WWUTT 343 If These Qualities Are Yours?

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January 3, 2017

Reading 2 Peter 1:5-8 and understanding the qualities that should be exhibited by believers who are fruitful in the faith. Visit wwutt.com for all of our videos!

00:01: We have read that His divine power is granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness and those things keep us from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our
00:12: Lord Jesus Christ when we understand the text. You are listening to When We Understand the
00:27: Text, an online Bible ministry so that we may know all the riches freely given to us by God.
00:32: For questions and comments, send us an email to whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com.
00:39: Here's your teacher, Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky. It is always a blessing, always a privilege to be able to retreat into the
00:47: Word of God, and today we'll be in 2 Peter 1, looking at verses 3 -11.
00:53: The Apostle says, His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us to His own glory and excellence, by which
01:06: He has granted to us His precious and very great promises, so 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.
01:19: For this very reason, 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.
01:38: For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our
01:46: 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.
01:55: Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election. For if you practice these qualities, you will never fall.
02:03: For in this way there will be ritually provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our
02:10: Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. So yesterday we were looking at verses 3 -5 where Peter says,
02:18: His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness.
02:24: Hope, purpose, and meaning in this life, we have knowledge of these things because of the power of God.
02:31: God's power who has granted to us an ability to understand these things, an ability to pursue godliness, to live in a way that is pleasing to the
02:42: Lord. Before this, we could not do it. No work of our own was ever going to be good enough.
02:47: We read in Isaiah 64 -6 that even our best deeds are as filthy rags before a holy
02:54: God, but it is by His divine power that He has granted to us an ability to pursue godliness, to live in such a way that is pleasing unto the
03:05: Lord, that we can, with our whole lives, worship God, worshiping
03:11: God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. And we are granted these things through the knowledge of Him who called us to His own glory and excellence, by which
03:23: He has granted to us His precious and very great promises. This is like Paul speaking in Colossians chapter 3 about having been raised with Christ, we are seated with Him at the right hand of the throne of God.
03:38: Not when we perish from this life, when our bodies die and our spirit goes to be with the
03:45: Lord forever and then we're in heaven with God, that's when we're with Christ. No, Paul says that when we have been raised from death to life, we have died to sin and are risen with Christ who is seated at the right hand of God.
04:02: We are seated with Him at the throne. And so therefore we need to keep our eyes, our minds fixed upon that which is above, not things that are here on earth.
04:13: So we have been granted His precious and very great promises so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature in the way that God is using all things for His glory.
04:28: Now that we have knowledge of these things, according to the word of God, we have escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.
04:39: Paul said to the Corinthians that God will never put anything in front of you beyond your ability to resist.
04:47: In 1 Corinthians 10, 13, no temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man.
04:54: God is faithful and He will not let you be tempted beyond your ability. But with the temptation,
05:01: He will also provide the way of escape that you may be able to endure it.
05:07: This is one of the ways that we partake in the divine nature.
05:12: Just as Christ was tempted and yet did not sin, so we who are being made in the image of Christ are able to resist sin just as Christ did and do so in a way that brings glory and honor and praise to God.
05:30: Not in boastfulness, not taking any credit to ourselves in our ability to resist sin, but as Peter says plainly here that we've escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire thanks to His divine power which is granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness.
05:49: So our ability to resist sin is because God has given us that ability by His divine power.
05:57: In 1 Corinthians 10, 14 as Paul goes on there, therefore my beloved flee from idolatry.
06:03: I speak as to sensible people, judge for yourselves what I say.
06:09: In other words, Paul was addressing whom he believed to be transformed by the spirit of Christ from a life of sinfulness into a life that pursues righteousness.
06:20: So when I say flee from idolatry, I know that I am speaking to believers who understand what that means and desire to honor
06:28: God and so turn away from anything that we might exalt to a place that is higher than God.
06:34: Anything in our lives that we would place of higher importance than God Himself, that's idolatry.
06:42: And so as Paul says to sensible people, people who are Christians, people who would understand what he says.
06:48: You can't walk up to just any Joe Schmo on the street and say, hey, flee from idolatry. If the spirit has not transformed his heart to respond to those words and obey them, then he's going to mock you for saying such a thing.
07:02: But Paul knows that he's addressing a church, people who have been transformed from death to life.
07:08: And so therefore are sensible people according to the spirit and can judge for themselves what it is that Paul is saying and what he means when he commands them flee from idolatry and saying this command in love.
