Simon Peter, a servant and an apostle of Jesus Christ, to them that have obtained like precious faith with us through the righteousness of God and our Saviour Jesus Christ: Grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God, and of Jesus our Lord, According as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and odliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue: Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust. And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge; And to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness; And to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity. For if these things be in you, and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But he that lacketh these things is blind, and cannot see afar off, and hath forgotten that he was purged from his old sins. Wherefore the rather, brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure: for if ye do these things, ye shall never fall: For so an entrance shall be ministered unto you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

I want to deal in particular with the section of scripture from verses 5-8. It says, "And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge; And to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness; And to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity. For if these things be in you, and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ." The word knowledge in verse 8 is a knowledge that is experiential. Peter wants us to know, or experience, God more, and that what we know about God would be fruitful. That it would come to fruition. We just don't know God and it not do something for us. If you look in verse 2, "Grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God, and of Jesus our Lord," we see that Peter realizes that grace and peace get multiplied when we know more about God, when we are experiencing God! But there is a key to experiencing God here. He says that you start losing the experience with God and you become barren and unfruitful if these things are not in you and abounding. Therefore, there are some things in our lives that need to be there; and they need to be abounding. And when they are not, we have a tendency to forget things and wander off, because the result is in verse 9. He says, "He that lacketh these things (referring to these things listed in verses 5-7) is blind, and cannot see afar off, and hath forgotten that he was purged from his old sins." Therefore he talks about remembering; about stirring you up by putting you in remembrance of the love God has had for a sinner. There is a lot in this chapter, and I'm not going to preach all of it. But, I want to show you something God showed me that I've not always understood about verses 5-7.

The first thing is that he said we need to give all diligence to add to our faith virtue. Now, this is important because the word diligence here is also used in verse ten, where it reads, "Wherefore the rather, brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure . . ." It is to assure you and firm you up. A lot of times we may use that out of context. In context, you have to connect the two uses of the word diligence. Peter is saying the way you make your calling and election sure is you need to be adding to your faith virtue, knowledge, temperance, and etc. on down the line. This assures you of salvation because there is this question in our mind: 'Can a man have an experience and it not change his life?' No! How do you know the experience is good? Because of what it's producing. If it's not producing something, then it has no validity. Yet, we do realize that you've got to give God some time, but you may need to know how the process works. It says here that there's something we can do. We can give diligence.

I did a little short study on the word diligence. This is something that is really tough in this generation. Now, I believe you can be saved and yet need re-assurance. You can struggle in the area of assurance. You can go back and remember the experience and have it all down, but still kind of struggle. This is because there may be some things that you are looking for in your life afterwards, that you can't find and they make you wonder if that experience had any validity. It can happen. It's good because it makes you examine more. But, in order to get through that, there's going to have to be a diligent attitude. Diligence is the opposite of laziness. If you go to the Old Testament and read the book of Proverbs, you read the word diligent. Everywhere it is used, you will always find the opposite in the same verse. Every time you see the word diligent, you'll find in that same verse the opposite which is slothfulness or sluggishness. So, in other words, you will not get the real stability that you need from God if you are not a diligent individual. You look at this and you might think, 'Now wait a minute. Are we going to prop up on works here? Are we going to have to work?' No! However, there is some work involved, because the word diligence here means 'somebody who exerts energy.' But you're not working to save yourself. You are working out that salvation that is in you; trying to get it on the outside. It ought to be your desire that what God has put in you should come out somehow. Yet, most of the time, what's in us is covered up by the flesh and people can't see it. Then we begin to wonder. We need to be stabilized. We are not talking about saving ourselves, but stabilizing ourselves where we can be men and women of faith who have confidence in who we are and what we are. This is what it's saying, because we need confidence to walk with God in the kingdom.

You see this assurance that Peter is talking about in verse 10, where he says that if we do these things ( I believe he's referring to verses 5-7); if we make our calling and election sure; if we are diligent to add some things, an entrance shall be ministered unto us abundantly to the everlasting kingdom. If you do these things, you're going to be walking in the kingdom like never before! You're going to have some confidence to walk with God. You say, "How do you get that? How do you gain that stability and confidence of our calling and election and be able to walk with our head up?" Peter began to say that you've got to have some things. You've got to be diligent to add some things to your life. There is a balance in assurance of salvation. I know before I was saved, I would try to give myself assurance that I was saved based on works. So, I'd pray more, and I'd read my Bible more, and I'd do these things more, and I'd do this, and do that, and now I'm not doing anything like that. Yet it may sound that way to some; but that is not what this is talking about. You already have something, but you need more confidence to reassure.

