2nd Peter chapter 1 and we're
going to read from verse 5. And beside this, giving all diligence,
add to your faith virtue, and to virtue knowledge, and to knowledge
temperance, and to temperance patience, and to patience godliness,
and to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness charity. For if these things be in you
and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor
unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But he
that lacketh these things is blind, and cannot see afar off,
and hath forgotten that he was purged from his old sins. Wherefore,
the rather brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election
sure, for if ye do these things, ye shall never fall. For so an
entrance shall be ministered unto you abundantly into the
everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. Amen. May God bless to us this
reading from his word. We've been speaking a little
bit about knowledge and wisdom in recent weeks and a wise man
and a wise woman and a wise boy and a wise girl will be eager
and desirous of finding an entrance into the everlasting kingdom
of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. Whatever this world has
in store for us, whatever we will experience and endure, whatever
we will feel, whatever we will encounter, Surely this is the
great promise that is set before the wise man, that we might find
an entrance into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour
Jesus Christ. May that be the desire that weighs
upon all of our hearts. May that be that which we spend
our time and our energy and our abilities pressing after to discover
and to experience this entrance into the everlasting kingdom
of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. We've been speaking in
recent weeks about some precious things. We've talked about precious
faith and we've spoken about precious promises and we've noted
the Apostle Peter's clear and emphatic insistence that all
of these precious things that we might view and see and discern
of the Lord Jesus Christ are gifts received by the grace of
Almighty God. These precious things are God-given
gifts. We spoke of precious faith. is
a gift from God. Salvation is a gift from God. Grace is a gift. Peace, peace with God, peace
in this life is a gift from God. All things pertaining to life
Whether that is temporal, the very breath that we breathe is
given to us by God. And if he withheld that gift
for a moment, it would be our last breath upon the face of
this earth. Spiritual life is a gift from
God. Eternal life is a gift from God. These are all God-given. Godliness is a gift. Holiness is a gift. Sanctification and justification
are gifts from God's bounty, His goodness and His grace. The Apostle Paul could say, what
have you that you haven't received? What makes you different from
anyone else? Only that which God has been
pleased to freely gift. to you. All we have is our sin
and our unworthiness under his holiness and judgment. And any standing we have at all
is because of God's free sovereign grace towards us. And we reminded
ourselves that all of these gifts are given to one glorious end. that ye might be partakers of
the divine nature. That's why God gives his good
gifts, that we might be partakers of the divine nature, that we
might be the bride of Christ and joined to him. that that
union, that consummation of relationship might be forged and we might
be partakers of the divine nature. What a statement, what a sublime
statement for a man to make to other men and women, that the
purpose of God's goodness and grace is because we who are fallen
sinners should partake of the nature of God. to be members of the body of
the Lord Jesus Christ. And last week we reminded ourselves
again that when he shall appear, we shall be like him, for we
shall see him as he is. And also that little reference
from 1 Corinthians 2 and verse 9. I hath not seen nor ear heard,
neither have entered into the heart of man the things which
God hath prepared for them that love him. All the good gifts
of God's grace and his blessing and goodness towards us have
not yet come to their end or conclusion. There is yet much
more to be had and to be experienced. These are just the earnest, the
foretastes, the beginnings of those things which the Lord has
prepared for his people. And if with me you think on these
things with some seriousness at all, if you're given by the
Spirit to reflect upon these statements of scriptures, sublime
as they are, amazing and astounding as they are, surely the vastness
and the glory and the extensiveness and the wonder causes our minds
to stumble and struggle at the extent of God's goodness. How can we grasp the nature and
the magnitude of God's grace towards us? And that wonder only
intensifies when we realise that this grace, this goodness, these
gifts, this list that we have highlighted from the opening
verses of 2 Peter chapter 1, they are founded upon an eternal
desire in the heart of God to do us good. that long before
we ever lived, long before we ever breathed, that God had us
in view, that God had his church and his people, had those who
the election of God, the choice of God fell upon in his mind,
in his purpose, that he might do us good. that he has chosen certain individuals
