The Calling of a Christian

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Transcript:

Well, this morning you get to hear the message that I had prepared for last Sunday, but that the weather was uncooperative in me being able to share with you. If you’ll turn with me to 2 Peter chapter 1 this morning, 2 Peter chapter 1, we’re going to talk about the calling of a Christian. I want to start off before we talk about it with a little bit of a visual illustration for you.

This is a box of banana bread mix. Now you ladies, don’t you judge me. I know that I’m not half the pioneer woman that many of you are, and I just don’t have time to bake bread from scratch.

But even this, there’s a little bit of labor involved. Now, whether you’re making banana bread from scratch, you know, you’ll need, if you’re making banana bread from scratch, you’ll need flour, sugar, bananas, several things, okay? With this, you know, a lot of that is already in the box, but there’s still some things you need to add.

You need to add the water, you need to add oil, you need to add eggs, and you need to add love, otherwise it just won’t taste right, right? Folks, too many times, you may think, what does the calling of a Christian have to do with banana bread? Too many times when we look at the things in the Bible that God tells us to do, especially when he gives us a list, especially when he points out multiple things that we’re to do, we treat it as a ladder that we climb one rung at a time and then forget the last rung we were on, or we consider a series of steps or maybe a checklist, and we take care of this one.

Okay, that love thy neighbor thing, I did that, don’t have to worry about that now. Now I can just focus on loving God with all my heart. Okay, I don’t steal, so I’ve got that under control, don’t have to worry about that, let’s focus on the not coveting.

Folks, when God gives us a command, just because he gives us another one to focus on, just because God gives us something to do, and then gives something else in addition to that, doesn’t mean that we forget the last thing he told us to do. Imagine making banana bread, whether it was from a box or from scratch, and you said, okay, now I’m going to put all my dry ingredients in here. I’ve got them in the bowl.

Good, they’re in the bowl. I don’t have to worry about them anymore. I can just dump them out and put the eggs in.

I’ve got the eggs mixed up. The yolks and the whites are mixed up together. Good, now I’ve got that under control.

I can dump those out and add the water. Folks, you wouldn’t end up with banana bread, would you? You’d end up with whatever the last thing was that you put in the bowl.

But when we make a recipe, everything has to be in there. Every time we cook it, and we can’t say, well, I used four eggs in the last loaf of banana bread. It calls for two, so I just won’t put any in this one.

It doesn’t work that way, does it? You’ve got to follow the recipe every time, and all the ingredients have got to be there. Otherwise, it’s not going to turn out to be banana bread.

And as I said too many times, when God gives us things to do, especially when it comes in list form, we think, okay, step one, I’ve got this under control. I can move on to step two and forget about that one. As we talk this morning, very briefly, about the calling of a Christian, and these things that God points out to us through Peter in 2 Peter 1, don’t look at this as a series of steps.

Okay, now that I’ve got this, I go on and just focus on this. No, this is a recipe, and we’ve got to have all the ingredients. We’ve got to strive to have all the ingredients, not just focus on one or two, or the bread doesn’t turn out the way it’s supposed to.

2 Peter 1, starting in verse 1, says, Peter, a servant and an apostle of Jesus Christ to them that have obtained like precious faith with us through the righteousness of God and our Savior Jesus Christ. Grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. Now Peter, just as in 1 Peter, is writing here to the Christians who have been sort of scattered throughout the Roman Empire. And Peter’s nearing the end of his ministry, he’s nearing the end of his life, and he writes instructions for those who are going to be left behind.

And by that I don’t mean by the rapture, I mean those who are going to be left behind in his absence when the Lord returned for him. And gives them instruction as they’re about to face things like persecution, as they’re about to face things like false teachers. And many people are going to fall away from the faith, and Peter leaves instructions and says, hey, you want to live the Christian life, here are some things that you need to be focused on, especially when the persecution comes, especially when the false teachers start spouting their lives, especially when it gets hard to be a Christian.

These are the things to focus on. And he starts out by talking about faith. And ladies and gentlemen, the steps that he talks about later on do not mean anything without faith.

