Adding: full transcript and answers

▶ 0:00 We’re going to step back and take a broad view and look at it. We’re going to go to that verse in Second Peter 1:5, and now you guys know it by heart. And you have all these things. And the term “add to your faith,” it implies that you can’t stay in one’s place. It’s such a good word. As soon as you hear it, you say, “I’ve got to do more than just believe. I’ve got to do more than just accept Christ in my heart. I’ve got to move on.” And it’s so good. And we’re going to look at this scripture and how much God is going to do for us. So “add to your faith virtue.” The virtue it’s talking about there is the moral excellence. As we learned, you’re committed to, you know, when you come to Christ.

▶ 1:00 You have to say no to sin. The moral excellence: you don’t abort babies anymore, you’re not going out and have sex outside of marriage, you throw the drugs out, you say no to that stuff. And just by saying no to that, just by living a moral excellent life, it will bless you. Just by saying no, you haven’t even added these other things, but by getting rid of the sin and let God do a work in your life, it begins to bless you. And that’s just the first step. And then he says to add knowledge. And as we teach here, you’ve got to read the Scriptures when you go home. It’s not just Sunday morning. Mr. [unclear] can’t come up in 15 minutes and fill you with enough bread to last a week. Amen. We’ve got to read, we’ve got to study the Scriptures, we’ve got to know for ourselves.

▶ 2:08 Self-control: you know, it’s also like the moral excellence, you have to say no, but self-control is also self-controlling your mind, taking care of it first in your mind, stopping that. The tongue: the Bible says the tongue is an unruly evil. Controlling the tongue—oh, man. Living in this life, getting married, having kids, you just have to learn. It’s a crash course in tongue control, right? Amen. You live with somebody, everything’s changing and you don’t know what’s going on. And patience—patience, my God, I need patience. Just like I was saying, you get married, you have kids, or just being a teenager having patience with your parents. Man, I’m telling you, that’s right. They can be tough. It can seem tough being a child. As parents, a husband and wives—patience. Man, you know, you’ve said these things over and over. You’ve got to have patience. Or maybe you don’t get it and you’ve got to have patience with yourself.

▶ 3:32 Like godliness—Christlike. Brotherly kindness: we come in here this morning, there are so many people loving one another, being kind sincerely. It was good. It was such a good feeling this morning in this place. And agape love, as defined in 1 Corinthians 13—you guys know that scripture. We all know about love, and it’s not love that’s defined by the world. It’s a different kind of love. It’s a love Jesus had. So much love for the Pharisees that he came in conflict with them. He rocked their world. He approached them and he said, “No, you’re wrong,” why? Because he loved them. And people don’t see love that way. They feel like it’s only a fuzzy. God is going to conflict with you. He’s going to approach you. Why? Because he loves you and he knows what’s best for you. He’s the Creator. Somewhere we’ve got to come to the realization that God really is the Creator. God really has so much power we don’t even understand it. And we sit here and we say to God, “What do you know, God?” What? He knows everything.

▶ 4:53 But it goes on to say—we want to look at these. You know, we talked a lot about these things, and Mr. Kincer has gone through. But after this, after the verse in 2 Peter 1:8, it’s very important what it says afterwards. It says, “For if these things”—talking about the additions to faith—“if these things abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful.” Barren: useless. You know, a desert is just—you go out there, it’s cracked. Death Valley. You can ride on it, you can tear it up, but that’s about it, you know. And it’s okay to be in a desert, but God wants us to be flourishing. God wants us to bear fruit. And yes, we do go through times of no water, and it causes us to dig deep. But when we apply these things, when these things abound in us, when we are exercising, when we take the knowledge and we go to the Scriptures and we get knowledge, we go to high school and we’re actually paying attention, and we go to college because we’re trying to add knowledge to ourselves—you know, God is going to bless those things. When we are more adding virtue, saying no. Amen.

▶ 6:28 When we add self-control, when we are trying to add patience, God is going to honor that. And it says right here, if these things abound you will neither be barren nor unfruitful—that means you’re going to be fruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. And you see, the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ—Christ wants to transform who we are, and not just us but people around us. You see, when you bear fruit you have something to give out. You have a tree, an orchard. It gets sent out throughout all of California, and people partake of that, and they get nourishment and vitamin C from oranges and all this stuff. Amen. Because somebody took the time to plant, somebody took the time to water, somebody took the time to take care and add to that seed.

▶ 7:31 Second Peter 1 verse 9. You know, God is so—he’s like, you know, you’re going to be so—if these things abound in you, you’re going to be blessed, you’re going to be fruitful. And on the other side, if you don’t, it’s rough. You know, in the Old Testament, if you listen to Me, you’re going to be blessed. You’re going to be—oh man—you’re going to be great throughout the earth. If you don’t, you’re going to have a big problem. You’re not going to have blessing. You’re going to have problems in your life. Line: Second Peter 1:9. And those here that are young, and you’ll find as you grow up, if we don’t add these things, you’re going to find that sin is going to creep in. Sin is going to hurt you. “Whoever lacks these things”—these qualities—“is blind, shortsighted, seeing only what is near to him.” Blind, just like the Pharisees. The Pharisees, they weren’t adding to their faith. They believed in Abraham, they believed in God, but they didn’t add anything. They were adding knowledge, they were learning the Scriptures, but they missed it. They were blind. They couldn’t see. They weren’t adding Christ. “And has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins.” Again, here we see adding to our faith. We come out of sin. We’re cleansed from sin. Christ died on the cross to cleanse us, to get rid of that, to make us a new creature. It’s plain in the Scriptures, the process that we need to go through.

