Hurry Up & Wait, Part Two

1. Read 2 Peter 1:1-11. What does it mean for you personally that God has granted to you all things that pertain to life and godliness?
2. 2. What are your go-to excuses whenever you aren't living in a godly way (e.g. physical, social, spiritual pressures).
3. When you slow down and rest, where do you feel your life is aiming? What have you noticed in your life that could potentially pull your affections away from God, particularly in times of rest?
4. What did the text show is a good barometer to gauge whether God's glory and excellence is the ultimate aim of my life in this season?
5. In which of the 7 virtues in verses 5-7 might God be encouraging you to be more diligent in this season?
6. What practical steps can you take to reduce hurry in your own life in a way that puts God's glory as the chief aim in your rest?

**Prayer + Practice: **

Take inventory of what your rest looks like this week. What is your heart aiming towards when you step back from the hurry? What do you find yourself reaching for in the quiet? Ask God what might be pulling your affections away from him and what you can do to keep his glory and excellence in focus.

Well, we started last week at the end. We started at the end of Second Peter, which is a letter that he wrote as his own life was coming to an end and Jesus had revealed his martyrdom was coming. It was right around the corner. And so with his own end in mind and the clarity that comes with imminent, impending death, Peter reminds us of our own end, sort of a last will and testament. He's saying, here's what I want you to remember when I'm gone.

It was fitting to start at the end, because Advent starts at the end.

More than just fuzzy feelings leading up to Christmas, Advent is meant to get the Apocalypse into our bones.

Advent slows us down in order to stir in us a longing and anticipation for the future, so that that future hope energizes how I live faithfully now. Or as one author put it, to live in a way where the future becomes the beating heart of my now. Because of the future hope that I'm waiting for, how should I then live? But we said after 2000 years of living in what the New Testament considers the last days, I mean, you can start to wonder. You know, it feels like a classic case of God telling us to hurry up and wait.

Somehow we're called to live in this constant state of readiness, being spiritually awake and alert, while also learning patience and endurance in the waiting, or as Peter put it, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God. And so we saw a lot of popular Christian teaching will try to make one or the other absolute and absolute value, either making the Christian life all about movement and works, or else presenting slowness as the absolute value. But we see here there is a tension between the two. We have to wrestle with the waiting and the hastening. We have to slow down enough to catch God's heart in order to be electrified with the things that he considers urgent.

We said, it's not like one particular speed is more holy, as if you could set a metronome and just follow the constant clicking. You've got to watch and learn the rhythms of the conductor. Who knows what the music needs, knows when it needs to yield and when it needs to urge on. So when the scoffers asked in Second Peter, where is the promise of his coming? Peter reassures us, God sees time differently than we do.

For God, a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years is like a day. His ways are far beyond ours, far higher than we can comprehend. And his apparent slowness we saw last week is actually his patience toward us, not wishing that any would Perish, but that all would come to repentance. So to catch God's heart means learning a kind of slowness. But right when we're content to stay at that one speed, that next verse jolted us awake.

Said, the day of the Lord will come like a thief. It'll come like a thief. Keeping pace with the Spirit also means learning a kind of urgency. And so Peter says, when you see the end that's coming, since all these things are thus to be dissolved, since nothing that we see here is really going to last, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God? Waiting for and hastening.

What does it mean to wait for and hasten the coming of the day of God? Well, last week we looked at waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God. Part of that means slowing down enough to catch God's heart for the lost, to catch his urgency for the lost. This week we'll look how slowing down. Slowing down and keeping the end in mind, this coming advent, it charges us with a sense of urgency in living lives of holiness and godliness.

So last week we started at the end of the book. Now we're going to retrace our steps, see how Peter got us there. So open up to the first chapter of Second Peter. And it starts with resting in who God is and what he's done, and then emphasizing this urgency in our response. So right after Peter's initial greeting, he drops one of my favorite passages in the New Testament.

This passage is so full, so rich and full of mystery with how we relate to God. And so it starts with this truth. His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness. His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness. We're going to start right there because, you know, in chapter three, Peter's goal is to get us living these lives of holiness and godliness as we wait for and hasten the day of God.

Well, he says right here, right from the beginning, that this has been made possible because God has supplied us with everything we need to live it out. It's not in your own strength, it's by his divine power. And so however daunting that may sound, that you could live a life of holiness and godliness, however daunting it might sound that you could actually start to see change in your life, however daunting it might sound that you could actually break free from that habitual sin that you keep coming back to, however daunting it sounds that you could actually be the kind of person that helps other people learn and grow, be discipled in the way of Jesus, however daunting that may sound. We are called to start by resting in the work that God has done, the divine power that enables us to live this kind of life. So before we seize the day, we're called to wait.

