How Childish Thinking Hurts Us

This is a sermon that I gave in Nashville a couple of months ago and hadn't given here. I thought about it. I had something I was going to tie into the Days of Unleavened Bread. Then I pulled the notes out and I was looking through the notes. I basically centered this on one set of scriptures, one set of verses. The end of those verses actually deal with the Passover.

I thought, I'm going to give this sermon here today. Even though it's not directly related to the Passover, it is indirectly related to the Passover. I knew a man one time. I didn't know him that well. I don't remember his name. This was many, many years ago. He would tell his child, he had a little baby, when someone would offer them candy, he would say, no, no, no, that's terrible. You wouldn't like that. It tastes terrible. The baby would say, no.

He had his child trained not to ever take candy or cake or pie anything with sugar in it, because he told them it tastes terrible. I remember thinking, what happens when that child someday bites into something? All of a sudden, all this training is going to get really messed up, because the child is going to say, you lied to me. It tastes great. So I just remember that as, that's not a good way to train a child, and then that child is going to have these, be trained in a certain way of thinking and then be challenged with that.

And when the challenges come, they're going to realize they have a distorted viewpoint. Now, can you trust dad anymore? Can you trust dad anymore? Because he lied to me. The truth is that all of us as adults have distorted viewpoints of life that we learned as children. Now, some people came from very dysfunctional families. I know some of you did. And you have very distorted viewpoints because of that. You carry pain and hurt because of the way you were treated as children. Some of you have talked to me about some of that. Others have come from stronger families where they didn't have that much dysfunction. But you still have things we all learn as children from our families, from school, from whatever, from our friends.

And we grow into adulthood and we have these distorted viewpoints. And those distorted viewpoints hurt us spiritually as adults. Now, let's see if you've ever heard of these ways that children approach things. Of course, I get to see it all the time. And then I remember my children doing it. And then I remember me and my sisters doing the same thing. It's like watching the pattern. Have you ever seen children do this? He got a bigger piece than me.

Take three or four children and give them a candy bar and tell them to divide it up. And it gets into a real serious thing, right? I mean, they're gathered around in a circle. And it's first, the argument is, who gets to divide it? And how does it get cut up? And then once it's cut up, every piece has to be measured to make sure, because, uh-uh, that one's too big. No, no, no.

I remember one of her daughters was dividing it up one time. And the pieces weren't exactly the same, so she fixed it. She picked up the big one and ate off of it and laid it down. So now they're the same. Because we believe there has to be this absolute equality to everybody as a child. And it's just part of the way we look at life. How about this one? She did that on purpose. Children tend to believe that everything that's happening to them is done to them by people who are thinking it through.

Right? She did that on purpose. They bumped me. They hit me. They tripped on me. I, you know, I hear it all the time. I remember my children saying it. I remember saying it. Well, they had to do it on purpose because it hurt me or it bothered me or one of my toys were broken. They had to do it on purpose to do that to me. And so children tend to think that anything that happens to them, it happened on purpose.

And so they automatically accuse that child, the other child of doing it on purpose. How about this one? That's not fair. Boy, I hear that one a lot. That's not fair. And actually a desire for fairness and justice is built into us.

We are supposed to have a certain concept of fairness and justice, but we also know that life isn't fair. Right? Life's not going to be fair. And it just isn't. I'll pick on Sophie. I don't get to pick on her much, but she's here today. I can remember when she was little I was worried about this. I don't know if she even remembers this. She was signed up to go to a soccer league.

And she was so excited. I mean, she was excited. And she had her little ball and we were going to go. We got there and there's this big organized soccer league and they had lost her paperwork. Right? Isn't that what happened? Jason, they lost her paperwork. And she's there looking at all the little kids and she's all excited as we went through the paperwork. And they said, we're sorry. She can't join. And sitting down and having to explain to her, I watched her dad explain, you know, of course it's not fair, right?

I didn't do anything wrong. I did everything right. I'm here. I have my ball. I'm ready to go. And, you know, there's coaches out there organizing the teams. But you can't do it. Do you remember this, Sophie? Sort of? Okay. You were pretty little. I forget how old she was. And it was like, how is this fair when it's not? Somebody made a mistake. It's not aimed at you personally, but someone made a mistake. And life's not fair. But I do remember the two of us went out and played with her.

We went to a park and the three of us played soccer for an hour. And she was the happiest little kid in the world. You know, she had her papa and her grandpa playing soccer with her.

