Good morning, everyone. My name is Andrew. If I haven't met you, it's good to be here. It's good to be gathered together. And yeah, it's good to worship God together and pray together and all that. And I invite you to open your Bibles, or I guess we'll read it from the top here. We're going to continue our way through 2 Peter. We're going to read the same passage we read last week, but we're going to look at the second half of it this time. So I invite you to read it with me. Simon Peter, a bondservant and apostle of Jesus Christ. To those who have received a faith of the same kind as ours, by the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ. Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord, seeing that his divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness through the true knowledge of him, who called us by his own glory and excellence, For by these he has granted to us his precious and magnificent promises, so that by them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust. Now, for this very reason also, applying all diligence, In your faith, supply moral excellence. And in your moral excellence, knowledge. And in your knowledge, self-control. And in your self-control, perseverance. And in your perseverance, godliness. And in your godliness, brotherly kindness. And in your brotherly kindness, love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they render you neither useless nor unfruitful in the true knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For he who lacks these qualities is blind or short-sighted, having forgotten his purification from his former sins. Therefore, brethren, be all the more diligent to make certain about his calling and choosing you. For as long as you practice these things, you will never stumble. For in this way, the entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ will be abundantly supplied to you. Therefore, I will always be ready to remind you of these things, even though you already know them and have been established in the truth which is present with you. I consider it right, as long as I am in this earthly dwelling, to stir you up by way of reminder, knowing that the laying aside of my earthly dwelling is imminent, as also our Lord Jesus Christ has made clear to me. And I will also be diligent that at any time after my departure, you'll be able to call these things to mind." This is the Word of God. I invite you to pray with me as we prepare to think about it. Our God and Father, you have brought us to life. You have begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Christ from the dead. And Father, we rejoice in this. And we know that you have said, I think it was in Psalm 81, that you said, open your mouths and I will fill it. Father, we know how good you are and how you want to nourish us. And so like, in a sense, Father, like birds chirping, we open our mouths and pray that as we ponder this passage, Father, please fill our mouths with good things. Nourish our souls. not just our minds, but we pray that you will nourish our innermost being. We pray this through our Lord's name, Jesus Christ. Amen. Now, if you were here last week, you might recall, remember that Sorry? Yes, oh, thank you, Taylor, yes. Great. Yes, Peter, we're not quite there, but Peter is writing this letter because the Lord has made clear to him, we read it in the latter half. The Lord's made clear to him that his time on earth is about to end. And so he takes to writing this letter to ensure that people like us have a permanent reminder of the essential things. And my attempt last week at summarizing the whole letter was, know Jesus more. That's right. This week's focus in the second half is really how to keep a healthy knowledge of God and of Jesus. How to keep a healthy heartfelt knowledge of God and of Jesus. So we were at verses 1 to 4 last week where Peter was reminding us that it's through the knowledge of God and of Jesus that we received everything we need for life and godliness. So I've got some slides here this time. There we go. I've discovered Bing's AI co-pilot and so it creates images for you. So I typed in what I wanted and it created this beautiful image saying that through the knowledge of God we have a pantry for life and godliness. And there are three things we receive. As we know God's glory and excellence more, we gain the understanding of what life and godliness is, the map. Secondly, we receive the call into God's glory and excellence. And thirdly, we receive the fuel, which is the fuel of his promises. So as we comprehend the riches of God's goodness and the power and the goodness of God, we become more certain of and clearer about how precious the promises of God are. Sorry, the fuel. Now we're up to verse 5, but I want to just spend a minute in verse 4 because we really need to launch off verse 4. Just to remind ourselves that it's through the promises that God has given us that we partake of the divine nature. Now that statement there might sound like a pretty radical statement, or even on a first read it could sound a little bit heretical. Partaking of the divine nature? But actually, it makes a lot of sense. When we have been begotten of God, it makes sense that we take after the nature of the one who begot us, of God. So, for