The Tremendous Value of Biblical Education

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Well, if you take out your Bibles and turn with me to the book of 2nd Peter, and we're going to go to the last chapter of that book, and we're going to look at the last verse.
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2nd Peter chapter 3 verse 18 is going to be the focus of tonight's lesson.
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2nd Peter chapter 3 verse 18 says this, but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
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To Him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity.
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Amen.
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The title of tonight's lesson is The Tremendous Value of Biblical Education.
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This coming Sunday, I'm going to be preaching on the tremendous value of gospel preaching.
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1 Corinthians 9 16, the Apostle Paul says, woe to me if I preach not the gospel.
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He says a necessity or a compulsion has been laid upon me, and woe to me if I do not preach the gospel.
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And I've really been thinking a lot about that statement over the last few days and even the last few weeks because I knew that it was coming.
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I've actually had some conversations with some other ministers and even men in this church who preach, and it really is an interesting statement that Paul makes when he says, woe to me if I preach not the gospel.
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That's a statement of judgment on himself.
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The word woe is very powerful in scripture when Jesus pronounces a woe on Khorasan and Bethsaida.
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You know, woe to you.
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It's a pronouncement of judgment, and Paul pronounces judgment on himself if he preaches not the gospel.
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He says a compulsion, a necessity has been laid on me, and that's going to be the focus of Sunday.
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The value of gospel preaching, not the preacher.
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I'm a dime a dozen.
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The preacher doesn't matter.
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The messenger doesn't matter, but the message itself, gospel preaching, is tremendously valuable, and it has been relegated in our day to second-class status.
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Everything else is more important than the preaching of the word, even in the church.
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And if I don't watch myself because I've been writing this sermon all day, I'm going to start preaching that sermon.
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So let me stop, because that's where we're going Sunday.
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But as I was thinking about Sunday, and thinking about the fact that next Wednesday night we're starting Vacation Bible School, I was anticipating the message in VBS, and I got to thinking there's another thing that's also tremendously valuable, and that is a biblical education.
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And so what I wanted to do tonight is to talk about the tremendous value of a biblical education, in conjunction with the tremendous value of gospel preaching, which we're going to do Sunday.
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When we get back from our break in August, we are going to embark on a series of studies of Bible doctrines.
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We're going to look at and increase our knowledge of foundational biblical education.
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And I hope, as I said earlier, I hope many of you will come next week, at least one of the nights, and see how we're trying to provide biblical education to the young people through Vacation Bible School, and families.
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Hopefully I will have a lot of folks here of all ages to increase their education of the subject matter that we're going to be dealing with.
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But when it comes to the issue of biblical education, I've said often, and you've probably all heard me say it at least once, that I believe that the church is an institution of higher learning.
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You ever heard me say that? That I believe that the church is an institution of higher learning.
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Certainly, we gather first and foremost to love one another, love God, and love each other, and to minister to one another.
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But we are also gathered to increase our understanding of God, and to grow in our knowledge of God.
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We don't come together just to hold hands and sing Amazing Grace.
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We don't come together to sit in circles and sing Kumbaya.
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We come together so that we will grow.
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And I know one of the things Jack and I have talked about over the years, we do have to concern ourselves with the amount of people that are here, but our more bigger concern is the growth and the people that are here.
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You know, we've said, is it about the numbers? No, it's about growth, but not numerical growth necessarily.
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We're going to preach to whoever God brings us.
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The growth is in the individuals.
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The growth is in the people.
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The growth is in the desire to know more of Christ.
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Charles Spurgeon said this, he said, he who does not long to know more of Christ knows nothing of Christ.
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Hear that again.
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He said, he who does not long to know more of Christ knows nothing of Christ.
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If you know him, you want to know him more.
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If you know him, you want to be closer to him.
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If you know him, you want to draw closer in your fellowship with him.
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And if you don't, you probably don't know him.
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Actually, Spurgeon said, you don't know him.
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If you don't want to go close, if you don't want to know more of him, you don't know anything of him.
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So as I was thinking about the subject matter for tonight, I got to thinking about the book of 2nd Peter.
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Not just this one verse, but the book itself.
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And I note that in the last verse, Peter says, grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
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And earlier in the book, he talks about some other places where he addresses the issue of growth.
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But I want to start here in the last verse, and then we're going to go back to the first chapter in just a moment.