We can try to live the best life we possibly could, and all our effort will end up with is us as good people ending up in an eternal hell separated from God. Folks, without the faith in Jesus Christ, it doesn’t matter what good, I mean, in the eternal scheme of things. Now it’s still good to be good.

But in the eternal scheme of things, it doesn’t matter what good we’ve done if we don’t have faith in Jesus Christ. He says here that he’s writing to those who have obtained like precious faith. The faith that he’s writing of, the faith that they shared was precious. One night last week, I watched My Fair Lady again, one of my favorite musicals of all time.

I love the Henry Higgins character, getting on everybody about their grammar. But He tells Eliza Doolittle before she learns to speak properly, when she’s just speaking this gutter dialect, he tells her, your language is the language of Shakespeare and Milton. It’s the greatest, it’s the most precious possession that we own.

And I listen to that and I think I’m inclined to agree. The English language is great. And yet, there’s something even more precious.

He missed it. There’s something even more precious. There’s something that we possess that’s more precious than gold, and it’s the faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. We are followers in the same faith as John and Peter and Luke and Paul.

All of the people in the scriptures that we look up to and say, these were great Christians. Well, folks, first of all, they were ordinary people who served an extraordinary God. But, folks, so are we.

And we stand in the same faith that they do. And that faith is the fact that Jesus Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, was buried and was raised again on the third day according to the scriptures, as 1 Corinthians chapter 15 says. Folks, the faith doesn’t mean just being a good Christian and going to church, and when I say Christian, I mean in the sense that we’re not Muslim, we’re not Hindu, we’re not atheist, we believe in God, and so we must be Christians.

This faith that he’s talking about is the gospel, the fact that Jesus Christ died to save sinners, was the only one who could accomplish it and did just that, and that what we all need and all that we need in eternity is that Jesus Christ shed his blood on the cross. for our sins. And that faith we have, ladies and gentlemen, is precious.

And he reminds them and he reminds us that it’s precious. We don’t let it go. To paraphrase Charlton Heston, they can have the faith when they pry it out of our cold dead hands.

We don’t give it up just because times become difficult. We don’t turn our back on the fact that Jesus Christ died for us just because things become difficult. And they lived in a world and we are fast approaching a world where it’s easier to compromise.

It’s easier to say, well, it doesn’t matter what you believe so long as you love Jesus. Baloney, it absolutely matters what you believe. It matters that you believe Jesus Christ died for your sins.

Folks, that faith we have is precious, and if we lose everything in this world, we still should cling to that faith because that faith is precious. Grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God and Jesus our Lord. As they were about to go through difficult times, folks, it’s a good thing he prayed for them grace and peace.

Don’t you want somebody praying grace and peace for you when you go through the struggles of life as a Christian? According as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue. So it says here the divine power of God has given us all things that pertain to life and godliness.

We think we can’t live the Christian life. We can’t serve God. It’s too hard.

I don’t have it within me. No, we don’t have it within us, but he’s given it to us. And we have the Holy Spirit who empowers us to live for God, whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises.

Folks, God’s promises, God’s promises are not just cute little flowery sayings that we put on posters and decorations that people put in their house that you can buy down at the Bible bookstore. As great as those things are, folks, God’s promises are real. God’s promises are steadfast, and God’s promises are a solid foundation we can cling to in a world that is topsy-turvy when nothing else is secure. We have.

We have great and precious promises that ye by these might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust. He says that we’re partakers of the divine nature because that doesn’t mean we become God, but that means God’s purpose for believers is that we become like him. We don’t become God, okay? I’m not preaching Mormonism up but we are to become like Jesus Christ. His will for us is our sanctification that we would be conformed each and every day to be more and more like the Lord Jesus Christ in the way we live our lives, in the way we respond to the world around us, in the things that we value, to be more and more like Jesus Christ. And He’s given us this divine nature.