instance, what that looks like when we fervently love each other, that's partaking of the divine nature. Because God is love. When we pursue peace with each other, and when we pursue forgiveness in the spirit of reconciliation, that's partaking of the divine nature. When we freely exercise hospitality and when we freely exercise generosity, that's partaking of the divine nature. And when we be true and faithful, just as God is true and faithful, that's partaking of the divine nature. So that's what he means when he says that through the promises of God, God has given us promises that we might become partakers of the divine nature. Now, so he says that we received an escape from corruption, and through drawing on God's promises we partake of his divine nature. Verse 5, I think that Peter's main concern, his main focus, is relapse. How to avoid relapse. Like the letter, actually I was at a Wednesday night group this past week and we were going through Revelation 2 where the letter to the Ephesians was the thing that Christ had against them was they lost their first love. Well Peter is writing here to teach us how to ensure that we don't lose our first love. how we don't fall into relapse. Sometimes, just throughout the years, there have been times in my life and perhaps yours too, where relapse feels inevitable. I don't know if you feel like that at some times. I think of, if you've seen the Marvel films, the Marvel movies, Thanos he's the big antagonist in that series and his phrase is I am inevitable and I hear that and I think sometimes relapse feels inevitable How can I be healthy in the knowledge of Christ and continue to be fruitful in the knowledge of Christ? Well, Peter is saying, this is what he's addressing. The image that comes to my mind is that of a teenage son. Now, it doesn't have to be a teenage son, but that's what I thought of. You know, in the morning, he wakes up and school is calling. The day is dawning. He knows it's dawning. But what you do is so nice and cozy under the covers. The temptation is just turn around, drift back to sleep. But, verse 5, Peter is like the mother. He's bursting into our rooms. He's opening the curtains. He's pulling off the doona. He's saying, don't you dare turn around and go back to sleep. young man, young woman, old man, old woman, whoever, whatever age you are, get up, get active, eat your spiritual Wheat Bix. You need these. Don't drift back off into sleep and corruption. And so Peter is prescribing for us what I've called a protein shaker, a spiritual fitness regime that we need to put into our daily routine. It is kind of, you may have not been expecting that, but it is very serious. Look at verse 5. He's saying, Now, we're going to go into these in detail in a little bit, but I just want to make sure that the logic of the passage is pretty clear first. These qualities that Peter lists off, they're usually talked about and thought of as the natural fruits of our salvation. And that's right, that's correct. But Peter's main focus here is not the fruit aspect. His writing, remember, to ensure that we continue in an increasingly healthy spiritual condition in his absence. And so he's prescribing these qualities kind of like essential oils or vitamins to guarantee our health, our ongoing usefulness and fruitfulness in the knowledge of Christ and of God. And that's why it says in verse 8, if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they render you neither, there's a double negative, they render you neither useless nor unfruitful, or they render you useful and fruitful in the true knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. Verse 9, if you aren't diligent in supplying these qualities, if you are lacking in these things, blind, yeah, blind, short-sighted, forgetful of what Christ has done for you. So let's look at these qualities in verse 5. Firstly, we've got here moral excellence. Moral excellence. It's the Greek word arete. It could also be translated as virtue. It's the same word used in verse 3 to describe God. It says His glory and His arete, His excellence. And there are a lot of different ways that I saw you could define this. This is my attempt. It's a courageous, vigorous practice of all that is good, noble, and right. And it's also pursuing it in a way that is good, noble, and right. I think another way perhaps of saying it is vigorously seeking to be filled with the truth and grace of Christ in every facet of life. Vigorously pursuing it. So externally that might look like a William Wilberforce. who very vigorously pursued the abolition of the British slave trade back in the few hundred years ago. It might be in your neighborhood that might be looking out for the orphans or the widows or the vulnerable in your neighborhood and vigorously pursuing to protect them. Things like that. But I think more it's talking about internally in our own lives, in our own conduct, pursuing the truth and grace of Christ in every facet of our lives. Vigorously. Are you vigorously watching your tongue and pursuing to, and seeking to use it for good? Pursuing wisdom like we were, a few of us were reading Proverbs just before. Or thinking of the various roles that we fill in terms of as a husband, as a wife, as a father or a mother, as an employer or an