Coming back to 2 Peter tonight, we asked the question, why did Peter bother to write a second epistle? And the answer to that really he gives us in chapter 3 verse 1. This second epistle, beloved, I now write unto you, in which I stir up your pure minds by way of remembrance." And then verse 2, he goes on to talk about these various prophets and apostles. And then verse 3, knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers walking after their own lusts. And Peter warns of the danger, the danger of moral corruption. If ever there is a book in the Bible that is relevant to our generation and our society, It is second Peter. I think that the greatest enemy of Christianity today is the abounding sin in the nation. Open immorality. When law is abandoned and when righteousness is really a word that no one wants to hear. And of course, the lie is given. It doesn't matter how you live. as long as you believe. And when a church insists on purity, well, that's old school. That's not the modern way to do church. And to insist on holiness and standards and proper living and living for God's glory according to his word, many say, well, that's just adding to the gospel what is not there. Let me say right off that there is no gospel without repentance. If you're not willing to leave the world and all its rotten, sinful lusts, you're not ready to be a Christian. No one should call themselves a Christian who is not repentant of the lusts and the sins of this world. Now, Peter insists on this here because he says to his readers, add to your faith. And let me assure you that across the world and evangelical churches, there is this battle that the church has no right to say to anyone that they must add to what they have in Christ as a Christian. That they must add anything beyond just a profession of, I accept the Lord Jesus as my Savior. Any church that does that, they say, is legalistic. You have gone from grace to legalism. Now the church has always been faced with this. antinomianism, the Nicolaitans that you read of, and the seven churches of Revelation, and their sins and their iniquities, the things that God hated. And the churches that tolerated them, God said, repent, repent, or else I will come unto you. And there would be consequences. The church has always been challenged to call God's people to godly living. And we're going to see that tonight in these seven things that need to be added. Now, last week I told you my conundrum about, you know, do we preach this as seven separate sermons, or do we take this as all one and make them facets of living the Christian life? But we'll see here that God's agenda is to bring his redeemed people back to the original state at creation. Now, there was a perfect man in this world. His name was Adam. And he is the model that we ought to be imitating. And he is the man that we ought to be like. You go back to Ephesians 4. And verse 24, you will see the model of how God created man at the very beginning in purity, in uprightness, in holiness, and he becomes the model for all who are new in Christ. And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created, in righteousness and true holiness. We were to take the time, and we should, and just go back a couple of verses, and you'll see how corruption comes into this again. And the exhortation to the Ephesian Christians in verse 22 is that ye put off concerning the former conversation, the former lifestyle, the old man which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts. Let's face it, the Roman world of the first century was a very ungodly world. It was a world where every immorality was practiced, and many times in the name of religion. You had temples with prostitutes. where priests, after their own lusts, sought gratification in the name of religion. In the first century Roman Greek world, homosexuality pervaded society. And when Paul and these apostles and others who preached the gospel planted churches and called people to a new life, they were to leave those things behind. He says here in verse 3, Be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness. So really what happens when you become a Christian is you become reconstructed. You get rebuilt. It's a bit like an auto wreck. When a car is driven over a cliff, and the vehicle tumbles down upon rocks and rolls, the damage is from bumper to bumper, and the wheelbases are out of place. Every window is smashed, the roof is crushed, the engine block is out of place. And by the time that vehicle gets pulled up out of that ravine, put onto a tow truck and brought into the shop, now the assessment begins. What will we do? In some cases, an insurance company would just write it off. It's not worth the expense and the trouble to fix it. But where a vehicle is deemed fixable, then they will start to rebuild. And usually they've got to strip off the damaged parts, order in new parts, and get it realigned, get that engine remounted, get everything into proper place, tested, checked. The wiring might be stripped or might even be burned, have to be replaced, and all of that until it goes into the paint booth, and there it gets a new paint job, and eventually it rolls out seemingly. as good as new. But would you buy it? Would you want to buy a car that you knew that had been in such a