The Journey with Pastor Steve DeWitt

Steve DeWitt Serving and Suffering . . . Just Like Jesus - Part A Download Study Guide for Spiritual Exiles, 1 Peter 2:18-21 Scripture Reference: 1 Peter 2:18-21 Visit the series page: Exiles: A study in 1 Peter Donate to Support The Journey Sermon Transcript for Spiritual Exiles, 1 Peter 2:18-21 Sermon Series: Spiritual ExilesMessage: Serving and Suffering … Just Like Jesus Airdate: 10/2 and 10/5/26Programs: 2370 and 2371“Servants, be subject to your masters with all respect, not only to the good and gentle, but also to the unjust. For this is a gracious thing. When mindful of God, one endures sorrows while suffering unjustly. For what credit is it if when you sin and are beaten for it, you endure? But if when you do good and suffer for it, you endure, this is a gracious thing in the sight of God.”“For to this you have been called because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example so that you may follow in his steps.” May God bless his word to us this morning. Last January, we had here in Northwest Indiana, we had the fifth worst snowstorm in Chicago's history. Do you remember? You may remember.And part of why we remember here at our church is that that Sunday morning, we did something that we hadn't done since 1999, which was cancel all of our services that morning. So my family, we were stuck at home just like you were stuck at home. And, when you're a pastor planning on preaching, it's not like you have other, you know, calendar items on a Sunday morning. So there we sit, now not having any services, wondering what we're going to do. So we were talking about this, and Jennifer mentioned to me.She said, you know, I've been wanting to maybe watch that that that show everybody's been talking about, Downton Abbey. And me, with absolutely nothing else to do, thought a little PBS masterpiece theater to make my wife happy, why not? Right? So we we started with the, you know, the first season. We put on the first episode of the first season, and we started watching.And I think that morning, we watched a couple episodes. And by noon on that Sunday, we were completely hooked. Right? And over the next, I think, probably month and a half, we watched all five seasons of episodes of Downton Abbey. And I'm here to tell you, until they the new ones come out next January, we're a little jittery.Right? Kind of like, when is it coming? Is it coming? We gotta know what's gonna happen. So Downton Abbey.Now, I don't know how many of you have used a blizzard to watch this show. Maybe you've watched it because you wanted to. Maybe you have no idea what I'm talking about. But it's been a wildly popular show. And it's very different than kind of normal television because it's kind of masterpiece theater.It's really well written. And the setting of Downton Abbey is in early part of the last century, so early twentieth century. And it's set in this estate where there is an earl who is the lord of the estate, and you have the family living in this beautiful castle, and then there is the serving staff. And so, the the show's intrigue then is that you have this family that has all of its kind of drama going on, and don't all families have drama going on? And, and they're very prim and proper, and it kind of is odd to us in our day because we see all of the cultural norms for people living in that sort of hoity toity kind of setting where there's lots of, you know, expectations and you do something a certain way and with a very stiff upper lip.But then you have the serving staff. And these are the people that are, you know, they they kind of live in the quadrants of the house. They're not family. They serve the family. But they have all of their own drama going on.And the the fun of of the show, I think, is just that it's so easy to relate to these people because they seem like people that you know, right, in the way that they act and and the way that they relate to each other. So this this staff of the house. With the staff of the house, you find all of the backbiting, cheating, lying, and stealing that we generally see in our workplace as well. So let me introduce you to some of the staff, or the cast members. Can I do that a moment?K. We're getting into Downton Abbey here this morning. Here's some of the, here's some of the staff. K? So upper left, there's the, there's the earl of the place, Lord Grantham.And you gotta say it like Lord Grantham. You know, it's sort of that way. And and so he's kind of the he's running the show. Carson is the butler. And he's a very likable guy with a really cool voice.If if I had his voice, our church would have 20,000 people in it. Just people would show up to hear that voice. It's really an amazing voice, unlike my own. O'Brien. She is the the, like, personal assistant to the wife of Lord Grantham.She is conniving, devious. She's a gossip, very self serving. That's O'Brien. Anna, upper right, nice girl next door, the kind you want your son to marry. You know, she's just so pure hearted with a little bit of a sort of, you know, she's got some spunk in her as well.So that's that's Anna. Tom Barrow, that's Satan. Okay? Tom Barrow is Satan himself. He is you talk about conniving.I mean, this guy is constantly working an angle. He is always, you know, very self serving. He will slander. He is devious. He is just in there creating problems all the time.Everything he shows up in, there's there's gonna be drama around it. Okay? Tom Barrow. Then you have Mrs. Hughes. And missus Hughes is, like the head housekeeper, and she is she's kind of like the mom to the staff.K? She's the one they go to when they have sorrows, and she's trying to keep everything unified. And she has the hots for Mr. Carson. K?So there are more staff than this, but that's just a general introduction to the staff there at Downton Abbey. Show is really well written, but I think, again, the intrigue and the popularity of this is that is that as you watch the show, you can almost think of people in your life that are just like O'Brien or just like Barrow or just like Carson. And you see the kind of way that they're, you know, getting along or not getting along in the serving staff. And it just reminds you so much of people that you that you know. The serving staff, they are I mean, they they they're very prim and proper with, you know, Lord Grantham and the family.But behind the scenes, they some of them, they mock the family and they steal from the family. You know, a little silverware here, a little wine there, whatever it is. They're stealing and conniving. It's just really an interesting it's an interesting show. And here's the question I wanna ask.K? If you were to watch Downton Abbey and I said to you, one of the serving staff is a Christian, and I want you to see if you can figure out which one it is. How would you go about trying to discern which one of those staff members is a Christian? Like, how would you know to watch them in the way that they work, the way that they respond to Lord Grantham or Carson or O'Brien who are in authority over them? How would you know from the way they conduct themselves there in the workplace whether or not they may be a Christian or not?What would you look to? The quality of the effort they give, their work ethic, how they treat others, and things like this would probably be the way that the clues that you would look for to discern which one of them actually is a follower of Jesus. And here in this text today, we find Peter continuing this. He's developing and turning this this this reality. These people he's writing to, they're they're exiles.They're in this place where geographically and spiritually, they do not they do not connect with the values around them. And yet, they're having to do normal life. They're having to live in all the normal social categories. And last week, we saw they were citizens there. How do they how do they live as citizens in a in a in a pagan environment, a hostile environment to their Christianity?And we see Peter saying, you need to respect even pagan human authority that is placed over you because that authority is put there by God himself. So therefore, honor everyone. Honor even the emperor, the crazy emperor Nero. And so now Peter continues here and he moves to the next category, the next sort of social category that all Christians have to live in. Namely, we all have to work, don't we?We all have to make a living. And in the making of a living, we are all interacting with people or working for people who don't share the values, the faith of of Christianity, many times are hostile to that. So how does the Christian then work in a world that is set against it? And that's what Peter is addressing here, workplace and workplace relationships. And so complicating this, and maybe you picked this up in in the first verse here, is that we are peering now into a a, a very different world than the one that we than we live in.Almost like people watch Downton Abbey just because it's so, like, intriguing to see how that world was a little bit different. That's a hundred years ago. How much? Two thousand years ago. All the way back when Rome was the world power and, you know, society and and culture was very, very different.And you see that in verse right there in verse 18. “Servants, be subject to your masters.” Now how many of us think, that's awesome. Right? No.We're we're we are automatically appalled by that because we don't live in a world where you have masters and masters that have property, people as property. That kind of that kind of of of slavery, if you will. But in the first century, it was absolutely normal practice. Almost every Roman family in the entire Roman Empire would have had serving staff. K?They would have called them slaves, serving staff. Get this. One quarter of the entire population of the Roman Empire were slaves. A quarter. One one commentator said it was the most common employer employee relationship in the ancient world, was this relationship between a master and his servants.We find it all over in the Bible. Paul talks about it often. Philemon is an entire letter that Paul writes to the owner of a slave who Paul has led to the Lord and the slaves going back now to him to serve under Philemon. So there's a whole book of the Bible. It's a very short one, but it's a book of the Bible that is talking about this very, cultural reality.Now a further wrinkle that we have, and this is part of our struggle, is that whenever we see the word slavery, having grown up the way that we have and, in the world that we've lived in, we automatically think about British slavery or we think about American slavery of of Africans. And indeed, that was slavery, but that was, what, two hundred years ago. We're going back now two thousand years ago where that experience was very different. So we have to read this verse not through the grid of the American slavery, but into what it actually was. And I'm gonna try to describe that here for you a little bit.These servant slaves were considered the property of the owner, but they served in a variety of roles such as managers of the household, trained professionals like doctors, teachers, even musicians would have been servants. There were extensive Roman laws about how, protecting those that were slaves and keeping, you know, theoretically keeping the owners of the slaves from being too cruel or not caring for them. In fact, Grudem, one of my favorite commentators in first Peter, says, there is no current comparable status in the Western world. In other words, he's saying, we have no frame of reference in our experience for what this actually was. So one of the reasons I I brought up Downton Abbey is that if you can think about more of more Downton Abbey than Roots.K? More Downton Abbey than the movie Roots, the the miniseries Roots. K? Only where maybe the earl actually is the master and owner of the serving staff, but largely treats them like you see them being treated in the show. K?That is more of the of the situation. And so that is why as we come to this text, we're not gonna you know, nobody here is probably owned legally by somebody else. But really what this is describing in the fair application for us is any place where I am in a employer employee relationship and I am under the authority of somebody else is essentially the the same as what those servants in the first century were dealing with as Christians now serving under, you know, a pagan master. How should I act? A a quarter of the whole empire was exactly that.So as Christianity spread across Asia Minor and the Roman Empire, you had owners becoming Christians like Philemon. You had servants or slaves becoming Christians now creating this sort of awkward relationship where they may gather together for prayer. They may gather together for worship. But then when they go home, the one owns the other. That's kinda weird, isn't it?But that was the reality. And so the New Testament writes into the reality. We can say it shouldn't be that way. Have been different. But that's the way that it was.And so the the the New Testament strives then to help masters and servants. Paul writes to masters about the way that he they were to treat their servants, to write into that and say, this is how we redeem even this very broken cultural system. So we're gonna look at this from the perspective that we all can relate to, and that is, what does it mean to be a Christian in the workplace? If we could watch Downton Abbey and say, okay, which one of those is a Christian? We know one is, if we happen to know that.How would what would you expect to see from an employee working at Downton Abbey? What would it look like? How would it be maybe be different than what the other staff is, the way they operate and what they care about? That's where we're going. So notice that Peter begins, you know, not with time cards and work reports, but he begins with attitude.Look what he says. “Servants, be subject to your masters with all respect.” New revised standard translates it, “slaves accept the authority of your masters with all deference.” Now I think it's pretty plain. Most of us here probably instinctively know what he is getting at here, do we not?This is about our attitude towards authority. That doesn't mean when I'm in the workplace that I'm a floor mat and, you know, I just am, you know, blindly obedient. But what it does mean is that I am showing respect for the authority that the employer that I am working for has over me. And notice it says, with all respect. K?So that kind of throws out the window. Maybe you're thinking, well, maybe I can improve, I don't have to be, like, super respectful. No. It says, all respect there. Do you see the word?This includes our words, our responses to our company, our bosses, and our general demeanor. To ask this question, does your boss get the idea from you that you give deference and respect to him or her in their place over you? Like, wouldn't it be interview interesting to interview all the bosses of everybody in our church and say, how is how is that Bethelonians? What kind of employee are they? What do you get from him or her?Do you get attitude, or do you get respect? And Peter here is saying, point number one, Christians will respect authority. Why? Because we see all authority as being established by God. Right?That's why we look at the government. And we may not agree with the government. We may not like the politicians of the government, but we are called to respect that authority because all authority comes from from God himself. That's true in the home, parents and children. That's true in government, with citizens.That's true in the workplace, with employers and employees. Parents, you notice how I work that in. Amen? Parents here? Okay.Children need to listen to that. Pastor Steve's on to something. Well, they might be getting clues as to your respect for authority in the way that you talk about your boss in the home. And that wasn't in the notes. I just threw it in.So the opposite of what he's talking about here is belligerence, defiance, rudeness, resistance. We've probably all been in workplace environments where we have observed people whose attitude is very different than respect towards the boss. We hear that in the words that are said. We see behind the scenes when the boss isn't there what that looks like. Maybe you live maybe you work in a place where it's actually culturally acceptable to have tension with the management, to speak bad of your boss.And here's where I think what Peter is writing about here is so challenging because he's writing to slaves. If anybody had the right to sort of say, you know what? I'm getting the short end of the stick here. It would be a slave, don't you think? Because why?They have no possibility of freedom. They can't get out of their job. They're not there voluntarily. They're not getting paid. They're probably getting provided for, but they're probably not making much money, if at all.The hours were long. The conditions were not what you wanted. If there was anybody that maybe had a right to not always show respect, it would be a slave more than an employee in the modern American labor force. And yet, Peter says, slaves, even you, need to show all respect to that authority that has been put over you. So do you see the point there?We have it so much easier than a slave. The modern American employee in the in the contemporary American labor situation has far more freedom and far more opportunity than any Roman slave could have dreamed of. And yet, the Roman slave needed to show deference to their owner. So let me ask you have you ask yourself this question. Does my boss sense from me my respect for his or her position over me?And if I say over you, are you resenting just the fact that I say it that way? Like, do you have an authority problem? Christians shouldn't have an authority problem. Why? Because we've surrendered to the ultimate authority, which is God himself.We're good at surrendering to authority. Jesus is our Lord. Right? I didn't expect a lot of amens in this sermon, but you could throw a few in here. Alright?I'm on a good point here now. K? You're like, I don't know about the authority over Okay. Jesus' authority. Amen.Boss' authority. I don't know about that. And maybe I hear a little murmuring right now because you're saying to yourself, but you don't know the boss that I have. He's a megalomaniac. I mean, it's all about him.She's a slave driver. I'll show respect when he gets respectable. But until then, forget about it. Right? “Servants, be subject to your masters with all respect.”Notice what he adds. Not only to the good and gentle, but also to the unjust. And the Greek word there for unjust, we get the word scoliosis from it. K? So to have scoliosis, you know, is to have a back that is what?Crooked. And that's the sense of it. Morally crooked. Morally unjust. Even the boss whose fundamental character is flawed and broken and crooked.Even that boss, I gotta show respect to. Is that what you're saying to me? If I work for Tom Barrow instead of Carson, I gotta respect Tom Barrow? That's what he's saying. K?That's what he's saying. Why? Because all authority is established by God. You know, it's easy to work for Carson. I think Lord Grantham's a pretty good guy.I wouldn't mind working for him. Flawed, but okay. The real test is not when you work for somebody who's kind and gentle and kinda lets you do whatever you wanna do. Almost anybody can, you know, to to do that. The real test is when I am working for somebody who is not that way, who I struggle to respect their character, their lifestyle, and yet I gotta respect him.That's what Peter is saying. So we saw it in government in the verses before. Here we see it in the workplace. You might say, this is terrible. I can't believe how hard this is.There's God would never call me to do that. Actually, what you're doing, even in the worst situation we have here, is nothing compared to what's coming in chapter three. Why? Because you don't have to sleep with your boss. But he's gonna talk about in the next section the wife who's married to the unbelieving husband, who may be gentle and kind, but who may be also unjust.And he is going to say essentially the same thing to her, that the manner in which she treats him, respects him, is a silent witness to the reality of the gospel in her heart, and she's a kind of missionary in the home. To me, that's the hardest one. K? So don't get any idea that you're suffering incredibly with this. We have wives in our church that suffer more than that because of the reality of where they live and what's going on there.But that's a future message. I just throw that out as a commercial. Maybe you'll come back. I hope that you do. K?So he's writing again to Christians who find themselves in a hostile environment. They're trying to make their Christianity work in a place where people are not super happy about their values, and they are at odds with the culture around them. The friction points are wherever Christianity and and and and people who are against Christianity have to make life work. And so you see that again, government, employment, home, family, marriage. Attitude is the first thing.Notice though, it's not just attitude. K? You can say, I'm gonna have a good attitude, but then I'm gonna not do what he wants me to I'm gonna have a great attitude but then I'm gonna quietly be subversive to her. Notice that it is also a respectful action. K?And if I had more time, could go over to Ephesians chapter six where Paul writes very eloquently both to those that are in authority over people and those that are under authority and talks about what that ought to look like. And he talks to he says to the employer or I'm sorry, the employee that you need to work in a manner that is actually under the Lord. You are working for the Lord actually is what Paul says. On earth, maybe I've got this employer, but my actual boss is is Jesus himself, which means that his eye is always upon me, and I'm to serve in a way that would please him. Here's how Peter says basically the same thing.“For this is a gracious thing. When mindful of God, one endures sorrows while suffering unjustly.” K? So get this. God is pleased when we do what is right and is pleasing to him even when it costs us.Even when me doing this means that I'm going to suffer from this. Now notice the context here. What is the right thing? K? This gracious thing when mindful of God, one endures suffering while suffering unjustly sorrows while suffering unjustly.What is that right thing that he is getting at here? Well, respecting our employer's wishes, serving faithfully in a difficult employment situation. You may think that's hard to do in a job. Again, it's harder in a marriage, but the burden for the Christian worker is to serve joyfully and respectfully when the workplace is hard and when the boss is hard and when being a Christian is hard. So what is the key here?And notice the key phrase. I think this is the most important thing in the whole text. When mindful of God, one suffers unjustly. In other words, when I am enduring something, and this is true in all contexts, but in the employment context, when I am enduring something and I am suffering because I am not compromising my integrity, or I am refusing to give in to the, maybe, the the the culture of the office to be against, and so I'm ostracized, Or I'm refusing to misreport or cheat or do something that the company wants me to do that goes against my values when my being faithful to the Lord causes me to suffer unjustly. My career gets torpedoed.My I'm not advanced. My salary gets takes a hit. Maybe I lose my job. All the things that may come from being faithful as a Christian in the employment situation because I am mindful of God, because I am aware of who I am really serving in the workplace. Christian, who's your real boss?K. It's God himself, isn't it? Now it might be, you know, John or Fran or some there's a name there that is the human per but my real boss is the Lord Jesus. And I am mindful of the fact that he is with me in the in the office place. You know, some places have this take your child to work day.Right? You can bring your your your kid with you and help them see what you do during the day and all that. What what Peter is basically saying is take God to work with you. Maybe that'll help you tomorrow morning. When you go to the office, when you go to the mill, when you go to work with school if you're a student, whatever it is, consciously be aware that God is with you.And then the things that you suffer lost because of what you've done, you know that the God of heaven sees it and promises to honor it. Take God to work with you. You know, even Jesus practiced this. John 19 tells a story that the the the day that the night that Jesus was betrayed, that next morning, he was taken to Pilate. Right?And he he goes before Pilate, and Pilate's interviewing him, trying to figure out who he is. And and Pilate said and Jesus didn't answer. And Pilate said, don't you know that I have authority to let you go? And Jesus says, you would have no authority unless my heavenly Father gave it to you. And what did Jesus do in that moment?He came under the authority of Pilate. Get that. The Son of God. The Son of God came under the human authority of the man he knew was going to kill him. Now you may have a bad boss, but I don't know how many of them are plotting your murder.But if you knew they were, would you come under that authority? Which is exactly what Jesus did. And I just wanna tell you briefly, God used that verse in my life. I think a key kind of maturity moment in my life years ago, I had a man that I was working for, and I I was working for him. He had it out for me.K? And it wasn't overt, but it was plain and obvious. He didn't like me. He didn't want me in that position. And so we had this kind of quiet sort of war that that that went on.And, I mean, it's not like I was, you know but it was it was subtle, and I knew my own heart. And I remember over the holidays, I was reading through John, and I read this passage. And that struck that thought struck me. Jesus came under Pilate's authority. If Jesus came under Pilate's authority, why can't I come under this guy's authority?And the Lord just broke my heart with it. And when I got home from the holidays, I met with him, tears on my face. I apologized for any sense of insubordination. And I said to him, from this day forward, I'm gonna be the best employee you've ever had. And I endeavored to do that.But it was that truth right there that broke my heart. And maybe God could use that right here in this room to do the same. You having a little war with your boss? You think you have the moral high ground? Take a look at Jesus and Pilate, and maybe that'll cause you to rethink.Hey. How am I supposed to live out my faith even for a boss that is scoliosis and might may be against me. Notice next, verse 19, that serving and suffering in the workplace is honorable to God. “For this is a gracious thing. When mindful of God, one endures sorrows while suffering unjustly.”