I should like to call your attention this morning to the words which are to be found in the second epistle of Peter, the first chapter, and I shall read verses five, six, and seven. Verses five, six, and seven in the first chapter of the second epistle of Peter. And beside this, 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. Now I call your attention to those three verses, and indeed to the surrounding verses, to the argument in fact of the first half of this first chapter of the second epistle of Peter, because it calls our attention to another cause of what we have been describing on a number of Sunday mornings as spiritual depression. We are engaged, as most of you remember and realize, in considering this condition of spiritual depression, or if you prefer it, the miserable Christian. And we've been at pains to analyze the various causes. As we know them in experience and as they're taught in the scriptures, and then to apply to each particular cause the appropriate remedy which is provided for us also in the scriptures. And we are doing this, of course, because this is a condition in which no Christian should ever be found. It's a contradiction in terms. It sounds wrong. Miserable Christian. spiritual depression, and yet it is a fact. And it behoves us to face facts. And we must do so not only for our own sakes, but because it is such a bad testimony, such a failure, and especially at a time such as this, with the world in the condition in which it is to be found. And therefore we have been trying to track down these causes. We've discovered that they're very subtle and that because they come ultimately from the adversary of ourselves, our great enemy, who is so powerful and so able and so subtle. And so we have had to dig them out, as it were, and hold them before us in order that we can face them and confess them and then proceed to deal with them. Well now, here I say, in this particular chapter, the Apostle deals with yet another cause of this condition. Indeed, his whole object, obviously, in writing his letter, was to deal with it. He writes to encourage people who are being discouraged, and being discouraged to the point that they appear, almost some of them, to have been doubting the very faith which they had believed and accepted. That is always something which arises as a very real danger in this condition of spiritual depression. If it persists and continues, it invariably leads to doubt and to uncertainty, and to a proneness even to look back perhaps at an old life from which we have been delivered. Now, fortunately for us in this instance, the Apostle gives us himself a very perfect description of the condition. He tells us a number of things about these people to whom he is writing. For instance, he puts it like this. He says, having given his exhortation, he says in verse 8, if these things be in you and abound, they make you, you will then become what you are not at the moment. Well, what was that? They make you that ye shall be neither barren nor unfruitful. in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. That was their condition. Not only that, he says that they were blind and couldn't see afar off, and that they had forgotten that they had been purged from their old sins. Indeed, there is a suggestion further that they were falling. For he tells them that if they but do what he tells them to do, they shall never fall. And not only that, he tells them that if they do these things, they will be making their calling and election sure. Well, obviously at the time they were not very sure about it. In other words, he does give us this very perfect description of the condition into which these Christian people to whom he writes had fallen. There's no question about their being Christian. That is something that we have to go on repeating Sunday by Sunday. Because there are some who have such a false notion of the Christian, and such an unscriptural notion of the Christian, that they would say that a person who can be described as Peter describes these people, is not really a Christian at all. But actually they are Christians, otherwise he wouldn't be writing to them. There is that false idea of the Christianism of a man who's always walking on the mountaintop. And there are some, I say, who feel that if a man's not always there, that he's not a Christian at all, which is, as I'm saying, a thoroughly unscriptural view to take of the Christian man. Now, these people are Christians. Yes, but they seem to be unhappy. They're most definitely ineffective. They're barren and unfruitful. Their lives, though they are Christians, don't seem to count at all. They don't seem to lead to anything. They're not helpful to other people. They're not really very productive as far as they themselves are concerned. Their belief and their faith doesn't seem to fill them with joy and with certainty. Here they are then, they're barren, they're unfruitful, the words really describe themselves, but they're quite ineffective. And also they're lacking in knowledge and in understanding. They're not growing in the knowledge of the Lord. There is this tremendous knowledge and understanding that's available for them, but they haven't got it. They haven't advanced in it. They haven't grown. They're unfruitful in that respect again. So that in all respects, though they