How did I know that's as good as anything else? So she was happy. But I do remember, even as an adult, feeling like this just isn't fair, right? That she has to now look forward to this for days, and she isn't able to participate.

How about this? Wait till I get you back. Thing is with children, if someone hurts me, they believe I will only feel better when I hurt them back. Then I will feel better. And there's adults who do that, right? I will feel better when I get you back. So wait till I get you back. If you don't do what I want, I'll hold my breath. Or some other thing like, lay on the floor and scream. Well, that's not going to work. Right? It's just not going to work. But we believe it will work. I'll lay on the floor and scream.

Or I will hold my breath. In other words, I'll actually do something that harms me in order to get what I want. And then the last one, I remember actually hearing these words. As a child says to another child, who made you the boss of me? Who made you the boss of me? Right? Nobody can tell me what to do.

And you know, as firstborns, we learn something. All you firstborns will understand what I'm saying. There's dad and mom and me. And every child that comes after, I'm the boss of. Right? That's the way life is. And the rest of them just don't get it. And we're just so frustrated for the rest of our lives that the rest of you just don't get it. We're the boss. Right? Who made you the boss of me? Now, we've all heard children say this.

We remember. That's why everybody, you know, there's sort of giggling. I remember saying that. Or you're looking at each other's kids. You know, I mean, you're looking at your own kids. I see that happening. And even adults look at each other like, oh, I've heard you say that.

Right? We learn these. You know, these are all distorted viewpoints of life. It's not how life works. And here's what happens if we hold on to these. And there's actual terms. Interesting terms that are used to describe how people can have a distorted view of life. So I'm not making up these terms. They're just terms that are used to explain them. So we all carry some of those views with us. You know, some we don't. Or other views we have as children. You know, I've sat down with many a woman over the years who said, I can't trust men because I was beaten as a child, or abandoned as a child, or whatever.

And you realize that got ingrained into them. And it's a struggle to say, how can I trust any man that won't treat me like my stepdad did? Right? And that's a reality. And it doesn't do any good to say, well, just get over it. That reality is harsh, and it's carried by that woman, by that person. So, let's look at, if we hang on to just the things we've talked about here, what happens to us?

One is called magnification. Okay, she got a bigger piece than me. He got a bigger piece than me. What happens is, magnification, we see everything in life in terms of, that person has it better than me. This person has it better than me. And so you're always looking at everybody else and comparing yourself to everybody else as, you have it better than me. This person really deals with envy as they grow up. They are very envious because everybody has a bigger piece of the pie.

And don't realize sometimes that they actually have a big piece of the pie. It's like some people don't realize how big of the piece of their pie is until they go to another country. Or even in places in the United States where poverty is very, very deeply embedded into that particular place, like some places of Chicago. And you go there and you realize, I can remember going through, it's different now, I can remember going through Harlem when I was a kid and it was just deep trapped in poverty.

Now it's not that way now, but it was then. It was then. And you realize, I came from a poor background at times and we didn't have, all the food we had was what my parents canned. And we only had meat if my dad went out and shot a deer. Otherwise you might go all winter without any meat. And we thought, well, we're a little bit poor, but now we have a pretty good piece of the pie, when you see what other people go through. But this is a viewpoint that you're always comparing everybody's piece of the pie to see who has the biggest one.

That is a sure way of being unhappy. Absolutely unhappy. Because there's somebody always with a bigger piece of the pie than you. And there's always people that have a smaller piece of the pie. Magnification. Anytime a situation doesn't turn out the way we want, we have an emotional breakdown. Right? Because we magnify everything. Everything's bigger than it actually is. Children do that because everything is big. You know, they go, why did children see it that way? Because everything's big.

I mean, everybody is twice your size. That's why it was funny to watch the two granddaughters who hadn't seen each other. They're both little, and it didn't take long. They're walking along holding hands. It's like, somebody my size! This is great! I'm not in the land of the giants anymore. And magnification is normal for a child.

Well, we see the world magnified as an adult. We create a distorted viewpoint of what life really is. The other is personalization. The personalization, we're back to, everybody does this to me on purpose. So you literally take everything that happens, and it's on purpose. I think you might remember, about two years ago, I was sitting in the middle of a little one-lane road, and a guy in front of me in a huge pickup truck backed up to get his mail.