“For what credit is it if when you sin and are beaten for it, you endure? But if when you do good and suffer for it you endure, this is a gracious thing in the sight of God.” Notice that not all suffering in the in the workplace is honorable to God. If you are lazy and lose your job, don't roll out this verse and say, I'm suffering. It's honorable in the eyes of God.No. You're lazy. K? If you don't show up to work on time and that costs you in your career, don't get all high and mighty and think that you're suffering and this is honorable to God. No.You're lazy. So don't use this as an excuse to be anything but the best employee that that boss has ever had, which all of us should strive to do. It's not when we suffer in the workplace that it's honorable to God. It is when we suffer unjustly in the workplace that it is honorable to God. So if you work for a boss and you don't cut corners and you maintain your integrity and and you are doing your very best to be respectful to him and you are striving for the good of the company, and in spite of all of these things, there is somebody that has it out for you, doesn't like your Christian faith, wants to take you down, doesn't want you as a part of the team, you lose your you lose your position, you lose career advancement, you lose money.Whatever loss comes from that, that is honorable in the eyes of God. That is suffering unjustly. And the God who sees it will make it up to you. Did you hear what I said? We never compromise in the workplace.This is not a blind obedience to the boss. My boss told me to do it, you know, sort of like the Nazis argued at the Nuremberg trial. Right? We were just doing what we were told as a kind of excuse. We are never called to compromise our convictions, our beliefs, our faith.K? The Puritans used to say it this way, if you have to choose between sin and suffering, always choose suffering. If you have to choose between sin and suffering, always choose suffering. If you're dealing with something at work where you know you're having to compromise, but you're on the other side, you're like, but I I really need this boss to write a reference. I need some kinda I'm looking for a gain.Don't do it. Always choose suffering over sin. Why? Because our allegiance is to God himself. I don't know if I have time for this, but the thought just comes to me that, you know, my brother-in-law, Jeff, Jennifer's brother, as an example of this, minor league baseball player, I think hit the game winning home run.One game, the manager called him in. At the end of the game, he says, we're done with you. Why? He was leading a Bible study on the team. The manager didn't like it and wanted him off the team.And that was why, in spite of having a really great season, he lost his role. And that kind of thing happens all the time. We probably have stories like this right here. If we allowed people to share of things that you have gone through because of your Christian faith, I want you to realize God sees that. You're mindful of God.God sees it. He honors that. It is honorable in his sight. So to the extent that we can show all respect, we do it. We do not compromise.And if we suffer for it, God makes it up to us. Now, finally, we see who our example is. Look at verse 21. “For to this you have been called because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example so that you may follow in his steps.” Who is our ultimate example of the very thing that we're talking about of doing good and suffering unjustly?It it is, of course, Jesus himself. Notice that Peter says here, it's not just a possibility. It is a calling. We are called to this. Get ready for it, Christian.You're gonna suffer for being a Christian in some way. Unless you're like a dead fish going down the stream, you're going to suffer in some way. People aren't gonna like you. Teenagers, listen to me. At school, college, you're gonna have people that are not going to think fondly of your faith in the Lord Jesus.We just gotta acknowledge that, know that, prepare ourselves for it. Don't be surprised when it happens. Why? Because that's exactly what happened to Jesus, and we're following him. Right?We're following in his steps. So get this. Who is the bully boss in Jesus' life? Who is the unjust boss in Jesus' life? Who's the tyrant in Jesus' life?Who mistreated Jesus when he wouldn't compromise his integrity? Wouldn't turn the stones into bread. Wouldn't throw himself down from the corner temple. We look at being a Christian at US Steel or Purdue Cal or some other place like it's the ultimate example of the hard place and all of the suffering. It's so hard to be a Christian there.It pales in comparison to what Jesus went through and what he did. Why? Because he came here. He did far better good than any of us have done, and yet he suffered, didn't he? He is the ultimate exile.Talk about being out of your element. Listen to this. He wasn't a fish out of water. He was a king without his glory. The Lord without his observable majesty.Yet he came here and he worked for who? The company of man. Did he see things around the place that were wrong that should have been done differently? Did he have any helpful suggestions to improve the systems of the company of man? Did they did those go unheeded? What was his salary, by the way? What was Jesus' salary while he was here doing all of these things? Why did the company of man hate him so much? Was it his job performance? Was he lazy?Did he lack the skills necessary? Did he need some training? What cause did Jesus give company of man to mistreat him unjustly, to hate him, to beat him, to flog him, to despise him, and to kill him? Upper management wanted him gone, but you don't fire God when he comes to earth. You don't put him on administrative leave.The only thing you can do when God is working for you and you don't want him anymore is to kill him. And that is what the management did. This in spite of all of the wonderful things that Jesus did for the company of man. Now that doesn't seem very fair, does it? Because he created the company of man in the first place.He's the founder of the company. He worked for free, fed the company, healed the hurts of the company, supplied the company with everything it needed for life every single day. So for the company that you created, loved, served, taught, fed, and healed, for that company to turn on you and kill you. That must be wrong even in the eyes of God. But if management fires you, but God hires you back by raising you from the dead and then puts you on the highest throne of management and gives you a title that is above every name.It would mean that in the eyes of God, willing and respectful service to even bad authority over you when done for God's sake is glorious in the eyes of God. Jesus is our example. K? So friends, listen. When your boss demeans you, mistreats you, overlooks you, disrespects you, but you go on and do good for the company and that boss anyway, all you are doing is following in the steps of Jesus, the steps of the life of the example of Jesus, the most glorious and wonderful life that has ever been lived.And so my dear church, make sure you take God to work with you. Heavenly Father, I pray over our church. I pray, Lord, that we would be discernibly Christians should somebody be watching the show of our life. If people were to watch the way that we interact with the other staff, watch the way that we interact with those that are in authority over us. Lord, I pray that the Bethelonians would, in Northwest Indiana, be known as being the best employees you can have.And, Lord, no doubt as I say that, there is a whole lot of repenting that needs to take place right here in this room for failures in this regard, failures of attitude, failures of action. Maybe you're calling somebody here to go to their boss tomorrow, to apologize, to make it right, and to promise from this day forward, I'll be the best employee you've ever had. What a witness we could be to the reality of a risen savior by the way that we work and the attitude we have. God, I pray that we would honor you. And when we suffer unjustly, Lord, I pray for patience and endurance, a kind of seeing of life in the big picture where you make all things right, either in this life or the next.So, God, I pray that in this category of life, it's a huge part of life. Lord, may we honor you and glorify you. To you be all praise. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.* This transcript was generated using AI transcription technology and reviewed for accuracy but may contain errors. Please refer to the original audio for precise wording.

Steve DeWitt War and Peace - Part B Study Guide for Spiritual Exiles, 1 Peter 2:11-12 Scripture Reference: 1 Peter 2:11-12 Visit the series page: Exiles: A study in 1 Peter Donate to Support The Journey Sermon Transcript for Spiritual Exiles, 1 Peter 2:11-12 Sermon Series: Spiritual ExilesMessage: War and PeaceAirdates: 9/30-10/01/26Programs: 2368 and 2369And let me add my good morning to you and great to see you here this weekend after our big Easter weekend. And I just want to take a moment and say thank you to so many volunteers and people that came together to pull all those services off, Good Friday services and then of course our Easter services. We've just got great reports from all the campuses. And just thank you for parking far away, coming early, sitting close, being hospitable, all those things that we encouraged. It was really a great weekend.We heard of a couple of adult men that received Christ as their savior as one indication of some encouragement, and we're happy about that. Our two new campuses had their first Easter, Gary and at Hobart Portage, and just great reports from both of those campuses. So really exciting. And by the way, need to say good morning to our Hobart Portage and Cedar Lake. Good to see you this morning, kind of.And thank you for joining here. And I also wanna mention to to all of our campuses that we are next weekend, we're gonna spend a little bit of time talking about the church and kinda where we're at, talk about mission them, give some updates on some things. So I hope you'll come back as we as we kinda get everybody on the same page. I have here a book, a little book, just a little book here. It's called War and Peace.Anybody read War and Peace? I see a few hands going up. I don't think anybody first service raised their hand. But War and Peace, it's kinda it's one of these books if you've you've not read it, you've probably heard of it. It's one of those books that just seeing somebody at the airport or coffee shop reading War and Peace, it's like impressive, isn't it?You think, wow, that person they're they're kinda serious about reading because they're reading War and and Peace. I've not read this, but the title of the book is a is a great outline for our passage today. And I I just wanna note to you that it's war and peace. It's not war instead of peace. It's not war then peace.It's war and peace. And as Christians, we get that. There is in the living of the Christian life, there is war and peace. We are in a battle Internally, especially, we are in a in a kind of war. But then externally, we are we are called and trying to express peace and beauty and love.And so we have this kind of dualism going on internally, Iwo Jima, externally, Beethoven's fifth. Right? That's the that's kind of the struggle of being of being a Christian. And Peter is going to explore this and give us some expectations today. And we're coming off this is our series in First Peter, exiles.We're coming off some wonderful verses, verses eight and nine and and ten, where he just summarizes what the church is and and who we are. We're a holy nation. We're a royal priesthood, people of his own of his own possession. We are in this world, we are declaring the greatness and the glories and the excellencies of the God who called us out of darkness and into his marvelous light. And so real high point kind of verses in the letter.And now Peter does war and peace. Let me read our text, and then we will do our exposition and application. Here is what Peter writes to us today. “Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which war against your soul. Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of his visitation.”So there is God's word to us today, and I want you to see just if you if you were if we were to read the rest of the letter, you would look back at these verses and say, those are really pivotal verses. Like, those are the verses where Peter goes from a more doctrinal explanation of the gospel and who the church is on the basis of new life in Christ and and resurrection into a very practical, what does it look like for this church to live in a hostile world, in a world where people don't aren't inclined to to liking us? What does it look like for the church to be faithful in its witness in a world set against it? So pivotal verses here. Verse 11 is war.Verse 12 is peace. K. So we begin with the war part. And, here's how he begins this little section here. “Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles.”There we have, the the words that we get our whole series title from. You might say, well, why do they call it exiles? There you go. There's another example. Sojourners and exiles.They are nearly synonyms. Both of them are describing people that are living somewhere where they don't primarily belong. Living somewhere not their place of birth, living somewhere not where their heart is. We get this a little bit in Indiana every football season where we live in Indiana, right? But during football season, if you drive through neighborhoods, you'll often see people that have flags out front of their house, right?They live in Indiana, but the flag will say Ohio State University or Michigan. Right? Or now this is the only acceptable one, University of Iowa. I love to see those. Those are fine.You can do that. The others though are saying something, aren't they? They're living in Indiana, but the flags are indicating that their hearts are elsewhere. So that if you went to the door of somebody who had that kind of a flag, you could knock on the door, and you and when they answer you, you could just say, you're not from around here, are you? And nine times out of 10, no. I was born in Ohio, and and I I cheer for the Buckeyes. Or I was born in Michigan, I cheer for, the Wolverines. So the flags in their hearts are saying something different. And as Christians, we are exiles and sojourners in this way. We live in this world.Right? We're we we live here. We're called to live here. But God has done this wonderful work in our lives, hasn't he? Amen?And so thankful for the grace of God in our life where he has now changed our hearts and and our our sense of belonging is not primarily in this world. Our our sense of belonging is the kingdom of God. This Paul writes in Colossians, for example, that “we are to set our minds on things above, not on earthly things.” So our affections and our hearts are are now for the kingdom of God and the future eternal life that's gonna be with him. This is what the writer of Hebrews, for example, talks about in Hebrews 11 where he lists the the hall of faith.Right? All of these different people in the Old Testament, remarkable saints. All of them were looking to a city, a future city, the city of God. They endured persecution here, but their hope was set was set there. Moses gives up all of the treasures of Egypt because why?His real treasure was Christ. We're called to that kind of a perspective living in this world as sojourners and exiles. So maybe I could ask you right now, what do the flags of your heart say? Where do you belong in your affections? Are you actually in exile?Are you a sojourner? Peter, well, what does that look like? Like, I don't have flags. It's a nice picture of Pastor Steve, but I don't have flags. What what does it look like to live in this world but to have our hearts and minds set on another?Peter urges us, essentially, first of all, to go to war. K? War and peace. He says, you gotta realize that you are in a war. Here's the here's the text.We're called to abstain from the passions of the flesh. The passions of the flesh. What is that talking about? Well, passion's good. Right?We ought to be passionate people. There's nothing wrong with passionate. Desires are good. God made us filled with desires, and those are not inherently bad either. What he is talking about here is the passions of the flesh.These are human passions left unchecked. These are human passions without law, without conscience, without consequence, without a sense of judgment, without the sense of God. These are illicit desires. This is man left to his own devices where his heart and his mind can do jolly well whatever they want to do. The passions of the flesh.Where do they come from? You might say, well, okay. That's interesting. But, like, how did I get these kind of passions, or where are they located? Here's where Jesus locates the problem.Matthew 15. “For out of the heart comes evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, and slander.” Yeah. That's in you. It's in every single one of us.How did these things get inside of us? Well, the Bible tells how that happened. Right? We go back into the Garden of Eden. God makes Adam and Eve their hearts, their desire, their every desire is for the Lord and for pleasing him and that relationship that they'd enjoyed with him and with one another.But when Adam and Eve rebelled against God, the Bible says that that heart, those desires that all the way to the core had always been good and holy, now we have died spiritually. And as we die spiritually, there enters into now our hearts another set of desires, another power, another force, indeed, an enemy. You have an enemy lurking inside of you. Every single one of us do. And that enemy is set against God.That enemy does not delight in God, does not delight in the will of God, does not delight in obedience to God. Rather, it delights in the opposite of all of that. It delights in what is illicit. It delights in sensuality. It delights in things that are are evil, actually.It delights in evil. This enemy inside our hearts. So the story of human history is not one of basically good people doing occasionally bad things. It is the story of fundamentally bad people occasionally doing good things, sometimes often doing good things. But the problem is that we retain in our hearts what Jeremiah calls “a desperately wicked heart.”It is inclined to evil. It delights in sin. This is the depravity of man. The Bible, that's what theologians call it, the depravity of man. Our hearts have that.You have that. K? We are bankrupt. We are we are morally defaulted. Our our setting inside is pride and self love.I didn't expect an amen there. How about people you know? Pride and self love. Amen to that? It's all around us, all these other peopleRight? The goal of this message is for us to realize the problem is not the primarily the world around me. The problem is not the liberal media. The problem is not the Republicans or the Democrats. The problem is not all of these other people.The problem with the world is me. It is my heart. It is my depravity. You know, if you're in a war, it's important that you identify who the enemy is, isn't it? It's generally easy in a war because it's the people that are shooting at you.It's the people that want to destroy you. It is the these are the people that are the enemy. Look how Peter describes our enemy. These desires, he says, which wage war against your soul. The Greek word there for war, that's not made up.It is actually it's a military word. It is describing a kind of battle. So think of a famous battle like Iwo Jima or something like that. Carnage everywhere, an enemy trying everything it can to destroy. That is going on within the human heart.It's going on within the Christian heart, I should say. The unbeliever has no battle. The unbeliever does not have any there there's no conflict inside. We have conflict because by God's grace, we have received this salvation. And what part of what God does when we are when we become Christians is that he gives us a new heart.Right? And with that new heart are all of these desires for the will of God and for pleasing God and the things of God. But we retain in our personhood the old self, the old man, and all those old desires. That is the enemy in Peter's language here. And there is a war going on.It is a real battle. And this enemy is a real enemy. I am not talking here metaphorically. I'm not giving an illustration. This is not analogy.There is a real enemy within you. And I wonder if you're aware of it. I wonder if you realize that you are in a war. You know, it would be a really terrible thing to be in a war and not realize it. Imagine a guy on the on the on the beach of Normandy, 06/06/1944, looking for seashells.What are all these bombs doing here and all of these soldiers? And what's the of the machine gun? And what is going on here? Somebody says, it's D-Day. Oh, but look at these shells.They're so wonderful and beautiful. If you're in a battle, you better realize it. If you're in a war, you better realize it. And, basically, the point of this message is that we are in a war, and I believe most Christians live their day and they don't realize it. Walk into the day thinking, hey.It's just another day, unaware that there is within us an active, real force that wants to destroy the good that God is doing in our life. And he is an enemy that must be defeated. So in this war, let's just draw up the sides here. On the one side, you have the heart, the new heart of the Christian, and those desires that the spirit has brought to us that can be also fanned into flame. And these are desires for holy obedience and joy and the glory of God.This is the side of love, and this is the side of all the goodness of God being lived out in our life, conforming to the likeness of Jesus. On the other side is what we're calling the enemy. This is the flesh. This is the old regime. These are the desires prior to salvation that dominated my life.This is sin and all of its corruption and all of its destruction and all of the things that God promises to punish in our life. Those are the two sides. And that battle is going on in every one of us. Be honest. Are you aware of it?Are you aware of it? Here's other scriptures that talk about this. Romans eight, “for if you live according to the flesh, you will die.” How about that for a verse? Live according to these desires, let them dominate your life, you will die.“But if by the spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live, but I say walk by the spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.” You see that kind of a dualism there. Right? If you live this way, you're not gonna gratify the desires of the flesh.