Take your Bibles to 2 Peter chapter 1. While I was sitting here, it just dawned on me that we may have forgotten one extra baby that has been born this week. And it's to our sister, Berina Irombo, who used to be Berina Singogo. They also had a baby out on the covelt. She's now a married lady. And I think one reason why we may have forgotten about the birth is that there was a lot of excitement in the course of the way from the grandfather, Mr. Singh Bogor, Kasote. In fact, I thought I should bring one of his posts here, where normally it begins with the word fox. I said, folks, from Mr. Castro de Zimbobo to husband Lucy Zimbobo, then I became Shivunga. Now, I'm Shifuru Uwepi Oteria. We don't normally announce grandchildren, but in this particular case, he almost went right past the actual father and mother in announcing the newborn baby. So I hope the deacons will take note of that for the evening service. Second Peter, and chapter one. We commence reading from verse 3. His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us to His own glory and excellence, by which He has granted to us His precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desires. For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and then the passage, the words we are considering, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. Well, brethren, again, it's no surprise to you that we are back into this text because it's a passage of Scripture that we have been considering for a number of months now under the theme, Christian, grow up. And it's vital that we realize that that's really a responsibility each one of us has. That Christianity is not simply like entering into a school and all you can boast about is that now I belong to that school. Christianity is life. It is about growth. It's about going from one degree of glory to another. And when individuals take their own growth for granted and don't throw in every effort into that enterprise, you are going to end up with a very blue, warm Christianity. One which, if you're familiar with the Book of Revelation, the Lord Jesus Christ wants to spit out. Because that's not the way it's supposed to be. We all ought to deliberately be making progress in the direction of wrong. In this particular chapter, that's what Peter is dealing with. And we are now in that stage where he is talking about adding godliness to steadfastness. I mentioned last week that we could only really begin to look at this subject. The reason is because the whole of Christianity is about godliness. Except for godliness. And so, we're really dealing with a topic that now covers Genesis to Revelation. And so, we could not run through it as fast as we had run through the other passages of Scripture. So what we did last week was basically to define what godliness really is. And what I did was I anchored my message between two passages of scripture. One was Exodus chapter 20, where we have the command, that you shall have no other gods beside me or before me, and then on the opposite end of the same one, where the words that are taught in Deuteronomy 6, but also quoted by our Lord a few times as the greatest commandment, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind, with all your soul, and with all your strength. I mention the fact that godliness grows First of all, out of the realization of who we are, that we are creatures that are made in the image of God, creatures accountable to him, that in fact we are fallen creatures. And consequently, we seek reconciliation with him, we seek a transformation from the inside out, otherwise we are doomed. And then thirdly and lastly, that we are mortal creatures, that we will soon die, that we will not be here forever. And consequently, we make the issue of our reconciliation with God and also our preparation for heaven as Priority number one, because we will soon be gone. But that's only the beginning of the Godliness. It's also the revelation of who God is, and that vast difference between the two of us. And we went into a lot of detail to appreciate something of the greatness, the grandeur, the magnificence, of this great God who has named us. And it is out of that realization of the fact that he has not only named us, but out of his own goodness, mercy, sympathy, grace, he has reached out to worms of the earth in order to bring us to himself. And out of the fullness of gratitude, we end up living lives that emulate something of the love for him. And that's how we found ourselves in that greatest of all commandments. Well, today, I want us to see how this godliness looks like in a Christian. What does it look like when godliness is walking on two feet? when the Apostle Peter says that we should, with every effort, supplement steadfastness with godliness. What is it that he is expecting to see in each one of us as believers in the Lord Jesus who are growing in this way? In a sense, I began to touch on it in the last sermon as I drew to a close. I said that the outworking of godliness will be seen in our love for God, our trust in Him, our worship of Him. I touched on it, but I need to open that up a lot further so that we can appreciate this more and more. What is it that my friends should