In 2 Peter 3, verse 17, the Apostle Peter finishes his letter with a warning. Now, warnings are good. Warnings are everywhere around us. They're on roadways, construction areas. They are on high-voltage towers, keep away, danger. They are on appliances in our homes, furnaces. everywhere that there is potential danger. And of course, we'd only be fools if we didn't acknowledge and recognize the signs and heed the warnings. Likewise with God's warnings, we would be fools to say, well, that doesn't apply to me. I'm different. I can just do it anyway. Well, these warnings are here for a reason and for a purpose. In this book, Peter has been warning us about false teachers. He has been warning about those who deceive and who, by their lusts or cravings for sinful things, will lead people astray. And so, we have here in verse 17 this word, beware. lest ye also." It is like a danger sign, and it's warning us that we need to take heed. Beware, lest ye also be led away with the error of the wicked. Peter is obviously concerned about these people to whom he's writing, And we have learned in this book that he is concerned about his departure by death. He will not be their pastor forever. He will not be in their midst for long. And when he departs, there may arise false teachers who will lead the people astray and cause them to fall. Now, they are in Christ, They are secure. They are rejoicing in the truth, because he says at the end of verse 17, "'Fall from your own steadfastness.'" So Peter is not pulling the carpet from under their feet and saying, "'You're going to fall.'" But to be sure that they do not fall prey to the false teachings, there's one thing they must do, and that is grow. grow in grace and in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus." Now, this growth is not physical. And it's not merely intellectual, it's not merely to gain knowledge about things, but it is growth in the experience and in fellowship with the Lord Jesus. When we are first converted, when we are first saved, we are brought into union with the person and have a relationship with the Lord Jesus, the Son of God. But that relationship needs to develop. That oneness and unity in the Lord needs to grow more and more. We might liken it to marriage. When a couple are firstly married, well, they come together with all their interest in each other. But as they live together and walk together through life, well, as my wife can do, she can probably know me thinking. She just looks at me and she says, I know what you're thinking. And it is this growing in relationship, in knowledge, personal friendship and understanding. And that's the knowledge that Peter is referring to here. Otherwise, we're going to be led astray by the error of the wicked. And that's why I wanted to start the service today with the words of John the Baptist. I must decrease, but he must increase. And of course, the reality is that we, by nature, are so independent-thinking. We want to do things our own way. We want to make our own decisions. We want to live our own life. But the Christian can't do that. You're married to the Lord. He is now your husband. He is the one that you must learn to lean on and depend upon and walk alongside with. And so we've got to die to self and to live more and more in fellowship, in a real loving relationship with the Lord Jesus. Now, in our sermon two weeks ago, We covered two things, hindrances to growth, and we looked at five marks of growth, kind of like a checklist to know if you be growing. Now, I would advise you get that sermon. And you can find that, of course, at our website online. Just go back two weeks, whatever date that was, June 12th, and you can get that sermon in the morning, the first part of this message on growth. Today we want to move on to the means of growth. What are the ways by which God has provided that we might grow in our relationship with the Lord Jesus and in our fellowship with Him? Well, the first thing that we need to do is exercise. Exercise your faith. Faith to be strong. must be exercised frequently. It's like those muscles, or at least those wannabe muscles, those muscles that we want to have. And if you don't use those muscles, well, they grow weaker and weaker and soon become unable to help at all. And just as muscles need to grow, so does your faith. So does your fellowship with the Lord Jesus. And here are a few ways by which you can flex the muscles of your faith and that you can grow stronger in your real fellowship with the Lord. Well, the first one is worship. Worship in faith. Now, that sounds very old-fashioned, and it sounds old school. And it is, because Christians have been doing this for hundreds and thousands of years. God's people have been learning how to worship, how to walk with God for generations after generations. And we're not in the business of creating something brand new. If we do, it's suspect. If it's different from what the men and women of the Bible have done, then we don't want it. Worship is old, but it's ever new. And it's something that every one of us here today must fully engage in, or we're not exercising our faith. We're just growing lazy in our profession of the Lord Jesus. Now, this word, worship, how do you understand it? I'm sure if we took a poll of people, we would get different answers today, even in this small congregation. What is then worship? We have read in the Bible of people who came to the feet of Jesus, and they worshiped him. They prostrated themselves, flew themselves down in the presence and the company of the Lord, and treated him as a king. They gave him honor, they gave him respect, and