And I'm sitting way far behind him, plenty of room. Okay, well, he's backing up. There's only one lane. And then, for reasons I don't know, he decided to back up more. And before I could hit the horn, he smashed in my car. And you know, I opened the door, and I looked at him, and I said, What are you doing? And he got out of the truck, and he looked at the car, and he says, I never looked in my mirror. He didn't do that on purpose. What's my first reaction? Are you an idiot? Right? He said, I realize he's like 6'5". Are you an idiot? But I looked at him, and I said, of course you didn't do it on purpose.

No one would do that on purpose. And then, you know, okay, let's talk about it. It's no big deal. But that first reaction was personalization. You had to do this on purpose. Nobody's stupid enough not to see a car parked 30 feet behind you. But he never looked in the mirror. And he says, I'm late for my daughter's soccer game.

And he says, I was just really about nervous to get there, and I never looked in my mirror. Personalization. See, we all do some of this stuff even now without thinking about it. Polarization. A person who has a polarized view of life, everything in life is about, you're on my side, or you're on the other side. There's only two sides to everything. You're on my side, or you're on the other side. There's friends and there's enemies, and that's how they see life.

Now, I know people like that. And, you know, when you're on their side, you're their best friend. When you have a disagreement, they want nothing to do with it. Everything is polarized. That's a childish way of looking at things. I can't see the forest for the trees. What happens is, when we have this viewpoint of life, all we see are the details.

So we're always in crisis. We can never get out of the crisis. That's what's happened in the last year. I'm going to have a meeting with the deacons and elders and the speakers here in a few weeks, and we're going to sit down and discuss moving forward, because the crisis isn't going to stop, it's just going to change. We've slid into crisis mode, where everybody's so wrapped up in the details. Nobody's seen the big picture. Well, there is no big picture, because without God there can't be. There's no big picture. So we're going to have to really be careful on how we focus our lives. It's going to be really more important, more important than it has been, because we've lived in Disneyland for a while, and it's not Disneyland anymore.

I'm not saying, oh, people are going to come shoot you. I'm not saying. I'm just saying, you and I don't live in Disneyland anymore, and we're going to have to spiritually realize we shouldn't have been in Disneyland anyways. So we have to work that through. Overgeneralization. This is something I have to watch. I do this.

Well, that person always does that. Well, no, they don't. My husband never pays me attention. Really? Never? My wife always is negative. Every single moment of every day she's negative. You think about how we just put these labels. Always. Never. And we overgeneralize. And when you do so, what happens? You can criticize that person however you want. Well, if I always am mean, we do it with each other in a congregation. That person always does it. I mean, you've known each other many times for a long time. My person always does this. That person never does that. Well, pretty soon you don't even have to have a relationship with them because, well, always said never.

Overgeneralization. And then the last one is, and this is really important in our society. We have to talk about this a lot. Where we've become... We reason everything through emotional reasoning instead of trying to be objective. And what happens is, if I feel it, it's true.

And I've had people tell me that. I know this is true because I feel it. Well, okay, here's a Bible. Prove it to me. Oh, no, I feel it. God works with my feelings. Well, God does work with our feelings. But that's why we also have this objective standard. We have to make sure we have someplace to go. And many times in life, we come to the conclusion, my feelings are wrong. My feelings are wrong.

Or they're not accurate. Not necessarily they're wrong. Feelings are never accurate. Because they're so complex. So explain how you feel. And you just have someone stare at you. I don't know. I'm just angry, or I'm just upset, or I'm just this. Explain that. Why? I don't know. So what happens is, if we get into this emotional reasoning, if I feel worthless, I am worthless. And God's answer is, I make you worth something. And I've seen people never really respond to God because I feel worthless. Okay, well, as far as eternity is concerned, we are worthless. Except God can do something. No, I feel worthless. But God can come into our lives and change that. Only He can change it. No, I feel worthless. And they never get out of that. It's because they're stuck in that feeling. You know, I feel like you don't love me, therefore I can treat you however I want. I feel like I deserve the job you got, therefore I can stab you in the back. See? We're motivated by feelings much more than we realize. And when they're educated and in line with the Scripture, that's good. When they're not, we do all kinds of things. So how do we deal with this? How do we deal with that? Well, the first thing is you have to go to God and ask Him to reveal to you your distorted viewpoints. You may have to go fast about it. It's always an interesting experience. Go fast and pray and spend time in your Bible and get away from everything for a while and say, What are my distorted viewpoints that I've absorbed as a human being? Maybe because of our culture. As Americans, we have distorted viewpoints that just come because of the culture we live in. And they're not what God wants, but they're absolutely normal to us. Of course they're normal. Everybody else thinks the same way. And then we've got to find out, well, they're not normal as far as God's concerned. So we need to first approach God with, I need help with distorted viewpoints I have of life.

