Jump Start # 2433

2 Peter 1:9 “For he who lacks these qualities is blind or short-sighted, having forgotten his purification from his former sins.”

Having forgotten—those are the words we find in our verse today. Forgetting is an interesting concept. I doubt we’ve heard many lessons focused upon that topic. We all tend to remember certain things and we tend to forget certain things. The older one gets, the more one tends to struggle with remembering. We see faces that we recognize, but we can’t recall a name. For my wife and I, it’s takes both of us to tell a story anymore. She forgets parts that I remember and I forget parts that she remembers. But together, we can pretty much get the story told.

In our passage today, Peter concludes the list of what we call “Christian virtues” or “Christian graces.” These qualities are strung together and connected by the word “add” Add to your faith, moral excellence. Add to moral excellence, knowledge. And on and on it goes, covering eight qualities of the heart that God wants His children to manifest. These eight are not options, like at a fast food restaurant. “I’ll have some of number one, hold the second one, and just a little of number four.” No, it doesn’t work that way. We need all eight of these. In fact, these seem to be in a certain order, as if stair steps. One leads to the next.

Now, having gone through that, Peter comes to our verse. If you don’t have these qualities you are short-sighted and have forgotten your purification. The reason some would not have these qualities is because they never “added” them to their faith. These are choices. All Christians ought to have these, but all Christians do not. Why not? Some have never developed as they should have.

It is in this atmosphere that we find the idea of forgetting. Here, as Peter uses it, it’s not a good thing. There are some things we should never forget. Don’t forget where you came from.

When we say this, we are not talking about ancestry and our family history. For me, my family came from Indiana. Before that, North Carolina. Before that, Saxony, Germany. Back and back one can trace their family history. The Jews did that. The Bible does that in many places. Genesis five does that. The beginning of Chronicles does that. The opening of Matthew does that.

Don’t forget where you came from, means, don’t forget what life was like before Jesus came into your life. We need to remember:

First, don’t forget what it was like to be lost. To realize that we were once guilty and not right before God is something that helps keep us from sin. Do you remember those few moments, or for some, those days and weeks, before you were baptized into Christ? You knew. You knew you were a sinner. You knew that if you died, Heaven wasn’t going to be yours. You knew that you had to open your heart to God. You knew that Jesus was right. You may have been scared. You may have wondered what others thought. But that feeling, that place you were in, wasn’t a good place. You were not happy. You were not living life to the fullest. You realized that sin had crushed your relationship with God. Sin had ruined your life. You outlook was selfish. Your heart was dark. Your attitude was sour. Your words were often blasphemous. And, now, you realized that the world wasn’t the place to be. You had offended God and broken His commandments. You needed the mercy, grace and forgiveness of God. Until you received that, you were not in a good place. Remember?

Second, don’t forget what it was like to be saved? Do you remember the day you came to Christ and was baptized? What a glorious feeling that was. How right and how clean you felt. How you realized that you have done something right in your life. How great it was to sit in worship, to take the Lord’s Supper and to realize that God saw you as His child. Do you remember how great it was to leave worship, feeling like you truly worshipped the Lord and how wonderful that was. Remember?

Peter’s direction is that the reason some have not developed as they should have and the reason some have not added to their faith is that they forgot. And, something sad happens when we forget. We tend to take things for granted when we forget. We can take our marriage for granted. We can take our blessings for granted. We can take our health for granted. We can take our wonderful congregation for granted. And, so often is the case, it takes losing something precious for us to realize how wonderful things were. In the moment, we didn’t give it much thought. In the moment we weren’t very thankful. But now that a mate has passed away…now that we move away from a congregation…now that we don’t have the wonderful tools before us, it is then that we realize that we forgot to be thankful and appreciative.

Don’t forget. Remember where you came from. Remember, you are a reformed sinner. Remember, without Jesus, Heaven wouldn’t be possible. Now, there are some things that we need to forget. We will address those in our next Jump Start. And, so often, we remember what we ought to forget and we forget what we ought to remember. This mixed up thinking gets us mixed up.

Remember where you came from. You don’t want to go back there.

Roger

Jump Start # 2421

2 Peter 1:9 “For he who lacks these qualities is blind or short-sighted, having forgotten his purification from his former sins.”

