If you'll turn to second Peter, we'll continue on in our study of spiritual transformation because that's what Peter is addressing. That's why he's writing this particular letter to talk against and about these false teachers. In fact, those false teachers are discussed in chapter two if you're looking, second Peter, chapter two, where the apostle says, but false prophets also rose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction. In many who follow their sensuality, because of them, the way of the truth will be blasphemed. And in their greed, they will exploit you with false words. Their condemnation from long ago is not idle and the destruction is not asleep. One of the things that they teach young men in seminary, and I have to admit that as much as I like church history, this is the part of church history, I did not like. When we had to study all of the ancient heresies of the first three centuries, there were dozens of them. Arianism and modalism and monarchism, and I couldn't even, I couldn't pass a presidential exam because I couldn't tell you what those things were anymore, and I used to figure, what was the use of these things? When I got into the ministry and I found something out about the enemy, that he really doesn't use new techniques because the old techniques work. What he does is he brings out a particular heresy or teaching, false teaching, and he uses it for a while until the church sounds the alarm, warns the people, and then he withdraws it. He just puts it in retirement and he waits a couple centuries and he brings it out again. For example, there were people in the early church Arian's, they were called, who taught that Jesus Christ was not divine. He was the son of God because of his good and Godly nature. It was a man who was adopted by God because it was perfectly black, but he was not the second person of the Trinity. Who in the world believes that now? What do you hope a witness does? They're Aryans. The Mormons are modalists. They believe that God appears in different modes and evolves over time into the God he is now. And there are people today who were nostics. I thought nosticism was long dead until the new age movement emerged in the late 1980s, early 90s, and found its way into now what is called the emergent church. I don't recommend you read this book, but if you're in for a thriller, then pick up a book called the New Christianity, where a nosticism is taught almost on every single page. And that nosticism is capturing a whole generation of younger people and what is called the emerging church. They are calling for, quote, a new kind of Christianity, but folks, it's really not new at all. Solomon was right. There is nothing new under the sun. Solomon has been, will come again, and what comes has already been. There is nothing under the sun, all is vanity in striving after wind. And Peter confronts nosticism, and I wanted to take this opportunity this morning at the risk or this evening of putting all of you to sleep and describe to you what nost... Now if it does, I'll get loud in a few minutes and wake you up for the meat of the sermon. Now I wanted to tell you what nosticism is, because I think you're going to be amazed as I describe what these ancient heretics believed in Peter and Paul's and John's day, and you're going to say, my goodness, I have a brother in law who believes that. Why the guy who shares the cubicle of me at work teaches that. And this is exactly what I heard on the radio, or on the television set, or in this book that I read, because nosticism is alive and well in America. This movement by the way, took its name from the heretics themselves. They called themselves the nostics, from the Greek word nossus. They believed that a person was not saved through the life and blood in grace of Jesus Christ, but because they received a direct revelation from God, from beings they called archons, that the overseers, or the great ones, like they were spiritual channels, sometimes angels, sometimes to cease people, sometimes spirits between God and men who communicated a special kind of mystical knowledge. And if you knew the right things you would be saved if you didn't, you would be lost. In fact, they divided humanity into three groups of people, the nostics who were also called the pneumatics, the spiritual ones, and had this special mystical knowledge. And the psychics who were close, they were less mature and very emotional, and they might get into the kingdom of God, and the somatics, the sleepers, who were purely materialistic, who were lost. These were the tenets of their religion. They were dualists, they believed in two gods who were presented in the Bible. Charles Clifton has written a book called the Encyclopedia of Heresies and Heretics, and that's where I'm taking my information from. Dr. Clifton says, rather than seeing a spiritual struggle between God and the devil taking place, the nostics described a conflict between the true, unknowable, high God and a lesser God who rules the world. This lesser God, they called the Demi-Eurg, from the Greek word that means public craftsmen. He was identified with the angry, rule-giving God of the Hebrew scriptures. Jesus, in contrast, had been sent by the high God to teach people how to free themselves from the Demi-Eurg's control and return to their spiritual home upon death. His role was more like that of a supreme guide rather than a king, a judge, or a redeemer. An allied with the view