867. What Christian Education Is All About

Welcome to The Daily Platform from Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina. The school was founded in 1927 by the evangelist Dr. Bob Jones, Sr. His intent was to make a school where Christ would be the center of everything, so he established daily chapel services. Today, that tradition continues with fervent biblical preaching from The University Chapel platform. Today's speaker is Dr. Steve Pettit, who served as an evangelist for over 29 years before becoming president of Bob Jones University. I want to ask you to take your Bibles and turn with me please to 2 Peter chapter 1.

I was probably about maybe 25 or 26 years old. I was serving as a youth pastor at a church that I worked in the first five years that I started in the ministry up in Michigan. In the mornings, I would go in early and have my morning devotions about 7 o'clock in my office and I was studying through this passage in 2 Peter chapter 1. As I worked through this passage, it's almost like when you start really doing serious Bible study, it's just so awesome. It's just so thrilling to get to really understand God's Word. As I got into 2 Peter chapter 1, I began to realize as I worked through this that this is actually, and I didn't know it at the time, but this is actually what Christian education is all about. Most of you have grown up in homes, many of you, especially if you went to a Christian school or home school, and in cases of public school where you had parents that were committed to Christian education.

They wanted their — they wanted you to get a particular education. And so as I was working through 2 Peter chapter 1, it really, really is kind of like the lights turned on. This is really what should be taking place in Christian education. And it was during that Bible study that I began in my own mind just thinking through the ministry that I wanted to be involved in that, that did this, that, that did what 2 Peter 1, 3-8 says. I didn't realize of course how that that would lead in my life as I was involved in evangelistic work and camp work and working with young people and discipling them, that eventually it would give me the privilege to come here to Bob Jones University.

And after I was here for about a couple of years, I began to realize I really wanted us to focus in on how do we best describe 2 Peter 1, 3-8, and how do we put it in words that are simple and memorable. What we call that is we call that in a university a tagline. And we have a tagline here. And that's the three words you see around campus, learn, love, and lead. And basically it comes out of a commitment that we are committed as a university to providing for you an outstanding Christian liberal arts education that is designed purposefully to inspire a lifelong pursuit of learning, loving, and leading.

And we didn't choose those three words because the first letter of each word starts with L. Or we just thought that they would be really cool words. And though they're memorable and though they're compelling and though I think they are simple and authentic, they're clear and they're concise and there's something behind it, what I want to do is actually show you in the scripture where it comes from. Because 2 Peter chapter 1 verses 3 through 8 is really what I think is foundational for understanding what Christian education is all about and what it is that we're hoping that you will experience while you're here at Bob Jones University.

So let me begin reading in 2 Peter chapter 1 and I'm going to start in verse 3 and I'd like to read down to verse 8. According as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain to life and godliness through the knowledge of him that have called us unto glory and virtue whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises that by these you might be partakers of the divine nature having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust. And besides this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue and to virtue knowledge and to knowledge temperance and to temperance patience and to patience godliness and to godliness brotherly kindness and to brotherly kindness charity for if these things, that is these seven qualities be in you and abound, they make you that you shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now what we read here this morning is really what I believe is foundational for Christian education and is actually what Bob Jones is all about. And that is BJU is a Christian university and so therefore to be a student here we ask that you give a testimony of your own salvation experience. It is, we could say it this way, it's for regenerated people, people who know the Lord. And therefore what we want to do and all that we do here is to have an atmosphere or an environment that is conducive for the spiritual growth of that new life so that it can thrive and grow. So you would expect that the campus atmosphere of Bob Jones University if it is for the nurturing of the spiritual life of believers, you would expect it to be different than for example a secular campus.

And I mean that's what we should expect so Bob Jones University should be different than Clemson University. Doesn't mean that Clemson doesn't have Christians there but it's a secular university or it would be different than the University of South Carolina. Because our goal is to take those who have been born again and provide for them this kind of an education that actually nurtures them and grows them in their faith. And what we see here in 2 Peter chapter one verses three and four, essentially here's what he is saying in essence. Through the preaching of Jesus Christ, especially the knowledge of who He is, His attributes and what He came to be, came to do to be our sin — our sacrifice for sin, that through that preaching God called you to salvation.