It’s not something that we have. It’s not something we do on our own. He has given it to us through the power of Christ, through the righteousness of Christ, when we by the blood of Christ escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust. And because of this, he says in verse 5, and beside this, on the basis of all of this, on the basis of this faith and everything else, the power that God has given you to live a godly life.

And beside this, giving all diligence. Giving all diligence. Folks, I don’t know that I’ve ever given all diligence to anything at any one time, have you?

We are just very incapable of focusing 100% on any one thing. But he says giving all diligence. We need to seek to serve God like it is the only thing that matters.

Because guess what? It is. He says, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue.

Now just to be very clear here, when he says add to the faith, we as Baptists really get upset when people talk about adding to faith. We’re not talking about adding works to faith as a means of pleasing God, of earning God’s favor, of earning our salvation. We’re talking about people who already have the faith, who already have been granted eternal life and salvation through Jesus Christ, building on top of that as a result.

And he says, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, and to virtue knowledge, and to knowledge temperance, and to temperance patience, and to patience godliness, and to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness charity. Okay, and we could look at that list and say, okay, I’ve got the faith, so now let me focus on virtue. Okay, I’ve got that under control, now I’m just going to worry about, I’m going to worry about knowledge.

Folks, it doesn’t work that way. We’re not climbing a ladder. We’re baking a cake.

We’re baking bread. And all of these things need to be in the recipe. We can’t forget one of them just because we’ve moved on.

And we don’t have to try to tackle them all in order. He says, put all of these things in the mix. And you know what?

I will say, as the text has said, and as so many other places in the Bible say, we don’t have it within us in our human nature, even as Christians, to do this perfectly. But you know what? We serve a perfect God who’s given us his Holy Spirit to indwell us and empower us for service.

As a result, in verse 8, he says, For if these things be in you and abound, if these things be in you and abound, if these things are found in your life and they’re found in abundance, not just a trace of them, but they’re in abundance, they make you that ye shall never be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. And sometimes we kind of stumble through our Christian life and we feel powerless and we feel fruitless and think I’m not accomplishing anything for God. I really should be doing more. Why am I not more effective in my service to him, ladies and gentlemen?

We need to give all diligence to the things that he’s called us to do. But he that lacketh these things is blind and cannot see afar off and hath forgotten that he was purged from his old sins. I want to look at these seven words just very briefly this morning.

These seven words that are mentioned in here and what they tell us about the calling of a Christian. And again, these are not steps. These are ingredients in our Christian life.

First of all, the calling of a Christian, as we look at the word virtue, The calling of a Christian is a praiseworthy life lived to the glory of God. A praiseworthy life lived to the glory of God. Now we look at the word virtue today and we assume it means just righteousness, a holy person.

He’s got good morals. He’s a man of integrity. Folks, virtue had a little bit broader meaning when they translated this into English.

And a virtuous life just meant one that was a good upstanding life, not just in moral things. Okay, he doesn’t drink, he doesn’t smoke, cheat on his wife, cuss, that sort of thing. but it meant that everything he did was praiseworthy.

This is not just talking about our morals. This is not talking just about our service to God when it says virtue. But as Christians, we are to live lives that are praiseworthy.

Do you remember the passage that says, Do all things as unto the Lord? Folks, this comes into play when we’re dealing with our families. This comes into play when we’re dealing with our workplace.

That when we go into our jobs, we’re not to be lazy. We’re not to be slothful. We are to work and to serve as we’re serving unto the Lord.

That we’re in traffic and we’re not supposed to be angry and yelling at people as I did the other night, sorry to say. It happens. But we’re supposed to live lives that in every aspect of it, we strive to do the best we can.

Why? Because we’re trying to be good people? Not exactly, but because we’re trying to live lives that glorify God.

Let your light so shine before all men that they see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven. Folks, on the job, at home, at school, on the ball field, in traffic, at the grocery store, at the bank, wherever we’re going, the meaning of virtue is that we are supposed to be striving to live lives that are praiseworthy in every aspect. We are doing our best to excel in what we’re doing in order to bring glory, excuse me, to bring glory to God.

