3 – His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness-through our knowledge of Him Who called us by His own glory and goodness.
4 – Through these He has given us His very great and precious promises,
so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.
5 – For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge;
6 – and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness;
7 – and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love.
8 – For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
9 – But if anyone does NOT have them, he is nearsighted and blind, and has forgotten that he has been cleansed from his past sins.
This is the Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
About three weeks ago we took Sarah back up to Messiah College so that she could begin her sophomore year. A couple days before we were to leave I stuck my head in her door to check on the progress of her packing, and I noted that Sarah had her clothes carefully folded and arranged in little piles all over the floor. It was as if her drawers and wardrobe had exploded in an orderly fashion. A closer look at her various stacks, told me that Sarah was packing according to certain outfits. I asked her about that and she confirmed my assumption. She explained that.
- There were piles of outfits she had set aside that were appropriate for morning classes and others for afternoon classes.
- There was clothing selected that would be suitable for just hanging around the dorm or for going to Lottie-the dining hall-for meals with her friends.
- There were dresses and skirts to wear to worship on Sundays. $ She had selected a few outfits that would be appropriate for the fall season up in Pennsylvania when the weather begins to turn cold.
- She also had a stack of sweatshirts, jackets, and other accessories ready to go. These were for her to wear to evening soccer games at Messiah- in-fashion outer-wear to match other outfits that were set aside for that purpose.
- Sarah had even packed three bags of a wide variety of footwear to compliment her clothing: flip flops, Nikes, Pumas, and more formal shoes for attending church.
I could go on and on, and if you have daughters you know what I mean. They tend to take clothing very seriously, which is why stores like Old Navy and American Eagle Outfitters and Pac Sun and Hollister do a very good business these days! But before we criticize our kids for their commitment to fashion, let’s be honest, most of us, regardless of our age or gender, care very much about the way we dress. We care because we know that there is an unwritten dress code in life that tells us what to wear-and where to wear it.
Do you remember the scandal that blew up over this picture of Northwestern University’s Girl’s Lacrosse team? After winning the national championship in 2005 they were invited to the White House. The next day a picture ran in the Chicago Tribune with the heading, “You Wore Flip Flops To The White House?!” because four of the girls in the front row did wear flip flops.
I would agree with the criticism you don’t dress that casually to visit the home of our nation’s chief executive, but it shows there is indeed a dress code out there and we all know it. Just curious how many of you have had nightmares where you found yourself at school or on the job or behind the pulpit and you discovered you were wearing your pajamas and then you spent the entire dream frantically trying to find appropriate clothing? The number of hands I see raised shows that this dress code is even built into our subconscious!
I bring this all up because the Bible repeatedly uses “proper clothing” as a word picture to help us understand the kinds of virtues that should be seen in-or on-the life of every believer. For example,
Ephesians 4:22-24 says, “Put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires and put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.”
Romans 13:14 says, “Clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the sinful nature.”
Colossians 3:12 says, “As God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, gentleness and patience.”
1st Peter 5:5 says, “All of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because, God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”
For eight Sundays-half this fall and the rest after Christmas-for a total of eight weeks we are going to study these virtues. I’m referring to this somewhat “spread out” sermon series as “The Dress Code of a Christian.” Our main text will be these verses in 2 Peter where the big fisherman talks about eight attitudes that we are to wear or “put on” as disciples of Jesus Christ. And, since we’re going to keep coming back to these verses for several months, I challenge you to save yourself the time of having to flip to 2 Peter each week by memorizing these seven verses. In fact, doing that will save you more than time-it will also help you to internalize these disciplines-or to keep with our theme, it will help you learn to dress properly as a Christian.
In his commentary on this text Jerry Bridges refers to these attitudes or virtues as “garments of grace.” And I want us to think of this “dress code” in that way, because these various “garments” are indeed undeserved gifts of God-precious attributes that help us to stand out as God’s children. I also want us to understand that we must learn to “wear” or “put on” these various virtues because they help us to experience the abundant life Jesus promises in much the same way that wearing a great suit makes you feel good.
I’m reminded of that men’s suit store around here whose owner says, “You’re gonna like the way you look! I guarantee it” because, in essence this text says, “Put on these things-‘wear’ these attitudes and you’re going to like your life! You’re going to enjoy your walk with Jesus. I guarantee it!”
Look again at our text and you’ll see what I mean. Verse 4 says that with these disciplines in our wardrobe, we will be able to: “participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.” Verses 8 and 9 says that this “dress code” will keep us, “from being ineffective and unproductive in our knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Peter even warns us that anyone who does not clothe him or herself in this way will be: “near-sighted and blind, and will have forgotten that he has been cleansed from his past sins.” Sounds like we better be sure we know how to wear or put on these eight virtues doesn’t it!?