Everybody gets saved or called through the preaching of the Word and the Holy Spirit and you have responded to that call. And then he says you have believed God's promises and as a result you have a new nature. That's what he means when he says in verse four that you by these promises have received a — you have become partakers of the divine nature. God, the Holy Spirit has come to live inside of your body. And this new nature is powerful because it frees you from your sinfully corrupt nature of your own heart. The new nature empowers you to overcome your sin nature. So that's sort of foundational.

That's the starting point. That's why you have to be born again because how can you live out the Christian life if you've not had it breathed into your heart? And so now through Christ what we have been given is everything that we need to live the Christian life. That's what he means in verse one, that on the basis of God's power, He's given unto you all things that pertain to life and godliness.

If I could say it this way, it's like buying a cell phone or a computer and the moment you get your phone or computer, you get an operating system. When you got saved, God put within you through the new nature, the new birth, He gave you everything in essence that you need to live the Christian life. He's not going to ask you to be something and not supply that need. So if you're here this morning, you have within your heart through the new birth and through the new life, everything fundamentally you need to live the Christian life. But then notice what he says at the end of verse five — at the beginning of verse five, he says, and beside this, that is on top of your salvation, giving all diligence, he says, add to your faith.

Now what is he talking about here? This is, this is essentially spiritual growth. This is what we call sanctification. Justification is the act of God declaring you righteous. Sanctification is the work of God where you actually put off the old life and you put on the new life and it's a process and it takes your whole life.

And verse five is the beginning point of sanctification. And notice what he says, and besides this, giving all diligence, diligence, add to your faith. What he is saying is this, that in order for you to be a spiritually maturing, growing Christian, you've got to put out a lot of effort. If I could say it this way, it involves hard work. Now it's not a work that is without God's power, for the Bible says work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for God has worked in you both the will and the do of His good pleasure. In other words, God has given us the ability. But we can't be lazy about it. The number one problem in spiritual growth for all of us is our own personal laziness. Let's just be honest, we actually have developed primarily a lot of bad lazy habits about spiritual growth. Because a lot of us have gone to church all of our life and we've heard tons of sermons, but spiritual growth doesn't come by hearing God's word, it comes by doing God's word. And so what I'm saying to you right now, in order for you to grow spiritually, you've got to put out effort.

And notice what he says, he says giving all diligence. The idea is to be passionate about it. If we should be passionate about anything, it ought to be spiritually knowing the Lord and growing in the Lord.

And that passion puts, puts out extra effort. I'm watching our, our, our teams now, getting in shape and, and preparing for their seasons this year. And so we have numbers of teams that are out running and I saw the guy's soccer team running yesterday in front of the campus of Bob Jones University.

They were running by and I thought my first thought is they look like Bob Jones guys. And somebody said yeah, they're the soccer team and they're out running. And you're not gonna get in shape to be able to run 90 minutes on a field, a soccer field that usually you end up running anywhere between five and seven or eight miles for 90 minutes. And you're not gonna do that and not be in shape.

In order to get in shape, you gotta put it out. You gotta put out the effort. Giving all diligence, he says, add to your faith. And that word add there, the best way for me to illustrate it is this. When you get a phone and you get an operating system, what's the first thing you realize you need to add to the phone? What do you need to add?

Tell me. What do you need to download? You need to download apps. Exactly. And you begin to download all these apps because now, though the system is there in place, you add these apps to be able to do things. And this is in essence what Peter is saying. As a believer, you need to add to your faith, your belief, your salvation, and he gives a list of things. And there are seven of them here, and it is from these seven things that I came up with the tagline, learn, love, and lead, and you'll see it. And the first four have to do with things that we definitely have to learn.

Notice what he says in verse, in verse, verse five, in giving all diligence, add to your faith, and he says virtue. Now as you look at these things, you could look at them like a stair step. You add virtue, then you add knowledge, then you add temperance.

It's like you're walking up a step, a stairs. Or you could look at it, which is the way I prefer to it, as adding parts to an orchestra. So you add the strings and then you add the brass and you add the woodwinds. You add the percussion. You add the violins, the violas, the cellos, the bass.

And they all come together and then they create together a particular sound in harmony. I think that's the way that we should look at these qualities, though the first four are things you definitely learn and the next three are actually things that are a result of that. So what are the things that we need to learn? Number one, the first thing is virtue.