Now, that doesn’t mean you’ve got to be the best at everything or God’s not glorified. But folks, God is glorified when people around us see us living an admirable life, especially A little caveat here for you. Especially when we’re humble about it and remind people that it’s not about how good we are, it’s about how good he is.

And we’re living this praiseworthy, or we’re trying to live this praiseworthy life to the glory of God. Second of all, the calling of a Christian is to know and to do the will of God. Says to add to virtue knowledge.

Folks, he’s not talking here about a knowledge of the gospel. He’s not talking about just a basic knowledge of the scriptures. It’s clear they already had that.

Add to your faith knowledge. If you’re talking about knowledge of the gospel, they already had it. Otherwise, there’s no faith.

Faith comes by hearing, and hearing comes by the word of God. They already knew. So in context, it’s clear what he’s talking about here is a knowledge of God’s will.

Now, that comes from knowing the scriptures. That also comes from time spent in prayer. That comes from listening to the Holy Spirit.

But folks, the calling of a Christian is to know and to do the will of God. Sometimes it’s hard to figure out the will of God. But as I’ve told you before, taught an entire series of messages on it.

I don’t think God ever intended it to be some secret that we have to trick him to find out his will. It’s his will because he wants us to do it. And if he wants us to do it, he makes it clear what he wants done.

Sometimes we have to work a little bit to find it. But folks, God’s will is out there for us to know. God’s will is in his word for us to know.

And I think sometimes our problem as Christians, as far as God’s will is concerned, is not that we don’t know God’s will, it’s that we don’t want to do God’s will. If we say, God, we may not say this in these exact words, but our thought process is kind of, God, if that’s your will, that sounds hard, that sounds inconvenient, I don’t want to do that. Surely, surely, God, you wouldn’t want me to do that.

So your will must be something else. And then we struggle to find something else and say we can’t find the will of God. Folks, the calling of a Christian is to know and to do the will of God.

So what if we don’t know the next step that he wills for us to take? What’s the last thing he told us to do? And have we done it?

See, if we’re expecting God to share his plan with us 15 steps down the road, he’s under no obligation to do that with us. Our job is to know what he wants us to do in this moment and to do it without question. Amen?

And to do it without question. The calling of the Christian is to know and to do the will of God. Third of all this morning, the calling of a Christian is self-control in an unrestrained world.

Now he says here that we are to add to our knowledge temperance. This word temperance means self-control. There’s a whole lot of lack of self-control in the world we live in, isn’t there?

I get so tired of being out in public and hearing people screaming at each other, and I think, can’t you wait until you get home? People yell and fight in public, and I’ve even noticed nowadays young ladies screaming and fighting at each other in public, and I don’t remember seeing that growing up. It probably was there.

I’m not that old, but, and you see people, this business about, hold me back, hold me back, and they’re just wanting. People get arrested for assault because they hit somebody. They just couldn’t restrain themselves, and people do all sorts of things.

And we look at that and we say, well, how awful. How awful that they would do that. But we have trouble controlling ourselves sometimes too.

Oh, I know I shouldn’t have said that about him, but you know what? Couldn’t help myself. I know I shouldn’t have eaten that whole pie, but you know what?

I couldn’t help myself. It’s been a while since I’ve eaten a whole pie. You know what?

We do things we know we shouldn’t do. We do things that don’t bring glory to God and we shrug it off saying, well, I just couldn’t help myself. You know what?

We need to learn to help ourselves. I need to learn to help myself. I need to learn to be self-controlled.

The Bible finds self-control praiseworthy. We live in a world where people are glorified because they live to excess and they do whatever they want and they live by their own rules. And I heard a preacher talking about it this week and say everybody sets up standards for themselves and they want to live by their own rules and they don’t even live by the rules that they set up.

We live in a world that glorifies excess and unrestrained passions, but the Bible, the Bible praises people who are self-controlled because controlling our behavior, controlling our behavior is a sign of a life that’s under control. Folks, and we’re under his control, if I can add that. And so we shouldn’t be the people who fly off the handlebars all the time, just lose control and fighting in public and doing things we know we ought not to having that seventh piece of pie.