It does indeed! We must learn to embrace these attitudes or disciplines. We need to ask God to nurture their growth in our lives because we can’t experience abundant life without them. Unless we “dress” this way we can’t be effective and fruitful disciples. And we do need God’s help with this; similar to the way a parent helps a child dress properly. It is His divine power, it is God’s Spirit in us, that empowers us to wear or live out these virtues. We can’t be truly virtuous on our own. This is what Jesus was getting at in John 15:5 when He said, “If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from Me you can do nothing.”
Another thing I want you to note as we begin is that these are not just virtues in and of themselves, but rather, as Mark Buchanan puts it, they are also, “seed beds of goodness in that they generate virtuousness.” For example, brotherly kindness is a wonderful trait all on its own. Wouldn’t you agree? Don’t you like kind people-individuals who treat everyone as a brother or sister? One reason we esteem this caliber of kindness is because we have learned that it has the power to produce forgiveness, repentance, humility, unity, and trustworthiness. brotherly kindness builds community, enriches friendship, and inspires servanthood.
And if this ability to generate virtue weren’t enough motivation to “put on” these attitudes, we need to understand that in a sense, they also function as “antidotes” for sin. You may remember that a few years back we studied seven of the deadliest sins and the amazing thing is that these virtues can have the effect of counteracting these lethal attitudes and behaviors. To show you what I mean, let’s use kindness as an example again because, like a base neutralizing an acid, it nullifies the sin of envy. Where brotherly kindness flourishes, envy withers.
And the good news is we don’t have to “shop” for these invaluable garments of grace. We don’t have to laboriously “stroll” through some spiritual equivalent of Marshall’s to find them because, as Peter reminds us, in verse 3, God has already, “given us everything we need for life and godliness.” In other words, the kind of “clothing” we need to put on in order to live a truly abundant Christian life is already in our spiritual “closets.” In fact, our wardrobe is full! We have all that is required to live the Christian life to the hilt. All we have to do is learn how to “make every effort” to “put them on.” When it comes to being a “well-dressed Christian,” the responsibility is ours. Everything we need to embrace the perfect dress code is hanging in our closet. All that is missing is our effort, our decision, to ask God to empower us wear them in life. My point is this-and please hear me! Unless we say, “Jesus, help me to be like this.” Unless we consciously decide to “clothe ourselves with His righteousness” unless we “make every effort” toward the right thing we can have everything we need and still have the wrong thing.
In fact, take a moment to examine our life as a believer. How abundant is it? How victorious is it? How close do you feel to God? To what extent are you experiencing the fulfillment and joy of joining Him in His great work? If your walk with Jesus is less than abundant, could it be due to the fact that you aren’t “dressing” correctly? Ask yourself: Are you wearing “rags” instead of virtues? Could your feelings of defeat and frustration stem from your not making every effort to embrace these Godly attitudes?
Before I go any further I want to let you know that, other than the Bible, I’m relying on two main books to help compliment my study: Mark Buchanan’s newest book, Hidden In Plain Sight and Jerry Bridges book, The Fruitful Life. I invite you to pick up a copy of both or either and study along with me!
Sarah would tell you that every outfit, whether it’s for morning classes or afternoon classes or soccer games, has a foundation-a place to start-some basic garment to build on. I guess that’s why they call other things “accessories.” And this is true of the dress code of a Christian as well. Our foundation-our basic “garment of grace”-is faith-and at the onset of our study of this part of our spiritual wardrobe. I want you to note that everyone-even non-Christians-build their “wardrobe of life” on it. Everyone has faith in something. John Bisagno once put it this way,
“Faith is the heart of life. Think of it. You go to a doctor whose name you can’t pronounce. He gives you a prescription you cannot read. You take it to a pharmacist you have never seen. He gives you medication you do not understand-and yet you take it.”
That’s living by faith isn’t it?! The truth is, none of us can get through a single day without living by faith. When you flip a light switch you put faith in the electrical wiring. When you turn the ignition switch in your car, you trust the starter and the motor. When you snail-mail a letter you have faith in the US Mail Service. When you punch in a number on your cell phone you put your faith in Verizon. When you sit in those soft wine-colored chairs you have faith that I’m going to stop preaching in time for you to eat lunch. Everyone has faith in something. But of course these verses in 2 Peter do not refer to these everyday varieties of faith. No, the Christian is to live every day of their lives by faith in God.
With that in mind, let’s begin our study of this foundational garment in the dress code of a Christian by looking at what faith in God is not.
