Add To Your Faith | Wade Branch

Good morning, everyone. It's great to see everyone who's

in the audience today. We have a regular members, we

have visitors who are perhaps feeling the seats of people who

are not here today from our own congregation.

So we want to welcome you. Thank you for being here and

hope you can come anytime you're able to have in the future to

join with us in worship. And we hope you know this is not

about us. Everything we've done so far

today, everything we will do in the future in this worship is

all for the glory of God. And that is our one focus this

morning. So there's not a better purpose.

There's not a better place to be.

And I'm thankful to get to lead in this part of the worship

because this is my favorite part.

This is the part where we dive into God's brilliance.

We get to dive into God's encouragement, God's wisdom.

And so I hope if you have your Bibles, you'll turn with me to

second Peter chapter 1. All right.

2 Peter 1 · chapter mention

I didn't know where I was going to go next.

But Chris at the last service said he was kind of expecting to

go into second Peter. So we're going to go into second

Peter. So we're going to keep rolling

on from first Peter, which was all about the trials of their

faith. The apostle Peter, who had been

through some trials himself, who had really messed up a lot, who

had really ate his foot, who had really done a lot of stuff that

we look back and say, you know, that's that's not the ideal.

He'd been through a lot, but that saying Peter had a lot to

to express to us, had a lot to teach us about about the faith

and about what it means to go through those trials.

And as he's going into the 2nd letter, the tone changes, the

message changes. It's not so much a letter all

about the trials of the faith, but it's about those who would

work against those who are Christians, those who might try

to pull them away. And so really there's there's a

there's a lot of similarities to things we've studied recently in

first, second and third John in here.

So you may see notes of that. But the same man is writing this

and I've titled today's Add to your faith.

Now, I and many people believe this may be the single most

encouraging chapter in all the Bible.

I just hope I don't get in the way of that this morning.

I hope you will see God's word for its brilliance.

And as Dave prayed, go home and read it and go home and meditate

on it and do it again tomorrow. And then a year from now, this

is going to come alive in new ways because it is one of the

most awesome chapters in all the Bible.

First Peter, a second Peter chapter 1.

2 Peter 1 · chapter mention

We're going to start right here in verse one.

It says Simon Peter, a bondservant and apostle of Jesus

Christ. So that's who's writing it.

He's identifying himself as the writer Peter to those who have

obtained like precious faith with us by the righteousness of

our God and Savior Jesus Christ. So he's he's identifying who's

writing to some people that the authors are writing to are

writing to people who have never heard.

We're studying with Frank in the book of Acts about he's writing

to O excellent Theophilus, this man who's a an influential,

maybe a leader, but he's not a Christian potentially check,

Fact Check myself, but not every recipient of the word has always

been a a believer or a Christian.

Here, though he has identified those who have already obtained

the faith. He's writing to people who in

the 1st chapter, he said you have been buried in baptism.

He says you've been washed by baptism.

He says baptism, not the removal of the filth of the flesh, but

the answer or the appeal of a conscience toward God.

He said those people have already obtained the faith.

They've already done that. These people are Christians.

So if you don't know how to be saved, hopefully you know you'll

pay attention at the end and that will dive into exactly how

to be saved. These people are saved.

It's in the past tense and they've done it by the

righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ.

I hope we never misunderstand when we stand in this pulpit,

none of our salvation is given to the glory of ourselves.

Our salvation is all by the righteousness of God, our Savior

of our God and Savior of Jesus Christ.

The Bible says that Abraham believed God and it was

accounted to him for righteousness.

Our righteousness comes from Jesus Christ.

And if there's ever any doubt that Jesus is our God, look what

it says right here of our God and Savior Jesus Christ.

He is our God and Savior. Sometimes we want to talk about

God, like there's God the Father, the real God, and then

there's Jesus and the Holy Spirit who are, you know, who

are of the family, but they're not really God.

No, there are three entities in the Godhead.

There's the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. 1 is not God

and the other word, the Son and the Holy Spirit, they're all

God. And this says our God and Savior

Jesus Christ. So he's writing to people who

have been saved by Jesus. He says grace and peace be

multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus

our Lord. So the writers often begin with

this because this is the ultimate goal of the message.

The goal of God's message is not to strike down sinners at the

hands of an angry God. Some people attribute that

motive to God and other false deities.

That's their motive. Our God seeks to bring peace and

grace if we will let him. That is the ultimate, the

ultimate motive of our God. But how does it come to us?

Sometimes we just want it the easy way.

We want to get it. We want to get Bam slapped in

the face by grace and peace. And he attributes this to the

knowledge of God. And I want to submit to you

today. If you want the easy way where

it just happens to you, you're going to be wishing for it your

whole life. If you just want it to happen to

you without diving into the peace of the Scriptures and the

love of God in the Scriptures, it's never going to happen.

