OPEN: Cecil B. DeMille was making one of his great epic movies. He had 6 cameras at various points to pick up the overall action and 5 other cameras set up to film plot developments involving major characters. The large cast had begun rehearsing the scene at 6am and they went through it 4 times.
Now it was late afternoon. The sun was setting & there was just enough light to get the shot done. DeMille looked over the panorama, saw that all was right, & gave the command for action.
One hundred extras charged up the hill; another hundred came storming down the same to hill to do mock battle. In another location Roman centurions lashed and shouted at 200 slaves who labored to move a huge stone monument toward its resting place.
Meanwhile the principal characters acted out their reactions on the hill. Their words were drowned out by the noise around them, but the dialogue was to be dubbed in later.
It took 15 minutes to complete the scene. When it was over, DeMille yelled, "Cut!" and turned to his assistant, all smiles. "That was great!" he said.
"It was, C.B.," the assistant yelled back. "It was fantastic! Everything went off perfectly!"
Enormously pleased, DeMille turned to face the head of the camera crew to find out if all the cameras had picked up what they had been assigned to film. He waved to the camera crew supervisor.
From the top of the hill, the camera supervisor waved back, raised his megaphone, and called out, "Ready when you are C.B!"
APPLY: It was a great scene.
It was a perfect day
The lighting ideal
All of the actors & actresses performed their parts flawlessly
Everything worked just as it should… except there was something missing. Something had been overlooked. And because something had been overlooked, all their efforts were in vain.
Can you imagine how discouraging that must have been?
Can you imagine how frustrating it would be to invest your life into a project of that magnitude only to find that it has been for nothing.
I. Paul told us that that could happen to us as well:
“… no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ.
If any man builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw,
his work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each man’s work. If what he has built survives, he will receive his reward. If it is burned up, he will suffer loss; he himself will be saved, but only as one escaping through the flames.” I Corinthians 3:11-15
It is possible for us to end up empty-handed on the day of judgment. To stand before God on that last day and have nothing to show for all the time I’ve been in church. Or Sunday School or Bible study.
Paul was telling us that if we build with wrong materials - we can still be saved – but our Christianity will be shown to be ineffective and unproductive
ILLUS: Howard Hendricks said, “I’ve never met a Christian who planned to have a mediocre life…."
He’d never known anyone who planned to build with wood, hay & stubble
He’d never known a Christian who meant to have nothing to show for their lives…
He said, “I’ve never met a Christian who planned to have a mediocre life but I’ve met plenty of mediocre Christians.”
Peter recognized that possible too… BUT he wrote that that didn’t have to happen to us. Peter tells us that if we develop 8 specific qualities in our lives, we will avoid being “…ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.” 2 Peter 1:8
Peter tells us that if we want to avoid being unproductive in our relationship with Jesus
If we want to avoid building with wood, hay and stubble,
If we want to have our Christianity count for something and mean something…
…then we need 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. (put the following list up on screen as I read)
· Faith
· Goodness
· Knowledge
· Self-control
· Perseverance
· Godliness
· Brotherly kindness
· Love
II. Now – take a good look at that list
Is there anything up there that is particularly hard to understand???
· Peter says we start with our Faith
· Goodness - & we build on that faith by increasing our goodness (actions/ tho’ts)
· Knowledge And we should strive to increase our knowledge of God and His word
· Self-control - We should be continually work on controlling our emotions and our actions
· Perseverance - We should stand firm and strong in difficult situations
· Godliness – we try to imitate God in our lives
· Brotherly kindness - you’re nice to people
· Love - Learn to love others like God loves you
It’s that simple. It’s not rocket science. You don’t need a Bible College education to grasp the substance of those terms.
But Peter warns us (vs. 5) that we need to “make every effort” to add these things to our lives.
We should strive to “possess these qualities in increasing measure” (vs. 8). In fact, he tells his readers in vs. 12: “I will always remind you of these things, even though you know them and are firmly established in the truth you now have."
"And I will make every effort to see that after my departure you will always be able to remember these things." (vs. 15)
III. Now… why is that so important to Peter?
Why does he stress that Christians should
…make every effort to add these qualities to their lives
…and that we should possess these qualities in increasing measure
And why would Peter go to such lengths to remind Christians of the importance of these “simple” qualities
… even going so far to make sure they’d remember them after he’d died?
Why would Peter stress these "simple" qualities as if they were a life and death matter?
ILLUS: John Denver was a famous folk singer of the past generation… How many of you remember how he died?
He was flying his Ultra-lite one day and it crashed. As with all such tragedies, there was a great deal of investigation into the circumstances surrounding what happened to cause Denver’s plane to fall from the sky.
What they discovered was that his plane was an experimental aircraft. It had two gas tanks
And because of the nature of how it was constructed the valve to change the tanks was located directly behind the pilot – and it required a wrench to turn the valve from one gas tank to the other.
From the crash site, it appeared that Denver’s 1st tank of gas had become empty and that he had been in the process of trying to switch tanks when his plane went down…
But it wouldn’t have made any difference had he succeeded – because the 2nd tank was empty.
John Denver had committed one of the most frequent errors in flying. He’d forgotten to check his tanks to see if they were full.
Denver had overlooked something very simple. And it cost him dearly.
What Peter is telling us is that we don’t want to overlook the basics of our Christianity EVEN IF they seem such simple things. Because to overlook them could cost us dearly as well.
· Faith
· Goodness
· Knowledge
· Self-control
· Perseverance
· Godliness
· Brotherly kindness
· Love
These are simple concepts – but they make all the difference on whether we’re living our faith in a productive and effective way… Or if we’re just spinning our wheels.
Don’t overlook them. Constantly examine your life to see if you can improve one characteristic or another of these
IV. Now – how do we add these qualities to our lives?
Well… practice is one way.
ILLUS: People sometimes ask musicians like Dave (piano), and Larry (guitar) and myself (banjo/guitar), how we got as good as we are on our musical instruments. Practice is a major portion of that. We have worked on our techniques until we were fairly satisfied with how we played.
But, now speaking for myself, practice can only go so far… after a while, practice can get a little old. It can get boring. There’s only so much entertainment value I get out of playing the banjo or guitar all by myself. What helps me to keep up with skill with the banjo and guitar is to use them. To lead singing once in a while. To do specials with the quartet or on my own. In fact, I rarely pick up my instruments unless I NEED to practice for leading songs or do a special.
Putting my talents to work forces me to practice and improve on what I already know
Now, I’m not the best guitar or banjo player around. There are people out there MUCH more talented than I am. But, the talent I have is strengthened by forcing myself to do things with what skill I do have.
Ø That’s a major part of the reason we’re stressing these talent sheets
(At this point we pass out the talent sheets)
CLOSE: Several years back there was a talk show called the Merv Griffin Show. And on one of those shows, Merv Griffin had a powerful body builder on as a guest. During the interview, Merv asked, “Why do you develop those particular muscles?”
The body builder simply stepped forward and flexed a series of muscles from chest to calf. The audience applauded.
Griffin waited for the applause to die down and then again he asked “What do you use all those muscles for?” Again, the muscular specimen flexed, and biceps and triceps sprouted to impressive proportions.
There was an embarrassed silence as Griffin asked – one more time - “But what do you use those muscles for?”
The body builder looked at Merv Griffin in bewilderment. It suddenly occurred to him that he had no idea what good his muscles were.
APPLY: Similarly, we need to ask ourselves the same kind of question:
What good is our Christianity?
Are we being effective and productive for Christ
What are we doing for Him right now?
