April 23, 2023
Grow Disciples
2 Peter 1:2-11
Last week we started a new sermon series in which we looked at how our church is carrying out the Great Commandment and the Great Commission which we are calling “We Exist…”. Here at FBC Bloomfield we have a mission statement that states, “We exist to Gather, Grow, Serve, & Share”, and that is exactly how we carry out God’s mission for the church. Last week we looked at the church in Acts 2 to understand what we mean when we say we Gather Worshipers. We looked at how the early church gathered worshipers, why they did it in those ways, and how we do that here at FBC. Today we will look at the second part of our mission statement which is to “Grow”. Now while we do have a community garden (which is actually having an official kickoff day on May 13th with a cookout), that’s not the type of growth we are talking about, even though both types of growth are analogous to each other. We are looking at growth as a disciple (disciple meaning a follower of Jesus), so when we say “Grow” we mean “Grow Disciples”. There are two important parts to understand when it comes to growing disciples and growing as a disciple. #1- You must have made Jesus the Lord of your life, as Jesus said to Nicodemus, you must be born again. You cannot enter into the growth step without having a saving relationship with Jesus Christ (Romans 10:9-11). You can’t grow as a follower of Jesus if you aren’t really following Jesus in the first place. #2- You’re going to have to make an effort to grow. This morning I want to look at three different types of growth that the Apostle Peter shares in his second epistle and how we can work toward each as we carry out the second step of our mission statement.
Grow in Knowledge - 2 Peter 1:2-4
2 May God give you more and more grace and peace as you grow in your knowledge of God and Jesus our Lord. 3 By his divine power, God has given us everything we need for living a godly life. We have received all of this by coming to know Him, the one who called us to Himself by means of His marvelous glory and excellence. 4 And because of His glory and excellence, He has given us great and precious promises. These are the promises that enable you to share His divine nature and escape the world’s corruption caused by human desires.
After his greeting in verse 1, Peter blesses the reader by asking God to give them peace and grace as the reader grows in the knowledge of God and Jesus our Lord. It’s very important that we understand what the word interpreted as knowledge means here (we will see the same English word used twice in this morning’s text and they are a different Greek word with a different meaning). The Greek word here is epignōsis, which means “educational knowledge”. This is knowledge gained from study. We do this every week here at FBC Bloomfield. We have preaching each Sunday Morning at 8:15 & 10:45 during our worship services, small group Bible studies that meet every Sunday at 9:30 here on campus, Midweek studies of all sorts every Wednesday Night during the school year, and other Bible studies off and on during the year as well. These types of opportunities to grow should be in addition to your own daily Bible study as you grow in knowledge of Jesus. If you need some help getting started, we have some resources that can help you. It would be easy to just skim over the rest of the section and move on to the next point, but we need to understand what Peter is saying in order to understand the nature of the growth we are seeking.
Peter tells us that God has given us everything we need to grow or live a godly lifestyle. That’s what being a disciple is. It’s following Jesus and becoming more and more like Him every day (there’s a “churchy” word used to describe this called “sanctification”). When we grow into this godly lifestyle, it’s a process over time, but the good news is that when we were born again, we were given everything we need to grow into this. Just like when a child is born, they have everything they need to grow into an adult. As Christians we are given everything we need to grow when we are born again. While there can be faults in our sinful fallen bodies that might cause problems with growth in our human bodies. There are no faults in our born-again selves that would keep us from growing. It’s just going to take some work. Peter goes on to say this was given by the Power of God (the Holy Spirit, Acts 1:8) and the promises of God (The word of God or the Bible). This goes back to the two things we need - we need to be saved so that the Holy Spirit dwells in us (1 Corinthians 3:16) and then we must rely on the promises of God (His Word). How do we understand that God has given us everything we need to live a godly life and grow? Do we just study more and more to gain knowledge? Gaining knowledge is just the first step. The most important step is step two when we start growing in faith.
Grow in Faith - 2 Peter 1:5-9
5 In view of all this, make every effort to respond to God’s promises. Supplement your faith with a generous provision of moral excellence, and moral excellence with knowledge, 6 and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with patient endurance, and patient endurance with godliness, 7 and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love for everyone. 8 The more you grow like this, the more productive and useful you will be in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9 But those who fail to develop in this way are shortsighted or blind, forgetting that they have been cleansed from their old sins.
Because God has given us everything we need to live a godly life and to grow, we need to work to respond to God’s word and Peter says it all starts with our faith.
Faith
Faith is the basis of our relationship with God. It’s through faith we are saved by grace (Ephesians 2:8-9), and it’s by faith that we walk daily (2 Corinthians 5:7), but we also have to realize when we have a saving faith there must be fruit in our lives (James 2:17). Faith is the vehicle for our salvation, but it’s only the first step in growth. Faith is the base for growth, but we must add different “ingredients” to our faith to strengthen it and then we will grow as disciples. The faith Peter talks about here must show itself in action.
Moral Excellence
The first thing that we see that faith does is lead us to moral excellence. It’s not merely the polishing of human qualities to be a better version of what we once were. This is exhibiting God-like qualities (that only come through salvation) through obedience to God. This is why we have been given God’s word so that we can put our faith into action. The first action we see is obedience to God’s word. Moral excellence is not the destination but something we practice each and every day, as we do our knowledge of God grows.
