02/06/2011 Making an Abundant Entrance (2 Peter 1:5-15)

Making an Abundant Entrance
2 Peter 1:5-15
5 But also for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, 6 to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness, 7 to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love. 8 For if these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9 For he who lacks these things is shortsighted, even to blindness, and has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins.

10 Therefore, brethren, be even more diligent to make your call and election sure, for if you do these things you will never stumble; 11 for so an entrance will be supplied to you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

12 For this reason I will not be negligent to remind you always of these things, though you know and are established in the present truth. 13 Yes, I think it is right, as long as I am in this tent, to stir you up by reminding you, 14 knowing that shortly I must put off my tent, just as our Lord Jesus Christ showed me. 15 Moreover I will be careful to ensure that you always have a reminder of these things after my decease. NKJV

We see from the last few verses I read there, that Peter knows the time for his martyrdom is getting close. And he wants to give some last words of encouragement. Ok, so he’s not the first Pope, but what a pastor’s heart he has. He is writing to his flock, the Christians he has ministered to over the last several years and he wants good things for them. He wants them to grow in there faith, he wants them to have assurance of salvation, he wants them to be fruitful, and he just doesn’t want them to make it into heaven by the skin of their teeth. He wants them to have an abundant entrance into the everlasting kingdom. That’s what I want for you too.

I can’t remember for sure who or where, but I remember someone telling a story of a parishioner who came to church regularly but otherwise wasn’t too involved in anything. The pastor talked to him one day being concerned for the man's soul. The man explained, “Oh I don’t want to do anything grand for God, I don’t need any crowns of glory, I’ll be happy to just make it inside the gate and pitch a tent by the outer wall.”

Do you know what Peter would say to that man, “You need to be even more diligent to make your call and election sure, because I’m not even sure you’re saved.”

Peter, the Holy Spirit and I want your entrance into the everlasting kingdom to be one of abundance. This is what God wants for His children. He wants there to be great rejoiceing. He wants the angels to recognize you coming through the gates and saying “There is Dorothy Larson, a faithful and fruitful servant of God.” And the angelic hosts break out into applause as they recognize all the good works you did through the power of the gospel. And Jesus greets you and says “Well done good and faithful servant.” An abundant entrance, not just some corner in a tent by the outer wall.

How does this happen? I hope you’ve thought about those seven virtues. That’s interesting, seven, the perfect number, coincidence that there just happens to be seven. No coincidences when the Holy Spirit is the author.

Let’s review these seven virtues we are to add to our faith. Most of our Bibles call the first one virtue; let’s instead call it moral excellence for clarity. Then we have knowledge, that is knowledge of our God and savior Jesus Christ, both His attributes and a personal experiential knowing. As Paul said, “That I may know Him and the power of His resurrection. The third one is self control, the fourth one is perseverance, we need to be faithful to the end, fifth is godliness which would be piety, reverence, worshipful. Sixth is brotherly love, love of the brethren, and seventh is agape love, love for the whole world, love for the lost, that desires to see them saved and come to the knowledge of truth.

Do you want your entrance into the everlasting kingdom to be supplied to you in abundance? Then give all diligence to abundantly supply your faith with these seven virtues. Peter does tie the two together. Look at verse 11, where it says “supplied to you abundantly”. That’s the same Greek word translated add or supply to your faith in verse 5. We are to supply abundantly to our faith these seven virtues, and if we do that our entrance will be supplied to us abundantly into the everlasting kingdom.

But then, lest we think this is something we do, we need to remember this is only made possible because of the gifts and promises of our God and savior Jesus Christ. It’s all Gospel centered. If you endeavor to do this under your own strength and power the only thing you will have in abundance is pride and self-righteousness and probably eventually heart –ache because you will fail. We always have to go back to the cross and the gospel to find our strength to go on.

In verse 8 Peter sticks with the language of abundance. He says “if these things are yours and abound”, literally its “super abound”, “then you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.” I’m not sure why the King James translated it “barren and unfruitful” and for some reason the New King James kept it, because it’s redundant and that’s not what the Greek says. The first word translated barren means inactive, unemployed, Idle. The second word translated unfruitful does mean barren or unfruitful. The American Standard Version says, “neither idle nor unfruitful”.