▶ 9:22 Amen. And such a powerful promise in 2 Peter 1:10. It goes on to say, if you do these things—if you add to your faith—you will never fall. And that is a promise worth seeking after. That is such a powerful promise. It says, and you will receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom. There’s different kind of welcomes. There’s a rich welcome and a poor welcome. And “oh yeah, yeah, you believe, come on in,” and “oh, there he is, the guy who added to his faith, the guy who did—come on in.” Man, you know, I don’t know what that means, a rich welcome, but I want a rich welcome. You know, Jesus keeps saying, “These things in My house are many mansions.” You know, he’s got something for us, and he’s saying mansions to let us know they’re valuable. So he’s got valuable things for his people. But we’ve got to add. He wants to reward us. He wants to reward his people. We have to add to our faith.

▶ 10:40 Daniel 1:4. It says that the servant, the prince of the eunuchs, was to go out and find men, children of Israel, with no blemish, well-favored, skillful in wisdom and cunning in knowledge and understanding science, and teachable. Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego—I always say the name because I can’t remember their original names—they were already working on adding to their faith. They believed. They believed in God, and they were adding knowledge, they were adding wisdom. See, these young men stood out. And you guys, as young people, we’ve got to decide as young people to be individuals, to stand out. Cry, believe in God, stand and add to your faith. It’s going to have the best effect in your life. As a young person in high school I was different, and people around me were different. When I went to college I was different. When I was in college I actually listened. When I was in high school I listened. I did my work. And I tell you, that has blessed me ever since I’ve been out of college. And it’s going to hurt you if you don’t. If you don’t add.

▶ 12:05 And you see, Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, they were chosen because they stood out. They stood—they were adding to their faith. And it says in chapter 1 verse 17, you see they had knowledge, but then God gave them. Read this right here: God gave them knowledge and skill in all learning and wisdom. You see, they had a level of knowledge, they had a level of wisdom, but then God came and gave them more. He added to their knowledge. I want that kind of knowledge. I want that kind of wisdom. I want that kind of understanding working in my home and my life and my family. But you see, these guys stood up for Christ. They had to begin to add faith. You have to start doing it. They stood out. They qualified. They were just qualifying. They weren’t chosen yet. They weren’t chosen yet. But God, in the middle of their qualification, from qualification to when they were chosen, God gave them more knowledge. God gave them wisdom and understanding. And it says in Daniel verse 20, in all matters of wisdom and understanding the king found them ten times better. And he found them ten times better because God gave them. God gave them knowledge. You know, they weren’t some magical awesome people. They didn’t have their own great ability. Their greatest ability was submitting to adding to their faith.

▶ 14:01 And you don’t have to be a super smart person. You don’t have to be a genius. You know, I would read Daniel, I say, “Gosh, this guy, he just had so much ability.” No. He made a choice as a young person to add to his faith, to exercise what the Bible said to do. And somewhere God met him in the middle of that and gave him more knowledge, more understanding, because God did it. And you see, when you add, God is going to meet you in the middle somewhere, and he’s going to give you more. He’s going to—the Bible says in the New Testament, to whom who has, more will be given. And you see, we’ve got to add to our faith. We’ve got to discipline ourselves. And King Nebuchadnezzar found them ten times better than all in his realm.

▶ 15:07 And we’re going to look at our second person. First Kings 4:29. God gave Solomon wisdom. You know, Solomon—I can’t see where—it doesn’t say in the Bible that he was adding to his faith. You know, I didn’t find that. So we’re going straight to the place where God gave him something. He asked for wisdom. He came to God and said, “I want wisdom to rule this people.” And it says in verse 29 that God gave Solomon wisdom, very great insight, breadth of understanding as measureless as the sand of the seashore. Solomon was given so much knowledge. He was given knowledge of things that we are finding out today in science. He was given knowledge by God that created everything. And people would come to hear all of this knowledge. Solomon’s wisdom was greater than the wisdom of all the men of the east. I mean, how do they find this stuff out? How do they know? He was wiser than all the men of the east, greater than all the wisdom of Egypt—all the wisdom combined, it sounds like. You see, God had blessed this guy. He was wiser than any other man. But if you read in First Kings 11 verse 1 through 4, it says, “But King Solomon loved many strange women.” King Solomon started to marry. He had 700 wives and 300 concubines.

▶ 16:54 He—it says the Scripture, the Bible says that his wives began to turn his heart away from God. And then we find later on that he is praising and giving thanks to another god, to an idol. And you see, Solomon, he threw out adding to his faith. He threw out virtue. You know, he wasn’t supposed to marry all those girls. That wasn’t right. He threw it out. He threw out self-control. He threw out knowledge of Christ. He threw out the Scriptures. You know, knowledge—he knew who created everything. He threw it out. He threw out virtue and godliness. And his wives turned away his heart. Later on in his life God was angry with him and brought judgment on the land. You see, in Second Peter we learned that you’re going to be blessed when you add to your faith, and if you don’t there’s going to be punishment. And that’s exactly what happened with Solomon. God gave him all this wisdom. God gave him these things. But he turned away. He left his addition.

▶ 18:21 But it says in Daniel 1:21 that Daniel continued even into the first year of King Cyrus. Daniel continued. Everybody say “continued.” Continued. Daniel continued. He continued to add to his faith. He continued to add. He didn’t neglect. He didn’t turn his heart from God. And if you read Daniel 1 through 12, you see Daniel becoming more and more mature, more excellent, more and more. Amen. And God is showing him more and more. And he wants to show you more and more. If you do these things you will never fall. If you add to your faith you’ll never fall, and you’ll receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord Jesus.