they took the lowly, lowly place. And that's what John the Baptist was getting at. I must decrease, but he must increase. The word worship, just by its dictionary meaning, simply means to lick as a dog. That's the meaning of the Greek word behind worship. And you know A dog will fondle, and it will come along and nudge you and just lick your hands or lick your face. And you know when a dog is doing that, he's warming up. There is a growing fondness and relationship, and there is that respect that is given there. Now, we're not going to do what the dog does. But there are ways that Christians demonstrate their fondness, their love, and their faith in the Lord Jesus. How do Christians do this? How do they declare and demonstrate their worship We don't actually come to church and get down on the carpet and spread ourselves out as if we were coming to a deity in that posture. But how do we do this in real biblical terms, as Christians have always done it? Well, the first thing that we do is we sing. out of faith. Sing with faith. If you turn to Colossians 3.16, we're told about singing spiritual songs. Hymns, songs, and various methods of singing. Hymns, songs, spiritual songs. Colossians 3, verse 16. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. And there is the singing of faith. Now, it starts with the truth. Let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly. And we sing what we believe. We sing our convictions. We sing the things that we know about our Lord, and we express them in our singing. And that's what makes them spiritual songs, and that is what glorifies the Lord. But singing without faith is not worship. If you sing in doubt, if you sing in fear, if you sing in you know, objection to God? Well, it's just mockery. It is not really the submission of heart and mind that is required. But the thing is, we've got to do it. We've got to actually do the singing. This is practical Christianity. We've actually got to come either to God's house or wherever God's people meet, and we've got to take that hymnal, and we've got to actually enter into the singing. We've got to use our own lungs, our own air, and our own talent of singing, whether that's big or small, and we've got to get into it. That is exercising your faith. Now, you always know when you're in a company of people who are real believers and those who are not, by the way they sing. I've been to funerals and such meetings where there's a lot of people who are not believers, and they're not used to singing. And it's tough leading that singing, because very few people enter into it. There might be a sprinkling of people who know the hymns and like to sing, but when there's a whole group of unbelievers with no faith, it usually falls flat. And sometimes in church, We have those times when people just seem to not enter into the singing, and we can tell. And this is the exercise of our faith. This is the flexing of our muscles. This is the strengthening of our very life and union with the Lord by entering into this singing. After all, every time you come to God's house, we spend at least a third of the time singing. Take five minutes per hymn, and usually four hymns, there's 20 minutes actually singing. There's a third of the time spent in singing. Why do we do that? Well, we're commanded. That's worship. That's how we exhibit our love and devotion That's how we tell the Lord that we're delighted in His name. It's like the dog licking. It's like the man coming to Jesus' feet and falling prostrate at His feet and showing their delight in the Lord. So there's singing out of faith. Then there's also prayer or praying in faith. Now, anyone can recite a prayer. even the Lord's Prayer out of the Bible, but it may not be the prayer of faith. It could be, for a Christian, there's nothing wrong with saying, reciting, and quoting the Lord's Prayer. The Lord has given it for us to use. But there are some people, of course, who just take that as a rote, and their hearts are not in it, their minds are not in it, they have no real deep thoughts about it, and they just do it out of habit or routine. And we cannot really call that the prayer of faith. Praying in faith is to take God at His Word and really believe in your heart. That He is the God that He says He is. And that His promises are exactly as He states them. I read of a young farmer, and one hot summer day he went into his cornfield. He was hot and tired. And in the midst of the weary work, he blasphemed the name of the Lord. And he took the name of the Lord in vain. He cursed the cornfield for being just a mess. It wasn't going very well for him. And then finally, he got to clear the field and to sow and plant and wait for a new crop, but it didn't really come. And again, he was discouraged and downcast and wondering why. His young wife, who was a believer, she said to him, Well, did you not say for God to damn that field? So how can you expect something good to grow on it?" And she got the message through to him that God does actually hear, and he actually knows what's in our hearts, and he takes on board our requests. If that is true in judgment, it's also true in worship. As we come to ask our requests of God, God hears, and God responds, and indeed, God answers. And as we come to pray on God's promises, those promises are like blank checks, and we're to fill them in. and present them at the throne of grace in prayer, believing—this is the exercise of faith now—believing that if it is a promise of God, the Lord will hear and answer for his own glory. Hebrews 11.6 tells us that he that cometh to God must believe that he is and that