When I got saved, I knew something happen-ed to me. I knew some things but I didn't know all that I know now. So over a period of time, because of spiritual growth, I have become extremely confident. That didn't happen to me over-night. But it wasn't like It was before when I didn't know if anything had ever happened to me. I couldn't answer any questions. I couldn't find anything. All I had was my religious works. But the text passage starts out saying that we have obtained a like precious faith. So, you start out with faith. Where did you obtain faith?

In context, this passage of scripture is dealing with folks who have obtained a like precious faith. You can't skip that first basic thing right there. That's why you deal with the question, 'How do you get faith?' The answer is that it's worked by repentance, and Godly sorrow works repentance! You deal with all the ingredients. You know that you have obtained faith. You believe what real salvation is. You believe about the Savior. You met Him. You know it's real. You've got that basic ingredient that every child of God has. Because that is what it says in verse one. 'Simon Peter, a servant and an apostle of Jesus Christ, to them that have obtained like precious faith.' This is something you don't give yourself. It's something that God has given to you. You have obtained it. It's been given to you. You now possess a like precious faith. You're not adding that. In other words, you haven't saved yourself. God has saved you and you've got something in you and it is faith! It is a person who believes! But that person who believes can be weak. We know there are those who are weak in the faith. That faith needs to be strengthened. That precious faith needs confidence. You need more confidence. Your confidence needs to be strengthened so you can walk boldly with God.

Now it says in verse 5, 'besides this,' referring to the promises which were given to us, which help us be partakers of the divine nature. It says besides the promises, you need something else in your life. You've got to be diligent to add some things.

Now, I never understood the order, and order is important with God. When you read down through here, to me the order has always seemed backwards. Because I don't understand how the last one could be love. The way I've always looked at this passage of scripture is that you've got faith as a foundation. You've got faith down here at the bottom and what you do is add to your faith virtue. So I thought what you do is just add virtue to your faith. You've got to start building somewhere. So you add virtue, and to virtue, knowledge, and temperance, godliness, and finally after you've added all these things on the very top you'll be loving. Brotherly kindness--you've got to have that before you can ? Now wait a minute. I've never understood that. How can you have brotherly kindness before you ? How in the world can I have virtue without love first? That's what it seems like it's saying isn't it? It says you add. I have built some things, and first you have a foundation, and you put this on, and you put this on, and you put this on, and that's what it seems like when you see the word add. Isn't that what it looks like? So, I've never really had any confidence when I've read this because it's never made sense to me. It just didn't seem like it was right. The way I was perceiving it.

We need to be diligent people. And you are always going to be an unstable Christian if you are lazy. You can just count on it. Because, you may be saved, but you're going to always drift away from your salvation if you're not diligent. You've got to be a man of diligence. The Word says that you're going to have to exert some energy. Besides all the promises that God has given you, you need to exert some energy if you want to be stabilized. But, I don't want to do it in the wrong way. It would be terrible to exert energy in a way that won't produce that. And I don't want to mislead you and make you think that you need to exert energy by being more religious to prove that you're saved. That is not what these verses are saying. That is not going to help you. Now you can say, "Well I need to pray more and that will make me think I'm saved." But that's not in any of these verses. It doesn't use any of those words here at all.

So what is this saying if it's not saying that? We don't want to get anybody in and we don't want to give anybody false assurance. We want them to have the right assurance. But there is something about strengthening ourselves in the faith. Because when you look at that little word add, that's where you understand these verses. The little word add. If you misunderstand that word add, you will misinterpret the rest of these verses. I've always just assumed I knew what the word add meant. Well, add means to add to it. I mean, how hard can that be? Two plus two is four. Why would I want to even consider what add means? But, this is where the understanding is found. You have to be diligent to add to your faith virtue. So we need to understand first of all what we need to be diligent to do! We need to be diligent to add. Now what is that word? It means to minister nourishment. That is not what I was expecting to find. It means to minister unto and to supply. It is from two Greek words. One means upon and the other is a word that means to be a chorus leader, or to furnish the chorus at one's own expense, to supply, to furnish abundantly. Like a choir director who supplies the music and hands out the music; who provides what we're going to sing and then you just sing. You're supplying a chorus. Now I'm thinking, "What in the world is God trying to tell me?" Because of the word minister, I decided I'd look up where it's translated in other places. So I could get a hold on it. That always helps.

If you don't know how to study, this will help you. If you don't understand a word's definition, look how it's used in other places and that will help you understand the definition. It's like in school when the teacher says use this word in a sentence. Because that kind of helps you know what the definition is. If you can use it right. So if you look how they've already used it, then you will understand what it means. But remember, the word by itself means, to minister to, to supply.

This same word is in II Corinthians 9:10. "Now he that ministereth seed to the sower both minister bread for your food, and multiply your seed sown, and increase the fruits of your righteousness;" Now that word ministereth is the same word. He that addeth seed to the sower. Supplying something to something. When you minister to something are you not helping that thing? I would be helping it. Now if I am a sower, I need seed. God gives me seed to help me sow. I am only half a sower if I don't have seed. I might be a sower but if I haven't got seed, I'm not doing it. So seed was supplying my need. So, therefore, when God gave me seed, he ministered to me by giving it to me. He has added something that I needed. This is not a building term. It is a ministering term. I've always looked at it as building blocks and its not. It is a nourishing term.

