Tonight in prayer, Lord, we all
are praying in our spirit and our minds. We think about things,
we consider things, we contemplate. Father, help to train us and
discipline us to pray more than we think. To pray and petition
your heart and your ears and your throne more than we try
to figure out the answer on our own. Father, through your mercies,
and by your grace, not that we deserve it nor have done anything
for it. You permit us to pray. You allow us to pray. And by
the authority of Christ our Savior, Lord, you hear us. You do not
hear us because of who we are, you hear us because of whose
we are. And we praise you for that. Father, help us to walk
by faith. Show us what it means to walk
by the Spirit. Give us the resolve, by Your
mercy, to cast away any sin that so easily ensnares us and trips
us, so that we may not lose our gaze as we peer to Christ and
to His cross and to the work that He has finished for us.
Father, help us to not hold so dearly the traditions and the
languages of history. but that we would hold dearly
the everlasting promise of life through Jesus Christ, our Savior,
and that we would see the truths therein, see the truths of Him
in the Word as we study it together and as we worship because of
it. And we pray all of this in Christ's name, amen. Okay, tonight
we're going to continue talk for just a minute topically and
topical for me is a lot different than what most people think.
I'm not talking about a subject. I'm just going to dive into a
particular portion of a letter, 2 Peter. I wanted to go through
there last week. We're going to be in the first
chapter of 2 Peter, and we're going to be looking at, as I
entitled last week's message, the work and the order of the
church. I think tonight I want to focus
on the reality of the life and the worship of the church. When
we think about what we should be doing as Christians, it's
very easy to become couch potato theologians. I mean think about
that for a minute. It's very easy for us to get
in the spirit of academics but not really be academically
inclined toward the Scripture. I threw out a bunch of books
over the last year. I mean, probably 1,500 books,
probably tossed that many, probably given away that many more. And
I've misplaced probably that many more. There's no telling
how many books I've gotten rid of. And one of the reasons for
that is I need room for more books, right? I need room in
my shelves. I need room in my head. And when
you're looking through texts and when you're looking through
library, You go, this book was terrible. Why have I kept it?
I'm a hoarder. I'm an organized hoarder. I'm
obsessed about not having that which I need. So I hold on to
everything in an organized fashion until it becomes overwhelmingly
disorganized, and then I give it all away. So when it comes
to books, even garbage, even theological trash, I'm like,
you know what, I'll put this right here, this one little book.
And in case someone refers to this one day, I'll have it on
hand. Now, I've had those books on hand many times through the
years. Been on the phone with people and they say, you know,
what do you think about so and so? Well, let me see, I have
it right here. And it's really a neat resource. But I've done
that so many times that I've just been inundated with trash. May not look like trash to you
if you look at it, but it's trash on the wall, it's trash on the
shelves, it's trash in your head, it's trash in your head. And
I think that the problem is, as I set fire to some books yesterday,
they make good kindling, they really do. And I'm not burning
books for the sake of burning books, I'm burning things for
the sake of getting rid of things. And I thought to myself, you
know, the ones that are in the pile right here were given to
me by someone else who was getting rid of books. when we lived in California.
Hey, buddy, I'm getting rid of some books. Would you like them?
And they hand me these boxes. And I kept the box with me for
10 years and brought it to Georgia and burned it. You know, nothing
there of substance. And then I started thinking about
that as I pyromanically, manically enjoyed fire. I do, I do enjoy
burning things in its context. And I thought, you know, I don't
even think people love to learn in America. I don't even think
the so-called church of the reformed tradition or the sovereign grace
circles, I don't think we love to learn. I think we love to
hoard. I think we love to hold on to stuff so we can collect.
We collect doctrine. We collect pastors. We collect
books. We collect Bibles. I mean, I'm
a Bible snob. I mean, I'm a Bible snob, you're
a Bible snob, we're all, you know, oh, this is the such-and-such
edition of the such-and-such leather of the such-and-such
whatever, you know. Do you have the Pitt Minion?