And like I said, you could sum up and just go right back to what we believed as children. That always isn't the way reality is as an adult. Well, secondly, that we have to grow in spiritual maturity. And this we're going to go into one set of verses and look at how Peter describes growing in spiritual maturity. So let's go to 2 Peter. 2 Peter 1.

Verse 1.

This is an interesting introduction here.

We can read through this introduction and miss what Peter is saying to these people. Peter's writing to the church at large. He's not taught writing to a specific congregation. 1 and 2 Peter goes out, it was supposed to go to all the churches. So this was a, he's getting into very general huge concepts sometimes. He says, Grace and peace be multiplied to you. Now, let's just stop there and think about it. He says, grace and peace is multiplied to you. Grace is the favor of God, the involvement of God in your life. The grace of God, which of course ultimately is the ultimate act of grace, is Christ dying for us. So this is what we did last night. The ultimate act of grace is, we looked at that and commemorated that last night, is Christ dying for us. So, but grace is more than it. Grace is all the favor that God gives us. Grace is all the fact that God takes care of us. And I know you've had me do this before, but, you know, take a breath. You just experienced the grace of God because without his will to do that, you won't take another one. If he wills that you and I won't take another one, we won't. So that's his favor. He's giving us something. Everybody gets to take a breath today. Some people don't because their time's up. So we realize that grace is this relationship of favor with God, and peace is multiplied. And we're going to look at how that happens. Because in order to grow spiritually, to mature spiritually, so that our viewpoints aren't so distorted as much, you know, just childish viewpoints, we have to grow in maturity. He says, Peter usually is very exact. That's a Pauline sentence right there. Man, a life. Paul would be proud of that one. He's like, oh, that's really a three-hour sermon, but I'll write it down in a sentence. Just think about for a minute. He starts, and we're going to talk about how we grow, but he starts with, let's look at what God has given to us. The knowledge of God and of Jesus Christ our Lord. He starts with that. That was given to us through grace and, you know, the grace and peace of God. This is how this is being multiplied inside of us. This is how we are growing in grace and peace is because we have that knowledge. Without that knowledge, you can't. Then he says, his divine power has given to us all things pertain to this life and godliness. Now we're going back to what Mr. Perrin talked about. In this life, suffering is going to be part of life. He says, in the midst of it, remember, he's given us everything we need. We have to believe that. He's given us everything we need to pertain to this life and godliness. So we're learning this process. We're going through this, and God, never is God going to say, you know what, if I'd have given that person one more blessing, spiritual blessing, or a little more of my spirit, or opened their mind to one more thing, they would have made it, but they're not, so I'm going to have to put them in a lake of fire. Everything we need, we're going to get. We don't feel like it a lot, that that's what's happening. That's what it is to be human. But everything we need, we're going to get. Exceedingly great and precious promises. Do you know the promises of God? Because I tell you, those promises need to become more and more central to how you live life. There are promises God makes that we have to hold on to, or we won't receive them. But they're promises. You hold on to them, you will receive them.

He says that through these you may become partakers of the divine nature. When we receive God's spirit, we are a singular nature, a human nature that is partly evil, partly good. That's what we are. When you receive God's spirit, you have two natures inside of you, and they're at war with each other. You are, when you receive, God's Holy Spirit. You become at war with yourself.

Because you have two natures. And God's taking these two natures and creating one out of it.

So He's given us the divine nature. Understand what that really means? To receive God's spirit in us means we receive part of God. I mean, God's in parts, but I can't put it in language. We receive part of God in us. And what He does, He uses that then to shape and mold our nature. Eventually, when you and I are changed, we have one nature.

We have one nature. We have a divine nature. We've been recreated into something else. He says, having escaped the corruption that is in the world, we forget how corrupt this world is. And He's saying, look, we have escaped it. We're moving out of this. We're leaving this world behind.

And then He talks about the process. This is very interesting of how this growth takes place.

And like I said, I gave this a couple of months ago in Nashville and realized that I hadn't given this here.

And as we go through this, we're just going to go through these few verses here.

But this is an amazing process that we need to study.