(1) First, Biblical faith is not faith in faith.
I say this because many times in Christian circles we link the effectiveness of our faith to how strongly we can convince ourselves that there will be a positive outcome to a particular situation. We decide to exert our will power such that no doubt will enter our minds. We convince ourselves that if we pump our faith up enough, God will honor our desires. We sing, pray, read Scripture, scold ourselves for any second thoughts-and try to convince ourselves that we can believe enough to get God to do what we think is right.
But that is not biblical faith, because it’s not a trust in God’s wisdom and power. No, it is confidence in ourselves and the amount of belief we have conjured up in an attempt to control God. This is the kind of false faith that fuels the ‘name it claim it’ or ‘blab it and grab it’ philosophy that so many television preachers proclaim. And this flawed kind of faith will not outlast the first major disappointment of life. When we can’t claim what we name or grab what we blab, when a loved one is not healed or a promotion does not come through or an unforseen tragedy hits, false faith like this will crumble like a stack of cards in a gentle breeze.
In their book, We Let Our Son Die, Larry and Lucy Parker recount the tragic story of the way they embraced this kind of misguided faith. In painful and painstaking detail, Larry and his wife paint the picture of how they had come to believe that if they just had enough faith, God would heal their diabetic son. Eventually, their son Wesley got ill and needed insulin. Believing that God would heal Wesley, they withheld the insulin and, predictably, Wesley lapsed into a diabetic coma. The Parkers, warned by some about the impropriety of not having enough faith, believed that God would heal Wesley. Unfortunately, Wesley died. But even after Wesley’s death, the Parkers, undaunted in their “faith,” conducted a resurrection service rather than a funeral service. In fact, for more than a year following his death, they refused to abandon their firmly held faith that Wesley, like Jesus, would rise from the dead. Eventually, both Larry and Lucy were tried and convicted of manslaughter and child abuse.
Their nightmare is the result of faith in their own faith-not faith in God. Theirs was not Biblical faith, but rather a warped form of religious positive thinking. It was faith in faith rather than faith in Him Who is faithful.
The late Ron Mehl, who endured Leukemia by embracing a Biblical faith in God and who finally succumbed to that disease a couple of years ago, wrote a book for his sons to read after his death. He titled his book After Words and in it he says, “Faith isn’t trying to manipulate God or circumstances to get what I want. It is resting in Him so that I can have what He wants.”
And Mehl was right on the money! Genuine faith-Biblical faith-does not believe that God will do what we say. It is a faith that knows and trusts that God will do what He says. It is a faith that acknowledges God’s limitless wisdom and knowledge and goodness, a faith that says He knows more than we do and that He is always working out His absolutely perfect purposes. Genuine faith is resting on the promises of God, no matter what happens, His assurances that we will encounter hardship and heartache in this life, but that He is with us and is working in all things for our good and His glory, and that when this life ends we’ll enter that perfect world where everything will be set right. Biblical faith is a relationship of trust in God. It’s an experience-built confidence in the character of our Heavenly Father. Faith in and of itself is worthless. The value of faith is rooted in the soundness and worthiness of its object. Buchanan says, “Without faith it is impossible to please God but without God it is impossible to have good faith. Faith like that has no where to lay its head.”
(2) This leads to a second thing Biblical faith is not. It’s not a blind leap in the dark.
Some people think faith in God means you ignore logic and reason. For example, many are like TV’s Dr. House in that they ridicule Christians for their faith that God exists, saying that kind of faith makes no sense. But the truth is, believing there is no God requires an unreasonable kind of faith. If atheists, agnostics, or secular humanists put their faith into words it might sound like this: “By faith we believe that this amazingly intricate universe evolved from mindless matter. We believe that order accidentally emerged from chaos.” Of course, they are hard-pressed to find any evidence for this “statement of faith” because true scientific observation consistently proves that order does not grow from chaos and that design points to a Designer.
I don’t know about you, but I find my faith more logical, more reasonable. When it comes to my statement of faith, I look to Hebrews 11:3 where it says, “By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.”
Do you see what I’m saying? Both creeds require faith. But only Christian faith is actually compatible with logic and reason. Ours is a faith that is based on historical evidence. It is supported by the Biblical record, by personal testimony, and, as I inferred a moment ago, by our own experiences. We can look up and down and all around and see the fingerprints of our Creator. And as Christians we can also look back and see evidence that God is worthy of the trust and faith we put in Him. The longer we walk with God, the more we know Him, the more we know that we can trust Him.