Our verse today is a consequence statement. The Holy Spirit is showing what happens when one doesn’t do what they should do. Prior to this, a series of virtues or qualities of the heart are listed. These were to be added by the Christian. They do not fall from Heaven like manna, the moment one becomes a disciple. Each follower of Christ must be busy in his walk with the Lord by adding these things. Some of these are harder than others. They are all connected. Peter begins with faith, the foundation of all that we do in Christ. From faith one adds moral excellence. From that comes knowledge. From that self control. Then perseverance. Godliness follows. Next is kindness. And at the top, is love. Add these things to your life. Let these things describe you. Become these things. Each of us needs these things. Missing one, not only makes us incomplete, but it causes us to suffer on our journey because we are not what we ought to be. These virtues are not to be picked over and chosen like standing in line at a fast food place. “I’ll have knowledge and a bit of kindness, but leave out the perseverance.” Doesn’t work that way.

Our verse, about lacking these qualities, shows us what happens when we don’t add these things to our character and heart. We become blind and forgetful of where we came from. It’s amazing to read about so many blind people in the Gospels. Jesus healed many of them. Today, we may go a long time without ever meeting a blind person. I’ve known two personally in my life. I had a friend in college who was blind. I used to do mean things to him such as rearranging his furniture without telling him. He always knew that it was me who did that. He’d ask me about things and I found it so difficult to describe what I could see with my eyes. We know what red is. We know the difference between red and green. It’s on stop lights. But for someone who has never seen red or green, it’s hard to put that into words. And, there are so many shades of those colors. Look out your window and you’ll see six or seven different kinds of green. Go to a paint store and you’ll be shown hundreds.

Think about spiritual blindness for a moment. Jesus, in describing parables, said blessed were the disciples because they could see with their eyes. Others couldn’t. It wasn’t a medical problem, but a spiritual problem. Jesus warned, if the blind lead the blind, they will both fall in the ditch. Then neither one could help the other.

There are those who declare, “I don’t see anything wrong with it.” And, they don’t. They can’t. They are spiritually blind. You could tell then what is wrong, but they likely wouldn’t get it. It is hard to explain the Bible to a person who is spiritually blind. To them, the Bible is nothing more than an old book. Why are you shaping your life because of some old book—is what runs through the mind of a spiritually blind person.

There is the old story about the blind men feeling different parts of an elephant. One felt the massive leg and declared it was a tree. Another felt the trunk of the elephant and thought it was a snake. One felt the side and thought it was a wall. Each of them were wrong. They didn’t see the big picture of what they felt. They didn’t see everything.

When a person is spiritually blind they don’t see the damage that their words could do. They say things, often offensive and hurtful, but hide behind the idea that “I only told him the truth.” With spiritual vision, we realize that our words can be remembered for a long time. Mean, hateful, and things not thought out can scar a person for a long, long time. Blindness doesn’t see that.

When a person is spiritually blind they overlook the good that even little deeds can do. Jesus said a cup of cold water given to a disciple is remembered by God. Taking a moment to say something or, better yet, to listen to someone. Taking the time to write a few kind words on a card and mailing them to someone. A home cooked meal taken to someone who is having a hard time means so much. Blindness doesn’t see that. “What good is it going to do? I don’t have time to do that. It won’t matter.” That’s how spiritual blindness sees things.

When a person is spiritually blind they do not see all the hours of work that the shepherds do in the church. There are so many conversations. There are so many things done behind the scenes. Failure to see these things will put a person in the position of taking pot shots at the leaders. He will accuse them of not doing anything when they have been very busy doing things. The blind person just never saw what was being done.

It is the spiritually blind that accuses the preacher of only working one day a week. Now, for some that could be true and they ought to be ashamed of that. But for the most part, preachers are working long and hard and doing things that so few realize. The spiritually blind boasts that he could do the preacher’s job until he begins to see all that is involved with it.

The spiritually blind doesn’t treasure the importance of fellowship and the good that comes from each other’s presence. The hugs, handshakes, smiles and words of encouragement lifts weary souls and keeps so many on the journey. For the spiritually blind, friendships with the world are just as good if not better than those in Christ. The spiritually blind finds himself in compromising situations because he is blind to the different directions the world and Christ are going. He doesn’t get it. He can’t get it. He’s blind.

How do I prevent spiritual blindness? It’s right before us in our context today. Add to your faith. Keep growing your faith. Keep using your faith. Keep protecting your faith. And, in this process, your eyes will be opened and you will begin to see things as God does. And, when that happens, our perspective changes, our heart grows and we become more and more like the Lord.

You don’t have to be blind…

Roger

Jump Start # 1934

2 Peter 1:9 “For he who lacks these qualities is blind or short sighted, having forgotten his purification from his former sins.”

