Okay, good morning. I've been prepared this time. And I guess by Fred having me back here again, I suppose that two weeks ago wasn't all that bad and he hasn't cut me for somebody else. But it's a great pleasure to be with you again this morning and to look at God's word together, I realize this is a true privilege, and I'm deeply concerned myself of the responsibility that it also is for you to listen to me. So I give you a thank you very much for your kind words two weeks ago. They were, of course, very well deserved. No, no, no, no. Sorry. That was my only joke today, so I have to get it off my chest before I can start. No, of course, all glory goes to the Lord Christ, without whom we can do nothing. And I do not really consider myself to be particularly gifted in this area of preaching. It is rather that preaching seems to be the spiritual task that I'm least unqualified to do. So we shall see how it goes today. Now, despite all your kind words, The biggest critic is, of course, the person that I have to go home with every day. And she has given me quite a mouthful last time. And if you know her, then you know that she is not someone to mince her words. And she said that I shouldn't be so apologetic up here and always apologize for things I'm not about to do or I am about to do. So I shall be more assertive in my presentation this morning and hope I shall not be to timid. So I have a tendency to assume that other people think very similar things that I do and do very similar things that I do. And then I met a non-Christian. But if you are like me in any way, then you will have similarly a problem in remembering Sunday's sermon on a Monday morning. And I'm not even talking about two weeks ago. But don't worry, I'm not going to scold you if you don't remember what we did two weeks ago. As a matter of fact, I'm actually counting on it, because today's sermon will run along a very similar line, which might be a refresher for some. but it will go on a different passage. It's actually the passage I was thinking of speaking of last time, but then got stricken down with fever and was not very well. So I had to dig out another sermon. And I'm actually, I have to say, I'm much more nervous this morning because I think the last time I was completely drugged up so much on painkillers, I didn't even remember anything I said. So I guess it will be a good refresher for all of us this morning. But actually, I really wanted to talk about this because when I came across this passage, it made me think and spend some time. Now, Doc mentioned last week that one of the most difficult things for us as sort of lay preachers to do is actually to think about what we preach on. And even when we found a piece of scripture to talk about, Once you're halfway through preparing it, you actually wish you had chosen a different text because I find it very often that the meaning that comes from superficially reading a text often doesn't hold true when you study the text in more detail. However, I did come across this passage in my personal study and it made me pause because on superficial reading, it seemed to be in contradiction to what other scriptures say. So if you turn with me to our reading this morning, it is from 2 Peter 1, and God so wills that we had just 2 Peter in our study this morning, so you should be familiar with some of the outsets of 2 Peter, but we should also go through it again. So, sorry, 2 Peter 1, and verse 10, just one verse. Be all the more eager or be all the more diligent to make your calling and election sure. Let's pray. Father God, as we look into your word, we know that it is true. We know that whatever it says is intended to stimulate and instruct us. And whatever conclusion we draw from it, we know that they are true. And Lord, as I bring this message this morning, I want to pray that you would guide my thought process and my thinking and my speaking that whatever it is you want to convey to us this morning will indeed be of your will and not of mine. So we ask your blessing upon us as we continue in Jesus name. Amen. Now, as I said, this passage made me think for a moment or just stumble. And in order for you to understand exactly why it did, I need to take you back a little bit in two little discourses so that we all end up in the same boat. Now, one doctrine that our church has at one of its foundations is that salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, apart from works. And this is a very common belief in the Reformed Protestant Church. Now, we do not own our own salvations through good behavior or certain practices, sacrifices, or pilgrimages. Instead, we believe that salvation is earned for everybody through the perfect sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ. Through his death and resurrection, we also, who are heirs with Christ, will be resurrected in glory. Now, we distinguish ourselves in this from many other denominations, most prominently, of course, the Catholic Church, where salvation is also perpetuated by grace, but the dispensing of grace is no longer mediated by Christ alone. It is mediated through the church. The church has the power to demand certain practices or monetary donations for the dispensing of grace, which is earned through good works and lost through sin. And both of these good works and sinful behavior are actually defined by the Catholic Church and no longer by scripture. So you end up with this huge power struggle or power concentrating