of Jesus' role was a teaching called Dossenticism, which means the appearance. That Jesus Christ only appeared to be flesh and blood, only appeared to be a human being, only appeared to have a body, appeared to suffer and die, appeared to go into the grave and raise himself from the dead. They believe that, in reality, what Jesus' family and disciples and friends and audience all was only an apparition of something created for the dull of mind and heart who had not this spiritual knowledge, for it was impossible for the high God to encase himself and flesh since flesh was bad and spirit was good. Now folks, one of the great and popular teachings today is that Jesus Christ came to correct our misconceptions about the angry, violent, war-encouraging tribal God of the Old Testament. People will teach and are increasingly teaching in the Christian church that we cannot have a reliable witness in the Old Testament because that God had low and base motives for doing things. Now, that's not a new argument. That argument came out in the late 1700s, early 1800s, in the higher critical liberal school of German theology. It's an old foolish idea. What makes it foolish is that Jesus Christ in the New Testament talks very lovely and affectionately about His Father, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of the Jews. He never presents Him as an angry, violent, basically motivated, tribal God, Jesus Christ, and His prophets in the Old Testament, the one who writes the Psalms, the great king of Israel, always present God as loving the world and welcoming all people to Himself. We may struggle with these passages where Israel is told to defend themselves or to wipe out an entire city, but these are for reasons deeper and much more important than we realize. The reason God did that, my friends, is He was protecting an infant nation church in its childhood because He realized that if they did not purge themselves from the evil among themselves, then soon they would sacrifice their children to God, they would engage in ritual prostitution, they would reject monotheism and turn to pagan ideas, which is exactly what they did and exactly why God sent them into Babylonian captivity. The reason that God was so strict in the Old Testament was to create a spiritual incubator that was pure into which one boy could be born who is His Son, Jesus Christ, and He not be polluted by the paganism of the world. If God had not done that, then our Lord Jesus Christ would have been raised by polytheistic parents who practiced ritual immorality in a temple somewhere and who took some of their children and sacrificed them to God, perhaps their firstborn, a boy named Yeshua. It seems harsh to us, but God was protecting the world and His people from complete debasement so that into this world could come a Savior who would save us from that very false pagan religion. There are not two gods. There is one God and Father of us all. The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ and the Nostics denied that. They believed that He was not conceived of a virgin, He was not born with human flesh, He did not live in the world, He didn't die, there was no resurrection, there was no blood atonement, which by the way the emerging church is now teaching, that blood atonement is of tribal, pagan, violent concept, unworthy of the Christian mind. Well I don't know what you do about the Old Testament, but I know that somewhere towards the end of the New Testament in the book of Hebrews it says in chapter 9, without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins. For the soul that sineth must die, sounds like Nostocisms alive and well. They also believed that men were basically good. As Professor says the Nostics, in their chief spiritual view of mankind, said that the key issue was not sin and separation from God as in the Orthodox Christian religion, but an ignorance about the nature of the false demigurges, traps, and how to surmount them with a true and spiritual knowledge. Professor Clifton's right, they taught that that atonement was not a matter of guilt and unrighteousness and atonement, that it was a matter of knowing the right way to manipulate the gods to get in their graces. They also believed in a personalized religion, that salvation was purely individual. Dr. Clifton says Nostics generally accepted that the kingdom of God was an interior state, a transformed consciousness rather than a future event. They rejected the idea that God's will was revealed in history because history, together with the material world's rewards, its governments and all of its aspirations were part of the demigurges planned to keep people ignorant of their true and spiritual natures. So salvation became for them simply a personal thing. Quite frankly, they sounded like modern psycho-babilists because they thought that salvation was basically feeling good about yourself and coming through the realization that God was in you, that each human being had what they called the divine spark. They talked, doesn't this sound new age, twenty-first century America. They talked about the God within emerging from you naturally as you shed at your old pagan ideas about sin and guilt and blood atonement. They rejected the apostolic revelation, the church's authority and all test of orthodoxy. They valued their individual understanding, Dr. Clifton says of spiritual truth, producing their own books of revelations, teachings and prophecies. They were