Being Diligent in Your Faith
Monday, January 25th, 2010Being Diligent in Your Faith
2 Peter 1:5-11
In the Christian life there must be a steady moral advance. “The Christian life must not be an initial spasm followed by a chronic inertia.: Quoted by James Moffatt
That is really the subject we are talking about. Will our Christian life be average or amazing? Ho Hum or Hallelujah? We are often content to let things just stay as they are “inertia,” rather than do the hard work to make the changes we need to go forward.
We saw last week that God desires for us a life that is fruitful. Think about it the only inert fruit tree is a dead fruit tree. Even when the look dormant, internally they are prepare to bud.
We need to build a good foundation. That is Grace and Faith. Everything comes to us from God by Grace and through faith. Eph. 2:89
On top of that foundation, we place a framework. 1. God’s Divine Power
2.God’s Dynamic Promises 3. God’s Delivered Partakers
Now that we have built a framework on the foundation, we can add some things to it. Our text says, “and beside this,” which means for this very reason. For the reasons previously stated we should do more. We should add some things. This is our “finish work.” When you build a house, you put in the foundation. You put up the framework and the walls, the roof. But then comes the finish work. You need doors and cabinets, trim, etc.
Most of the time, the work that goes on inside of the house takes much longer than the work that goes on outside of the house. So it requires diligence.
1.Diligence: 2 Peter 1:5 “Giving all diligence”
(a)“Giving” introducing side by side or at the same time. We are to bring alongside into our relationship with God every ounce of determination we can muster.
(b)“All Diligence”
i.(2Co 8:7) Therefore, as ye abound in every thing, in faith, and utterance, and knowledge, and in all diligence, and in your love to us, see that ye abound in this grace also.
ii.Thayer: earnestness in accomplishing, promoting, or striving after anything.
(c)“Add”
i.In ancient Greece, there were lavish choruses or choirs. These choirs would have benefactors who would supply them (out of their own pocket) with all of theirs needs. It was very expensive and they would perform several times a year. These benefactors were called “choregoi.” “Epichoregein” means to equip and outfit any one or anything. But it carries the idea to equip lavishly. It can mean to equip an army or in our case to equip the soul.
ii.The Linguistic Key to the N.T. Says, “to provide more than was expected or could be demanded.”
iii.We should make an earnest and diligent effort to provide and add more than is expected and demanded for our faith to grow and mature.
(d)How shall we operate with such diligence? How can we make such a sustained effort that our growth doesn’t stagnate or go along in spasms. God’s power. Remember our “framework?” We have God’s Divine Power on which we can rely.
2.Faith: 2 Peter 1:5 “Add to your faith”
(a)Faith is the conviction that what Jesus says is true. It is understood that we have faith and that we are to add to it.
(b)We commit ourselves to his promises and launch ourselves forward to meet His demands.
(c)The finish work we put into the house is suspended upon the framework. If we have faith, it hangs upon His Word. Our trust is nailed to His Dynamic Promises. Our strength is attached to His Divine Power.
(d)Faith in God makes great optimists. Over in Burma, Judson was lying in a foul jail with 32 lbs. of chains on his ankles, his feet bound to a bamboo pole. A fellow prisoner said, “Dr. Judson, what about the prospect of the conversion of the heathen?”, with a sneer on his face. His instant reply was, “The prospects are just as bright as the promises of God.”
(e)Our faith doesn’t rest on our faith or my situation. I don’t have faith for the sake of faith. I have faith because His promises proof true. My faith doesn’t work because I have faith. It works because it rest on His promises.
(f)During an especially trying time in the work of the China Inland Mission, Hudson Taylor wrote to his wife, “We have twenty-five cents–and all the promises of God!
3.Virtue: 2 Peter 1:5 “Add to your faith virtue”
(a)Virtue in Greek times meant “a god-given power to perform heroic deeds…the quality by which one stands out as being excellent. It came to mean right behavior. Some would call it moral courage and excellence.
(b)We want our lives to have virtue. Not be Ho-Hum, but Hallelujah. Not be average, but amazing.
(c)What will we draw upon in order to have such moral courage and excellence in life? We draw upon God’s nature.
(d)We have been delivered from the old corruptible nature. We have been given a new nature in Jesus Christ. We are dead to our old desires and awakened to new and Godly desires.
(e)We can live a life of moral virtue and excellence due entirely to God’s inner working in our life.
(f)Historians Will and Ariel Durant observed in their summary volume, The Lessons of History, that “there never has been a significant example of morality apart from belief in God.”
4.New Building. When we get saved God doesn’t remodel the old life. He builds an entirely new one. We have a new foundation. We have a new framework. (2Co 5:17) “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.”
(a)Now God wants us to add on the doors and the cabinets and the pictures, etc.
(b)But even these are placed on a framework provided by God.
(c)Our diligence to do this work is dependent on the divine power God supplies.
(d)Our faith to proceed along amid trying times is dependent on His dynamic promises.
(e)Our virtue, excellence that we begin the work with is hinged upon the new nature, the Divine Nature that we have become partakers to.