Hopefully someone comes along your way and shows you that love

from an example, but unless we read it, we're not going to be

filled with it. May we seek to be filled with

the knowledge of God that will bring us grace and peace that is

beyond what our understanding can handle.

It comes from the knowledge of God and of Jesus Christ our

Lord. He says as His divine power, His

godly power has given to us all things that pertain to life and

godliness through the knowledge of him.

There it is again, who called us by glory and virtue.

If we ever doubt, let's just remind ourselves.

Peter's going to say in just a minute, I'm writing this to stir

up your minds by way of reminding you all things that

pertain to life and godliness are in His word, in the

knowledge of Him. And maybe Satan has tempted us.

Maybe Satanist tempted you to think that you don't really have

all you need in God to make you think that when you read the

Bible. Yeah, there's stuff about being

holy, but, you know, there's not really anything about real life

I deal with real life I deal with, you know, real stuff that

happens to people you don't know.

The Bible doesn't have that. That's nonsense.

The Bible has everything that pertains to life and godliness.

Sounds like that's all we need to know.

That sounds like it has every single bit of of life sustenance

that we need. But maybe life's challenges,

frustrations and endurances have you made you forgotten that have

made you lose a focus on the word, like it actually has that

for you. Peter wants to remind you that

it's the knowledge of it. It's knowing him.

It's knowing His Word and the things about Him.

They're going to get you through all the things that pertain to

life and being godly in it. And this is through Him who

called us by glory and virtue. We come to God because we

acknowledge that He has the glory and the virtue.

We don't come to God because of any other reason other than He

is the source of it all. He is what defines good.

We're going to talk about today how to be good and what it means

to strive to be good, but he is the source of it.

That's why we come to him. He is the source of all things

that are glorious and that calls us to him and he called us with

a message of glory and virtue as well.

We seek that verse 4 which haven't been given to us

exceedingly great and precious promises.

It's this glory and virtue that brings us exceedingly great and

precious promises that through these you may be partakers of

the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is

in the world through lust. His glory and virtue gave us

promises that are so great you can't even wrap your mind around

it. It's exceedingly great.

There's things in our lives that seem good and they last for

about a day or two. Or maybe here maybe there's

things that are really exciting for a little while.

But these things go far beyond to the point that they're called

exceedingly great by scriptures. They're promises that go beyond

anything else they exceed. They go above all the other

promises that through these you may be partakers of the divine

nature. The divine nature is something

you see when you look into the creation around you.

The divine nature you can grasp just a little bit of when you

look into the mountains and the solar system and you stand in

awe of the divine nature that has this kind of power.

When you see real goodness that someone would sacrifice

something of themself or someone else, you see divine nature when

you get to share in that. To partake means to take part,

to have a shared participation in the divine.

That's mind blowing that we could really touch the divine in

a real way. But it comes through having

escaping the corruption that is in the world through lust.

And if you haven't escaped the corruption, the lust of the

world will only corrupt as we seek the divine.

There are lusts that will only corrupt you and they seem good

for now. And if you're young and you

think, you know, this is great, there's nothing wrong with this.

It's going to show you in time that it's going to corrupt and

produce death. But the divine nature is where

we go to escape that. But also for this very reason.

For what very reason? For the fact that he has

wonderful promises, a divine nature.

And there's less that could pull you away because of that.

He says for this reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith

and I'm going to go ahead and read this and we'll go back

through slowly. He says giving all diligence add

to your faith, virtue to virtue, knowledge to knowledge,

self-control, to self-control, perseverance to perseverance,

godliness to godliness, brotherly kindness, and to

brotherly kindness, love. For these things are yours and a

bound in you and a bound you will be neither barren nor

unfruitful. And the knowledge of our Lord

Jesus Christ, if you want to get fired up to move forward and to

walk with God, there's no better place to start than right here.

So let's let's start. He says for also for this very

reason, given all giving all diligence, the first point he's

going to acknowledge is this is going to take a daily effort.

If you tried yesterday and you're surprised that it's hard

today, he's going to say, yeah, that's why you need diligence.

And at this stage of my life, I'm realizing how hard it is to

be diligent. I'm realizing that there's a lot

of things you could do for one day that's not always easy to do

tomorrow, and then the next day and the next day and the next

day. It takes diligence.

It takes a daily grind. But you can't.

There's nothing that God has asked you to do that you can't

do giving all diligence add to your faith.

So he's writing to people who have some level of faith and

everyone in this audience has some level of faith.

I had a chance to talk about these verses with some kids in a

in a club at school that they call Bible Club.

And I had a chance to teach to them.

And even those kids, you know very little about the Bible have

some little bit of faith. Hopefully it's like a mustard

seed, the Bible says, but you have some little bit of faith.

And so maybe you don't know much, but you have some seed of

faith that has you here today. The Bible says that his innate

power in Godhead is, is is known by all.

We at some point our lives may lose the acknowledgement, the

awareness that there's divine nature.