employee, a work colleague or a nurse or a bus driver, whatever hats you wear. Are you vigorously endeavouring to fill those hats with the grace and truth of Christ? Moral excellence. But just the classic Greek use of this word, it needs to be emphasized. It's not just the practice, it's the pursuit of this in a way that is good, right, vigorous, and noble. So, moral excellence. Next he's got knowledge. He's not just meaning any knowledge or an aimless knowledge like what the latest celebrity gossip is. No, he's meaning a knowledge of God and of Christ. A knowledge of what God does, of what God has made. A knowledge of mankind. So it's a consistent, distinguishable, intentional growth in this knowledge. That means listening at church. at Bible study, or at home in your closet, when no one's around. That means thinking about it and processing it for yourself. That means chewing it, not just eating what others have chewed for you, but chewing it for yourself. That means maybe also reading good books. Knowledge, he's saying, in your faith supply knowledge. Now I find it actually hard to retain things. I can learn them one day and then the next day I don't retain them. So for me this means writing because I find that when I write things down for people and try to convince people or write in a simple way, it helps me to think about it and retain it better. Maybe some of you could be like that as well. So knowledge. Next he's got self-control in this. He's throwing all these things into the protein shake. Self-control. So you're not giving control of yourself whether it be bodily or mentally or emotionally. Not giving control of any of facet over to the flesh's passions or whatever is contrary to God's law. Even for things that are lawful and permissible, keeping to moderation. Self-control. Throw that in a protein shake. He's got perseverance here as well. So not sometimes pursuing what is good and right, not sometimes exercising self-control, but persevering through it and continuing consistently in these qualities, even when the going gets tough. And that actually includes, when we do sin, persevering in repentance and coming back to God. He's got the next one, godliness. So God-likeness, imitating God, loving what God loves, hating what God hates, treasuring what God treasures, appreciating what God appreciates. So following God's cues, tuned to where He is at, godliness. And he's got brotherly kindness. We're sort of speeding up here, aren't we? Brotherly kindness. Now, you may know that the Greek language has a few different words to describe, well, a few different words that in English they translate into love. He uses two different words here. For this one, brotherly kindness, he uses the word Philadelphia, which means the love of kin. So the love that brothers and sisters have for each other, brothers and sisters that love each other, that know each other well, that kind of love. It means to cherish one another as brothers and sisters. It's an intimate, affectionate love where you know and love that other person. It's a love that overflows with a deep, affectionate expression of kindness. And then he lists off love. Now, the previous one was Philadelphia. This word is the word agape, meaning a selfless, outward-looking goodwill, a loving affection or benevolence for everyone. That's your loving disposition toward everyone, like God so loved the world. It kind of just overflows. It doesn't matter if you know them. Philadelphia is sort of the intimate, know-you kind of love. But love is just the goodwill general. Now you might, like me, like I was wondering if there's a kind of sequence to these qualities. Because when you look at verse 4 and 5, or verse 4, Peter doesn't just give us a pure list with commas in between it. It's not just a CSV file, if you could call it. He seems to be chaining them together in an interesting way. And we can't use too much time thinking about how it's all chained together, but here's my attempt at that. He says, in your faith, mind you, faith which we've received from God. He's already made that clear in verse 1. In our faith, supply a vigorous practice and pursuit of what is good and right. But you need to know what is good and right. So supply knowledge, the knowledge between good and evil. And knowing this, supply self-control by which you deny a platform for evil in your life and keep to what is good. But it's hard to keep day in, day out. So supply perseverance to keep on going on. And with these proteins, you can and should supply true godliness. And then you're equipped to love your brothers and sisters in Christ. And out of that just flows a love for anyone, a longing disposition, a loving disposition for all the people in all the world, even people you're walking past down the street. I don't know, maybe that's the sequence. There's something of a sequence here. Maybe you could tell me what you think, how you might think he's chaining it together afterward. But throw all these into the protein shake, and that's quite a list. That is quite a list. And I don't know about you, but I read this list, and I feel overwhelmed. I feel very overwhelmed. I thought to myself when I was reading this, I don't think I have it in me to keep up with this fitness regime that Peter's prescribing. And