odds with bishops and creeds and rituals and confessions of faith. And each Nostic was his own ultimate authority and they rejected all ideas of apostolic succession and revelation. They had books like The Gospel According to Thomas, The Gospel According to Judas, The Gospel According to Mary Magdalene. In fact, if you went to see the movie The Da Vinci Code, what you saw was Nosticism portrayed through The Gospel According to Mary Magdalene. There's a great collection of books that Old Testament and seminary students study called The Naghamadi, all these Nostic books that basically talk about all these things that I've been explaining to you. They also were corrupted and immoral. They had great gender confusion and they engaged in much sexual immorality, sometimes richly so. There was a rise of feminism in them and in Nosticism Mary Magdalene took on a supernatural place as the wife and lover of Jesus Christ and the one who actually redeems him from his false views of his human nature, making him rise above his manhood and his fallen way of living. It's an absolutely disgusting portrayal of Jesus Christ. They believed in the remoteness of God that he really didn't care much about the details of life. The pastor Clifton says although their writings personify wisdom as an emanation of God, they also depicted God as more remote from human affairs, similar to the removed God of their Nostic background. God kind of spun the world into existence and then said like a clock that he wound up, let it go. And the idea that he would ever send someone from heaven to interfere with our personal lives and change our history was absolutely forbidden. We were on our own. God helps those who helped themselves they taught if that doesn't sound classically American. And that, along with other things, was Nosticism. You know what's interesting is that all the New Testament apostles write against these men. Look at Peter says again in chapter 2 beginning in verse 10, bold and willful they do not tremble as they blaspheme the glorious ones, whereas angels, though greater in might and power, do not pronounce a blasphemous judgment against them before the Lord, but these like irrational animals, creatures of instinct, born to be caught and destroyed blaspheming about matters of which they are ignorant, will also be destroyed in their destruction, suffering wrong as the wages for their wrongdoing. They counted the pleasure to rebel in the day time. There are blotts and blemishes reveling in their deceptions while they feast with you. They have eyes full of adultery, insatiable for sin. They entice unsteady souls. They have hearts trained in greed, a curse children. For saking the right way they have gone astray, they have followed the way of bailum, the son of Bior who loved gain from wrongdoing, but was rebuke for his own transgression, a speechless donkey spoke with a human voice and restrained the prophet's madness. Jude talks about these same men if you turn to Jude, back towards the book of Revelation right in front of the book of Revelation. In fact, his epistle is almost identical to second Peter. We can't tell which one led to the other, but obviously one of these writers had read the other and copied much of what the others said. And Jude shares the same inspired assessment of them. In Jude verse 8 he says, yet in like manner these people also relying on their dreams to file the flesh, reject authority and blaspheme the glorious ones. But when the archangel Michael, contending with the devil, was disputing about the body of Moses, he did not presume to pronounce a blasphemous judgment but said the Lord rebuke you. But these people blaspheme all that they do not understand and they are destroyed like unresting animals understand instinctively, woe to them. For they walk in the way of can and abandon themselves for the sake of gain to bailum's heir and perished in chorus rebellion, they are hidden reefs at your love feast. As they feast with you out fear, shepherding, shepherds feeding themselves, waterless clouds swept along by winds fruitless trees in late autumn, twice dead, uprooted, wild ways of the sea casting up their foam of shame, wandering stars for whom the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved forever. You know, if I preach like that, it'd be fired in two weeks. It's amazing how in concerned these inspired apostles are about these heretics turned to John because John writes about them more than anyone since he wrote later than all of them and wrote during their apex of influence. John in 1 John chapter 3, 1 John chapter 6 says in verse 6, no one who abides in him keeps on sinning. No one who keeps on sinning has either seen him nor been known him, little children let no one deceive you, whoever practices righteous does as righteous as he is righteous, whoever makes a practice of sin is of the devil. For the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God's seed abides in him and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God. By this it is evident who are the children of God and who are the children of the devil, whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, there is the one who does not love his brother, that Nostyx taught that doesn't matter what you do with your body. You believe in Jesus Christ and all you want does make any difference, John says that's not true. He goes on in chapter 4 to say that anyone who does not confess that the Son of God was incarnate in human flesh is not a Christian. Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but don't believe all these are cons that speak to you, but believe, attest the spirits to see whether they are from God. For many false prophets have gone out into the world, by this you know the Spirit of God, every spirit that confesses that Jesus has come in the flesh is from God and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the Antichrist which you heard was coming and now is in the world already. Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, for he was in you is greater than he was in the world. They are from the world, therefore they speak us in the world and the world listens to them. We are from God, whoever knows God listens to us, whoever is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the Spirit of truth and the Spirit of air. Even Paul describes these false-nostic teachers and how they manipulated people for sexual advantage. For among them are those who creep into households and captivate women burdened down with sins and led astray by great weakness and various passions. They are always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. Just as Janice and Jambres opposed Moses, those men also opposed the truth, men corrupted in mind and disqualified regarding the faith, but they will not succeed. For their folly will become evident to all, as also was that of those two men in the Old Testament. Paul, Peter, John, Jude. They all warn us that this heresy is alive and well. Michael Horton, professor at Westminster West has taken a great deal of flack over riding a book called Chrysler's Christianity where he exposes again the Nostecaracy. And in one of his chapters he said that Nostecism is alive and well and he mentions that two men have written books, one named Philip Lee, who's written against the Protestant Nostics and a man named Harold Bloom, who's written the American religion. Both of these men, he says, point out the connection between this popular spirituality today and Nostecism of the ancient world with great insight, Philip Lee laments Nostecism of the American religion while Alan Barrow Bloom celebrates it. It's alive and well, it's in the church. You can find it in the health and wealth teachers that tell you that if you know the word of faith, if you know how to claim the promises, if you'll just send 1995 to them with a self-addressed envelope, they'll send you the key to spiritual fulfillment and blessings in this life. That is nothing but Nostec's, the right knowledge to get the gods to do what you want them to do. And folks, it's all, how does it come to us? I mean, how does this Nostecism flourish among the human nature and the human race again and again? Professor Clifton said, the origins of Nostecism may be sought in two ways as a movement and as a worldview. In the later approach, it is seen as a type of world-wearingness that particularly affected dissonant intellectuals and people whose worldly status had shifted against their will from higher to lower, feeling unappreciated and dishonored, these people were receptive to philosophies that rejected the world and the grinding process of history, replacing them with an elaborate spiritual hierarchy through which they might come to true knowledge and regain their great status. A world-wearingness, he says, gave birth to Nostecism. Professor Albert Molar, the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, was talking about the emergent church and this book, A New Kind of Christianity, and he said, I'm sure that this author is tapping into a spiritual exhaustion, a fatigue, a sense of wanting to be culturally relevant, a sense of not wanting to stand out from one's peers and neighbors. I certainly understand that but I just believe that the cost of following that route is literally to abandon the historic biblical Christianity. You can see this Nostecism all around us. It is the idea that God saves me because I ask him into my heart, that no one can tell me how to live or how to believe, that my religion is deeply personal and individualistic and nobody else's business, that God loves everyone, saves everyone, condemns no one, no one really goes to hell in the end, all go to heaven. Because all are basically good, they have a divine spark within them, holding this as optional and not essential, I can do as I please with my body as long as my soul belongs to God. Gender rules are old fashioned structures of an ignorant, patriarchal system. God is who you want him to be, whatever you need him to be. And there is no meta-narrative, no grand story that tells all of life together, no redent of history, no objective facts, no absolute truth, no one way to heaven. Just your story, combined with other stories, as you muddle through life and find the key to understanding. My friends, Nostecism is alive and well. And the proof of that is that if we were to survey evangelical Christians, those who were 35 years and older and ask them, is there another way to heaven besides Jesus Christ? 