are definitely and specifically Christian, they seem to have very little to show for it. They also seem to be failing to understand what exactly has happened to them. They seem to have forgotten the fact that they have been cleansed or purged from their old sins, and they're living as if that hadn't happened. And all these things, of course, inevitably go together always. Where there is a lack of understanding and a fruitfulness in this matter of understanding, you will generally get a corresponding failure in the life, both as regards its own holiness and as regards its usefulness and value to other people. Well, now that is in a sense the description which the Apostle gives us of this kind of person. And of course we are all, alas, quite familiar with this type. It's the sort of person, I say, you have to grant that he's a Christian, And yet how little there is in that person's life to show for it all. Their lives seem to be bound in shallows and in miseries. They don't give the impression of being as our Lord said that the Christian would be when he had received the Holy Spirit that out of his inward parts would flow living waters. No impression of that at all. all around them is barren, it's unfruitful, nothing's being fructified by them, they seem to be passing nothing on, and as regards themselves, their life is weak and merasmic and doesn't seem to be increasing and developing, the whole thing seems utterly ineffective. And they themselves I say, are thus downcast, and they're unhappy, and they're shaken by doubts, whether they read them in the newspapers or anywhere else. They don't seem to have an answer, and they're troubled and worried about it all. They know they do believe, they say, and yet they're always in this position in which their very foundations seem to be liable to be shaken. Now that's the condition which the apostle is dealing with, and which we are dealing with this morning. Now the first thing we have to ask, of course, is what is the cause of this condition? Why is it that anybody ever gets into such a state? There are Christians, I say, that correspond to this description. Now why are they like that? Why are they unlike other Christians who are fruitful, whose lives are effective and living and life-giving? What's the difference? Well, that is the theme that we want to consider together on this occasion. And it seems to be perfectly clear that the apostle here tells them very plainly that there is only one ultimate cause for all these manifestations of this depression, and that is a lack of discipline. That's the whole cause of trouble. It's a sheer absence of discipline and order in their lives. But fortunately again, for us, the Apostle doesn't leave it at a general statement. The New Testament writers never stop at generalities. They always go on and they break it up into details, they consider it point by point. And fortunately, I say, the Apostle does that in this particular instance. Now, why are these people lacking in discipline in their lives? Why is this slackness, this indolence, so apparent in their lives? The answers which he seems to give to the questions we can put in this way. The first cause seems to be that they have a wrong view of faith. Now, this I find, of course, in the opening of the fifth verse. He says, and beside this, or for this very cause, if you like, giving all diligence, add to your faith, supplement your faith, furnish out your faith with the things he then proceeds to mention. Now there surely is a suggestion that they had a wrong view of faith, and this of course is something that is very common. Their view of faith seems to have been a kind of magical view of faith. The idea, in other words, that as long as you have faith, all is well, and that your faith will work automatically in your life. That all you need to do as a Christian is, you must believe the truth, you must accept the faith, and having done that, well, the rest will happen to you. You just take your one step, you take your decision, or whatever it may be called, and there it is. Now, faith is going to work henceforth in my life, magically, I've got nothing to do with it, it's all going to happen to me. I describe it as an almost magical view of faith. Certainly the thing that one wants to emphasize is this automatic conception of faith. But perhaps I can put it in a different form. Very often there is what we must need to describe as a mystical view of faith, which certainly accounts for the trouble in the case of many people. And when I mean a mystical view of faith, I mean something like this. It is a conception of faith which always thinks of it as a whole, and always thinks of it in terms of the personal relationship to the Lord Jesus Christ. Putting it negatively, I mean this. that their view of faith is such that these people do not break it up into these component parts as the apostle does here. They have one formula only, and the one formula is, of course, that you must always be looking to the Lord. And as long as you look to the Lord, there's nothing else to do. And they say that any attempt to do anything else is surely dropping back onto the works level again. So they have a universal formula for all problems in the Christian life, a matter of faith, looking to the Lord, or abiding in the Lord. And that's the only thing they