There is a saying; idle hands are the devils workshop. This is not directly from the Bible, but it definitely is a biblical principle. Idleness, laziness, sloth are warned about several times in scripture, especially in the Proverbs. King David was idle, he should have been with his troops out on the battle field but instead he was wasting time and he ended up on the roof and he was temped and he fell.

Your mind can get into lots of mischief if you just let it wonder. If these virtues are yours and super abound, you won’t be idle, you won’t be unemployed, you will be busy for the Lord. We should be busy as Christians. There is so much to do. There is a lost world out there. If you are giving all diligence to abundantly supply these seven character qualities to your life you will be busy. You will spend less time watching television and on the computer and more time reading your Bible and praying. Boredom will never be an issue for you. There is so much good stuff to fill your mind with, books, music, and today with the internet we have access to great preaching like never before.

“For if these things are yours”, it doesn’t say you need to do them, it says you need to own them. They need to be yours; they need to become a part of who you are. He doesn’t say if you do these things. It’s more than just doing something, its becoming something through the power of the Holy Spirit.
For if these things are yours and super abound, you will be neither Idle or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. I hope that is your desire this morning. When I look around at much of what is called Christianity today, it seems I see a lot of idleness and barreness, doing little to nothing for the kingdom of God. Peter is telling us there is no excuse for that. If you add these virtues to you faith you will by busy and fruitful. Does that describe your Christian life?

We are to add moral excellence, stay away from the media that is over sensualized. Movies, television, books, magazines, internet and music that these days are loaded with blasphemy and immorality. We are to flee these things.

We are to add knowledge, continue in prayer and bible study daily. Self control, mortify and kill the sins that cling so close to our flesh. Perseverance, make it to the finish line no matter what, Jesus is worth it. Godliness, live your life in the presence of God. He is here, he is with you. Your body is a temple; know that what ever you do, where ever you go, God is there. Brotherly love, make every effort to be with other Christians every chance you get, for the building up of yourself and the body.

And finally add love, agape love, the love for the world demonstrated by Jesus. Be Evangelical, an old missionary, I don’t recall who said it, but he said this, “Every Christian needs to be involved in missions. Every Christian should have scares on there hands. Every Christian should either be going down the rope, or holding the rope that the others are going down.” Those going down the rope are the ones going. They are going to foreign lands, they are going to the homeless, they are going out in the streets to do street ministry. Those holding the rope, are the rest of the church, financing and praying for those going.

Again, If these things are yours and abound, you will not be Idle or unfruitful.

But what about everybody else? What about the 90% of what is called Christendom today that seems to just be sitting on their hands? Peter addresses that next. He says, “He who lacks these things is short sighted.” You’re not seeing clearly. You're looking through an opaque piece of glass and all you see is light and vague images. You’re in a fog. That’s the imagery that is being used here. That accurately describes much of what is called Christianity. It is clueless. Recent surveys conclude that most people who identify themselves as Christians are biblically and theologically illiterate. Terms like regeneration, the atonement, the righteousness of faith, propitiation mean nothing to them. And they think “Judge not” is one of the Ten Commandments and there favorite Bible verse is “God helps them who help themselves”.

Peter is saying that if your life lacks these seven virtues, something is wrong. He’s not coming out and saying they are lost, but he is placing a challenge before them. He says you are short sighted, even to blindness. Literally the second word there, blindness, means to blink the eye, the image is of one who has a bright light shined in there face and they blink; they are blinded by the light.

It is being in such a fog spiritually, that when somebody shines the light of God’s truth on you that you have to blink, or even turn away it is so foreign to you. Sometimes your greatest opposition will come from the spiritually befuddled. You will share God’s truth with them and they will think you’re crazy and fanatical, because it is so foreign to them. Now again Peter is not calling these people lost.

But he continues to build his case against those who lack these things. He said, “He who lacks these things… has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins.” Peter is being kind of mean spirited here. He’s getting kind of brutal. First he says you’re not seeing clearly, you’re in a fog, definitely not a compliment. Then he says you’re blinking, your blinded by the truth of God, like it’s something foreign and something you need to turn away from. Literally what he says next is “You have received Forgetfulness”.

Earlier in the letter he speaks of the things we receive from God through the Gospel, every thing we need for life and Godliness and, we receive great and precious promises. But here Peter speaks of those who have no interest in growing in there faith as receiving forgetfulness. The implication being, that this is not just the forgetting something over time, this is a matter of the will. This is a voluntary forgetting and blocking. In psychology there is something they call memory regression, where certain traumatic memories are suppressed.