be seeing in me? What is it that my spouse should be seeing in me? What is it that my children or my parents should be seeing in me? What is it that my neighbors, workmates, schoolmates should be seeing in me? And gospel is saying, he is a godly She is a godly person. Well, I've got quite a number of them, nine all together. So we will have to really put on our hats and follow along. The first and most obvious one is that if you're truly godly, your heart has a supreme love for God. A supreme love for God. That's what we saw when we're ending last Sunday's sermon, when Jesus spoke about the greatest of all commandments, that you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind, with all your soul, and with all your strength. And the reason why this is bound to happen is because you have come to appreciate, as I said, you belong to the dust, and then this glorious being who at the click of a finger would have really destroyed you, instead has given his own son for you, the consequence is that your own heart is full of love for a God who has loved you this way. You can't miss it in those who are genuinely and truly godly. They are in love with the living God. It's not simply that God and salvation is a kind of hell insurance policy, sort of avoiding going to hell. It's much more than that. They love the Lord, and even when they think about death and heaven, they think in terms of going to be with the one whom they have loved. What might surprise you is that those who are to be called men don't just love God, they also fear Him. At exactly the same point, they fear the Lord. It's a wholesome fear, but it is a fear nonetheless. Remember, we are down there, He is up there, and we defined Him last time as best as we could in terms of the totality of His being. And when you realize the kind of God who is there, you invariably are filled with a wholesome fear. And this is the God of judgment, the God of wrath, the God who is holy, the God who must punish sinners. And at the same time, he's a God who knows all the details of my life, not just what I do in public. He's also a God who knows the words I speak in private. He's a God who knows the thoughts that I entertain in my mind. That alone makes you realize that the God with whom I have to do, I need to be extremely serious to make sure that I am holy within and also holy on the outside. The Bible tells us that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. And that's the reason why godly people cannot be hypocrites. For what you see on the outside It's them. Because the thing that they fear the most is not public opinion of them. Come on! There is an eye that sees everything they do, and that is an eye they are concerned about. And because of that, hypocrisy is the last thing, because they know that the God who is there is a God who sees everything about them, and they fear him with that wholesome fear. They, therefore, are individuals who don't need to be near parents. They don't need to see uniformed policemen. They don't need to have auditors around them. They don't need elders whipping over their shoulders to see how they're doing. They don't need all those things, because the one they fear the most, God, is always with them, wherever they are. and they fear him. Let me hurry on to the third. And it is that when you are truly godly, your heart has a supreme trust in God. A supreme trust in God. You see, this world is absolutely unpredictable. Today, Everybody's smiling at you. Tomorrow, the same people who were smiling at you are now wanting to put a bullet through your brain to drag you down into the dust. The very individuals around you that perhaps you are working for in the workplace are the ones who begin to connive in order to ensure that you get fired. One moment you are well, the next moment you are unwell and you discover that the illness that you have is one that is incurable. And so on and so forth. A person who is truly godly is one who trusts in the fact that the God I have come to know is the God who is in control of everything in this universe. That there's not a single little hair on my head that falls to the ground without Him having permitted it to me. There's not a single bird in the air that ever gets shot or killed without His permission, and that should be the case. He is the almighty God. He is the all-knowing God. And He is the faithful God. I am in a covenant with Him. And because I'm in a covenant with Him, He has committed Himself to ensure that I arrive in heaven where And therefore, whatever comes my way, I can trust Him. And even when human beings, who are more powerful than I am, rise up against me, He will be mine to face. In the book of Proverbs, we just read the Psalms. Proverbs was the last one. Those of you who are taking notes, the few of them are the Psalms. So, Proverbs 9, verse 10. But now, let's go to the Book of Psalms. Go with me to Psalm 18 and Psalm 27. Psalm 18 and Psalm 27. Psalm 18. Who's it this one? That's the first three verses. I'll begin with the introduction to the psalm. To the choir master, a son of David, the servant of the Lord, who addressed the words of his song to the Lord. He said to this, on the day when the Lord rescued