say you have to do. Now, that's a view, you see, that always regards it as a whole. And it doesn't divide it up into these component parts, which we have here, such as virtue, and knowledge, and temperance, and patience, and godliness, and brotherly kindness, and charity. Now, this is a very common error, it seems to me. And you will find in a most interesting way that men who hold such a view of faith, if they should happen to be expositors and expound certain passages of scripture, where great emphasis is put upon detailed aspects and detailed applications, are obviously in difficulties because, as from then, you mustn't really be concerned about details. You have only one thing to do. You hold on to the Lord. You abide in Him. You look to Him. And as long as you do that, there is nothing more to be done. Now, this is the most productive cause of this kind of spiritual depression and lethargy that we are dealing with this morning. People spend their time, I say, in this unhappy condition, and all along they feel the need of a repetition of this exhortation just to abide and to look to the Lord, And for a while they seem to be all right, but then, somehow or another, something seems to go wrong, and they don't seem to be doing it, and they're unhappy once more, and the problem returns, and again they're taken back to that. And so the whole of their life is spent in going backwards and forwards from this one position which they seem to recognize. And the remainder of their lives, I say, conforms to this description of unhappiness. Now this is clearly a very central and a very important matter, and we must be clear that our view of faith is the New Testament view, and that therefore we realize what the Apostle means here when he goes on to say that we've got to add to our faith, supplement our faith with certain other things. However, we will come to that. Now, the second general cause, or the second general explanation of this condition is undoubtedly nothing but sheer laziness or indolence, a flackness, or to use the apostle's language, a lack of diligence. He says, beside all this, for this very cause, giving all diligence, he's very concerned to impress that upon us. And he repeats it in the 10th verse, where for the rather brethren he says, give diligence to make your calling and election sure. Now, here again, of course, is a very great theme, which could very well occupy the remainder of our time this morning, but we must avoid doing that because we want to be practical and positive. But I think we all know something about this. there is a kind of general indolence or laziness which afflicts us all and is undoubtedly produced by the devil himself. Have we not all noticed that? How, when it comes to a question of the spiritual life, we don't seem to have the same zeal and enthusiasm and apply the same energy as we do with our calling, or our vocation, or our profession, or business, or our pleasure, or something that we happen to be interested in. Haven't we all noticed that, some way or another, when we've been working quite well, if we turn to a season of prayer, we suddenly feel tired and fatigued. Curious how we always become tired when we want to read the Bible, rather than read a novel, or something like that. And we are fully persuaded that it is something purely physical, that we really can't help ourselves. But it is as certain as we are here gathered at this moment, that the moment we begin to apply ourselves to spiritual things, we shall immediately come face to face with that problem of that indolence, that lethargy, that laziness that afflicts us. Or take it as it assumes the form of the tendency to procrastinate. Oh, of course we want to do this. We want to read our Bible, and we want to study it, and we want to read a commentary, perhaps, so that we really shall get the meaning. But we don't feel like it at the moment. And we think it's a bad thing to be doing these things when you really don't feel at your best, or when you don't feel like it. We'd better put it off until we feel better. There'll be a more appropriate opportunity or occasion later on. You're familiar with it all. How often have we all passed through this kind of experience? or we haven't got the time, or we lack the opportunity, and we only wish we had, of course, and then when the time does come in a strange manner, we still find that we can't do it. Now, there is no question about this at all. Most of us are living lives which are seriously lacking in discipline, and in order, and in arrangement. Never, perhaps, has life been quite so difficult for the Christian as it is at the present The world and the whole organization of life around and about us makes the thing almost impossible. The most difficult thing in life at this moment is to order your own life and to manage it. For this reason, of course, not that anything else rarely compels you, but that if you don't realize the danger and stand up to it, you'll have gone down to it without knowing that anything's happened. There are so many things in life. You start with your morning newspaper. And so many people seem to start with two rather than one. They must have one official paper which everybody reads, and then they want to have another with more news, as they say, so they have two. And then your evening papers