to accomplish his will and to secure his ways, and that those
individuals chosen by grace, chosen by God, have a settled
state and standing before his holiness. Here we see the triune
God at work. Here we see God the Father loving
a people everlastingly before time, before creation, before
the world, in the mind of God, in the purpose of God. Here is
a love that burns brightly and seeks out His people to do them
good. We see that love is everlasting
and we see that God's choice of those that he loves is an
eternal choice, an infinite choice, an unchangeable choice because
it is God who is unchangeable who settles his love upon his
people. And this isn't anything to do
with Jews and Gentiles. It isn't anything to do with
any characteristic of any individual upon this earth, neither rich
nor poor, nor educated or uneducated, or black or white, or any nationality
or language or kindred or creed. This is to do with God's desire
to magnanimously bestow His love and His grace upon individuals
of His choice. And there in the eternal councils
of the Godhead, He settled upon a people. And the Lord Jesus
Christ undertook for that people to take every sin that they had
committed, every transgression of the law of God, and to take
it to himself, to take its ownership, to take its guilt and to carry
it upon his own shoulders and to pay the price of God's wrath
and anger as a holy God against his breached law. And the Lord Jesus Christ stood
up in the eternal council and he says, for those that thou
hast chosen, for those that thou hast loved, here am I, send me,
I will go. And he willingly and voluntarily
undertook to come into this world and secure the salvation of the
chosen people, to stand as their substitute, to go as their representative. and to accomplish all things
that are needful for their gathering in and peace with God. And God, the Holy Spirit, in
that great trinity of persons, taking his role from the coming
of the Lord Jesus Christ and the substitutionary atonement
for sin, undertook to bring the application of those blessings
to God's loved people. And so the gospel goes forth
employed by God the Holy Spirit into the hearts and lives of
men and women to call them and quicken them and bring them to
a knowledge of the truth and to take of their sins and to
cause them to be known, to be forgiven, and to experience the
cleansing of the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. To bestow
upon them a faith, a trust, that this great promise, precious
promise that had been set before us in the gospel, accomplished
by the Lord Jesus Christ, is the source of their acceptance
and the means and the way of life to sinners like them. And so the gospel goes out and
it is preached and it is preached promiscuously, it is preached
widely. And that message, when it is
preached, is taken by the Holy Spirit and applied to those certain
individuals whom the Lord Jesus Christ died for and those certain
individuals whom the Father loved. there in the eternal purpose
of God, the elect of God are gathered through election and
through calling, through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ,
the great accomplishment of salvation is set before men and devils. This calling that we speak of
here is the discovery then of all that God has done for his
people. It is entering into an awareness
of the plan of salvation and how it has been secured. It teaches us by the Holy Spirit
directing our hearts and our minds to see the love of God
and the grace of God. the sacrifice of Christ and the
power of the blood of Christ, and to lay hold upon these things
as that means and that way by which God is pleased to reconcile
his people and bring them to himself. If we are looking for
an entrance into everlasting life, Here is the man, the Lord
Jesus Christ. Here is the way, the gospel of
reconciliation and peace. Here is the means, the shed blood
of a Redeemer and a Deliverer, by which is ministered to sinners
like you and me, an abundant entrance into the everlasting
kingdom of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. Now here's the
thing that we all know. If you want to see more, you
need to go higher. That's just the way it is. And
whether you're a little girl who wants to see the parade over
the crowd, you've got to get onto your dad's shoulders. Or
your mum if your dad's not there. And if you wanted to see where
the danger lay and where the land was, well, you had to climb
to the crow's nest and sit right up there on the top of the ship
and look along the vast horizons until you could cry out, land
ahoy. You have to go higher to see
more. That's why the military send
their spy planes to glide silently through the atmosphere at the
edge of space. Because they all want to see
more. What about the Lord's people?
Do we want to see more? Do we want to see more of the
Lord Jesus Christ? Do we want to see more of the
glory of God? Do we want to see more of this
great work of salvation? Then we have to go higher. We
have to have a deepening of our knowledge, an increase in our
understanding. We have to know with wisdom what
it is that the Lord Jesus Christ has done. And this morning I want to go
a little bit higher, that we might see a little bit more.