I remember when I got the Pitt Minion, Cambridge, the small
Bible. Now I have to have four sets
of glasses to see it because it's 8 point or something, 8.5
or 9, I can't remember. The word Pitt Minion means the
size, I don't even know what it means, I'm that ignorant of it. And
so we have spent a lot of time as a culture even in sovereign
grace, the true gospel of Jesus, the true saints of the Lord who
have been born by grace. We have spent a lot of time compiling
our little collections. And we spend a lot of time talking
about our collections and showing our collections and displaying
our collections amongst each other. I'm a collector. When
I married 25 years ago, I had over 2 million sports cards.
I had over 1,000 comic books. I can't tell you how many autographed
baseballs I had. Transformer toys. All sorts of
things all meant all in the box everything where it's supposed
to be everything cataloged and and it financed our early lives
as a couple and now I look back of there. I saw a Hank Aaron
rookie that didn't look as good as the one I had that I sold
for $1,600 23 years ago sold for 79,000 yesterday at auction. Oh, you know, it's like getting
rid of the Bitcoin in 2010 It doesn't matter. What's the point?
I've spent countless hours through the years talking about memorabilia. I've spent countless hours cataloging,
grading, firearms, collections, chess pieces. I still haven't
gotten rid of my chess boards and pieces, but I mean, I have
300-year-old chess boards. I have handmade chess boards. I have French chess boards and
Russian chess boards, and they don't even speak the language
very well. But that's what we do. And I think as a church,
as of the church, I think we've done a very good job of just
becoming collectors. And we've also collected not
just stuff and philosophies and ideas, but we've collected one
another. I think we've come to a place where we have engaged
to such a degree that we've collected one another and each other's
opinions to the point that they matter more than the truth of
the Bible itself. We've collected the opinions of culture and history
to the point where we now have a very good graded system of
how we ought to live and what we ought to be doing, and we've
made those examples doctrine, and that doctrine infallible,
and that infallible doctrine, we've made it gospel. And it all boils down to this. Well, what else are we supposed
to do as Christians? Aren't we supposed to be busy about something?
Aren't we supposed to be engaged in something? Aren't we supposed
to be doing something? Yes. Yes, we are. And we've been learning what
that doing looks like. Every New Testament letter teaches
us, and I say letters, I'm not talking about the Gospels and
Acts, the letters, teach the church things that they should
be doing. The narratives of Luke explain
what happened in the early church. It doesn't command us to do likewise. There's no command to produce
and reproduce Pentecost. There's no command to heal. There's
no command to speak in tongues. There's no command to go out
and open air preach. There's no command to be an apostle.
There's no command to have a merry men of evangelists banging on
doors. But there are clear commands.
Isn't that the way it works? Isn't that the way it works? The things
that we really know we ought to be doing in life, we don't
do, but we want the outcome of those things, but not the discipline
that's required to get them. For example, health and fitness
and wealth, knowledge, expertise. Everybody wants to play the piano,
nobody wants to practice. Everybody wants to be able to
sing, nobody wants to open their mouths. Everybody wants to have
a million dollars in the bank. Nobody wants to stop spending.
It's all a facade. Church, we all want to be honoring
the Lord, but nobody wants to listen. We don't want to listen. Now we're not going to conflate
the living the gospel with being in the gospel. There's a standing
that you have, beloved. The indicative of who you are
in Christ can never change. But the life that you live can
change from day to day. The way you think can change
from minute to minute. Your understanding of truth can ebb and flow depending
on the influences that you're listening to. You can be deceived,
you can be distraught, you can be destroyed. You and I and all
of the faculties that we have are not permanent. We could lose
our minds tonight and our sight tomorrow and the very function
of our brains by the time the sun goes down. There is nothing
that's permanent but the truth of Christ and the commands of
Christ. So the church should be, first
and foremost, about the business of living the gospel. And there
is a difference in being alive because of the gospel and living
the gospel. Not every Christian is taught to live the gospel.