you know what, if you thought this too, then you're right. You're right. You're spot on. You don't have it in you to diligently do this to stay spiritually fit. But that's the point that Peter is making. That's part of the point. See, we didn't escape our corruption by our own strength. We didn't start partaking of God's divine nature by our own strength. We do it by the promises of God. And how we began is exactly how we continue. By faith. That's why at the start of verse 5, he says, in your faith supply these qualities. In your faith supply these qualities. Faith in the one who has given you these magnificent promises. So like Abraham, you probably all know Abraham, he learned the promises of God. And what did he do? By faith, in his faith, he stepped toward the promised land. And he dwelt in the promised land. And he did this, and Paul writes to the Romans that he rejoiced to do this because he was convinced that God would supply and work what he had promised. So that's our mentality in faith. Like Abraham, we bravely and joyfully supply these qualities, not looking to within ourselves, but looking to the one who has promised us, who has given these magnificent promises, being fully convinced that the one who promised us keeps his promises and will work what he has promised. So in the faith that we've received from God, Peter says, Diligently, give all diligent to supply these qualities. Verse eight, we're up to, yeah, we're up to verse eight. Or I like to think, are you useless and fruitless or useful and fruitful? Do you want to be useful and fruitful in the knowledge of Christ? I mean, it's kind of an obvious answer to there, isn't it? Or do you want to be useless and fruitless? I have a lemon tree out back home in Timboon. I have a lemon tree out the back of my house. And it's an incredible tree because whenever I pick fruit from it, it's not long before there's more fruit on it. And it's not the kind of tree where you can count the fruit on it because every time I look out the backyard it just seems to be more fruit on it. It just keeps going. At the moment it's half green from the leaves and half yellow from all the lemons on it. It's great. But you want to be that kind of tree, right? You want to be that kind of tree. Not the tree that has the old shriveled fruit on it, and you're content with that. Or the fruit that you grew a few years ago and that you point to, to sort of pat yourself on the back and prove that you have genuine faith. No, you want to be the tree that just keeps fruiting in the knowledge of Christ. The kind of tree that for every grain of knowledge about Christ that you receive, your life responds with some kind of joy and fruit in the knowledge of Christ. And every time you review and relearn what you already know, you want to be that kind of tree where your life just bursts with good attitudes, good habits, good words, great Christ-exalting joy. Things that are also useful for the people around you to pluck off in a sense. Useful for others to pluck off and enjoy as well. So useful and fruitful. But notice what he says in verse 8 as well. If these qualities are yours and are increasing, that's an important word. If they need to be increasing, we need to keep upping the dosage of this protein shake in a sense. I wonder if here is the problem for many Christians, and maybe especially in reformed churches, with the problem of thinking, I know plenty about God. I know plenty about God already. Or if you've grown up in a Christian family and have been blessed to receive the traditions of Christian life, those good habits, so that they're normal and natural for you, the risk is that you could make the mistake of thinking, well, I'm amply self-controlled. I'm amply loving, amply knowledgeable of God, and I'm amply honest enough to openly say that I have improvements to make. But ample is not found in Peter's fitness regime. It's increasing. That's the word that he says. And the mentality of a healthy, useful, fruitful Christian, I call it an Oliver Twist mentality. If you're aware of the story of Oliver Twist, he's an orphan, I think it's Dickens, is it Dickens? Yeah, Charles Dickens, his tale of Oliver Twist, he's an orphan and he grew up in a a work house and the memory that I have of him eating just a little bit of food and then he was the one selected to go to the headmaster and what did he say? Please sir, can I have some more? More? More? And the headmaster, what did he say? More? You want more? Only that's the big difference, right? Our headmaster is not stingy at all. Our headmaster is the one who's just dying to give us more. Dying to give us more and more and more and bring us to more increase in the knowledge of Christ. He's the one who delights to fuel us with extravagant promises that we might more and more reflect his divine nature. There can be no place for the word ample in a Christian's mind. Only an insatiable satisfaction for more of Christ. So an Oliver Twist mentality for more. Is this you? Is this you? Verse 9. The one who lacks these qualities is blind or short-sighted, even forgetting his purification from his former sins. You see, without more of this protein shake, our spiritual sight of Christ will grow dim. In fact, if we're not increasing, Peter's making the