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.
All at once an angel touched him and said, "Get up and eat." 6 He looked around, and there by his head was a cake of bread baked over hot coals, and a jar of water. He ate and drank and then lay down again.
7 The angel of the LORD came back a second time and touched him and said, "Get up and eat, for the journey is too much for you." 8 So he got up and ate and drank. Strengthened by that food, he traveled forty days and forty nights until he reached Horeb, the mountain of God.
Here’s what we did. We slept some, and ate some. And we woke up refreshed.
Now, you may be thinking, HOW STUPID! But do you realize how potent that truth is? Sometimes the best thing that we can do when we start to get a wrong focus on life is to sleep and eat. We knew to do this, because we know that when Elijah was depressed, to the point of taking his own life, he slept and ate. When we followed the same procedure, we were able to take on the challenges of life and parenting again.
It really is that simple. Sometimes we look for deep-seated issues. We dig in the past to try and determine what happened to us to affect our lives today. If I had gone to a psychologist that day, they probably would have said, “Oh, something from when you were a baby has affected you, and now that you have a son of your own, it is bringing up these feelings of hurt and pain, and we just have to get at them.” No, what we needed was to sleep and eat.
If we hadn’t have believed what we believed, if we didn’t know the Scriptures, it might have taken some time before we had done the right thing (gone to bed and eaten). We might have eventually found the right solution, but what damage would we have done in the meantime? How would we have hurt our marriage relationship, by getting sharp and snappy with each other? I tell you, I preach this because I believe it. I’m not up here telling you one thing and then living another.
But let’s get back to the qualities that we should have in our lives. We are to add to our faith goodness, moral excellence, virtue. To that, we are to add knowledge. Next, to our knowledge, we add self-control.
The word literally means “holding oneself in”. In Peter’s day, self-control was used of athletes who were to be self-restrained and self-disciplined. Thus, a Christian is to control the flesh, the passions, and the bodily desires, rather than allowing himself to be controlled by them. We might even use the word “disciplined” today.
Kevin was a very inventive guy and he was always trying out new things. One day he wanted to see just how fast a bicycle could go before it went out of control. He pedaled as fast as he could and got the bike up to thirty miles-per-hour. He was sure it could go twice as fast. So he asked his friend, Eric, who owned an old Mustang, if he could tie his bike to the bumper of his car to test his theory. His friend agreed.
So Kevin tied his bike to the back of the car and instructed Eric, "I’ll ring my bell once if I want you to go faster, twice if I want you to maintain speed, and repeatedly if I want you to slow down." With that, off they went. Things were going pretty well with Eric slowly increasing his speed until he was doing well over sixty miles per hour. Kevin and his bike was handling the speed just fine. Suddenly, a black Corvette pulled up beside them revving its engine. Eric forgot all about Kevin tied to the back of the Mustang and started racing the Corvette.
Down the road sat Deputy Todd in his police cruiser. He heard the cars coming long before radar flashed one hundred and five miles-per-hour. He called headquarters and said, "You guys aren’t going to believe this, but there’s a Corvette and a Mustang racing out here on Highway 3, and right behind them there’s a guy on a bike ringing his bell and waving his arms like crazy trying to pass them!"
Self-control is used here to hone one’s body to be able to master it. In 1 Corinthians 9: 24Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize.
25Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last; but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. 26Therefore I do not run like a man running aimlessly; I do not fight like a man beating the air. 27No, I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize.
Paul would discipline himself, just like athletes today discipline themselves.
Tonight, a lot of football players are going to take the field. They haven’t just decided to come together to play a game of pick-up football, like what we do when we are kids and teenagers. They have trained for this, they have practiced for this, they have restricted and refrained from certain things so that when game time comes, they are fully prepared to play at the best they can. That is what we are to do.
It takes a lot to be self-controlled. To be able to handle temptation when it comes our way. Sometimes it means driving a certain way home from work. Maybe it means not shopping at certain stores. Maybe it means not have a tv or computer in your house. What it means for all of us is that we need to be working on it if we want to experience that abundant life.
From Proverbs: 32 Better a patient man than a warrior,
a man who controls his temper than one who takes a city.
28 Like a city whose walls are broken down
is a man who lacks self-control.
We need to add to our knowledge self-control.
To our self-control, we need to add perseverance. The word here means “Staying under”. It means to not give in, to stay the course, to not be swayed by what happens in life.
We know that the testing of our faith produces perserverance, but it is something to add to our lives. Someone wrote this about self-control and perseverance: “Patience is the ability to endure when circumstances are difficult. Self-control has to do with handling the pleasures of life, while patience relates primarily to the pressures and problems of life. Often, the person who “gives in” to pleasures is not disciplined enough to handle pressures either, so he “gives up.”
We need to stay the course—to not alter when life gets overwhelmingly difficult. I can tell you, there have been times when I have not wanted to get out of bed, but I do because I have to. Many of you have done the same thing—that’s perseverance. Staying the course. When trials come, let them come, because they will help us develop this perseverance.
Add to perseverance godliness. Warren Wiersbe said about this word, “This word means “right worship” or a dependence on God that reveals itself in a devoted life.”
This word describes the man who was right in his relationship with God and with his fellowman. Perhaps the words reverence and piety come closer to defining this term. It is that quality of character that makes a person distinctive. He lives above the petty things of life, the passions and pressures that control the lives of others. He seeks to do the will of God and, as he does, he seeks the welfare of others.
Are you sensing something from this list? The more you work on one aspect, the others start to grow as well. As you work on goodness, your knowledge will grow. As your knowledge grows, your self-control can grow. As self-control grows, so will perseverance. And the more all of this grows, the more godly you will become.
First-graders were asked to draw a picture of God in their Sunday School class. Their finished products contained some interesting theology. One child depicted God in the form of a brightly colored rainbow. Another presented him as an old man coming out of the clouds. An intense little boy drew God with a remarkable resemblance to Superman. The best snapshot came from a little girl. She said, "I didn’t know what God looked like, so I just drew a picture of my daddy." When we live godly lives, people will see God.
TO that, we add brotherly kindness. The more godly we become, the more we will show brotherly kindness to our fellow man. But it doesn’t stop there, we are to add LOVE. Whereas brotherly kindness is concern for others’ needs, love is desiring the highest good for others.
Do you find it interesting how this list begins and ends? Interestingly this “symphony” begins with faith and ends with love. Building on the foundation of faith in Christ, believers are to exhibit Christlikeness by supplying these seven qualities that climax in love toward others.
This has been like a marathon today, but I want you to catch this. I believe that if we add these in increasing measure, we will be able to handle everything in regard to life and godliness. I hope that isn’t a new concept to you if you have been here the past few weeks, because I have said it several times.
It is impossible for fallen human nature to manufacture these seven qualities of Christian character. They must be produced by the Spirit of God. To be sure, there are unsaved people who possess amazing self-control and endurance, but these virtues point to them and not to the Lord. They get the glory. When God produces the beautiful nature of His Son in a Christian, it is God who receives the praise and glory.
Because we have the divine nature, we can grow spiritually and develop this kind of Christian character. It is through the power of God and the precious promises of God that this growth takes place. The divine “genetic structure” is already there: God wants us to be “conformed to the image of His Son” (Rom. 8:29). The life within will reproduce that image if we but diligently cooperate with God and use the means He has lavishly given us.
We will finish up this series next week, but I want to you understand this—we can live the abundant life. We can have everything we need for life and godliness. It’s not a secret; God wants you to have it and live it. Doing this is all it takes.
