The Walk of Grace
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Today we continue with our theme of “Living Expectantly”
14 Therefore, beloved, looking forward to these things, be diligent to be found by Him in peace, without spot and blameless;
Peter is reminding the believers to live expectantly of certain things in their lives because they are following Christ.
to live expectantly of these things means to:
seek them out if they aren’t happening in your life.
That’s changing your life to accommodate them and to pray about them, asking God to bring them about.
to live in a way that is marked by them.
Making room for and living life:
Expecting and looking forward to your glorious inheritance. The future that Jesus died to give you
Daily living in the experience of the joy and acceptance of God’s grace.
Living life under the guidance and power of God’s awesome Word
being lifted up to your spiritual place and position in him
Being changed into the image of Christ. Becoming more like Him every day.
Experiencing and sharing the wonderful blessings in your life
becoming an outlet for the Glory of God to be seen in your world.
Walking in your victory over the enemy.
Being a person of authority - understanding the authority that God has given to you as his child and living in it
Allowing God’s Spirit to make you submissive to the authority that he has placed over you
Allowing that submission to bring a godly humility to your life.
Having a passion for life that will fill your heart with worship toward Christ in everything that you do.
Trusting God as Peter says in - that he is perfecting you and establishing you while he strengthens you and settles you.
Perfecting - Kat-ar-tid-zo - mending you, fitting you, preparing you and restoring you
Establish - stay-rid-zo - making you steadfast, and stable. Creating in you a constant spirit that will stand firm in the craziness of life
Strengthen - sthen-ou-oo - to make you able to stand strong in and undergo certain experiences.
Settle - them-el-ee-ou-oo - give you a firm foundation to stand upon and to operate from.
And with that we enter into Peter’s second letter
1 Simon Peter, a bondservant and apostle of Jesus Christ, To those who have obtained like precious faith with us by the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ:
2 Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord,
3 as His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue,
4 by which have been given to 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.
5 But also for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge,
6 to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness,
7 to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love.
8 For if these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
9 For he who lacks these things is shortsighted, even to blindness, and has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins.
10 Therefore, brethren, be even more diligent to make your call and election sure, for if you do these things you will never stumble;
11 for so an entrance will be supplied to you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Because of What Jesus has done, you and I can expect a progression to our spiritual walk.
None of us should get to heaven walking the same way that we did when we first asked Christ into our heart.
God expects that our Spirit will grow and mature.
He expects that his children will grow from infant into adulthood.
But we know from reading Paul’s writings that doesn’ t always happen.
Paul writes a few times about babes in Christ, the milk vs the solid food of the Word and Spiritual maturity.
Count Your Blessings
Count Your Blessings
This is exactly what the whole series has been about up to this point.
Realizing what God has done for us and in us
Living in the things that Christ paid such a high price to give us.
This is one way to grow in Christ.
Just look at the list here:
a precious faith
knowledge of God
a calling of God
a life of godliness. the ability to live differently than we are living now.
Look at this one in verse 4 - partakers of the divine nature.
My brothers and sisters, we get to take on the divine nature of God.
That’s not becoming a god, but being like God
It’s not being omniscient, but being guided through life and it’s situations and circumstances by the wisdom and knowledge of God
It’s not being omnipresent, but being God in every place that we find ourselves
It’s not being omnipotent, but seeing the power of God released in our lives in our daily living
We get to represent Jesus to the World.
People visiting with us this morning, should enjoy what they see, because we are shining the light of Jesus
People at your workplace should be encouraged whenever you are around, because you are speaking forth and living out the Word of God in front of them
People in your community should be built up, because your heart is full of the love of God and it just flows out of your spirit towards them today
And so much more because the divine nature of God is affecting his children.
( We’ve looked at this one already)
5 Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus,
20 I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.
This should be our goal in our walk with Christ. That we get to a place where it’s not us who are living, but Christ through us.
Do you know what happens around you when that takes place.
Look what Paul says here. He doesn’t say that I stop living. but that now the life I live in this flesh is lived by faith in the son of God.
This is possible brothers and sisters. It’s done by the power of the Holy Spirit and by us making a choice that it’s Christ who gets to live in this flesh
No longer my plans, or my agenda’s or what I want, but I’m allowing Christ to live through me. I guarantee in each of us today - that looks different than the way that we are living now.
Jesus gives the way for that transformation of living to take place
4 Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me.
5 “I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.
It’s as we stay connected to him.
It’s as we stay looking to him
WE need to understand that the real power to live life is being connected to the source of life
And that without him, we can do nothing.
Counting our blessings:
So Counting our blessings:
Gives us hope for where we are headed
reminds us of how far we have actually come already
builds up our faith in our God - to be able to trust him for greater things.
We see here that Peter starts with Faith. Our precious Faith
Next
Put Your Best Foot Forward
Put Your Best Foot Forward
walk the walk of grace. Keep going forward.
If you are not there yet, don’t stop. Don’t throw in the towel, no matter how bad it gets
Just get walking. Persevere, Push through
Step in faith.
In verse 5, he says give it all diligence
Start from right where you are.
And what has God given to us through Jesus Christ? FAITH
Start with faith.
Start stepping out in faith. Start reading God’s Word, getting a word from God and moving out in it.
And as you move out in your faith, you begin to add to your faith virtue.
The word for virtue here has two meanings.
1st it means moral goodness. We know that faith without action is dead.
as we walk in faith, we trust God for things in our lives and those around us and we begin to raise our lives up to the bar
This is why Christians should be different than the world.
