EVERYONE Growing
2 Peter 3:17-18
Rev. Brian Bill
April 22-23, 2023
Dr. Charles Stanley graduated to glory this week at the age of 90. He served as pastor of First Baptist in Atlanta for 51 years, authored over 60 books. His sermons have aired daily on the internet, television, and radio for many years. How many of you have grown in your walk with Christ through his ministry?
I’ve always admired how Dr. Stanley was able to hold the attention of his listeners. One of my favorite lines from his preaching was when he would say, “Listen to me, now!” I may use it today if I see you drifting or dozing.
Last week, we looked at the importance of “Everyone Gathering” and summarized the message this way: “The church is God’s plan A. There is no plan B.” Today our topic is “Everyone Growing.” Here’s what I’m hoping we learn and live out: Spiritual growth is intentional, not automatic.
Here’s what Dr. Stanley had to say about spiritual growth.
“If you want to genuinely grow in spiritual maturity, it is not enough to simply be instructed by the Word of God. You may love going to church or listening to Christian radio programs. You might talk about everything you hear and assume you’re growing because your knowledge is increasing. However, if you don’t actually grow closer to God by allowing His Word to change you from the inside out, your head will merely continue to fill with information…spiritual growth is the result of practicing the truth you receive from God.”
To help us practice the truth, let’s turn to 2 Peter 3:17-18: “You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, take care that you are not carried away with the error of lawless people and lose your own stability. But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity. Amen.”
The context for this text speaks of the nefariousness of false teachers and the nearness of Christ’s return. In light of these two certainties, we’re given three exhortations – guard, grow, and glorify.
1. Guard. We see this in verse 17: “You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, take care that you are not carried away with the error of lawless people and lose your own stability.” The word “beforehand” helps prepare us for what lies ahead. To be forewarned is to be forearmed.
The phrase “take care” calls us to be wary and watchful of “error” because lethargic believers will bail on the Bible if they’re not on guard. Ephesians 4:14 warns about being “tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine.” Many today have been “carried away” by progressive Christianity, critical theory, easy believism, the prosperity gospel, secularism, gender and sexuality issues, and sloppy spirituality. Those who are “lawless” have no concern for the clear teaching of truth because they live outside biblical boundaries.
The theme of our men’s retreat next weekend is “Standing Firm.” Pastor Kyle, AJ Reynolds, and I will be the speakers. Guys, if you’re looking to connect with other men and learn how to stand firm, please sign up today. We’ll begin Friday night and you’ll be home by dinner on Saturday.
Beloved brothers and sisters, you and I must guard ourselves, so we do not lose our spiritual “stability.” While genuine born-again believers cannot lose their salvation, they can lose their steadiness, leaving them stagnant and ineffective. Hebrews 2:1 serves as a warning for us: “Therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it.”
In an effort to help us guard the gospel without wavering or capitulating, the pastoral team is working on a six-week worldview emphasis this fall called, “Unshaken and Unashamed.” We’ll address topics like reality, identity, who Jesus is, purpose, culture, and witness. We’ll do this through our sermons and Growth Groups. We also plan to have our children, teenagers and young adults interact with these topics in age-appropriate ways.
We’re bringing back the “pop-up” bookstore we used during the Prophecy Conference to help equip us with resources to help us know what we believe, why we believe it, and how to pass it along to our neighbors, classmates, and co-workers, along with our children and grandchildren. As part of this emphasis, we’re also planning a Saturday morning intensive apologetics seminar in the fall.
Listen to me, now. Spiritual growth is intentional, not automatic.
2. Grow. The best safeguard against falling down is growing up in your faith. It’s a bit like riding a bicycle. If you stop moving forward, you’ll eventually fall over.
Check out what D.A. Carson writes:
“People do not drift toward holiness. Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord. We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance; we drift toward disobedience and call it freedom; we drift toward superstition and call it faith.”
Look at the first part of verse 18: “But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ…” The word “but” shows that in contrast to drifting, falling, or being led astray, God exhorts us to grow, which means to “enlarge, add, augment, advance, and increase.” This is a present active imperative, which means our growth must be a continual, active, and passionate pursuit. We could translate it like this, “keep on growing” or “be constantly growing.”
One pastor has some great insight:
“We don’t hear much about spiritual growth these days. Many Christians have been diverted by various teachings that promise power, spiritual energy, and success without the process of growth into spiritual maturity. They look for dramatic experiences, climactic turning points, and instant solutions to their spiritual problems…millions of professing Christians suffer from arrested development. Churches are filled with people who are spiritually immature, undiscerning, weak, and fragile. Spiritual underdevelopment is the rule, no longer an exception.”
Listen to me now. There are no spiritual shortcuts. You can’t coast in your Christianity. You can’t hit pause and stay where you are. If you’re not moving forward, you’re moving backwards. If you don’t swim against the cultural current, you’ll be swept away by the waves of worldliness. If you’re not growing as a disciple, you’ll drift into godlessness.