“For the desires of the flesh are against the spirit, and the desires of the spirit are against the flesh. For they are at war with each other to keep you from doing the things that you want to do.” Read Romans seven. It's an entire chapter describing this battle, this strife, this war that goes on in the heart of the Christian. You say, well, how does he how if I got this enemy inside of me that's lurking, how does he how does he exactly wage war?We have to realize the battlefield within us is for our minds, for our hearts, and for our souls. What desires are going to rule us? What affections are we going to say that's the way that I'm going to go? And part of this challenge for us is that the desires that the the flesh is seeking to cultivate in us and to to lead us by in the world are normal. Hear me, Bethel Church. In the world, they are normal and acceptable. That's just the way that we live. That's the way that we roll as we live by those passions and desires. And so you can easily live in the world, and it comes at you all the time and peer pressure and expectation and everybody you know lives this way. And then you live that way, and lo and behold, it's the enemy that is winning that battle.Sometimes it's hard to spot the enemy, but it's not hard to spot his effect. Paul writes this to the Galatians about the effects of living according to the flesh. “Now the works of the flesh are evident, sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these, I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.” So what do we think when we see that kind of thing pop up in the life of a Christian or in the church? What do we think?We think, ah, we've spotted the enemy. There he is. We see his his his signature. We see his fingerprints over this. Because whenever the enemy is is is winning, that's what it looks like.This is just one sermon. I can't hit everything about this in this one sermon. I just want to focus on Paul's strategy. You say, wow. I got this enemy inside of me.He wants to destroy me. I'm in a battle every single day. What do I do about this? Beyond being aware of the battle, here's Peter's advice. Abstain.Thank you, Peter. Don't do it. And actually, the word abstain, it's it's a it's a geography word. It's a distance word. K?If this is where the flesh is leading me, then I am going to if that's east, then I'm going west. I am going to distance myself as far as I can from all of those things because that's the flesh. I have been freed from that. That's my old way of life. I don't want to live that way.I have a new heart. I want to live for the glory of God. And so I'm going to I'm going to run from these things. This is this is Joseph and Potiphar's wife who comes to him and says, sleep with me. What does Joseph do?He says, well, I'll go into the bedroom, but I ain't sleeping with you. Is that what he did? No. What did Joseph do? He created distance.He ran. He ran. Here's other passages saying the same thing. Flee youthful lust. Young people and old people, we still have these lusts inside of us.What's the best thing to do with them? Run. Create distance. Romans 13, make no provision for the flesh. Galatians five, walk by the spirit and you will not gratify the flesh.These and other passages. Here's my goal though. My goal for the church is that this message would wake us up to the battle, to wake us up that every day that I wake up, I am I am like a soldier. I am entering into a battlefield, and the the it's a war for my soul. And the consequences are huge.Be a pastor. And here's what's the kind of thing that you hear. People say this. I never thought somebody like me could do something like that. Or they'll say, oh, you know, that that wasn't the real me.When actually, that might have been your clearest look into the depravity of your own heart. It is not that that is not the real you. It is most certainly the real us. We need to wake up. It's kinda like 09:11.America woke up and realized, oh, wow. There's an enemy. And the church slumbers along in the day to day of life thinking that I'm just living this day. There's nothing really for me to be worried about. And all the while, the enemy lurks within us seeking moments to dominate and to take over.And he he he drags us down with compromises and with wrong thinking and with friends and influences and whatever temptations. He seeks to drag us down and destroy God's good work in us. And how often we see that? All of a sudden, so and so, they're like, bam, down they go. And we're like, what happened?And you look into the story, and it's a series of steps down and down and down of giving in, of of submitting and surrendering to a whole set of desires, the passions of the flesh. And then all of a sudden, the bomb goes off. And the home is destroyed, and the marriage is destroyed, and the family is destroyed, and the person's destroyed. We are in a battle, friends. And I I love you.I want God's best in your life. You will not have it without fighting. K? Without fighting this war. And I've got to ask you, are you in the battle?First thing, be aware of it. Secondly, actively fight against it. Create distance. Abstain. Now the message is war and peace.Right? So what about the peace part? You might look at this and say, man, the stakes are high, and they are high. The stakes are high for my life, and they are high for your life. Peter's really worried about, like, me individually, primarily.Wrong. That is not Peter's primary concern here. Peter is much more concerned with the witness and the testimony of the local church in its community and the lives that those Christians in that church live as a kind of it gives credibility it's a terrible sentence. Sorry, Leo. The lives lived by the Christians as a faithful witness to the claims of Christianity and that local church living in that hostile environment.That's what he's concerned about. And we see that now as he as he it's one sentence. Okay? This is one sentence, verses eleven and twelve. It's one thought.So we abstain from the fleshly desires. And now he says, “keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.” So Peter, as often we find in the New Testament, there's something not to do and there is something to do. What are we not to do? We are not to submit to the illicit desires of the flesh.What are we to do? And what we are to do is to live honorably amongst a living or a watching world. Now the Gentiles here, by the way, he's not talking ethnically here. It's not non Jews that he has in mind. It's spiritually.These are unbelievers that we are to live out our lives in front of. And Peter says, keep your conduct, your lives before this watching unbelieving world. Make sure they have a quality about them. K? And what's the quality?What do you see there? Keep your conduct among the Gentiles. What's the next word? Honorable. It's the Greek word it's just the Greek word for what is good, what is what is beautiful, what is lovely.Make the mark of your lives have a kind of quality about them that has an inherent moral and spiritual goodness about them. Now why do you suppose Peter, concerned for the church living in a hostile community, why would his concern be the quality of the lives that are being lived? Well, it's because there is something that happens when real Christianity shows up in a secular environment. People see things they don't see anywhere else. What is what is Christianity all about?It is about Jesus leaving his glorious throne, coming into this broken and sick world, living amongst us, teaching, healing, dying for our sins, all of it as an expression of love. And Christians now receiving this love from God with a new heart and new desires now turning horizontally and expressing this love to the world around. So guess what the world gets when Christianity is real and authentic? They get justice. They get sacrificial love.They get kindness. They get generosity, a magnanimous type spirit, a selflessness like Jesus was selfless. Where real Christians are and where real Christianity is, that's what it feels like. Where do you get that in the secular world? Nowhere.That world is dominated by the passions and the desires of the flesh. Love our self love and pride. You step into a world of self love and pride with selflessness and humility, and they're like, what is this? What is this all about? I hadn't seen that anywhere else.And it causes them to wonder, what's this all about? And Peter assumes that Christians and real churches are gonna look like that, that their lifestyle is gonna create a kind of holy curiosity so that, he says, when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation. That sounds like doublespeak, doesn't it? Live such gloriously good lives amongst the people that when they slander you and they call you evildoers, do good and they'll call you evildoers. What?How does that work? I wanna illustrate this way. In light of the Masters Tournament, which is going on this week, the greatest week of the year other than Easter and Christmas. The greatest week of the year is the Masters golf tournament. So in light of that, I want to tell a golf just give a golf illustration of this.I've told this story before over the years. But true story. Years ago, there was a Pro Am golf tournament going on. And a Pro Am is where you have the PGA professionals, and they match them with amateurs who get to play in the tournament, get to play with the PGA players. They raise money for things, kind of thing.So there was a Pro Am tournament. And Billy Graham was playing in that Pro Am tournament. Well, ironically, matched with him in his foursome was a PGA player who was a notorious bad boy on tour. K? Well, a friend of the PGA tour saw that this guy was matched with Billy Graham, and he thought it was quite humorous and was kind of teasing him about, oh, you're with Billy Graham and la la la.So he was anxious to see how this was all going to play out. So they play their 18 holes, and the friend, when it's all done, he looks out on the range, and there is the PGA player. And he can tell that that guy on the he is just fuming mad. Right? He's out there.He's just hitting those balls just as hard as he can. And you think, oh, no. Something went terribly wrong. And so he rushes out to his friend, and he goes, hey. You played with Billy Graham.You're so mad. What did he say to you? And the player is just like, and he says, he didn't say anything. What's going on there? What is what's going on there?The obvious moral goodness of the life and ministry of Billy Graham really bothered that guy. Billy Graham didn't have to say anything. There was in his one commentator called it luminous goodness about his life that said something without words to the bad boy PGA golfer. And he probably would have called Billy Graham a good for nothing blankety blank and this, that, and the other, accuse him of all kinds of things. But there was something happening spiritually inside that guy's heart, wasn't there?There was a kind of curiosity. That's what he is getting at here. Live such lives amongst the pagans, the unbelievers, that though they accuse you of all kinds of evil, there will be in their hearts a kind of wondering when they see the sort of things that you're doing with your life and the values that you have. It makes them wonder, maybe there's something to this after all. How many of us deal with negativity in the workplace or negativity with family or friends because they know we're Christians?We have a family in this service right now who you might remember a few weeks ago, we we looked at the the stone of stumbling, that Jesus is the stone that was rejected, and we made the point that when people reject us, it's not so much us that they are rejecting as it goes all the way back to the stone that was rejected. It goes back to Jesus. That's what really where the rub is. And we have to keep that in mind. Well, family that's in the service right now, they came up to me after the service, tears in their eyes.They're getting ready to go on the mission field. They're going to a place where their Christianity will not accepted by the people around them. They don't like it at all. And they came up and they just said, we have got to keep that in mind. It's not us they are rejecting.It's the stone, the precious cornerstone that they are rejecting. You know, there's only ever been one perfect human being who's ever lived, and he was accused of being born illegitimately, plotting to overthrow Rome, and be king of demon possession, blasphemy, and mental derangement. That was Jesus. The early Christians were viewed with suspicion and hostility because they didn't go along with the lifestyle of the Greco Roman sexual, etcetera, lifestyle. They were viewed like, hey.What is wrong with you people? Right? This is like the way we roll around here. What is wrong with you? Why aren't you being a part of this?He's going to say, I think in chapter five, they're shocked that you don't indulge in all the same things that they indulge in. If I may pull a thought from recent headlines, to believe that marriage is between a man and a woman is increasingly being accused of being hateful and to be a bigot. Now we look at that and we say, it's about love. Right? Husband and wife, the love of Jesus and the church.It's a beautiful picture of sacrificial love for one. That marriage is about love. But increasingly, in our day, our perspective on marriage is being viewed as bigotry and prejudice and is actually hateful as one easy example of what we're looking at here. The church should exhibit a kind of life, a kind of ethos that causes the very different moral and spiritual world around us to wonder, what is that all about? And when there is an obvious kind of good being done for others, it makes them wonder if maybe there's something to it after all.So that the PGA player who is exasperated by being with Billy Graham might reconsider his prejudice when he thinks about the gentleness that Billy Graham had, the kind words that Billy Graham had, and how he was a man much different than he expected. Here's how Jesus said it. “In the same way, let your light shine before others so they may see your good works and give glory to your father who is in heaven.” Same thought. In fact, commentators think Peter's basically quoting Jesus from the sermon on the mount. Jesus' light is Peter's good deeds and the result of all of this is that the unbeliever worships God.Day of visitation, we don't exactly know what that is. Probably in the future, the culmination of all things, final judgment. But the point is this: our lives are intended by God to be a silent but powerful witness to the reality of the Holy Spirit in our life and to all of the claims of Christianity. Our lives are that witness. You might say, "That's right, we've got to get out there, we've got to preach it louder." Well, maybe. But mostly what he is talking about here is the good deeds of our life: the way, the lifestyle, the conduct of our lives.Here's an easy example. If you look at chapter 3, verse 1: "Likewise, wives, be subject to your own husbands, so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives." You see him making the point there. The woman who is married to an unbeliever, what does she need to do? Does she need to berate him with the gospel? That is not what he is saying. In that most intimate human relationship, there ought to be a daily silent witness to the reality of Christianity in the way that wife is a wife to her unbelieving husband. It's like he is her mission field, and she wins him by her life.Now I want to give an illustration of this. I've got to tell you, I'm going to use it again when I preach this passage in a few weeks, but it fits so well here. Many years ago, let's say sixteen years ago, I was fairly new at the church, and we got a call that there was an elderly woman in our church whose husband was an unbeliever, and he was dying in the hospital. The kids were Christian, the wife was a Christian, they had prayed for years, and they viewed this as one last chance for him to become a Christian. "Pastor Steve, will you go see him?" I had never met the guy. I had heard a few stories, a few notorious stories, about him, but I said I would go.So I go to the hospital, and I remember this as clear as day. I go into the room, and here's this guy. He's on the bed, tubes everywhere. He may be dazed from dying, but he still has his faculties; he's still with it. He's lying there, and on the other side of the bed is his wife, I'll call her Jan, holding his hand and stroking it. She's a frail, elderly woman. So I go in, and there's a chair I can sit in next to him, so I sit down and make some small talk, just to break the ice. I don't know the guy at all, so just some small talk.From the moment I walked in, I could tell he had no interest in what I was saying and would rather I hadn't come, but here was the elderly woman, and here were the people praying, so I soldiered on. So I'm making small talk with this guy, and he very abruptly, and kind of rudely, stops me and says, "Pastor, if you have something you need to say, say it, because I've got to go to the bathroom." I'm sitting in the chair, and just the way he said it, the scornful, disdainful way he said it, it kind of got to me. I don't know what my seminary would say about the way I responded, but here's what I did.I rose up in my chair, got in his face, pointed my finger at him, and said, "Let me tell you something. You are about to die, and without Jesus you are going to hell. You've denied it your entire life, but you can't deny it in your wife." And there she was, over there, rubbing his hand like this. As I got in his face, in that moment where the pressure is rising and the blood is rushing to his face, the moment I said "his wife," he softened, turned over to her, and said, "Yep, you're right. She is one fine cookie." That's exactly what he said.Think with me for a moment about this woman. Decades of raising the kids, hauling them to church, reading the Bible in the home, with no support from this guy whatsoever. Decades of being a wife to this guy, and all the responsibilities that entails, decade after decade after decade, faithfully doing that. This guy, tough as nails, but on his deathbed, he has to acknowledge there is something to this Christianity, because he had seen it in the life of his wife.What is the church called to do? We are called to live it out, with faithful kindness and witness, with love, graciousness, encouragement, being a blessing to the city and community, doing all we can to alleviate human suffering, being involved in people's lives. It's the kind gesture, the tender word, the kind of thing the world can't explain away. Those things will bear witness to the reality of a risen Savior. I love that story.So let Peter challenge us here. I want to ask this question. Does my life make the case for Jesus and the gospel? To ask, if an unbeliever were to watch my life up close, would it draw their heart to the claims of Christianity? And we're not talking about perfection here. The gospel tells us we need grace every day. But there is an effect the Spirit of God has in the heart of the Christian and in the life of a Christian that is so countercultural, so counter worldly, that it is itself an argument for the gospel. Would an unbeliever be drawn to the possibility that Jesus is risen from the dead because of your life? Live beautiful lives in this hostile world. Even those who hate you will wonder in their hearts if maybe there is something to it. And that wondering may open their heart, not just to think, but to actually believe. Yep, she's one fine cookie.And with that, I'd like to ask that all of our campus would please rise for a moment. Campus pastors, if you would take over the leadership of this moment. Can we bow our heads? I'd like a time of self-reflection here as a congregation. I want to ask first, are you in the battle? Or are you like that guy on June 6th, 1944, looking for seashells in Normandy, completely unaware of the battle raging within you?And we pray to the Lord right now. God, I want to engage in that. I want to follow the path of the Holy Spirit. I want to be led by the Spirit. I don't want to give in to those things that lead to death, that lead to destruction. Help me. Maybe in reflection you think, "That list of the flesh, that's the way I live." Maybe pray to God about that, repent, ask Him to help you walk in this new life that Jesus is creating in you.How about the whole matter of living good deeds in a hostile world? How are we doing as a church? How are we doing here at this campus? What would Crown Point and the area around us say? What would they say about Bethel Church? How about the unbelievers in your sphere? Is there a quality about your life that draws a kind of curiosity? And if not, why not? Pray, "God, help me to be that kind of witness. Help me to be that kind of gospel missionary. Help me to live it out."Imagine the effect on our church, on all of our people, if we were on mission with this. What would Northwest Indiana think?Heavenly Father, I pray over these truths. I pray over this passage. There is just so much to say in a world where it's so easy for us to compromise and be the dead fish going down the stream, along with the rest of the culture, on the stream to hell. And yet Jesus is risen from the dead. There is new life in Him. We believe that, and God, I pray that You would help us cultivate that, and pursue that, and abstain from the one and fight the battle for the other. I pray that we would be a church where the quality of our lives would lead the people around us to wonder, "What is it about those people?" Help us to love. Help us to care about pain. Help us to go the extra mile. Help us to be like the first, second, and third century Christians, where children were dumped in the streets and Christians would save them and raise them, where the plagues would come and Christians would minister to those who were sick, causing the Romans to famously look on and say, "See how they love one another."Oh God, cultivate that in our congregation. Forgive us for our failures. May we be a church, a lighthouse of truth lived out in very observable and challenging moments, that we might draw many, many, many to the cross of Jesus and to faith in Him. We thank You for this high calling and privilege. We love You, and we pray this in Your holy name. Amen. Amen.* This transcript was generated using AI transcription technology and reviewed for accuracy but may contain errors. Please refer to the original audio for precise wording

Steve DeWitt War and Peace - Part A Study Guide for Spiritual Exiles, 1 Peter 2:11-12 Scripture Reference: 1 Peter 2:11-12 Visit the series page: Exiles: A study in 1 Peter Donate to Support The Journey Sermon Transcript for Spiritual Exiles, 1 Peter 2:11-12 Sermon Series: Spiritual ExilesMessage: War and PeaceAirdates: 9/30-10/01/26Programs: 2368 and 2369And let me add my good morning to you and great to see you here this weekend after our big Easter weekend. And I just want to take a moment and say thank you to so many volunteers and people that came together to pull all those services off, Good Friday services and then of course our Easter services. We've just got great reports from all the campuses. And just thank you for parking far away, coming early, sitting close, being hospitable, all those things that we encouraged. It was really a great weekend.We heard of a couple of adult men that received Christ as their savior as one indication of some encouragement, and we're happy about that. Our two new campuses had their first Easter, Gary and at Hobart Portage, and just great reports from both of those campuses. So really exciting. And by the way, need to say good morning to our Hobart Portage and Cedar Lake. Good to see you this morning, kind of.And thank you for joining here. And I also wanna mention to to all of our campuses that we are next weekend, we're gonna spend a little bit of time talking about the church and kinda where we're at, talk about mission them, give some updates on some things. So I hope you'll come back as we as we kinda get everybody on the same page. I have here a book, a little book, just a little book here. It's called War and Peace.Anybody read War and Peace? I see a few hands going up. I don't think anybody first service raised their hand. But War and Peace, it's kinda it's one of these books if you've you've not read it, you've probably heard of it. It's one of those books that just seeing somebody at the airport or coffee shop reading War and Peace, it's like impressive, isn't it?You think, wow, that person they're they're kinda serious about reading because they're reading War and and Peace. I've not read this, but the title of the book is a is a great outline for our passage today. And I I just wanna note to you that it's war and peace. It's not war instead of peace. It's not war then peace.It's war and peace. And as Christians, we get that. There is in the living of the Christian life, there is war and peace. We are in a battle Internally, especially, we are in a in a kind of war. But then externally, we are we are called and trying to express peace and beauty and love.And so we have this kind of dualism going on internally, Iwo Jima, externally, Beethoven's fifth. Right? That's the that's kind of the struggle of being of being a Christian. And Peter is going to explore this and give us some expectations today. And we're coming off this is our series in First Peter, exiles.We're coming off some wonderful verses, verses eight and nine and and ten, where he just summarizes what the church is and and who we are. We're a holy nation. We're a royal priesthood, people of his own of his own possession. We are in this world, we are declaring the greatness and the glories and the excellencies of the God who called us out of darkness and into his marvelous light. And so real high point kind of verses in the letter.And now Peter does war and peace. Let me read our text, and then we will do our exposition and application. Here is what Peter writes to us today. “Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which war against your soul. Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of his visitation.”So there is God's word to us today, and I want you to see just if you if you were if we were to read the rest of the letter, you would look back at these verses and say, those are really pivotal verses. Like, those are the verses where Peter goes from a more doctrinal explanation of the gospel and who the church is on the basis of new life in Christ and and resurrection into a very practical, what does it look like for this church to live in a hostile world, in a world where people don't aren't inclined to to liking us? What does it look like for the church to be faithful in its witness in a world set against it? So pivotal verses here. Verse 11 is war.Verse 12 is peace. K. So we begin with the war part. And, here's how he begins this little section here. “Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles.”There we have, the the words that we get our whole series title from. You might say, well, why do they call it exiles? There you go. There's another example. Sojourners and exiles.They are nearly synonyms. Both of them are describing people that are living somewhere where they don't primarily belong. Living somewhere not their place of birth, living somewhere not where their heart is. We get this a little bit in Indiana every football season where we live in Indiana, right? But during football season, if you drive through neighborhoods, you'll often see people that have flags out front of their house, right?They live in Indiana, but the flag will say Ohio State University or Michigan. Right? Or now this is the only acceptable one, University of Iowa. I love to see those. Those are fine.You can do that. The others though are saying something, aren't they? They're living in Indiana, but the flags are indicating that their hearts are elsewhere. So that if you went to the door of somebody who had that kind of a flag, you could knock on the door, and you and when they answer you, you could just say, you're not from around here, are you? And nine times out of 10, no. I was born in Ohio, and and I I cheer for the Buckeyes. Or I was born in Michigan, I cheer for, the Wolverines. So the flags in their hearts are saying something different. And as Christians, we are exiles and sojourners in this way. We live in this world.Right? We're we we live here. We're called to live here. But God has done this wonderful work in our lives, hasn't he? Amen?And so thankful for the grace of God in our life where he has now changed our hearts and and our our sense of belonging is not primarily in this world. Our our sense of belonging is the kingdom of God. This Paul writes in Colossians, for example, that “we are to set our minds on things above, not on earthly things.” So our affections and our hearts are are now for the kingdom of God and the future eternal life that's gonna be with him. This is what the writer of Hebrews, for example, talks about in Hebrews 11 where he lists the the hall of faith.Right? All of these different people in the Old Testament, remarkable saints. All of them were looking to a city, a future city, the city of God. They endured persecution here, but their hope was set was set there. Moses gives up all of the treasures of Egypt because why?His real treasure was Christ. We're called to that kind of a perspective living in this world as sojourners and exiles. So maybe I could ask you right now, what do the flags of your heart say? Where do you belong in your affections? Are you actually in exile?Are you a sojourner? Peter, well, what does that look like? Like, I don't have flags. It's a nice picture of Pastor Steve, but I don't have flags. What what does it look like to live in this world but to have our hearts and minds set on another?Peter urges us, essentially, first of all, to go to war. K? War and peace. He says, you gotta realize that you are in a war. Here's the here's the text.We're called to abstain from the passions of the flesh. The passions of the flesh. What is that talking about? Well, passion's good. Right?We ought to be passionate people. There's nothing wrong with passionate. Desires are good. God made us filled with desires, and those are not inherently bad either. What he is talking about here is the passions of the flesh.These are human passions left unchecked. These are human passions without law, without conscience, without consequence, without a sense of judgment, without the sense of God. These are illicit desires. This is man left to his own devices where his heart and his mind can do jolly well whatever they want to do. The passions of the flesh.Where do they come from? You might say, well, okay. That's interesting. But, like, how did I get these kind of passions, or where are they located? Here's where Jesus locates the problem.Matthew 15. “For out of the heart comes evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, and slander.” Yeah. That's in you. It's in every single one of us.How did these things get inside of us? Well, the Bible tells how that happened. Right? We go back into the Garden of Eden. God makes Adam and Eve their hearts, their desire, their every desire is for the Lord and for pleasing him and that relationship that they'd enjoyed with him and with one another.But when Adam and Eve rebelled against God, the Bible says that that heart, those desires that all the way to the core had always been good and holy, now we have died spiritually. And as we die spiritually, there enters into now our hearts another set of desires, another power, another force, indeed, an enemy. You have an enemy lurking inside of you. Every single one of us do. And that enemy is set against God.That enemy does not delight in God, does not delight in the will of God, does not delight in obedience to God. Rather, it delights in the opposite of all of that. It delights in what is illicit. It delights in sensuality. It delights in things that are are evil, actually.It delights in evil. This enemy inside our hearts. So the story of human history is not one of basically good people doing occasionally bad things. It is the story of fundamentally bad people occasionally doing good things, sometimes often doing good things. But the problem is that we retain in our hearts what Jeremiah calls “a desperately wicked heart.”It is inclined to evil. It delights in sin. This is the depravity of man. The Bible, that's what theologians call it, the depravity of man. Our hearts have that.You have that. K? We are bankrupt. We are we are morally defaulted. Our our setting inside is pride and self love.I didn't expect an amen there. How about people you know? Pride and self love. Amen to that? It's all around us, all these other peopleRight? The goal of this message is for us to realize the problem is not the primarily the world around me. The problem is not the liberal media. The problem is not the Republicans or the Democrats. The problem is not all of these other people.The problem with the world is me. It is my heart. It is my depravity. You know, if you're in a war, it's important that you identify who the enemy is, isn't it? It's generally easy in a war because it's the people that are shooting at you.It's the people that want to destroy you. It is the these are the people that are the enemy. Look how Peter describes our enemy. These desires, he says, which wage war against your soul. The Greek word there for war, that's not made up.It is actually it's a military word. It is describing a kind of battle. So think of a famous battle like Iwo Jima or something like that. Carnage everywhere, an enemy trying everything it can to destroy. That is going on within the human heart.It's going on within the Christian heart, I should say. The unbeliever has no battle. The unbeliever does not have any there there's no conflict inside. We have conflict because by God's grace, we have received this salvation. And what part of what God does when we are when we become Christians is that he gives us a new heart.Right? And with that new heart are all of these desires for the will of God and for pleasing God and the things of God. But we retain in our personhood the old self, the old man, and all those old desires. That is the enemy in Peter's language here. And there is a war going on.It is a real battle. And this enemy is a real enemy. I am not talking here metaphorically. I'm not giving an illustration. This is not analogy.There is a real enemy within you. And I wonder if you're aware of it. I wonder if you realize that you are in a war. You know, it would be a really terrible thing to be in a war and not realize it. Imagine a guy on the on the on the beach of Normandy, 06/06/1944, looking for seashells.What are all these bombs doing here and all of these soldiers? And what's the of the machine gun? And what is going on here? Somebody says, it's D-Day. Oh, but look at these shells.They're so wonderful and beautiful. If you're in a battle, you better realize it. If you're in a war, you better realize it. And, basically, the point of this message is that we are in a war, and I believe most Christians live their day and they don't realize it. Walk into the day thinking, hey.It's just another day, unaware that there is within us an active, real force that wants to destroy the good that God is doing in our life. And he is an enemy that must be defeated. So in this war, let's just draw up the sides here. On the one side, you have the heart, the new heart of the Christian, and those desires that the spirit has brought to us that can be also fanned into flame. And these are desires for holy obedience and joy and the glory of God.This is the side of love, and this is the side of all the goodness of God being lived out in our life, conforming to the likeness of Jesus. On the other side is what we're calling the enemy. This is the flesh. This is the old regime. These are the desires prior to salvation that dominated my life.This is sin and all of its corruption and all of its destruction and all of the things that God promises to punish in our life. Those are the two sides. And that battle is going on in every one of us. Be honest. Are you aware of it?Are you aware of it? Here's other scriptures that talk about this. Romans eight, “for if you live according to the flesh, you will die.” How about that for a verse? Live according to these desires, let them dominate your life, you will die.“But if by the spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live, but I say walk by the spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.” You see that kind of a dualism there. Right? If you live this way, you're not gonna gratify the desires of the flesh.“For the desires of the flesh are against the spirit, and the desires of the spirit are against the flesh. For they are at war with each other to keep you from doing the things that you want to do.” Read Romans seven. It's an entire chapter describing this battle, this strife, this war that goes on in the heart of the Christian. You say, well, how does he how if I got this enemy inside of me that's lurking, how does he how does he exactly wage war?We have to realize the battlefield within us is for our minds, for our hearts, and for our souls. What desires are going to rule us? What affections are we going to say that's the way that I'm going to go? And part of this challenge for us is that the desires that the the flesh is seeking to cultivate in us and to to lead us by in the world are normal. Hear me, Bethel Church. In the world, they are normal and acceptable. That's just the way that we live. That's the way that we roll as we live by those passions and desires. And so you can easily live in the world, and it comes at you all the time and peer pressure and expectation and everybody you know lives this way. And then you live that way, and lo and behold, it's the enemy that is winning that battle.Sometimes it's hard to spot the enemy, but it's not hard to spot his effect. Paul writes this to the Galatians about the effects of living according to the flesh. “Now the works of the flesh are evident, sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these, I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.” So what do we think when we see that kind of thing pop up in the life of a Christian or in the church? What do we think?We think, ah, we've spotted the enemy. There he is. We see his his his signature. We see his fingerprints over this. Because whenever the enemy is is is winning, that's what it looks like.This is just one sermon. I can't hit everything about this in this one sermon. I just want to focus on Paul's strategy. You say, wow. I got this enemy inside of me.He wants to destroy me. I'm in a battle every single day. What do I do about this? Beyond being aware of the battle, here's Peter's advice. Abstain.Thank you, Peter. Don't do it. And actually, the word abstain, it's it's a it's a geography word. It's a distance word. K?If this is where the flesh is leading me, then I am going to if that's east, then I'm going west. I am going to distance myself as far as I can from all of those things because that's the flesh. I have been freed from that. That's my old way of life. I don't want to live that way.I have a new heart. I want to live for the glory of God. And so I'm going to I'm going to run from these things. This is this is Joseph and Potiphar's wife who comes to him and says, sleep with me. What does Joseph do?He says, well, I'll go into the bedroom, but I ain't sleeping with you. Is that what he did? No. What did Joseph do? He created distance.He ran. He ran. Here's other passages saying the same thing. Flee youthful lust. Young people and old people, we still have these lusts inside of us.What's the best thing to do with them? Run. Create distance. Romans 13, make no provision for the flesh. Galatians five, walk by the spirit and you will not gratify the flesh.These and other passages. Here's my goal though. My goal for the church is that this message would wake us up to the battle, to wake us up that every day that I wake up, I am I am like a soldier. I am entering into a battlefield, and the the it's a war for my soul. And the consequences are huge.Be a pastor. And here's what's the kind of thing that you hear. People say this. I never thought somebody like me could do something like that. Or they'll say, oh, you know, that that wasn't the real me.When actually, that might have been your clearest look into the depravity of your own heart. It is not that that is not the real you. It is most certainly the real us. We need to wake up. It's kinda like 09:11.America woke up and realized, oh, wow. There's an enemy. And the church slumbers along in the day to day of life thinking that I'm just living this day. There's nothing really for me to be worried about. And all the while, the enemy lurks within us seeking moments to dominate and to take over.And he he he drags us down with compromises and with wrong thinking and with friends and influences and whatever temptations. He seeks to drag us down and destroy God's good work in us. And how often we see that? All of a sudden, so and so, they're like, bam, down they go. And we're like, what happened?And you look into the story, and it's a series of steps down and down and down of giving in, of of submitting and surrendering to a whole set of desires, the passions of the flesh. And then all of a sudden, the bomb goes off. And the home is destroyed, and the marriage is destroyed, and the family is destroyed, and the person's destroyed. We are in a battle, friends. And I I love you.I want God's best in your life. You will not have it without fighting. K? Without fighting this war. And I've got to ask you, are you in the battle?First thing, be aware of it. Secondly, actively fight against it. Create distance. Abstain. Now the message is war and peace.Right? So what about the peace part? You might look at this and say, man, the stakes are high, and they are high. The stakes are high for my life, and they are high for your life. Peter's really worried about, like, me individually, primarily.Wrong. That is not Peter's primary concern here. Peter is much more concerned with the witness and the testimony of the local church in its community and the lives that those Christians in that church live as a kind of it gives credibility it's a terrible sentence. Sorry, Leo. The lives lived by the Christians as a faithful witness to the claims of Christianity and that local church living in that hostile environment.That's what he's concerned about. And we see that now as he as he it's one sentence. Okay? This is one sentence, verses eleven and twelve. It's one thought.So we abstain from the fleshly desires. And now he says, “keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.” So Peter, as often we find in the New Testament, there's something not to do and there is something to do. What are we not to do? We are not to submit to the illicit desires of the flesh.What are we to do? And what we are to do is to live honorably amongst a living or a watching world. Now the Gentiles here, by the way, he's not talking ethnically here. It's not non Jews that he has in mind. It's spiritually.These are unbelievers that we are to live out our lives in front of. And Peter says, keep your conduct, your lives before this watching unbelieving world. Make sure they have a quality about them. K? And what's the quality?What do you see there? Keep your conduct among the Gentiles. What's the next word? Honorable. It's the Greek word it's just the Greek word for what is good, what is what is beautiful, what is lovely.Make the mark of your lives have a kind of quality about them that has an inherent moral and spiritual goodness about them. Now why do you suppose Peter, concerned for the church living in a hostile community, why would his concern be the quality of the lives that are being lived? Well, it's because there is something that happens when real Christianity shows up in a secular environment. People see things they don't see anywhere else. What is what is Christianity all about?It is about Jesus leaving his glorious throne, coming into this broken and sick world, living amongst us, teaching, healing, dying for our sins, all of it as an expression of love. And Christians now receiving this love from God with a new heart and new desires now turning horizontally and expressing this love to the world around. So guess what the world gets when Christianity is real and authentic? They get justice. They get sacrificial love.They get kindness. They get generosity, a magnanimous type spirit, a selflessness like Jesus was selfless. Where real Christians are and where real Christianity is, that's what it feels like. Where do you get that in the secular world? Nowhere.That world is dominated by the passions and the desires of the flesh. Love our self love and pride. You step into a world of self love and pride with selflessness and humility, and they're like, what is this? What is this all about? I hadn't seen that anywhere else.And it causes them to wonder, what's this all about? And Peter assumes that Christians and real churches are gonna look like that, that their lifestyle is gonna create a kind of holy curiosity so that, he says, when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation. That sounds like doublespeak, doesn't it? Live such gloriously good lives amongst the people that when they slander you and they call you evildoers, do good and they'll call you evildoers. What?How does that work? I wanna illustrate this way. In light of the Masters Tournament, which is going on this week, the greatest week of the year other than Easter and Christmas. The greatest week of the year is the Masters golf tournament. So in light of that, I want to tell a golf just give a golf illustration of this.I've told this story before over the years. But true story. Years ago, there was a Pro Am golf tournament going on. And a Pro Am is where you have the PGA professionals, and they match them with amateurs who get to play in the tournament, get to play with the PGA players. They raise money for things, kind of thing.So there was a Pro Am tournament. And Billy Graham was playing in that Pro Am tournament. Well, ironically, matched with him in his foursome was a PGA player who was a notorious bad boy on tour. K? Well, a friend of the PGA tour saw that this guy was matched with Billy Graham, and he thought it was quite humorous and was kind of teasing him about, oh, you're with Billy Graham and la la la.So he was anxious to see how this was all going to play out. So they play their 18 holes, and the friend, when it's all done, he looks out on the range, and there is the PGA player. And he can tell that that guy on the he is just fuming mad. Right? He's out there.He's just hitting those balls just as hard as he can. And you think, oh, no. Something went terribly wrong. And so he rushes out to his friend, and he goes, hey. You played with Billy Graham.You're so mad. What did he say to you? And the player is just like, and he says, he didn't say anything. What's going on there? What is what's going on there?The obvious moral goodness of the life and ministry of Billy Graham really bothered that guy. Billy Graham didn't have to say anything. There was in his one commentator called it luminous goodness about his life that said something without words to the bad boy PGA golfer. And he probably would have called Billy Graham a good for nothing blankety blank and this, that, and the other, accuse him of all kinds of things. But there was something happening spiritually inside that guy's heart, wasn't there?There was a kind of curiosity. That's what he is getting at here. Live such lives amongst the pagans, the unbelievers, that though they accuse you of all kinds of evil, there will be in their hearts a kind of wondering when they see the sort of things that you're doing with your life and the values that you have. It makes them wonder, maybe there's something to this after all. How many of us deal with negativity in the workplace or negativity with family or friends because they know we're Christians?We have a family in this service right now who you might remember a few weeks ago, we we looked at the the stone of stumbling, that Jesus is the stone that was rejected, and we made the point that when people reject us, it's not so much us that they are rejecting as it goes all the way back to the stone that was rejected. It goes back to Jesus. That's what really where the rub is. And we have to keep that in mind. Well, family that's in the service right now, they came up to me after the service, tears in their eyes.They're getting ready to go on the mission field. They're going to a place where their Christianity will not accepted by the people around them. They don't like it at all. And they came up and they just said, we have got to keep that in mind. It's not us they are rejecting.It's the stone, the precious cornerstone that they are rejecting. You know, there's only ever been one perfect human being who's ever lived, and he was accused of being born illegitimately, plotting to overthrow Rome, and be king of demon possession, blasphemy, and mental derangement. That was Jesus. The early Christians were viewed with suspicion and hostility because they didn't go along with the lifestyle of the Greco Roman sexual, etcetera, lifestyle. They were viewed like, hey.What is wrong with you people? Right? This is like the way we roll around here. What is wrong with you? Why aren't you being a part of this?He's going to say, I think in chapter five, they're shocked that you don't indulge in all the same things that they indulge in. If I may pull a thought from recent headlines, to believe that marriage is between a man and a woman is increasingly being accused of being hateful and to be a bigot. Now we look at that and we say, it's about love. Right? Husband and wife, the love of Jesus and the church.It's a beautiful picture of sacrificial love for one. That marriage is about love. But increasingly, in our day, our perspective on marriage is being viewed as bigotry and prejudice and is actually hateful as one easy example of what we're looking at here. The church should exhibit a kind of life, a kind of ethos that causes the very different moral and spiritual world around us to wonder, what is that all about? And when there is an obvious kind of good being done for others, it makes them wonder if maybe there's something to it after all.So that the PGA player who is exasperated by being with Billy Graham might reconsider his prejudice when he thinks about the gentleness that Billy Graham had, the kind words that Billy Graham had, and how he was a man much different than he expected. Here's how Jesus said it. “In the same way, let your light shine before others so they may see your good works and give glory to your father who is in heaven.” Same thought. In fact, commentators think Peter's basically quoting Jesus from the sermon on the mount. Jesus' light is Peter's good deeds and the result of all of this is that the unbeliever worships God.Day of visitation, we don't exactly know what that is. Probably in the future, the culmination of all things, final judgment. But the point is this: our lives are intended by God to be a silent but powerful witness to the reality of the Holy Spirit in our life and to all of the claims of Christianity. Our lives are that witness. You might say, "That's right, we've got to get out there, we've got to preach it louder." Well, maybe. But mostly what he is talking about here is the good deeds of our life: the way, the lifestyle, the conduct of our lives.Here's an easy example. If you look at chapter 3, verse 1: "Likewise, wives, be subject to your own husbands, so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives." You see him making the point there. The woman who is married to an unbeliever, what does she need to do? Does she need to berate him with the gospel? That is not what he is saying. In that most intimate human relationship, there ought to be a daily silent witness to the reality of Christianity in the way that wife is a wife to her unbelieving husband. It's like he is her mission field, and she wins him by her life.Now I want to give an illustration of this. I've got to tell you, I'm going to use it again when I preach this passage in a few weeks, but it fits so well here. Many years ago, let's say sixteen years ago, I was fairly new at the church, and we got a call that there was an elderly woman in our church whose husband was an unbeliever, and he was dying in the hospital. The kids were Christian, the wife was a Christian, they had prayed for years, and they viewed this as one last chance for him to become a Christian. "Pastor Steve, will you go see him?" I had never met the guy. I had heard a few stories, a few notorious stories, about him, but I said I would go.So I go to the hospital, and I remember this as clear as day. I go into the room, and here's this guy. He's on the bed, tubes everywhere. He may be dazed from dying, but he still has his faculties; he's still with it. He's lying there, and on the other side of the bed is his wife, I'll call her Jan, holding his hand and stroking it. She's a frail, elderly woman. So I go in, and there's a chair I can sit in next to him, so I sit down and make some small talk, just to break the ice. I don't know the guy at all, so just some small talk.From the moment I walked in, I could tell he had no interest in what I was saying and would rather I hadn't come, but here was the elderly woman, and here were the people praying, so I soldiered on. So I'm making small talk with this guy, and he very abruptly, and kind of rudely, stops me and says, "Pastor, if you have something you need to say, say it, because I've got to go to the bathroom." I'm sitting in the chair, and just the way he said it, the scornful, disdainful way he said it, it kind of got to me. I don't know what my seminary would say about the way I responded, but here's what I did.I rose up in my chair, got in his face, pointed my finger at him, and said, "Let me tell you something. You are about to die, and without Jesus you are going to hell. You've denied it your entire life, but you can't deny it in your wife." And there she was, over there, rubbing his hand like this. As I got in his face, in that moment where the pressure is rising and the blood is rushing to his face, the moment I said "his wife," he softened, turned over to her, and said, "Yep, you're right. She is one fine cookie." That's exactly what he said.Think with me for a moment about this woman. Decades of raising the kids, hauling them to church, reading the Bible in the home, with no support from this guy whatsoever. Decades of being a wife to this guy, and all the responsibilities that entails, decade after decade after decade, faithfully doing that. This guy, tough as nails, but on his deathbed, he has to acknowledge there is something to this Christianity, because he had seen it in the life of his wife.What is the church called to do? We are called to live it out, with faithful kindness and witness, with love, graciousness, encouragement, being a blessing to the city and community, doing all we can to alleviate human suffering, being involved in people's lives. It's the kind gesture, the tender word, the kind of thing the world can't explain away. Those things will bear witness to the reality of a risen Savior. I love that story.So let Peter challenge us here. I want to ask this question. Does my life make the case for Jesus and the gospel? To ask, if an unbeliever were to watch my life up close, would it draw their heart to the claims of Christianity? And we're not talking about perfection here. The gospel tells us we need grace every day. But there is an effect the Spirit of God has in the heart of the Christian and in the life of a Christian that is so countercultural, so counter worldly, that it is itself an argument for the gospel. Would an unbeliever be drawn to the possibility that Jesus is risen from the dead because of your life? Live beautiful lives in this hostile world. Even those who hate you will wonder in their hearts if maybe there is something to it. And that wondering may open their heart, not just to think, but to actually believe. Yep, she's one fine cookie.And with that, I'd like to ask that all of our campus would please rise for a moment. Campus pastors, if you would take over the leadership of this moment. Can we bow our heads? I'd like a time of self-reflection here as a congregation. I want to ask first, are you in the battle? Or are you like that guy on June 6th, 1944, looking for seashells in Normandy, completely unaware of the battle raging within you?And we pray to the Lord right now. God, I want to engage in that. I want to follow the path of the Holy Spirit. I want to be led by the Spirit. I don't want to give in to those things that lead to death, that lead to destruction. Help me. Maybe in reflection you think, "That list of the flesh, that's the way I live." Maybe pray to God about that, repent, ask Him to help you walk in this new life that Jesus is creating in you.How about the whole matter of living good deeds in a hostile world? How are we doing as a church? How are we doing here at this campus? What would Crown Point and the area around us say? What would they say about Bethel Church? How about the unbelievers in your sphere? Is there a quality about your life that draws a kind of curiosity? And if not, why not? Pray, "God, help me to be that kind of witness. Help me to be that kind of gospel missionary. Help me to live it out."Imagine the effect on our church, on all of our people, if we were on mission with this. What would Northwest Indiana think?Heavenly Father, I pray over these truths. I pray over this passage. There is just so much to say in a world where it's so easy for us to compromise and be the dead fish going down the stream, along with the rest of the culture, on the stream to hell. And yet Jesus is risen from the dead. There is new life in Him. We believe that, and God, I pray that You would help us cultivate that, and pursue that, and abstain from the one and fight the battle for the other. I pray that we would be a church where the quality of our lives would lead the people around us to wonder, "What is it about those people?" Help us to love. Help us to care about pain. Help us to go the extra mile. Help us to be like the first, second, and third century Christians, where children were dumped in the streets and Christians would save them and raise them, where the plagues would come and Christians would minister to those who were sick, causing the Romans to famously look on and say, "See how they love one another."Oh God, cultivate that in our congregation. Forgive us for our failures. May we be a church, a lighthouse of truth lived out in very observable and challenging moments, that we might draw many, many, many to the cross of Jesus and to faith in Him. We thank You for this high calling and privilege. We love You, and we pray this in Your holy name. Amen. Amen.* This transcript was generated using AI transcription technology and reviewed for accuracy but may contain errors. Please refer to the original audio for precise wording