And so there is a morality change in our lives. We begin to take on the outlook of life that God has.
We begin to see what we were really created for. What we were really created to be
And we live in it daily.
2ndly, it is the manifestation in our lives of God’s divine power. This definition is key to this verse as it relates to what Peter has already stated in
3 as His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue,
2 Peter
We have been called to live a virtuous life. It’s part of being a follower of Jesus Christ and a son or daughter of God.
And as we add virtue to our faith, we begin to exercise that faith and God begins to react to our faith and exercise his power.
So virtue is one way that our faith is seen in the world around us.
And Peter says, don’t stop there. He says, take another step.
To your virtue add knowledge.
He is not just talking about wisdom here. But when we put the two words together that Peter says what to add to what, we see a better image of what he is talking about.
If virtue is morality and power, then when you add knowledge to that, you get moral wisdom
When you look at the definition of the word used there, it is the deeper more perfect and enlarged knowledge of this religion, such a s belongs to the more advanced. 1C esp. of things lawful and unlawful for Christians. 1D moral wisdom, such as is seen in right living
It’s a higher sense of moral insight.
Strong, J. (1995). Enhanced Strong’s Lexicon. Woodside Bible Fellowship.
Brothers and sisters, we need to expect this in our lives today. We are living in a world of moralistic confusion.
So many shades of gray. So much confusion in God’s people. And it’s not because God isn’t clear
It’s because the enemy is up to his old games of bringing doubt to God’s Word. And so few Christians really know God’s Word because they aren’t in it on a consistent basis, they don’t go to church consistently, they don’t attend Bible Study and they are listening to all the wrong stuff, that he tricks them into thinking God said something or meant something when it couldn’t be further from the truth.
Let’s not be those people.
Let’s pray and ask God to reveal his moral wisdom in our hearts. And not just to be hearers of it, but doers of it.
It speaks of a mental restraint. No longer falling for the lies and half truths around us.
Remember what Paul writes to the young pastor Timothy about speaking the whole word of God, even in the midst of people who will not hear it.
2 Preach the word! Be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching.
3 For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers;
4 and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables.
5 But you be watchful in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.
4 traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God,
2 Timothy 4:
Brothers and sisters, we are in that time.
Let’s be careful to trust God and expect that he will allow us to hear the truth and to live in it.
And we keep stepping
To knowledge, Self control
This is the ability to put that knowledge into effect.
to exercise complete control over one’s desires and actions.
This is a complete turn around from the pervading mindset of our society today
I can’t help myself
I’m predisposed to that - yes because of sin
I was born into it, it’s in my genes, it’s who I am - yes a child of sin
This causes us to take responsibility for our sin and rebellion and do something about it.
Paul writes in
25 And everyone who competes for the prize is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a perishable crown, but we for an imperishable crown.
That word temperate is this same word for self control used here and lets us know that Paul is saying that if you are going to compete for the gold in life, than you are going to have to show self control in all things.
To self control add perseverance (that should be straightforward)
It’s again our faith in action. we are able to endure, because of our hope and faith in Jesus Christ.
It’s the ability to continue to bear up under difficult circumstances.
It’s a patience and waiting (again why???) because of the faith that we have in God.
Then he says take the next step of godliness
Here comes the divine nature.
This is the ability to serve God in the appropriate fashion
To praise him, to place him first in our lives
It’s becoming more like him
It’s a respect toward him. It’s holiness
16 because it is written, “Be holy, for I am holy.”
Add to that brotherly kindness and to that love
I want us to be a church that loves one another.
I want to be a church of brother love.
And Peter tells us here the steps to get there.
Spirit Filled Life Study Bible Chapter 1
Brotherly Love Flows from the Divine Nature, BROTHERLY LOVE. In 1:4 Peter describes God’s “great and precious promises” intended to enable us 1) to be “partakers” in His divine nature and 2) to allow us to “escape the corruption that is in the world.” These graces are necessary to lift us above the decay of human nature and unto “brotherly kindness” and “love” (v. 7). Brotherly kindness dissolves personal infighting and ungracious ignoring of one another. It allows refocusing on our real enemy—Satan. Further, to master love is to receive and release agape love: that Christlike, unconditional gift that is full of affection, bursting with benevolence, and that provides a love feast to all to whom we minister in the name of Jesus. This text is a promise for those yielded enough to let these gifts flow: we can actually participate in the divine nature of God, which is elevated above the corrupt, divisive spirit of the world.
Brotherly Love Flows from the Divine Nature.
Brotherly Love Flows from the Divine Nature.
. Brotherly kindness dissolves personal infighting and ungracious ignoring of one another. It allows refocusing on our real enemy—Satan. Further, to master love is to receive and release agape love: that Christlike, unconditional gift that is full of affection, bursting with benevolence, and that provides a love feast to all to whom we minister in the name of Jesus. This text is a promise for those yielded enough to let these gifts flow: we can actually participate in the divine nature of God, which is elevated above the corrupt, divisive spirit of the world.
Taking on the nature of God. Becoming like our God.
The world seeing the children of God as they should be seen so that God can be seen in them
That’s what this is all about today
That’s what we should be expecting today
We should be expecting this spiritual progression in our lives
We should live in the one expecting God to add the next one
And it’s God who adds these things, not us. But as we live out the first, it enables God to add to it.
And I am out of time today, but look at the rewards of living this progressive life.
No Barrenness
No unfruitfulness
no shortsightedness or blindness in life
and the ability to live as one who has been cleansed
How many want this today? How many will expect this with me today in your life?
Let’s Pray.