And sadly, some congregations are being taught what gospel
living looks like, but they're being taught that the way that
you know that you are alive in Christ is the way you live. That's
ridiculous. I'm gonna say this very clearly
for those who care. To tell the church that they
are not born again, to tell a person that he or she is not born again
by the Spirit of God because of how they act or live, whether
it be good or bad, or to tell them that they are because of
how they act or live, whether it be good or bad, or vice versa,
is flat demonic. It's demonic. It's demonic to
say to the child of God, you're probably not saved because You
still have that sin in your life. That's ridiculous. Or you're
probably not saved because you're not serving in the church. Or
you're probably not born again because if you were born again,
what is that called? That is called adding to the
gospel. That is another idea of circumcision. That is a false teaching and
it is an abomination to Christ. It is to lie concerning the hope
that we have. But because we are secure in
the gospel, we know that we have been born of God because we know
Christ and we know who He is and what He did for His people
and we understand to the best of our cognitive ability by the
Spirit alone that the true redemption that we've been given is all
of grace and it is sovereignly and freely ours. It is grace
by definition which makes it free. There is nothing that we
can do nor that we could merit that grace. And it is sovereign
in that God alone affects it. God alone established it. God
alone applies it. Let me put that in the past tense. God alone applied it. When He
put Christ to the death on the cross at Mount Calvary. So now
what should we do? But see, some of us might not
be tracking. What is he talking about? Let
me just bring it down to this. So many times, even with what
I've said just this far tonight in introduction, we're thinking,
I got so many things in my life I need to get right. Is that
a true statement? Absolutely, it's a true statement.
Everybody who needs to get something right in their life stand up,
and everybody's standing up. Everybody who has everything
right in your life sit down, nobody sits down. So we stand
up for the remainder of the service. There's little Simon Says things.
And so what we're doing tonight in 2 Peter is not so that we
can get our lives right and therefore be confident before the Lord.
We are confident before the Lord, therefore we want to honor him
with our lives. Therefore we need to learn what
it is that we're supposed to be doing. And more importantly,
we need to learn that what we are to be is all of grace. It's
all of grace. Now I want to get to verse 15. I don't know that I will, but
if not, I'll keep going next week. But let us read the first
15 verses of chapter 1 of 2 Peter. Here we go. Simon Peter, a servant
and apostle of Jesus Christ. to those who have obtained a
faith of equal standing with ours by the righteousness of
our God and our Savior Jesus Christ. May grace and peace be
multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and in the knowledge of
Jesus Christ our Lord. His, who? Jesus Christ, His divine
power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness. all things, through the knowledge
of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which
he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, in order
that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature,
having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because
of sinful desire. For this very reason," here's
the commands, Make every effort to supplement your faith with
virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control,
and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness,
and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection
with love. For if these qualities are yours
and they are growing, They keep you from being ineffective or
unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For whoever
lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten
that he was cleansed from his former sins. Therefore, brothers,
be all the more diligent to confirm your calling in election, for
if you practice these qualities, you'll never fail. For in this way there will be
richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our
Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Therefore I intend always to
remind you of these qualities though you know them and are
established in the truth that you have. I think it right as
long as I am in this body to stir you up by way of reminder
since I know that the putting off of my body will be soon as
the Lord Jesus has made clear to me and I will make every effort
so that after my departure you may be able at any time to recall
these things. So here is the Apostle Peter
writing to this Jewish church, and he's saying to them, I'm
writing this letter so that it may be established among you
that you are in the gospel, you are my brothers and sisters in
the Lord Jesus Christ by his grace, you understand the qualities
that are called of you, you understand what it is that you're supposed
to be doing, you know what it means to be effective, but if
I don't remind you of these things, you will stop doing them. I want
you to think about that for a second. You know one of the things that
fleshes out our pride, the sinfulness of our flesh, is when somebody
tells us something that we already know and we're affronted by it. And what do children say? I know.
I know. I know. Well, we don't know. If we knew, we'd be doing it,
wouldn't we? If we knew, we wouldn't be complaining. If we knew, we
wouldn't be aggravated. If we knew, we wouldn't be irritated.
But we're irritated, we're aggravated, we're complaining, we're frustrated,
we're fearful, we're lazy, we're non-sympathetic, we're non-loving.