We need to understand this, these first eleven verses in 2 Peter 1.

So, in verse 5, He says, But also, for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue and to virtue knowledge. And He says, you add. In other words, you actually are building off of something. You're adding to it. You're building off of it. So it's a process. It's not just like He says, here, have all these things. He says, you start here and then you build off of that and you build off of that. And God's doing this, remember, because it's the divine nature being built into us. We're submitting to what God is doing. And part of us is going to fight it.

Our human nature is going to fight what God's doing sometimes.

We just don't see the benefit in it.

Because we have this little childish viewpoint. You can't punish a child sometimes because they only know what they know. They only see what they can see.

You're a child. You don't treat a child with the same responsibility if they're two, as if they're ten. You treat them differently. You expect different things out of them.

So that's us. As we grow through this, there's times we resist it.

My one little granddaughter this morning came up. I was in the office looking over these notes. She sat in the chair. How old is she? Two. Two? Yeah. One. Almost two. Okay. And we were having a nice little conversation. And then I said, I'm going downstairs now. So she took my hand. And I thought I had a hard time going downstairs. We got down the stairs. And then she decided to go back up. And I said, no, we have to stay down. And I put up the little child guard. And suddenly this wonderful experience we're having was turning into collapsing on the ground screaming.

Which all the kids figure out after a while. Grandpa doesn't seem like motivated by this at all. He doesn't even get mad. Well, that's dumb. We all as adults have our moments of kicking and screaming, don't we? We're all still childish at some point. No, we don't get down on the floor and do it. But it's happening in our heads. And God's saying, well, that's pretty... that won't work. That won't work. You know, a lot of times we think of God being angry. And He does get angry with us.

And sometimes He's just looking at us like a father and saying, boy, man, that's not going to work out at all. He says you have to put... you have to give diligence. That's a very interesting concept. You have to dedicate yourself to the process. You know, diligence means you're working hard at something. But you're working hard at something God is doing. You have to give yourself to the process.

You have to just throw yourself into the process of what God is doing. And He says, so you have to add to your faith virtue. So He starts with faith. You know, if we don't have an understanding, some understanding of God, and some understanding of Jesus Christ is, and we don't believe and say, okay, I must follow, and then we attempt to follow, like little children that don't understand a lot of times what's going on.

We attempt to follow. We have to start there. If we're not willing to do that much, you never grow up. You never grow up. So we start this process, and we say, okay, I'm going to follow. And we have no idea what that really means. We have no idea the difficulty of it. Okay, we have this. We start with this. But that faith is the foundation that we build off of. He says you must add to that virtue.

Virtue is an interesting word. We don't talk about it much, or use it much in our language today. It's an Old English word. It literally means, in Greek, moral excellence. In other words, you truly obey God. Not just because I'm a lawkeeper, but because I believe it. I have moral excellence.

The morality of the law. Don't steal. Don't lie. Don't kill. Don't commit adultery. Don't worship idols. It's part of who you are. It's part of your moral excellence. So you add to your faith a moral excellence. So the idea that, oh, I have faith. That's all I need. I've heard people say that. I don't have to obey God. I just have faith.

Peter says, oh, that is so childish. If you really have faith, you're pursuing obedience. So you have moral excellence. And what that means is, really, there is no half-hearted Christianity. Half-hearted Christianity isn't Christianity at all. Half-hearted Christianity isn't Christianity at all. In our trust in God, we begin to identify with Him and with Christ. And as we do, who gets the biggest piece doesn't matter that much anymore.

I'm going to pay you back. Just wait until I get you back. Doesn't matter. My wife always tells a story about her brother, who, when he was very little, got mad at his mother and said, wait until I get big and you get little. I'll take care of this.

Somehow he thought he was going to get big and the adults were going to get smaller in life. And that's how it was going to get fixed someday. He was going to be big and she was going to be little. We start to move away from identifying everything with our own thoughts and emotions and constantly pursuing what does God want.

You know, I just passed on something here. The more I try, the older I get, and I say, okay, I can't go by my thoughts and emotions. And the more I delve in, I have to let God decide this. I'll go to my wife and I'll say, you know, I used to have such surety of things. And now I find myself many times saying, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. What does God want?

And suddenly I'm not so sure of myself. Okay, wait a minute. Before I do anything here, let me think about this. Let me pray about this. I mean, look at this in the Bible. Because I've actually lost a little bit of self-confidence as I get older because I realized I shouldn't be so self-confident. Because sometimes I'm not right.