And that's what Peter is doing here for us. It's as if he set
out a ladder for us. He set out some steps, he set
out some rungs. But we need to remember also
that each rung on this ladder, as we climb, as we step up, is
only given to us by grace. We can't try to be godly, we
can't try to be virtuous, we can't try to be kind-hearted
and have brotherly kindness to one another, to exercise charity
and temperance and patience and godliness. We can't endeavour
to do all these things, imagining for a moment that by them we
make ourselves any more acceptable to God, or that we can claim
God's love by the practice. Rather, we understand upon the
foundation of God's grace and goodness to us, these things
all flow to us by grace. but in the experience of them,
in the exercise of these graces, so our view enlarges, so our
grasp gets stronger, and so our understanding is deepened. We
see more of the Lord Jesus Christ as we ever follow him more closely. Peter calls us to diligence in
our Christian walk and in our Christian life and in our Christian
experience. He calls us to diligence. It's
a lovely word, diligence. I looked it up and I spent a
little bit of time just dwelling on it and meditating upon it. Because we kind of know what
diligence means, don't we? It means that you need to take
careful attention. So if you're a parent, Well,
you need to be diligent when you're walking along the side
of a busy road with your children. You need to be alert. You need
to be aware. You need to be thinking. Just yesterday I saw a headline
in a website somewhere about somebody
who'd left their child in a car in the heat. for hours and hours
and hours. That's not diligence. That's
carelessness. If we're going to be diligent,
we have to be careful. But there's another strand to
this word diligence. It has to do with love. Because
the word comes from a Latin root that means love. And so it is
a diligence, a carefulness rooted in affection. And that's what
Peter is calling us to. He is calling us to diligence
when we come to think about our lives, how we live, how we act,
what we do. And it's a vital point that reminds
us that a believer's desire is founded not in obligation, but
in love. It's a gratitude, it's a thanksgiving
that causes us and motivates us and leads us onward and upward
in our Christian experience and our desire after the knowledge
of God and Christ. And we've said it so many times,
we talk about service, but gratitude is the only service that means
anything. And everything else must flow
from that gratitude for what the Lord Jesus Christ has done
for us. We're not talking about obligation.
We're not talking about responsibility. We're not talking about law and
duty. We're talking about thankfulness. We're talking about gratitude.
We're talking about love. We're recognizing that he first
loved us and that's why we love him. There's a second strand to that
also, because that careful love in the way in which we deal with
these things that Peter sets before us here, this diligence
of these graces, they are good for us too. They will do us good. You know, Christians are not
immune from the pressures and the problems and the trials of
life by no means. Indeed, the testimony of Scripture,
we read it in our hymns, we read it in the pages of our Bible,
we read it in the lives of our friends and our neighbours and
our fellow believers in the church. We read it in our own life. that
there's trial and trouble and problems, and that we must enter
into the kingdom through much tribulation. But here's the thing,
diligence will do us good in the midst of our trials. These
are the ways that God, the Holy Spirit, bless and build up His
people in the face of their difficulties. We all have challenges. We all
have trials. And if you're not experiencing
them now, then that's because they're just gathering like a
storm. And age brings its own. Responsibility brings its own.
Growing up brings its own. But when we are diligent in our
dealings with the Lord, then there will be blessing in it
for us. It will do us good in our minds,
in our bodies, in our spirit, in our soul, because we'll have
a greater understanding of what the Lord has done. If we are
to have an increased knowledge, if we are to see more, if we
are to understand better, then The call of Peter is for diligence,
it is for careful attention, born out of love, but with a
recognition also that there will be blessing in it for ourselves. because there is comfort, spiritual
comfort, in the discoveries of grace and blessing in our life. As we understand more by faith
of the Lord Jesus Christ, there will be spiritual blessings for
us. Grace brings evidences of life. It brings a fruitfulness. It brings an outworking in the
individual's life of that change that has been effected within. And these changes, their evidence,
their examples of changed attitudes, changed aptitudes, changed desires,
so that the Lord's people will not any longer be barren of spiritual
fruit, but they will be fruitful and
useful and helpful in the body, in the church, in this world. Like Apollos was, when he heard
the truth, his usefulness increased, his benefit to those around about
him was enhanced. And it's lovely, you know, I
didn't mention it at the time, but that little scene there,
just that little moment, that little glimpse of that man Apollos,
so respected, so highly thought of, indeed, it's considered that
he was more thought of than the Apostle Paul himself when it
came to preaching. but he was taught of Priscilla
and Aquila, a tent maker and his wife. And I think that's
lovely because there was Priscilla, there was a lady, a lady teaching
Apollos who then became useful for the wellbeing of the church.
There's no place for sexism in our church, there's no place
for... The pulpit is retained for the preaching of a man, but
that doesn't stop that help, that education, that direction,
that example being generated by all of us. Indeed, it is incumbent
upon all of us. As we exercise the graces that
God has given us, the wisdom that God has granted, the knowledge
that God has given to the greater good of those around about us.
We are working together in this. It's a body effect. It's a congregation
that the Lord has given us. And that grace, that life, it
compels growth and growth. increases knowledge. That diligence
then is to add virtue to our faith. Faith is a gift, we spoke
about that already, but we have to add virtue and these also
are gifts, but they are gifts that are given, gifts that are
granted to be exercised and employed, to be considered, to be diligently
engaged with. Add virtue, add knowledge, add
temperance, add patience, add godliness, add brotherly kindness,
add charity. And these are all outward signs,
outward graces, respecting the witness and the testimony of
the Lord's people to those around about them. The things we say
and the things we do matter. The way we live is important.