We lose the awareness. But God said we have all known.

So there's some seed of faith that he wants us to add to.

Because it's one thing to have a faith, but it's another thing to

live the faith. So what does it look like?

He says, add to your faith? Virtue.

What is virtue? It's moral excellence.

Moral excellence means being a good person, doing good things,

being morally excellent. Now, some people want to talk

about that like it's a holier than thou.

No, it's not. If that person is having a bad

day and they need somebody, they need somebody who's morally

excellent to be there for them, to support them and strengthen

them and be there. Virtue is moral excellence.

So it's not enough just to have faith.

You got to be morally excellent. So take whatever you currently

have and go do something good with it.

If you're starting out, just in the beginning, go do something

good. And you know what?

We all know what's good naturally.

Generally, we all know what's good.

You can take a kid and you say I want you to do your best today.

If you go out and do your best, I'm going to give you an ice

cream party. At the end of the day, that kid

is going to light up and they know exactly what to do.

Generally, OK, they might not know everything.

That's where we're going to get into something else next.

They might not have all knowledge of what's good, but

they generally know how to do good things, and we do, too.

That's why, though, he says add to your faith virtue and to

virtue knowledge. So as we develop the desire and

the ability to get ourselves to go do something good, we need to

be educated about what's good. How can you know all the good

things there ought to do unless you you learn?

How can we know what is right and good without diving into

Scripture? And so that's why I believe he

puts this next on the list. He wants us to have faith that

prompts action, but that action is going to be misguided.

There are things when I was young Christian that I thought

were totally fine and I didn't know until I got knowledge that

it was wrong, and it's something else I needed to be doing was

good that I just wasn't aware of.

I don't know how actively the scriptures tell us you need to

go visit widows and orphans, James says.

That's real religion. Are you visiting widows and

orphans? There are things you need to add

to your knowledge, their awareness of what is virtuous.

So you add to your faith, knowledge of what's good, and to

knowledge we add self-control. So once you know this stuff,

that's where our human will really hits a conflict because

at this point we've been aware of God and we want to do

something good until we learn about something that we don't

really want to do. And that's where you have to

control yourself. And I'm made aware of that

whenever I talk to Charlie. And Charlie's just doing

something. I said, Charlie, control

yourself. You have control.

There's something in one of you that wants to fly off the handle

and do something else. I need you to take control of

yourself. And if we act as mature

Christians or older Christians of the faith, as if we don't

still need self-control, we are not in control of ourself.

Because we'll realize how much it takes to overcome the evil

that is pressing against us and maybe pressing out from within

us that we have to control and to stop and to overcome.

Because there are undoubtedly going to be things that feel

good that we want to do. We have to learn again, the very

first word we learn as humans. The very first word you learn is

no. We have to learn the word no for

ourselves sometimes, and sometimes no means overcoming

complacency. No, I will not be complacent.

No, I will not sit here and act like I'm doing enough today,

like that's good enough and yesterday's merits are good

enough. No, I'm going to keep moving

forward. I'm going to take control of

myself and take responsibility for what is good, what is

virtuous, and I'm going to go do that thing I don't feel like

doing today. I'm going to take control of

myself, whether it's a desire to or a desire not to.

I got to take control of all that.

You can't control yourself and not just be controlled, be

carried away by the things that might detract from us.

So we have to learn to control ourselves.

Once we know, and once you learn to control yourself, he says,

add perseverance. You got to learn to just keep

going, to persevere through the successes because maybe you get

through the end of one day and you're like, man, I'm feeling

good. That was successful.

And you're like, I got to do that again tomorrow.

That can be exhausting sometimes.

But again, God will give us strength for the daily effort.

That's what daily bread is. That's what mana is.

It's a representation. Just says give us this day Our

Daily Bread. It's a representation of the

things I need to do today. I need today to do it again, to

live a life of faith again and that do it again mentality is

perseverance. Yes, it was hard to control

myself, but I can persevere in that.

You need to learn to persevere, not against only against

successes and through successes, but against failure to fall on

your face one day, so to speak, and to then go, I'm going to get

up again. I'm going to try again.

I messed up and the devil's message is you're a loser,

you're never going to succeed. You're a failure if you follow

that teaching. That's the teaching of the

devil. Do you realize that the teaching

of the devil is you can't succeed, you're a loser?

Sometimes we feel like it's this righteous voice inside of us

saying no, I if I know it's really right, I'm never going to

be successful. That is the message of the

devil. Reject that and hear what

scripture has to say. Scripture says no, you can't

control yourself and keep going in that despite your failures.

You get up again, you try again, one man said.

In order to grow in anything, you have to face it's opposite.

In order to be a strong person physically, you have to push

yourself to the point of weakness with muscles.

You have to accept the feeling I'm going to feel weak when I

try to push this load, whether it's on the job site or if it's

in the gym. You have to push to the point

that you feel weak, and then that makes you strong.