Knowledge
Paul then goes on to say that moral excellence (obedience to God’s word) will lead us to knowledge. Remember how I mentioned we will see the word knowledge mentioned a few more times in the scriptures today? This is the first time we see the new Greek word that is interpreted here as knowledge. The word here is gnōsis and it is a knowledge that is gained through experience. It’s a type of knowledge that comes when you are obedient to God’s word. It’s through obedience that you start to learn more and more about Him and you learn more about yourself. You learn more about His Grace and your need for it. As you learn more about Him through experiences, you start to learn more about temptations in life. Temptations that are especially difficult for you to control and as you learn more you learn you will have to have self-control.
Self-Control
When we want to grow and are working toward growth there are things we can and things we cannot do. Some start off innocently, but we learn that those “innocent” situations can lead us to sin. These situations are different for everyone. That’s when our need for self-control is shown. The type of self-control Peter is talking about is controlling the pleasures in and around our lives because we know ourselves, what we will struggle with, and what God expects of us from His word. Just like an athlete that wants to achieve the highest goals in their field, they have to be self-disciplined in what they do, what they consume, and what they refuse to take part in. The same thing goes for those growing in the Christian life. When we want to grow (and we have to want to, it won’t happen on accident) we have to exercise self-control over our lives (yes it’s hard, but remember God has given us everything we need). While self-control deals with all the issues we struggle with inwardly, we have to handle those things that are externally around us as well.
Patient Endurance
Remember having growing pains as a kid? Growing pains happen when we grow as disciples as well. It usually happens when we need to exhibit patient endurance. James tells us right off the bat in his letter that trials will come and how we handle them will help us grow. This is usually not very fun because we always want things on our timeline. As we deal with issues the world throws our way we should handle them GOD’s way and in GOD’s timing. James says when we do this we start to grow more and more until we need nothing. As we exhibit more and more patient endurance in our lives others will start to see this more and more. It will be undeniable that something miraculous has happened inside of us.
Godliness
A lot of the time when we think of godliness as a goal in our lives we tend to think it’s unobtainable. It is when we try in our own power, but we need to remind ourselves once again that God has given us everything we need to reach this goal. We have the Holy Spirit and God’s Word. It’s all we need to work toward godliness. This is not easy, but nothing worthwhile ever is. When we start growing in our relationship with Jesus we start to see that we no longer fix our eyes upon things of this world, but instead we fix our eyes upon the things of God. We start to live a life that looks more and more like Jesus.
Brotherly Affection
In 1 Peter 1:22, Peter calls love to others who are Christian as a fruit of salvation. It’s something that we see once we are saved and the Holy Spirit is living in us. It’s putting them first, looking out for them before ourselves, having compassion on them and acting upon that compassion. That’s one of the fruits of growth that we see more and more as we grow and add each of these “ingredients” in our walk with Jesus. There is one final thing we must add. Many times it will be the hardest.
Love for Everyone
Romans 5:7-8 shows us that it’s easy to have love for a good or righteous person whom we consider a brother, but it’s something else entirely to love everyone - even your enemies. The last step in growth is to love our enemies. It’s what Jesus said is something that will make us act like true children of God. It’s hard, but it’s something we can and are called to do. Jesus gave us the perfect example of this when He willingly went to the cross and laid down His life for us when we were still His enemies.
Peter finishes off these 8 steps by saying when we do this, we will grow in knowledge (it’s the active knowledge) of Jesus. We learn more and more about Him and grow more and more in Him. He says those who don’t are short-sighted because they don’t remember where they came from (death into life) or they are just blind (blind to the power we have through the Holy Spirit and God’s word). We must grow our faith through these actions.
Grow in Grace - 2 Peter 1:10-11 & 3:18
10 So, dear brothers and sisters, work hard to prove that you really are among those God has called and chosen. Do these things, and you will never fall away. 11 Then God will give you a grand entrance into the eternal Kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
3:18 Rather, you must grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
All glory to him, both now and forever! Amen.
Peter encourages the reader to do these things to keep a sure footing in their walk with Jesus and closes the letter much like he opens it except for two differences. He uses a different word that we translate as knowledge than he did during the first part of the letter and adds that we must grow in grace. Knowledge and grace are almost synonymous at this point in His letter because both are experiences that come from obedience to God’s word. They are both given by God and are what actually cause our growth. Christian growth isn’t something that we can obtain by ourselves. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 3 that it’s God that makes it grow and that’s what always happens, but we have to be obedient to Him in order to see growth. When we do we experience Him more and more and on deeper and deeper levels. We see Him in ways we never have before and understand His grace (God giving us what we don’t deserve) in ways we never had before. It’s the last type of growth mentioned but it’s the type that is the most satisfying in our walk with Him. However, it requires effort on our part to grow in faith before we can experience it. Remember the only thing that grows without effort is weeds. When we want something that has value, we are going to have to work for it, whether it’s in our garden, in our yard, or in our Christian walk. Here at FBC Bloomfield, we have many different things we offer to help equip you to grow in knowledge, in faith, and in grace, but the growth will happen depending on the effort you put forth.