Steve DeWitt His People. His Possession. His Proclamation - Part B Study Guide for Spiritual Exiles, 1 Peter 2:9-10 Scripture Reference: 1 Peter 2:9-10 Visit the series page: Exiles: A study in 1 Peter Donate to Support The Journey Sermon Transcript for Spiritual Exiles, 1 Peter 2:9-10 Sermon Series: Spiritual ExilesMessage: His People. His Possession. His Proclamation.Airdate: 9/28-9/29/25Programs: 2366 & 2367That's what we're gonna do. You know, we're in the thick of March Madness. And I have to warn you, I'm just seeing this as my, kind of green light to let my inner sports fan out in this message. So I'm gonna do that here. And, we're in March Madness, the NCAA tournament.Maybe you've been watching it. Last night's game was crazy as one example, but so much fun. And and, I love, basketball in particular. Many of you know that. And, you know, as crazy as it is now, we we actually go back maybe, what, thirty years, and you're in the midst of the great dynasty of UCLA basketball. You know, talk about how great teams are, Kentucky, etcetera, now. You wanna talk about greatness. You gotta look at at, UCLA coached by the great John Wooden. They won seven NCAA tournament championships in a row. He won 10 in total.So back then, it wasn't hard to fill out your bracket. You just kinda went UCLA, UCLA, UCLA, UCLA, and everybody tied because everybody picked the same team to win the whole thing. That's the way that it was, a true a true dynasty. Once, they won 88 consecutive games in a row. 88.Only to lose in the great state of Indiana. Playing who? Notre Dame. So we're gonna I'm amongst friends, sports fans, friends here. If you know that Notre Dame defeated them and broke that record.But John Wooden just talk about John Wooden a second. You know, he was the iconic coach of UCLA. To this day, famous not only for his accomplishments, but he's quoted all the time. If you follow sports much, Wooden is quoted all the time. They call them woodenisms Because John Wooden had the ability to take kind of like life wisdom, sports wisdom, and just make it into a little statement that is easily remembered, easily quoted.For example, “winning takes talent to repeat takes character.” Apparently, they had a lot of character in those days at UCLA. “It's what you learn after you know it all that counts” and things like that. So how great would it be if we could, hear John Wooden, like, at the halftime, speech or maybe in the huddle, ten seconds left. This is what we're gonna do.He just had a unique ability to take big truths and to make them small and to make them memorable. And I love it when the Bible does that. You know, there's so much in the Bible you can kinda read and maybe it's ethereal. You scratch your head a little bit. But then there are certain passages of Scripture that just take it down and just say, this is what it's all about.Right? Like John three sixteen. For the gospel, John three sixteen is a verse like that. This is the essence of the gospel is way more than this, but this is the essence of the gospel. Or, the role of Jesus, Colossians one eighteen, so that in everything he might have the supremacy.Love that verse. Why? It just summarize it's like bottom line of bottom lines. This is what it's all about. Well, the passage we have in front of us today is a verse like that regarding the church.Why are we here? What's our purpose? What are what's going on? This verse does it so wonderfully, so beautifully. It might be end up being your favorite verse in first Peter.And so here we have Peter. He's part of the inner member of the inner circle. He's a leader of the apostles. He's a leader in the early church. Here we have the leader of the church telling us today, this is why you exist.This is your purpose. Now get after it. K? Kinda like John Wooden would have done. So let me read first Peter two verse nine, and then we're gonna see what it's what it means.But you are listen, church. “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” Very pastoral language by Peter here intended to be an encouragement. Remember, these, this letter is written to people that have been relocated. They are exiles in in Asia Minor.They are sojourners in a culture that they don't know. They are struggling. And Peter wants them to realize that they have an identity that is different than what the people around them are saying who they are, what their feelings are saying about who they are. It doesn't matter what the culture says. It doesn't matter what your feelings say.It matters what God says about you. And God has something to say about Christian identity and Christian purpose. I also want us to realize that this is not just for exiles, that this passage is for us today. If you're a Christian, this is you. He is describing you.He is describing us collectively. Who are we? Why are we here? What is our purpose? You know, I can't help but notice that in the teams in the in the NCAA tournament, all of them, one of the first basic things is you've gotta know what team you're on.Right? And so what do they do in order to identify what team they're on? They they all wear jerseys. And emblazoned on the jersey is the team, the university that they represent. And so they have, you know, Duke or Kentucky or the team about to lose to Kentucky.You know, these are the identities of these teams in the tournament. And they all know who they are, though. If you're gonna be a winning team, you've gotta know, first of all, who are you? Who are we, church, in the eyes of God? Notice, you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession.This is identity. K? Identity. One of the things that we know about all human beings is that we all we all crave an identity. In fact, we all need an identity.We all need a place to belong. We all desire very much a sense of belonging. This is where I think our family or our hometown or the school we attended, these provide certain identities for us. One of the first things that, you know, when you meet somebody, what do you say? Where are you from?And your identity is somewhat out of where you come from. This, I think, is part of the appeal of a lot of the of the sports teams and the sports mania where you watch these games. You watch a a Manchester United game or an Alabama football game, and you're gonna see a huge thousands of people all dressed in the same colors, wearing the same kinds of of, of jerseys. And they're in the stands. Right?They are doing nothing really other than screaming to contribute to the victory or the loss, but they see themselves as connected to this team or this organization. And you can laugh at that, but people take it seriously. Like, they seriously are identified with that. The fortunes of that team up and down. Their emotions ride with the ups and downs of that team.What is, I think, part of that appeal? We gotta belong to something. I gotta belong to something that is bigger than me, something that I think is really, really important. And in our culture, sports teams are one of the big identities that people attach themselves to. And, of course, this is all about relationship.I wanna feel like I belong to something, that I'm in relationship with something that is greater than myself. In a sense, we're all that seventh grade boy standing in the cafeteria wondering where to sit. What table will accept me? Where can I go that I have a sense of belonging? Could I ask you, where do you belong?What do you choose to identify with that gives you a sense of meaning in your life? What would you say is your identity group? This might be helpful. If you were to die today, what would people, your friends and family, what would they write about you in your obituary? If you read through obituaries, generally, they say this is so and so.He's from this family. And he was an avid this. He was a part of this organization. This is the things that really mattered to him. What might your family say about you?Or I do funerals and, you know, they'll have the casket oftentimes and the family and friends will adorn the casket with the things that were the identity of that person. And so there might be a picture of his dog. Or there might be, you know, his favorite sports team. There's a something from the team in there. Or it could be a Harley Davidson hat.It almost doesn't matter. Right? Because the human heart craves, longs, and must find some identity with something beyond itself. We're made that way. We crave it.We long for it. And, of course, the curse for all of our human identities is that they are all fleeting, and they are all temporary, and in the end, they are all disappointing. Right, Cubs fans? Right? Now that's a silly example, although some of you take it seriously.I'm showing the superficiality of that. But all of our human identities, in the end, are fleeting. Even the most meaningful ones, family and marriage, we don't, in the end, get to keep those, do we? Why? Because death is separation from all of our human identities, everything connected to this world.Death is the is the is the separation from that. If only there was somewhere, something that we could belong to that is real in this life and endures in the next life. If there was some place that I could have a sense of belonging, where I could feel like I have an identity and I could know that it's not bound up in the whims of sports or the marketplace or the stock market or human relationships or friendships or even family separated by death. Wouldn't it be great if there was some place that I could actually, not just theoretically, but actually see as my identity and to know that this will be my identity forever. Even death can't take it away.Wouldn't that be fantastic? And that is essentially what Peter is encouraging these exiles with here. And he does so quoting mostly Exodus 19, and here he lists four blessed and enduring identities that are true for every single genuine and authentic follower of Jesus Christ. Let's walk through them together. First of all, he says, you are a chosen race.A chosen race. We hear chosen and we think this has something to do with us. Right? Like LeBron who has tattooed giant across his giant back, chosen one. I think for LeBron, he means that to say something about him.Right? He is the chosen one. And this of course was the stumbling block of Israel because God chose Israel. God chose Abraham, all of his descendants. And for all of those years in in in in spiritually speaking, it became a stumbling block because the Israelites thought their choosing was about them.It said something about their worth. It was something about we're better than the other peoples. We're higher. We're special. And Moses in Deuteronomy wanted them to realize God didn't choose you because of you.Here's what he says. “It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you. For you were the fewest of all peoples. But it is because the Lord loves you.” Did you hear that?Why did God choose to love Israel? It had nothing to do with Israel. It is because God himself is love. The choosing has everything to do with God. And we here now in the new covenant, elect and chosen by God, sovereign choice election by God.It does not give us pride. It does not make us think that this is about us any more than the donkey on Palm Sunday might have thought, they're clapping for me. They're wavy palm branches for me. Palm Sunday is not about the donkey and the church and the choosing is not about us. It is about God's sovereign love where he, for reasons only he knows, chooses to set his love upon undeserving, unmerited sinners like us and to say, I love you because I'm love.And when God sets his love upon you and you respond to that love by loving him through the gospel, we enter into a a place. We enter into a a people group. God is forming a new people group. His chosen people. His chosen race.We are a royal priesthood. That does not mean that we are kings and queens or princes or princesses. A priest in Israel was somebody that was allowed to draw near to God. A priest was somebody that ministered in the temple and offered the sacrifices and represented the people to God. God allowed the priest into a place that the people were not allowed to come.We are now in the new covenant, a royal priesthood. We're not kings and queens, but God, the King, bids us to draw near to him. He allows us access into his presence. In the new covenant, my prayers offered in Jesus' name are heard in the very ears of God himself. We are we are close to him.We are near to him. We're near to the King. We're royal priests. We are a holy nation. Listen to Grudem. “Just as believers are a new spiritual race and a new spiritual priesthood, so they are a new spiritual nation, which is based now neither on ethnic identity nor geographical boundaries, but rather on allegiance to their heavenly King Jesus Christ who is truly King of kings and Lord of lords.” Do not miss the radical nature of even that statement. In a day where, especially in Israel, there was a sense that we are the people of God. We are the nation of God. And what does God come along and do?And what does Jesus do? He dies on the cross not for just for the Jew, but also for the Gentile. Now all who believe in Christ are part of the nation of God, the family of God. We have a kind of citizenship. We don't immigrate.We don't apply. Citizenship is by faith in allegiance to Jesus as Savior and Lord. And if Jesus is your Savior and Jesus is your Lord, then he is King of the nation that you're a member of. You become a part of that. And that means that there's no ethnic line on that.There's no age line on that. There's no geographical line on that. The child living in the hut in Africa is as free to become a part of this nation as the wealthy Wall Street stockbroker is, and the educated Harvard person is, and the Eskimo is, and the Aborigine is. It doesn't matter who you are, where you are, what your background, your skin color, the blood in your veins. It matters if you believe and trust in Christ.And if you do, welcome to the nation. Welcome to the nation. The nation of God. A fellow citizen with anybody else who has pledged allegiance to the King. We are part of a holy nation.And fourth, and I think most wonderfully, these words here, that we are a people for his own possession. That Greek word there for possession is used describing the practice of the ancient kings of the East, who in those kings like kings now or presidents now, really any nation, has to pay for roads and swords and ships and provide various things for the people of that particular nation. And so taxes are taken in and it goes into the treasury. And out of the treasury of the the nation, those things are are met. But the ancient kings of the East would have they would have the monies of the country that while they were king, could lay a claim to those things.Those were the things that were used to provide for the needs of the country. They had though a special treasury. A special treasury box, gold in that box that was not part of the national treasury. This was their own treasure. That word is the word that is used here.We are, to God, a personal treasure. We are, to God, a personal possession. This is about relationship. We belong to him. We belong to almighty God, a treasure to the most high God.Here's just two verses that talk about this. Isaiah forty-three one, “Fear not, for I have redeemed you. I have called you by name. You are mine.” Titus two, “who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.”Indeed, we are the possession of God. How? He bought us. He paid the ransom price for us, didn't he? He bought us out of the slavery of sin.The blood of Jesus was the ransom payment. We are redeemed. We are bought back by God, and now we are the very possession of God. But like in your house, you have possessions that are in different categories. You probably have things in your garage and things in your basement you don't even realize that you have.Right? And so you hear it's it's time for the neighborhood garage sale and you go rummaging through the, you know, the basement or the attic. And you're like, oh, I forgot all about this thing. Right? You have those kinds of possessions.But then there's the things that you hide when you go on vacation. That's in a different category, isn't it? What do you hide? You hide things that are dear to you. You hide things that are valuable to you.You hide things that are special to you. What this passage is saying is in God's eyes, that's what we are. He cares for us. We are dear to him. We are his personal possession.We are his personal treasure. Take these all as a whole. Chosen nation, priest of the King, prized by God himself, think of what this would have meant to the people that Peter's writing to. These exiles who are living in this you know, they're like men without a country. They don't they don't They've been they've been geographically displaced.They've been they're displaced from their families, probably their jobs. They're living in a a place where the people around them are viewing them negatively, are seeing them suspiciously. They're suffering loss. They feel just so isolated. They wonder, who where do we belong?Like, who am I? Why are we here? What is this all about? Think of how encouraging this would have been for Peter to say, listen, you are you have an exalted status. That we are not who our feelings say that we are.We are not who other people say that we are. We are not who our pain and our trials in those moments say that we are. Who are we? We are God's chosen and prized possession. We belong to him.What better news could we hear? Right? Christian, what better news than to be loved and treasured, to be citizens of the only nation that will endure the test of time, to be members of the family of God. Now how important is this? I think it's critical.My dear friend, I think it's critical. I had a woman right before first service today comes up to me and said, would you please pray for me? Tears in her eyes, suddenly lost her job, struggling with what that means, worked twenty two years in this company, and just boom, you're done. And just, you know, that that kind of startle, that kind of struggle, we can relate to that, can't we? But that's life, isn't it?Life in this world and all of these identities that we sort of cling to and want to make us feel like, you know, we belong to something, they're always fleeting and they're always changing. So make your identity your husband or your wife, and then death or divorce comes. Now who am I? Who am I? Make your identity your children, and then their rebellion shatters you.Make your money your identity, and then a recession destroys you. Make your health or your good looks your identity, and then feel the creeping effect of age and look in the mirror and think, who am I? These and so many other things like this. All the time, fleeing. We never get past being that seventh-grade boy in the cafeteria.Who am I? Who accepts me? Where do I belong? And to this, God shouts to his people. He shouts to us, Bethel Church, and you Christian.He wants you to realize who you are, your identity, your place, your sense of belonging, that you are prized by God himself. I like that. I like that. I think about our young people here. We've got young people.I see them sitting around here. Teenagers. Those years where you're just like, oh, who am I? And all of that. And the culture shouting at you the things that really, this is where your identity should be, and the friends at the school saying, is what's really important.Would that Bethel Church would be a vehicle to raising up a generation of young people who refuse to find their identity in the fleeting things in this world? And even as young people say to themself, I am a child of God. And I don't look like you say I gotta look. And I'm not doing the things that you say I gotta do. And I'm not caring about the culture things that you say I gotta care about.Because I know who I am. I'm a child of God. I'm gonna live out that identity. Wouldn't that be great? And for their parents as well.For their parents as well. So our identity is that we are God's possession. But notice that we are not simply in identity to be in identity. Rather, there is something that we are to do. It's the rest of the verse.That you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness and into his marvelous light. What a wonderful verse this is. We are God's possessions, and our purpose is proclamation. In other words, we don't exist for ourselves. Can I say that, Bethel Church?This church does not exist for Bethel Church. And Christian, this church doesn't exist for you. This is not about you primarily. So enough of the, you know, this church, you gotta do this for me and this for me. Enough coming to church like a consumer.Go to the mall. This church exists to proclaim the greatness of somebody else. Indeed, we are proclaiming him, the text says. How wonderful he is. To proclaim how wonderful it is, what God has done for us, taking us out of darkness and into his marvelous light.Darkness throughout Scripture is a metaphor for mankind apart from God. The life of man, the philosophy of man, the worldview of man, living out his life apart from a relationship with God. The Bible says that that situation is like a person walking around in darkness. Jesus said it this way. After and this is the judgment.