So in your Christian life, don't be surprised when you get to

feeling like you're weak and it hurts mentally.

Like I like this. That means you're being pushed

towards strength. If you want to develop social

skills, you have to embrace awkwardness.

You have to go out there and try.

A lot of times it happens when people are young, they got to

push themselves past being awkward into social situations

they don't really like. But that's the only way to get

better. If you don't like public

speaking, the only way to get better is to go through the

awkward. So the only way to feel

comfortable is to embrace the awkward.

Sometimes in order to get physical health after an injury,

you have to feel more injured. Sometimes when I separated my

shoulder, the last thing I want to do is rehab, right?

Because the rehab hurts and you're made more aware of your

injury. But every day I just kept doing

it and it became healthy. It became a healthy shoulder.

There's no popping, there's no limited range of motion.

But I had to embrace the injury. If I sat there, I wouldn't feel

injured. I feel great.

As long as I don't move, I feel fine.

But as soon as I start to move, that's what hurts.

In order to develop health, you have to feel injured.

Sometimes. In order to get strong,

mentally, have mental health, you have to.

You have to handle the past hurt and you have to handle the

current reality of how bad you are right now.

Maybe it's really bad, maybe it's not super bad, maybe it

feels really bad, but you have to look that in the face and

deal with that. It's easier to numb ourselves

with any number of things, with substance, with distractions,

with entertainment, to the point that we don't think a thing

about how we really are right now.

That's easy and you feel good, but it doesn't make you good.

It keeps you mentally unhealthy. But to be healthy, you have to

look unhealthiness in the face and you have to look at who you

are right now and deal with the pain of where you're at, where

you've been. It's nothing.

It's nothing new. You all know this.

And so spiritual health often comes in the form of spiritual

war. Spiritual health comes through a

spiritual fight. And so if these call to

perseverance and all these things feel like, man, this

Christian life isn't what I thought it was going to be.

I thought I was going to walk in and Jesus was going to sweep me

off my feet and carry me on. Yes, but that's not always what

it feels like. He's going to carry us and give

us strength that we don't have on our own, but it's not always

going to feel like that. And so we have to be perseverant

and to perseverance godliness. There's a lot of reasons why you

could explain the order, the way that things they are, the way

they are here. I think it makes sense that

until you have learned to know what's good, to control yourself

and to do it even when you don't feel like it, how can you

possibly know what it means to be like God?

God and all of human history has faced frustrating idiots like us

and said I'm still going to be good to you anyway.

And it's not until you've dealt with something you don't want to

do and you still did what was good and virtuous anyway, that

you can even comprehend what it means to be godly.

And that is the goal, being like God, being more like him.

Or we can overcome and still seek good despite the challenges

to godliness. Brotherly kindness.

Some translations say brotherly affection.

I think that might be a little bit better for the trying to

understand what he's really getting at.

He wants us to add a God to godliness and brotherly

kindness. Because there's a lot of people

who are godly, but maybe people don't quite feel the affection

from them. So you got to add that.

You got to learn how to be affectionate like a brother, not

like a spouse. It's not spousal affection.

That's why he says brotherly. I believe it's because it's a

different kind of affection. It's a it's a brotherly like I'm

here for you and I want you to feel that.

I want you to know that. I want you to see that, that I'm

here for you as a brother in support and to lock arms with

you and to do this thing. Let's go.

I want to make people feel that way.

So if you're godly, maybe you need to seek to make people feel

that that kindness from you. There's a lot of angles on this

passage, but I think it's also important to note that there are

people who are godly in many areas of their life, But when it

comes to loving their brethren, maybe specifically their

brethren in Christ, that's hard because we sometimes are the

shortest with the people that we're the closest to.

You don't have your most fights with your distant friends.

You know, a lot of times have fights, but people who are close

to you because you know them, you've been through this before.

We've hit this wall before, and I'm frustrated with you.

And so it takes another level of effort to be kind to your

brother sometimes. Me, I had two older brothers and

younger sister. We were probably the rudest

toward each other out of anybody.

We would never be as rude to other people as we were to each

other sometimes. And so sometimes we have to

learn how to love each other despite how close we are and

despite the warps we see in one another that make it hard to be

affectionate, brotherly. I think that's all wrapped up in

this. It's a whole nother thing to be

affectionate toward people and not just be sternly godly.

Sometimes we need to be affectionate beyond the goodness

that we see in God. And a brotherly kindness, love,

This is the last thing he says on this list here.

And you might think, well, why don't you start with that?

Why don't you start with love? Brandon, many of you have seen

in the past as you've studied this and you can see it now that

love is a lot. As you read First Corinthians

1 Corinthians 13 · chapter mention

chapter 13, you realize love is a lot of things that require a

lot of effort that are actually things on this list.

How can you be loving if you don't know how to be loving if

you're not a good person? Can you be loving if you're not

virtuous, if you're not a good person?