So let me make sure I'm right. Oh, that's part of the maturity process. At first I thought, maybe I'm getting senile. No, actually, it's part of the maturity process. Double check. What does God want? Don't react with your own reactions.

Don't always follow your own feelings about something. It always ends up better. So moral excellence. We become a realization that obeying God isn't because of rewards. Obeying God is because He's good and we want to be good. We want goodness for goodness sake. Because if we don't want goodness for goodness sake, what Mr. Perriman was talking about, some of the trials of life, you'll give it up. You'll give God's way up. Because sometimes there is no reward in the immediacy of obeying God.

Sometimes there just isn't. The reward's later. So if we're only doing it for reward, not because of goodness sake, because God's good and I want to be like God, then we stay immature. He then goes on, He says in verse 5, adding to virtue knowledge. Mator Christians know what they believe, not because they've just heard it at church.

Now, many of you grew up in the church. You can't believe what you believe just because you've heard it. You have to know this book, and you have to know you believe what you believe because you found God telling you this. Just to do it because we've heard it isn't enough. You have to know where the knowledge comes from. You have to know it comes from God. And you have to have an enormous amount of faith in a book that this is the Word of God.

With all of the things that seem strange and you don't understand, God left this for us. People died. You know how many people throughout history have died to make sure this book kept being printed? It's amazing. All through Europe and England. The reason we have the King James Bible is because they couldn't kill the people printing Bibles fast enough. So the king said, I'll fix this. We'll make an official Bible. So they made a translation of the Bible and printed it.

It's a pretty good copy. But it's not because he wanted...he didn't want the average person to have a Bible. But people were printing Bibles. They had translators. They had people who knew Greek. They knew Hebrew. And they were translating the Bible. And so finally the government took over and printed a Bible. Fortunately, they did a good job. So you have to understand...you have to...moral excellence. You say, well, I've obeyed God all my life, but do you know why? Do you have the knowledge? Now, he didn't put knowledge first. It's very interesting.

First is faith in God. But along here we come down to knowledge. And I think over the next year, for those who grew up in the church, this needs to be an intense year of you learning the Bible. Learning the Bible. That means you have to read it. That means you have to read it. To be mature, we have to know why we believe what we believe, why we are motivated to do what we do. Because to say, my church taught me this is not enough. Is it enough? You have to believe it in here because you believe God taught it to you.

Now, we're trying our best to teach you the Bible. Everyone that gets up here has put a large amount of time into the preparation of what they do. You know, when I was here a couple weeks ago, and I heard Mr. Smith, Mr. Haggard get up and speak, today I heard Mr. Perryman, these are thought-out messages. These are thought-out messages to take the Bible and try to make them into real... This is reality, folks. This is what our life is. This is what the world is.

And here's how the Bible fits in. But you have to believe that, not just because we told you. You have to believe it because you've studied the Bible. And you know what it says. Because someday, you're going to face... You're going to face persecution because of what you believe. Because that's where our society is going.

I'm not saying you have to be some kind of negative person. I'm not saying people are going to drag you out and stone you in the streets. But all you have to do... Come on, get on Facebook, get on Twitter, and say some Bible comment. And let it get out there and see what happens. All of a sudden, people who thought you were really nice think you're next... you know, you're not a Nazi. This is the tip of the iceberg as society changes. So you better know it, folks, because you're going to have to defend it.

And you will be happy if you defend it. And you will be miserable if you don't. Giving in doesn't bring you happiness. It destroys who you are inside. Then he says... He goes on and he says here, to knowledge... In verse 6, self-control. In other words, if you have knowledge, you have to control it. You just can't. There's a time to say things, there's a time not to say things. I was talking to the guy at the NBC Suites.

The man that sets up all the events there. He said, this is a church of God that's here today. It was a Pentecostal church of God. He said, now we're not like them. He said, we had another church of God here a while back.

And they only taught the Old Testament. I said, really? He said, yeah. And I said, why do you say that? He said, because they did it when he Christmas trees up. And, you know, in the room, I said, I know those people. I said, that wasn't why they wanted that. And he looked at me for a minute. I said, they believe in Jesus Christ. And the look at his face...

We left his office, so he had to put my mask on because he put his on. Because he has to when he walks out of his office. We always take him off. But, okay, we walked in and his eyes got real big. And he said, they don't believe in the commercialization of Christmas.

