Give Your All for Godliness

If you would open your Bibles with me to 2 Peter. Tonight we'll be in verses 5-11.

! If you're a senior, you're already over halfway through your last year of high school.

Which may make you sad or happy. But one of the difficulties is figuring out what's next for me. Where am I going to go to college if I go to college?

What am I going to do for work if I enter the workforce? If I do go to college, what's my major going to be? What career path am I going to pursue? All of these questions you have.

And if you're in middle school right now thinking that's so far away from me. It is kind of, but it'll be here quickly. And even once you get to college, the first couple of years. Like I chose this as my major. Should I change my major?

Should I have gone to this school? Should I go to a different school? All kinds of questions about the future kind of haunt you during that period of life. I remember it was February of my senior year.

And I just woke up one morning and it hit me. I was super stressed. I was like, I'm going to be somewhere else in the world in six months from now, in August. And I don't know exactly where that is yet.

I have some options available to me, but I don't know exactly where I'm going to be living in six months. And so that really stressed me out. Just kind of hit me all of a sudden on that one day.

That unknown can be paralyzing. That unknown of what your life is going to hold, what the next four years or five years is going to hold, can be paralyzing.

What's after high school? What am I going to do with my life? What will I be? Where will I live? Who will I marry? And it would be helpful sometimes we think like if the Lord could just give me a glimpse like five, ten years into the future to see how some of this stuff works out.

I could be a lot less stressed in the present. I could just see where my life is going, see what I'm doing. I could chill out now and just kind of know what direction to go. And that's true.

If you could see a glimpse of the future, it would kind of put your nerves at ease now. It would make life now a little bit easier. But why is that? Why would it kind of help us calm down in the present?

I think it would give us kind of a known goal to shoot for. If we see, okay, this is my job in ten years. Let me, I can take steps now to get to where I'm at that point in my career in ten years or whatever.

And so the goal is clarified for us if that were to happen. And so it would make now a little bit easier. Now, I don't have answers for you in terms of the specific questions about your future.

But God does reveal his goals for us, his purposes for us. And that's both helpful and freeing for us. If you're a Christian, God wants you to know your calling.

And as we think about calling, calling kind of frames this section. If you look with me at verse 3 from last week, it is Christ who called us to his own glory and excellence.

And skip down to verse 10 with me. Peter concludes this section saying, Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election.

God wants you to know your calling. He wants us to know what he wants us to do.

He desires for us to know that. Now, he doesn't tell us specific details about what exactly our lives will look like. But he does tell us exactly who he wants us to be.

He doesn't tell us where we're going to be. He doesn't tell us who we're going to marry. But he does tell us what kind of person he wants us to be. And so if you remember from last week, verses 3 and 4, he has given us everything we need for what life and godliness.

Because of Christ's power, because of his promises, we have everything we need to serve him and to please him. And that grace that he has shown us, the salvation that he has shown us, lays the foundation for our lives.

And now Peter's going to build on that foundation. God's grace saves us. God's grace gives us the ability to obey. And now Peter, inspired by the Holy Spirit, is going to tell us the exact type of person we should strive to be.

So I have two main points tonight. The first one is make every effort. Make every effort. We see this in verses 5 through 9.

And so if you remember from last week, it's Christ's power, Christ's promises, we will participate in the divine nature with him by escaping the corruption of this world. Verse 5, for this very reason.

Because of everything Jesus has done for us. Because of his salvation. Because of his power and his grace in our lives. For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue.

And virtue with knowledge. And knowledge with self-control. And self-control with steadfastness. And steadfastness with godliness. And godliness with brotherly affection.

And brotherly affection with love. And so Peter gives us here a list of seven qualities that we should be increasing in. That we should be growing in.

And he says, make every effort to add these to your life. So he's calling for maximum effort. We, as Christians, have a lot of work to do. And we need to work hard.

And this section here gets very, very practical. And so we see very quickly that Christianity isn't just about what you know.

Christianity is also about how you live. Christianity is not just about what you know. It's also about how you live. And so these verses, verses 5 through 7 in particular, call us to work hard in order to live a life of godliness.

But while we're thinking about these verses, and Peter's telling us what our responsibility is, we need to remember the gospel from verses 3 and 4. That it is God's grace that saves us. That's the foundation that's been laid.

And it's our responsibility to build on it as we carry out what the Lord has called us to do. So we're not working to earn God's grace. We're working because we've received God's grace.