Can you be loving if you don't know what's good and right?

And that's what's backwards about our society.

A lot our society says it's loving if you just accept me how

I am. No that is not knowledge says

that is not true. Love says I don't I love you

enough to not leave you there because if I love you I will

pull and pull and help you from where you stand.

Not just say you're fine, do what you're doing.

You do you. No, that is not love and

knowledge tells us that. So can you be loving without

knowledge? Can you be loving without

self-control? Man, I've been around people who

I thought were superly, superly, super, super good at brotherly

affection. They were like, they made me

feel good when I was around. They were like affection in a

different way. But then there's some things

that happened and they flew off the handle.

They had no self-control. And all of a sudden I was like,

whoa, whoa, whoa, you're not who I thought you were.

Can you be loving if you don't have self-control?

Can you be loving if you don't keep going when it's hard?

Can you be loving if you are not godly?

Because there's things about God that are pure love that we could

never come up with on our own. Can you be loving if you're not

affectionate? I think we might think that, but

then other people disagree. They're like, you're not that

loving. There's things that people see

in us. They were like, well, I thought

I was loving, but you didn't really make anyone else feel

loved. And I think that's why this is

at the end of the list, because that's when you start to really

see it all come together. Now, I don't believe this is the

ending point. I believe this is cyclical.

But don't be afraid if you think you're here, start at the

beginning. Maybe you need to add more

faith. Maybe you need to add more of

the beginning pieces of this process.

And it's cyclical. And this is the life right here.

This is the life we live. We go around and around on this

process. But I hope you at least start to

see that you have direction today.

I hope you see something in this list where you're like, yeah, I

feel like I've got that, but I know I think I need that right

there. And so you keep going.

You add to your faith. That is Peter's first message to

the people in this letter. Add to your faith, verse 8.

Why should I do this? Because for if these things are

yours and abound, you will neither be barren nor unfruitful

in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

So he says, if you just have a little bit of this sometimes in

your life, you're going to you're going to be fruitful,

right? No, he says, if this here, these

are yours and about if you try this one time in your life, it's

not promising good, a whole lot of great things.

But if it abounds in your life and you make this the habit of

your life, like I'm going to keep doing this and keep going.

He says the product will be guaranteed.

If you had a farmer and you could tell him if you do this

thing, you'll be guaranteed a harvest, you'd be a billionaire.

That's what every commercial probably tells these farmers.

If you just get this pesticide or you just get this fertilizer,

you're going to have a unhindered harvest.

It's going to be perfect. The Christians have a guarantee.

If you do this, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in

the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

If you have this perfect Peachtree, but it produces no

Peaches, it's barren and it's unfruitful.

You did all the work. You planted it, you dug the

hole, you, you planted it. You, you fertilized it.

You kept the weeds out of it. You did all the right things and

it produces nothing. It's just a waste.

God does not want our lives to be a waste.

That's the biggest, that's the biggest danger I think in our

lives is that you go through all of it, all the challenges, all

the heartbreak, all the ups and downs, and then for what?

For nothing. He doesn't want that for us.

He wants us to be fruitful. And to be honest with you,

that's one of my fears is that am I doing the right things?

Am I going to look back later and say I I was unfruitful?

I see the results later because I was unfruitful, because I was

not abounding in these things. How do I know that I'm going to

look back later in life and I'm not going to have regrets?

This passage is so comforting because it says if you do this

stuff he just talked about, don't worry about that.

The product will take care of itself.

The results will show because that means it's possible to have

knowledge of Lord Jesus Christ that does nothing for you.

It's possible to have a knowledge of Jesus Christ that

does nothing for anybody else. That is terrifying.

That is demonic. Even the devil's believe and

tremble. The demons believe in tremble.

You don't have to worry. If you just keep adding to your

faith, these things, everything will take care of itself.

You don't have to wonder like what is God going to do with me?

There's some of those questions like God's plan for my life.

You just go. You just go and let the manager

take care of the managers business and you take care of

your business. And if you do that, you will

never be unfruitful in your knowledge of Him.

For he who lacks these things is short sighted or near sighted,

we might say today even to blindness, and it's forgotten

that he was cleansed from his old sins.

Near sightedness For those of you who have eyeglasses, near

sightedness is when you can only see what's near.

You can't see what's beyond your face.

And so some people will be sitting there reading, will be

looking up and ahead of you, but you need glasses to see close.

That's called farsighted. Farsighted, as you can see, far

near sighted is I'm starting to flip myself around.

Near sighted means you can't see past right here.

OK, so near sighted means I can only see what's right here in

front of me. He says if you don't have all

these qualities, you're near sighted.

You can't see past what's right in front of you.

Why is that a problem? Because he says it leads to

blindness because you've forgotten that you're cleansed

from his old sins. You're too near sighted about

your past. It's like you forgot who you

were. You can only look this far back

and you're like, oh, that was pretty good yesterday.

