Will you steal, murder, and commit adultery and swear falsely, and offer sacrifices to Baal and walk after other gods that you have not known, then come and stand before Me in this house, which is called by My name, and say, "We are delivered!"—that you may do all these abominations? (Jeremiah 7:8-10).

Paul had a similar indictment against some in the New Testament:

What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?... What then? Shall we sin because we are not under the law but under grace? (Romans 6:1,15).

In the Old Testament some Jews trusted in the temple to absolve them of the guilt of their sinful lifestyles and their idolatry. In the New Testament some Christians thought that God's grace was a license to sin. Neither was true. 

For the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people. It teaches us to say “No” to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age, while we wait for the blessed hope—the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good (Titus 2:11-14).

Paul clearly says that the grace that saves us also commands us to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age. If we think otherwise, we may not have received the saving grace of God but instead believed in Satan's lie. We must not treat the grace of God as some kind of rabbit foot or lucky charm or a "get out of jail free" card. 

While the grace of God does indeed do what we could never do for ourselves, namely, achieve our salvation in Christ, it also produces in us an eagerness "to do what is good." Although we were not saved by our good works, we were saved to do good works:

For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do (Ephesians 2:10).

At the heart of this call to obedience is the knowledge of God, which was given to believers in the Old Testament, as it is given to believers in the New Testament:

Thus says the Lord, “Let not a wise man boast of his wisdom, and let not the mighty man boast of his might, let not a rich man boast of his riches; but let him who boasts boast of this, that he understands and knows Me, that I am the Lord who exercises lovingkindness, justice and righteousness on earth; for I delight in these things,” declares the Lord (Isaiah 9:23-24).

His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires (2 Peter 1:3-4).

But as these texts also suggest, knowing the Lord means that we understand His nature, namely, His lovingkindness, justice, righteousness, and goodness. And in understanding this, that we would participate in the divine nature by doing the things in which He delights. So Peter continues by writing,

For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But whoever does not have them is nearsighted and blind, forgetting that they have been cleansed from their past sins (2 Peter 1:5-9).

Peter commands us to build upon the foundation of our faith in Christ the virtues that are in keeping with God's nature. He says that in doing this, we will be kept from being "ineffective and unproductive" in our knowledge of Christ. But not doing this means that we have become "nearsighted," "blind," and "forgetful" of what Christ has accomplished for us. That is not all. He goes on to argue that it is in doing these things that we are assured that we are truly saved in the first place:

Therefore, my brothers and sisters, make every effort to confirm your calling and election. For if you do these things, you will never stumble, and you will receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ (2 Peter 1:10-11).

It is, therefore, in building on our saving faith that we confirm our "calling and election." We are not saved by good works, but good works confirm our salvation. 

Friends, we are saved by God's power and grace, apart from any willing or doing on our part, but this does not mean that we are free to sin in keeping with our sinful natures. As Paul wrote, "By no means!" No, we have been made "partakers of the divine nature," by which we are set free from the corruption caused by our sinful natures and led to eagerly desire to do the good works that God has prepared in advance for us to do. These include things like goodness, knowledge, self-control, perseverance, godliness, mutal affection, and love. 

Therefore, let us persevere in building on our faith these virtues. They will keep us from being ineffective and unproductive. if we consistently pursue these things, we will "never stumble!" In doing these things, we will be assured of our true salvation. Finally, in doing them we find a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

What then should we be working on? If I might just comment today on the first virtue in Peter's list of virtues:

Goodness - this virtue is uniquely God-defined. The psalmist writes, "Nearness to God is my good" (Psalm 73:28). Again, he writes, "I have no good apart from You" (Psalm 16:2). Jesus says that God is the only good (cf. Matthew 19:17). James writes that every good thing comes from God (cf. James 1:17). Consider this very appropo assessment by one of my favorit theologians, A.W. Pink:

There is such an absolute perfection in God’s nature and being that nothing is wanting to it or defective in it, and nothing can be added to it to make it better. ‘He is originally good, good of Himself, which nothing else is; for all creatures are good only by participation and communication from God. He is essentially good; not only good, but goodness itself: the creature’s good is a super-added quality, in God it is His essence. He is infinitely good; the creature’s good is but a drop, but in God there is an infinite ocean or gathering together of good. He is eternally and immutably good, for He cannot be less good than He is; as there can be no addition made to Him, so no subtraction from Him’ (Thomas Manton). God is summum bonum, the highest good (A. W. Pink, The Attributes of God, p. 52.).

