Building Character in fallen World

Transcript (Auto-generated)

So the world, we're actually going to read from 2 Peter so you can have that ready in a moment, but I was just thinking about what has happened in the world recently and what it means for us as believers in Jesus Christ and how we respond to that. We've had world events that draw our focus away from the Bible and from God because we tend to get caught up in what's happening and depending on what news service you listen to you have a particular political slant some way or you might have a political understanding of how things are, but God still speaks to your heart through all that and God wants to challenge you today about something I believe. It's almost a demand, when we respond to what's happening in the world today, it's almost a demand on us to be provoked into some response and sometimes because we come out of our humanity and it's why it's very great that we, you know, Dylan and I didn't talk about which song God had let him to put together today, but I surrender all just seems to be the opportunity we have today to connect him with God about that and not to be a victim of it. So as things come up on the screen, you'll see what I mean. We had the Brisbane Lions one yesterday and that's in all the newspapers, that's everywhere as well and we've had Charlie Kirk's funeral and all that was happened there with Erica and that response that provoked in us as well and then we have, you know, the latest one that made me chuckle a bit, the latest update of Climate Report, which is about the 15th doom and gloom documents in 1982, the world is going to end in five years and all those things create in us some sort of anxiety. Scripture tells us though that we have an insurance in God and this is the challenge for us today as part of looking at the character of who we are in Christ is that assurance we have. According to Timothy 1.7, it says, not to be afraid, but the Spirit of God gives, the Spirit of God gave us does not make us timid but gives us power, love and self-discipline. Not to be overcome in one John 4.4, it says, you dear children are from God and overcome them because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world. Jesus said these words, Jesus is the difference in one John 5.5, who is that that overcomes the world? Only the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God and we are unequalled in our power in 2 Peter 1.3, for his divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and his goodness. I'm not quite sure where you are with God today, whether you've come along to church to worship because it's something you do every Sunday, whether you're here seeking, whether you've had a shocking week and you're trying to work it all out but you still come here out of faithfulness. My prayer is that God will speak to today as we unpack this character, what it means to be in God. In 2 Peter, let's read together, starting from verse 5. Actually, we might go earlier, let's start from verse 3. Let your eyes scan up the page. For his divine power has given us everything we need for godly life through our knowledge of him who has called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these, he has given us the very great and precious promises so that through them you may participate in the divine nature having escaped the corruption of the world caused by evil desires. For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness and to goodness knowledge and to knowledge self-control and to self-control perseverance and to perseverance and godliness and to godliness mutual affection and to mutual affection and love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they'll keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. Peter had seen it all. He'd been there with Jesus in ministry. He'd seen the ups and downs of humanity. He'd personally experienced those ups and downs. It's a great disciple to relate to sometimes when we look at how he denied Jesus or was restored to Jesus, but also just the words and the questions he asked Jesus in ministry in that time. We recall too, a lot of times, just to get the basics right. The basics we start off with is, do you know his divine power? It says in verse 3. We can read these words, but unless we live these words, we know them personally. Do you know his divine power? It's about a personal relationship with Jesus. When we know his divine power and we have a personal relationship with Jesus, we can say, here's my Lord and my Savior. When he's my Lord and my Savior, then we say, Lord, make me, mold me, show me what you want me to do. Lord, help me to develop as a believer, as a follower of you. Lord, help me to be effective for you. The question has to be asked before we go any further is, do you know him as Lord and Savior? Do you know him as the God of salvation who died on the cross for your sin? Do you know him as the one who took your place? Do you know him as the one who you can go to? In Romans 10, 9, the words say this, if you declare with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, then you will be saved. We're just saying a song about surrendering to Jesus. Back when I was first starting to go to church, back in the dim dark years of the 70s, late 70s, early 80s, we sang this hymn quite often. It was a hymn that we sang for a response. My encouragement and challenge for you today, if you don't know Jesus, Lord and Savior, do business with him today. Out of all the understanding of reading through Peter and looking at preparing Christians for their walk with the Lord and helping us to build and build and build in our faithfulness, this verse came as clear as a bell to share today. I encourage you, if you have not surrendered your life to Jesus, all the things of the world that try to provoke you and try to pull you in, I pray that you'll respond to him in faithfulness. We're actually going to sing that song again at the end of the service. If God's been dealing with your heart today, can I encourage you, don't be sitting there, don't be holding back, I want to encourage you to turn to a friend or someone with you and say, I need to surrender my life to Jesus. I need to surrender to him today. An opportunity at the end of the service that will be available if you want someone to pray with you will be at the front here. I'll be sitting at the front here waiting for you to come and pray. If you have someone who you know deeply as a good friend of yours who you trust and you want to turn to them and say, can you pray for me, can you pray with me, do that. And as that song is going past, I'm going to ask people