But it's not going to take us out of the love of God. There
is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. There
is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. So as
Peter writes this letter, he's saying, before I die, I wanna
put this pen to paper so that you can be reminded long after
I'm gone about what qualities you ought to try to live out. Nothing in this letter has anything
to do, nothing in this instruction has anything to do with whether
or not they're in the faith, just like in 1 John, just like
in the letter of James. Beloved, let me tell you this,
and I know it may take away from the time or the point of this
whole assembly tonight, but the false gospel of the United States
of America is so close to truth that if possible, even the elect
would be deceived. Paul says that to the Thessalonians,
and it's true today. And here's the difference. We're
all teaching out of the Bible. We teach in 1 John, we teach
in Romans, we teach in Romans 12 and 13, we Hebrew 6, 10 and
13. You see where I'm going for those
of you who know what those references are? We teach in this, we teach
in that, we teach in the other, and if you're not doing these
things, you're lost. That's what people say. So it's
always what the believer or the creature must do. No, it's what
the creator has done. That is your hope. These letters
were not written to decipher lost and saved people. These
letters were written to the saved people, to the born again people.
And because of that, they are exhorted to listen and pay attention
and live the gospel in these ways. Let's look first. in verses 8, 9, and 10. Look at that. For if these qualities
are yours and are increasing, what do they do? Does it say
they secure your eternal salvation? They give you great confidence
in the day of judgment? They're there so you can know
that you know that you have eternal life. They prove to your neighbor
that you truly are born of God. No, it says they will keep you
from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord
Jesus Christ. I see some folks go, oh, wait a minute. If you're
unfruitful, ineffective in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus,
you don't understand the gospel. That's bull. That's baloney. That's hogwash. What other redneck
thing can I say to say it's nonsense? That's not the context of this
letter. To those who have obtained a faith of equal standing with
ours by the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ. You might not be in the faith.
Was Peter insane? Was he on crack? No. He was writing
by the power of God the Spirit Himself. the body of Christ,
of their great salvation, and then how they can be effective
and fruitful in the knowledge of this salvation, which is to
have these qualities. Have these qualities. And it is all of grace. Grace
and peace be multiplied. You look at verse 3. His divine
power has granted to us all things that pertain to life in God.
What is it about pertaining life in God? It's not about eternal
life. We have eternal life. We've already established that.
Peter didn't spend any time wasting the first two sentences establishing
that everybody in the witness of this letter had eternal life. Now were there goats amongst
the saints? Absolutely. There's always going to be chaff
and wheat together to the very day of Jesus. Most pastors are
going to be very disappointed. Some pastors, I don't want to
say most, some pastors are going to be very disappointed when they're
standing over there and they're going to start walking toward the sheep
pile, and the Lord's going to go, uh-uh. You see? Some Christians are just going
to be standing over there, going, yeah, y'all about to get y'alls. And
everybody's together, and then God's going to go, whew, and
He's going to separate the sheep from the goat. All right, the wheat
from the chaff. It's going to be together. This is not even in
Peter's mind. It was never in Paul's mind.
It's not. They don't worry about that. Church discipline takes
care of that. He said everything you need to
live your life and to understand and live out godliness is granted
to you. Now what is the granted there?
What is that but grace? What is that but grace? What
does it mean that God by grace grants us by His divine power
everything we need to live and be godly? What does it mean to
be godly? See, that's an incredibly aggravating
question, isn't it? What does it mean to be godly?
Depends on who you ask. What does the Bible say it means
to be godly? To love the Lord and your neighbor. And thus fulfill the law of Christ.
To honor the Lord with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength.
I can't do that. You better believe you can't do that. So by faith,
Christ did it for you. Christ did it for you by grace.
He grants you faith to know that he did it for you. You don't
worry about it. You just live according to this
and together we grow together and we understand. So there are
things that we need to be thinking about and be looking at and be
doing because the grace of God, the very call to be like this
is a gift. It doesn't mean that God through
his power is going to transform our lives into a righteous standard. Because at the greatest standard
of every man, other than the God-man, who has lived on this
world, at the greatest standard, at the greatest pinnacle of his
righteous living, was still trash before the Lord. Yet in Christ,
all those things are accepted. As a what? As a sacrifice of
praise and thanksgiving. See, when we think about these
qualities, some of us go, well, I'm just not like that. No, I'm
not like that either. I just don't have time for that. I don't wanna do that. I'm just
tired of this. I'm grumpy. Well, I'm grumpy too. And I don't
think God's going to let me get away from being grumpy. I think
he's just going to call me out of it every day. Every day he's
going to call me out of it. You're grumpy, call out of it.