What does this mean for you and me? How do we add this virtue of goodness to our faith? 

Simply put, I believe it means that we do everything we can to draw near to God. This implies always praying to Him, trusting Him in everything, and making Him the center of our lives. It certainly means to know Him through His Word - in fact, this is the very next virtue. It includes doing what honors Him, what pleases Him, and what He commands us to do. Humility is understood because in practicing this virtue we would recognize that there is no good in ourselves (cf. Psalm 14:1; 53:1; Romans 3:9-18) but our every good comes only from God. 

Friends, I stop here because this sharing is already long as it is. But I encourage you to search out in like manner the other virtues that Peter lists for your own good.

"When you tell them all this, they will not listen to you; when you call to them, they will not answer. Therefore say to them, 'This is the nation that has not obeyed the Lord its God or responded to correction. Truth has perished; it has vanished from their lips. (Jeremiah 7:27, 28 NIV)

In these chapters of Jeremiah, God tells the people that they have been disobedient and rebellious right from the beginning. There has never been a time when they have been faithful to Him. And now their sinful rebellion has reached the critical point, where God will not stand for it any longer. What is more, even if He were to continue His appeal to them to repent, they would not listen. So He declares, "Truth has perished; it has vanished from their lips."

Oh, that I had in the desert a lodging place for travelers, so that I might leave my people and go away from them; for they are all adulterers, a crowd of unfaithful people. "They make ready their tongue like a bow, to shoot lies; it is not by truth that they triumph in the land. They go from one sin to another; they do not acknowledge me,"declares the Lord. "Beware of your friends; do not trust anyone in your clan. For every one of them is a deceiver, and every friend a slanderer. Friend deceives friend, and no one speaks the truth. They have taught their tongues to lie; they weary themselves with sinning. You live in the midst of deception; in their deceit they refuse to acknowledge me,"declares the Lord. (Jeremiah 9:2-6 NIV)

These are but excerpts from God's long diatribe against Judah. By these descriptions we are led to understand that there was no good in the people, for even whatever good there could be had been corrupted and whatever truth had been twisted with lies and deception. 

Yet, in the midst of this we have some words of hope. 

This is what the Lord says:"Let not the wise boast of their wisdom or the strong boast of their strength or the rich boast of their riches, but let the one who boasts boast about this: that they have the understanding to know me, that I am the Lord, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight," declares the Lord. (Jeremiah 9:23, 24 NIV)

Now, this is remarkable. God has just before this pronouncement of hope indicated that the people would not and, therefore, could not know Him. He said that there understanding was dull and twisted by scribes that penned lies. He indicated that truth had perished among them, that it had vanished from their lips. So, wherein could they boast about having the understanding to know God?! 

May I suggest that this understanding did not arise from the people's own minds or wills. It was given them by God. According to the freedom of their wills they were trapped in their own web of self-destructive lies; however, as we will learn from Jeremiah's later explanation of the New Covenant, in the New Covenant God would give them what they could not gain for themselves. He would give them the knowledge of God:

"The days are coming," declares the Lord, "when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them," declares the Lord. "This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel after that time," declares the Lord."I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. No longer will they teach their neighbor, or say to one another, 'Know the Lord, 'because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest," declares the Lord. "For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more." (Jeremiah 31:31-34 NIV)

Praise God, dear friends! We are inheritors of this New Covenant, for it was ratified through the precious shed blood of Christ Jesus to the benefit of all of us, who have been given the privilege and enablement to believe in Him. Jeremiah's words to them apply to us too, for we too have been given what we could not have gained for ourselves.

So, today, don't worry about what you may be worrying about right now. What does it matter in view of your eternal inheritance, which will never fail nor fade? While I would not go so far as to encourage you to be carefree, I would say be free of the kind of cares that debilitate and keep you from enjoying the full riches of God and His promises in the short life you have left on this earth. There are others that joyfully look forward to heaven while being tortured until they die, so you have no excuse for your miserable outlook. Take to heart Paul's encouragement and admonition:

Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:4-7 NIV)

"This is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says: Go ahead, add your burnt offerings to your other sacrifices and eat the meat yourselves! ²² For when I brought your ancestors out of Egypt and spoke to them, I did not just give them commands about burnt offerings and sacrifices, ²³ but I gave them this command: Obey me, and I will be your God and you will be my people. Walk in obedience to all I command you, that it may go well with you."