“The light has come into the world, and people love the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed.” Many other passages of Scripture say this same kind of language. It describes humanity, some in darkness, some in light. But those that are in darkness, really, it's it's not so much that we're in darkness, it is that we are in blindness.The light is all around us. Right? We just can't see it. Romans one twenty, “the very nature of God is on display in the things that have been made so that men are without excuse” What is that describing?It's saying that in this whole world of of of beauty and of color and of flavor and of visual delights and sensory delights and sunrises and sunsets and, experiences that we enjoy. All of these things are is God communicating to us something about himself. God is shouting, “the heavens declare the glory of God,” Psalm 19. So every day, it's pouring forth speech that Psalm says. God is shouting and saying, I'm here.This is what I'm like. This is who I am. But the natural man, because of sin, born in sin, born in darkness, is blind to the light. You could take a blind person out on a blazingly sunlit day, and to him, it's all darkness. Right?You can say, no, the light's shining. Said, no, it's not. I can't see it. It's there. I can't see it.Our problem morally and spiritually, naturally is that we are blind to the things of God. We are blind to the to the gospel. We are blind to the glory of God. We're we're blind to our created purpose. We are we think that we see.Right? But we don't. As one person described the philosophies of of man like a blind mind a blind man searching in a dark room for a black cat that isn't there. I quote I just did that by memory. One more service to go.So you look at the world around us. Right? Professing to know truth. This is what's really important. Living for all kinds of things.The Bible says that's all darkness. They are trying to explain reality. They are trying to explain the world around them, but they have no reference point with God. And so they are in their blindness and in their darkness. That's secular humanism, trying to explain purpose without God.That's evolution, trying to explain existence without God. That's the world around us. Right? That's what they are. They're and they're living out that moral worldview aka Daytona Beach Spring Break.Where does no reference point with God lead to? It leads to despair. So you drive a jet into a mountain with a 100 plus people in the plane with you, or you go to Daytona Beach and you take your clothes off and you dance. That is mankind's condition apart from God, seeking for meaning, seeking for some answer. It's darkness.It's blindness. And that's where all of us begin. But then something happens. Something happens. Somehow, there is a light that shines into the awareness of the sinner.It is a light of truth. It has something to do with Jesus who said he is the light of the world. Right? He shines into the awareness and the understanding of the person in darkness, and there is a kind of apprehending of what Jesus has done, an entire way of thinking that is different than the darkness. This is light thinking and an awareness of my sin and my guilt.I come to see that Jesus has come and died on the cross in my place bearing my guilt and my shame. And I hear in the gospel message God saying to my own heart, you are a sinner, but if you put your belief and your trust in Jesus and what he did in your place, I will forgive your sins, and I will welcome you into the light. And for the sinner, it's like it's like the scale like, you know, the blinders come off. And now I see the truth. I see the light.And by faith, I leave the realm of darkness, and I step into his marvelous light. That is salvation. That is conversion. That is the gospel. And if you're a Christian here today, maybe you can't remember what it was like living in darkness.Maybe you can. But how good it is to be in the light, in the marvelous light of the truth. The marvelous light of the presence of God. The marvelous light of the favor and the love of God. The marvelous light of his grace.To look back at the way that it was and to say, “I once was lost, but now I'm found. Was blind, but now I see.” To be in the light. Praise God that he welcomes sinners into the light. Here is second Corinthians four six.“For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,' has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” What that text is saying is that just like God spoke into the darkness of the abyss of nothingness and created light in creation, he does that every time he speaks into the heart of the sinner. He speaks light. Let there be light. And the sinner sees the light of God shining in the face of Jesus Christ.I come to realize who he is, and I make him my Lord and my Savior. I surrender my life in faith to him. Now here's the purpose. Notice the purpose. Praise God that he's done that.Praise God we're a holy nation, royal priest, and all of that. But why are we here? The verse tells us that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you. Church, why do we exist? We exist to proclaim, to declare, to make known this light, this glory that we have ourselves so preciously embraced.Now look at that word excellency there. Okay? This is one of the scholars. They say it's hard to translate this word. I take them at their word.They know more about that than I do. But I think we have a little clue here about what it's talking about. If you look just back to verse three of chapter two, what does it say there? It says, if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good. That word for good in verse three is the same word that we find for excellencies in verse nine.So in verse three, we are tasting the goodness of God. In verse nine, we are declaring the goodness of God. K? So in verse three, we taste it. In verse nine, we tell it.What's our purpose? Well, here we have, I think, the clue and the key. We essentially are doing with this most marvelous experience of salvation what we do with anything and everything that we delight in. To give you an illustration of this, some weeks ago, I we were on vacation, and we were visiting Jennifer's parents. And so one of the days, I had a lunch to myself, and I didn't know the area.I didn't know the restaurants. I just needed to find some lunch. So there's one of these strip malls with various restaurants, and I just parked and said, okay. I'll go to this one. So I went walking into this restaurant.The name of the restaurant is Zoe's Kitchen. K? Zoe's Kitchen. I go walking in, and I'm like, oh, this looks kind of nice. Kinda had sort of a chipotle feel to it inside.And, it had a big sign, you know, fresh only fresh ingredients used, something like that. And I thought, oh, well, that at least it'll be fresh tasting. You know? I have no idea what this place is about. So I go walking up, and I stand in front of the counter, and and I'm looking there.It's one of those moments if you've ever been to a restaurant first time, you know, you're kinda like overwhelmed by the experience. I'm looking at all these options. And the guy that's working there, he's I said, it's my first time. He goes, well, our shish kebabs are good. Well, I happen to like shish kebabs.So I was like, shish kebabs it is. I'll take the shish kebabs. And what sides would you like? And here's a list of the sides. And I'm like, I'll take the mixed vegetables, and I'll take the fruit.Coming right up. So I paid the bill. I went and sat down, waited for them to bring, the food by. And I'm just, you know, taking it in. It's kind of a nice environment, playing on my phone.Here comes the food. And they delivered the food and put it in front of me. Here you go. Thank you so much. And I looked down.I got my phone, and I take the first shish kebab, and I'm like, It was fantastic. I'm serious. It just was one of those like, wow. I'm like, you know, it's got like chicken, tomato, mushroom, chicken, tomato, mushroom. One of those kind of things.I'm just pulling each one off and going, enjoying it so much. I get I think I got to the end and I'm like, lick the kebab. I've got a whole another one to enjoy. Right? So I'm I just it was so good.You know, here I am at kind of a In N Out sort of restaurant. This isn't exactly fine dining. And the food was fantastic. So I get done with all of that. I was like, wow.That was just awesome. Well, now I have the mixed vegetables. So I get eating the mixed vegetables. And they had that kind of like grilled, you know, sort of flavor to them done just perfectly. I was like, this is so good.These mixed vegetables are great. Finally, I have the fruit. And I took the pineapple and the strawberry and the blueberry. And all of them had that kind of midsummer freshness flavor to them. I'm you know, this is like February, but it's tasting like July.And I just I got done with the whole thing, and I just thought, that was wonderful. I called the manager over. I could tell me about Zoe's Kitchen a little bit. I'm thinking, I need to open one of these in Northwest Indiana. And if there are any investors here that would like to talk to me.But I got all this information. I looked it up on my phone really quick. Zoe's Kitchen. You know? I'm like, there's a stock there.What you know? It's like, I was utterly impressed. I drove home. Jennifer and her family there, I go, Zoe's kitchen. It's fantastic.You gotta I just told her about all of this. I talked about it for three days. Of course, we had all had to go back over there for lunch. Everybody ordered the shish kebabs. I mean, it was just it was just one of those fun surprise moments.I couldn't get over it. It was just so good. What did I do? I tasted goodness, and I declared goodness. That's what we do with anything we delight in.What a great game. Did you watch that game last night, Notre Dame, Kentucky? Oh, man. Right down to the wire. What a great game that game was.What a beautiful sunset. Take a picture. Let's put it on Facebook. Let's talk about this beautiful sunset. Isn't it wonderful?Have you been to that new restaurant down there? Man, the food there is great. You've gotta you've gotta go and check that out. My daughter is so beautiful. Let me just talk about my daughter ad nauseam.This is the human heart. We are made to declare anything we delight in. In fact, the more that we delight in it, the more we wanna talk about it. Right? Listen to CS Lewis on this.The world rings with praise. Lovers praising their mistresses. Readers, their favorite poet. Walkers praising the countryside, players praising their favorite game, praise of weather, wines, dishes, actors, motors, horses, colleges, countries, historical part personages, children, flowers, mountains, rare stamps, rare beetles, even sometimes politicians or scholars. Except when intolerably adverse circumstances interfere, praise almost seems to be inner health made audible.I had not noticed either that just as men spontaneously praise whatever they value, so they spontaneously urge us to join them in praising it. Isn't she lovely? Wasn't it glorious? Don't you think that magnificent? I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment.It is its appointed consummation. And my friends, that is the key to what Peter is describing as the purpose for which we exist. The purpose for which this church is here. And Christian, why you are on this planet? What are we called to do?We are called to delight, first of all, in what God has done for us. To delight in the fact that I was in darkness, and if I had stayed there, I was going to hell forever and ever and ever and ever. But God chose to send light into my darkness. God chose to love me through Jesus. God chose by the Spirit to help me realize what he has done for me.And in the doing of that and my response in faith, I left the darkness. I came into light. And not just light, marvelous, wonderful, glorious, life giving, eternal light. And to so delight in what God has done for me that I declare it. I declare it with my life.I declare it with my words. I declare it with the church. I declare it with my small group. I declare it in my family. I declare it with my thoughts and my prayers.My life now is living out my delighting in what God has done. And the more I delight in what God has done, the more I want to declare it. He who has loved little, loves little. He who has loved much, loves much, Jesus said. So why let me ask let's ask this question.How can there be so many professing Christians who have experienced the love of God taking us out of darkness and into light, but their lives declare nothing? Silence or worse yet, still living for the values of the darkness out of which God has brought us. And the world around us wondering, wow, why? What is there to what you're saying? You live just like we do.How can we be silent? How can we not say something? Could it be that we are not delighting? We're not humbled. We're not in awe of the grace of God to us.Because when I realize what God has done for me and I delight in what he has given to me in salvation and I stand in the light of his forgiveness and his grace and eternal life, How can I but say something? Now you might be like, oh, here we go. Gotta go on a street corner and say something. I gotta knock on the door next to me and say something. Something I get I gotta get cheesy.That's not what Peter does. What does faithfully declaring the goodness of God look like for Peter? Look ahead. He begins in verse 13. It looks like being submissive to authority that God places over you.Chapter three, it looks like an unbelieving a a believing wife married to an unbelieving husband, faithfully living out the gospel in the home and winning his heart to the gospel without words. That's what it looks like. It looks like in chapter three beginning in verse eight, Christians enduring even unjust suffering for Jesus' sake and remaining faithful in the trials of life. And on we can go in Peter. That is faithful presence.That is delighting in God more than the identities of this world. That is what it means to be salt and light. And to live in this dark world, desperate for truth, wondering what life is all about. And to, yes, say it, but also to live it and to be found faithful in the doing of it. But we have to know who we are.We have to know whose we are. We have to delight in what God has done, and then we we delight to declare it to all who will listen. Hosanna. There is a Savior. Hosanna in the highest.Bethel Church, let's just do that. Can we just do that? Can everybody get on board with that? Can we remind our souls what God has done for us? Can we relish the marvelous light and then simply invite people to Zoe's kitchen?Come sit at our table, seventh grade boy, looking for somewhere to belong. You can belong here. Red and yellow, black and white, they are all precious in his sight. All are welcome to the nation of God. Amen.Would you stand with me for prayer? God, I pray over our church right now. I could pray for any church this truth, but God, we are responsible for this one. Father, forgive us for our silence. Forgive us for forgetting what life was like in darkness.Forgive us, God, for minimizing the glory of walking and living in your marvelous light. And I pray that the gospel would bring us back to this basic point that we are great sinners, but Christ is a great Savior. And from that might flow our purpose, to declare the goodness and the excellencies of him who has loved us and saved us. And, God, I pray that we would indeed live for your glory. We are happy to be the donkey.We are happy to carry Jesus in glory before others, to wave the branches, and to sing over him. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. We're gonna sing a final song, but before we do, just a word. Are you in the light?Are you in the light? Like, as I described that living in darkness, now living in the light, and the scales coming off, and the apprehending of the glory of God, and the face of Jesus. Are you in the light? God bids you, welcomes you into his family, into his nation, into his treasure box. The condition is faith.You must believe. And if you have not believed yet, why not right now? Why not put your faith in Christ right now and step into the light?* This transcript was generated using AI transcription technology and reviewed for accuracy but may contain errors. Please refer to the original audio for precise wording.

Steve DeWitt His People. His Possession. His Proclamation - Part A Study Guide for Spiritual Exiles, 1 Peter 2:9-10 Scripture Reference: 1 Peter 2:9-10 Visit the series page: Exiles: A study in 1 Peter Donate to Support The Journey Sermon Transcript for Spiritual Exiles, 1 Peter 2:9-10 Sermon Series: Spiritual ExilesMessage: His People. His Possession. His Proclamation.Airdate: 9/28-9/29/25Programs: 2366 & 2367That's what we're gonna do. You know, we're in the thick of March Madness. And I have to warn you, I'm just seeing this as my, kind of green light to let my inner sports fan out in this message. So I'm gonna do that here. And, we're in March Madness, the NCAA tournament.Maybe you've been watching it. Last night's game was crazy as one example, but so much fun. And and, I love, basketball in particular. Many of you know that. And, you know, as crazy as it is now, we we actually go back maybe, what, thirty years, and you're in the midst of the great dynasty of UCLA basketball. You know, talk about how great teams are, Kentucky, etcetera, now. You wanna talk about greatness. You gotta look at at, UCLA coached by the great John Wooden. They won seven NCAA tournament championships in a row. He won 10 in total.So back then, it wasn't hard to fill out your bracket. You just kinda went UCLA, UCLA, UCLA, UCLA, and everybody tied because everybody picked the same team to win the whole thing. That's the way that it was, a true a true dynasty. Once, they won 88 consecutive games in a row. 88.Only to lose in the great state of Indiana. Playing who? Notre Dame. So we're gonna I'm amongst friends, sports fans, friends here. If you know that Notre Dame defeated them and broke that record.But John Wooden just talk about John Wooden a second. You know, he was the iconic coach of UCLA. To this day, famous not only for his accomplishments, but he's quoted all the time. If you follow sports much, Wooden is quoted all the time. They call them woodenisms Because John Wooden had the ability to take kind of like life wisdom, sports wisdom, and just make it into a little statement that is easily remembered, easily quoted.For example, “winning takes talent to repeat takes character.” Apparently, they had a lot of character in those days at UCLA. “It's what you learn after you know it all that counts” and things like that. So how great would it be if we could, hear John Wooden, like, at the halftime, speech or maybe in the huddle, ten seconds left. This is what we're gonna do.He just had a unique ability to take big truths and to make them small and to make them memorable. And I love it when the Bible does that. You know, there's so much in the Bible you can kinda read and maybe it's ethereal. You scratch your head a little bit. But then there are certain passages of Scripture that just take it down and just say, this is what it's all about.Right? Like John three sixteen. For the gospel, John three sixteen is a verse like that. This is the essence of the gospel is way more than this, but this is the essence of the gospel. Or, the role of Jesus, Colossians one eighteen, so that in everything he might have the supremacy.Love that verse. Why? It just summarize it's like bottom line of bottom lines. This is what it's all about. Well, the passage we have in front of us today is a verse like that regarding the church.Why are we here? What's our purpose? What are what's going on? This verse does it so wonderfully, so beautifully. It might be end up being your favorite verse in first Peter.And so here we have Peter. He's part of the inner member of the inner circle. He's a leader of the apostles. He's a leader in the early church. Here we have the leader of the church telling us today, this is why you exist.This is your purpose. Now get after it. K? Kinda like John Wooden would have done. So let me read first Peter two verse nine, and then we're gonna see what it's what it means.But you are listen, church. “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” Very pastoral language by Peter here intended to be an encouragement. Remember, these, this letter is written to people that have been relocated. They are exiles in in Asia Minor.They are sojourners in a culture that they don't know. They are struggling. And Peter wants them to realize that they have an identity that is different than what the people around them are saying who they are, what their feelings are saying about who they are. It doesn't matter what the culture says. It doesn't matter what your feelings say.It matters what God says about you. And God has something to say about Christian identity and Christian purpose. I also want us to realize that this is not just for exiles, that this passage is for us today. If you're a Christian, this is you. He is describing you.He is describing us collectively. Who are we? Why are we here? What is our purpose? You know, I can't help but notice that in the teams in the in the NCAA tournament, all of them, one of the first basic things is you've gotta know what team you're on.Right? And so what do they do in order to identify what team they're on? They they all wear jerseys. And emblazoned on the jersey is the team, the university that they represent. And so they have, you know, Duke or Kentucky or the team about to lose to Kentucky.You know, these are the identities of these teams in the tournament. And they all know who they are, though. If you're gonna be a winning team, you've gotta know, first of all, who are you? Who are we, church, in the eyes of God? Notice, you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession.This is identity. K? Identity. One of the things that we know about all human beings is that we all we all crave an identity. In fact, we all need an identity.We all need a place to belong. We all desire very much a sense of belonging. This is where I think our family or our hometown or the school we attended, these provide certain identities for us. One of the first things that, you know, when you meet somebody, what do you say? Where are you from?And your identity is somewhat out of where you come from. This, I think, is part of the appeal of a lot of the of the sports teams and the sports mania where you watch these games. You watch a a Manchester United game or an Alabama football game, and you're gonna see a huge thousands of people all dressed in the same colors, wearing the same kinds of of, of jerseys. And they're in the stands. Right?They are doing nothing really other than screaming to contribute to the victory or the loss, but they see themselves as connected to this team or this organization. And you can laugh at that, but people take it seriously. Like, they seriously are identified with that. The fortunes of that team up and down. Their emotions ride with the ups and downs of that team.What is, I think, part of that appeal? We gotta belong to something. I gotta belong to something that is bigger than me, something that I think is really, really important. And in our culture, sports teams are one of the big identities that people attach themselves to. And, of course, this is all about relationship.I wanna feel like I belong to something, that I'm in relationship with something that is greater than myself. In a sense, we're all that seventh grade boy standing in the cafeteria wondering where to sit. What table will accept me? Where can I go that I have a sense of belonging? Could I ask you, where do you belong?What do you choose to identify with that gives you a sense of meaning in your life? What would you say is your identity group? This might be helpful. If you were to die today, what would people, your friends and family, what would they write about you in your obituary? If you read through obituaries, generally, they say this is so and so.He's from this family. And he was an avid this. He was a part of this organization. This is the things that really mattered to him. What might your family say about you?Or I do funerals and, you know, they'll have the casket oftentimes and the family and friends will adorn the casket with the things that were the identity of that person. And so there might be a picture of his dog. Or there might be, you know, his favorite sports team. There's a something from the team in there. Or it could be a Harley Davidson hat.It almost doesn't matter. Right? Because the human heart craves, longs, and must find some identity with something beyond itself. We're made that way. We crave it.We long for it. And, of course, the curse for all of our human identities is that they are all fleeting, and they are all temporary, and in the end, they are all disappointing. Right, Cubs fans? Right? Now that's a silly example, although some of you take it seriously.I'm showing the superficiality of that. But all of our human identities, in the end, are fleeting. Even the most meaningful ones, family and marriage, we don't, in the end, get to keep those, do we? Why? Because death is separation from all of our human identities, everything connected to this world.Death is the is the is the separation from that. If only there was somewhere, something that we could belong to that is real in this life and endures in the next life. If there was some place that I could have a sense of belonging, where I could feel like I have an identity and I could know that it's not bound up in the whims of sports or the marketplace or the stock market or human relationships or friendships or even family separated by death. Wouldn't it be great if there was some place that I could actually, not just theoretically, but actually see as my identity and to know that this will be my identity forever. Even death can't take it away.Wouldn't that be fantastic? And that is essentially what Peter is encouraging these exiles with here. And he does so quoting mostly Exodus 19, and here he lists four blessed and enduring identities that are true for every single genuine and authentic follower of Jesus Christ. Let's walk through them together. First of all, he says, you are a chosen race.A chosen race. We hear chosen and we think this has something to do with us. Right? Like LeBron who has tattooed giant across his giant back, chosen one. I think for LeBron, he means that to say something about him.Right? He is the chosen one. And this of course was the stumbling block of Israel because God chose Israel. God chose Abraham, all of his descendants. And for all of those years in in in in spiritually speaking, it became a stumbling block because the Israelites thought their choosing was about them.It said something about their worth. It was something about we're better than the other peoples. We're higher. We're special. And Moses in Deuteronomy wanted them to realize God didn't choose you because of you.Here's what he says. “It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you. For you were the fewest of all peoples. But it is because the Lord loves you.” Did you hear that?Why did God choose to love Israel? It had nothing to do with Israel. It is because God himself is love. The choosing has everything to do with God. And we here now in the new covenant, elect and chosen by God, sovereign choice election by God.It does not give us pride. It does not make us think that this is about us any more than the donkey on Palm Sunday might have thought, they're clapping for me. They're wavy palm branches for me. Palm Sunday is not about the donkey and