Author Tim Hansel tells the story about the day he and his son Zac were out in the country, climbing around in some cliffs. Hansel says at one point in the day he heard a voice above him yell, “Hey Dad! Catch me!” He turned around to see Zac jumping off a rock, flying straight at him. Apparently, Zac had jumped first and then yelled, “Hey Dad! Catch me!” Hansel became an instant circus act, instinctively twisting to catch his son in mid air. They both fell to the ground and for a moment Hansel could hardly talk. When he found his voice again he gasped in exasperation: “Zac! Can you give me one good reason why you did that?” Zac responded with remarkable calmness: “Sure! Because you’re my dad!”
Zac’s whole assurance was based on the fact that he believed his father was trustworthy. He’d no doubt experienced his dad’s quick instincts and firm grip in the past. His relationship with his father deepened his faith and enabled him to live life to the hilt. He could risk the joy of that jump because he was confident-he rested in-the strength and love of his father that he had experienced every day of his life.
This is a great story. I think it illustrates my point well. But I must point out that Biblical faith is faith in God even if He doesn’t catch us even if He doesn’t heal our children. Genuine faith says, “My understanding of the Bible and my life experience has shown me that I can trust God’s goodness even if I can’t see it from my perspective.” It’s the faith of Job who said, “Though He slay me, yet will I hope in Him.” (Job 13:15) In any case-faith is not a blind leap in the dark. It makes sense to trust in the character of God.
Okay, enough of the negative. What is faith? What is this foundational garment in the dress code of the Christian? I want to answer this question in two ways and the first flows logically from my last point.
(1) You see faith is believing in what we can’t always see.
As Hebrews 11:1 puts it, “Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” The phrases “being sure” and “do not see” seem to contradict each other, but people who practice genuine faith know that there is no contradiction because the Bible teaches us that real faith anticipates. It visualizes the future in the present. It sees in advance. It believes God’s purposes will prevail somewhere out there over the horizon-so it is being sure even of what you don’t yet see.
Noah embraced this aspect of faith. Remember? He was warned about an impending flood. He had never even seen rain before, much less enough water to flood the world, but he was so sure of this future event that-in faith-he built the ark as instructed by God. When we accurately understand God’s character we can embrace a faith that does not see and then believe-it believes and then it sees. It is believing in a future that you cannot see. Matthew Henry put it this way. “Faith demonstrates to the eye of the mind the reality of these things which cannot be discerned by the eye of the body.”
The great musician Ray Charles went blind at age seven. When he was just a small child something gathered over his eyes and turned his world grainy and gray-finally closing him in utter darkness. He lived his childhood in rural poverty in a one-room shack at the edge of a sharecropper’s field. In the popular film about his life there is a scene from this chapter of his life. Ray runs into his house and trips over a chair. He starts to wail for his mother. She stands at the stove, right in front of him and instinctively reaches out to lift him. Then she stops. Backs up. Stands still. Watches. In a moment Ray stops crying. He quiets. He listens. He hears, behind him, the water on the wood stove whistling to a boil. He hears, outside, the wind pass like a hand through the corn stalks. He hears the thud of horse hooves on the road, the creak and clatter of the wagon they pull. Then he hears, in front of him, the thin faint stretch of a grasshopper walking the worn floorboards of his mama’s cottage. He inches over and, attentive now to every sigh and twitch, gathers the tiny insect in his hand. He holds it in his open palm and says, “I hear you too, Mamma.” She weeps with pride and sorrow and wonder. Later in the film Ray explains to someone, “I hear like you see.”
As Buchannan puts it, “This is faith’s motto: I hear like you see. I trust in God-in what He’s done and is doing and will do-as much, even more than others trust in what they touch and taste and see.” Faith is believing in that which is often imperceptible from our limited perspective.
(2) And then second, faith is acting on what we can’t always understand.
You see, faith is not only a way of seeing-it is also a way of living. Genuine faith is more of a verb than it is a noun. Hebrews 11:8 says: “It was faith that made Abraham obey when God called him to go out to a country God had promised to him. He left his own country without knowing where he was going.” Abraham’s faith motivated him to obey God even when it meant leaving his homeland and heading off for some unknown destination-a trip that must not have made much sense to him. And the truth is many times God’s commands don’t make sense to you and me. As Oswald Chambers says, “Common sense is not faith and faith is not common sense.” I like the way Chambers puts it because as it says in Proverbs 3, faith often requires us to “lean not on our own understanding.” The fact that God’s instructions didn’t make sense to Abraham didn’t stop Him from acting on his faith. And his example teaches us that authentic faith is always characterized by action.