We learn to rest in who he is and what he's done. So many excuses for the Christian life start off with, you know, yeah, but you don't know my story. You don't know the trauma that I carry. You don't know what I've done. You hear the good old boys saying, you know, if I got the dip in your mouth, you say, if I don't, if I walk into that church, I reckon it'd fall in on me, right?

Or my personal, least favorite, it's just who I am. It's just who I am. That may be who you are, but it's not where God wants to leave you, living lives of holiness and godliness, it doesn't rest on our ability. It's only his divine power that enables it at all. And so another excuse, if you don't blame it on your own inability, you might try to blame it on all of these outside factors that press in around you.

Just all your situations, all your circumstances that you find yourself in. In biblical counseling, we use this chart to. To kind of show that the heart is right at the center. But all of these concentric circles around the heart are factors that are pressing in around you. They're weighing on you, but they're not causing you to sin.

The problem, the source, the cause is in your heart. Who is enthroned right now on your heart, the throne of your heart. So we could say, hey, we're physically embodied. You know, we use the acronym hungry, angry, lonely, tired. You know, when you find yourself in those places, you tend to be more prone to sin, right?

I'm hangry, right? If I'm hangry, then people around me are going to know, right? Or if I'm tired, if I'm exhausted, my fuse is short, or if you've got chronic sickness, a chronic pain, all of these things are factors that are pressing in. They're pressing in on your life. They're not the cause of your sin.

So you're physically embodied. You're also socially embedded. I mean, how much do finances play a role in? Just anxiety and stress in our lives. Finances can play a big role in that or family, you've got spouse, kids in laws.

Whose family is not a stressor, Right? There are stressors that play are in your life. Because we're socially embedded. Maybe you're focused on the government and what the government's doing or the Internet being such a hard place to navigate. We're socially embedded.

None of those things are the cause of your sin. Or we're spiritually embattled. The phrase, you know, the devil made me do it, right. We are in a war. There's a war going on for your hearts.

And so these things press in around you, but none of them cause you to sin. The problem is my own heart. Who am I letting run things, me or Christ?

So yeah, I mean, I fall into these traps too, you know, when I. When I feel like, you know, I'm just not. Like I just don't have it in me, you know, or, you know, I can't be holy because I'm hangry. Right. It sounds like it should be a country song.

Can't be holy because I'm hangry.

Whether you write yourself off saying there's no way someone like me could be like that, could be holy or godly, or else you blame these outside factors. The point is, it's his divine power that enables lives of holiness and godliness. He's the one that supplies it. So there's no excuse. You have literally been given everything, all things that pertain to life and godliness.

So how do we tap into that power? What does it look like if I want to stop making excuses and live the life that God's called me to live?

I'm going to break this down a little bit and then try to give you a picture for where this is aimed. His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness. This is sort of one of those. There's a literary device that takes two terms kind of just to communicate one concept. So that's why I've circled this whole piece.

Life and Godliness. He's given us everything we need for that. He's empowering us through the knowledge of Him. Okay, now this knowledge, this is not just the kind of knowledge that is like a fan knows a superstar from afar. It's not the kind of knowledge that wins Bible Trivia Night.

This is a intimate kind of knowledge. It's a knowledge of him who called. It's a knowledge of the Father who has called you, who has called us to his own glory and excellence.

Now this word right here too, it could actually Be the word by. We're doing the ESV right now. There's a note in there that says it could go either way. A lot of translations use by. I prefer the word by.

Just because this passage is communicating the means by which. It's sort of an instrumental sense that it's using that it's by his own glory and excellence that he's called us, you see, that it's by his glory and excellence that he's even called us. And it's by those his glory and excellence by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises. So that through them, through these promises, you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that's in the world because of sinful desire. That is an interesting promise.

To become a partaker of the divine nature. That is such a mystical sense. What does he mean by that? To become a partaker in the divine nature of God.

Not in some other kind of religious sense where you just get absorbed into a higher power? No, we still have who we are, but somehow we get to take part in that divine nature to share in his glory and excellence. Okay, I'm going to give you a little picture just to see kind of where this is moving. Okay. This looks like it's kind of laid out what we would call a chiastic structure or a chiasm, really.

A chiastic structure just says, hey, this is A, A prime, B, B prime, C. And the whole point of these kinds of structures is to move towards the center. It's showing where the passage, where the emphasis of the passage is aimed. Now, I don't think grammatically, very strictly speaking, I don't think that there's a chiastic structure here. But I think logically, Peter is presenting this chiastic structure to point to the glory and the excellence of God.

So his divine power, the Holy Spirit, has given us this divine power, all things pertaining to life and godliness. Look at how this is bookmarked here, too. You've got the divine power and you've got the divine nature. His divine power given us all things pertaining to life and godliness through the knowledge, the intimate acquaintance with the Father who has called us by his glory and excellence. His glory and his excellence are the end goal, the aim of this passage.