And the fact that it's just, you know, it's not even about Jesus. That's part of it. He says, I get that. Now, I could have said, no, it's pagan. And my mind said, whoa, he just got it. He stopped and turned on me and his eyes got real big. He said, okay, he got half of it. We'll just leave it at that. He said, so why are you... Okay, then you must go to church on Saturday. Yeah. Why are you having a Sunday service? I said, at the time of Jesus, there was a week-long festival at this time, including the Passover. When he sat down with his disciples and said, take the bread and the wine from my body, he said, oh yeah, I know about that.

I said, we actually do that on the night that he did that. Oh, and suddenly I saw he was overwhelmed, just overwhelmed like... I mean, it's like, wow, you know. Well, okay, so they do believe in Jesus. I said, yeah, they believe in Jesus. So do we. It was a fascinating conversation. How much do I give him at the time? That's where the self-control comes in, because I'm the kind of person that would have said, let's sit down.

Let me get my Bible out of the car and let's talk. Okay. Now, it wouldn't have done either of us any good. It sure would have helped our business relationship with him. But there's something planted in that man's mind that's like, I get it. All this commercialization. That's part of it. So self-control keeps us from beating people up. And in the church, we can beat each other up over knowledge. Right?

We can have something we understand, and the person next to us does it, so we beat him with it. Right? It's funny. Knowledge is here after it. It's knowledge, and then you have to add self-control to that. And that doesn't just mean with the knowledge. You mean self-control in everything. Now we have to really grow up, and you know, the hardest thing about growing up, and I haven't mastered it yet, and I'm 65 next month.

I still have total control over my emotions. Not yet. Not that you have to control them, but what I mean is so that you don't do something negative. You don't do something wrong. You know?

So that you don't maybe obsess over somebody or something until you let something... You watch something on the news, you obsess, obsess, obsess until you've ruined your day. Right? That's not right. That's not good. That's not what God wants. But we've probably all done it. You know?

There's certain politicians I tell my wife, don't watch them. Because I want to be a happy man. It's purely selfish. Just don't watch them.

Add self-control. Self-control is about submission to the will of God. That's what's so hard about it. Self-control means you actually give up self. You give up on yourself.

Someone may not like what I just said.

Now, I have a story about lightning, but I'm going to move on because I don't want to get by. It involves Gerald Waterhouse. Somebody even knows who Gerald Waterhouse is.

Okay, I'll tell you.

For those who don't, Gerald Waterhouse would preach for a minimum of three hours. He was doing a Bible study once in this little town in Pennsylvania where we lived. It was raining. It was storming. Just as he said, God will strike people down. He would always pound the table. Lightning hit the transformer and blew it up and everything went out.

He said, give me a flashlight. We all sat there in the dark for about an hour while he finished reading the Bible with a flashlight. Years later, even the last time I saw him, he'd say, I was like 13 at the time. I'm a little kid. He'd come up and say, hey, Gary, do you remember that time we were in Uniontown, Pennsylvania and the transformer blew up? I'd say, yeah, and I wanted to see Gerald. At 13, I kept thinking, this man's crazy. But, you know... So anyways, that was my story. Okay, let's move on here. So the problem with self-control is that it is submission to God where you give up some of the control. So the self-control is, I have control of everything. No, it's not. Not spiritually. Self-control is, now I'm giving up some of this so that God controls me. That's a whole subject in itself. See, this is about growing up. This is about growing up. This is about spirituality. And then he says you add self-control, perseverance. In other words, now it's tough. When you keep adding this, it gets to the point where now you just gotta sometimes put your head down and plow through this, because you've got to persevere. You've got to last. You know, it's interesting. The Greek word here that's translated, persevere, one of the best explanations I've ever seen of this is one Greek dictionary that said, it is the quality that does not surrender to circumstances or succumb under trial. Surrendering to circumstances is hard for us. Watch a child trying to surrender. I mean, circumstances drive them, right? Because they have no power at all. Except to scream. I mean, what else can they do? And we find ourselves, we can't be driven by circumstances. Now, we still have to react to circumstances, but we can't be driven by circumstances. And then he says to perseverance, godliness. Godliness is interesting in Greek. It literally means well worship. It doesn't have to do with just being godly. You know, moral excellence, we talked about that. It goes beyond that. It actually has to do with piety or religious duty. So in other words, God desires to be worshipped a certain way, and we worship Him the way He wants to be worshipped. We worship Him how He wants to be worshipped. Which I wanted to tell the guy this week, no, we don't keep Christmas in Easter, because we worship God the way He wants to be worshipped. But I can't, right? There wasn't the right time and place to say that.