the church and the choosing is not about us. It is about God's sovereign love where he, for reasons only he knows, chooses to set his love upon undeserving, unmerited sinners like us and to say, I love you because I'm love.And when God sets his love upon you and you respond to that love by loving him through the gospel, we enter into a a place. We enter into a a people group. God is forming a new people group. His chosen people. His chosen race.We are a royal priesthood. That does not mean that we are kings and queens or princes or princesses. A priest in Israel was somebody that was allowed to draw near to God. A priest was somebody that ministered in the temple and offered the sacrifices and represented the people to God. God allowed the priest into a place that the people were not allowed to come.We are now in the new covenant, a royal priesthood. We're not kings and queens, but God, the King, bids us to draw near to him. He allows us access into his presence. In the new covenant, my prayers offered in Jesus' name are heard in the very ears of God himself. We are we are close to him.We are near to him. We're near to the King. We're royal priests. We are a holy nation. Listen to Grudem. “Just as believers are a new spiritual race and a new spiritual priesthood, so they are a new spiritual nation, which is based now neither on ethnic identity nor geographical boundaries, but rather on allegiance to their heavenly King Jesus Christ who is truly King of kings and Lord of lords.” Do not miss the radical nature of even that statement. In a day where, especially in Israel, there was a sense that we are the people of God. We are the nation of God. And what does God come along and do?And what does Jesus do? He dies on the cross not for just for the Jew, but also for the Gentile. Now all who believe in Christ are part of the nation of God, the family of God. We have a kind of citizenship. We don't immigrate.We don't apply. Citizenship is by faith in allegiance to Jesus as Savior and Lord. And if Jesus is your Savior and Jesus is your Lord, then he is King of the nation that you're a member of. You become a part of that. And that means that there's no ethnic line on that.There's no age line on that. There's no geographical line on that. The child living in the hut in Africa is as free to become a part of this nation as the wealthy Wall Street stockbroker is, and the educated Harvard person is, and the Eskimo is, and the Aborigine is. It doesn't matter who you are, where you are, what your background, your skin color, the blood in your veins. It matters if you believe and trust in Christ.And if you do, welcome to the nation. Welcome to the nation. The nation of God. A fellow citizen with anybody else who has pledged allegiance to the King. We are part of a holy nation.And fourth, and I think most wonderfully, these words here, that we are a people for his own possession. That Greek word there for possession is used describing the practice of the ancient kings of the East, who in those kings like kings now or presidents now, really any nation, has to pay for roads and swords and ships and provide various things for the people of that particular nation. And so taxes are taken in and it goes into the treasury. And out of the treasury of the the nation, those things are are met. But the ancient kings of the East would have they would have the monies of the country that while they were king, could lay a claim to those things.Those were the things that were used to provide for the needs of the country. They had though a special treasury. A special treasury box, gold in that box that was not part of the national treasury. This was their own treasure. That word is the word that is used here.We are, to God, a personal treasure. We are, to God, a personal possession. This is about relationship. We belong to him. We belong to almighty God, a treasure to the most high God.Here's just two verses that talk about this. Isaiah forty-three one, “Fear not, for I have redeemed you. I have called you by name. You are mine.” Titus two, “who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.”Indeed, we are the possession of God. How? He bought us. He paid the ransom price for us, didn't he? He bought us out of the slavery of sin.The blood of Jesus was the ransom payment. We are redeemed. We are bought back by God, and now we are the very possession of God. But like in your house, you have possessions that are in different categories. You probably have things in your garage and things in your basement you don't even realize that you have.Right? And so you hear it's it's time for the neighborhood garage sale and you go rummaging through the, you know, the basement or the attic. And you're like, oh, I forgot all about this thing. Right? You have those kinds of possessions.But then there's the things that you hide when you go on vacation. That's in a different category, isn't it? What do you hide? You hide things that are dear to you. You hide things that are valuable to you.You hide things that are special to you. What this passage is saying is in God's eyes, that's what we are. He cares for us. We are dear to him. We are his personal possession.We are his personal treasure. Take these all as a whole. Chosen nation, priest of the King, prized by God himself, think of what this would have meant to the people that Peter's writing to. These exiles who are living in this you know, they're like men without a country. They don't they don't They've been they've been geographically displaced.They've been they're displaced from their families, probably their jobs. They're living in a a place where the people around them are viewing them negatively, are seeing them suspiciously. They're suffering loss. They feel just so isolated. They wonder, who where do we belong?Like, who am I? Why are we here? What is this all about? Think of how encouraging this would have been for Peter to say, listen, you are you have an exalted status. That we are not who our feelings say that we are.We are not who other people say that we are. We are not who our pain and our trials in those moments say that we are. Who are we? We are God's chosen and prized possession. We belong to him.What better news could we hear? Right? Christian, what better news than to be loved and treasured, to be citizens of the only nation that will endure the test of time, to be members of the family of God. Now how important is this? I think it's critical.My dear friend, I think it's critical. I had a woman right before first service today comes up to me and said, would you please pray for me? Tears in her eyes, suddenly lost her job, struggling with what that means, worked twenty two years in this company, and just boom, you're done. And just, you know, that that kind of startle, that kind of struggle, we can relate to that, can't we? But that's life, isn't it?Life in this world and all of these identities that we sort of cling to and want to make us feel like, you know, we belong to something, they're always fleeting and they're always changing. So make your identity your husband or your wife, and then death or divorce comes. Now who am I? Who am I? Make your identity your children, and then their rebellion shatters you.Make your money your identity, and then a recession destroys you. Make your health or your good looks your identity, and then feel the creeping effect of age and look in the mirror and think, who am I? These and so many other things like this. All the time, fleeing. We never get past being that seventh-grade boy in the cafeteria.Who am I? Who accepts me? Where do I belong? And to this, God shouts to his people. He shouts to us, Bethel Church, and you Christian.He wants you to realize who you are, your identity, your place, your sense of belonging, that you are prized by God himself. I like that. I like that. I think about our young people here. We've got young people.I see them sitting around here. Teenagers. Those years where you're just like, oh, who am I? And all of that. And the culture shouting at you the things that really, this is where your identity should be, and the friends at the school saying, is what's really important.Would that Bethel Church would be a vehicle to raising up a generation of young people who refuse to find their identity in the fleeting things in this world? And even as young people say to themself, I am a child of God. And I don't look like you say I gotta look. And I'm not doing the things that you say I gotta do. And I'm not caring about the culture things that you say I gotta care about.Because I know who I am. I'm a child of God. I'm gonna live out that identity. Wouldn't that be great? And for their parents as well.For their parents as well. So our identity is that we are God's possession. But notice that we are not simply in identity to be in identity. Rather, there is something that we are to do. It's the rest of the verse.That you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness and into his marvelous light. What a wonderful verse this is. We are God's possessions, and our purpose is proclamation. In other words, we don't exist for ourselves. Can I say that, Bethel Church?This church does not exist for Bethel Church. And Christian, this church doesn't exist for you. This is not about you primarily. So enough of the, you know, this church, you gotta do this for me and this for me. Enough coming to church like a consumer.Go to the mall. This church exists to proclaim the greatness of somebody else. Indeed, we are proclaiming him, the text says. How wonderful he is. To proclaim how wonderful it is, what God has done for us, taking us out of darkness and into his marvelous light.Darkness throughout Scripture is a metaphor for mankind apart from God. The life of man, the philosophy of man, the worldview of man, living out his life apart from a relationship with God. The Bible says that that situation is like a person walking around in darkness. Jesus said it this way. After and this is the judgment.“The light has come into the world, and people love the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed.” Many other passages of Scripture say this same kind of language. It describes humanity, some in darkness, some in light. But those that are in darkness, really, it's it's not so much that we're in darkness, it is that we are in blindness.The light is all around us. Right? We just can't see it. Romans one twenty, “the very nature of God is on display in the things that have been made so that men are without excuse” What is that describing?It's saying that in this whole world of of of beauty and of color and of flavor and of visual delights and sensory delights and sunrises and sunsets and, experiences that we enjoy. All of these things are is God communicating to us something about himself. God is shouting, “the heavens declare the glory of God,” Psalm 19. So every day, it's pouring forth speech that Psalm says. God is shouting and saying, I'm here.This is what I'm like. This is who I am. But the natural man, because of sin, born in sin, born in darkness, is blind to the light. You could take a blind person out on a blazingly sunlit day, and to him, it's all darkness. Right?You can say, no, the light's shining. Said, no, it's not. I can't see it. It's there. I can't see it.Our problem morally and spiritually, naturally is that we are blind to the things of God. We are blind to the to the gospel. We are blind to the glory of God. We're we're blind to our created purpose. We are we think that we see.Right? But we don't. As one person described the philosophies of of man like a blind mind a blind man searching in a dark room for a black cat that isn't there. I quote I just did that by memory. One more service to go.So you look at the world around us. Right? Professing to know truth. This is what's really important. Living for all kinds of things.The Bible says that's all darkness. They are trying to explain reality. They are trying to explain the world around them, but they have no reference point with God. And so they are in their blindness and in their darkness. That's secular humanism, trying to explain purpose without God.That's evolution, trying to explain existence without God. That's the world around us. Right? That's what they are. They're and they're living out that moral worldview aka Daytona Beach Spring Break.Where does no reference point with God lead to? It leads to despair. So you drive a jet into a mountain with a 100 plus people in the plane with you, or you go to Daytona Beach and you take your clothes off and you dance. That is mankind's condition apart from God, seeking for meaning, seeking for some answer. It's darkness.It's blindness. And that's where all of us begin. But then something happens. Something happens. Somehow, there is a light that shines into the awareness of the sinner.It is a light of truth. It has something to do with Jesus who said he is the light of the world. Right? He shines into the awareness and the understanding of the person in darkness, and there is a kind of apprehending of what Jesus has done, an entire way of thinking that is different than the darkness. This is light thinking and an awareness of my sin and my guilt.I come to see that Jesus has come and died on the cross in my place bearing my guilt and my shame. And I hear in the gospel message God saying to my own heart, you are a sinner, but if you put your belief and your trust in Jesus and what he did in your place, I will forgive your sins, and I will welcome you into the light. And for the sinner, it's like it's like the scale like, you know, the blinders come off. And now I see the truth. I see the light.And by faith, I leave the realm of darkness, and I step into his marvelous light. That is salvation. That is conversion. That is the gospel. And if you're a Christian here today, maybe you can't remember what it was like living in darkness.Maybe you can. But how good it is to be in the light, in the marvelous light of the truth. The marvelous light of the presence of God. The marvelous light of the favor and the love of God. The marvelous light of his grace.To look back at the way that it was and to say, “I once was lost, but now I'm found. Was blind, but now I see.” To be in the light. Praise God that he welcomes sinners into the light. Here is second Corinthians four six.“For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,' has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” What that text is saying is that just like God spoke into the darkness of the abyss of nothingness and created light in creation, he does that every time he speaks into the heart of the sinner. He speaks light. Let there be light. And the sinner sees the light of God shining in the face of Jesus Christ.I come to realize who he is, and I make him my Lord and my Savior. I surrender my life in faith to him. Now here's the purpose. Notice the purpose. Praise God that he's done that.Praise God we're a holy nation, royal priest, and all of that. But why are we here? The verse tells us that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you. Church, why do we exist? We exist to proclaim, to declare, to make known this light, this glory that we have ourselves so preciously embraced.Now look at that word excellency there. Okay? This is one of the scholars. They say it's hard to translate this word. I take them at their word.They know more about that than I do. But I think we have a little clue here about what it's talking about. If you look just back to verse three of chapter two, what does it say there? It says, if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good. That word for good in verse three is the same word that we find for excellencies in verse nine.So in verse three, we are tasting the goodness of God. In verse nine, we are declaring the goodness of God. K? So in verse three, we taste it. In verse nine, we tell it.What's our purpose? Well, here we have, I think, the clue and the key. We essentially are doing with this most marvelous experience of salvation what we do with anything and everything that we delight in. To give you an illustration of this, some weeks ago, I we were on vacation, and we were visiting Jennifer's parents. And so one of the days, I had a lunch to myself, and I didn't know the area.I didn't know the restaurants. I just needed to find some lunch. So there's one of these strip malls with various restaurants, and I just parked and said, okay. I'll go to this one. So I went walking into this restaurant.The name of the restaurant is Zoe's Kitchen. K? Zoe's Kitchen. I go walking in, and I'm like, oh, this looks kind of nice. Kinda had sort of a chipotle feel to it inside.And, it had a big sign, you know, fresh only fresh ingredients used, something like that. And I thought, oh, well, that at least it'll be fresh tasting. You know? I have no idea what this place is about. So I go walking up, and I stand in front of the counter, and and I'm looking there.It's one of those moments if you've ever been to a restaurant first time, you know, you're kinda like overwhelmed by the experience. I'm looking at all these options. And the guy that's working there, he's I said, it's my first time. He goes, well, our shish kebabs are good. Well, I happen to like shish kebabs.So I was like, shish kebabs it is. I'll take the shish kebabs. And what sides would you like? And here's a list of the sides. And I'm like, I'll take the mixed vegetables, and I'll take the fruit.Coming right up. So I paid the bill. I went and sat down, waited for them to bring, the food by. And I'm just, you know, taking it in. It's kind of a nice environment, playing on my phone.Here comes the food. And they delivered the food and put it in front of me. Here you go. Thank you so much. And I looked down.I got my phone, and I take the first shish kebab, and I'm like, It was fantastic. I'm serious. It just was one of those like, wow. I'm like, you know, it's got like chicken, tomato, mushroom, chicken, tomato, mushroom. One of those kind of things.I'm just pulling each one off and going, enjoying it so much. I get I think I got to the end and I'm like, lick the kebab. I've got a whole another one to enjoy. Right? So I'm I just it was so good.You know, here I am at kind of a In N Out sort of restaurant. This isn't exactly fine dining. And the food was fantastic. So I get done with all of that. I was like, wow.That was just awesome. Well, now I have the mixed vegetables. So I get eating the mixed vegetables. And they had that kind of like grilled, you know, sort of flavor to them done just perfectly. I was like, this is so good.These mixed vegetables are great. Finally, I have the fruit. And I took the pineapple and the strawberry and the blueberry. And all of them had that kind of midsummer freshness flavor to them. I'm you know, this is like February, but it's tasting like July.And I just I got done with the whole thing, and I just thought, that was wonderful. I called the manager over. I could tell me about Zoe's Kitchen a little bit. I'm thinking, I need to open one of these in Northwest Indiana. And if there are any investors here that would like to talk to me.But I got all this information. I looked it up on my phone really quick. Zoe's Kitchen. You know? I'm like, there's a stock there.What you know? It's like, I was utterly impressed. I drove home. Jennifer and her family there, I go, Zoe's kitchen. It's fantastic.You gotta I just told her about all of this. I talked about it for three days. Of course, we had all had to go back over there for lunch. Everybody ordered the shish kebabs. I mean, it was just it was just one of those fun surprise moments.I couldn't get over it. It was just so good. What did I do? I tasted goodness, and I declared goodness. That's what we do with anything we delight in.What a great game. Did you watch that game last night, Notre Dame, Kentucky? Oh, man. Right down to the wire. What a great game that game was.What a beautiful sunset. Take a picture. Let's put it on Facebook. Let's talk about this beautiful sunset. Isn't it wonderful?Have you been to that new restaurant down there? Man, the food there is great. You've gotta you've gotta go and check that out. My daughter is so beautiful. Let me just talk about my daughter ad nauseam.This is the human heart. We are made to declare anything we delight in. In fact, the more that we delight in it, the more we wanna talk about it. Right? Listen to CS Lewis on this.The world rings with praise. Lovers praising their mistresses. Readers, their favorite poet. Walkers praising the countryside, players praising their favorite game, praise of weather, wines, dishes, actors, motors, horses, colleges, countries, historical part personages, children, flowers, mountains, rare stamps, rare beetles, even sometimes politicians or scholars. Except when intolerably adverse circumstances interfere, praise almost seems to be inner health made audible.I had not noticed either that just as men spontaneously praise whatever they value, so they spontaneously urge us to join them in praising it. Isn't she lovely? Wasn't it glorious? Don't you think that magnificent? I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment.It is its appointed consummation. And my friends, that is the key to what Peter is describing as the purpose for which we exist. The purpose for which this church is here. And Christian, why you are on this planet? What are we called to do?We are called to delight, first of all, in what God has done for us. To delight in the fact that I was in darkness, and if I had stayed there, I was going to hell forever and ever and ever and ever. But God chose to send light into my darkness. God chose to love me through Jesus. God chose by the Spirit to help me realize what he has done for me.And in the doing of that and my response in faith, I left the darkness. I came into light. And not just light, marvelous, wonderful, glorious, life giving, eternal light. And to so delight in what God has done for me that I declare it. I declare it with my life.I declare it with my words. I declare it with the church. I declare it with my small group. I declare it in my family. I declare it with my thoughts and my prayers.My life now is living out my delighting in what God has done. And the more I delight in what God has done, the more I want to declare it. He who has loved little, loves little. He who has loved much, loves much, Jesus said. So why let me ask let's ask this question.How can there be so many professing Christians who have experienced the love of God taking us out of darkness and into light, but their lives declare nothing? Silence or worse yet, still living for the values of the darkness out of which God has brought us. And the world around us wondering, wow, why? What is there to what you're saying? You live just like we do.How can we be silent? How can we not say something? Could it be that we are not delighting? We're not humbled. We're not in awe of the grace of God to us.Because when I realize what God has done for me and I delight in what he has given to me in salvation and I stand in the light of his forgiveness and his grace and eternal life, How can I but say something? Now you might be like, oh, here we go. Gotta go on a street corner and say something. I gotta knock on the door next to me and say something. Something I get I gotta get cheesy.That's not what Peter does. What does faithfully declaring the goodness of God look like for Peter? Look ahead. He begins in verse 13. It looks like being submissive to authority that God places over you.Chapter three, it looks like an unbelieving a a believing wife married to an unbelieving husband, faithfully living out the gospel in the home and winning his heart to the gospel without words. That's what it looks like. It looks like in chapter three beginning in verse eight, Christians enduring even unjust suffering for Jesus' sake and remaining faithful in the trials of life. And on we can go in Peter. That is faithful presence.That is delighting in God more than the identities of this world. That is what it means to be salt and light. And to live in this dark world, desperate for truth, wondering what life is all about. And to, yes, say it, but also to live it and to be found faithful in the doing of it. But we have to know who we are.We have to know whose we are. We have to delight in what God has done, and then we we delight to declare it to all who will listen. Hosanna. There is a Savior. Hosanna in the highest.Bethel Church, let's just do that. Can we just do that? Can everybody get on board with that? Can we remind our souls what God has done for us? Can we relish the marvelous light and then simply invite people to Zoe's kitchen?Come sit at our table, seventh grade boy, looking for somewhere to belong. You can belong here. Red and yellow, black and white, they are all precious in his sight. All are welcome to the nation of God. Amen.Would you stand with me for prayer? God, I pray over our church right now. I could pray for any church this truth, but God, we are responsible for this one. Father, forgive us for our silence. Forgive us for forgetting what life was like in darkness.Forgive us, God, for minimizing the glory of walking and living in your marvelous light. And I pray that the gospel would bring us back to this basic point that we are great sinners, but Christ is a great Savior. And from that might flow our purpose, to declare the goodness and the excellencies of him who has loved us and saved us. And, God, I pray that we would indeed live for your glory. We are happy to be the donkey.We are happy to carry Jesus in glory before others, to wave the branches, and to sing over him. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. We're gonna sing a final song, but before we do, just a word. Are you in the light?Are you in the light? Like, as I described that living in darkness, now living in the light, and the scales coming off, and the apprehending of the glory of God, and the face of Jesus. Are you in the light? God bids you, welcomes you into his family, into his nation, into his treasure box. The condition is faith.You must believe. And if you have not believed yet, why not right now? Why not put your faith in Christ right now and step into the light?* This transcript was generated using AI transcription technology and reviewed for accuracy but may contain errors. Please refer to the original audio for precise wording.