to stand, but if people need to sit, we'll let them sit and do business with God. If you want to do something significant before you move any further into the service, you want to come forward and just acknowledge that you have declared Jesus, Lord and Savior, I encourage you to do so. Don't sit there, don't say, I know him perhaps next week, because the world is not changing and God has called us into the world to be a difference, to be a light. So as we unpack this scripture, it's talking about being intentional. It's the word add in there, it says, make every effort in verse five. In the Greek that means bring into play entirely with eagerness and enthusiasm. It doesn't mean just nonchalantly walk around. It doesn't mean if it feels good, it doesn't mean if it's, you know, I've got nothing else to do, I suppose I'll be with Jesus today. It means make every effort. When Peter puts that in, he's speaking from experience, he's saying that, I've been there, I've done that. I desire that you make every effort, that you bring into play entirely with eagerness and enthusiasm, what I'm about to say to you. It's pretty exciting stuff, isn't it? A bit of a challenge in today's world of actually saying, hey, we don't know the answers, because we can just look it up. Jesus is going to speak today. Let's go through the qualities and the character that he's talking about here. First of all, he says add to, presuming there is a base. As I said before, if you know Jesus, that's great. If you don't know Jesus, perhaps he's challenged you today to do something about that and respond to him. Add to the base of your Christian faith. Firm conviction and personal surrender to Jesus. That faith word there, in Hebrews 11-1, the simple definition, now faith is the confidence that in what you hope for and the assurance of what is yet you do not see. Just step out in faith, recall to do that. Add to this again with entirely eagerness and enthusiasm. Add to your faith. The people might know the difference about who you are. It talks about goodness there, adding the goodness to faith, the spiritual gifts and reflection of his love. In Psalm 52-8 it says, but I am like the olive tree flourishing in the house of God. I trust in God's unfailing love forever and ever. So we have faith and we add to faith, we add goodness, and to goodness we add knowledge. It's about knowing him. It's about digging in deep to him, about reading your Bible, about looking at devotions, about listening online to people who read the Bible, looking at devotions online. It's about being active and present. It's about being enthusiastic and leaning into God because none of us are perfect. We're on a journey of maturity. He's challenging us today. For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you. We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives. When you go through academia and you go through different levels of school, there's an idea that if you give knowledge, you'll be far better off. Worldly knowledge of some consequence was not the finality, but the knowledge of God is deeper than that. We only hit that knowledge and we asked for that knowledge when we leaned into his word. When I started off doing my educational journey, I left high school at year 11 and went bush. I came back to the coast and was encouraged by a gentleman in the church. I started attending here saying, you look like you've got a few gifts for teaching. Perhaps you should be a teacher. He said, let's get you enrolled in QTAC. I think it was at the time. I said, how is that going to happen? He said, you just fill out all your senior subjects. I said, I didn't finish senior. He went, oh. I started, he got me into night classes. Then I went through night classes that qualified me for teacher's college. I was doing teacher's college. I finished and I taught for 20 odd years. I started asking God about the next step. He said, pastoral ministry. I ran into the very same person at Barber College. He said, ah, Doug, finally, you're here. He took you 20 years. I said, oh, yeah, I'm here for the journey again. He said, oh, he said, so you would have got your diploma, your degree, and all these things. I said, no. I've just got a diploma in teaching. Oh, dear me. He said, why didn't you go on with your education? I said, I was too busy telling people about Jesus. He didn't have a comeback for that one. So I enrolled to do my Bachelor of Ministries, much to his struggle there. He walked me through college for a fair bit of that. I still haven't got any more academic profiles beside my name. Only by the grace of God that I'm standing here sharing today. Because the knowledge we have comes from a couple of things. One, leaning into God's Word. And the other one is, if he challenges you to study, do so. If he opens the door for you, take it. I encourage you, number one, lean into that knowledge of God. As a build on the Christian character, it goes on and Peter goes on even further. And he says, just keep building. He says, the next one he says is to self-control. Self-control is a gift that teaches to sermon against ungodly desires. I didn't know whether you'd come across that term before. Let me just read it again. You can read it on the screen. Self-control is a gift, a spiritual gift that teaches to sermon against ungodly desires, something we all struggle with. There's those ungodly desires. In Colossians 3.5 it says, put to death therefore whatever belongs to your earthly nature, sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is adultery. They're the things that primarily, that Paul is saying to the church in Colossians is saying, these are the things you need to deal with. The question I have for you today is, what is God saying that you need to deal with? Is there something in your life you've just left there in that little room in the back that says, oh, you can have this God but you can't have in here? Because this is really embarrassing. When that last song is played today, if you're dealing with that, can I encourage you to surrender all to him? Don't just sit there and say, oh no, it'll pass till next week. I'll encourage you to lean into him there. Then we want to add to the list already is to perseverance. Under testing times we find out who we are. Therefore among God's churches we boast about your perseverance and your faith in all the persecutions and trials you're enduring. Boy, don't we get lucky here? Aren't we awesome here in 21st century, 1st world church? The opportunity we have here to, we have air conditioning. So it's just the right temperature. We have comfy seats. We have people who love us and