likewise. Now, these things are thrust upon us. Of course, you're not bound to buy a paper. But there it is, and everybody else does, and it's delivered at the door, and so on. The thing is put in front of you, and without you realizing that anything is happening, there is something occupying and claiming your time. And I needn't waste your time in multiplying it all. With your wireless and your television, and the things that are to do, and the meetings to attend, and the interests here and there, and the various organizations that arise, Why the fact is that every one of us is fighting for his life at the present time. To own and to master and to live your own life. And so constantly all who are pastors will agree with me when I say that there is nothing that one is being told more frequently than just that. People say, I don't know what to do. I don't seem to have the time to read my Bible and to pray and to meditate as I'd like to and as I ought to. Well now, the simple answer to all that is that that is sure lack of discipline. It's a sure failure to order your life. It's no use gulking these facts or blinking at them. It simply comes back to that. And there's no need to argue about it. We all have time. If we have time to do these other things, we have the time. And the whole battle and the whole business in this respect is to take that time forcibly and to insist that it's given to this rather than to that. Now that is, I say, the second cause of the trouble. The sheer lack of discipline in the life. The failure to order our lives, to command and to control our lives as we know in our heart of hearts they should be lived. Well, now then, that being the cause, let us turn to the treatment. What's the treatment prescribed by the apostle for this condition? Well, it's just the reverse of what I've been saying. First and foremost, he emphasizes all diligence. Make every effort. I think the Revised Standard Version puts it. That's the idea. Make every effort. Beside this, for this cause, in the light of the things, the exceeding great and precious promises that are given you and all things that pertain to life and godliness, and because you've escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust, because of all this, make every effort. Give all diligence. Or as it's translated there in that 10th verse, be more zealous than ever before to do these things. Here it is then the need of discipline and of diligence. Now perhaps the best way of putting this argument is to just put it in a simple historical manner. I defy you to read the life of any saint that has ever adorned the life of a church without seeing at once that the greatest characteristic in the life of that saint was discipline and order. Invariably, it is the universal characteristic of all the outstanding men and women of God. How often have I mentioned their names to you? Read about Henry Martin. Read about David Brainerd. Read about Jonathan Edwards. Read about Wesley, the brothers Wesley, Whitfield. Read their journals. These men who formed their holy clubs and had their discipline in their spiritual lives. It's true of all of them. It doesn't matter what branch of the church they belong to. They have all disciplined their lives. They've insisted upon this. And obviously it is something that is thoroughly scriptural and absolutely essential. The scripture for it, if you like, is this, that he that cometh unto God must believe that he is, yes, and also that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him. We must be diligent in our seeking. Ah, but Sir Solomon, surely you are preaching justification by works this morning. That's the argument, isn't it? And you see how subtle the devil is. He says, of course, the man says to himself, I believe in an order, disciplined life. But you know, I must never go back to rely upon works. I'm in the faith position. And as a man who believes in faith, I don't believe in going back to these details and in disciplining my life in that way. Surely I'll be dropping right back into the old Roman Catholic heresy. What a subtle thing that is. The answer to that kind of argument is that it's the Apostle Peter, the inspired apostle who goes out of his way to remind us that all these scriptures are inspired. It is he who tells us that we must add to our faith these various other things and give all diligence in the doing of it. Be more zealous, be still more active. And, of course, there is no contradiction at all. The error of justification by works is to trust to your own disciplining of yourself. But the opposite of trusting to your works is not to do nothing. It's to do everything but not to trust them. It isn't the works that are wrong. It is putting your faith in your works, trusting to your works, saying that your works are meritorious. But you see where the subtle danger comes in, and it seems to me that it is one of the major heresies in Protestantism today, and perhaps, dare I say it, in evangelicalism, that in our fear of justification by works, we have been tending to say, works don't matter. Antinomianism, in other words. Faith alone counts. And because I'm a man of faith, it doesn't matter very much what I do. My life can be thoroughly lacking in discipline, and thereby I'm in a thoroughly contradictory position. No, no, my friends, the opposite of a false