You're aggravated, don't be aggravated. And it's His mercy. And then
He focuses us on the Word of God and focuses us by His Spirit
on each other. And even when we can't pray or
refuse to pray, the Spirit of God prays the will of God for
our lives. The will of God for our lives is to be set apart
for Him in our love for each other. And then in our service,
in our understanding, in our growth, in our humility, in our
kindness. Why? Because that is the sacrifice
of praise. God is due thanksgiving. He is
due worship. He is due praise. Because of
who He is. Whether He'd ever saved any of
us, we deserve to praise Him. Because of who He is. But because
He has saved us, oh how much more thanksgiving comes from
the knowledge of the unmerited favor of God for His people through
the death of Jesus. This is the most amazing work
that has ever been done in the world. And it's the most amazing
word that has ever been proclaimed in the world. And His name is
Jesus Christ. So He's called us. by grace. He's granted us power by grace.
All things that pertain to life and godliness. And see, we automatically
there in the first part of verse three, we think, okay, now what
is it that I must do to employ these things in my life? How
did God do that? What is He gonna do in my life
that I might be effective and fulfilling and fruitful? What's
He gonna change in me? That's not what He says. How
does He say He's already granted us this divine power? How? Through
the knowledge of Him who called us to His own glory and to His
own excellence. This text preaches itself, by
the way. Pauline letters, Peter's letters often do. So it is the knowledge granted. It is salvation granted through
the knowledge of the gospel. It is the positive proclamation
of the perfection of Jesus Christ and His life and His sacrifice
and His redemptive work, His atoning work, His propitiatory
work, His substitutionary work, to the hearts and the minds of
the elect, and they see, and they rest, and they know Him. They know they are in Him, and
they are found in Him, and He alone is our hope. So His divine
power has granted to us all of this, life and godliness, the
power unto life and godliness, through the gospel, through the
knowledge of the gospel. Does Paul not say the same thing
in Romans 12? Therefore, what does he say? Be transformed by
the what? Actions of your life? Be transformed
by the diligence of your passion? Be transformed by the foundation
of your zeal? No, be transformed by the renewal
of your mind. By testing, by discriminating
what is good and what is bad. How do we do that? We look at
the gospel. present your bodies as a living
sacrifice, present your lives, love one another. And in chapters
13, 14, 15 of Romans gives us that explanation of what it looks
like to live effectively for Christ. And so it is the knowledge
of him who called us. What did Christ call us to? To
his own glory. He's gonna give it to us. He's gonna impute his
righteousness to us legally, judicially, forensically, and
then one day he's gonna recreate us literally. to be sharing in
His glory, to be sinless. So the excellence of who Christ
is, is the gospel. His own glory, everything that
He is, is the perfection of His work and His essence. And everything
that He is, look at that in verse four. The knowledge of Him and
the calling that came through the gospel work, through the
Spirit of God, is inclusive of the divine power to save us and
to declare us His own and to justify us and then to bring
us to the new birth to know Him and know whose we are and know
what He has done for us. And it is that same power, verse
4, which He has granted to us His precious and very great promises. What are the precious and very
great promises of God? Well, we could talk about the
temporal ones. We could talk about the ones that are in context
later in this very paragraph. We could talk about the promises
that God says you'll be fruitful in your Christian life if you
understand these qualities and you grow in them. But here in
this context, he's talking about eternal glory. He's talking about
eternal life that God had promised even to Adam and Eve that through
the seed of the woman, the work of the enemy, the fall, the cost
of sin, rebellion in and of itself, death shall be defeated through
Jesus Christ for the people of God. So the very promise of glory
is ours in Jesus Christ. This is the power of God. This
is what's all wrapped up in Romans 116. For I'm not ashamed of the
good news of Jesus Christ. For it is, what? The good news
is the power of God unto salvation to the Greek and the Jew. There is a time, as we've already
said, by which He has granted to us His precious and very great
promises so that through the promises, through what? The promises. How do we get glory? Through the promises. How do
we have eternal life? Through the promises. How do we have
security? Through the promises of God.