His name is Aaron. He is a fine preacher and a wonderful friend. I received an email from him this week. He reminded me of a special event. It wasn’t his birthday, or wedding anniversary. It was thirty years ago to the day that I baptized Aaron. He not only remembered the actual date, he remembered what I preached that night. Thirty years ago. I was just a young preacher and Aaron was just a young man. That Sunday night, a long time ago changed his life. Aaron went off to college, later met a beautiful girl and he asked me to preform their wedding. Their family has been blessed with children and he decided to preach. He’s a marvelous preacher and has done great work. But all of this started thirty years ago when he decided to allow the Lord to cleanse him and lead him. He hasn’t looked back since.

Our verse is what I thought of when I read Aaron’s note this week. It follows what we call the virtues of the Christian character. You’ll remember, add to your faith, virtue. To your virtue, add knowledge. A whole series of powerful qualities that are connected to one another. This section ends with our verse today. Not having these qualities results in two things:

First, it makes us blind spiritually. We will never be as God wants us to be without these qualities. Sure, we can still go to church services. We can sing the hymns, bow our heads, but it’s what’s missing in our hearts that will trip us and cause us to go back to our old ways. God wants us to excel. God wants us to grow, be strong and be powerful in Him. We must be busy “adding” these virtues to our lives.

Second, lacking these qualities tends to make us forget where we came from. It makes us forget that we were sinners that have been forgiven and redeemed by the blood of Jesus. The great hymn, “Amazing Grace,” states, “I once was lost, but now I’m found.” There are some things we should never forget. Through the years a person has a way of not seeing the past as clearly as it was. “The good ole’ days,” seem pretty good when you only think about the pleasant things. I don’t find modern homes being built without bathrooms. Going to the pump for water and the outhouse to use the bathroom doesn’t sound very good to me. You’d think, if those were such wonderful days, there would be folks building houses that reflect that. They don’t.

Do you remember what it was like when you realized that you were lost in your sins? Remember that awful feeling? Remember being scared of dying? All the running with the wrong people. All the terrible things you did. They seemed like fun at the moment. But when the purity of the Gospel reached our hearts, we saw those things for what they really were, sinful. We disgraced God. We disappointed God. We rebelled against God. We were lost. We were dead spiritually.

Someone took the time to show us the saving message of Jesus. Light bulbs came on. We understood. Can you imagine where you would be today if that had not happened? Can you imagine how deep into the well of sin you may have fallen? How many marriages would you have crashed by now? What addictions would you have? How many lives would you have hurt?

When we forget, we tend to take our foot off the spiritual accelerator. We find ourselves flirting with the world once again. Some, will even put one foot back into the world. Why? Why would they want to return to where they once were? Why would they want to be lost again? Why would they give up all the good things God has done for them? Is sin better than grace? Is sin more fun than living for God? No. Always NO. The problem is that a person has forgotten.

Not only can we forget where we came from, but we can forget what we have. We can take things for granted. A wonderful marriage. A great family. A church that accepts, loves and supports you. A God who considers you as one of His. A purpose to live by. A plan that leaves us a clear path to follow. No doubts. No question marks. What a joy it is to be a Christian. Have we forgotten? Count your many blessings, name them, one by one. A life without worry. Living without the fear of death. Knowing that someday, God’s home, will be my home. That’s what we have in Christ. Have we forgotten?

There are certain events that should never be forgotten. We remember 9-11. We remember the Alamo. Every Sunday, we remember the death of Jesus. And in our own lives, we need to remember where we were, where we were headed, and what we have in Jesus.

I am thankful that my good friend Aaron reminded me what happened thirty years ago this week. I remember baptizing him, but I’d forgotten what month and what year. He didn’t. He even remembered the sermon. I don’t know where that sermon is or even what I said in it. But he remembered. He remembered the song leader that night.

How about you? Can you remember the actual date you became a Christian? Can you remember who was there or what sermon was preached?

It’s good to remember. It’s good to never forget some things. It’s good to see how far we have come. It’s good to see that God has been good to us. Who would have thought, thirty years ago, that the young man I baptized would grow up and preach the gospel. I hope Aaron, someday you’ll get a note from someone thirty years later, thanking you for what you did to their life. All of this is only possible because of Jesus. We are part of one long chain of people helping others. Someone helped us and we help others. It is our spiritual legacy and our spiritual joy.

Don’t forget.