We are constantly under the gaze of this world. We are constantly
called to be encouraging and supportive of one another. And it is the Lord's will because
he has supplied these graces. We've said it so many times.
The Lord God demands nothing from us that he has not already
given to us. But then he calls us with diligence
to add to these experiences of his goodness and to deepen our
understanding that we may know him better. And if the Lord Jesus Christ
enters into an individual's heart, then that will be a converting
experience. We don't have God in our life
without any change taking place. Peter is showing us here the
avenues that we have both for worship and for service and for
the expression of gratitude towards God for his goodness to us. And if the Lord Jesus Christ
reigns in a sinner's heart, as we claim and profess that he
does as believers in him, if the Lord Jesus Christ reigns
as king, which he claims to be, he's not going to play second
fiddle to us. That's just contrary to all of
what the gospel teaches. He reigns as king and that means
that a man or a woman in whose heart he dwells is changed. We use the word conversion with
good cause and reason. Now we may not always feel that
change, We may not always feel the benefits of the Lord's presence
with us. Indeed, it may well be that we
are increasingly challenged because of the Lord's rule and reign
in our hearts. It's a great paradox. that I
think all of us feel, and invariably we feel as if we're unique when
it happens to us, but it has been the testimony of the Lord's
people down through the ages of the church, that it is they
who are cleansed who feel the dirtiest. It is they who are
washed that feel sin the most. Those who are forgiven who feel
guilt and condemnation worse. John Newton, we've read a few
of his hymns recently. He said this, strange and mysterious
is my life. What opposites I feel within. A stable peace, a constant strife,
the rule of grace, the power of sin. That's his life. That's his testimony. And while
he has tasted something of the sweetness of grace, it comes
to him with an added sorrow at the sin that he still feels dwelling
in his heart. That's the paradox. That's the
great irony of the believer's life. And there are some for whom that
paradox is a fearful experience. So sensitive is their soul to
sin that they struggle to believe that they believe. They just don't have assurance
that these things can be real. They believe the gospel. They're
convinced of the necessity of the blood of Christ. They have
an understanding of the power of God, and they know the teaching
of his sovereignty. But yet they say, can it be mine? For the way that I feel? For
the things that I do? for the struggles that I have. And their faith is weak, almost
mustard seed sized. So little is it. And their hope
ebbs and flows. And their assurance, that which
they have, if any, is readily crushed and broken. And don't
imagine that Satan is above using the very gospel of free grace
against the Lord's true people in order to frighten Christ's
little flock. He can use the gospel of sovereign
grace against the people of God just as readily as he can use
the temptations in the newspapers and the magazines or wherever
it is that he gets into our eyes and our ears and wherever else
he does. He can use anything and he will
use anything. God's precious promises are read
and they're committed to memory. And we read them and we admire
them. and we long for them to be applied to us, but they so
often remain elusive to us. And it is sin and not grace that
seems to dominate our lives and cause us strife and cause us
dread. So what does Peter have to say
to such a soul as that? Well, he provides a comparison
between those who possess the fruit and those who do not. Look at verse nine. He says there,
but he that lacketh these things is blind. You see, the unregenerate,
if a person truly is unregenerate, They have no sight of God at
all. They have no sight of Christ. They have no knowledge of Him.
