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April 02, 2006
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2 Peter
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Pastor Brian Shimer
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"God's Recipe: To Self Control add Godliness"
2 Peter 1: 1-11
- We have been learning about "adding" to our faith over the past few weeks - like steps in a dance, like ingredients in a recipe, like parts to a car engine, Peter tells us that if we want to become mature in Christ, if we want a faith that won't falter that will get us through to the end, then it is essential that we be complementing our basic faith with these qualities.
These are all about our growth in faith-it is into faith that we supply goodness.
How do you supply goodness to faith? Remember?
(by our thinking upon God, our meditating upon God's goodness allows the goodness of God to come into and through us!)
And then into goodness we supply knowledge. Is this just intellectual stuff known "about" God? No. It isn't; is it. It is also the knowledge of God. That verb "to know" is used both of facts and of sexual intimacy in marriage, as in Adam knew Eve and she conceived.
Into knowledge supply self control. Why do we need to have self control added to knowledge? What is it about knowledge that necessitates self control? For self control, saying "yes" to what God has said in what we know through the Word, and no to what God forbids applies what we know, doesn't it.
Jesus tells us to be not just hearers of the Word but doers. The "one who hears my words and puts them into practice is like the man who…" what?
Yes, the man who built his house upon the Rock.
Self control keeps knowledge from just "puffing us proudly up" with how much we know. It keeps us walking in what we know day by day.
But self control is not something that we can continue on in day by day unless we supply into it perseverance as we dealt with last week looking more fully at what it means to "run that race that is before us." It is not just on Sunday that this race of faith is run, but day by day, week by week, isn't it, until we finish the course when we die. But until then, God calls us to endure, to overcome, to have patience, to place one foot in front of the other, fixing our eyes on Jesus.
That is the Christian walk as we race, surrounded by those running alongside us, by those cheering us on who have gone before us, with God working within us every step of the way.
As we persevere God will work within us to produce character (Paul says in the book of Romans). In the book of James, we learn the character produced is that we would be "perfect" not lacking anything. In other words, God will make us what He wants us to be as we persevere. What is God's desire? God desires that we be like Jesus, or in other words, we would become godly.
So godliness fits into perseverance. This is why Peter says we supply godliness into our perseverance.
- You have heard the saying, "cleanliness is next to godliness"
often enough to believe it. This is why godliness is confused with having a good shower and a clean room. However, godliness is not cleanliness.
We assume godliness is some quality not rooted in real life. It is for the preacher, the church leader, the old saint but not for the likes of us ordinary sinners. But, godliness is not disconnected from real life.
In direct translation, the word means "good worship" or "good devotion" and shows the effect of right devotion upon my life-so it has spiritual roots that affect the physical life.
Harvard's now deceased famous professor Henri Nouwen went to see Mother Teresa in India to ask her for spiritual direction. She did not offer him what he expected, but directed him into godliness saying: "Spend an hour a day adoring your Lord; don't do anything you know you ought not to do; and you will be alright."
An hour a day adoring God - not listing your many requests; and self control with perseverance as regarding to what desires you say "yes" and "no". She connected devotion with action - the spiritual and physical - for godliness is both.
- Why do I say godliness is both physical and spiritual? For Paul gives us this definition of godliness in 1 Timothy. Just before the start of chapter 4 Paul has this amazing statement, "The mystery of Godliness is great…" and then has a poetic statement about Jesus. After the words "great" comes "He". Godliness is not about some static life form - spiritually impotent to affect the world. No Godliness is Jesus come in the flesh. Look at this statement in the Bible (1 Timothy 3: 16):
"Beyond all question the mystery of godliness is great: HE appeared in a body, was vindicated by the Spirit, was seen by angels, was preached among the nations, was believed on in the world, was taken up in glory."
Godliness is about Jesus Christ. Godliness is that very real, tangible, experience of God as he came in the flesh and as he comes in our flesh.
Those deceiving spirits of hypocritical liars that Paul mentions in the first part of chapter 4 will do what? They will forbid the good things that God has provided in this world: forbid marriage, forbid certain foods, made by God to be received with thanksgiving!
Godliness is God come in the flesh. It is mystery that God could come in Jesus Christ, that Jesus was both man and God. That is mystery. But the fact is God has thus come and God will continue to be made known through the flesh, this time our flesh.
Godliness can be trained into my life and into your life. It is my choice what I believe. Paul says and Peter will be saying, there are all kinds of falsehoods abounding, but don't focus upon those. Learn to discern between what is false and what is true.
Godliness begins in prayer, as I think upon God, as I thank God for all things which are thus set apart for our use, as Paul wrote to Timothy. It is about right devotion expressed in prayer, in fasting (doing without something for a season), in any choice to abstain from something for a season, but does not stop there.
We train ourselves to be godly, not just by prayer, but by searching the Scriptures. Paul tells Timothy to point out to the brothers the "truths of the faith", to "command and teach these things." Timothy is not to have anything to do with godless myths in order to train himself to be godly, and is to teach them to do the same. We read, study, search the Scripture to know the truth of God's Word and to have the Living God be able to access and change how we think. We do not come to the Bible wearing our wise intellectual 20th Century lenses in order to dismantle it, but we come like a people needing to be taught, needing to obey the voice of God reaching to us through the Word. We come to have the Bible change how we think and view life, rather than align the Bible to the way I choose to live.
Godliness is the life of God lived through my life, it is the transformation of God's life in and through me, that I would begin to live like Jesus.
- It was John Wesley, the great leader in the church in the 1700s who wrote that there are three main works of godliness, which he called piety. There are three main ways we can appropriate God's grace in order to become more godly in our lives. He listed prayer, searching the Scriptures, and the third, this meal we are participating in today, Holy Communion.
It is a meal, something tangible we take into ourselves, by eating and drinking at this table we are taking in a physical reminder of the reception of Jesus into our lives. The Word was made flesh in Jesus and continues to be made flesh in your life and mine. This is godliness. As you take this meal take into your life the full provision of God's grace to set you free from sin and to set you into life.
http://gbgm-umc.org/umw/wesley/disciple.stm
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