Look in Colossians 2:19. This is where you are really going to understand the words. It says, "And not holding the Head, from which all the body by joints and bands having nourishment ministered, and knit together, increaseth with the increase of God." See that word, 'having nourishment ministered?' It is the word meaning add. Having nourishment ministered!

Have any of you today had nourishment ministered to you? By your own hand? Did you get a donut this morning? Did you get a bowl of cereal? You know what you did? You added to yourself. And what did it do? You got nourishment from it. Right? Nourishment was ministered to you and you were diligent about doing it. You got up and fed yourself because you needed something. Now that's what the word add means.

If you take what the word means, then you are going to immediately go back to II Peter and look and think about this differently. Look at verse 5, "And beside this, giving all diligence," that is, by your own hand "add," or minister nourishment, "to your faith. . ."

Immediately you've got to assume that your faith needs something. It is lacking something. Then you must assume that faith needs to be strengthened. There is your confidence. So you can have faith and yet have it need nourishment. We have obtained a like precious faith, but Peter didn't tell us that it never needed anything. See, I think what some of you assume is that your faith should never need anything. But I'm going to tell you that sometimes your faith will wane, and it will struggle. You will begin to wonder and doubt and you question and all those things. And your faith needs some nourishment just like your body sometimes. Just like you, sometimes you get weak and frail and you wonder if you're going to be able to go much farther unless you get a donut or something. Your faith needs some nourishment. Add to your faith; feed it. Feed your faith. It tells us what our faith needs, it needs virtue.

Now I'm going to give you this and then I will come back. I'm dealing with the word add, and Peter says add to your faith virtue. So your faith needs the nourishment of a donut called virtue. Then he says, but now virtue needs something. Add to your faith virtue and what? Virtue needs knowledge. Virtue needs some knowledge. But now wait a minute! Knowledge needs some temperance, some self-control. Self-control needs patience. And patience needs godliness, and godliness needs brotherly kindness, and brotherly kindness needs love. So what happens? Faith is at the end of the line waiting for nourishment to come from love which goes through these things and finally arrives at faith. It is like I thought! Love is the beginning! It's not something that you get finally. It's what you start with and if you feed love to brotherly kindness, when it gets through the chain, finally your faith will be strengthened. Strong faith is the end result, not love.

Some of you say, "How good is that for me?" Real good, if you ever get this. Now, we are going to go over this again because some of you are looking at me like, "I don't understand what you're talking about." Let me say it again. The word add means to provide nourishment, to minister nourishment. It's like feeding. So it says it needs something. Your faith is what you believe. What you believe about Christ; what you believe about salvation; what you believe about yourself. Your faith, at times, needs nourishment. It's lacking something. Why else did he say, "Add to it?" Now, that ought to help some of you right there. When you got saved, you had not arrived! But you've at least got that! But what does it need now and how do I get it? Your faith doesn't need love. Stay with this thing now.

It's like a food chain in the world. I don't eat mice! But somewhere I guarantee you I got some of it. I don't eat hay, but I eat cows, and guess what? Cows eat hay! Somewhere you probably got stuff that you don't need to nourish you, but whatever you ate probably needed it to nourish it to grow it up so you could get it. So, ultimately, at the end of the food chain is your faith.

Listen! Your faith is not going to be stabil-ized on loving somebody, but on virtue. And, your virtue needs nourishment. See, what happened was, I was perplexed because immediately it starts out with the most difficult thing there is. It's easier for me to love somebody than it is for me to be virtuous. Looking at this can cause great discouragement. Because you think, "I feel like I'm at the bottom and I'm having trouble here." Then you begin to feel like a failure because faith doesn't see you being as virtuous as you need to be. You say, "Well, what's virtue?" That's a good Question. Virtue is a virtuous course of thought. A good course of thought. It has to do with the way you think, because the way you think changes your life.

Look over in Philippians. Let me show you how the words are used so you all will know. Philippians 4:8, says, "Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things." Now every one of those things are virtues. They are good things. Virtue is good things, true, being truthful, that's virtuous, right? Honesty. That's virtuous. I'll tell you what; you tell a lie and see if you won't wonder if you are saved or not. See if your faith won't waver. Be dishonest one time and see if you won't question your salvation. Thank God we aren't saved by works! But it will make you stagger. Because faith needs to be nourished.