The very first thing out of the gate is moral excellence. Let me say it this way, you cannot be spiritual and be immoral at the same time because you cannot separate spirituality from morality. Colossians chapter three, if you then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above. That's called spirituality. Verse five, mortify therefore your members upon the earth, fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence. That's morality. But God never separates the moral life of the believer from the spiritual life of the believer.

You cannot read God's truth and go out and tell a bunch of lies. So the point of the matter is, you cannot be spiritual if you don't deal with the immorality that is in your life. And so for every one of us, if we're going to grow spiritually, we have to recognize that we must deal with the issue of moral purity in our life. That has to do with sexual purity. That has to do with the words that come out of our mouth.

It has to do with the thoughts that we think. But virtue is actually even more than that because it means moral excellence. And it's not just talking about making right choices about sex, though that is really important because the right choice is no sexual activity prior to marriage because when we get married we become one flesh, not before. But moral excellence is actually much, much more than that because moral excellence recognizes that everything that I have from God is a gift. And therefore, God deserves my very best.

So whatever I do, I do it with excellence. As these young ladies were playing this morning the harp and the violin, and I love the harp and violin, so I mean I'm like sitting there going bonkers. They cannot create that kind of sound if they don't practice. If the violinist never practiced, she would not create the sound she created, she would have squawked.

And it would have been horrible to listen to. I've heard great violinists in my life and I've heard some that are really bad. Excellence is doing things with quality and moral excellence means everything I do, I seek to do my best. Bob Jones Sr. said, it is a sin to do less than your best. So moral excellence means that I take everything I do and I do the very best I can with quality. Years ago I was a camp director and it took me two years to teach our camp staff team how to run games in a proper way. And I said the reason why we run games in a proper way, the reason we do them with excellence is it says something.

It says something to the campers. It says that they are so special that we want them to have the very best experience and we're gonna even make the games awesome. So that when you come to the games, you are so fired up and you're gonna give your best because we have given our best. At Bob Jones University, we want you to learn to do things with excellence. So you should do your studies with excellence.

You should do your activities, you should build your relationship, your demeanor, your appearance, the way you look, it ought to reflect the virtue of God. And then the second word is the word knowledge. The word knowledge here means the content of what people know.

Let me also say that this is not referring just to Bible knowledge because all truth is God's truth. Whatever we discover in the universe, it was already there in the wisdom of God. But what he is saying is that as we grow, we actually seek to be learners. The idea here is being diligent and not passive in learning. Learning is a discipline. We call, we call learning a discipline, the disciplines of something.

And so you're putting forth the effort to stretch your brain, to learn is actually a process of maturity and growth. And then notice number three, the word temperance. The word temperance basically means self-control. It means to learn to say no to what your sin nature wants to say yes to. Jesus said if any man would come after me, let him deny himself to take up his cross and follow me. Bob Jones Sr. said the Christian philosophy is a philosophy of self-denial, self-control, self-restraint. The satanic philosophy is a philosophy of live as you please, have what you want. Don't let anybody tell you what to do. It's your life. You have God a right to live it. But God's philosophy is always to say no to what your, your flesh wants to say yes to. And so self-control has to do with controlling what God has given you and bringing it in alignment with God's Spirit.

For example, your mouth. Learning to control your tongue, the words that come out of your mouth, your mind, your thought life, learning to discipline your thoughts. Man that is hard. Learning to control your time, redeem your time because the days are evil. It has to do with your finances because learning to control money is not something that you just naturally have.

It's something you have to learn. The importance of giving, the importance of tithing, the importance of saving, the importance of spending money wisely. And it is all about self-control because if you bring yourself under, then you're able to be able to serve God usefully. And then number four, the word perseverance. The word perseverance means to be steadfast, to endure, to stick it out. It means to go through hard times, trials, suffering, temptations, and yet God is helping you to get through this. The very fact that right now we're in a trial is actually a way in which we can persevere, stick it out, don't quit. Bob Jones Sr. said the test of your character is what it takes to stop you.

Anybody can stop, but winners are finishers. So he has four things here and these are things that we learn and I would say between the ages of 18 and 25 years old, and especially between 18 and 21, these four things, virtue, temperance, self-control, perseverance, and knowledge are foundational. They are core to your life and you growing and maturing. You're having to get over the humps of spiritual growth and I believe that you will learn these things at Bob Jones University if you stick with us.