So piety, now, that's something we never even talked about. And yet He says, you grow into this, which now your whole life is centered on worshiping God the way He wants to be worshipped. Now, that doesn't mean being a legalist, okay? But that's a whole other subject. Then He says, you add to godliness, brotherly kindness. Once again, what's very interesting here, the next step in this is how you treat each other.

How we treat each other in the imperfections of life is part of our spiritual maturity. And you have to be well along into the process before this even comes along. Brotherly kindness. And it's not just each other. It's everybody we meet. It's everybody in the world. We are to every day, every person we come in contact with, try to leave them a little bit of kindness. A little bit of kindness. Ah, it's not easy, is it? Try to leave everybody with a little bit of kindness.

Boy, this maturity thing is difficult. So I said, this is a Pauline statement. We've got these few verses that Paul, well, it takes five or ten or twenty sermons just to explain. And this is Peter. And then He says, to brotherly kindness, agape, that incredible Greek word. I'm going to give a series of sermons. I gave a series of sermons that ten years ago. I'm going to redo them. I think it takes six or seven just to explain agape. Agape is a Greek philosophical word. I have one Greek dictionary that uses fifty pages to try to explain it. And I can't even figure out what they're saying in some of it.

There's part of it in Greek, that's part of the reason why. Parts in English, parts in Greek. But it's a philosophical word that means the ultimate goodness. And Paul redefines it to mean the character of God.

That's why you'll find agape used a couple different ways in the New Testament. Because Paul is the one that says, ah, let's just use this word that the Greek world will understand. The ultimate goodness and say this is the character of God. So if you want to know God, you have to understand His character. And this is where He ends this. This discussion of spiritual maturity ends with, now, we add to all this the character of God.

Remember, he already said He's given us all things to get there. It's the getting there. It's following Him. It's letting Him work with us. But the ultimate and brotherly kindness is that we get to the place where treating other people right becomes the priority of life.

We're not so interested in, do I get a bigger piece of the pie? We're not so interested in, wait till I get you back. We're not so interested in all these things. We're now interested in, okay, this may be painful for me, but what do I do for the goodness of this person? And he says, now, once you get to that point, the next step is the very character of God. And now you're mature. You feel like a child right now? Spiritually? Because we should. We're just still children. Yeah. That's the point. That's why he said you have to give diligence to this.

This is a process. This is a process. This is just scratching the surface of what God wants us to be as we grow up. We can know the truth, but we have to grow up in it. Let's look at 2 Peter here, how he finishes this. Because this is fascinating. Because this actually, like I said, I was going to do something else based on the Passover. Then I realized this brings us back to the Passover. So we'll go back here to 2 Peter and chapter 1. I wonder if James doesn't say what I want him to say.

2 Peter chapter 1. We just read those first four verses where he encourages us and says, Look, God's doing this. Keep your mind on that. Keep your mind on God. Verse 5 says, But also for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge, to self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness, to godliness, brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness agape.

The English word love there doesn't capture what he's saying at all. The very goodness of God. This is maturity. He says, For if these things are yours and abound, if these things become who you are and you abound in this, God helps you grow in this, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For he who lacks these things is short-sighted even to blindness, and has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins.

We have forgotten what the Passover is all about if we are not abounding in these things. That's what Peter says. And then he says, Therefore, brethren, be even more diligent. He goes back to, you've got to throw everything into this. Your energy, your heart, your mind, everything's got to go into this. Therefore, be even more diligent to make your call an election sure. We are called, then we are elected. For if you do these things, you will never stumble. Remember where it comes from, though. It comes from God. That was the first four verses. We then are diligently giving ourselves over to the process. He says, you do this, you're never going to stumble.

You're going to keep going. You're going to grow. And then he says, For so an entrance will be supplied to you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. And so Peter ends it by reminding us of our goal, of our purpose.

It's just a remarkable, concise little set of scripture of verses, 11 verses, in which Peter matches Paul. Just, you know, I may be the dumb fisherman, but with God's Spirit, he matches Paul. It is just the brilliance of what he's saying. Think about this over the next week. We're still children, and God knows that. That's why God's so patient with us. We're still little children, but we have to be growing. We have to be moving forward, and God wants us to grow up.