him from the hands of all his enemies and from the hand of Saul. In other words, from the hands of the king, from the hands of the most powerful person in the land, from the hands of the one who has the entire army at his disposal, How does he speak to the Lord? Listen to this. I love you, Lord. I love you, O Lord, my strength. Remember when we began, a godly person loves the Lord. He loves the Lord. He cannot simply look the Lord in the face and say, Lord, I love you. And you know that. I love you. Then he goes on to say, my strength. The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, my guard, my rock in whom I take refuge, my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold. I call upon the Lord, who is well-praised, and I am saved from my enemies. You can read the rest of that psalm if and when you want, but it's very clear that this godly man trusted in the Lord. Despite the fact that the most powerful potentate in the land was after him, he cried to the Lord And it was the Lord who rescued him. And he knows that. Look at the way he puts it in chapter 27. Psalm 27. Again, just the first three verses. And what I want you to do is ask yourself, do you have this kind of faith? This kind of trust? This kind of confidence? Because that's what Peter is saying. Add to your steadfastness this godliness, and one of the attributes of this godliness is this peaceful trust in the living God in the midst of all the circumstances of life. Especially when men are after your backside, so to speak. This is chapter 27, verse 1 to verse 3. The Lord is my light and my salvation. Whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life. Of whom shall I be afraid? When evil doers assail me to eat up my flesh, my accessories, and forth, it is they who stumble and fall. Though an army encamp against me, my heart shall not fear, though war arise against me, yet I will be confident. He goes on, when in the house of the Lord, that will I seek after, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life. The point I'd like to bring out there is this confidence, confidence. Second, Too many Christians press the panic button. Too many Christians are full of complaints, just complaining and complaining and complaining about circumstances in their lives, rather than simply trusting that God, leaving my issues with Him. He will take care of it all. Mine is to concentrate on the work that He has given me. And this trust includes peacefully submitting to God's frowning providence. Peacefully submitting to God's frowning providence. And they will come. They will. You will have disappointments. You will have illnesses. You will have accidents. You will have robberies. You will have his death and the other. Are you able to say with joy, naked I came to my mother's womb, naked I shall depart. The Lord gave in his sovereignty. The Lord has taken away in his sovereignty. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Amen. Now, friends, that's called weakness. That's called weakness. You don't press the panic button. You say, in the Lord's own time, if He's to bless me in this way, He will. If He doesn't bless me in this way, He won't. It's His will. I worship Him. He is sovereign over my life. That's Godliness. That's Godliness. When you are truly Godly, you give your highest obedience to God. Your highest obedience to God in all areas of your life. You know, the one time You will never get on the wrong side of a truly godly person is when you try to make them do what is wrong. Perhaps at work, and they are accountants, and you ask them to book figures. That's when you get your shock that they are not just good boys and girls, they are godly boys and girls. Because they will say to you, sorry, I can't do that. Why not? I'm a Christian. And you can persecute them as much as you please. To borrow in the words of the apostles, in the book of Acts, judge for yourselves what is right, whether we should obey you rather than God. Judge for yourself. But one thing is sure, We will obey God. Now that's godliness. Friends, that's what godliness is about. An unflinching loyalty to the God who is there, and his law, his commandment, his ordinance, That we who live by that will live. Let me help you. When you matriculate, you give to God your highest worship. Your highest worship. Remember what I said. Godliness begins with the realization that I am legal, I am a creature, I am a mortal creature, I am a sinful creature. But your eyes have not only understood who you are, your eyes of faith have also seen something of the glory of who this God is. And that contrast makes you a worshipper of God. A worshipper of the living God. As we read in the book of Revelation, in chapter 4, John had a peek of what was happening in heaven. And he says, to borrow his own words, that He saw these creatures, the angelic beings, saying this about this God. The very last verse. Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things and by your will They existed and will be. Brethren, all you need to do is just look at creation. We're not even going into salvation. Just creation alone. And I'm not even asking you to start thinking in terms of the galaxies upon galaxies that make up this universe. that in itself overwhelms you with the greatness and grandeur of the God who is there. Even your own life. To just think that you've been around 20 years, 30 years, 40 years, 50 years, I don't know, and that it's this God who sustains you. All he needs to do is to stop that kind of beauty. Just stop the beauty. And that's it, you know. That he sustains the entire system of what is made out of beauty. the skeletal system with the muscles, the digestive system, the cooling system, the digestive system, and so many other systems that make up your body. You know, I love photography, as some of you know. And when I'm preparing to take a picture with my camera, the number of things I have to adjust when I go out of the room like this and go outside, the number of things I have to adjust to get a good picture. Your eyes do it without even thinking about it, just as you walk right through the door. All those things happen. God. And then you feel to worship Him. And then He says to you, just give me one day out of seven. Set aside to leave everything else to come and say thank you to me. To acknowledge who I am. And you say it's too much, it's too much. I'm gonna be home watching TV and watching some sports activities. This great, glorious view. And I've only touched the eye, that's all. I haven't touched other parts of our human bodies. I remember the other day, I was in someone else's home, coaching groups, and they gave me their main bedroom on the first floor. And as I was moving around the room, I'm thinking to myself, I just made a decision that I'm going upstairs. That's all I am. Just made a decision I'm going upstairs. And the entire system of this room, began to operate all the muscles necessary for me to remain upright, and I'm going down this staircase. I remember thinking to myself when I go down there, this will be a worship. This will be a worship. Because in a few years from now, I'll be standing at the bottom of that staircase with a stick. Because I will know that I start persuading different muscles to take me up there. And I may have to say to the people, no, I think let me just sleep in the city. God is worthy of worship. Worthy of worship. And hence, you treasure the Lord's Day. You treasure the times of worship with the Godhead Church. Again, I'm going to take it to Psalm 122, where the psalmist says at the very beginning that he was glad when they said, let us go to the house of the Lord. Let me assure you, a truly godly soul is longing for the Holy Spirit. Longing to meet with the people of God. Longing! It's not a, it's Sunday again. No, no, no, no, no, no. The day before, the soul is already getting pumped up, as it were. To go and meet with the saints. Let me head on, because I want to make my pathway through this. A truly godly soul has a supreme hunger for God himself. And I have a number of points on that. He has a supreme hunger for God himself. I said last week, And I want to begin on that point. I'm shocked that a believer can ever say that I was bored yesterday. Because the one person, the one being you want to be with is the Lord himself. If you long for him, that you gladly want to say, guys, yes, you can go and do your activities, yes, leave me alone if you want, yes, please, go, go, go, go. That I might spend time with the lover of my soul. The altogether lovely one. The one whom I truly love. My supreme joy! The psalmist in Psalm 73 says, Who have I in heaven but you? And heaven has nothing I desire except you. Now that's the good news. That's the good news. It's somebody who has finally found his highest joy in God himself. His supreme joy in knowing the Lord. You want to have fellowship with God. And as I say, that's the primary reason why you can go to the place of worship. not just to worship Him, but to have fellowship with Him among God's people. But it's more than that. It's what you prize the most, that there is interaction between my soul and God. And that's what makes you want to run away from any indication of sin. Because what sin does is it affects That fellowship, the fellowship that you so much treasure with the Lord, it grieves the spirit. And consequently, you don't want that. You want the sun to shine, as it were, in your relationship with the Lord. That's a good message. That's a good message. And that, I want to repeat, is why you hate sin. Your desire, in that hunger for God, is to be conformed to His image. To be conformed to His image. Again, the Bible says, Be holy, for I, the Lord, your God, am holy. Be holy, because I'm holy. And as you know, birds of a feather flock together. As you become more and more like God, the fellowship with Him gets sweeter. And so you want to be like Him in every way, to be conformed to this image. All this is still in the name of hunger for God, allowing you to throw in another. And it is this, you want to think hard after God. You want to think hard after God. Psalm 63. Now, remember what I said. Godliness is really your entire Bible. And I'm sure you are seeing this. I'm going this way, I'm going that way, I'm going this way, and so on. But largely in the book of Psalms, because it is such an experiential book. It's God's children simply