he's a rewarder of them that seek him. You can't just pray heedlessly, thoughtlessly. You've got to exercise faith in your praying, and then you will be rewarded. And so, here is the way to exercise your faith. Singing! Are you a singing Christian? Then I ask you, are you a praying Christian? That's how we exercise our faith that we might grow. If you're not exercising faith in prayer, calling on God to help you and bless you and to work in your heart, how will you grow spiritually? The third way to exercise your faith is to hear the live preaching of God's Word. Now, here is something that preachers find a bit tricky to preach, because it's a bit like blowing your own horn and peddling your own gas here, and I don't want to be seen doing that. But it is true that the live preaching of God's Word is the chief means God has ordained to work in the hearts of God's people to make them grow. And you can make this experiment in your mind. Any growing Christian you know will love the living preaching of God's Word. Now, we're living in an age when there's all kinds of ways to try and learn truth, There's books, there's websites, there's audio sermons, there's all kinds of things. But God has ordained the assembling of ourselves together and the work of the preacher, the live preacher in the midst. Now, why is this? Why is this God's chief way of helping His children to grow? Well, I thought hard about this, and I wrote out a little blurb here that I want to read to you, and I want to just give you what I am convinced is the reason why God uses this means. First of all, preaching is called a mystery. You read of that in Ephesians 6. It's a mystery. There is something going on in this act of church worship and preaching that is beyond our five physical senses. There is a spiritual realm that we're entering into that God blesses. It is a special work of God's Spirit First of all, to stir men to preach the Word. And that is God's work. God leads men to the Bible, he gives them stirred in that portion of the Bible, and then they come to expound it with all their heart. And that's like digging gold out of the Bible. And that is the work that the preacher must do. And as you come under the sound of the preaching, you ought to be receiving the very riches of God's grace. Now, furthermore, in this act of preaching, God promises His presence. Go into all the world, preach the gospel, and lo, I am with you always. And where two or three are gathered together in the Lord's name, in the church where the Word of God is preached, there is the special, gracious presence of the Lord that He does not promise in any other place. And as we assemble ourselves together and we preach the Word, the preaching ministry is God, a God-given exercise that brings all God's truth His power and His presence into play. And we ought to be experiencing that. And we ought to be enjoying the blessing of that. And it stretches our souls and it stretches our fellowship and walk with God. Another way by which God exercises our souls to grow is that He commands us to bear witness for Him before the world. Now here's something really, really important. This bearing witness, being a testimony to the world around us, is a form of spiritual exercise, and God uses it to stretch the faculties of our faith. Now, we know that it's the Lord's will that every man in the world hears the gospel. We're not to limit the gospel to even one person. Go ye into all the world, preach the gospel to every creature. And the Lord said, Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of me, And of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him shall the Son of man be ashamed." Now, you think of being that person who never speaks for the Lord, always silent, never ever bears witness for the Lord, and the Lord is ashamed of us. Do you think that that's going to be conducive to growth? Because something's been held back now. There's a rent in the fellowship. The Lord says, you're ashamed of me. You won't speak about me. You won't even tell others you're a Christian. And that becomes a divide, a dampener in the friendship, the fellowship that we enjoy with the Lord. And you feel grieved. And you feel weakened by the fact that you did not bear witness for the Lord. But the Lord does promise that whosoever therefore shall confess me before men, him will I confess before my Father in heaven." Because then the Lord is pleased with us. And when we just speak a word for the Lord Jesus—doesn't have to be a sermon, Doesn't have to be a long diatribe of explanation. It could simply be a text of Scripture. It could be a gospel tract. It could be telling someone about a sermon or something of the gospel you've heard. Or it could be that little formula that we have, the ABC of the gospel. All have sinned and come short of God's glory. Be, behold, the Lamb of God. See, call upon the name of the Lord, now shall be saved. Now, the Lord is pleased with that. He's not ashamed. And He ministers to your heart grace. He ministers to your heart joy. And He ministers to your soul strength, even in the very act of witnessing and afterwards. Now, I want you to try it this week. I want you to take one of these little church cards and go to someone. Now, before you go, pray. Pray that the Lord helps you to be that witness. Pray that the Lord gives you the words to speak and the boldness to speak them. And then deliver the card. Whatever the words become, they become. And then after you've borne the witness, go back and pray again. And I guarantee that you'll have grace and joy in your soul that will beyond the average day of your life. How