Philippians 2:12-13 balances our responsibility to grow with God’s role in our growth: “Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, [our responsibility] for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure [God’s role].”
We could say it like this:
• We need to work out our growing. 1 Peter 2:2 says, “Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation.”
• God works in us to grow us. 1 Corinthians 3:7: “So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.”
Growth is the process by which our positional truth becomes more and more a reality in practice. Notice our growth is to take place in at least two areas.
• In grace. Grace means favor or a gift given to guilty people. We don’t deserve it and we cannot earn it. One commentator says, “God’s grace is his active favor bestowing the greatest gift upon those who have deserved the greatest punishment.” I like this definition of grace, using the letters as an acrostic – God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense. Are you growing in your understanding of the unmerited gift of God which not only saved you, but also sustains and sanctifies you?
• In knowledge. The word “knowledge” refers to understanding. We’re called to comprehend the words, works, and ways of Christ. This is more than just putting the facts together because He is not just a subject to be studied but a person to be known as He declared in John 17:3: “And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” We’re urged to know him personally, experientially, and relationally according to Philippians 3:8: “Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.” Hosea 6:3 calls us not to be passive but to pursue knowing Him with all we have: “Let us know; let us press on to know the LORD…”
If it’s been a while since you’ve read one of the gospels, you might want to do so again. You’ll hear more about this shortly, but one of our newest Sunday Growth Groups will be studying the Gospel Project, which will begin with the Gospels. As a way to grow in our knowledge of Jesus, we’re going to celebrate the supremacy of Christ this summer by going verse-by-verse through the Book of Colossians.
Before moving on, don’t miss the word “and.” We’re called to grow in grace and in knowledge. If we only grow in one way, our message will become muddied as we’ll either become wishy washy or prideful about all we know.
Most of us know more of the Bible than we really live, or as one pastor quipped, “We are educated far beyond our level of obedience.” Spurgeon said it like this: “How easy it is to grow in knowledge but not in grace! Knowledge without grace is a terrible weapon, and grace without knowledge can be very shallow.” Another commentator remarked, “The better we know Christ through the Word, the more we grow in grace; the more we grow in grace, the better we understand the Word of God.”
As our society continues to slide south spiritually, we must increasingly become people who know all we can about Jesus Christ in order to grow in our relationship with Him. When we do, we’ll be able to show the Savior to a world in desperate need of His grace and mercy.
For the third time in this letter, he refers to Jesus as “our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (1:11; 2:20). I love this four-fold title Peter uses. It’s impossible to separate Jesus Christ as Savior from Jesus Christ as Lord.
? Lord. He is Lord and Master, Supreme in authority.
? Savior. He is the One who rescues, saves, and sustains.
? Jesus. This name means the “Lord saves.”
? Christ. This is the transliteration of the Greek word Christos, which means “anointed one,” or Messiah in Hebrew.
We submit to Him as Lord, we love Him as Savior, we adore Him as Jesus, and we worship Him as Christ.
Would you say you are growing, or have you stalled out? Do you know the Lord Jesus Christ better this year than you did last year? Will you do what it takes to grow?
Someone has said, “You can be young only once, but you can be immature for a long, long time.” Hebrews 6:1 says, “Therefore let us leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity…”
Listen to me, now. Spiritual growth is intentional, not automatic.
3. Glorify. Our ultimate aim and highest purpose must be to give glory to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ: “To Him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity. Amen.”
Glory refers to His power, majesty, weightiness, and splendor. To give glory to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is to acknowledge He is God. Isaiah 42:8 says: “I am the LORD, that is my name; my glory I give to no other.” We’re to give Him glory right now because that’s what we’ll be doing in eternity. The word “Amen” means, “so be it” or “let it be so.”
Let’s pull this passage together: When you guard the gospel, you’ll want to grow; and when you grow, God gets all the glory.
Grow in Christ
Let’s go back to the Book of Acts to see how the First Church of Jerusalem fleshed this out.
• Grow through the Word. Listen to Acts 2:42: “And they continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine…” The most basic essential for any healthy church is a steadfast commitment to hearing, learning, and applying God’s Word in order to grow as disciples of Christ.
Make sure you are reading God’s Word every day. Pastor Kyle puts together a new Bible reading plan each month. Next month we’ll be in the very practical shorter epistles. These plans are available at the Resource Kiosks, on the website, and our app.
• Grow through large gatherings. The early church was also committed to grow through the preaching of God’s Word in corporate worship settings. Drop down to Acts 2:46: “And day by day, attending the temple together…” They got a daily dose of God’s Word as it was preached.