Because Christ has given us everything we need, we must work hard. And that may seem contradictory to you. You say, okay, Jesus has given us absolutely everything we need for life and godliness.

And yet he calls us to work hard. Which one is it, Peter? Do we have everything we need? Or do we need to work hard to add this stuff to our lives? Well, it's both. So if I were to tell you that if you're trying to get in shape, you're trying to get strong, trying to lose weight, or get in better shape, whatever it is, if you go to a gym that is well supplied, well stocked, got all the weights you need, dumbbells, barbells, kettlebells, all the bells, treadmill, bikes, whatever you need, I can tell you this gym has everything you need to get in shape.

But it's going to take a lot of work on your part. That's kind of what Peter is saying here. The gym in that scenario has everything you need to get healthy, to get in shape. But it's going to require effort on your part.

And that's what he's saying here. Christ has saved us and he's given us everything we need. And he's going to be with us along the way. But there's going to be a lot of sweat on our part. There's going to be a lot of effort on our part to live a life of godliness.

And so here's what I want you to understand from this passage. A life of godliness doesn't come from laziness. A life of godliness does not come from laziness.

You're not going to accidentally live a godly life. If you want to live a godly life, and I hope you do, it's going to require effort on your part. It's going to require sacrifice on your part.

It is not easy to follow Christ. And this hard work obviously pertains to our spiritual lives, as we'll see here in this passage.

But as Christians, this hard work should affect every area of our life. And so you can't just think, okay, I'm going to work hard when I'm at church on Sundays and Wednesdays. If you love Christ and you follow him, this hard work should characterize you, certainly at church, but also at home, at school, and at your job if you've got one.

You should be the hardest worker there. Not because you're trying to earn God's favor, but as a demonstration of what Christ has done for you. He's called us to a life of responsibility.

Because all of life is for God's glory. And so one thing this means is that your pursuit of Christ can't just happen on Sundays and Wednesdays. It's really easy to fall into the temptation of thinking like, ah, I should probably read my Bible, but I went to church on Sunday and we got a lot of Bible there.

So I should be good for the rest of the week. Your Christianity has to affect more days of your week than just Sundays and Wednesdays. And so I would encourage you, read your Bible, memorize it, read good books, fellowship with believers.

And so Peter says, make every effort, put out maximum effort to supplement your faith. And faith here refers to, as we usually use it, personal belief in Christ.

We've received this faith as a gift. As verse one says, these believers have received a faith that's equal to the faith of the apostles. And now Peter lists seven qualities that we need to build onto that faith or add to that faith.

And these virtues, these qualities, seem to kind of progress a little bit. So they seem to kind of stack on top of each other as Peter's working through. But that's not completely true.

It's not exactly what he's doing. But it's not an accident that this list begins with faith and ends with love. Faith is the foundation. Love is the chief attribute of the Christian life.

And so if you think about faith and love, these two things get mentioned constantly when we're talking about practically living for Christ. Love is the highest Christian virtue.

And we need to think about love in terms of how the Bible talks about it. Love isn't just acceptance of sin or celebration of people, regardless of what lifestyle they live. Love is defined by the Bible.

But love is the highest Christian virtue. And I want you to listen to what the apostle Paul says to Timothy. This is 1 Timothy 1.5.

Paul says, The aim or the goal of our charge is love, that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.

And so to our faith, we should make every effort to supplement our faith with virtue. And virtue could be translated just moral excellence.

We saw this word at the end of verse 3. Christ calls us to his virtue or his excellence. And so this really means being above reproach, living a life that isn't stained by sin.

As Christians, we will still sin, certainly. But your life as a Christian shouldn't be characterized by sin habits. You should be washed of that.

Certainly we will struggle. Certainly we will fight temptation. Every day we're alive on this earth. But Peter calls us through our faith to pursue virtue.

And just a little test to kind of examine yourself with and myself. Would people around you, so at school or at work or on your sports team, would people around you be surprised if they found out you went to church?

Would people around you be surprised if they found out you claim to be a Christian? If people hear that, if you say, oh yeah, I go to First Baptist Mustang, people are like, really? You go to church, that's not good, okay?

You should live in such a way that if people find out you're a Christian, people find out you follow Christ, they say, you know what, that makes sense. Like I was wondering. And so we need to live a life of virtue or moral excellence.

And then to that virtue, we supplement that virtue with knowledge. And Peter talks a lot about knowledge throughout this letter. He began it in verse two, knowledge of God and of Jesus, our Lord.