does this come? Because the Lord's not ashamed. The Lord is pleased with you. And you've demonstrated to your Lord that you love Him more than the well-done of men. And you have the fear of the Lord more than the fear of man. And this bearing witness is a mechanism by which God gives us growth—growth in grace—and he pours in that grace into our hearts. We read in Acts about the early Christians. They had such joy because they were counted worthy to suffer for Christ's sake. That's when they were beaten and told never to speak again in that name. But they obeyed God rather than men, and they were filled with grace and joy. We read of martyrs consigned to their death, and while they were waiting for their death hour, the Lord ministered multiplied blessings, because they were witnesses for the Lord. And that becomes a means of growth. And I set this before you today Exercise faith. Sing. Pray. Witness. And when you do those things, you will grow. Now, there's something more, more than exercise, and I'm going to call it earnestness. Growth demands earnestness. Any growing thing you know wants to grow. Whether it's a new seed in the ground, or even it's a weed where you don't want it to be, it's got a will to grow. It wants to grow. And if you are converted and born of the Spirit, you will want to grow. There will be a purpose in your mind, Lord, make me to grow as a Christian. Now, every Christian, therefore, needs I will statements in their lives. resolutions, determination. Now, I want to turn you to Psalm 5, where you have the psalmist in worship, in prayer, and he really shows that he's determined. He's determined to walk with God, to serve him and worship him. Psalm 5, verse 1, Give ear to my words, O LORD, consider my meditation, Hearken unto the voice of my cry, my King and my God, for unto Thee will I pray. Now there's determination, there's purpose, there's earnestness. My voice shalt thou hear in the morning, O LORD. In the morning will I direct my prayer unto thee, and will look up. And so here is a man who knows his own needs. He's a worshiper, but he's got this determination, I will. And if you're going to grow, If you're going to really be a strong Christian, you need that I will in your heart, a determination that you're going to do what it takes to go through with God and serve Him with all your heart. Now, our Lord Jesus had I-wills in his life. He thanked God that he came into this world to do God's will. You read of that in Psalm 40, and again in Hebrews 10, where he said, Then said I, lo, I come, in the volume of the book that is written of me, to do thy will, O God. And so if we're going to grow in the grace of the Lord Jesus and be like Him, we need our whole life to be doing God's will. And when you think of the Lord Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, that night when He was under horrendous pressure, satanic temptation, when He knew His fate within hours, that he would be arrested and soon to be crucified. And he prayed this prayer, Not my will, but thine be done. If it be possible, let this cup pass from me, but not my will, but thine be done. And you can see there the earnestness of the Lord. He went to that cross with determination, and He suffered willingly that He might serve God and serve us. And you and I need that determination. We need that earnestness in our worship. It ought not to be with a Christian that you get up in the morning and you decide, will I read my Bible today? Nor should you get up in the morning and say, well, I don't think I need to pray today, I feel strong. Or maybe get up on a Sunday morning, I don't think I need to go to church today. We need that resolution, that determination, the I-wills in our lives that gives us that earnestness. I need because I want to grow. I need because I want to be strong in the Lord. And so, this growth demands earnestness. And then, of course, I could never preach on this topic without coming into the relation that you and I have with our Bibles. And we need to be Bible readers. There are four little pictures on reading the Bible, and it's just like a plant life. A plant needs light. That's the first thing a plant needs, is light. If you want to kill off vegetation, you get a big, thick tarp, you put rocks or bricks around the edges of it and keep it down, don't allow the light in, and everything underneath just will die. No light. When we come to our Bible, that is our knowledge base. That is the light of God shining into our hearts. And we are not to be children of darkness, but children of light. We walk in the day and not in the night. And as we come to our Bible, we gain light, the true knowledge, understanding, of the living God. And so, we need to be fervent Bible readers, praying for that light of the Lord to shine into our hearts. The other thing that plants need, and that is heat. Flowers open up to the sun. You can see them behave so differently on a bright, sunny, hot day than they do on the cloudy, dark, rainy day. They just open up. They bloom because they have received the heat. Now, that heat that plants enjoy for the Christian is really the love of the Lord. Peter was warning here about evil men on an agenda of hatred and destruction. But there's one thing you must note about Peter is that he enjoyed the love of the Savior. One of his key words is the word precious. And he says in 1 Peter 1, verse 8, that unto him, having not seen, we love. and unto us he is precious." Now, what is it that will send you to your Bible? It's burning love for the Lord. And the wonderful thing is that as we take time in that Word, The Lord's love burns in our