major wreck? In British Columbia, car dealers are supposed to declare if a vehicle has been in an accident over $2,000. Now, that doesn't take very much. That's a minor one. But when it's a serious accident, you ought to know, because there may still be some problems. But what we're talking about here in the plan of redemption and grace is God is the Rebuilder. And we are told that if any man be in Christ, He is a new creature, a new creation. All things pass away, and behold, all things become new. Now, in this process of recreation from the old man to the new, from the damaged, wrecked condition of our nature, because we've had a fall. We're like that vehicle that went over the cliff and tumbled and tossed and was beaten and battered. Man is a fallen creature. Sin has corrupted us in every aspect of our human faculties, our mind, our passions, our emotions. Every aspect of the human being is now depraved, fallen into iniquity. And so when God operates in grace to save a sinner, from his carnage of sin. It's not just a little weak call and say, now, just say the words, I believe in Jesus. This is much more radical. Regeneration, conversion, and all the work of God's grace in the human heart and soul is to make you a new man, a new woman in Christ, a whole new person from head to toe. Now, we do not do that in our power. If you go back to 2 Peter 1 verse 3, you'll notice that this is done in God's power. He is the rebuilder. He is the one that is refurbishing and making us new. Second Peter 1.3, according as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness. God's agenda is not just a lip profession. It's not just to say, well, okay, I'll go to church. It is to make you a totally new person. And the old things need to go, and the new things come in. Now, to work this out in our lives, you'll notice in verse 4 that God gives us great promises. Indeed, He calls them exceeding great and precious promises. And I don't think Peter could have added any more adjectives, any more emphasis to the significance, the value of the promises of God. with this purpose, that ye might be partakers of the divine nature." In other words, that you might be godly, godlike, that your thinking would be godlike, your walk, your talk, Your whole desire, your whole purpose for living is now in a Godward direction, whereas before it was in the direction of rebellion, lust, and evil. And all of this is laid out for us here. And then there are the list of seven things. Add to your faith. And these seven things are listed for us— virtue, knowledge, temperance, patience, godliness, brotherly kindness, and charity. Now, last week, I preached on the first one, and we looked at this matter of virtue. Now, as I was studying this out, I did something that I'm not very good at, and that is I did a little bit of art. I drew myself a man. And just a little stick man, a head and a body, two arms, two legs. And then as I looked at each one of these items, I drew arrows to what part of the man this applies to. Well, the first one, virtue, that's the spine. So I put two good bold lines right down the middle of his back. And virtue means to be courageous, manly, somebody that has a spine, and he's erect and standing up for Jesus. And that's what we learned last week, the meaning of virtue, being bold, ready to serve the Lord with zeal for his own glory, because we've been called We've been called. The Christian is not apologizing for being a Christian. We do talk about a Christian apologetics, but that really is defending the faith. That means that we do stand up when people come with their false ideas and notions. We don't lie down to every new whim and trend that comes the way, but rather we stand up and say, this is not what the Bible teaches. And so, in Christianity, we need virtue. We need a spine. And then we're to add knowledge. Knowledge. And so you would just simply draw an arrow to the head. This is the brain power. This is the data within the mind of the man. And the problem with our fall, being sons of Adam and having fallen into sin, is that our thinking by nature is all wrong. If there's anywhere that man is wrong, it is in his mind. His thoughts of God are skewed. They are rebellious. They are idolatrous. Usually, man makes the God of his own imagination. And the apostle warned of that in Romans 1, that man will turn the creature into the Creator, and he makes his own God. And the first thing we need as a Christian to be effective, to be whole, to be restored to that first order, is that we need a new mind. And Romans 12 tells us to be renewed in your mind. And we are to let this mind be in you, which was in Christ Jesus. Now, we were in Ephesians a while ago. Let's go back there again to Ephesians 4, verse 17 through to 21. I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk, not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind. Now, vanity means emptiness, futile, pointless. It is carnal and fruitless. Do not walk as other Gentiles walk in the vanity of their mind, having the understanding darkened. That's the state of the unconverted. The state of the unregenerate person. And that's how we were before we were converted. Being alienated from the life of God. You see what wrong thinking does? What carnal, sinful thinking does? It alienates