It's all moving towards this. Because by his glory and excellence, he has granted us his great and precious. His precious and very great promises, which Peter goes on. We saw last week in chapter three, that he expounds on those promises as eternal life. As this new Heavens and new earth.

So by his glory and excellence, he's granted to us these very great and precious promises, this eternal life through sending his Son Jesus, so that we could become partakers in the divine nature. Having escaped the corruption in the world because of sinful desire. This entire passage is slowing down to point us in one direction. It's pointing us towards the glory and excellence of God.

So when we start, when we start here, by resting in who God is and what he's done, his glory and splendor and excellence, we slow down in order to aim our lives in that direction. Slowing down aims our lives. It aims our lives towards what's most important. I came across this picture this week. I thought it was so fitting.

Direction is more important than speed.

You got this croc just making his way, and he'll strike when he's ready. Direction is more important than speed. This first, these first two verses are teaching us to slow down and aim the entirety of our lives toward the glory and excellence of God.

So we slow down in order to find our aim. I've committed to going on a prayer retreat once a semester, really, just for this very reason. I mean, I know in all of my normal hurry, right? Even doing kingdom work, right. In all my normal hurry, if I don't slow down with purposeful time with God, I know my aim will be off.

And so this last prayer retreat that I went on, I didn't expect to see anybody there. There were some guys who were finishing up a sharpshooter event, and they finished it up the day before. But they stayed another day just to shoot before they go back to New York. And they came and they knocked on my cabin door and they just said, hey, you want to come shoot with us? They saw me coming in and they just, hey, you want to come shoot?

I was like, okay, sure. I've never done anything long range before. So I had these really high powered sniper rifles on this valley down below. And this veteran sharpshooter showed me how to lay prone in just the right way to where my legs were acting as a tripod. And my.

There was like a sandbag that the, that the gun was rested on so that you could squeeze it and make these micro adjustments. It was teaching me how to breathe and what I should see when I looked through the scope. Guess what I did? 500 yards. I hit dead center every single time because I slowed down.

Took the advice from the marksman. I don't know if you know this. I'm not just a pastor. I'm A trained sniper now doubly lethal.

Slowed down long enough, right? If I just picked it up and start going without aiming. Slowness aims us. We slow down to aim. The direction of our lives, we slow down to aim.

So if we are talking about this tension in Second Peter between waiting and hastening, right? The value of learning a certain kind of slowness is that it aims our lives in a certain direction. St. Augustine famously said, he said we were made for you. Our hearts were made for you, O Lord.

He said, we were made. You have made us for yourself, O Lord. And our heart is restless until it rests in you. So even if you learn how to slow down and become a less hurried kind of person, it's in those slow times that your heart is searching for meaning and purpose. It's looking for a direction.

It's a restlessness. We're looking for direction and meaning and purpose in those times. So if you never feel like you get enough rest, it's likely that you don't because you are engaging in a sort of relaxation that your heart is just restlessly looking for something. Where to aim your affections? I just temporarily deleted my favorite news app off of my phone because I felt my heart being pulled, being aimed in those quiet moments.

It became the quick go to I want to know what's going on and I'll add it back eventually. But I recognized in this season how it was pulling my heart and that I needed to take a break, that my rest wasn't becoming restful. Temporarily deleted it. Any good thing becomes a bad thing if you start to feel it pulling your affections away from God. If your heart starts aiming somewhere else, starts growing cold towards Him.

So this kind of slowness that we need to learn in the waiting, it's not just ceasing work and casting off restraint as if we had no responsibility just to indulge in this escapist entertainment. It's learning.

It's learning a satisfaction in the glory and excellence of God. It's partaking in sharing in his divine nature. But most of our rest, just like most of our hurry, is self centered pursuit. Because I have been so busy doing A, B and C, what do we say? I deserve X, Y and Z.

It's not just about speed. It is the aim of our hearts. God's glory and excellence is the ultimate aim of our lives. Being satisfied in his glory is the good life partaking in the divine nature.

So Peter says, for this very reason, for this very reason, he says, make every effort. Make every effort to supplement your faith. With virtue. And virtue. With knowledge.

And knowledge. With self control. And self control. With steadfastness. Steadfastness.

With godliness. Godliness. With brotherly affection. Brotherly affection. With love.

He's got sort of this just ascending ladder of virtues in this passage.

And you know what's really most significant about this is that it starts with faith and it ends in this end goal of love. It starts with faith and it ends with love.

But this idea, make every effort to supplement your faith. That should sound strange to your ears. If you're a member here, that should sound a little strange to you, right? We know that it's not faith plus anything else, that it's faith alone, in Christ alone that saves us. But it's only strange to supplement your faith if that is your aim.