trusting to works is not indolence, lack of discipline, and doing nothing. It is, I say, to be diligent and more diligent and zealous, and to add to your faith, but to realize that your actions alone will never be enough. But God is certainly a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him. So many people say, I'd give anything if I only had that knowledge of God that the saints have. And if I had that, the saints said, if only I had that joy, I'd give the whole world for it. And they're seeking it and have been seeking it for years. They say, why can't I have the experience that Wesley had of the warmed heart and so on? Well, generally speaking, I think the answer is this. You've never really sought it as Wesley did. You look at the lives of those men, I say, observe the discipline, the time they gave every day to prayer and to scripture reading and to meditation and to various other forms of self-examination and things like that. These men believed in the culture and the discipline of the spiritual life. And it was because they did that that God rewarded them by giving them these gracious manifestations of himself and these mighty experiences which warmed their hearts. So that the first thing I say is the sheer necessity of discipline and order and arrangement. And indeed I'm tempted to go down at this point even to the merest detail. But we all do know the importance, as I've suggested, of claiming time and of ordering our day and of insisting at all costs that certain things must be done. In other words, if I really believe that the Bible is more important than the morning newspaper, I must read my Bible before I read the paper. If I'm to end my day with something not done, well, that must be the thing that isn't done. This must be done. And my prayer time must be safeguarded. My meditation must be secured. Whatever else I don't do, I must do these things. Now that's the beginning. That's the giving all diligence. That's an insistence upon the element of order coming back into your life. So many people, I say, fail and become miserable and depressed simply because they haven't taken themselves in hand. They've got to do it. It'll never be done for you. It'll never happen to you in a meeting. Nobody else can do it for you. Whatever the meeting may be, whatever great the blessing you get in the meeting, if you don't do this in detail, I assure you, you will remain a depressed Christian. Give all diligence. Make every effort. Be more zealous. See to it at all costs. Well, that's the first thing. Let me hurry to the second. The second is that we've got to supplement our faith. Add to your faith, says this authorized version here. Supplement it, says another. Furnish it out, says another, and no doubt that is the best. The learned authorities will all tell you that this word add is a Greek word that was used in connection with the performance of the Greek dramas, and it means the providing of a kind of chorus or a kind of orchestra. If you wanted to do the thing really well, you furnished out your performance with this orchestra, with this chorus, as it were. And it made it complete. It was fully orbed and rounded off. It was a perfect performance. It wasn't merely doing the thing anyhow somehow. That's the meaning of the word, add to your faith. Furnish it out. supplement it, add to it, make the thing complete, let it be a full-orbed faith and a glorious faith. Well, what do you add to it? Well, the apostle gives us this list, and I must just note them. The first thing he says is, add to your faith virtue. What's he mean by that? Well, there again is a word, the meaning of which has changed since this authorized version was produced. It doesn't mean virtue in the sense that we mean it, as we use it commonly at the present time. Otherwise, he would be saying, add to your faith virtue, and then goes on to repeat various virtues. No, it means energy, moral energy. It means power, or if you like, it means vigor. Now, this is very important. You see, the condition that the apostle is dealing with is this. languid, indisciplined, slack kind of Christian life. So he says, no, you've got faith. You believe the truth. There's no doubt about that. You've got like precious faith with us. He's reminded them of that at the very beginning. Well, what do you need to do about it? Well, he says, in addition to the faith which you have, you must cease to be languid. In other words, positively add to your faith moral energy. Wake yourself up. Pull yourself together. Don't shuffle through your Christian life. Walk through it, as you should. Do it with vigor. Do it with a kind of strength, and of power, and of grip, and of manliness. Don't be a languid sort of Christian, who always gives the impression that he or she is on the point of swooning or fainting. and you droop in your Christian life. Well, yes, you've got to say that person is alive, it's like a flower. It certainly isn't a dead flower, and yet it's scarcely a live flower. It's just drooping and languid. You haven't changed the water, or something like that. Now, that's the position. Don't be languid, says the Apostle. Furnish your faith with vigor, and with grip, and with grit, and with manliness and power. Virtue. What a necessary exhortation that is. Compare and contrast the typical average Christian with the typical