Roger

Jump Start # 1588

2 Peter 1:9 “For he who lacks these qualities is blind or short sighted, having forgotten his purification from his former sins.”

   Our verse today follows that wonderful section commonly called the “Christian virtues.” Peter lists a series of eight spiritual characteristics of a growing Christian. The New American Standard uses the word “applying.” Older translations used the word “add.” We understand that concept. It’s a growth process. We add layers on in the winter to stay warm. We add more friends on Facebook. We add up the days until we retire. Adding is a choice. These were the things that brethren were doing on purpose. These qualities are not a matter of picking and choosing. It’s all of them or none of them. They are so tied together and one leads to the next, so carefully, that a person develops them all.

Our verse is what comes next. Peter says the person who lacks these qualities, is talking about these virtues. That is the qualities that Peter has in mind. For a Christian to lack these things, means that he hasn’t grown. He has not understood Christ. He hasn’t become. He’s stuck.

The one who lacks these things is blind and has forgotten his salvation. How can we forget? How can we forget where we started and where we are.

All of this leads to some thoughts about forgetting. It seems the older a person gets, the more he forgets. I can be around my kids or my wife and they can bring up a story from the past and I have forgotten that. I see faces that I ought to know, but I have forgotten their names.

There are some things that we ought to forget. We need to forget our sins that God has forgiven us. Forgiveness does not erase our memory. We can remember the argument and what we said and how we acted. We can remember flying off the handle. We can remember hurting others. The pain of those sins can linger for a long, long time. If forgiven, we ought to bury those sins in an unmarked grave and never return there again. But that’s hard to do. Some continually beat themselves up over the same forgiven sins. We ought to forget them.

We ought to forget the good that we have done for others. Just do good, and don’t let the left hand know what the right hand is doing. Keeping a mental file of all the good we have done will make us think too highly of ourselves and it may lead to bragging. Just do good and let Heaven keep track of what is done. One of the best things is when someone comes up years later and he remembers something nice that you did, but you have totally forgotten all about that. That’s the way to do that.

But then there are some things that we ought never to forget. This is what has been bothering me lately. I know as I get older, I am going to be forgetting things. There are some things I don’t want to lose. My mom  has been gone for more than twenty years. I will never forget her. But there are some things she said, some memories had are fading. I hate that. There are parts of my childhood that have faded. There are things that I do not want to forget.

Here is my list of things that I never want to forget. Maybe after you read this, you can make your own list.

• I don’t ever want to forget how wonderful God has been to me. He has blessed me beyond what I have ever expected.
• I don’t ever want to forget that I have had great people in my life that have helped me spiritually. There have been churches that gave me a chance. There have been patient brethren that took the time to show me things. I would never be who I am without these amazing people.
• I don’t ever want to forget how special baptisms are. Each one is a unique story. Each one puts a smile on God’s face.
• I don’t ever want to forget how special my family has been to me. Words cannot describe what these people mean to me.
• I don’t ever want to forget where I was before Jesus.
• I don’t ever want to forget what a privilege it is to preach God’s word. That’s such an honor. And God has allowed a simple guy like me to do that for almost four decades. Unbelievable. Each time, every time, is special.
• I don’t ever want to forget how beautiful and powerful God’s word is. Those incredible stories have built my faith and made it possible for me to walk with my Savior.
• I don’t ever want to forget how special Heaven is. Heaven is about God. It’s about being with God.

My grandma used to forget the names of us grandkids. She have to start naming them off, sometimes even including the names of the pets, before she got the right name with the right person. We’d laugh. That doesn’t seem all that funny now.

Forgetting—there are some things that you need to let go and there are some things that you should never, ever forget.

Roger

Jump Start # 1330

2 Peter 1:9 “For he who lacks these qualities is blind or short-sighted, having forgotten his purification from his former sins.”

  Following a list of virtues that the Christian is to be adding and increasing in his life, Peter gives this solemn statement that is our verse today. Forgetting where we came from, forgetting what has happened, being blind to those things, will lead to serious spiritual consequences. Earlier Peter said that if these qualities are yours and are increasing they will render you neither useless nor unfruitful. However, if the opposite is true, if one forgets where he came from, then he is likely to be barren towards God.