65% would say, no, 35% of older evangelicals, only 35% would say there's another way to heaven. But when we survey Christians who were evangelicals 35 and younger, 69% say there is another way to heaven besides Jesus Christ. The numbers are inverted at the age break of 35. His Nostecism has caught on again. So what is Peter's defense? Surprising way he begins is not to launch right into the truths that counter these heretical views, he says, no, no, the antidote that you inject yourself with to inoculate yourself from Nostecism is spiritual transformation and godly virtue. Look again to chapter 1, beginning in 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 by his own glory and excellence, but which is granted to us as precious and very great promises. So that through them you might become partakers of the divine nature having escaped from the corruption that isn't the world because of sinful desire. 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 steadfastness with godliness and godliness with brother affection and brother affection with love for if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or infruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For whoever lacks these things is so near sighted that he is blind having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins, therefore brothers be all the more diligent to make your calling election sure. And if you practice these qualities you will never fail for in this way there will richly be provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Peter says that God has given us in the Holy Spirit and in the grace and person of Jesus Christ all that we need to contradict and be inoculated against this popular heresy that keeps coming back and capturing millions of people age after age. So he presents a golden chain of virtue, things that God brings to us and things that we engage with grace, the life of God in the soul of man faith, trusting in the historical Jesus as the only Savior of mankind at his great medanerative of the kingdom of God is the true story, virtue, moral goodness, moral courage and moral energy, knowledge, historical biblical and theological realities of life, self-control, reigning in our fleshly passions, controlling the bodies war against the Spirit, steadfastness, overcoming soul-wearingness and disillusionment that makes you look for an easier shortcut to God and now he comes to one that is strange to our ears, godliness or literally piety. He says we need to develop, supplement and to all of this golden chain of virtue, piety. Two things you want to see tonight, what is piety and how do we develop it? For this very reason make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, virtue with knowledge, knowledge with self-control, self-control with steadfastness, instead fastness with yusemeah. The most literal translation of that word is piety. We translate it, godliness or religion or worship or devotion, but it really means piety. It's one of the key words that Paul uses in the past oral epistle. Doctrine and godliness, teaching and piety. It comes from two words in Greek, e-u-u, which means good or well done, and sebo-my, to worship, to be devoted to a god or a goddess, to be devout. It is literally a good worship, a good devotion, a good godly orientation. It comes from a rich family of words, there's a verb yusemeah, which means to worship, to carry out religious duties, to show piety towards the divine, to hold sacred, holy things, the adjective yusemeah, which means to be religious, devout, pious, godly in an adverb, yusemeah, which means to live in a godly or in a god-defearing manner. So a god-fearing man who has a god-word life who's concerned about the things of god is a man or woman of piety. And there's a number of people in the New Testament, like Cornelius, and the Apostle Paul, and Jesus Christ, and others who are referred to with this adjective. Piety is defined as having three sides. It is a devotion to god through faith in Jesus Christ. It's looking for the true god, through the true revealer of that god, Jesus Christ. Secondly, it's a respect for god and the things of god. It includes the idea of reverence. And thirdly, it is a demeanor that displays a pursuit of Christ's likeness. It's what John Piper calls a god-word life. I love that adjective he's made up god-word, a life that's oriented toward god. In the book by that name, a god-word life, Piper says, where is god in your daily newspaper, or in your talk radio show, or on your network television program, or in time in Newsweek magazine, or the theater or the public school classroom? God is the most important reality in the universe, but he is also totally ignored. And if not, he is likely belittled as he is reverenced. And then he is the most crucial factor in every issue facing the nation. There would simply be no nation without god, but he is disregarded by our cultural leaders is if they believed he didn't exist. Disregard for god is the greatest evil in the Western world today. It is though an ant on his ant hill should disbelieve in the earth that he sees. If the church is going to reassert god's rightful place in the soul of man and at the center of all of life, we will need a sharpened focus on who god is, what he is like, and what he wants from us. In short, we will need to recapture a god-word life. My friends, this is the truth. The easiest thing to do is a Christian is to add god to your life. Just take a little bit of Jesus and put him in your busy formula and to think that that is enough. I am here to tell you in no uncertain turns that Jesus Christ will not be added to anything. He will be your life or he will not be in your life at all. He is going to be the center in the essence of your life or he is not interested in your life the least bit. Jesus Christ will not become one more activity to be scheduled, one