The value of these things are immeasurable. They are the things that you have to have to become mature and there's no shortcuts to spiritual maturity. If you cut corners, you only go around in circles.

If you look for the easy path, you have already lost your way. These are things that you learn. And then notice the second word, the word love, learned love. And we see that in the next three qualities, godliness, brotherly kindness, and charity. And let me just say these are not things that you do, these are things you become. You don't do godliness.

You don't say, hey, what'd you do yesterday? Oh, I did some godliness. That's not — that's something you're becoming, you're becoming this. So what's godliness, brotherly kindness, charity?

And I want to just explain it very simple. Godliness is somebody who learns to worship God well. It's exactly what the word means. It means worship is not Sunday morning from 930 to 11 o'clock, but worship is 24-7. And the only way to learn to worship well is to worship daily consistently. And that's what we call devotions. You ever wonder why we call it devotions? Because you're being devoted to God.

Well, how do I do that? By reading the word and the Holy Spirit speaks to my heart through God's word. And through that word, I learn to worship God. And worship is more than what I said yesterday is more than singing, though that's a part of it. Worship is a whole life devoted to God. And the more that I read the word of God and the more that I understand the nature of God, the more I worship God.

And my life becomes a worship and a praise to Him. The word brotherly kindness is an awesome word and most people don't really know what it means. It's more than being kind to Christian brothers. It's actually something that God creates within our heart as we grow in worship and love for God. And what it essentially means is I am attracted to a person who is a believer because I have Christ in me and they have Christ in them and we are attracted to one another because of Jesus Christ. If I could say it this way, brotherly kindness is what draws us to one another.

It's the magnet that brings us together. It's not my culture. It's not the color of my skin.

It's not my language. It's that you know Jesus and I see Jesus in you and you see Jesus in me and we are drawn together because of Jesus Christ. That's why the church is called a body. That's why in the midst of diversity, there's always unity. What is it that unifies us?

It's Jesus. And that is why there should be an atmosphere of brotherly kindness. If I've heard it once, I've heard it a thousand times here at Bob Jones University. We have people who come and visit BJU and they, they don't know what it's going to be like but it is never what they think it's going to be. They always say we didn't know it was like this. Why?

I'm going to tell you why. It is because of brotherly kindness. It is because there are so many people here who have Jesus in them and that's what you see. It creates, if I could say it this way, a little bit of heaven on earth. And then the last word is the word charity. The word charity is essentially God's, God's love for us that is manifested in the sacrifice of Jesus. And the end result of a life that is devoted to God and worships well is it lives their life to serve other people. They become servants and service is not lip service, it's life service.

And the, and that's what love is all about. Learn love and then the last one is lead. What qualifies a person to be a leader? My son Michael when he was a little boy said to me one day, he said, Daddy I want to grow up. I want to be just like you. I said why son? He said because you sit behind that desk and you tell people what to do.

He said I want to grow up and tell people what to do. I said well son that's not a leader. I said a leader is a servant.

I was preaching in Tennessee a few years ago and a girl who had just graduated in the spring was at this teacher's conference. And she came up to me and she said Dr. Pettit I think I learned at Bob Jones what it means to be a leader. A leader is somebody who serves others. I said you got a great education because if you come to Bob Jones University and get an education but you don't learn how to serve then we sort of miss the boat in the process. And what the world is crying out for today, the world is crying out for principled, godly, spirit-filled leaders. Everything rises and falls on leadership. And so learn, love, and lead is a nice tagline but when you put it in the context of scripture you go ahaha.

Now I get it. And I hope that you will grow into learning, loving, and leading. Father we thank you for this day and we thank you for your grace in our lives. Help us to learn, help us to love, and help us to lead according to the pattern we find in your word. In Jesus' name, amen. Thank you for listening to The Daily Platform. If you're looking for a regionally accredited Christian liberal arts university, I invite you to consider BJU which is purposefully designed to inspire a lifelong pursuit of learning, loving, and leading. For more information about Bob Jones University visit bju.edu or call 800-252-6363. We hope you'll join us again tomorrow at this same time as we study God's Word together on The Daily Platform.