But that almost seems to be what Peter is suggesting, the danger of lacking any effort to add these virtues to your life of faith will end up in the voluntary forgetting that you were cleansed from your old sins.
How does that happen in ones life? Today I can see how that happens because a lot of people don’t come to Jesus to be cleansed of their sins. They come for the wonderful life they are promised. They think Jesus is just an add on, something that will make their already pretty good life even better. Sure they probably were told that all sin and fall short of the glory of God, but it never was driven home to them that they personally are wretched sinners and they only thing they have earned for themselves is the wrath of God, not His grace. So the issue of being cleansed from there sins and saved from the wrath of God may not ever register on their radar to begin with.

How do you forget something like that if you have experience it. You understand that you are a sinner, lost and deserving hell, then in salvation you have those sins forgiven. That’s a pretty dramatic move. It’s a move from darkness to light. It is a move from wrath to grace. It is like having your eyes opened and seeing clearly for the first time. How do you forget that? Now again Peter is not calling these people lost. He is not their judge, but is simply laying the foundation that they might judge themselves.

Obviously Peter is concerned about some of his brothers and sisters, either he has observed some things first hand or has been told some things. He has a pastor’s heart, he wants them to abound, he wants them to grow, he want every spiritual blessing to be theirs. He sees the lack of the desire, the lack of abounding in these virtues as a warning sign. And because of this he has to say something.

Therefore, because your eternity is at stake, “Brethren, be even more diligent to make your calling and election sure.” First Peter says we are to give all diligence to add to our faith, virtue, knowledge, self control, perseverance, godliness, brotherly love, and agape love. We are to give all diligence to these things. He steps it up a notch, the diligence I spoke of before, this is more important yet. Be even more diligent than even that, to make you calling and election sure.

You need to make sure you’re saved. You need to make sure you have the like precious faith that Peter talked about earlier, because if you don’t have that then you will be in a fog, and you will blink when the light of Christ’s righteousness is shown on your face and you will forget you were cleansed because maybe you never were in the first place. It was superficial, it wasn’t real, you didn’t see yourself as a wretched sinner.

Make your call and election sure. I don’t think we need to get into the whole Calvinistic debate when talking about our call and election. I know that if I have repented of my sin and I have trusted in Jesus for salvation I am one of God’s elect. Jesus said many are called but few are chosen at the end of one of his parables. In the parable the king invited many to a wedding feast and many turned down the invitation so he invited some others, and eventually he filled his banquet hall. But there was a dress code and a garment was provided for you by the King. The king found someone who accepted the invitation but for some reason felt what he was wearing was good enough. They threw him out.

Many accept the invitation of Come to Jesus and your life will be better, but they refuse to see their wretchedness, they refuse to repent and be clothed with the righteousness of Christ. Jesus will say to those people, depart from me you worker if iniquity, I never knew you. Many are called, but few are chosen, few are elected.

Make your calling and election sure. Make sure you heard God’s call on your life, make sure you have responded to that call, that you have repented, and that you have clothed yourself in the righteousness of faith. For if you do these things that Peter has outlined in these first 10 verses you will never stumble. I don’t believe Peter is saying you won’t sin, that would contradict many other scriptures. The language here is of a runner in a race who trips and falls. It adds no commentary to what happens after he trips, does he get up and finish the race or is the fall so catastrophic that the runner doesn’t make it to the end.

That’s probably immaterial to what Peter is saying. What does stumbling look like? We see it once in a while in the church, some high profile people like Ted Haggard, Jim Baker, Jimmy Swaggard and there are others, who have had spectacular falls into sin. It can be avoided. If you do these things you will never stumble. I’ve heard some one say, no one becomes base over night. No one just wakes up some morning and out of the blue says, “I’m going to commit adultery this morning.” It happens over time, Idleness, laziness, compromise, not doing these things Peter admonishes us to do. It doesn’t have to happen.

Another benefit of doing these things, an entrance will be supplied to you abundantly into the everlasting Kingdom. Isn’t that what you want? Not in a prideful way, but in a give all the glory to God for what he has done kind of way, and to hear from the one we love more than life itself. “Well done good and faithful servant.” This is Peters hope and prayer for his flock, this is my prayer for you. Amen