hearts, like the man on the road to Emmaus with the heartburn. And we need to be growing, not just in head knowledge, not just in the big doctrines of life, but in our love and relationship with our Lord, that He is precious to us, that He is our first love. Faith worketh by love. There's a text to that. Faith worketh by love. And I pray that you grow in deeper love with the Savior, and that through His Word, that love will be like heat that will just cause you to open up, blossom as the flowers in the sunshine. The other thing that plant life needs, and that is moisture. There has to be a supply of water and moisture. In the rain and in the dew, the shrub, the tree, the plant will blossom. It will bring forth its fruit. But without water, again, of course, it really dies. Now, that water would be like the ministry of the Holy Spirit. And we need the Holy Spirit's breath and dew upon our hearts as we worship the Lord. Do you understand that this is not a mechanical thing? I've been trying to get this through over these weeks. Christianity is not physical, mechanical activity. It's a living relationship with our Lord Jesus. It is to know Him, not just about Him, but to enter into real, loving experience with the living Savior who loves us. And that way we must grow. We must abound more and more in the blessedness. And of course, the Holy Spirit is the one that works that within our hearts. And so pray for the Spirit's power in your own heart to fill you with more and more of the love and grace of the Lord Jesus. The last little example here of the Word working in our hearts is just like vegetation, it needs air. If there is no oxygen in the air, well, the plant life cannot function. And you and I as Christians need to walk in the right atmosphere. No smoky air, no pollution. We've got to be in good, godly, Christian atmosphere where we will be influenced for the Lord. Now, if you're living in some ungodly, black, dark, sinful atmosphere, how can you grow? How can you abound as a Christian? Surely it will cause you to be sickly and grieve the Lord. Pray for the clean air. Pray that you will live in godly fellowship. And I pray that this church is a place of such atmosphere and influence that you will grow and abound, not only in the fellowship of God's people, but in the fellowship of the Father. Now, there's something else before we close today that I need to talk to you about. related to your growing in Christ, and that is self-examination. Every Christian must be willing to examine himself. Every good gardener that grows around the garden inspects the plants for mildew, for bugs, for things that are harming it, and, of course, applies the remedies. And there are times in our Christian life that we've got to come to self-examination. We've got to ask ourselves, am I really in Christ? Am I really a Christian? Am I really a believer in the Son of God? Am I washed in His blood? Do I have the marks of the new birth experience in my life?" And if you can say yes to that, then you go on to say, is there anything that I'm doing that's grieving my Lord? Anything that's holding back His blessing upon my soul and upon my enjoyment of His grace? And as soon as you ask that question, the Spirit of God goes, boom! He will witness and point out the very thing that's grieving Him. You can be sure of that. The Spirit of God will testify to you the things that are wrong and grieving Him. And He will point them out. And then that leads you to confession, and to change, and to do those things that are right. And you come then under the power of the cleansing blood. 1 John 2.1, if any man sin, we then advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, and His blood cleanseth us. And so you've got to go again to the cross for cleansing, that you might be sure there is nothing between your soul and your Savior. And that leads you back to the cross. And I have always said this, and I say it again, lest there's someone that's disturbed by this. Self-examination does not stop to lead you back to the cross. If you stop short of the cross, it will only lead you into guilt and bondage. But if you're self-examination, where you see your weaknesses, your sins, your failures, and you confess them to the Lord, and you plead the blood of the cross, that brings you into liberty, and it brings you into blessing. Because the man who forsakes his sin will have God's pardon, and you'll be set free from all the trouble of heart that that brings. But don't stop till you get back to the cross. And then you will find that your heart will be set free and able to grow. Now, Peter ended this epistle with the doxology, To him be glory both now and forever. Amen. That's the real reason why we want to grow, because we want to live lives that are for God's glory. We want to bring honor to the Lord Jesus. We don't want to fall. We don't want to be led astray by the error of the wicked. We don't want to deny the one who has bought us with his own blood. We want to live in the victory and the power of the gospel. And of course, this was Peter's passion for these people. And it ought to be the passion of every pastor, that God's people live lives that bring glory to the Lord Jesus. And when we enter into glory, we will receive the well done and the honor of God. So grow that you may glow. Get that? Let's end on that note today. Grow that you may glow. If you're not a growing Christian, you'll be wilting. But if you're growing, you'll glow, and that will bring glory to the Lord. So I leave this text with you. Grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. To Him be glory, both now and forever.