within the church. See, my guy actually paid attention at Cal's soteriology Bible study the other day. So we are saved by grace through faith alone. Now, I don't have the time to give a full apology of why that doctrine holds true. But if you want to read into this, I'm sure you're aware of Romans chapter three and four. And I can refer you to this to look into it a bit more in detail if you want to. Now, knowing that we are saved by faith alone is not quite sufficient for exploring this text this morning, so we go on our Second little discourse and we go to Romans chapter 8 and verse 29 now I promise that this will all come back to our text and We will have a good look into that But it is very important to get this one first so we can all be as I said in the same boat or on the same page Now Romans 8 verse 29 For those God foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. And those he predestined, he also called. Those he called, he also justified. Those he justified, he also glorified. Now in this short passage, we have the same two words as in our reading in 2 Peter, calling and election. Now, you might say, where is the election? In Romans, we haven't actually read it. Well, it works if we equate predestination with election. Now, I looked into this for some time, and I'm convinced that it is correct to equate predestination with election. For example, John MacArthur said that the distinction between predestination and election is simply this, that predestination is the more general term that applies to all people, while election is the more specific, narrow term. Now, what does that mean? In essence, everyone, whoever is born, whether Christian or not, is predestined. But only some that are elect for glory are the ones that are called elect. So we have the predestination of all mankind for destruction or honor, depending on whether or not they are elect. Furthermore, if we were to go on to read Romans further, we read in verse 33 of chapter 8, that Paul actually mentions the elect. And in the context, one is led to assume that Paul is indeed referring to the same people that he just called the predestined by God several verses earlier. Thus he equates predestination with election. So why did I bring us to this text? Well, this passage is called the order of salvation, or also the order of salutis. This is the sequence by which our salvation is played out until our ultimate glorification. Now it has its beginning in foreknowledge, that is the foreknowledge that God has, being not bound in the space-time continuum, which of course he created. It is then followed by election, calling, and justification. Now from other texts we know that justification is followed by sanctification, before our ultimate goal is reached, that is glorification. Now, the one thing the Bible teaches that we need in order to be justified is that we need to have faith, which is what we just concluded from our first discourse, which means that if the order of salvation is correct, and since it is part of the Bible, I have no doubt that it is, then we were elect and called way before we ever had faith. So while we are still unregenerate, still living in sin, still unable to please God or understand Him, we are already elect. This means that our predestination or election and calling are completely irrespective of any act that we can perform. They are acts of God, performed entirely out of His will and His goodness. Now let me back this up a little bit by looking at one other passage. And if you want to turn with me, turn with me to Ephesians chapter one. We shall read another text. So Ephesians chapter one verse four reads this. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ in accordance with his pleasure and will. So our election is a past event. Now even today there are those that have not professed faith in Christ but are already elect to be saved. which on a side note is the reason we should be diligent in presenting the gospel to those that we know do not believe in Christ because we don't know who the elect are. So let me again bring this all together so we can see where it relates to our text. Now we are justified at the point of receiving saving faith in Christ. That is the one prerequisite the Bible makes. We have to have faith. At that point, we receive the Holy Spirit and are able for the first time in our lives to no longer sin and, in fact, please God. That does not mean, as we said earlier, that we are completely no longer sinning, but that we are able to choose not to sin. Now, at that point, the Spirit testifies with our spirit that we are God's children, as we read in our reading together. However, before that, we were clueless, we were helpless, enemies of God, unable to choose good or have any influence on our predestination and calling. So you may see now how this relates to our text in 2 Peter, where it says, make sure or confirm your own election. Now, if these are past events that we have no influence on, and are exclusively reserved for God, what does that mean? Why does Peter say you have to make your election secure? If it is God who calls, how can I affect my calling if I cannot even please or understand God's will until I am justified, which happens after election? How can I affect anything that has presumably come before my justification, before the time I am even able to choose God, to understand God? Okay, now let us tackle this one by one. First, we know that election and calling are