Where is our assurance? Through the promises of God. How do I know? Through the promises
of God. Through the power of God granting
us rest, saving faith, in the promises of God. Through the
promises of God, you are going to be partakers of the divine
nature. You are. And you will be. You are going to be partakers
of the divine nature. That is true. You are those who
have escaped the world, and death, and the flesh, and sinful desires,
which leads to corruption. You have escaped these things.
You are kept from sinning. Let's think about that, and we're
going back to 1 John a little bit right now in that the one
who is born of God keeps us from sinning. and keeps us from the
power of the evil one in which the whole world lies. There is
no accusation and there is no condemnation and there is no
evidence against the elect even when our lives don't reveal godliness. Even when they reveal rebellion
because Christ has paid it in full. So when James Tippins sins,
that sin doesn't count against me. So it is not sin for me. It was sin for Christ. It's paid. But is it my sin? Absolutely. Am I guilty of it?
Absolutely. Not before my Father. Why? You
see how crazy that is? To say, let us sin that grace
may abound. That just blows your mind, doesn't
it? We've escaped the corruption
that is in this world because of sinful desire. We've escaped
death. Most of all, we've escaped the
justice of God because he has poured out his justice on Jesus
Christ in our stay. So then, verse five, for this
very reason, and here we go, make every effort to supplement your faith. What's
a supplement? Something you take in addition.
What does it mean to supplement something? Well, if you've got
low iron and you're eating well and you can't get any more iron,
your doctor might give you an iron pill. If you have diabetes
and your body can't produce insulin to deal with sugar, no matter
how you eat, you have to take certain medications so that your
body can supplement itself. Sometimes we have to have certain
hormones to supplement the natural flow of our bodies. This is not
about supplementing our eternal life. This is about what goes
along with our faith that we should strive unto because of
the security that is ours in Jesus Christ. So it goes along
with us. Everywhere I go, I have defensive
tools. I have working tools. I have
jumper cables, got candles, got a hatchet, books, toilet paper, paper towels,
handy wipes, and a whole lot of hand sanitizer. Long before
the COVID came. You're just ready to supplement
your trip. Where are you going? I mean, every time we go to vacation,
I'd always have three or four little duffel bags full of junk
that we've never used in 25 years, but just in case. Remember, I
told you I was a hoarder when we got started tonight. We supplement. Do we need an extra tire 24 hours
a day? No, but we've got it underneath
the thing, don't we? Make every effort to supplement your faith.
Your faith is done. Your life is in Christ. Your
salvation is complete. It is God's divine power that
has caused you to even know that this has been done for you. So
make every effort. Work, labor, strive to supplement
your faith with virtue. I don't have time to go through
all of these things tonight, but what is virtue? Truth. Be
true. Know truth. Understand the knowledge
of Christ. Grow in your understanding of
grace. There's a lot of things. But I mean, think about this.
Virtue with knowledge? How do we supplement virtue? Supplement your faith with what?
Virtue, supplement your virtue with knowledge, supplement your
knowledge with self-control, supplement your self-control
with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness
with brother affection. That's love, right? But he says
in the brotherly affection with love. So what does it boil down
to? It boils down to the very thing
that we've been learning in 1 John. It boils down to the very things
that we've learned in Paul's writing to the Corinthians. Paul's
writing to the Romans. We have a spiritual act of worship
because we are true worshipers. So let our spiritual act of worship
be about the tender, concerned care for one another in the knowledge
of the truth and in life in general. One of the hardest things as
a pastor is when the saints, or the sheep, or the members
of the church, of course I'm a saint, I'm a sheep too, but
you know, the members of the church have needs and don't share
them. Because they don't want to be
a burden. But when we don't want to be a burden, we're actually
saying, I don't want you to worship the Lord. I don't want you to
serve the Lord. I don't want you to give to the
Lord. I don't want you to love Christ.
What needs do you have? How about things you need prayer
for? How about things that you need to eat or wear? How about
financial needs? How about emotional needs? How
about just a friend? How about somebody to come cut
your grass? What if you don't have the shoes you need? What
if you don't know what you need? You just need to share that with
somebody. Share it with somebody. And sadly, I'm not equipped to
answer all those needs, but I am equipped to answer one of them,
and that's to continue to press us to the virtue of the gospel
of grace. And to help all of us as God has gifted us as we
learn this, and as we learn these qualities and strive for them,
that everyone is equipped to be part of the ministry of the
body. That's Ephesians 3 and 4. For if these qualities are yours
and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective and
unfruitful in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. See, we know Christ. We know the gospel. But that's
the beginning. Isn't it? That's the beginning.