07:23: Therefore my beloved flee from idolatry and knowing that he is addressing brothers and sisters in Christ.
07:30: Therefore my beloved flee from idolatry and our ability again to resist is because God has granted it for us to be able to do so.
07:40: We go on in second Peter, chapter one, verse five, for this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue.
07:53: So we have faith that Jesus Christ is our savior. He is the giver of our faith and the object of our faith.
08:03: So just saying we believe that's not a declaration of faith. If you say,
08:09: I believe in Christ as my savior, and you know in your heart that you have been forgiven your sins by Christ, that's faith,
08:17: God, the object of our faith and the giver of our faith. So we believe in Jesus Christ as savior.
08:25: That is faith. Now what? Well, Peter says, supplement your faith with virtue.
08:32: So now that you have faith in Christ as the object of your faith, so what should be showing up in your life is evidence of the righteousness of Christ.
08:43: Virtue is simply moral excellence. It is the pursuit of goodness and there is nothing good except God.
08:50: That's the words of Christ himself. There is no one good but God. So if we believe in God, if we know
08:56: Christ as our savior, then what should then happen as a reflection of this faith, this evidence of our faith is that we would pursue the moral excellence of Christ.
09:08: Not that we're going to do it perfectly, but you desire the goodness of God and to reflect his goodness in your heart because he has been good to you.
09:18: You reflect this goodness exterior, in your exterior, in your exterior, you reflect this goodness in the way that you live.
09:26: There we go. That's the better way to put it. So the way that you treat others, the way that you are growing in maturity, all of these things you are growing in the goodness and the knowledge of God because he has been good to you.
09:40: So this is, this is important in the life of a believer. If you got a person who says, yeah, I gave my life to Christ when
09:45: I was, you know, something, something years old, 20 years ago, but yet you do not see in their life any sort of change whatsoever over the course of 20 years, that would indicate to you that they are actually a strong, growing, maturing
09:57: Christian. There would be reason to doubt their faith. Peter is saying here that this is what should be reflected in the life of a growing and maturing
10:06: Christian, somebody that is pursuing God. It just begins with faith and then that faith produces other things.
10:15: Supplement your faith with virtue, a growing desire of the moral excellence of God.
10:21: And as Paul put this before the Philippians, not that I am already perfect, but I seek to make it my own because Christ has made me his own.
10:32: Then with virtue, that pursuit of moral excellence in the goodness of God, we supplement virtue with knowledge.
10:41: So there should be a growth in righteousness and a growth in the understanding of the things of God.
10:50: If you've been a Christian for 20 years and you still have a, a Sunday school flannel board level understanding of the
10:59: Bible, that's a problem. There should be a growing understanding of, of God's word, what it says, his doctrines, the deep truths, studying the deep and meaningful things of God, learning from other pastors, not just the pastor of your church.
11:17: Now he's the one who specifically cares for and nurtures your soul, but there are other pastors that you can listen to and hear from.
11:26: In fact, I tell my congregation, listen to other pastors, not just me, but some other ministers as well.
11:32: You've got church pastors through history, whether it's recent history like Edwards or Spurgeon or Whitfield or, or long past history like Luther or Calvin, or you go even back to Irenaeus and Eusebius and Polycarp, and you're reading the early church fathers.
11:50: We've got 2000 years of church history that we can glean from and learn from.
11:55: And this is all helping us to grow in the knowledge of God. Most of all, it is a steady diet of the scriptures and expositional preaching of the scriptures, large chunks of scripture at the time, at a time.
12:08: So you can hear everything in context and you can use scripture to interpret scripture, the spirit of God speaking to you through the
12:18: Bible. If you ever want to hear God speak to you, read the Bible. And as Justin Peters has said, if you ever want to hear
12:25: God speak to you out loud, read the Bible out loud. This is growth in the knowledge of God, our dedication to his word, writing his words upon our heart.
12:37: You listen to this broadcast on a regular basis because you desire to grow in a knowledge of the word of God, because that's, that's really all that I'm offering when
12:47: I teach. I've got no gimmick for you. I just have straight teaching of the word of God.
12:52: And so this is how we supplement virtue with knowledge.
12:57: We're growing in goodness, in, in, um, uh, the pursuit of righteousness.
13:03: And we are also growing in the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence as we read in verse three.
13:12: So then we supplant knowledge with self -control as we grow in knowledge, as we grow in understanding of these things, there needs to be an understanding of self -control that we are, uh, that we're spending time on a particular doctrine and not being tossed to and fro by every shifting wind of doctrine, as Paul puts it in Ephesians chapter four.
