, that you grew in grace and in knowledge
of Christ. That's it. That's it. All right.