more thing to do, one more person to fit into your giving and your loving and your time. Paul says, Christ, who is our life will be revealed and then we will be revealed and glory with him. A pious soul and that word pious is not a bad word. We use, oh she's so pious. We use that as synonymous with hypocritical, but it's not the same. To be pious is to be concerned about god and the things of god to take seriously the claims of Jesus Christ in life so that our word is impious. Our world has no piety. They could care less about Christ, about god. They marginalize him in devalue and blasphemy. In fact, they hate spiritual things. But a life of piety is a Christ-centered life. It's a gospel-driven life where Jesus is loved and esteemed and treasured is the ultimate pleasure in good. Let me tell you what piety is not. It is not perfection. A man of piety is not sinless. He makes mistakes. He sins. He does bad things. But he is oriented toward god. A life of piety is not piosity. A word that sounds the same, but piosity is false piety. That's where the hypocrisy comes in. You act like your pious, but you're not. Piosity is synonymous with self-righteousness with Phariseism. And piety is not asceticism. It is not the denial of the world. It's the celebration of the world the way god intended. The man who was pious likes cold beer. He goes to football games. He loves to make love to his wife. He lacks a good television show. He has fun on vacation. He goffs. He hunts. He travels. He reads. He enjoys the common grace of god, but he puts them in the paradigm that these things can never take him away from Christ and never be used in an inappropriate way. They should lead him to love and appreciate god in the world for god so love the world that this godly man loves the world too. He loves some of the things of the world as long as the things of the world are not against the things of god. So don't think that you've got to become a monk or a fundamentalist. I can't do this and I can't do that to become pious, not so. In fact, one of the marks of Gnosticism is a nod to asceticism. The denial of easy things I gave up candy for lent.
I gave up football games as long as it was Michigan. You know, you give up some easy thing and all the sudden your pious. No, that's not piety. Piety is seen in the life that pursues god and the things of god and the will of god. When Paul says this one thing I do, it's one thing I do. Forget in my old life the sin that lies behind. I press on for the goal of the prize of the upward call of god in Christ Jesus. That is the strongest statement of piety in the Bible. For me to live as Christ to die as Gn is the heartbeat of a pious person. So what do they look like? Well, they love the Lord's day and they want to worship on it. They begin each day with the prayer and the word and they end each day in prayer and the word. They spend their money on the things of god and not only on themselves, they love to sing to god. They love to read Christian biographies. I love to go to Bible studies and I like to learn through conferences things about the world of god. They are suspicious of the world if everybody agrees in the world about something they automatically say it's got to be wrong. They love their pastors and they respect the church. They honor the great saints of the church. They honor their mom and dad. God, the authority means something to them. Tradition is not something to be questioned or ridiculed. It's the value of sacred history informing our modern lives. They love the ordinance of the church, preaching and worship and liturgy and baptism in the prayer books and the holy days and the rhythm of life, where god is put at the center of the week, the month, the year, the eons. They practice spiritual disciplines and pursuit of god. They take three things seriously. They're sin, god's mercy and the blood of Jesus Christ. They believe that god is a god of grace and a god of judgment, god of the law and a god of the gospel, god of mercy and god of wrath. They believe that all these are life-shaping realities. They confess that Christ has come, Christ has died, Christ has risen, and in the body He will come again. These are pious people. I leave it to John Calvin to define it for us. I call piety that reference joined with love for God, which the knowledge of his benefits always induces. For until men recognize that they owe everything to God, that they are nourished by his fatherly care, that he is the author of their every good, they should seek for nothing beyond him. Till they recognize us, they will never yield to him willing service. Nay, unless they establish their complete happiness in God, they will never give themselves truly and serily to him or to his beloved and precious son. The pious person simply believes that god is true, that god is good, that god is involved in our lives, and that god's way is always better than ours. That's what it means to be pious. Peter says we ought to develop that. How? Let me tell you some five things very quickly, not difficult things to understand. First of all, piety is developed by developing a trinitarian structure of life. To believe that you are brought into a life with god through god and creation, Christ and history, the spirit and the church. I want to commend a book to you. In fact, you have at the bottom of your of your sermon notes tonight of bibliography of things that will help you understand piety. In the first on the list, I