It's like when you graduate from school or you graduate from a
certificate program or from an internship. The day that you
finish that, you are least qualified to do the job in the field. You don't get out of engineering
school and then just get to build a city. You don't get out of
medical school and just go start doing surgery as a chief of surgery.
You have to intern. You have to grow. You have to
do all of your different types of apprenticeships. Same thing with subject matter.
Just because you're a math teacher with a bachelor's in education
doesn't mean that you are the most qualified because the person
who's been there for 35 years and has taught 16 million people
over the 35 year period is a little bit more apt to teach in the
context or understand in the context of the subject matter.
Now I know there's exceptions to all that and everybody's probably
going, oh, I know somebody who, just take the point. When we
come to the faith, And we come to the knowledge of the truth,
we're not immediately endowed with great gifts. We're not immediately
immersed in a spiritual transformative way to where we just start living
the gospel as we know we should because we don't know. We know
the gospel, but we don't know. We don't know how to handle conflict.
We don't know how to deal with ministry. We don't know how to
do these things. We have to learn and to grow
into them. When a child is born, we don't
just throw it in the back of the car and say, get home somehow,
you better find a job. We take care of it and then we
grow it as it matures. The body of Christ is the same
way. We are all responsible to the level that we have grown
to instruct and to equip and to minister in that gift. And when we do, we are not unfruitful.
So let's stop the, I hate that negative thing there. In the
latter part of verse eight, let's make it into a positive. These
qualities are yours and as you grow in them, you are fruitful
and you are effective. For what? To the praise of his
glorious grace, that's what. You are effective in your worship.
See, that's what this is all about. It's your spiritual act
of worship. One of the smallest and most
insignificant ways most people think most people serve the Lord
is through their own personal teaching ministry. Because the teaching ministry
is to equip the saints to actually do 90% of the true worship. And those who teach are thankful
and they praise God like, Paul, I thank God for you in my prayers
daily. for your love is increasing. I praise the Lord for you, as
he would tell the Ephesians. I pray that the love of God would
be manifest, that you would understand it. Not you individually, but
you all, with all the saints, would know the breadth and the
depth and the height of the love of God in Christ. You see? This is the only real
worship. And it's not about location.
It's about intimacy. It's about sacrifice. It's about
suffering. It's about long suffering. It's
about wisdom. It's about calmness and quietness
and meekness. It's about the truth of Christ.
Emulate someone in the world. Emulate Christ on his death walk. That's who you emulate. When we're persecuted and destroyed
and stabbed and we see all sorts of wickedness going on around
us, let's be like Christ. Father, forgive them. Jesus wept. These are these fruitful things. See, if we're not looking at
worship this way, Peter goes on to say, whoever lacks these
qualities is so nearsighted that he's blind. That means he's not
seeing the point. He's not seeing it. He's not
lost. He's not living. He's not living
a fulfilled life. And he's not living under the
praise of the glory of Christ. It's not about continually holding
up all of the sealed hobbies of doctrine and grace and gospel
and going, look at all that I've learned. Do something with it. Be effective. Therefore, brothers, what is
this blindness? He's forgotten that he's cleansed
from his former sins. He's forgotten. You know what
happens? We get so heady. We get so enthralled. We get so active in the way we
think things ought to be that we forget that everything that
we are before the Father is by grace alone. And we start to
feel, we don't see it, it's deceptive. We don't see it until somebody
calls us out on it. We start feeling like we got the end runs
on truth. We start feeling like we know
who is and who is not truth. We start feeling like we have
the authority to call people out all over the world. We start
feeling like we have the ability to be busy bodies in the life
of the body. But yet Peter, or not Peter,
but yeah, he does actually. We see Jude and Paul specifically
calling out that kind of stuff. Don't be involved in that way. Forget that you've been cleansed
from your former sins. Not that I wanna quote anyone,
but you know the old cliche, nobody really knows who said
it. They've attributed it to some people, but there by the
grace of God, I would be. There go I, except by the grace
of God. When you look and see people fall and fail in the faith. It's antithetical to the human
nature to expressly walk in humility, beloved. But the gospel strikes
the heart of humility in us to the praise of Christ and to his
joy rather than to discomfort and displeasure. Verse 11, for in this way What
way? Oh, verse 10, excuse me. Therefore, brothers, be all the
more diligent, and this is going to be interesting, to confirm
your calling and election. Remember, these are saints. Their
salvation is not in question or in view here, but the call
to strive in this way supplements. I've got a plane ticket and I
need to go somewhere. Well, I'm not going. I've got a plane ticket. I'm not going to head that direction.