point, you're already showing signs of being short-sighted. You've fallen into near-sightedness. A couple years ago, I was catching up every Friday with a young friend of mine. Well, I say young, he was in his early 20s, showing my age now. He wanted to be fruitful and useful in the knowledge of Christ. He didn't use those words, but that's essentially what it was. He grew up in a nominal Christian family, and he just said recently, or back then, he just recently decided to get serious about following Jesus, which is great. So we started meeting up every Friday. We'd have lunch together. We'd read a portion of scripture together and pray together. But I was really concerned for him because despite my efforts and warnings, he didn't have time for this kind of protein shake. He was investing a lot of his time, a lot of his mental energies on three things. There were three addictions. Different for everyone, but for him, these three addictions were video games, his Mazda RX-8, fancy car, and working two jobs. None of which intrinsically are evil, but for him they were very unhelpful because it meant that he gave the vast majority of his mental energy and his time to these things and he didn't give much diligence to this protein shake. He lacked these qualities, and lo and behold, he suffers from short-sightedness. In fact, he started justifying it, despite my warnings and opening scripture and showing him, he started justifying it when he started dating his unbelieving co-worker, as, oh, I'll bring her to Christ. And now he's living with her. And we don't catch up anymore. That's his choice. But I'm grateful that he does know. I've made it clear to him that you can't serve two masters. But I think this is an example that he lost sight of the saving knowledge of Christ. His heart grew cold. Because he didn't have the time, the mental energy, in investing in this kind of protein shake. Don't let your heart forget what Christ has done for you. Don't forget that he has given you a clean slate. He's given you a clean bill of health by giving himself up on the cross for us. Don't ever let our hearts forget it. This protein shake will help keep our heart throbbing when we think of Christ who died for us, who was raised for us, and who now lives forever. to intercede for us. Verse 10. Therefore, brethren, be all the more diligent to make certain about his calling and choosing you, for as long as you practice these things, that is, these qualities, you will never stumble, for in this way the entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ will be abundantly supplied to you." Do you see the wordplay that Peter has just used there? Originally in verse 5 he says, "...in your faith supply these qualities," and then verse 11 he says, "...and the entrance into the eternal kingdom of Christ will be abundantly supplied to you. It's the same word. It's an interesting wordplay that he's done there. But note, he's not calling us to earn an entry into the kingdom. Let's make that clear. He's not calling us to... There's nothing to do with earning an entry into the kingdom. And he's not teaching us that we ought to try to produce these qualities to prove that we believe. Nothing like that. His point is that we need to give every ounce of diligence to increasing in these qualities because it promotes an ever clearer sight of Christ. An ever clearer sight of the one who died for us. A healthier heart in the knowledge of Christ. A firmer reliance on the one who has promised us. So if they say an apple a day keeps the doctors away, I say to those who know Jesus, growing in these qualities every day helps keep relapse away. I wonder when you think of yourself in one year time, in your future one year older self, or five years, or in 10 years, you want to become more useful and fruitful, don't you? Well, it starts in the present. Here's the fitness regime. Here's the protein shake that Peter is telling us to give all diligence to pay attention to. And when your time comes and you're finally about to cross the finish line, Don't you want to say how I love him now more than ever. Not how I loved him then but not so much now. Don't you want to say how I love him now more than ever. Here's the protein shake. This is the spiritual fitness regime that Peter is calling us to do and to help each other do. All right, let's pray in that vein of thought. Father, we know that you have given us, well, we have no ground to stand on but Jesus Christ, our Lord. He alone is our plea. We thank you for bringing us to life through him, revealing him to us, and revealing yourself to us through Him, and we don't ever want to fall back into our blindness and short-sightedness and that corruption that ruled us. And we don't want our hearts to be blind to you ever again. You've wiped our slate clean through Christ, and we rejoice in this, and we want to commit to this fitness plan. Father, we can't maintain it by ourselves. We pray You have promised us and we pray that You will enable us to increase more and more. Help us to give us all diligence to these qualities, to these things. Father, that our hearts might throb more and more in the saving knowledge of Your Son and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. We pray these things in His name. Amen.