would recommend is Eugene Peterson's Christ plays in 10,000 places. That talks about the trinitarian structure of life, and you can revisit these ideas if you want to go online and pull up our old sermon series, Life with God, preached back in 2008, it's kind of a summation of these concepts for life. Secondly, piety is developed by establishing a Christ-centered view of life. What I call a cruciform life, a life shaped by the cross. If you look at the cross above me and has four points, top and bottom, left and right, and there are four dimensions of a Christ-shaped life. The Christ is a center of life. Everything revolves around him. The Christ is the paradigm of life. Everything is interpreted with reference to him. That Christ is the chief end or purpose of life. That everything we do should be done for his glory and pleasure. And fourthly, that Christ is the supreme pleasure of life. All things are of secondary worth compared to Jesus Christ. He is the center of life. He is the paradigm of life. He is the purpose of life. He is the supreme pleasure of life. For me to live is Christ. That is the summation of a Christ-centered piety. Thirdly, we develop piety by grounding our lives in the local church. Piety cannot be developed individually on our own. In fact, in a wonderful sermon series called Gospel Life, Tim Keller has a sermon in their entitled Community, the context of change and transformation. And he makes the point that we cannot ever become all that God wants us to be without the help of the local church. Mother Kirk. Mother Church, you know, we're uncomfortable. We say, isn't that kind of Catholic to refer to the churches our mother? Well, you know, John Calvin referred to the churches as the mother. Read his institutes. Martin Luther referred to the churches as our spiritual mother. So do the church fathers. In fact, one of them said, if we would have God as our father, we must have the churches our mother. In fact, Paul refers to the churches our mother. And so do the prophets of the Old Testament. There's something about the church, something she brings to us that shapes piety at every turn. If you look in your notes, I'm not going to run through these things in much length, but I've listed 20 things there. 20 things the church gives to us, the delightful day, the Lord's day, a holy place, a sanctuary place, set apart from the world and set aside for piety, a sacred desk, a holy font, a holy table, a house of prayer, school for Christ, where we learn about him and Sunday's school Bible studies. It sets before us each week the divine drama of liturgy, the heavenly anthres of Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs and music presents to us the men of God, clergymen, and the noble army we call them in him, the laity who serve the Lord with joy and courage, brings us into the family of God, generations in community, and the rhythm of life, the great holy days and holidays that we celebrate in Christ and his church. It gives us a celestial citizen ship, church membership, and a common confession in our creeds and catechisms and confessions. It gives us a micomandate to do justice and love mercy, and while humbly with God and a great commission to change the world, it gives before us a vision of the city of God, of a life with God, it tells us about angels in the architects, there are signs and symbols all around us that remind us that we are part of something larger than life and greater than ourselves that last forever this kingdom of God. You know what you have there? You got 20 chapter titles of a book some day, I hope to write why everything you need to know about life you'll find in the church, you'll find in the wife of God, the apple of Christ eye. It's great and passionate love interests, and we cannot escape the fact that without mother church we will never be God-word people. Fourthly, piety is developed by ruining our life in the spiritual disciplines. All the women in this room know that if you want your husband to stay in good shape and you want your children to go big and strong and healthy, you give them the five basic food grooves and a well-balanced menu. Board of those things? Well it's not dairy grains, meat vegetables, and fruits, it's the word the sacraments prayer, fellowship, and worship, the things that they devoted themselves to in the early church, and there are spiritual disciplines that make up this menu. They take these five basic food groups and they combine them in different ways to feed the soul, the word through studies and Bible studies and sermons and Bible reading and good books and memorization, meditation of scripture prayer, through personal and corporate and family prayer, days of fasting and prayer, days of silence and solitude. In worship, the Lord's day, through the liturgy, through special events and holy days, through funerals and weddings, whenever we come together to celebrate the life of God, among his people, there's worship, the sacraments, through baptism and communion, in fellowship, through love feast and community events and shared missions and care for one another. In other words, if you want to be grow up and be strong and look just like dad, you want to be like your big brother Jesus Christ and you have a good diet and use the spiritual disciplines to link into these means of grace and somehow in some way that we can't explain that we know as a fact when we feed our souls this way, we grow strong