And that's even a bad example. It's just sort of what popped
in my head. We need to walk in the gospel. If the gospel is
really the power of God and the salvation, and if the gospel
is truly our joy of Christ, is truly our Savior, do we not want
to worship Him and to praise Him and to invest in His body?
That's the point that Peter's making. Live it. James does the
same thing, by the way, a couple of weeks on Wednesdays when we
get there. Because your calling and your
election You will not fail in the ministry
of Christ because you've been called and you've been elected.
No specific order there. He conflates those two things. You will not fail. You will not
fall. If we're considering how we ought to be submitting to
one another in unity and humility, we will not fall. Because in
the gospel, In the practice of the gospel today, listen to this.
This is all I have to say now for tonight. We are preparing
for glory together. These familial relationships,
these temporal associations, they're gone one day. But they are the relationships
as the body, the relationship of the believers in the body.
We are eternally aligned as siblings. And so in some sense, we know that this is the front
door of glory, isn't it? This is the waiting room. This
is the assembly before the true assembly to live this way. and in verses 12 through 15 we
see just Peter saying why he's doing this he's not worried about
whether these people are doing it or understanding it he's not
saying they don't he's not rebuking them or challenging them he's
not disciplining them he's just reminding them he's reminding
them beloved if you gather with the church and the preaching
of the word of God in its context does not bring you to two things
To a reminder of the gospel of free and sovereign grace and
to the reminder of our love and responsibility to the saints,
the preaching has been in vain. And I want you to hear that. We need to quit wasting time
in senseless fodder and thinking that it's honorable when we should
have spent that time with people who actually have their mouth
open like baby birds wanting to eat the glory of Christ. Stop
throwing pearls to swine. And that's a terrible thing to
end on. Because it's not the point of this. The point of this is the finished
work of Jesus. I always want to remind you of
these qualities though you know them and are established in the
truth of Christ that you have I think it is right that as long
as I'm in this body, to stir you up by way of reminder. Remember
what Paul says in the letter to the Hebrews? As long as it
is called today, encourage one another. To what? Own to love and deeds of service. Good deeds. Ephesians 2, by grace
you've been saved through faith, and this is not of your own doing,
but is a gift of God, for you are God's workmanship. God created
you. You're God's workmanship. And
in God's workmanship, he called you in Christ Jesus and made
you his own and saved you through the work of Jesus so that he
could present you to himself blameless. And until that day
where we're like Christ, we are to walk in the good works and
the works of service and love that God has prepared beforehand
for us to walk in. Here it is. But beloved, don't
ever put your hope in anything you are, and don't ever put your
hope in anything you do, because your only hope is the Lord Jesus
Christ and His life for ours. Let's pray. We thank you, Father,
for the gospel. And Lord, I thank you that no
matter what kind of day that I've had, that you cause me to stop and to meditate on the truth
of Christ. And Lord, that by your unmerited favor, you permit
me to preach it. Father, I pray that we as a people,
as a family, would continue to grow in our understanding of
this great gospel. and that we would care and that
we would be driven to pray for one another and to be in the
Word so that we would be better equipped to invest in one another's
lives. Lord, that we would give our
talents and our time as we are able for the sake of each other. In the foundation of all of that,
Father, if we could just learn to pray for each other. And in all of it, Lord, no matter
how hard things may be, we will be together in the gospel. And
we will be effective in the gospel. And we will be fruitful in the
gospel. And that through our lives, that your sheep would
even come to know the truth. That you would add to the number
of your body. To the praise of your glorious
grace. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.