Now faith stands alone, given by salvation, which is worked by repentance, but it is stabilized and nourished, and strengthened, by virtuous living; virtuous thinking. "Whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure. . ." Get an impure thought and tell me if you won't have trouble. Do something impure, get an impure sexual thought and see if you won't have trouble. It doesn't mean you're not saved. It just means you're going to struggle. You are going to wonder. I don't care how old you are in the Lord, your faith will waver when you are not living virtuously. It doesn't mean your not saved. You're just going to get weak. This is the way it works. What the Scripture is telling you is that faith is nourished and strengthened by virtuous living and thinking. Thank God for grace and forgiveness until you can get the virtue that you need.

Now, see what happens. After studying this I thought, "My faith wavers, but is the only thing that strengthens faith virtue? Oh no, I'm in trouble! Because I'm not virtuous." I don't have as much virtue as I need. When you think about virtuous living and virtuous thoughts it is easy to see that virtue needs help. When we stop thinking about God and we stop thinking about things that are good and honest, our faith is going to waver. But, when you get to thinking right and thinking good thoughts and thinking about God, your faith is strong.

When you don't put your mind on good things and right things, you starve your faith to death. It becomes weak and almost faints. And you can starve him so bad until he can't even get up and walk with God. You can put your thoughts on evil continually and there is a need to think about God all the time. Because if I think about God, it will nourish my faith, if my thoughts are right and they are on good and honest things and truthful things, then I will be strong in faith.

Look, let me show you what this word also means; the word virtue. Let me show you how it's used again. It's also translated for the word praise.

I Peter 2:9, says, "But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should show forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvelous light:" The word praises is the word virtue used in II Peter. You should show forth the praises of Him. You know what our faith needs? It needs to be thinking on the good things of God. On the virtues of God, not on the thoughts of the world and their virtues, and what they like. Am I fixing to try to work in the flesh, trying to keep out garbage, "garbage in - garbage out?" I'll be honest with you, I have already tried all that and it didn't work. But now remember, it's still true that what you think on is going to help you or hurt you. It won't make you saved or lost, but it will make you stronger or it will make you weaker. You're saved or lost based on a work of God, repentance and faith, and you've attained a like precious faith but you are either going to be a strong Christian or a weak one based on what you think. You're either going to be believing strongly and have great confidence, or you're weak and have no confidence. Faith is strengthened by right thinking.

Remember in the days of Noah? 'As in the days of Noah,' remember what their problem was? Their thoughts were on evil continually and they corrupted their way before God. That word corrupt means, they ruined it; it spoiled, it rotted. What they had decayed because their thoughts were on the wrong things and their way was corrupt before God.

Now I'm going to have to say this, that in my life, I've had times where all I thought about was God. Then, there have been times when I couldn't get a thought of God on my mind. But there is that battle of the thoughts. So, in other words, virtue has a weakness. Now it's in me to think right about God. You can think on God! Virtue is there. There are right things to think about; things that are true, things that are honest. There's lots to think about, but do you ever have trouble putting your mind on them? You say, "I'm just going to think about God" - then all of a sudden you're over there thinking about something wrong before you know it; because, virtue needs nourishment.

God gives us the way in which to obtain a virtuous life. What's amazing to me is how we think we can do it by our will. I'm going to decide to put my mind thinking on the right thing. I'm going to eliminate my T.V. and I'm going to eliminate this, and eliminate this, and we do everything after the flesh thinking that the way we get virtue is to eliminate wrong thoughts. No! What you do, is you have to add to virtue. And, what is it that virtue needs? Well, it needs knowledge. Isn't that what it says? Now, all these are logical. When you get to thinking about it, every one of them is logical. If virtue is what you think, then you need to know what to think. Now, we all know what not to think! We have no trouble in thinking what we ought not to think. It's that we have trouble thinking on what we ought to think. So, we need nourishment. We need something to think on. Now listen; faith needs right thinking, needs truthful thinking, needs godly thinking, needs the praises of God. It needs the qualities of God. If you don't know what they are, how are you going to do that? So you need knowledge.

Now this word knowledge used here is a word that is not shallow knowledge. It means the deeper, more perfect knowledge of our faith. The things that are lawful and unlawful for Christians. Moral wisdom. But it's almost two words. It is to know something, but it also has in it to know it by experiencing it. Virtue needs to know some things. Therefore, you must have a hunger to know God. If you're unstable in the faith, you need to have a virtuous life. But in order to have that you're going to need to know the praises of God. So you're going to have to be diligent to know some things. Because, if you know about God, it helps you with your thoughts.

This word knowledge is found in a couple of places. Remember now, you have to stay with the train of thought and what I'm doing. Because every one of these needs nourishment. Your faith needs a virtuous life. A virtuous life is one which thinks on pure, good things all the time. That life wanes and it needs help to do right.

We have come out of a generation whose thoughts are on evil continually. God saves you, puts faith in there and says now, you need to live a virtuous life and think on good continually. Wow, that's tough! Forget about faith, I'm shaky in the virtuous area. So virtue needs some nourishment.