agree with us all around us. Yep, this talks about perseverance. It talks about times at trial. It talks about when things get a bit hard. But we add to the experience we have in God in those times to help us to build into Christian maturity, to help increase the qualities we have in him. Adding to perseverance's godliness, building maturity as a witness. Being confident of this, therefore, he who begin a good work in you will carry you on to the redemption, completion until the day of Christ Jesus, the day of Christ Jesus when he comes again. The Bible tells us he's not going to know the time of the hour. There was a prediction not long ago that Jesus was going to come again. There have been predictions all through time where man tries to put a stopwatch on what God is doing. And God says I'm above all that. I will come when it's, I think it's right. I will send my son Jesus to come to the earth and claim the earth again. He says he will return. It says in John 14, I go to prepare a place for you. If I do that, I'm coming back. If he's coming back, what does that say to our hearts and minds and how we are prepared for that? As we think about our godliness in maturity to Christ, think about some of the things that God is saying to us, oh, just come to me. Come to me as the one who can take away your burdens. And he keeps building. He keeps building. He keeps adding to the list. He talks about mutual affection. That's a respect founded in grace received in John 1.16. Out of all fullness, we have all received grace in place of grace already given. We are saved by grace through Jesus Christ. Nothing we can do but what Christ has done in us. And Peter is saying there that you need to be founded in this grace. You need to have mutual affection for one another. Have the best in mind for one another. Have a heart for one another. Build each other up. The reading that Dylan did before was a beautiful reading that encouraged us to be one in Christ, to look for the unity in him. And so as we build our Christian character, we start to build a picture then of what we're dealing with. And the world can't go against this. The world can't take that away from us. We walk in Christ in this way. And the last one is love. So we build on mutual affection then we build on love as an act of worship. 1 Corinthians 13, 4 and 5 says these words. Love is patient. Love is kind. Love does not envy. It does not boast. It is not proud. It does not dishonour others. It is not self-seeking. It is not easily angered. It keeps no records of wrong. Love doesn't keep score. If you love someone, you don't keep score. You ask anyone who's married. No one keeps score. You just give it over to God. And as a church and as a body of Christ, one of our characteristics we can show the world when it's raging around us and trying to influence and provoke us into response is that hang on a second. Wait a minute. Love doesn't keep score. We don't need to keep score against each other. We just need to give it to God. Let me read through that list again. Love is patient. Love is kind. It does not envy. Love does not boast. Love is not proud. Love does not dishonour others. Love does not self-seeking. It is not easily angered. And love keeps no records of wrong. What if we replace the word love there with grace? Grace is patient. Grace is kind. Grace does not envy. Grace does not boast. Grace is not proud. Grace does not dishonour others. Grace is not self-seeking. Grace is not easily angered. Grace does not keep record of wrongs. Peter's desire for us is not to be a people that go, yeah Jesus and then forget about him. It's a desire us to take Jesus into the world with us. It says increasing measure at the end of this passage. Do it in increasing measure. There's no limit to what God can do with those characteristics of your life, those qualities of your life. So if you do an increasing measure it becomes an intentionality. Seeking to do that. And the question is, and the question I always ask myself, am I being intentional about my Christian walk? Am I being intentional about reading the word? Am I being intentional about how to react and respond to others? Am I being intentional about how I respect, react with people outside the church, people in the world, people that you come across in different places, people who cut in front of you on the traffic, people who take a long time serving you, people who get your order wrong at McDonald's. Increasing every day. And the reason why is this. It helps us to be effective for the kingdom of heaven. Because it's not about us, it's about building the kingdom of heaven, about people coming to know Jesus and letting them know that he loves them unconditionally. It's about also being productive for the kingdom of heaven. So we glorify God. So lastly, just finishing up and worship, Tim, you can come up if you like. I just want to encourage you as we sing this song to think about the characters and qualities and what God's saying to your heart today. But intentionally seek without fear. Seek him without fear, without reprise. Seek to grow in God. Be intentional about seeking to grow in God. Can I just say this, that it's great and it's a privilege and it's humbling to be able to share God's worth with you on a Sunday. But he will keep speaking to you through the week, through his word. Dig into his word, read his word. And seek to ask the Lord, show me the way. Show me the way, Lord, that I can build my character, that I can build character that glorifies you. For all the highs and lows, Lord, help it be authentic in my understanding. And as we sing today, I'll encourage you. God's doing a work in you today. Don't just sit there. Respond to him. Let him know that you're listening to him today. Heavenly Father, we thank you, Lord, that your journey for us is never-ending. But, Lord, you're faithful and walking with us through that whole journey. Father, we thank you, Lord, that as we, Lord, are intentional about our Christian faith, Lord, we add to those things. Lord, they don't sit in subjective categories or columns or categories. Father, they sit, Father, as a building stone, building block for you. Lord, to help us to grow into you. To be people of faith who reach the world. Help us to be people of faith who build each other up, encourage one another. Father, we know that Satan wants us to be confused. We know, Lord, that Satan wants us to be distracted by the world. Lord, help us to keep our eyes on you. Lord, is still unaware of what's going on, but, Lord, keep us focused on you. We know your grace and your mercy. We'll give you these things today in your name. Amen.