average person of the world. The Christian is interested in Christian spiritual things and in the kingdom of God. and in a knowledge of God and of Christ. That's his claim. He says, I have faith, and that's what faith means. Well, compare the average such person with the average person who's interested in tennis, and all that's been happening this week, and the boat races, and the cricket, and so on. Do you see the difference? There's nothing languid about the person who's interested in those sports. Look at the keenness and the vigor and the excitement and the enthusiasm. There's virtue there. There's energy there. They're keen on it and they want to get there and they talk about it. And look at the Christian by contrast, how languid, how half-hearted, how apparently apologetic. Well, that's the reason why this kind of Christian has failed to add to the faith. He says, oh, of course, I'm a Christian, and I believe the truth, and I want to go to heaven and so on. But it stops at that faith supposed to do everything. And they do nothing. Add to it virtue. and then knowledge, which again doesn't just mean the knowledge of the doctrines, because we have that, otherwise we wouldn't have faith. Well, what's it mean? Well, it means a kind of insight. It means understanding. It means enlightenment. The moment we believe in Christ, we don't know everything. We don't understand fully. That's only the beginning. There are these constant appeals and exhortations in the epistles to a growth in understanding, that your love may grow even, says Paul somewhere, in understanding. And that's the thing that the Apostle Peter has at this point He says it isn't enough, you know, that you believe and that you're now a Christian. You've got to understand the Christian life. You've got to see the subtle dangers that afflict you. You've got to understand something about the ingenuity of Satan and of all the pitfalls that are around you and the heresies and the errors and the confusion. You need understanding. So add to your faith. Go in for this insight, this comprehension, this enlightenment and how essential it is. And, my friends, that is only obtained as the result of diligent study of the Scripture, the diligent reading of the Scripture itself, and books on the Scripture, and the doctrines of the faith. You will never have understanding unless you apply yourselves to these things, and it's a painful process sometimes, and it certainly needs all the discipline that we can ever apply. A student never becomes proficient in any subject without hard work. It's a sure myth that you've got a brilliant type of man who never does any work at all, goes into the examination hall and gets the first. It's never happened. It isn't true. It's a lie. Without knowledge, and you'll never have knowledge without applying yourself, a man can never have this understanding, this true knowledge. It needs the discipline and the application, and it's needed here supremely. Furnish your faith out with it. And the next thing is temperance, which means self-control. And here it doesn't mean merely that you control your life in general and control your time, as I've been emphasizing. That's the giving diligence. This temperance is a much more particular thing than that. It means that you will have to control every aspect of your life. It may mean that you'll have to control even your eating and drinking. It will mean that. The authorities again are assuring us constantly about this, that most people are in a poor state of physical health because they probably eat and drink too much. There's no question about it. And that's something, again, that's a great tendency in the modern world. It's thrust upon us. It's there everywhere. It's advertised. It's made attractive. And there are people who find themselves weary and tired and lethargic. Very often it's simply because of lack of temperance, self-control. They don't control their appetites, their lusts, their passions, their desires. We eat too much. We drink too much. We may sleep too much. All along the line, these things afflict us. Now, the way to really get an insight into that is, I say again, just to read the lives of the saints, read their diaries, read how they did what they did with themselves and with their lives, how fearful they were about these very things, and realize that they had to avoid them at all costs, temperance, self-control. Then patience, which means patient endurance, that you keep on with it. There'll be everything to discourage you. You'll start all right, perhaps after a holiday or something like that, then you'll soon give it up. You say, I can't help it, it's circumstances. It isn't. You not merely start these things, you've got to continue, says the Apostle. It means patient endurance. And you've got to add that you yourself to your faith. It doesn't just mean looking to the Lord. You've got to be patient and go on steadily doing this thing day by day by day. Patient endurance. keeping on with it. And then godliness, which means undoubtedly at this point that you maintain your attitude towards God. You see, he's concerned in these last three with relationships. Relationship to God, godliness, brotherly kindness, your relationship to your fellow Christian, charity, love in general, your love towards all men, those who are even outside