Look at the men and women of faith listed in Hebrew 11-that Hall of Heroes of Faith. Their faith in the future made them act in the present because genuine faith is not passive. No, it is dynamic and forceful. Truly faithful people actively obey God day in and day out. Listen to their achievements beginning with verse 32:
“And what more shall I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets who through faith conquered kingdoms, enforced justice, received promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched raging fire, escaped the edge of the sword, won strength out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. (Hebrews 11:32-35)
The faith-filled activities of these people have changed the course of history because their faith led them to boldly act in obedience to God!
I think that one of the first science fiction novels I read as a teenager was H. G. Wells’ The Invisible Man. If you read it or have seen movie adaptations of it, then you know that the only way you could tell if the invisible man was in the room, was if things were moving. There would be a teacup and a saucer going across thin air about this high. Or a hat would be hanging in thin air with nothing underneath it-or a door would slam. So, the only way you could tell the invisible man was there was by his actions-the effect that he had on the things around him.
And we see genuine faith in people who claim to be Christians by their actions. One way to put it would be to say that faith is a belief in the unseen that can be seen by others. This is what James 2:18 means when it says, “Show me your faith without deeds. I’ll show you my faith by what I do.” The truth is, people know what we believe by the way that we behave. So let’s ask ourselves this morning: What would people who know us and work with us-people who share our car pools and play dates-what would they say we believe? What would they say about our faith?
This is an important question for us to consider because genuine faith is visible. One of the reasons many churches don’t grow is because their members don’t wear this kind of faith. Instead, they dress themselves in a faith that is without deeds. [As Buchannan puts it] their motto is, “believe but carry on as usual.” You know, when it comes to belief in God we often put people in one of two groups: theists and atheists. We group them according to those who believe in God and those who don’t. In Our Daily Bread, Vernon Grounds points out that we need a third category: apatheists. That’s apathy joined to theism, indifference married to creed. Apatheists believe in God but don’t really care. They’re glad God is out there, somewhere doing something, hearing prayers and spinning planets but His existence impinges little on their own. It doesn’t guide their actions, shape their decisions, and correct their attitudes. God is not a present, urgent reality to them. Instead He’s a distant, occasionally interesting idea. Their belief is such that it doesn’t prompt them to do anything.
In 1959 the USSR leader Nikita Khrushchev made an unprecedented visit to America. This was right after the death of Russian dictator Joseph Stalin. Khrushchev was his successor and he had already caused a global stir in a speech he gave in which he had denounced Stalin’s many atrocities: his genocidal policies against the Ukraine, his cold-blooded assassination of anyone who had become “redundant,” anyone whose existence no longer served “the party.” Khrushchev criticized Stalin for his purges-the way he ruthlessly killed anyone he didn’t trust, which was almost everyone.
Well, Khrushchev was scheduled to appear at the National Press Club in Washington and it was widely expected he would deliver an abbreviated version of his Politburo speech. Every newspaper and magazine of any standing made sure they had at least one reporter present so the room was packed. Khrushchev did not disappoint: he delivered-via translator-a shortened but potent indictment of his former boss, complete with corroborating evidence. When he finished he the floor for questions. Someone called out from the crowd, “Mr. Khrushchev, you have just given us an account of Mr. Stalin’s many crimes against humanity. You were his right-hand man during much of that time. Well, what were you doing while all this was going on?” The question was translated to Khrushchev and when he heard it he exploded in anger, “Who said that!?” he demanded. No one answered. “Who said that?” he bellowed at the audience. There was only silence. “Who said that?” Again there was just silence. Everyone present just looked at their shoes. Khrushchev said, “That’s what I was doing.”
Unfortunately his inaction illustrates the faith of many Christians-a workless faith characterized by looking at our shoes and doing nothing while a lost world slips further and further from God. Remember, Jesus says that on the day of Judgment He will be able to see His true followers in one way: they will wear their faith. Their belief will be translated faith into action. When confronted with the hungry, the suffering, the poor, the imprisoned, they will be those who didn’t look at their shoes. In faith, they will have said, “Here I am. Send me.”
Well, is your faith the kind that makes you an expert on the state of your footwear, or is it the kind that makes you wear your shoes out as you obediently allow Jesus to use your feet and your hands, and your voice to share His love with those who desperately need it?
Closing Challenge
We always close our service by singing a hymn to give us an opportunity to respond to God in faith. This morning God may be calling you to trust Him with your eternal destiny by deciding today to become a Christian. You see your need for a personal faith relationship with Jesus Christ. If that describes where you are-if you see that you need the anchor that Jesus gives, come and share that decision with me. God may be speaking to some Christians present-convicting them to lay aside their apatheism by getting involved in His great work in some way. Perhaps He is calling you to join this church and work out your faith by serving God here with us. I welcome hearing your decision whatever it may be. Will you walk here to the front and share it with me now as we stand to sing?