 I could hear the voice of my Shepherd this morning, calling for reformation in my life. God tells Israel that merely having God's commands will not do any good for the imminent judgement. All the religious activities or carrying out the duties as a member of any local church will be useless before God unless we OBEY Him. We don't have the ordinances of all kinds of offerings and regulations any more, but we have a new commandment now: Love one another! When we do that, Jesus said, people would know that He is with us. Let's continue to pray for this fundrasing event and at the same time do what we got to do faithfully!

Consider today the reason for the judgment that is coming on Judah:

Who is the wise man who may understand this? And who is he to whom the mouth of the LORD has spoken, that he may declare it? Why does the land perish and burn up like a wilderness, so that no one can pass through? And the LORD said, “Because they have forsaken My law which I set before them, and have not obeyed My voice, nor walked according to it, but they have walked according to the dictates of their own hearts and after the Baals, which their fathers taught them," therefore thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: “Behold, I will feed them, this people, with wormwood, and give them water of gall to drink. I will scatter them also among the Gentiles, whom neither they nor their fathers have known. And I will send a sword after them until I have consumed them.” (Jeremiah 8:12-16)

I have highlighted in this Scripture the reasons for God's judgment. Within this reason, did you catch the three ways that knowledge was received by the people: from God, from self, and from their "fathers" (influential leaders from generation to generation). Rather than follow God's Word, the people chose to follow their own thoughts and feelings. Rather than trust God's counsel, they chose to follow their misguided leaders, who taught them how to compromise their worship of Yahweh with the worship of Baal. As you read Jeremiah, you will notice that it was not that the people outright rejected God or His Word. Later, they would even seek out the prophet Jeremiah to hear God's counsel. But rather than embrace the Word of God as truth, they filtered everything through their own personal thoughts and feelings and the counsel of others, who gave them alternative counsel. And more often than not, this counsel or their own thoughts was what they followed.

This reminds me of what Paul said in his second letter to Timothy:

For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. (2 Timothy 4:3-4, TNIV).

It is no wonder that some of the most popular preachers today do not preach the Word of God, only a distorted version of it. The largest churches today do not create the kind of holy discomfort that causes their members to reorient their lives to be completely Christ-focused. In Jeremiah's day the fall-back words were, "the Temple of the LORD, the Temple of the LORD, the Temple of the LORD" (Jeremiah 7:4). Today, people say, "I go to church, I go to church, I go to church." In Jeremiah's day, they were saying, "Peace! Peace!" But there was no peace. (Jeremiah 8:11). Today, people say, "Don't judge me! Don't be so negative!" But that is exactly what is needed in the church of God today (1 Peter 4:17).

Dear friends, you cannot rely on the pastor or Bible teacher to ultimately guide you. Even such leaders may be shaped by the ungodly culture in which they live. Except for a few prophets, the majority of the prophets and priests in Israel were speaking lies and leading the people astray. And you cannot rely on your own thoughts and feelings. Your reasoning is limited, and God says that the wisdom of the world is foolishness to God (1 Corinthians 3:19). And will you trust your feelings and experiences, which can turn this way and that and are wholly unreliable because they can be deceived and manipulated by unscrupulous people and even demons? There is only one recourse, and that is to wholly trust in the Word of God. 

In Jeremiah 9:23-24 we read,

      "Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom,
      Let not the mighty man glory in his might,
      Nor let the rich man glory in his riches;
     
      But let him who glories glory in this,
      That he understands and knows Me,
      That I am the LORD, exercising lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth.
      For in these I delight,” says the LORD.

Let us then glory in this, that we know God. And there is but two sure ways for us to know Him - generally through His creation (Psalm 19:1-6; Romans 1:20) and specifically through His Word. But only through His Word can we be sanctified, that is, made holy and pleasing to God (John 17:17). Therefore, dear friends, daily meditate and memorize God's Word, and then pray that God's Spirit may help you both to speak and to live the Word of God in truth every day.