expressing themselves. Psalm 63. Psalm 63. The psalmist there says, oh God, you are my God. Earnestly I seek you. My soul thirsts for you. My flesh faints for you. As in a dry and weary land where there is no water. So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary. Beholding your power and glory. Because your steadfast love is better than life. My lips will praise you. And on and on he goes. Now, that's the soul of the godly expression. That's the soul of the godly. Let me ask, when did you last produce those words to the monk? When? To tell him, I'm longing for you. I'm thirsting after you. Not again, I'm going on like this anymore. Oh, for more of you. The Apostle Paul used those words in Philippians and Jack 4. I want to. It's the whole Bible. It's the whole Bible. Philippians 4, and rather, Philippians 3, verse 10, sorry, in my non-Sahih book, 4, Bibles chapter 3, and verse 10. The older versions, I think it's the King James Version, even has that, oh, oh, that I may know. Oh, that I may know. And this is not a young convict just beginning the Christian life. No, no, no. This is the Apostle Paul who's now even in prison for his faith, who's planted so many churches across Asia Minor and Europe, and has written so many other letters continue to edify the church. And what is he saying later in life? I long to know him and the power of his resurrection. Friends, that's godliness. That's godliness. When I opened this book, When I'm alone, it's not just to pick a few lessons for life and living. No, no, no. I want the Lord whom I love and who loves me to speak to me, to reveal Himself to me. I want to meet Him in the pages of Scripture. I'm hungering and thirsting for Him. When I pick up a book that is a Christian book and I'm putting my brains into it, it's because I want to think hard after God. To stretch my mind more and more concerning the greatest subject that I can ever plunge myself into, and that is God himself. Because he's an ocean without a shore. He is a sun without a sphere. He is infinite. He stretches me to the very limits. And it's a real hunger, a real hunger, a real hunger after God. Then as I said last week, part of this hunger for God is to fight and beat to finally meet Him. I beheld Him with the eye of faith, as in a glass dimly. Oh, for the day when faith is turned to silence, when now I'm in His very presence, in heaven. And here he said the words, well done, well done. I'm not reading them in scripture. I'm not hearing his full voice. The one who has loved me from all eternity with an everlasting Now to meet him. Now to be with him. Forever. Thank you Lord. Thank you Lord. Thank you Lord. I mean, yes, it is true. But that's the Christianity of this world. From God. That's what it's all about. And the Apostle Peter is saying, to your stresslessness, add this. Make this. Grow and manifest and blossom and attract the attention of the outside world. This is how you ought to be. So Christian, grow up. Grow up. This is why the Lord saved you. It's not just a kind of ticket to heaven that you can keep in your pocket while you are proffering in the midst of the mire and dirt and mud and sewer of this world. No! It is for you to experience something of this reality, to be like God. to be in this extraordinary relationship with God. That's why he saved you. And it's this that attracts the attention of the world to real Christianity. Everything else, they see through it as mere pretence and hypocrisy and something they too can do. But this much they cannot do. They can't. Only God can produce this in us. So what we saw last week was the foundation, was merely the foundation. What Godliness is, what we've seen today is the superstructure. See, when you are with a person and you go away saying, he's gone, she's gone, it's when you see this. It's when you see this. But here's what it was. This is becoming so rare. in our own soul. We all seem to just compare ourselves with ourselves and remain very satisfied with the lowest levels of spirituality, the lowest levels. We are missing out on the life of God in the soul of man. We're missing out. On true Christianity, we're missing out on that which Jesus Christ paid his life's blood for, that we may experience here on earth. And as a result, We don't attract people to Christ. We don't. Our office mates admire nothing about our lives. Our children admire nothing about our lives. Our spouses admire nothing about our lives. There's nothing in us that pulls the heavenly ones, pulls the good ones. Nothing. Until God sends his judgment and persecution. And then nine-tenths of the people fall away. because there was no way out of it. And the one thing is what manifests itself to actually being the real Christian. When will it continue? When Jesus shed his life's blood for his paradise. He shed his life's blood God left everything in order to give us this life. To borrow his own words, I have come that you may have life and have it in abundance. In all its fullness, I have come to bring to you. Oh, great God, have we made it through. that we may put in our lives, from which brotherly kindness and love will flow to the world, which is what we are going to do next time. May God help us.