us from God. We end up out of fellowship with God. God is not even in our thoughts as these other things come in. And so, in this regenerative work, in this rebuilding of man into a proper Christian, effective for God, the first thing that is required is knowledge. We need to know God. And we need to know God, not just book, chapter, and verse. We need to know God by experience. In our prayer week this week, we took this theme. On Wednesday evening we had the text, the people that do know their God shall be strong and do exploits. And so Daniel, the man who would not bow, he would not bend, he would not burn, he would not change, he would not assimilate to the ungodly Babylonian culture. Why? Because he knew his God. And that's what made him the man that he was. Then on Thursday evening, we looked at Jacob wrestling. And he said, I will not let thee go until you bless me. And here is the Christian wrestling with God, desiring to have God's power. And Jacob got the power. At the end of that wrestling with the angel of the Lord, Jacob, we are told, prevailed, and he had power with God and power with men. And I come back to that challenge of A. W. Tozer. What you think about the moment you hear the name God will determine the kind of Christian you are. If you think of God as some old aged, weak, crippled figure, what kind of Christian will you be? If you think of God as just out to spoil your fun, God who is out just to make life miserable for you. There's no joy, there's no power, there's no grace, there's no glory with him. If you've got the wrong notion of God, your whole Christianity will be wrong. And so it is vital that we fill our minds with the true knowledge of God. And then, for your information, Friday evening, we looked at Isaiah when he saw the glory of the Lord in the temple, high and lifted up. And you remember the impression that it made on Isaiah? Woe is me, for I am undone. Isaiah was emptied in the presence of the Holy. What will the knowledge of God do to you? It'll change you. It'll empty you of your ego, of your pride, of your own agenda. And you will do what Isaiah did, saying, Lord, here am I. Send me. Let me ask you, are you available to the service of God tonight? Maybe you haven't even thought about it. Maybe you've never heard the call of God to your soul. Then it begs the question, do you know God? Have you ever heard His voice calling you to leave the world and follow Him? When God uses His people, He most often gives them a tremendous sight of His glory, an experience of His reality. If you do not know the reality of God, You'll never serve him. You'll never follow him. You'll never bring glory to his name. Now, in the first century, this need for knowledge was paramount because of the many heresies that were abounding. Chapter 3 warns us about these scoffers with their pernicious doctrines and teachings. They are out to destroy and hinder God's people. In the... first century, and probably more toward the end of the first century. Now, we've dated this book, and I have taken the position that this book is somewhere in the 60s A.D., prior to the destruction of Jerusalem, but near the end of Peter's life. He talks in verse 13, about his decease, putting off this tabernacle. He knows that he's not going to be much longer in this world. There is a great rage of persecution abroad, and Peter's convinced that his days are numbered on earth. Now, in those years, there was a growing heresy of Gnosticism. The Gnostics, well, they really, they're rooted in an ancient culture of Zoroastrianism. And it's this mystical knowledge that they pumped. And they had three levels, almost like a caste system, and there were people who did not have this knowledge. They were nobodies. Don't listen to them. But these Gnostics, they proclaimed to have superior knowledge. But it was the knowledge not that was objective, but subjective. It was mystical knowledge, knowledge that you can't get your hands on, you can't define, and you can't say it's the same today and tomorrow. It was always moving. It's like a moving target. The knowledge that Peter is referring to here is the factual knowledge. the objective, solid, concrete truths of the Bible, the Word of God. Now, when we get to it, we're going to be looking down in verse 19, where Peter talks about a more sure word of prophecy, and then he starts talking about the written Word and how it is of no private interpretation or origination. It is the inspired Word of God. What we have in our hands tonight in this Bible is not mysticism. It's not gnosticism. It is not And there's another term that's used probably in universities and philosophy courses today, that is existentialism. Existentialism teaches that knowledge is individual in the experience of the single person. And what I know and what I experience, of course, the next person does not. To the existentialist, there is no such thing as fixed truth. There is no such thing as something that is unchangeable, irascible, and undeniable solid truth. And by that means, they justify any personal action. And what do wicked, carnal, fallen men do? They consume on it with their lusts, and they justify any kind of behavior because they deny that there is any objective truth, any objective right or wrong. Now, if you two were to