So that's who I am. No, this history is you.

Do you remember where he pulled you from?

Your floor as a person is not, you know, a kind of a Christian

who messed up a few times here and there.

No, that's not your floor. That's not my floor.

Our floor of our life is dead in trespasses and sins.

Ephesians chapter 3. We were dead in our sins.

Ephesians 3 · chapter mention

And so if we act like we can't see back far enough to see where

we were dead, that's nearsighted.

We're blind to see what's past just right here.

We can't see far back enough to see where we came from.

And you know, something that I hear past people have struggled

with addiction. Something those people say is

they say I can go nowhere near these things because I know

where I've been. I know what I've struggled with.

I know what my triggers are. I know that I can't hide my

weaknesses and we need to learn something from people who've

struggled with addiction in that they're aware and acknowledge

what's their challenges are. But sometimes we as Christians

act like I can do whatever I want and I'm going to be fine.

We're blind to where we came from.

We came from the dust of death and sin and we will stay there

if we are not careful to add to our faith.

But also we're short sighted because if you don't add these

things, you're just living for the moment.

Right now. You can't see the consequences

on the other side of right here from our face.

You can't see why oh need to have self-control and brotherly

love. We can't see past the moment.

And so it is short sightedness. And because of that you're just

as good as being blind. If I can't see right here, If I

can't see past right here, I'm blind to what really matters.

He has forgotten. He has cleansed from his old

sins. Therefore, verse 10, brethren,

be even more diligent to make your call and election.

Sure. The Scriptures mention this

phrase a lot about how you are called.

You're chosen. Did you know you can make that

more sure? Whatever anyone wants to tell

you about election, we've talked about that in past studies, so

I'm not going to go into it. Whatever people say about having

been called by God, you have the ability to make that sure you

and your own life can latch onto that and make that a strong

surety. You don't have to be like, did

God choose me? That's not what this is about.

It's about I can make it sure I can be the called of God by

answering the call for sure. You don't have to wonder.

I in my life have struggled with assurance of my salvation

because it just blows my mind. Like how is this real for me?

But he says you can make it sure.

You don't have to be wondering. You don't have to be unsure.

If you are adding to your faith, this will help make you sure.

For if you do these things, you will never stumble.

Stumbling is kind of in contrast to what scriptures often call

the walk of faith, the spiritual race, an upright life, walking

in the light. It's in contrast to think about

stumbling. So what is stumbling?

Scriptures describe falling in phrases like falling from grace.

So you can fall and he doesn't want them to stumble.

So stumbling might be called the process that leads up to

falling. Maybe it's the the sequence of

stumbling steps that leads to a fall.

He doesn't want that. He doesn't want us to

spiritually fall. Spiritually destruction,

spiritually destructive fall is what he wants us to avoid.

And I was reading after people who say, well, it doesn't mean

you're going to lose your salvation, which means you're a

fall. Well, why does he say next you

have an abundant entrance into the Kingdom?

I believe he's contrasting the abundant entrance with stumbling

to fall. Judas, he stumbled and he fell.

Peter stumbled, but he got back up.

This phrase stumble literally means a loss of footing.

That's what your foundation is. That's your foundation for

everything else. And he doesn't want these people

to stumble in the sense that they lose a strong foundation.

So I believe the best way to kind of summarise this is it's

not missing the mark, right? Because we can be living the

life of faith, walking the light and miss the mark and sin.

That's what the definition of sin is.

It's to miss the mark. But if we stumble, it's he's

like classifying it as a downward trajectory into a fall

spiritually, because we're, we're all going to sin.

We're all going to miss the mark, but if you do these

things, even though you missed the mark, you're not going to

fall into a cycle or a pattern of destruct, destructive living.

I believe that's kind of the context of what he's saying

here. We will still sin.

We're not going to be perfect. There's no scripture that says

that. You are never going to argue to

be perfect. But if we do these things,

you're not going to slip into destructive patterns.

You're not going to be lost and fallen for so in an entrance

will be supplied to you abundantly into the everlasting

Kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

Frank has taught on this not too long ago.

It's an abundant entrance. It's not squeaking in like I

think you said by by the skinnier teeth.

It's not just barely getting in. It's an abundant entrance.

If you live your life like wonder, am I going to squeak in?

You're probably not adding to your faith.

If you're adding to your faith, it'll make you sure and as it

makes you sure it'll be an abundant entrance.

Don't doubt it. If you struggle with that, talk

to one of us. You need to work through things.

I've had to work things and do have still have to work through

things. So don't let that linger as an

idea in your mind that is real. God wants you to have an

abundant entrance supplied to us into the everlasting Kingdom of

our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

That's the that's the ideal. For this reason, I will not be

negligent to remind you always of these things Peter says,

though you know and are established in the present

truth. For this reason, he's saying,

because this is the case, I need to keep reminding you.