Here he's probably referring to knowledge of God's will. So living with wisdom, knowing how to apply God's truth to the situations of life. To our knowledge, we supplement our knowledge with self-control.

Self-control, we can think about it as self-mastery. I think it's a stronger, more vivid term. And so the idea of self-control is you are controlling your desires rather than your desires controlling you.

You are mastering your desires rather than them dominating you. And this term was used of athletes in the ancient world because they had to have almost perfect self-control, eating the right foods, working out correctly so that they could qualify for their sporting events to compete in something like what we have in the Olympics.

And so this self-control is mastery or control over your desires rather than vice versa. And we have some experience with our desires controlling us when we get hangry.

We just make some decisions that we're not proud of when we get really hungry, right? And so this isn't in the book of Proverbs, but it might as well be. Don't go to Walmart if you're hungry, okay? Just, if you haven't heard that, write that down.

I've gone to Walmart when I'm hungry before and everything sounds good. It's like Pop-Tarts, sure. Fruit by the foot, I'll take five. And then Spicy Cheetos, sure, I'll take them. And then you spend $300 and you're like, what in the world happened?

So eat a snack before you go to Walmart and your desires won't control you. But there is no self-control without self-denial.

There's no self-control without self-denial. If you're going to control yourself, if you're going to control your desires, your sinful desires, you're going to have to deny yourself some things.

There are going to be things that you have to say no to. And sorry for all the health and fitness analogies tonight, but it's January, so we're all trying to get in shape. If you're trying to lose weight, you have to be at what's called a caloric deficit.

You have to burn more calories than you consume, which means you have to say no to some delicious stuff, like the best stuff in life, like ice cream. You have to say no to that if you're trying to lose weight.

And so having self-control means that there will be things in life that you say no to. And these things won't always be bad things. A lot of times they're just things that won't get you where you want to go in life.

Things that can be fun, things that can be good when they're used correctly, but things like TV, social media, your phone, those things are gifts from the Lord that can be used for his glory.

They can also be used to distract you and derail you from living a life that glorifies the Lord, like when it goes off in church. I'm just kidding. I don't know who that was. Sorry, I called you out.

But when you think about self-denial and self-control, if you only do good things when you feel like it, you won't do good things that often.

If you're like, I want to read my Bible more, but I'm only going to read my Bible when I feel like it. You're going to read your Bible like twice a week probably, if that. And so we can't just do things we're responsible to do when we feel like doing them.

So we have to deny ourselves. We have to be willing to say to our sinful desires that we are in control of them. And this is exactly what Jesus called us to.

In Luke 9, 23, he says, if anyone would come after me, he must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. When Christ calls someone, it is a call to die to your sinful desires and follow him.

And I mentioned last week, this whole letter is really kind of an attack on false teachers that have arisen from within the church. And one way that Peter's going to consistently characterize these false teachers is as lacking self-control.

They have no ability to control their sinful desires. And with self-control, we supplement that with steadfastness.

This is perseverance, endurance, it's strength and energy to keep going even when it's difficult, and steadfastness with godliness. Godliness is just God-centeredness in all of life.

It is God-likeness. We're imitating him, seeking to pursue him, seeking to be like him in every phase of life. Verse seven, in godliness, with brotherly affection.

And that word, brotherly affection, is Philadelphia. So Philadelphia is the city of brotherly love, at least in name, not in actuality. And that comes from the Greek word here, which means brotherly love.

Go Eagles. But the church is to be a family. The church is intended to be a spiritual family. Christ has saved us through his death and resurrection, making us his younger brothers and sisters and bringing us into a spiritual family.

So I think that entails everything that a normal family does. We'll drive each other crazy sometimes, but we should care about each other, love one another, and serve one another as Christ has served us.

And then lastly, number seven, brotherly affection with love. With love. Love is the highest virtue of the Christian life.

In John 13, Jesus said that this is how the entire world will know that we belong to him if we love each other. If we love each other. And so a question for us is, are we loving and kind toward people, especially toward other believers?

if we're not, something is sinfully wrong with us. We need to correct that. We need to repent and seek forgiveness from the Lord and from each other and correct it because love is where our knowledge is supposed to lead.

Now, why should we make effort to add these things to our lives? Why should we even be concerned about these things? Well, Peter tells us in verse eight, for or because if these qualities or if these virtues are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

And so we have these by being Christians. We've been supplied with everything we need, but we need to grow in them. We need to increase in them. And so your growth in Christ is never done.