in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and we grow up Paul says to be just like him. And finally, piety is developed by taking your faith into the world. It's something like a muscle that must be exercised. We would think that piety is arrived at by going away to a monastery and reading and praying and meditating for the rest of your life. No, that produces piosity. It doesn't work. I tried that for four years. Piety is only developed when we take mercy and justice and mission and witness and truth and upright living and caring concern for other people out into the world. In fact, piety without the public dimension of outreach soon devolves into piosity to a deformed piety. He has told you, oh man, what is good and what the Lord requires of you and it requires you engaging people in the world with a Godward life and calling them to go on this journey with you into the kingdom of heaven. All of these things that I mention indicate that piety alone among these nine virtues of this golden chain of virtue, piety is the only one that is developed as a way of looking at life. That may be the bottom line but piety is the way I look at reality through a trinitarian structure of life through Christ and His cross at the center of everything through the filter and fellowship of the church through all of the means of grace that's God given me and seeing myself in relation to the world because God so loved the world that if He's living in me, I ought to love Him too. And as He sent His Son out, the Son said, as the Father has sent me, so send I you. That's how we develop piety. The way we're losing our new generation to an old narcissism is because they lack piety. They really don't like the church. They've been taught by their parents that it's optional. And they're not given to discipline anything. They want an easy life and so spiritual disciplines. Well, that's not really that attractive. In tradition, that's for old dead people who really aren't connected to authentic living. And so on go the excuses. You know, the real reason that narcissism comes back is because piety is not a quick fix to spiritual issues. There are no microwave versions of godliness. Secondly, piety cannot survive our individualistic culture. You can't get piety off the internet by sitting in front of your laptop. There's no way to download piety into a pdf plugin in and get godly. And piety has no updated versions. There was no piety 2000 that you need to buy from some software store and plug into your soul. In fact, if you listen to Jeremiah and Isaiah, it's going back to the ancient paths and finding the old ways to solve new problems. That may be the most difficult thing of all to accept about piety. That are technology, that are advancing sciences, that are increasing in martial power of our evidential learning, cannot produce piety. In order to go forward with god, we must go back to the fountain. We need to go back to god in Jesus and the Bible and the apostles and the church. Old things that are able to give us new power in this modern world. That's what piety is. It's a wonderful thing. And when piety finally comes upon the church and reigns supreme over us, an amazing thing happens. Rather than call for a new kind of Christianity, which really is just the old, nostic, heresy. The world begins to say this surprising thing. You know, I've been watching my Christian friends and they seem to be energized about what god is doing in the world. They seem to be captivated by Christ and what he's doing in his church. There's a sense of purpose and joy. I don't know how to say it, but they're more reverent and more kind and more gracious. And when I'm around these Christians, all of a sudden the kingdom of heaven seems real to me. And I want to go with them to their church and find out about this god they worship. And I want the knowledge of Jesus Christ to fill me. And that's why we add piety to our character. Let's pray. Father, we have become in many ways. We confess an impious people because we live among an impious people. Isaiah said we have become a people of unclean lips because we dwell among people of unclean lips. And so we need you by your spirit and by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ to develop in each one of us a godward life, a true and genuine biblical and Christ-centered piety. Not a word we use much, but a truth we need a great deal. I pray that you protect our church especially our young ones from this researching nosticism. Take them back to what Jude called a faith once for all delivered to the saints. What Paul says is able to build them up and give them the inheritance among the saints of light in glory. And I pray that you'd work deeply in our lives to help us fall again in love with Jesus Christ and the things of Christ to be reverent and serious about the church. All of our great ordinances and blessings and means of grace. We begin to see life through the triangle of Father and creation and Son and history and spirit in the community of the church that you would brand us with the brand mark of Jesus Christ, a cruciform life so that he indeed is our life, the center of it, our paradigm to interpret it, our purpose in living it and our pleasure both now and at the end of our life. Make us pious people and save us from falsehood we pray. Help us. Speeder says we should to grow in the grace and knowledge, to grow in piety of our Lord and save your Jesus Christ and whose name we pray. Amen.