Our Quality Of Living Series

A sports fan was sitting in the top row at the Super Bowl, barely able to see the field. He noticed a vacant seat about 3 rows back on the 50-yard line. It was still vacant when the second quarter started, so he went down and asked the man seated next to it if anyone was sitting there.

The man said "No, have a seat." A few minutes later he asked the man if he knew whose seat this was and why they weren’t here at such an important event. The man said that for ten years it had been his wife’s seat but that she had passed away.

Feeling sorry for the nice man, the fan asked if he didn’t have a friend or family member that he could have offered the seat to instead of just leaving it vacant. The man said "No, they’re all at the funeral."

What’s that have to do with today’s sermon? Nothing at all, but it does have to deal with the big event today. Many of us will sit down tonight (AFTER CHURCH) and watch the Super Bowl. From all of the hype, it looks like it will be a good game.

Of course, the hype doesn’t mean much. After all, how often does something live up to its hype? Can you think of 1 thing in your life that you can say has honestly lived up to the hype?

Well, we have been looking at 2 Peter 1, and I hope that you will come to realize that it does live up to the hype I’ve been giving it.

3His 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.

Does this really live up to the hype I’ve been giving it? I say that it does. I believe it with all my heart. When life’s problems come our way, we have everything we need to handle because of Christ’s divine power. We can experience the abundant life that Christ came to give us.

Remember Christ’s words—he came not just to give us eternal life, but abundant life: “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.”

We looked at the word sufficient, and how we sufficiently have everything we need for life and godliness. We looked at the word certainty; how we can be assured that we can live the abundant life on this earth. We looked last week at the word effort. It takes a concerted, focused effort in order to accomplish all of this. That brings us to the word for this week, and we actually started looking at it last week. The word is quality.

8For 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.

We started looking at those qualities last week, how we need to add to our faith goodness and knowledge. Maybe you think that I’m still old fashioned, that I’m a fuddy-duddy. That there is no way possible for us to be able to handle life’s problems as they come our way. Well, let me give you a personal example from Lynelle’s and my life this week.

This past Wednesday was a really bad day. The baby fussed all day long. Lynelle and I had been running for so long on adreneline, and Wednesday was the day that we finally hit the wall. Reality had started to sink in. And little baby Matthew started to fuss. And I mean really fuss. He cried all day long. And we couldn’t settle him down. But more important, we were starting to get stressed. What have we gotten ourselves into? Little things started to get on our nerves, and we were both reaching the breaking point.

Now I’ve been preaching this for several weeks. 3His 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.

How was this going to happen in our lives? Let me tell you what we did. We followed the pattern for this in 1 Kings 19. This is what it says—in the context of Elijah destroying the prophets of Baal.

1 Now Ahab told Jezebel everything Elijah had done and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword. 2 So Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah to say, "May the gods deal with me, be it ever so severely, if by this time tomorrow I do not make your life like that of one of them."

3 Elijah was afraid [1] and ran for his life. When he came to Beersheba in Judah, he left his servant there, 4 while he himself went a day’s journey into the desert. He came to a broom tree, sat down under it and prayed that he might die. "I have had enough, LORD ," he said. "Take my life; I am no better than my ancestors." 5 Then he lay down under the tree and fell asleep.