Folks, we ought to be under control. And even as I’m saying this, I think and think this for myself, you know, the book of James talks about this, and I’m paraphrasing here, but it says that if any man controls the tongue, if we can control the tongue, that takes care of a lot of it. Self-control.

Christians should be characterized by self-control. Fourth of all, the calling of a Christian is patience, patient endurance in trials of faith. Patient endurance in trials of faith.

Now this one spoke to their specific needs that they were about to go through when he says, add to temperance patience. As I said, there would be times for them that it would be hard to be Christian. There will be times for us when it’s hard to be a Christian.

Now in their case, many of them were thrown to lions. Folks, that’s not a fairy tale, that really happened. And many of us might think, even if just for a minute, you know, it’d be easier just not to be eaten by the lion.

It’d be easier just to say, no, I don’t know him. I mean, after all, Peter denied him and Jesus forgave him. Let’s just back off from the faith a little bit.

It’ll be easier. Many people did that, but a lot of people didn’t. They were thrown to lions.

They were dipped in tar and used as human torches. Christians went through the most, in the words of one of the Romans’ own pagan historians, the most exquisite tortures. Those are the people he’s writing to, the people who were about to go through those things.

We live in a world and in a country where I don’t think anytime soon we’re going to be faced with those things, but we already live in a world where to be a Christian, to be outspoken as a believer in God’s Word, gets us marginalized by society. You think, how am I going to get ahead in business? How am I going to get ahead in school?

How am I going to this or that if people know I’m a born-again, Bible-believing Christian? Maybe it’d be easier if I just backed off from that a little when the trials of faith happened. Sometimes we’re hit by personal trials of faith where the world around us just doesn’t seem to make sense.

The world seems to be spinning out of control to such an extent you think, stop the world, I just want to get off. Somebody stop it, somebody stop the ride. And we think, I can’t make sense of this world anymore.

Where is God? Why is all of this happening? How could he let the, God, how could you do this to me?

And we’re tempted in that time to abandon the faith and say, I don’t know if I can believe this anymore. If I can practice this anymore. Folks, we are told to stand firm, to add to our temperance, patience.

He’s not just talking about patience for patience’s sake. Oh, I’m going to sit here and listen quietly while the children run amok and not scream at them because I’m patient. No, he’s talking about real people with real problems, real trials they were about to go through and said they as Christians needed to patiently endure.

Folks, we as Christians will go through trials of faith. Whether it’s put on us by the outside, whether it’s internal, We’ve got to remember the preciousness of the faith that we possess, the preciousness of the truth of Jesus Christ and his gospel, and not be swayed to let go of the faith just because times are difficult. Fifth of all this morning, if you’re wondering, there are seven words.

I may have said that already. Seven words in this passage that we’re looking at today. Fifth of all, the calling of a Christian is dedication to the Lord in word and deed.

It says, add to patience godliness. And that’s a word that shouldn’t need a whole lot of explanation. godliness, to try to be like God or to try to be like what God wants us to be.

As believers, it’s not just about living a praiseworthy life where people see how hard we try, how honest we are, and those sorts of things. But it’s about living a life that says, you know what, I’m not just, it’s not just that I’m trying to do good things, it’s that I’m trying to please the Lord and serve Him. What’s the basis of my decision making?

Is it what I want or is it what God tells me to do? What’s the basis of my priorities? Is it what I want or is it what God tells me to do?

Do I respond to things the way I feel like I would want to respond to them or am I trying desperately even though it’s so hard to respond to things the way that God would have me to do? Folks, the calling of a Christian is that we are dedicated to the Lord in word and deed, that what we say and what we do reveals that our hearts belong to him. When we call him Lord, ladies and gentlemen, that’s not just a title.

It’s a title with real ramifications. To call him Lord means to call him master. And so this idea of adding godliness means that in this mix, in this mix, we need to be dedicated to the Lord in everything.