take a philosophy class in high school or at university, you would hear all of this junk, and it's poured out from psychology courses, and I'm sure it impacts on psychiatry as well, but on the humanities. Humanism, and I know there's a difference in those two, but I'm going to major on humanism. Humanism, of course, is really the free thinker. And this is where our battle lies. And that's why people think they can opt out of the command of marriage, sex outside of marriage, homosexuality, you name it. People say, I'm free to do just whatever turns me on. And this is the pernicious passion of lust justified in the name of so-called knowledge, philosophies of men, taught by these false teachers. and they enter the church. Liberalism that hit the Christian church somewhere around the mid-1850s when you had Darwinianism really abounding. The theologians climbed on the bandwagon to try and justify evolution, and liberalism denied the miracles of the Bible and the objective truth of the Bible. And this is our battle. And so every Christian is to stand up for Christ by adding knowledge. And what you and I need more than ever is to be grounded in the solid, fixed truths of the Scriptures. They are the doctrines that will stand the test of time. They are the doctrines that come from the Old Testament. They were highlighted and emphasized in the New. They became the very mark of the early Christians and the martyrs. The Protestant Reformation of the 1500s, 1600s, was to bring men back to the Bible and the objective doctrines of God's Word. And today, we are just a small remnant of people who are holding on desperately. We are a people that believe that this book is right, and the notions of men are hellish, and destroying the souls of men, and they're going to perdition. And so we need to stand, but we've got to do it with knowledge. It's not prejudice. It's not bias. It's not just narrow-mindedness. It is a reasonable faith grounded on the Word of God. And that's our battle. And that's the work that God has called us onto. Now, Alan might get his way yet. I might have to slow up here and not try and preach all seven of these. And I'm looking at the clock, and I'm not going to do it all tonight. But I will try to preach one more, and that is temperance. That's number three. Why temperance? Temperance is really self-control. And in an age of immorality, An age of impurity, of moral looseness, temperance becomes the outstanding thing required. Now, when I drew my little man and I came to temperance, I really drew an arrow to his arms and his legs. Self-control is keeping your hands to yourself and keeping your feet where they ought to be and where you ought to walk. Every good person needs good motor skills. You need to be able to obey the command center of your mind and walk and act accordingly. Now, this is the man, this man who is exercising temperance. He knows what he's doing, and he's doing it because he knows it's right and proper. Do you see how thinking and knowledge affects the things you do, the values you have? will dictate the actions you perform? I won't touch that. Oh, I'll hold on to that. That's temperance, self-control as we exercise what we know to be right and wrong. I searched the concordance on this, looking up this word temperance in the Bible, and I discovered that Paul, when he stood before Felix, he preached righteousness and temperance. Now, Paul must have known that there was some infidelity going on in Felix's life, and he was preaching to him about righteousness and temperance. Do you see how those two things go together? right ways, right wiseness, and what you, how you behave. So if we preach righteousness and declare something to be right and wrong, and if we are a disciple of Christ, we will need power to overcome the wrong and do the right. That's what a Christian is, an overcoming Christian. is temperate in self-control. Now, there's a lot of areas that the Christian needs to keep under control. We need to control our thoughts, and there's where the battle lies, our thought life. What you think about will consume you, and it will soon lead you to act in that way. We also need to control our tongues. There's ever a thing that marks the person that's born again of the Spirit is that they've now got a clean tongue. That person in their old life, in their sinful worldly life, my, they had a tongue that would not only lash out, but it was filthy. Rude, crude, blasphemous words. John Newton would fill into that category as a captain on a slave trade, ship, and yet marvelously converted, amazing grace. And now that he was a new man, you don't expect that tongue to come out with the same language and the same words. That's true today. Then we also need to control what we eat. The Bible warns against gluttony. Now, I think you're going to take a double take and say, well, our preachers have got a work to do on this. Yes, pray for me. I love food. I love chocolate. Christmas is a great time of year for me. In fact, you'll read about many preachers who love chocolate. I was learning about Martin Lloyd-Jones. He was a great lover of chocolate. Every afternoon, he had his cup of tea in Kit Kat, and that was the British way. We have so many temptations with food today, and most of them are good for us. It's just that