They are blind towards Him. God's gifts and graces are alien
to Him. And all those things that we
talked about as being the gift of God in our introduction, they
don't have any depth or meaning. or validity or veracity. They don't have any substance
in that person's life. That's not to say that they can't
use the vocabulary. That's not to say that they can't
employ the words. But for them, faith is a notion. It's a concept. They talk about
it. They sing about it. They argue
about it. but they never experience it. They cannot see afar off. They're
preoccupied with the flesh and they can read Peter's gospel
and they can read about virtue and they can read about all of
the blessings of godliness and knowledge and brotherly love
and patience. And they can say all of these
things are desirable to have, all of these things are worthy
to diligently seek after. And they can take these words
and they can take these verses and they can strive to their
heart's desire to fulfill the commands of God. Because that's
what they believe they are. And they hope in some way that
they can recommend themselves to God and gain God's pleasure
and gain God's blessing. But they do not look for a city
that has foundations. They're not looking afar off. They're not looking at that entrance
into the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ. They cannot. They can use the language and
the words. They can use the themes and the
concepts. They can use the notions and
the ideas. But they cannot taste the reality
because that is a spiritual gift. Nor are they concerned for the
glory of Christ. Religion to them is an outward
mask. They want enough to placate their
sense of sin. They want enough to maintain
an outward respectability. They want just sufficient to
make them feel that they are acceptable to those around about
them whose views and thoughts and acceptance they aspire to. But sins are no burden to such
people because their sins are dealt with. Sin has no consequence to them
and they're unremarkable. They're doing fine. They've got
their religion. They've got their faith. They've
got their church. They've got their insurance policy. It's in their pocket and they're
doing okay. But that's not how the believer
feels. The believer struggles. The believer chaffs. The believer
has to deal constantly with the besetting sins that bring him
down, with the challenges that she has to face as to whether
or not her standing is valid in any way at all. Because the
man or the woman that has no problem with their sin is a man
and a woman that has no need of a saviour. And the Lord's people need a
saviour every day. Every day. And every hour of
every day. When sin becomes a problem to
us, when guilt lays heavily upon our conscience, when we know
we deserve death and separation and judgment and hell, and when
we confess ourselves incapable of doing anything to recover
our lost state, when all that remains for us is the blood of
Christ and the willingness of God to save us. then we're beginning
to understand something of what it is to be sensitive to our
true condition before God. Do you see how contrary men are
in their religion? They say, well, I choose Christ,
when the real question is, has Christ chosen me? They ask, do I need forgiveness? When the real question is, will
God give me forgiveness? Shall I give my life to Jesus
Christ? When the real question is, did
Jesus Christ give his life for me? True faith. like the precious
faith of the apostles is built on knowing the Lord Jesus Christ,
who he is, what he has done, why and how he did it. It speaks of sin and forgiveness. It speaks of guilt and atonement. It speaks of bondage and redemption
by blood. And all who truly know Christ
have faith. All who know him have faith.
And all who know him have with that knowledge a burden with
their flesh and a burden to serve their maker. They desire to honour
God and glorify Him, but struggle to do so, feeling as if they
are wading through treacle, wading through mud, constantly beset
with the challenges of their life. They understand what Christ has
done, even done for them, and they have an enlarged view of
the Lord Jesus Christ in all of His glory. And they hold on
to the promise which says, this is life eternal, that they might
know thee, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom thou hast
sent. So I say to you, to my own heart, are you anxious about your soul? Are you anxious about your calling
and your election? Are you concerned? Does sin make
you doubt your interest in the death of Christ? Does your coldness
and your sluggishness in spiritual matters make you wonder whether
you ever even have truly tasted of this spiritual life? Does Satan say to you, you're
unworthy? You're unfit. You're unacceptable. You're unsavable. Well, he would, wouldn't he? That's his job. That's his role. That's who he is. He was a murderer
from the beginning. He's the father of lies. And
he'll murder you. He'll murder you if he possibly
can. He'll take your soul with him
to hell if he gets half a chance to do it. But if you know who the Lord
Jesus Christ is, if you have seen Christ set before you in
the gospel, if you've understood the message of grace and what
it takes to be a child of God, if you understand what sovereign
grace really means, and see in the Lord Jesus Christ an able
and a fit saviour, if you know who He is and know what you are. And if you have been brought
to that place of understanding that it is but by confession
because there's nothing else you can do about your condition
and repentance, then you know that He alone can help you. And if you know that all that
the Father giveth me shall come to me, and he that cometh unto
me I will in no wise cast out, then you understand calling and
election. You know that man has no part
in God's calling and election. You know that it's God's prerogative
and choice. but we also are called to take
Christ at his word, to believe that he is honest and true and
faithful to the things that he has said, to believe that in
the precious promises of God are the experience of the precious
calling and election of God and the precious salvation and gifts
of God's grace. The Lord Jesus Christ has said
that he will not cast out the weak. He will not reject the
weary and the heavy laden. He has never done so before and
he is not going to make a beginning with you. He is our door of access. He is our entrance into eternal
life. He is, for so an entrance shall
be ministered unto you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom
of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. So may the Lord open our hearts
and our eyes to receive and accept And may the Lord teach us that
these promises are real and that they are those promises, precious
as they are, by which the Lord God brings his people to the
experience of his grace and goodness. And may the Holy Spirit allow
us to lay hold upon them, that we might use them in the challenges
that we face day by day and the attacks that the devil makes
upon us. The Lord bless these thoughts to our hearts and lead
us to himself. Amen.