absolutes. They're sort of like the same thing we said last time with either being enemies or friends of God. They're either ors. there's no like in between things, you either are elect or you're not. And same applies here, that we're, yeah, as I said, either elect or not. Now, second, if we are elect, then that happened in the past, then we can indeed not affect our own salvation, sorry, our own election, our own salvation, of course, by proxy, but our own election as such. Now, thirdly, if it is God who elects and it is he who does, then even if we wanted to affect our own election, if we somehow are in a position before being even justified to persuade God to choose us to elect us, then we cannot because it is God who does the electing. So obviously, as I said, Peter's text must be more deeper than just a superficial reading of do this and you confirm your election. So in order to make it a bit more clear, we should probably read the verse we read in its context with the text around it. So let's read the whole passage of 1 Peter, starting from verse 1. 2 Peter, chapter 1, verse 1. Simon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who through the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ have received a faith as precious as ours, grace and peace be yours in abundance through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires. For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness, and to goodness knowledge, and to knowledge self-control, and to self-control perseverance, and to perseverance godliness, and to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, They will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But if anyone does not have them, he is nearsighted and blind and has forgotten that he has been cleansed from his past sins. Therefore, my brothers, be all the more eager, be all the more diligent to make your calling and election sure. For if you do these things, you will never fall and you will receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. And let's stop here. Now, Peter's first letter to the churches is written to people that were under severe persecution, and he addresses the issues that arise from it in his first letter. how to act and how to behave under persecution. Now, the second letter actually addresses a lot of false teachings, how to detect false teachings and how to get rid of them and what their ultimate destiny is. So if you want to understand Peter's instructions of how to make our election secure, we need to remember that he wrote to Christians who may be influenced by false teachers. It also becomes pretty clear that he writes to Christians. He addresses his letter to those who have received a faith as precious as ours in verse one. The King James puts it like, puts it as a like precious faith. We know that in order to be justified, we need to have faith. So since he said to those who are justified, he clearly speaks about those that have already been elect. Again, pointing that to a different idea that is being portrayed here in our text in verse 10. So we said that 2 Peter is a writing in order to assuage false teachings. Now if you want to play devil's advocate and think about the one thing you would want a Christian to stop believing in, what would that be? Well, if it was me, I'd go after the assurance that we have in our own salvation. We know the one thing that makes us a Christian is not how we dress, or how we behave, or the rules that we follow, or that we go to church on Sundays. No, what makes us Christians is our justification, our faith that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, that he died for our sins, that he rose on the third day, and that he sits at the right hand of the Father, and that we will be heirs with him in the eternal kingdom. Now, if we can take that assurance away, that certainty that we have our coming glorification, which we can achieve only if we are justified, and if we are elect, then you have created a huge false teaching. And how fitting it is then for Peter that the first chance he has in his letter to address the certainty of salvation. No. Peter addresses people that have received a faith as precious as his and wants to clarify that they are indeed elect and called by God. They are his children. God's election and calling are sure, they are his. So when he says we need to confirm our election and calling, it has nothing to do with the reality of being elected and called that is in God's hand and has been taken care of in eternity past. So what Peter is talking about here is that we ought to have confidence in our election and calling. We ought to convince ourselves, despite what everybody else says, that truly we are elect by God, that his election is sure, that the precious faith we have received is not futile, that even though we might be persecuted or suffering, it is still worth it. It is still worth to stay the course because our election and calling are secured. We just need to confirm them for our own confidence. So how do we do that? Well, Fred mentioned this morning that Peter is probably a very practical guy, a fisherman, and one would expect him to leave a few large clues of what we can do in order to be confident of our election. Well, let's look again at our text and maybe try to decipher that a bit more. So verse 10, therefore, my brothers and sisters, make every effort to confirm your calling and election. For if you do these things, you will never