I know all of this, you may be sitting here thinking, pretty tall order, yeah, it is. But again, that’s one of the reasons that God left us the Holy Spirit to enable and empower us to do this. Sixth of all this morning, the calling of a Christian is kindness and love for one another.

Oh, my goodness. Here’s where we fall off the wagon, isn’t it? I read an article this week where a pastor was talking about Christians arguing on the internet, and I try to stay out of arguments on the internet.

I try to stay out of arguments on Facebook because even if you win, you lose. Even if you win, feelings get hurt, people get upset, you end up looking like the bad guy. It’s just not worth it.

But he was talking about how Christians fight and argue, and sometimes about things that matter, but a lot of times about things that don’t matter all that much. And he was writing from the perspective of a lost person and said, he said he had never heard a lost person to say, you know, the way you Christians attack and mock each other really is what led me to become a follower of Jesus Christ. Have any of you ever heard an unbeliever say that? Gee, I sure am thinking of converting to Christianity.

Sure am thinking about trusting Jesus Christ because it looks so good the way y’all have so much fun mocking. And I’m not saying we do that in here, but folks, we have got to be so careful as believers, not just to not be mean to each other, but we’ve got to be so careful to proactively show love to one another. He says, add to our godliness, brotherly kindness.

Folks, it’s kindness and love for one another. The Bible says they will know we’re Christians by our love, by the way we treat each other, that they’ll know we’re his disciples indeed if we have love for one And again, I’m not just talking about the absence of conflict and the absence of meanness. You can walk into a lot of places and not see anybody being mean to each other.

I can walk into a restaurant and everybody’s happily eating their food and nobody’s cross at each other. And it, you know, I may think the food is good, but I’m not standing there saying, oh, the atmosphere in here is so wonderful and loving, I must come back. But how many times have we heard about somebody walking into a church, whether it’s this one or another one, and being sort of smacked in the face by the love that was obvious between the people, among the people, and saying, you know, I’m still not completely, even a non-believer says, I’m still not completely convinced of what you’re talking about with Jesus, but there’s something different about this group of people.

Folks, we ought to be a different group of people in the world. We ought to stick out like a sore thumb. We ought to be weird in this world, and not because they look at us and say, oh, they just hate everybody, they just judge everybody, but because we’re the people as Christians, as believers, as followers of Jesus Christ, because we’re the people who reach out and love even to those who don’t deserve it.

Folks, and I’ll submit to you this. It’s not love if it’s not hard. Are you with me?

If it’s not hard to do it, it’s not love. Because if we just love each other, if we just love somebody, when it’s easy, it’s just an emotion. But love, as the Bible portrays it, is a commitment.

And we love one another when we’re lovable, and we love one another when we’re grouchy and insufferable. That’s what love is. We love each other whether we deserve it or not.

The calling of a Christian is a kindness and love for one another. And finally this morning, the calling of a Christian is demonstrating God’s love to a lost and dying world. It says here, add to your brotherly kindness charity.

This word charity in some Bible versions is translated love. So we would have brotherly kindness and love. But folks, so often the Greek word behind this is agape, which means God’s kind of love.

It means an unconditional love, and beyond that, it means a love that is supernatural. It’s a love that is undeserved, and it’s a love that’s abundant. Now, I’m not saying we can love exactly as God loves. I don’t have it in me to love as God loves.

But again, the Holy Spirit is there, and God, especially if we pray about it, God gives us the capacity to love others the way He did, the way He does. This agape, this charity, is a self-sacrificial love. And folks, as Christians, it’s incumbent on us to give up a little bit of ourselves to take the love of God, not just the brotherly kindness within these four walls, but to take the love of God outside these four walls.

And maybe that means we feed the hungry. Maybe that means we clothe the naked. Maybe that means we stand up for those who can’t stand up for themselves.

Maybe it means the most loving thing we can do of all, which is to tell them about a Savior who loved them enough to die for them when they were unlovable, when we were unlovable. because the Bible says that God commended his love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. What that means very literally in the Greek is while we were still in the act of sinning, God love

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