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Let's look here at this last verse.
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It says, but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
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And after this, he gives a doxology, to him be glory both now and to the day of eternity.
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The word grow there means to become greater or to increase.
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It's the same in the Greek as it is in English, to grow.
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And in this passage, the word grow is in what is called the present active imperative.
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In the Greek, you have verbs, and the verbs are in moods, and they tell you how the verb is being used in the sentence.
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And the present means it's now, it's going on right now.
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Active imperative means it's something that you are commanded to do.
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Imperative.
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It's a command.
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It is a responsibility.
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So when the text says to grow, that's a command.
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When the text says to grow, that is an exhortation.
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It is a plea.
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It's an entreaty.
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It means the responsibility is being laid on you.
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Now, we know that we need to grow, and we know that we're called by this passage to grow, but there's a little bit of confusion because sometimes we wonder, well, is growth my business or is growth God's business? And the answer is yes.
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Some of you remember this, and it's in your notes, the difference between monergism and synergism.
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We've talked about this several times.
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If you don't remember, I'm going to redefine it for you.
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But you have monergism and synergism.
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That's in your notes, right? I put those two words.
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Monergism.
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Mono means one.
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Ergos is the word for work or worker.
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So monergism means that there is a single active participant who is working alone.
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Monergism.
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A single active participant working alone.
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Synergism, the prefix syn, means together.
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So if monergism means a single active participant working alone, synergism is two or more participants working together.
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Two or more participants working together.
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When it comes to salvation, the Bible clearly teaches, and this is going to sound like a big 50 cent word, but I will explain it just in case there's confusion.
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The Bible teaches monergistic salvation.
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Monergistic salvation means this.
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When it comes to your salvation, God does all the work.
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We neither aid Him, nor even do we guide His hand.
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How does the Bible describe us before we're saved? Dead.
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Dead.
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Not sick.
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Not partially alive.
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Not on life support.
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You've all heard the analogy, they say there's a salvation is like a man who's drowning and somebody throws him a life preserver and he's got to reach out and grab the life preserver and the life preserver is Christ.
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That's an analogy.
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It's used by thousands of evangelists.
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I have a problem with that analogy because the analogy, in the analogy, the drowning person is still alive.
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The picture of salvation is not that I'm drowning and someone throws me a life preserver.
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The picture of salvation in Scripture is I have already drowned.
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I've already sunken to the bottom of the lake.
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I have already begun to decompose.
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The animals at the bottom of the lake are eating my flesh and my bones are starting to deteriorate and God breathes life into my dead corpse and I come alive.
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The Bible says you were dead and your trespasses and sins in which you once walked following the course of this world but God who is rich in mercy made you alive together with Christ.
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By grace you are saved.
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That's a paraphrase of Ephesians 2.
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Right? You were dead, now you're alive and you didn't have any participation except at the moment you were made alive you believed.
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But even then that was a gift of God because prior to that you were not able to believe.
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The Bible says we are not even able to believe unless God gives us the ability to believe.
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So all that being said, salvation is monergistic.
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It is a single active worker but when it comes to growth in our faith we find ourselves or rather growth in our knowledge, growth in our faith, we find ourselves as active participants because now we've been made alive.
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We're no longer dead.
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By the way, who is worse off when they sin? The believer or the unbeliever? I believe it's the believer in the sense that the believer has the ability, this Holy Spirit within him, to know that it's wrong and to battle.
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Right? Whereas the unbeliever is dead in his trespasses and sins.
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As I've said before, wretches wretch and that's what wretches do.
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But if you have been saved you have the Holy Spirit of God living within you and the Bible says no temptation has befallen you that's not common to all men and with every temptation you are given a way of escape.
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So when you sin you choose to sin.
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That makes it kind of worse doesn't it? Yeah it really does.
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So we talk about the subject of growth and we see okay we have some part in this.
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We play a part in this.
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Now some people say our growth also known as sanctification if you're we're going to talk about that word in a minute but our growth in Christ some people say is synergistic and other people say no it's not and there's sort of this battle in the reformed community.
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Right? There's a community.
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Yes I'm somewhat a part of the community.
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You know I do get on and read articles and things and there's somewhat of a debate because this word synergism for reformed people it's sort of like kryptonite.
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You know we hear that words were you know because we want you know we know God is the is the author and the finisher of our faith and so we don't want to put anything off of him.