stumble and you will receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. For if you do these things, you will never stumble. Well, what are those things that he's talking about here? Well, if we go back to verse five, we can read what they are. For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness, and to goodness knowledge, and to knowledge self-control, and to self-control perseverance, and to perseverance godliness, and to godliness mutual affection, and to mutual affection love. So Peter describes seven qualities we are to possess and to make an effort in obtaining in order to confirm to ourselves the certainty of our calling and election. Now I thought it might therefore be a good idea if we take the rest of this morning to look at each of them so we can strive in pursuing these attributes in our life. Now we start off with faith. Now it doesn't say that we need to have faith, or that we need to increase in faith. In fact, if you just briefly counted with me, I actually didn't count faith as one of the seven attributes or qualities to have. No, it says that we need to add to our faith. So faith is presumed to be present in the individual. Now, why does it not say to have faith in the first place? Very often we hear people say to us, all you need to have is faith, or all you need to do is have more faith. Now, I actually typed in Google how to increase your faith, and you get a whole list of self-help sites of how to do that. Most interestingly, one of the first hits was from the Mormon church. Now, Peter doesn't say increase in faith first, but add to your faith. Now, why would he assume that faith is already present and that the level that he has is already sufficient? Well, let's look back at verse one. Second part, to those who through the righteousness of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ, have received a faith as precious as ours. Peter clearly states that the faith that is already in those he addresses his letter to, which by inference also includes us, have received their faith as a gift from God through the righteousness of Jesus Christ. That is saving faith, since he says it is a like precious faith. Now if you have received a saving faith from God, which is solely based on the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ, how are you going to increase it? How can you increase that faith that we have been given as a gift? We can't. We can only add to it. I also have a second passage that sort of underlines that. If we go back to Ephesians chapter two, keep a finger in second Peter though, we need to go right back. Ephesians two, Paul writing obviously, so a different author. that the faith we possess is indeed a gift of God. Chapter two, verse eight, for by grace you have been saved through faith and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God. For by grace you have been saved through faith and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God. So, What do we need to add to our faith in order to confirm our election? Well, the first thing it says is goodness. I think the King James says virtue. And the dictionary defines virtue as moral excellence, meaning what is good or virtuous is moral. So what Peter says is that we need to add moral excellence to our faith. Now we need to be a bit more careful or a bit careful in saying that we need to add moral things to our faith, since the world has a very different understanding of what is moral than we should or that we need to add here. Now, for example, you may have heard of the Gosnell trial a few months ago, where it was a tremendous outcry when it was discovered that a abortion doctor had actually performed late-term abortions. And when the abortion was botched, the fetus was actually born alive, and he then killed the baby when it was born. It was a huge outcry, and actually criminal charges were brought against him. And it was deemed immoral behavior to kill a born child. Now, that seems very contorted to me, because it was morally wrong to first remove the fetus from the womb and then kill it, but it would be morally totally fine and indeed excellent if you kill the fetus first and then remove it from the uterus, which doesn't make a huge difference to me. So we need to have a different kind of moral standards than the world. And if we want to add moral excellence to our faith, we need to, of course, embrace Christian ethics and Christian morals to add to our faith. Now, how do we find out about Christian morals and Christian ethics? Well, this leads us nicely to our second quality we are to add on top of moral excellence. It is knowledge. Now, if you don't know what is good, you can't add it to your faith. Now, interestingly, Peter mentions knowledge four times. in the first 10 verses of the second letter, which we have just read. In verse two, it says, grace and peace be yours in abundance through the knowledge of our God and of Jesus our Lord. In verse three he says, his divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Then we have it in our text we just read. And then we have it again in verse eight. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. So knowledge seems to play a pretty important role in this text. And if you may have noticed, it is indeed a particular kind of knowledge. It is the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. So you may think that the knowledge that is being referred to, referring to here that we are to add to moral excellence is the knowledge of Jesus Christ. However, that would sort of create a self-fulfilling argument. Because if you look at verse eight, it says, for if you possess these qualities, these knowledges, one among them being knowledge, in increasing measure, it will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. So if the quality of knowledge is merely the knowledge of Christ, then it would be saying like, you need to increase your knowledge of Christ in order to increase your knowledge of Christ. Now indeed, we need to look more detailed into this then to make it clear what is meant here. So the three verses referring to the knowledge of Christ per se are translated from the Greek word epignosis. While the knowledge we are to add to our virtue or goodness is translated from the word gnosis. Now, this means, in difference, a more general knowledge of moral rights and wrongs compared to the more particular knowledge of epinosis, which is the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Now, if we look for gnosis anywhere else in the Bible, we come to the most practical part of the Bible, the Proverbs. And we can see in Proverbs 19 verse 26, a very practical way of how to add knowledge to our moral excellence. Now Proverbs 19 verse 27 says, stop listening to instruction, my son, and you will stray away from the words of knowledge. When we start our Christian life, we don't always get things right. We don't know moral excellence and may fall trapped to our own desires and shortcomings. Now, through instruction, we can gain the knowledge that Peter is talking about here. And one way to get instructed is to listen to those who have gone before us, those who have lived the Christian life, those who have run the race. And while we certainly can find their biographies in libraries, We also have plenty of those people already here in the church. So if you want to add knowledge to your goodness, you may want to seek out and emulate all the Christians. Ask them if you have a problem or if you have done something that you're not sure how to deal with or if it was morally excellent. Well, you might say, what are they going to scold me for? Well, of course they will. Well, another proverb might help understanding here. Proverbs 12 verse 1. Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge, and whoever hates correction is stupid. So if you want to add your knowledge, you may need to be disciplined, which we need to keep in mind. Now on top of knowledge, we are to add self-control. Self-control is the ability to control one's emotions, behavior, and desires. And I guess I have to add a lot of that to myself, because when I was preparing for this, my only desire was to stop and procrastinate the rest of the day, which was an almost overwhelming desire. Now, Galatians 5 teaches us that self-control is actually a fruit of the spirit. So as such, we can gain self-control. We can add it to our knowledge practically. by allowing the Spirit to work in us and to produce the fruit we want to have, in this case, self-control, transforming us to conform in our thinking and doing to the Lord Jesus Christ. Next thing we add to self-control is perseverance or endurance. Now, you may not remember, but we actually talked about perseverance two weeks ago, when we examined the theological consequences of salvation through Christ. We talked from a text on Romans 5, and if we go back to there, verse 3 says, not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance, perseverance character, and character hope. So if you want to pursue, to add perseverance to our faith, then we increase perseverance through our trials, through our sufferings. We not only endure our sufferings, but we also endure the transformation process as it happens in our sanctification. Now if part of increasing our knowledge is to be disciplined, as we read in Proverbs, then we need endurance as we go through the changes that are necessary in our transformation. And we heard this morning about a young girl who is asking for prayer from the peer pressure that is upon her. And I guess some of this may be applying to her life that, you know, she needs to increase in self control. But this is like, you know, me preaching to someone I don't know at all, but this is just an example. But sometimes it may include things like having to stop meeting someone or hanging out with them or someone that you know as a friend, or stop a particular behavior, and it requires endurance. In Romans we also read that perseverance produces hope. And we mentioned two weeks ago that the biblical hope is always equated with certainty. Now here we have the same principle at work. If we want certainty of our election, we are to endure the troubles and difficulties of life. What we have to add on top of self-control, Peter says, is godliness. Now, I found that the hardest to explain. As you may imagine, godliness seems to be an attribute that is describing godlike behavior and thereby something that we cannot achieve because of our human inadequacy. Now, it seemed, therefore, strange for Peter to have included it in this list. as one of the qualities that we need to strive for in order to confirm our salvation. So I went back and looked at the Greek word that is translated godliness here, and it is eusebia. Now besides godliness, eusebia can also mean inner piety or spiritual maturity. In the New Testament, eusebia is mentioned 15 times, 14 times it is translated as godliness, and one time