How is it that one can forget? We all have our own unique story. Our story may be long, painful and filled with drama. Others have a rather straight forward and simple story. All of us who are Christians have eventually ended up at the same point. Like a giant funnel that is large at the top, it narrows down to a simple point at the end. All of us ended up being baptized. It may have been after a Sunday morning sermon. It may have been during the week. We may have been baptized in the church building, or in a swimming pool, or some, years ago were baptized in rivers and ponds. My dad remembers cars lining up on a hill with their headlights on, so folks could make their way down to a pond where someone was going to be baptized in the dark. It may have been a preacher baptized you. It may have been your dad that baptized you. But we all come to that central point, purified from our sins by the blood of Jesus. Although the details of our stories are all unique, the conclusions are all the same. We believed. We decided to change. We confessed. We were immersed. The song, “Oh, happy day,” was sung at many of those baptisms. It was a happy day. It was a new day for us. We were given a clean page in our life’s story by God. Our names were added to the book of life. We were off on a journey with Christ.

Do you remember the moment after were baptized? The hugs, the pats on the backs, the “we’re happy for you,” comments. Sometimes, especially on a Sunday morning, there was a long line of people waiting just to hug you. You were standing there with wet hair, a bit scared and nervous, but you felt so good. You know you did right.

The next Sunday, we took the Lord’s Supper for the first time. We’d seen our family and others do it, but now it was our turn. Now it meant something special to us. Jesus had died for us. We were remembering that wonderful event. How special that was.

Time passed. You grew. You became a real student of the Bible. You prayed deeply. You started putting things together in your mind. Things were moving along. But for most the newness settled down into a comfortable routine. You got used to taking the Lord’s Supper. Seeing fellow Christians was nothing new. And for some, we might have lost the specialness of what happened and who we now were. Sin comes back. The lines of distinction between who we were and who we are got merged a bit. Things got taken for granted. Another service. Another Lord’s Supper. Another sermon. We leveled off. We stopped growing. Life and all the activities squeezed out our prayer life and our reading of the Bible. We just drifted along.

For some of us, this is where we are now. Some of us have been here for a long time. We are not spiritually dead, or even lukewarm, it’s just that our spiritual burner is barely on. We tend to be coasting. Things are not bad or even wrong, we are just not as excited as we once were.

Then something happens in our life. It could be a visiting preacher who stirs up something deep in us that we had forgotten about for a long time. His passion, his delivery, his reminders, plug us back in. Everything turns on. We become excited again about the Lord. For others, it’s a journey down some tragic path. A death. A car wreck. A divorce. The bottom seems to drop out. In those quiet moments, a person realizes that something has been missing for a long time. God has not seemed very close. A new interest takes place. A home Bible study. A new try at hospitality. Hope is found. Love lost is renewed in the Lord.

It’s good for us to remember. It’s good for us to take a moment and see where we are and what’s happened on our journey. The church of Ephesus had lost their first love. They weren’t throwing in the towel on Jesus, He just wasn’t first with them any more. The admonition is to remember and do what you did at first. Peter is telling us to remember. Remember your purification from sins.

Do you remember who baptized you and when it was? Do you remember what the day was like? Do you remember the feeling when others found out? Have you ever thanked the Lord for that person in your life? Have you ever given thought to what happened to that person? Have you thought about those people who came and smiled and hugged you? Go down memory lane. Give it some thought. It’s like our spring flowers that are coming up, it brings joy and happiness to remember those precious memories.

Remembering will also stir a passion in you. Remembering will help put God back into the center of things. Remembering will help you grasp your resolve and commitment to the Lord. Remembering will put you back on the path and continue your journey with the Lord.

Don’t forget. Don’t ever forget. Several years ago, I received an email from a young man. He’s now preaching. He was remembering me baptizing him. It was an anniversary of his baptism. He reached out to me. I’d forgotten the details. He never did. It made my day knowing that he never forgot.  You might want to do that with someone in your life. Maybe they didn’t baptize you, but maybe they were your first Bible class teacher. Or, maybe they were a real friend to you when you started out. Or, maybe it was a lesson that really changed your life. Years later, you have never forgotten. That too has happened to me. Years ago, a man in Colorado came to hear me preach one evening. He remembered a sermon I preached when he was in college years ago in another state. He had gotten a cassette tape and literally wore the tape out listening to it over and over. I’d long forgotten that sermon. It was stuffed away in some box somewhere. He hadn’t. It had stayed in his heart all these years later. He remembered. He shared that with me and thanked me. It does a person good to share with others the good that they have done for us.

Remember…I hope this has stirred your mind and heart today. Oh, the names, the places, the people, long ago, who helped us become who we are today. Thank God for them. Thank them if you can. Then, become that kind of person for someone else.

Roger