And so if you're out there and you're a Christian and you're 16 and you're like, I've been a Christian for a few years now, I'm pretty good at this. Like I should probably ease off on the gas pedal a little bit, slow down a bit.

That's not a good thing. You need to continue to keep growing. And even me, which I'm almost 30 now, if I just said, I think I know enough at this point, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna coast a little bit.

If I do that for 10 years, I'm gonna be a super immature Christian in 10 years. And so we have to keep driving forward. We have to continue to seek to grow in Christ.

And we need to remember that as we put in this effort, the spirit is the one who's producing this fruit in our lives. They, verse eight, these virtues, keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful.

And so if we strive to grow in these virtues, our knowledge of Christ will be productive. If we don't, we risk being ineffective as Christians and unfruitful.

Ineffective means useless, lazy, or idle, not accomplishing anything. Unfruitful would be also unproductive, but also has the idea of not functioning properly in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Christ. The knowledge you have of Christ should lead you to a life of godliness. Everything you know about the Bible, everything you know about God, everything you know about theology should make you a more godly Christian.

And we see our sin in the difference between the knowledge we have and how well we live. If we were not sinful, we would be able to live out perfectly everything we know.

But because we're sinful creatures, there's a large gap between what we know to be true and how we live the Christian life. And Peter is saying, make your knowledge effective.

Put your knowledge to work. Show that you truly know Christ by how you live. Christianity, again, isn't just about what you know, it's about how you live because what you know should impact how you live this life.

And in verse 9, Peter gives us a warning about what will happen if we neglect to increase in these things, if we fail to pursue these things. Verse 9, for whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins.

And so Peter calls this person that takes the lazy approach to the Christian life is just like, oh, God's gracious. I don't really need to worry about my sin. I don't need to strive for growth. I'll just take the lazy approach.

Peter says that he is so nearsighted that he is blind. Nearsightedness is the ability to see things near, but the distance is fuzzy for you.

This is what I have physically. And so the distance is a little bit fuzzy if I take off my glasses, but I can see up close just fine. But I also have astigmatism. So if I drive without glasses at night, everyone's headlights look like fireworks.

They're just everywhere. Pow! Nearsightedness is not good, but it's easily corrected. You just need a pair of these puppies, some glasses to correct them.

Spiritual nearsightedness is much more dangerous. It's this idea that you can't see anything beyond the immediate, anything beyond today.

And so you base all of your decisions based on what's just right in front of you. You don't have this long-term view of eternity. You don't have this long-term view of the rest of your life. You just make decisions here and now.

What's most convenient? What's best for me right now, today? This person doesn't have the ability to see what God has called him to be. He's so nearsighted that he's basically blind.

He can't see the big picture of what God intends for his life. And Peter explains because he's forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins.

The forgiveness of our sins should motivate us to live a godly life. Christ's forgiveness and mercy should make us want to give our lives in his service.

But we're so sinful that oftentimes we don't think our sin is that big of a deal. We think like, okay, well, yeah, Christ forgave us already, so I'll just ask for forgiveness.

This isn't that big of a deal compared to what so-and-so's doing. I know they did way worse and they're still going to church and no one judges them. Whatever. We excuse our sin so easily. And Peter's saying, if you become so nearsighted like that, you're forgetting or maybe even intentionally ignoring that you've been changed.

You're a new creature now. You shouldn't be marked by your same sinful habits that enslaved you before you were a Christian. And so, if we fail to be motivated, if we fail to exercise effort in pursuit of these godly characteristics, maybe we've forgotten the gospel.

Maybe we're ignoring the fact that Christ has changed us. And if you're a Christian living that way, you're living like an unbeliever. And if you are an unbeliever, you're living out just what your nature is and that needs to change because God will come, Christ will come in judgment.

So that's the first thing. Make every effort. Secondly, in verses 10 through 11, Peter calls us to confirm your calling and election. Confirm your calling and election.

Verse 10, Peter says, therefore, so based on everything we've covered so far, based on Christ's power and promises and based on his charge to live a godly life and the threat of judgment if we don't have that motivation.

Verse 10, therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent. Give even more effort. Make every effort and keep going on in that effort.

Why? To confirm your calling and election. This word confirm means to validate or prove. And so Peter is saying prove or demonstrate your calling and election.

And in the ancient Greek world, this word for confirm was used to describe the confirmation of a transaction. And so basically, this confirmation was a receipt.