as piety. In Greek mythology, it is used to describe gods, with a small g, and if applied to human behavior, it can also mean devotion, reverence, or respect. So, away from the theory, trying to go to the practice of how we put it in our lives. We are to seek God-like behavior, to be like Christ, to be pious like Christ, to be mature like Christ, reverent like Christ, respectful like Christ, loving like Christ. That is all I have to this part. As I said, I had some problems in explaining this better. So I have two more, but I'm not going to apologize for it. Oh, she's not here. Two more things to go to. We're almost there. Keep your endurance up. The second to last thing he adds that we have to add to our qualities is mutual affection or brotherly kindness. It sort of seems that godliness almost seems to be like the final quality that we or to strive for. If you achieve God-like behavior, then it doesn't seem that there's anything else we need to add to it, which sort of means this whole sequence of things is probably not so much meant sequentially to go for achieving goodness first and then add knowledge on top of that. I think it is more a sequence or a passage that is meant all things at once. So what is the second last thing? Mutual affection or brotherly kindness is the affection that we have for each other as fellow followers of Christ. We are to extend to each other kindness and mutual affection as we walk in Christ. We are to share in each other's joys and sufferings. We joyful with those who are joyful and mourn with those who are mourning. Now we need to notice that the Greek word used here, Philadelphia, specifically and exclusively means the love we have for each other as brother and sister, as fellow followers of Christ. I like that. It is the love we should have for each other only on account of both of us being believers. That does not mean that we are not to cherish those outside. In fact, our last quality will clearly make that distinction. But it is clear that it is exclusively the affection we have for each other on account of our faith. So lastly, we come to love. We are to add love or charity to our brotherly kindness. So now that we have added brotherly love to our system or to our understanding, Peter urges us to add love for everyone. to extend love and charity to those that may not love us or that may even hate us. It is the comparison between the philos love that we have for each other and the agape love that God has for each one of us and that we are to portray to everyone else. It is to extend a love that does not want or expect anything in return. to love those that are not brothers in Christ in the same way as God loved us while we were still outside of his grace and were in fact his enemies. Two other passages that I'm just going to mention just to show you the excellence of love, and one is in 1 Corinthians chapter 13, verse 13. It says, now these three remain, faith, hope, and love, but the greatest of these is love. And in Romans chapter 5 verse 8 it says, but God demonstrates his own love towards us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Now, let's bring it all together. We have seen that our election and calling are outside of our control. We cannot elect ourselves into God's grace. We cannot persuade God to choose us. What we can do is to make sure of our election and calling by adding these seven qualities in increasing measure to our faith that we have received as a gift from God. Goodness, knowledge, self-control, perseverance, brotherly kindness, and love. Now, some of you may sit here and hope it's soon over. It is. But you may also sit here and think that I don't have any of these characteristics in my life. You may never have strived for these things, never considered them to be of importance. You may now think perhaps the same as the people that Peter was addressing his letter to. Perhaps since you have never strived for these qualities in your life, you too am not of the elect. Now, if that is you, and you think that your faith is indeed not genuine, and believe me, I often go through this myself, then pray to God, and he is willing to give you precious faith, a faith that will not disappoint, that will not falter, that will not come short of the joy of heaven, and the grace of God, the Father, and the inheritance we are to share in Christ. Only one thing. When you have that faith, make every effort to add to your faith goodness, and to goodness knowledge, and to knowledge self-control, and to self-control perseverance, and to perseverance godliness, and to godliness mutual affection, and to mutual affection love. For if you do these things, you will never stumble, and you will receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Let's pray. Father God, I give you thanks for your scripture, for your word that is true in us and that we want to achieve in ourselves. Thank you, Lord, that we are indeed totally dependent on you for our election, calling and salvation, that we cannot add to it, that we cannot take away from it. and that it is secure. We thank you for the practical advice that Peter gives us in confirming and making sure of this election and our salvation. And Lord, as we ponder these things, we pray that we would be able to put them into practice and to add daily to it, to be continually sanctified so that we too will be welcomed into the eternal kingdom with rich blessing and welcome. We pray all these things in Jesus' name. Amen.