the faith. You've got to watch these things in detail. Well, now there the apostle has taken us through these various steps and stages. And having done that, he gives us an encouragement to do all that he's told us to do. What's the encouragement? Well, let me but note it. First of all, he reminds us as to what we are. He tells us that we have become partakers of the divine nature. If you feel that I've been preaching a hard doctrine, if you say surely that's reducing life again to a hard task, my friend, if you're at all hesitant or doubtful, let me put it to you like this. Do you realize what you are as a Christian? Do you realize that you're a partaker of the divine nature? Do you realize that the Son of God came from heaven to earth and even went to the cross on Calvary to save you, to deliver you from the world and its lusts, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust? Lust is the cause of that corruption. Are you going to stay there? Don't you want to get out of it? That's his argument. Realize, he says, that Christ has died, that you might be taken out of it. And you have been taken out of it. And because you've been taken out of it now then, for this very cause, giving all diligence, that's it? Surely you haven't forgotten that you have been purged from your old sins? Surely you haven't forgotten that you've died with Christ and are therefore dead unto the law and dead unto sin? How shall we that are dead unto sin live any more therein? That's Paul's way of putting it. That's Peter's argument. Well, we've got to realize that, and what a tremendous encouragement it is, and exhortation as we face this. But you don't stop at that. Realize further, says the apostle, that if you only do these things, you'll have great joy and happiness in the present. Wherefore, the rather brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure. And you make your calling and election sure by doing these things. You'll never be quite happy if you don't. It isn't enough to say, here's the word of God. It says, whosoever believeth has passed from death to life. I believe therefore. I know that's all right, but it doesn't always satisfy. You've got to do that. That's a part of your assurance. But if you and I think that assurance stops at that, we're making a profound mistake. If you want to make your calling and election sure, you've got to give all diligence to do all these things in detail. And as you do so, you'll have great joy, you'll have great peace, you'll have great happiness. You'll know where you are, and you'll reap this glorious benefit. Furthermore, he says, if you do these things, you shall never fall. Nothing is more discouraging than our various fallings. We fall, and then we are miserable and unhappy, and that causes depression, and it tends to make us feel absolutely hopeless about everything. Isn't that it? Well, the thing to do is to avoid fallings, says Peter. And if you do these things, you shall never fall. Now, it doesn't mean that you are being kept, you see, while you are doing nothing. It's as you do these things, you will not fall. So you give all diligence to do these things so that you may not fall. And then finally, and how glorious it is, listen. For so, he says, an entrance shall be ministered unto you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. He is not talking about salvation there, because these people are already saved. He's talking about the ultimate entrance into glory. Notice the words. For so, he says, an entrance shall be ministered unto you. Do you know that that's exactly the same word as this word, add? You minister these things to your faith, the abundant entry shall be ministered unto you. That's how it works. In other words, if you do these things, says Peter, if you discipline your life, if you order your life and if you furnish out your faith in this way with these various other qualities, why, he says, you'll not only never fall in the present, you'll have great joy and happiness resulting from your assurance. And when the end comes, you'll go out of this life into the next. with your sails full with a glorious breeze. There'll be no doubt or hesitation about it. It won't be an entrance with torn sails. An abundant entrance will be administered unto you. And you won't say with a poet, And may there be no moaning of the bar when I set out to sea. It won't be like that. It'll be glorious and triumphant, exhilarating and exuberant. The abundant entrance shall be administered unto you into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Beloved friends, If we are unhappy and depressed Christians this morning, it is more than likely that it's all due to that lack of discipline. Let us therefore be up and doing and giving all diligence. Let us supplement our faith and not be afraid of such a term. Let's get our ideas clear. and then put it into practice and supplement our faith with this strength and vigor, with this knowledge, with this temperance, with this patience, godliness, brotherly kindness and love. and begin to enjoy our Christian life and be fruitful and helpful to others and grow in grace and knowledge and be an attraction to all who know us. To come and join with us in the like precious faith and to experience the blessings of these exceeding great and precious promises which never fail. Amen.