So what he's saying is you are now aware of this and you're

established in it, and yet this person is still writing them a

letter. How much do you think that

means? We need this.

If you think you can just coast through life and not live in the

scriptures, we're lying to ourselves.

Because he says these people know it and are established, but

they still need to hear it. I still need this or I'm not

going to be. In the right spirit frame of

mind to grasp it. And he wants them to be reminded

always of these things, of the present truth.

Verse 13 yes, I think it is right.

As long as I'm in this tent, it's a temporary earthly

dwelling. It's his body.

His body is a temporary place, His tent.

As long as I'm in this tent to stir you up by reminding you,

knowing that shortly I must put off my tent because I'm going to

die soon, I'm going to lose this earthly body.

This tent as opposed to a house, it's permanent.

It's tent, it's temporary. Just as our Lord Jesus Christ

showed me, He had revelation that showed him he wasn't going

to be here a lot longer. So he's writing this letter as a

final admonition to these people.

Moreover, I will be careful to ensure that you always have a

reminder of these things after my disease.

Isn't that cool? He was writing thousands of

years ago, said I'm going to make sure that you don't lose

this message. And we're still hearing it

thousands of years later. We still have the reminder after

Paul or Peter's been dead for thousands of years.

Wow. For we did not follow, it says.

For we did not follow cunningly devised fables, he says.

The stuff that we're asking you to believe in, it wasn't like

some trick we put together. And that's what people try to

say, right? You've heard people say that,

that the Bible is just like all these people who got together

made a plan to trick everyone, he says.

We didn't follow these sneaky tricks when we made known to you

the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were

eyewitnesses of his. I think he actually says glory.

I don't know if that might have chopped off the end of the

verse, but he says we were eyewitnesses.

The things you're reading are from an eyewitness to it.

Peter saw this with his own eyes.

What did he see? For he received from God the

Father honor and glory. When such a voice came to him

from the excellent glory, who is this for?

He being Jesus, received from God the Father honor and glory.

So like we know this is this guy's real deal because we saw

it happen. He got honor from God the

Father. When, what?

When such a voice came to Him from the excellent glory, and

this is what the excellent voice said to him.

What did he say? This is my beloved Son in whom I

am well pleased. Peter said We heard God tell

Jesus that, God the Father tell Jesus that.

And we heard his voice which came from heaven when we were

with Him on the holy mountain. You remember who wrote this?

Peter, Peter, James, and John went on the mount of

Transfiguration with Jesus by themselves.

Jesus pulled them aside and only those people got to see.

This is an amazing scene. And Jesus was transfigured

before their faces and he's shown and they saw his glory.

Why? To contrast with Moses and

Elijah, to contrast with these people that they revered.

He said, no, no, no, this is my beloved Son.

Hear him. That's what the Father

identified about the Son. And it's in that the Peter's

writing the same guys, we didn't make this up.

We saw God identify Jesus and reveal his glory on the Mount of

Transfiguration. We're not making this up, guys.

This is real. And so we have the prophetic

word confirmed that confirmed it for them, which you do well to

heed as a light that shines in a dark place until the day dawns

and the morning star rises in your hearts.

We're almost done. Please stay with me.

This is some of the most powerful imagery in all of the

scripture. I'm not going to try to get the

lights all turned out right now, but I want you to picture

yourself in a dark place in a dark cave even and I have been

to I think it was the moaning caverns.

You couldn't even see your your hand in front of your face.

That's the illustration here that you would be, that you

would heed the light that shines in a dark place.

If you're in those caverns, whenever someone turns on a

light, everyone's eyes go to it immediately.

You can't help it. Your eyes lock on it like it's

the only light in a dark, dark place, He says.

That's how we need to be living our lives, looking into the

Scripture. Look at God's Word, the

prophetic word. Look at it like it's the only

light in a dark, dark place. Are you looking at the Word of

God like it's the only light in a dark place right now, Or are

you looking at everything else and that's just kind of in the

room with you? It's the only light in this dark

place. The earth right now is a dark

place. In many ways.

It's not a surprise. We need the light that shines

the Word of God in this dark place.

Until what? Until the day dawns and the

morning star rises in your hearts.

What is he talking about here? This is beautiful.

What is he talking about? If you look into the night sky a

lot of times in town you can see this.

You can see some beautiful stars out there.

You can see some some celestial bodies, as First Corinthians

calls it. They're just amazing.

And in the night sky, you see a dark place and there are lights

that are shining. But he wants them to identify

the morning star. What is the morning star?

Well, when you look up at the night sky and you see this, this

is the night sky through the Hubble telescope.

So if you go up in the mountains where you're away from all the

light pollution, you see something closer to this.

You still can't see it all. The telescope helps you really

see it. But these stars just form a

mass. They form a lot of lights that

are kind of unclear as to what's what.

And during this day and time, if you're trying to use that for

navigation, it could be very confusing.

What he wants them to see is the morning star.