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Right? But at the same time there is some argument to the reality that we do have to play a part in our growth.
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You don't just sit down and close your eyes and hum and God makes you spiritual and he doesn't zap you with some kind of knowledge or maturity the moment you become a believer.
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In fact what are we called when we become believers? Babes.
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Right? Babes in Christ.
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And what's the goal? To get off the milk and move to the meat.
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Isn't that the goal? To grow up.
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Right? What was Paul's problem with the Corinthians? That they were still behaving as if they were unsaved.
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They were still behaving like immature believers or they were acting in some senses like unbelievers.
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Now I want you to go back to chapter one of second Peter because if chapter three tells us to grow chapter one says more about that same subject.
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And I think chapter three is.
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I think it's that imperative language to grow in grace and knowledge.
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Chapter one verse five.
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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 for if these qualities are yours and are increasing they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
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Think about what he said.
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He says make every effort.
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That's a participle.
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The word make is participle and the active imperative verb is supplement.
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Make every effort to supplement.
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That's what you're supposed to do.
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Supplement what? Supplement your faith.
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You see God gave you that faith but what do we supplement it with? Virtue, knowledge, self-control, steadfastness, godliness, brotherly affection and love.
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We're commanded to supplement our faith with these things because if we don't what does he say happens? We become ineffective and unfruitful.
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We become ineffective.
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What's another word? Does anybody else got a different word translation there? Verse eight.
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If these qualities are yours and are increasing they keep you from being any other word than ineffective? Barren.
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What's it? Unproductive.
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Unfruitful.
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You get the idea of what he's saying.
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He's saying if we're not growing we're stagnant.
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We're not doing what we're supposed to do.
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We're either growing or we're stagnant and we become ineffective and unproductive.
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Make every effort to supplement your faith with these things.
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John Calvin in his commentary on this passage says this, as it is an arduous work and of immense labor to put off the corruption which is in us he bids us to strive and make every effort for this purpose.
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He intimates that no place is to be given in the case of sloth and that we ought to obey God's calling us not slowly or carelessly but that there is need for alacrity or speedy desire to do this as though he had said put forth every effort and make your exertions manifest to all.
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Calvin is basically simply saying this.
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He's saying this is actually work.
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In his comments on 2 Peter 1 5 what we just read he said Peter's calling you to do something.
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He's calling you to actually work on something.
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When you get saved God gives you a new heart, right? With that heart comes new desires.
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Andy and I were talking about this a little while ago about when you got saved brother you and you just tell your story for you but when you got baptized you wanted to preach the day of your baptism, right? The new desire is there but you said you didn't know anything and I've been there.
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The new heart is granted regeneration and with the new heart comes new desires but not automatically new knowledge.
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Not automatically new maturity.
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I've told story after story of how when I first became a Christian I was very immature and I still fight battles with with growth.
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I want to grow.
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I want to be better and more like Christ.
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We should all want to be more like Christ but I look back and I say wow the level of maturity was so...
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I didn't understand anything.
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All I knew was I needed Christ and I wanted Christ but growth takes effort and I tell you this is unpopular because we live in a society today where everything comes in a can that's ready to open and ready to go but sanctification and growth doesn't come that way.
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In fact R.C.
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Sproul said this he said sanctification includes our efforts.
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We say it is synergistic.
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By the way he wasn't afraid to say it was synergistic.
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One of the most prominent reformed theologians.
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He said we say it is synergistic because both God and we are doing something yet we aren't equal partners.
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God wills and works in us according to his good pleasure so that we progress in holiness but as he works in us we work as well pursuing him in prayer relying on the means of grace the word and the sacrament seeking to be reconciled to those who we have offended.
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So R.C.
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is saying this he's saying yes we participate but it's not an equal partnership.
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It's not like God gives 50% and we give 50%.
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It's more like this God is working in us and we are being obedient and in that obedience we're growing.
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God is the one who's doing the work in us and we are participating in that work and you're on your sheet it says regeneration is blank.
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The answer there is birth.
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Regeneration is birth but sanctification is growth.
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Regeneration is birth sanctification is growth.
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If you ever have difficulty in your mind just understanding what those words mean hopefully that will help you.
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When you got saved it was because God regenerated your heart and he and he gave new birth to your soul and you were born again and you didn't have anything to do with that any more than you had to do with your first birth.