13:35: So let me give you a more specific example of this. If you are a
13:40: Presbyterian one week and the next week you are a Baptist and you are just as passionate about your new found
13:50: Baptist beliefs as you were about your Presbyterian beliefs the week before, that's a problem.
13:58: In fact, there's another term that is used for that. And it's cage stage. You're, you should be locked in a cage until you can settle down a little bit on these new found doctrines that you have.
14:09: Cage stage often applies to Calvinism. Whenever a person comes into an understanding of the doctrines of grace, they are so passionate and so on fire about it that they will look at others who do not share this enthusiasm for the doctrines of grace and even wonder if those people can possibly be saved.
14:27: So it is said of them that they need to be locked in a cage until they can settle down until they really understand that the doctrines of grace are all about grace,
14:36: God's grace to you. So you therefore being gracious to other people and then you can come out of your cage and, uh, and, and help people to understand this maturity into these doctrines, which you now hold dear.
14:50: So this is learning self -control. When you come into learning the things of God, as you grow in maturity, you're not beating people who are not yet as mature and, and saying,
15:02: Hey, why don't you know this yet? But you have self -control. You understand that these deep truths that have been revealed to you by the spirit of God, according to his word are a gift of God.
15:13: It is nothing for you to boast in. It is nothing for you to beat up on somebody else about, but rather you understand the words of Micah in Micah six, eight.
15:24: What is it that the Lord expects of you? Oh man, but to do justly to love mercy and to walk humbly with your
15:32: God. There is a walk that you have with the Lord and you need to be humble in that walk.
15:38: There is a walk that somebody else has with the Lord and you need to be gracious in the way that you are helping that person understand their walk, not beating them over the head with doctrines that the
15:50: Lord has revealed to you and saying, you can't possibly be saved because you don't understand these doctrines or hold to them as passionately as I do avoid the cage stage, learn knowledge with self control.
16:05: Part of being a part of being self -controlled also means that we are constantly in pursuit of God.
16:11: See, as we grow in knowledge, there may be a temptation to feel like, well, I've learned everything that I need to learn.
16:17: I don't see that I need to learn anything else, but being self -controlled keeps yourself in pursuit of the
16:22: Lord and never coming to rest on the things that you have been studying as if to say that, well, here
16:28: I am, I know it all. And that there's a tendency among Christians to even feel that way. I know as much as I need to know in order to get into heaven.
16:37: So there no longer needs to be any pursuit of these things. Self -control means not being lazy in this.
16:43: Oftentimes we think of self -control as abstaining from something, but self -control also means to pursue something, to not give in to the tendency of becoming lazy.
16:54: There is, especially in men in particular, there is a craving in our flesh to be lazy and complacent and not do anything.
17:02: And we can't let ourselves get there. We have to have the self -control to continue to be in pursuit of God and never just coming to rest and feeling like I've done all of the work that I need to do.
17:14: So as we then supplant self -control with steadfastness, as we grow in knowledge, as we grow in self -control constantly in pursuit of the
17:24: Lord, we will be steadfast in our faith, unmoving, no longer being tossed to and fro by every shifting wind of doctrine.
17:33: But we are straight in the course to the Lord Jesus Christ, our eyes fixed on him.
17:39: As it says in Hebrews 12, running the race with our eyes fixed on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith.
17:48: So this is steadfastness. We're unwavering. We are unmoving.
17:54: It's not only shifting winds of doctrine that can't move us, but it is also the trials and the struggles and the things of this life.
18:04: We are growing in the knowledge of God and therefore realizing all the more how these things that we're enduring, the things that are going on in the world around us are all still to the glory of God.
18:15: God is using all of these things to his glory. And our realization of that produces a steadfastness in continuing to give praise to God in the midst of all circumstances.
18:29: Steadfastness, supplant steadfastness with godliness. Well, we already talked about supplanting faith with virtue, the pursuit of good things, the good things of God, reflecting the righteousness of Christ.
18:42: So then what is godliness? If godliness is godly living, as we described it earlier, according to 2
18:48: Peter 1, 3, what is godliness in this context? Shouldn't we have been in pursuit of godliness all the way up to this point?
18:57: Well, godliness translates in Greek, Eusebia, and it means a devoutness, a piety, a devotion to God.
19:07: So we're actually growing all the more in humility, in meekness, understanding the holiness of God as compared to the sinfulness of man and just how unworthy we are to be able to call upon the
19:26: Lord. And yet it is by Christ that we are able to do that. And he hears our prayers and our cries because Christ has cleansed us from all unrighteousness.