Can you pick out the morning star in this sky right here?

You know what the morning star is?

It's a specific star. And even more so if you look in

the Hubble telescope. I'm not an astronomer.

I don't know where the morning star is today.

We know that the morning star is not just a star, it's a it's

actually a planet. It's Venus.

In the morning sky you can see Venus and it's the last star

left standing before the sun comes up.

It's hard to see sometimes in the dark.

This is Venus. If you look next time there's a

sunrise and there's not clouds in the way, look to the east

where the sunrise is coming up. The last star you'll see before

the sun comes up is Venus. It's a planet.

They call it the Morning Star. Who is that?

Revelation 22 clearly identifies?

That's Jesus. Do you see the metaphor building

here? You've been going through

darkness. You're in darkness.

The true light is coming where we live in the presence of the

sun, where we are in living in light right now.

We're living in light, right? You guys see the the the sun is

up. We're living in light.

That's a metaphor for being in God's presence.

But we're in the darkness right now, as if we're in the night,

and he wants us to look while it's still dark, out before the

sun is out before in God's presence.

He wants us to see the morning star.

He wants us to see Jesus and what he says is if you hold on

to this light, the word of God on the Bible up here, if you

hold on to the word of God like it's the only light in a dark

place, what's going to happen is everything else is going to

disappear. All those lights that were

confusing to you and like how do you know what truth is?

How do I know who's the right God and how do I know which

church to be a part of? How do I know it's right on this

doctrinal issue or this issue? He says you hold on to the word

of God and pretty soon it's going to be the only light left

standing. Jesus, the bright and morning

star is going to be standing there.

The truth will be revealed. It'll be clear eventually.

This is true both in eternity's sake, but it's also true in your

individual lives. With the questions you have, are

you wondering about this or that?

Hold on to the word like it's the only light in a dark place.

And eventually this is going to happen.

Truth will become clear. But you may be standing in the

night looking at the night sky and you're like, I don't know

what to believe. Hold on to the Word of God until

the day dawns, the day starts to come up, and the morning star

rises in your hearts. You know why?

This is not just an eternal thing.

Jesus will come back and then we're going to go to be in the

presence of his light. But I know it's also for right

now because he says it's in your hearts.

It's still in our hearts now. So even though we're not in the

presence of the Father, you can have that peace that leads you

to see truth despite the lies, despite the mess, despite the

confusion, the darkness, Jesus, the true light will shine

through. But you have to 1st hold on to

the Word before that day star comes.

This symbolizes the end of the night.

Jesus is the end of the night. He is the day that is coming.

The true light is coming. When you see that day star, you

know the light is on its way. The sun is coming up.

God's coming back to get us. Jesus is coming back.

But right now wait to see the day star.

They will light on this star for navigation in the night sky sky.

If you couldn't pick out the Venus, which they could, they

could pick out Venus to to guide them.

If they couldn't pick it out, they were lost.

They needed it for navigation and today we need Jesus and we

need the word for truth. Side note, if you're not looking

at the Hubble telescope, this will increase your faith in the

magnitude and the power of God. These are photos from the Hubble

telescope so as Christians please use it.

It's mind blowing knowing this first that no prophecy of

scripture is of any private interpretation.

The the people who wrote the word of God didn't give us their

interpretation what they thought God was telling them.

No, it's not a private interpretation.

Therefore we can't privately say I think it means this.

You can think whatever it means. No, God gave them for prophecy

never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as

they were moved by the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit said, I want you to say this, He gave this to

them. However you got that done.

I know that the Holy Spirit spoke through them.

So what that means is they didn't pick what it meant and we

don't pick what it means. God's truth needs to shine

through. And that's the end of chapter 1.

And today, if you have not begun walking in this light, if you

have not identified that Venus, that morning star in the night

sky, I can tell you it's Jesus. And I can tell you that the

Bible is clear about how to be saved and how to become a child

of his. As we've talked today, the Bible

says in Mark 1616, he who believes and is baptized will be

saved. But we're told we can't just,

you know, keep living. Like he said in this chapter, we

have to add to our faith, and that involves repentance.

It means I have to change. I have to go from my way and go

toward God's way. I need to change according to

Luke 13. Three, we need to confess.

Jesus Christ is the Son of God. You can't just say that there's

God out there and all these stars in the sky are all great.

I'm going with all of them. No, there is one morning star,

that's Jesus Christ. We must confess Him and we have

to be baptized, as we already read in First Pier 321.

He already addressed this. These people were baptized and

washed in baptism. First Pier 321.

If you've done that, then you are a child of God.

You may be a strange child of God, but you can come back today

and you can make things right. If you want to do that with in

front of the audience, say you can do that.

If you need to talk one-on-one to make that right.

Whatever we can do today to support you.

If you need to be baptized for their mission, their sins, if

you want to get started in the process working towards that, or

if you need to make something right, please come forward while

we stand on what we see.