If that's your aim, if that's where you start. You don't start with haste. You start with rest. And you keep coming back to rest. Peter just poured the foundation in these last two verses, aiming us toward the glory and excellence of God.

Now he's saying, run wild. You've slowed down to aim your life at the glory of God. And now he's saying, run hard in that direction. Make every effort or make haste. When he says make every effort, this is actually the effort there is the same.

It's the noun form of the word haste. In our key verse of waiting for and hastening, it's the noun form of the same word. He's saying to make haste, make haste.

You slow down to take aim at the glory of God, and then you run hard in that direction. You make haste to supplement your faith with virtue. So the word for virtue too is interesting because it's the same word that he used for excellence when he's talking about his glory and excellence, his glory and his virtue.

That's what our aim is. The only way that we have any virtue, any excellence in our lives is based on what he did first. His is the basis of my own. In the Advent season, when you get, like we said, the Apocalypse in your bones and your heart is pining for the glory of God. When you realize what's available to you with God's divine power sharing in his divine nature, Peter's saying, make haste to live like it.

You know, knowledge. We could look at knowledge here, you know, maybe you don't know much yet about the nature of God or how he's revealed Himself in His Word. He's saying, make every effort. Make every effort to share in his divine nature by supplementing that faith with knowledge. Right, Jump into a study, join a dgroup, find someone in your life to help you along that path, learning who God is.

Run out the door and make haste. Self control. You know, you've got a habitual sin that just keeps popping up over and over and over again in your life and it's pulling your affections away from God, it's setting the aim of your life in a different direction. He's saying, supplement your faith with self control. Weed out that sin in your life, amputate it, get accountability today.

Is it pulling you, is it pulling your affections away from God and aiming your life in a different direction? Run out the door, make haste. Steadfastness. You know, sometimes life is really hard and we're tempted to slouch and complain and give into things that we wouldn't normally because of those external pressures that are weighing in on us physically, socially, spiritually. And so we just feel weak.

Well, he's saying get the community around you involved to help you bear up under the load, to carry the load with you, to stand up under the pressure, make haste to get into your prayer room and wrestle with God over how to deal with everything that's coming your way.

This list, it starts with faith and it ends with love. This list isn't showy. I wonder what our list would look like if somebody said, come up with seven virtues for the Christian life. These virtues aren't showy.

They start on the inside and they move out towards love, towards God and others. And so this list makes a really good barometer of where my life is aimed. Let me tell you something, I don't mourn over just not hitting a list perfectly.

What I mourn over is that this list shows me when my life is not aimed at the glory of God. This list shows me that the great aim and the great pursuit of my life is off.

That's what this shows me. It's a barometer to see where your life is aimed.

So he says if these qualities are yours, if you own them and they're increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For whoever lacks these qualities is so near sighted that he's blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins.

If these, if that list is not yours and increasing. If you don't see that transformation, that movement, that growth in your life, he's saying, he's saying you're nearsighted, you don't see the future, you don't have the end in mind. And you don't see the past. You've forgotten how you were cleansed from your sins. You're sort of just stuck here in this middle space.

And you don't know how to live now because you're detached from your future and from your past. And so you have nothing else but to live for yourself. Right now, your aim is off.

Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent. There's our word again. Just be diligent. Be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and your election. For if you practice these qualities, you will never fall for.

In this way, there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. This word provided, it's the same word when we said, supplement your faith.

It will be supplied for you. This entrance into the kingdom, this eternal life that we're moving towards, this hope that we're moving towards, the aim of our lives will be supplied to you. You see how this entire passage, though, starts with what God supplies and it says, just work in cooperation with His Spirit. And he is richly providing, richly supplying for you this entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. God provides the power, we provide the effort.

In the end, there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

So as we, as we look at this list of virtues, don't start with haste. Don't start with haste. Don't go out and just try to be better and do more and check off the boxes on that list. That's not Christianity, that's a moralistic religion that just tries to make your life better. Does that sound like your aim would be right?

No. Start by changing the way you slow down, enter into real rest. Remember that slowness is not an end in itself. Slowness is about getting your aim right. Where are we aiming our affections?

So the kind of rest that continues to distract you from partaking in a divine nature, the life of God, that escapist entertainment that has nothing to do with escaping the corruption of the world, but rather indulging in it, that's not true. Rest that will not satisfy you. That's a kind of relaxation with no substance. It's a casting off of restraint, throwing off responsibility, rejecting your purpose in an attempt to be free, which if we had time, that's what the false teachers in chapter two try to get them to do. Just be free.

If all your slowness is filled up with more things to distract you from God and indulge in your fleshly nature than in his divine nature. You've missed the point of slowing down. And all your hurry.