Okay, so we just had Christmas a few weeks ago and sometimes we just don't get good presents, right? Like that's happened to everyone in the room, I'm sure. And you open up a present from your cousin or whoever it is and you're like, oh, thank you.

And you hate it and the room knows you hate it but you have to fake it because it's Christmas. And you're like, thank you for, I don't know what this is. And then you see a gift receipt and you're like, all is forgiven.

I can take this back for store credit, baby. And so, that receipt is the confirmation of the transaction. That receipt is proof that this was bought at such and such a store.

And so, you can walk into that store and return it and get store credit. That's what Peter is calling for. He says, prove, confirm that you've been saved by Christ.

Show the receipt that you've been saved by Christ. Demonstrate it by how you live your life. And he calls us to confirm our calling and election.

calling in the New Testament refers to Christ's call to salvation, his call to follow him, his call to believe in him, and election refers to Christ's choice of us in the first place.

Now, when did this choice happen? Thinking about Christ choosing who would be saved, when did that choice take place? Ephesians 1 tells us it happened before the foundations of the world.

And so, God and Christ chose who his people would be before creation began. And so, election is God's choice of his people before time began.

Calling is Christ's call to follow him within time. Election took place before the world began. Calling takes place in time.

And so, as you think about the gospels, there was a point in time where Jesus called the disciples to follow him. He said, follow me. That's when he called them.

That was their calling. But that is not the moment that they were chosen. They were chosen before the world began and this calling took place within time.

And the same is true for you. There's a point in time when you became a Christian. There's a point in time when you repented of your sins and placed your faith in Christ. But that is not the moment that Christ chose you.

Christ's choice predates creation itself. And so, Peter calls us to confirm your calling and election.

Why? For if you practice these qualities, you will never fall. Fall refers to an eternal stumbling.

A falling away from the faith. And this can include things like people saying, I'm not a Christian anymore. I'm going to embrace atheism, for example. I'm going to abandon faith in Christ.

But this can also happen through, probably more relevant to Peter's audience, being deceived by false teachers. And so, Peter is saying, we need to work hard to live a godly life so that we don't fall away from the gospel.

So that we don't get deceived by false teaching. And so, being deceived by a false teacher isn't just an issue of knowledge.

Isn't just an issue of what you know or don't know. It's an issue of your life as well and your godliness. And so, for us in this room, if you know the truth, if you know good theology, and yet you've kind of allowed safe passage for your sin, you know what the truth is, you know what the gospel is, but you just kind of let this sin abide in your life.

You don't pursue godliness with all of your energy. You are susceptible to false teaching. And that may not make sense to us at first. How is that the case? Because if that's your situation, what you sinfully desire is having more of an influence on you than what you know to be true.

What you desire in your flesh carries more weight with you than what you know to be true about Christ and his word. And so, if a false teacher comes along and exploits your desire for sin, you are susceptible to being deceived.

And so, Peter's point is that certainly he wants us to know the truth. He wants these believers to know the truth and to know Christ. He also wants them to live a godly life.

Because if they harbor their sin and don't repent of it and they hide it, they're just as susceptible to being deceived as someone who doesn't know the truth like they should is.

And so, allowing sin to continue to exist in your life and not repenting of it, is really kind of like a spiritually weak immune system. So, when you think about your immune system, it helps you not get sick, keeps you healthy, fights infection or disease that's in your body.

And there are some kind of common sicknesses that don't really take you out anymore. You guys are middle school and high school students, you don't get the tummy bug as much as you did when you were two or three because your immune system has developed.

But, if you go a week with not getting enough sleep and you don't wash your hands, your immune system is weakened. Even though a sickness hasn't attacked you yet, your immune system is weakened and you're more susceptible to getting sick.

So, wash your hands, please. But, sin kind of weakens your spiritual immune system. It kind of ruins some of the discernment that the Lord would give to you if you were living a godly life.

And so, Peter is saying, if you practice these qualities, if you pursue them with every effort and very diligently, you will never fall. Verse 11, for in this way, in the way of practicing all these qualities, there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

This will be richly provided to believers. It will be lavish, it will be luxurious. glorious. And who is it that will provide this? It's Christ himself.

It is his kingdom. He is the one who opens the door to that kingdom. And so, Peter is saying, we need to know Christ, we need to live a godly life and increase in these virtues.

Because if we continue in this way, we will not go to hell, we will not fall away from the faith, but we will be able to enter the heavenly kingdom. And spiritually speaking, we've already entered this.

Christ has already given us eternal life, but the fullness of that entrance, the fullness of that experience of Christ's love and eternal life is yet to be experienced in the future.