we eat too much of them. Gluttony is wrong. We have to control ourselves. We also need to control our drinking. Now, if you're a free Presbyterian, you're going to be a winner because we'll call you to total abstinence. I believe this is the only safe position for a Christian in the generation and time in which we live. I have no regrets in raising a family with no beer in my fridge. If my children ever turned a drink, they've never learned it from me. I would not want to be a father raising children, giving them the example, oh, I can handle one or two or three or whatever. I do not want to be a preacher in a church where there are people who take drink, and I get a report, or, did you know that somebody had too much last night? You better discipline him. I have no idea how any church disciplines people because they take a little more drink than they should have taken. What do you do with someone who's a member and stopped by the police for drinking under the influence? Booze is destroying our nation. It is still the number one killer in society. When you take car accidents, domestic issues, diseases of the body. There's a British report come out this week that all alcohol has an impact on cancer issues. control, temperance. Is it wrong to call a Christian to self-denial because we don't want to be put in a stumbling block before a weaker brother? Someone who has come out of the alcoholic world, God has converted them and saved them, and we're saying to God's people, look, don't drink in your life because it might be the fall of that man. Is it wrong to say, I'll deny myself of that? that I might be a good example and a good witness. Then there's the drug world. Maybe we're going to have to add to our church standards marijuana before long. It's going to soon be a legalized substance in our country. And it's going to wreck ruin. We're going to have so many mental cases in society. Minds that are blown by drugs. It's already around us and it'll multiply. But then there's something maybe more difficult for us even than that. to control temptations. Temptations are all around us. We face them every day in every situation. And for these things, you need to claim the promises. That's what they're here for. We're told in this verse 4, whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises. By these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust. These are the wonderful, mighty, powerful, effective promises of God. What kind of promises? Well, there's a promise where the Lord says that He will not allow any temptation to overtake us. What a promise! Beyond that which we are able. God controls the temptations in our lives. And he gives us the spiritual power, because you look at verse 3, it talks about, "...his divine power hath given us all things that pertain unto life and godliness." Now, that's one of the seven on the list—godliness. But we need to plead the promises that we be a people under self-control, temperate in all things. What a wonderful marriage God's people can have where there is self-control in the home, where the wife's tongue is not lashing out, where the husband fulfills not only his duty of not to do things, but the things that he should do. Self-control means the power to do as well as the power not to do. Temperance. And I hope tonight that you can lay hold on the promises And say, Lord, I need to add to my faith virtue, and to virtue knowledge, and then temperance. And then we'll go right down the list. And it's only when you put all of these things together that you get the complete effect of Christian. And we're told down in verse 8, if these things be in you and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful. And then in verse 10, they are the marks of your conversion. Make your calling and election sure. If you're not temperate, if you're not on self-control in your life, if you can't overcome temptation, if you do not have the knowledge of God and enjoy fellowship with Him, if you are not able to stand up for Jesus, can you say that you're born again? Can you say that you are one of the Lords? These are now the marks that determine if we're in Christ. And so these are essentials. I trust you'll go down this list, pray over them, and may each of us be enabled by God's grace to add them to our faith, that we might be effect of Christians. For if you do these things, ye shall never fall. These seven things, we need to put them into practice and put them into action within our lives. In dealing with the society in which we live, the media bombardment, the just total saturation of ungodliness in our society, there's only one hope. And that is Christianity. Moral lessons will not save our nation. Police officers will not save our nation. I wish I could put some hope in teachers in schools giving good moral values to children, but let me tell you, children from the youngest ages are learning the pernicious things. and to tolerate the things that are an abomination in the sight of God. The only hope is the gospel. The only hope is when God, by His Spirit, raises up Christians that stand for the Lord and become living witnesses. That's why we're sought in the earth, to be witnesses for the Lord Jesus by our pure living. not by stooping and being dragged down to the wicked ways of the world.