In order to help you put our sermons into practice, we email the manuscripts, note-taking sheets, and discussion questions out every Friday. If you’d like to receive this email, simply fill out a card in front of you and drop it in the offering box. Note-taking sheets and discussion questions are also available at both resource kiosks. Some find it helpful to follow along with the sermon manuscript on the Edgewood app.
• Grow through small groups. We believe growth takes place when each believer is in God’s Word every day, when the Word is preached in a large group celebration and when it is fleshed out in a small group setting as seen in verse 46: “…and breaking bread in their homes.”
Acts 12:12 describes believers meeting in the house of Mary “where many were gathered together and were praying.” Acts 16:40 tells us where Paul and Silas headed after they were released from prison: “So they went out of the prison and visited Lydia. And when they had seen the brothers, they encouraged them and departed.” In Acts 20:20, we read how Paul taught publicly “and from house to house.” We read in Romans 16:5 how Priscilla and Aquila opened their home for ministry: “Greet also the church in their house.”
Noah had a small group of seven who met in cramped quarters for a brief period of time. Daniel and his three friends formed a Spirit-enabled community and met for more than 70 years. Jesus selected a group of 12 for some intentional discipleship, and also met with an even smaller group of three for some specialized leadership training.
John Wesley insisted that new converts be folded into groups of believers who met weekly in order to check on the condition of each other’s souls. He was convinced there was no such thing as a solitary faith. Wesley believed that it was only through such close fellowship that people continued in their faith. Those who did not join a group sooner or later fell back into their former careless life.
How many of you enjoyed group projects when you were in school? My guess is that if you coasted in your classes (like I did), you liked them because you could get a better grade if you were in a group with some brainiacs. It was pretty cool that we all got the same grade even if I didn’t contribute much. On the other hand, if you were serious about your studies, you probably didn’t like having underperforming teammates like me.
Listen to me now: Spiritual growth is a group project. Whether we like it or not, we’ve all been assigned to the same group because Romans 12:5 says we are “members of one another.”
During 2023, we’re encouraging everyone at Edgewood to be all in. The word everyone is used at least 200 times in the Bible, and it means:
1. All.
2. Every.
3. Whole.
Our assignment from the Almighty is for everyone to be on mission by gathering, growing, giving, and going with the gospel, all for the glory of God.
Because we believe growth happens best in groups, we want to see everyone at Edgewood involved in some kind of group this year. One pastor said: “Small groups are the purest expression of the church.”
Here are six focus areas:
• Everyone discipling or being discipled (we do this through our intergenerational Intentional Discipleship ministry).
• Host a Group Connect Weekend (more about this in a bit).
• Leader recruiting and training (Pastor Kyle has already been working on this).
• Launch a church-wide state of theology survey this summer.
• Biblical worldview focus (I mentioned this earlier).
• Ramp up EdgeMen ministry (“Standing Firm” retreat next weekend, Women’s Spring Luncheon May 13).
Could I encourage you to find a group to join? Our aim is for everyone at Edgewood to plug into a group.
• We have 12 Sunday morning Growth Groups, including a men’s group and a women’s group, plus a junior high and a high school group.
• We have 15 mid-week groups. At least 10 of them have space for more people, including 5 of our groups that meet in homes. We have women’s groups and men’s groups. We also have a group for “Snowbirds.”
• Our caring groups (Grief Share, Divorce Care, and Alzheimer’s Support) are wrapping up for the summer but will begin again in the fall.
• Weavers of the Bible for Women meets the second Saturday of the month.
• On Friday nights, Celebrate Recovery has groups for men (Purity, Anger, Alcohol and Chemical Dependency, and Life Issues) and groups for women (Abuse, Life Issues, and Alcohol and Chemical Dependency)
• In addition, Celebrate Recovery currently has a weekly 12-step group for men and another one for women.
• More than 80 people have been involved in our intergenerational Intentional Discipleship groups and others will be starting soon.
This week, I heard about a creative way to join a group. Jessica Trowbridge shared how she and two other women use the YouVersion Bible app to do a virtual Bible study together. This allows each of them to do the study at a time that works for them and then they interact with each other’s insights and comments at a convenient time.
We want everyone in a group. We believe God wants everyone in a group. That means me (Beth and I lead a group on Wednesday nights), that means you, that means all, everyone, the whole church. That’s going to take focus and effort.
Let me circle back to Dr. Stanley. The key to his life and ministry can be summed up in Acts 20:24, a verse he often meditated on: “But I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God.”
We take being in a group so seriously, that we’re ending the sermon early so you have time to visit the tables we’ve set up in the Lobby and in the Life Center. Our open Growth Groups will be in the Lobby while our Sunday morning Growth Groups are on display in the Life Center. Actually, our service is not really ending early – we’re just continuing the service in the Lobby and Life Center. Please take a few minutes to visit the tables in both areas.
Listen to me, now. Since spiritual growth is intentional, not automatic, let’s make sure each of us are doing all we can to guard, grow, and bring glory to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