And so, one theologian said this, and I think this is really helpful, our final salvation, salvation is not by works, but it is with works.

Our final salvation is not by works, but it is with works. And so, we have a lot of work to do, not so we can earn a spot in heaven, but because as we work out our faith, that's the proof, that's the confirmation that we do belong to Christ.

And if you don't live a godly life, you will not go to heaven. Not because your hope of heaven depends on you being able to perform enough good deeds of obedience, but because all of God's people who are going to heaven manifest their faith through works of godliness.

And Hebrews 12, 14 says, we need to pursue the holiness without which no one will see the Lord. And so, the author of Hebrews is saying, if you don't have holiness of life here, you won't see the Lord there.

And so, Peter is urging us to pay careful attention to ourselves and to be carefully and faithfully obedient to Christ. Not because our obedience earns forgiveness or earns a spot in heaven, but because that obedience demonstrates that we've been made like Christ.

Christ. The apostle Paul talked this way too in 1 Corinthians 6. He says, do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?

And the sins he lists, the works of unrighteousness that he lists are sexual morality, idolatry, Adultery, greed, homosexuality, stealing, getting drunk, reviling, swindling.

People who practice such things will not go to heaven. But here's the hope of the gospel. Paul says, and such were some of you. People used to be like that, but now they've been saved, they've been transformed, they were washed, they were sanctified, they were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

God. No one living a sinful lifestyle will go to heaven. Because the people that Jesus saves, the people that he takes to heaven, he transforms.

Now we will struggle with sin, we will fight with sin, so I'm not saying you'll be perfect, but what the Bible calls us to is to work out this salvation with fear and trembling, to add these virtues to our lives that Peter calls us to in chapter one.

And if we continue in this way, if we stay faithful to the Lord, Peter says, there will be an entrance richly provided for you into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Heaven is described as his eternal kingdom. He rules there and it goes on and on forever and ever. And so when we think about self control and self denial, it's all the things we have to say no to, all the things we have to deny our flesh, when we get there to this eternal kingdom, it will have been worth it.

We won't look back on any sacrifice we've made and think, I probably didn't need to be so serious about following Christ. Everything will be worth it.

And so I want you to think about, if you can, the length of eternity. days and years and decades and millennia without end forever and ever.

The length of that compared to just our lives here. Seventy year olds seem super old, but when you think about them in light of eternity, that's nothing.

And so there are days in our lives that are very, very hard and difficult. But don't let difficulty keep you from your responsibility.

Don't let difficulties in this life keep you from your responsibility. When you think about the length of eternity, you will spend eternity somewhere, in heaven or in hell.

Now, when you think about the length of time that that is, what kind of person should you be today in light of eternity?

What kind of person should you be today in light of that reality? Or we can spin it another way. When your life is over, it's done. There's no going back, no correcting anything.

When your life is over, how will you wish you had lived your middle school and high school years? How will you have wanted to live when you get to the end of your life?

You'll wish that you hadn't wasted time. You'll wish that you'd lived for Christ. You'll wish that you had given it your all for godliness.

And I'm not saying we can't have fun or relax or rest. Those things, too, can glorify the Lord. But you will wish you would have given it your all for the sake of godliness.

And so in light of Christ's eternal kingdom in verse 11, in light of everything that Christ has done for us through his death on the cross, Peter calls us to make every effort and be all the more diligent to confirm that we belong to Christ.

He calls us to give it our all for godliness. There's eternity to rest and enjoy and have fun. Don't miss out on eternity because you love your sin.

And if you die apart from Christ, without placing your faith in him, you'll die and go to hell. And you'll look back on your life and you'll think what Peter says, I was blind.

I was nearsighted. I wasted my life. Don't waste the gift of this short life.

life. I shared part of this poem with our middle schoolers a couple of weeks ago, but it comes from a guy named C.T. Studd, glorious name. And he wrote this poem and at the very end of it, he says, And when at last I'll hear the call, I know I'll say it was worth it all.

Only one life, it will soon be passed. Only what's done for Christ will last. And because that's true, give it your all for the sake of godliness.

Let's pray. Our father, we thank you for the truth of the gospel that we've sung tonight, that we've looked at in your word. I pray that we would work hard, but always remember that the foundation of our hard work is your grace and your love to us.

So father, I pray that we'd be found worthy of confirming our calling and election through holy lives and acts of obedience. And it's in Christ's name we pray. Amen.