19:36: So as we grow in godliness in this context, it's a little bit different context than what we read in 2
19:43: Peter 1, 3. Godliness in this context, according to verse,
19:49: I lost my place here. According to verse 6, is again recognizing the righteousness of God as compared to our sin and the more that we grow in the knowledge of God, the more unworthy we are going to realize that we are.
20:05: And that is growth in godliness according to this supplanting that Peter is encouraging us to do.
20:12: We supplant godliness with brotherly affection. So now we realize that because we are so unworthy of the mercy and the grace of God, that drives us all the more to realize we need to be a reflection of that mercy and grace toward others.
20:29: And we need to show that same mercy and grace to one another. And we can only do that in the church.
20:38: You cannot grow in brotherly affection on the internet. You have to be in regular communication, in contact, physically sharing homes with one another, showing hospitality to each other, worshiping together, lifting up your voices as one song in one chorus, learning the scriptures together, hearing them proclaimed out loud from the pulpit so that you are learning the same passages at the same pace and encouraging one another as we grow in the knowledge of these things.
21:10: This is what happens in church. This is the fellowship of the body of Christ. We live in an internet era where people are trying to make excuses and saying that I go to church by watching sermons online and I'm watching the same thing that other
21:22: Christians are watching, so therefore I'm growing together with them. No, you cannot grow in brotherly affection for one another unless you are actually putting yourself in a position to have your heart broken by somebody else.
21:36: And despite the fact that there are times when they are going to sin against you, you love them anyway.
21:42: You show them grace and forgiveness just as God has shown grace and forgiveness to you.
21:47: You don't play it safe. You get your hands dirty. You are in the blood, sweat and tears of everybody else.
21:53: You learn what it means to rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep. You go through difficult, tough things together and you can only do that in the church when you're interacting with other believers in the body of Christ, not by sitting at a desk staring at a computer screen.
22:10: You cannot grow in brotherly affection that way. You can only grow in brotherly affection as part of the body of Christ, his bride, the church.
22:23: We are growing in godliness, supplanting steadfastness with godliness, godliness with brotherly affection just as Christ gave up himself for us, so we need to give up ourselves for one another.
22:39: Just as Christ called his disciples friends, so we need to grow in friendship, in fellowship with one another in the body of Christ and we supplant brotherly affection with love.
22:56: As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13, 13, these three remain faith, hope and love, but the greatest of these is love.
23:03: Knowing that faith and hope are things that we need in this life, they are essential Christian virtues only for as long as we inhabit this flesh, but when we put off this flesh and we go to be with our
23:15: Lord in glory, there is no longer any need for faith and hope because our faith has become sight.
23:21: We don't hope in what is seen and now we see and no longer need to hope, but love endures forever.
23:29: His love endures forever. As it says over and over in the Psalms, his love endures forever.
23:36: We may not have need for faith and hope in heaven, but we will forever be in his love, the perfect love of God, which just keeps going and going and this is what we should pursue.
23:49: For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our
23:57: Lord Jesus Christ. And goodness, I wish I could just keep right on going, but I'm already over my 20 minute limit where I try to stop whenever we do these
24:07: Bible studies each day. So that is where we're going to pick up next week. We've studied second
24:13: Peter, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Tomorrow we're going to look at an old Testament study and then the next week, beginning
24:21: Monday, we will continue our study of second Peter. But you continue to be diligent in these things and read on, study this later today, open up your
24:30: Bible and read through it and look at this all together in context so that we would increase in these qualities and be kept from being unfruitful or ineffective in the knowledge of our
24:44: Lord Jesus Christ. Let us pray. Our wonderful God and Savior, we thank you for your divine power who is granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness through the knowledge of you, which we read about in the scriptures.
25:01: You who have called us to your own glory and excellence by which you've granted to us your very precious and very great promises.
25:12: As Peter had said previously in his first letter, you have caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled and unfading, kept in heaven for us who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.
25:36: God, it is by your power that we have been saved. It is by your power that we stay saved. So keep us,
25:42: Lord, in steadfastness according to the word of God that we would be growing in the knowledge of these things all the more to your glory and honor.
25:52: In the name of Christ we pray, amen. You've been listening to When We Understand the
25:57: Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, Gabe will be going through a New Testament study.
26:03: Then on Thursday, we look at an Old Testament book. On Friday, we take questions from the listeners and viewers.