Steve DeWitt Craving Spiritual Milk and Spiritual Growth Study Guide for Spiritual Exiles, 1 Peter 2:1-3 Scripture Reference: 1 Peter 2:1-3 Visit the series page: Exiles: A study in 1 Peter Donate to Support The Journey Sermon Transcript for Spiritual Exiles, 1 Peter 2:1-3 Sermon Series: Spiritual ExilesMessage: Craving Spiritual Milk and Spiritual Growth Airdate: 9/22-9/23/26Programs: 2362 & 2363We continue our series in First Peter today, and you can open your Bibles if you have one with you. And we get into the second chapter of this letter. And by way of introduction, you know, for about twenty years, the milk industry sponsored a series of advertisements. These were billboards, magazines, TV advertisements. Some of you old timers might remember this.It was called either got milk or milk, it does the body good. Right? And so they one of the strategies they incorporated with this is that they would get famous people and they would have the milk mustache, right? And they would put them up there. And I just dug up a couple here to remind you maybe of how they did this.You may remember him. You might remember him. And they did a lot of this kind of thing. And the idea was that, hey, if these famous people drink milk, look at how successful they've been and seemingly healthy they are, then therefore, who wouldn't wanna be healthy like them? So, therefore, drink, you know, drink milk.Well, here's a question. What about spiritually? Is the same thing true spiritually? Will a normal, healthy Christian have a desire to grow? And maybe what we need in this, I got thinking, was a slightly different ad campaign for Christians.And so here, I'll give you an example of kind of maybe what I was thinking possibly might work. This one, I think this will this will next one will really pastor Gary Butler here at Bethel Church. What would those insinuate? Well, if you want to be like Martin Luther or Gary Butler, then you better be drinking your milk.But how do we do that exactly?Like how do Christians grow? And Peter brings us here today to one of the core values of our church, which is growth. And it's great when God grows us in in width. Right? Today, we birth a new campus and things like that that that seem to indicate a growing sphere of of of spiritual growth.But what Peter is not he's not talking about this way. He's talking about this way. How do we grow deeper or how do we mature as Christians? And will a healthy Christian want that? That's where we're going today.Our passage is First Peter two verses one through three. I'm gonna read God's word, and then we're going to get into it. Here's what Peter writes. “So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander. Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk that by it, you may grow up to salvation.”“If indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.” It's important when you read the Bible to realize that those chapter divisions and those verse divisions, those were all added, like centuries after these letters were written. When Peter was writing this, he didn't say, okay. And now for chapter two of my book. He just was writing.And so the context and what's said before often is critical to understanding what that person is saying when they're actually saying it. And so if we just look a little bit to the latter part of chapter one, we see that there really are three themes that Peter has been developing. One of them is the need for moral purity and obedience in the Christian's life. We see that in verses 14 and following. Verses 22 and following are all about us loving one another.And then we have in verses twenty-four and twenty-five, teaching about the word of God. An authentic Christianity, you can study it in history. You can find it alive anywhere in the world. It will always prioritize those three things, the need for obedience, the the need for loving one another, and the role of the word of God in the hearts and the lives of the people of God. So what Peter does now is he's been talking about these things, and he he gets practical with it.You can almost sense him, you know, thinking of the people that are listening to the letter thinking they they may not know exactly what I'm talking about. So how about if I get a little bit specific now with what it looks like or maybe what it doesn't look like to be obedient, to love one another, and to prioritize the word of God. And what he does here now beginning in chapter two is that he lists five I'm calling them toxins. Five toxins to any Christian relationship and certainly any Christian church. Notice that he begins with the word so, at least in the ESV, the the Greek word there.It's just that word often translated therefore. And when you see these little conjunctions, it's easy to kinda skip over them. Right? You haven't really looked at a conjunction since grammar class, and you didn't even like doing it then. But when you read the Bible, these little words tell you what the author is intending.And so he begins the chapter by saying, therefore or so, based on everything I've been saying here, this now is what I want you to realize. And what does he want us to realize? That when it comes to loving one another, moral obedience, and the role of the word of God, he begins now with five things that will destroy all of that, particularly the loving and the unity part. And he lists now these five toxins that any Christian should try very hard not to have a part of their lifestyle, and every church should work very hard at not having a part of being kind of the culture of the church. So let's just walk through these one at a time.He begins with malice. K? Malice. Malice is a word it's a general word for evil of any kind. But because Peter is talking about interpersonal relationships, they translate it malice.And that's a pretty good word. It's not a word that we use all the time. Do we understand what it means? To have malice towards somebody is the opposite of loving them. It is to have evil in my heart towards somebody else.And because of that, you could view the first one in the list as kind of a general statement that summarizes all of them. Right? If you don't have malice in your heart, you're probably not slandering somebody. Right? Or you're not deceiving them.So malice is kind of generally having malintent, a lack of love towards somebody else. If love is giving of yourself for their good and their joy to build them up and bless them, malice is the opposite of that. It is to view them negatively. It is to think and plot in my mind, how can I take them down? How can I hurt them?How can I make myself look better than them? So we are to take just generally malice towards other people. We're to get rid of it. We're to put it aside. I skipped actually something I wanted to mention to you.The word there for get rid of in the ESV, also translated, put away or actually, it's put away in the ESV. It's also translated get rid of. It is the word for taking off a garment. Okay? Taking off a garment.And the imagery here is with these things, you are you're like clothes, you are taking them off and you're you're putting them away. Why do I do that? In fact, maybe to ask the question, how often should you do that? How often should you take off the clothes? First service thought that was a trick question.But then I sniffed the air, and I realized they had no idea. People, you should do this daily, and some of you should begin applying that right now. Right? Daily, we want to take off the dirty clothes and to put it in the hamper and to why why do I do that? Because I want I wanna wear clean clothes.I don't wanna wear dirty clothes. It's only in a desperate situation when you need to wear something do you begin going through those dirty clothes. I'm gonna put this on again. No. I want clean clothes.That's the imagery of this. Put off these things. Why? Because I wanna put something else and something better on. K.So put off malice. Secondly, put off deceit. Now I think most of us know what deceit is. This is to deceive. It is deception.It is lying. The word in the Greek here is actually a word that fisher it's used for fishermen. I don't if you have fishermen here, but all of us understand the concept of fishing. Right? Nobody fishes with a bare hook unless they're really biting, and that's a lot of fun.Always, when you're fishing, you have a hook, but it's hiding in something else. Right? There's a worm or there's a jig or there's a surface lure that looks like a frog or whatever it is. And that fisherman is putting that thing out, and he's doing all that he can to make it look real, to make it look like it's something the fish is going to like. But then in the end, it's something that the fish doesn't like.Right? Because he sets the hook, and now the fish is on the line. The deception has done its deed. In our relationships, deceit deceit is anytime that we are less than honest with one another. Now we live in a day where lying or shading the truth is almost acceptable, right?We listen to politicians. We listen to the superstars and all of that. We always wonder, are we getting the real story, right? Because there's such a pattern of of deceit but in the church, we are freed from that. Why?Because we know the truth in Christ. Right? Now I'm in a place where I don't I don't I don't want to walk in darkness. I want to walk in the light, John says. There is this freedom from having to to be deceitful towards others and certainly to use my words in a way that would be damaging or would mislead you.That is the key. He's not talking here about when you say, oh, I think I've I've got that appointment at noon on Friday, then you look at your calendar and actually it was Saturday. It's not where you're like, oh, I've gotta go and I've gotta ask forgiveness. But it was an honest mistake. K?Here's the test. What is my motivation with my words? Am I using my words in some way to either mislead the other person or in some way to cause for them to see me in a way that's not true, to pump myself up in front of them? That would also would be deceit. We're to put these things away.Third, hypocrisy. Now, I can skip that because you never see that in church. Actually, we see it so much that we have metaphors for this. It's to be two faced or to speak with a forked tongue. Have you ever heard that phrase?What is that referring to? It's the snake. Right? And they got the the end of their their tongue. It's it can it's got little like, it's got two parts to it.So the the snake's tongue, it can wiggle here and it can wiggle here. It's a forked tongue. And there are some people that are really good at saying one thing over here and saying another thing over here. They are duplicit. Literally, two faced is what hypocrisy means.They are one way to these people, and they're another way to these people. Is this a problem amongst amongst Christians? It's a problem in my life. I think to be a Christian is to struggle with a kind of reality that I'm following Jesus, I believe in him, I'm a Christian, I'm a Christ follower, But to also struggle with the reality of my humanity. Right?And so some people's solution to that is to act one way here and to act another over here instead of embracing the gospel which says that I am a sinner saved by grace. The gospel frees us from the need to be hypocrites. Right? Somebody said the church is the only organization you have to acknowledge that you're a sinner to get in, and then you spend the rest of your time trying to act like you're not one. Right?And so we all walk around and we're all good and we're all perfect and everything's fine, and I haven't sinned since I got saved thirty years ago. No laughter on that one. Indeed, hypocrisy. There was a recent poll amongst 20 somethings in The U. S. That said that I think it let me get the number right. 86% of non Christian 20 somethings perceived Christians as being hypocritical. Apparently, 20 somethings are in a wonderful moral standing to judge the quality of the lives of others, which itself is hypocritical, of course. But I digress regarding the self defeating question there. But the point being is that many people obviously view Christians and see you driving to church this morning.Right? And they say, oh, no. They're just a bunch of hypocrites in there. There's that kind of thing. That's not what Peter's talking about.He's talking about the intentional, duplicit living that lives this way, sanctimonious, I'm a follower of Jesus, I'm righteous, but they have another face, another life. This, I think, is one of the struggles of second generation Christians who grow up in the church. Right? Because they see mom and dad at church, small group, whatever it is, and, you know, everything's cheery and happy. And I'm, you know, I'm we're all very, very, very, very committed Christians.But then they see at home, and obviously no parents are perfect. But you realize this is why second and third generation Christians often struggle and maybe even reject the faith professed by their parents because they see intimately the two facedness. I could talk more about that. I don't have time. The point that Peter is making is that the gospel frees us from having to have two faces.We're free to be who we are in Christ. We don't have to play act. We don't have to wear a mask. We can be real and authentic. I sent some authenticity in the videos for the baptism today, did you not?That was that was very encouraging. Don't be sanctimonious. Don't act high and holy but secretly live another way. Be who you are. We are who we are in Christ, right?Just be who you are. The third one is envy. Okay? Envy. Envy or jealousy.Jealousy, they're they're like twin evil sisters. They're very similar. Slight difference between envy and jealousy. Envy? Envy says, I crave what you have.Jealousy says, I crave what you have, and I don't want you to have it. Right? I'm jealous of you. Think of Joseph's brothers as an example of this with the coat of many colors. Envy leads to jealousy because the more convinced I am that I would be happy if I had what you have, the more I'm going to resent you for actually having it.Jonathan Edwards about envy. Envy may be defined to be a spirit of dissatisfaction with and opposition to the prosperity and happiness of others as compared with our own. The thing that the envious person is opposed to and dislikes is the comparative superiority of the state of honor or prosperity or happiness that another may enjoy over that which he possesses. And the point that Edwards makes here, it's not just that you have the car, the house, the reputation, or the body that I want. It's that I sense that you're happy having it, and I resent you for that.It's a key insight, I think. Love is the opposite of that, isn't it? Love doesn't envy other people for having things that I don't have. Love is self giving for the good and joy of others. And so if you have something that I don't have and you're happy about it, I can be happy with your happiness.I can join in your happiness, not resent you for being happy. Why? Because I'm for you. Love is to be for other people. And when they succeed and when they have things that God allows them to have or whatever it might be, now we can be happy with one another.This is why I think envy and jealousy in the church is a kind of apostasy because what are we what's our gig here? I mean, of all things, what are we saying? We are saying that Jesus is our savior and that our satisfaction is in him. Right? Amen?Amen. That's what we believe. But when I have envy for a fellow Christian, I am saying that Jesus is not enough. I need Jesus and that car. My friend is driving.Then I'd be happy because he looks happy driving that car. And speaking of that, I don't like the car, and I don't like his happiness in the car. God, take both of those away from him, and let him join my own misery. James talks about where divisions come from in the church. Jealousy, selfish ambition.It can divide the church. It can divide this church. Put it off, he says. Get rid of it. The last one is slander.Okay? Slander. I would suspect most of us probably, we may not be able to define it, but we know it when we hear it or we should. Slander is not speaking to people but about people. Slander is it can be in front of people.Gossip is always behind people's back. K? So you can know it's gossip if what they're saying is something that that person, if they were to hear it, would think negatively about. Or they would sense the way that it's being said is not uplifting or prayerful or encouraging. It's damaging.It's seeking to tear that person down, tear down their reputation. You can know if you're slandering if the person that you're talking about was to come up and to hear you saying it, and you'd feel the need to go. That's probably slander. Slander is the opposite of love. Love seeks the good of others.Love uses its words to build others up. That's the call that we have in Ephesians four twenty nine. “Let your words be for the edification of others, for the building of them up.” And that means, essentially, I think, people were to hear the person here's a test. If the person that you are talking about was to hear the conversation that you're having, would they think that you love them?It doesn't mean that we don't we can't talk about other people, talk about life situations. That's just life. Right? But the way that we talk about them, is it tearing them down? Is it dragging down their testimony?Or is it in a way that is intended to build them up? Here's another test. Do I need to do I feel the need to whisper about this? Like if you say, did you hear about this? And you don't even know why, but your voice comes down like this.The whisper is probably an indication that this is something in the category of either slander or gossip. I ought not be doing it. Why? Proverbs says, “Whisperers separate close friends.” Have you ever had anybody whisper against you something not true or maybe just half true?By the way, slander can be true. A lot of people take that cover. Right? You shouldn't be saying that. It's true after all.As if the fact that it's true means that I have a right to repeat it in a way that drags that person down. It can be true. That's not the issue. The issue is my motive in the sharing of this. Is it love?Am I for them? Am I seeking their good? Is my sharing of this with somebody else helpful, profitable, or am I contributing to a kind of gossipy culture? You say, well, I can't I cannot slander, but I can't keep people from slandering me. There actually is a great way to do this.It works with gossips as well. Tell them, that's slander. You need to repent. They will never do it to you again. Right?Never. Why? Because gossips and gossip and slander is essentially cowardice. We're called to speak the truth in love to one another. Ephesians four again.Okay. That's mature Christianity. When we sort of drum up our courage and in love, we go to that person, we say, hey, I got I just I need to admonish you on on something. That's like robust Christianity. Gossip y, slander, Mrs. Olsen, Little House on the Prairie type stuff. Know? Young people are like, what's Little House on the Prairie? Who's Curly? Who's Billy Graham? Everybody knows Gary Butler.I digress. What are we to do with slander? Put it off. K? Put it off.Oh, that God would increasingly either create or protect a culture in our church free from the gossipy, whispering, slanders that too often even God's people will be a part of. They say, okay. Well, that's nice, pastor Steve. How do I do that? My whole life, I've been, like, angry with people, hateful towards people.I've used words that are damaging to people. I follow Jesus. Now, but how do I how do I get over these and a thousand other things that I know I'm supposed to be striving for as a Christian? And that's this growth thing. That's verse two and following here.Peter, how do we grow? Again, notice what he says. Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk that by it you may grow up into salvation, if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good. So the picture that he draws here is of a newborn infant. And I gotta tell you, I am so glad this was not planned, but in God's good providence, I am so glad that I can teach through First Peter after having become a father myself.There were so many times and nights, early on especially, with our daughter, where this verse would come to my mind as I would see mommy and daughter doing the feeding, the late night feeding, and I would see or hear, you know, Keira Lee indicating that the time had come. Children, they they don't know any words, but they they communicate effectively, don't they? Right? That's code for feed me now. Right?Feed me now. You ain't sleeping till I get some food in my belly. So I'm excited to be able to talk about this. I think about my daughter in this verse. You know, one of the things that was fun with her too is that once she was able to somewhat communicate, we started doing the little hand signals.You know, you can teach babies little hand signals. And our signal for more was this. K? So she'd be eating, and we go, more. And then she got to the place where she could go, more.So adorable. More on that in a little bit. Let's understand let's understand though, first of all, what is the milk that he's talking about here? Long for the pure spiritual milk. Our first clue is what the milk produces, what it does.Notice the rest of the verse. That by it, you may grow up into salvation. The spiritual milk he's talking about does for the Christian something analogous to what the mommy's milk does for the infant, which he describes here as being that we grow up into our salvation. And by that, he doesn't mean that we become saved by drinking this milk. He is talking about that growth into maturity, the growth into adulthood.Like a child will grow and become stronger and taller and move into adulthood. Spiritually, we all begin our our life in Jesus immature. Right? We grow up. At least we're supposed to.And there is something about this spiritual milk that contributes to the growing, like mommy's milk contributes to the infant. That's the analogy that he's drawing. It's not a hard one, but just to make clear to be sure, are you all with me? Okay. Now when we see this, I think, in context, it all points to and in the same direction.Look at the preceding verse. “But the word of the Lord remains forever.” That's verse 25 of chapter one. He's been talking about the gospel. He's been talking about the word of God.So at the very least, we can say the milk is the gospel of Christ. But I think more accurately, is broader than that. It is the word of God. It is what we call the Bible. God's inspired revelation to us is to the Christian milk like mommy's milk is to the infant.So we can literally look at the Bible as a kind of right? It is milk to us. It nourishes us. It spiritually feeds us. It causes us to grow.Now don't let infants here throw you off because there are other passages that talk about, like Hebrews five where the writer of Hebrews says, don't be infants. You need you need meat, not milk. Or you need milk. You shouldn't eat meat is what he says there. That's a totally different illustration.K? The people that Peter writes to have been Christians, some of them for thirty years. They are mature Christians. And yet, Peter says, you need spiritual milk. You need the word of God.Well, not the only way. The primary listen, Bethel Church. The primary means to growth that God has given us is the hearing, the understanding, and the applying of God's word to our lives. Should I say that again for emphasis? There are other ways that God grows us for sure, but the primary means by which he grows us is the hearing, the understanding, and the applying of God's word.That is how we drink this spiritual milk. Here's another passage that basically says the same thing. Colossians three sixteen. Put it up here on the screen a second. “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.”Drink it. K? How? Teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your heart to God. If you said, hey, Steve.Give me one verse that describes what you hope is the experience for the members and the people of Bethel Church, I would have a hard time beating that one. Why? What does it describe? A congregation and a community where the word of God is so evident, so a part of the experience that it's dwelling richly. And the fruit of that is that it produces a kind of speaking to one another that echoes the wisdom of God's word.Our words are not slander. Our words are not malice. Our words are not intended to drag each other down. But like the word of God, they are there to build us up and to encourage us. And that we are actively doing that and employing that great means of growth with one another.The fruit of that is joy, which sounds like singing and thanksgiving. Who would want to be a part of a church like that? Where does that come from? The word of Christ dwelling in you richly. It grows up the congregation.It's the same thing that Peter says. Drink deeply from the word of God. It will grow you up as a person and as a church. Alright. Now here's the question.Where does that craving come from? Where does it come from? Because we all know the natural person does not crave knowing the word of God. Many of you probably remember times in your life where, you know, you just the the Bible and people that listen to a sermon or reading some book or whatever, they'd be like, I'd rather do anything else but that. The natural man does not desire the milk of the word of God.So where does our craving come from? Well, here's where the analogy, I think, is so helpful with infants and milk. And just to share from my own experience with this, I, as as many of you know, I I got married later in life. We had our daughter, essentially a year later. And so we were doing marriage new.Now we're having doing parenting new. And there were a lot of things about the whole thing that we were quite nervous about, as most parents, new parents are. One of the things that we were uncertain about was the whole breastfeeding thing. Right? Like what's that going to be like?And how does that all exactly work? And on the surface, you look at it and you say, people have been doing this for like thousands of years. How hard can it be? Well, I'm here to tell all you single men out there, there's way more to it than I even began to realize. And part of it was, I think, because we had a hard time with it.Okay? We had a hard time with it, at least initially. And so we got this lactation nurse from the hospital that's doing coaching. And there's books you can read and tips and all this stuff. And we're trying to do it right, of course.We're very conscientious about all this. But we we had a hard time making it all work. You know what the key to the whole thing was? It wasn't the lactation nurse. It wasn't the coaching.It wasn't any pamphlet that we read. The key to the whole thing was that Keira Lee was hungry. If she didn't have an appetite, we could have had all the coaching and all the other that we that we wanted. Something would have been desperately wrong, wouldn't it? She was hungry.God puts within babies this basic instinct to want mommy's milk. And to see that, observe how strong that desire is is part of what I'm saying here. I often at night and different times where, you know, and they're sort of clawing and they're wanting of milk. I would think of this verse, actually. Like newborn infants crave the pure spiritual milk of the word.How inclined was our daughter to go, I don't know, day, two, couple weeks without any milk? Not gonna happen. Right? In fact, one of the things you have to do as a parent is you wanna get that child on a regular feeding schedule. Right?Why? Because the regular feeding is part of what nourishes that child. If it's hit and miss, how healthy is that baby going to be? I wonder, dear friends, does the analogy apply to us as it relates to the intake of God's word in our life? What does it mean when it's hit or miss?And what does it mean when I don't care that it's hit or miss? When I can kinda go, I'll take some of it. I'll get a little bit here. I'm good for a month. Why does the writer of Hebrews say, “do not forsake the assembling of yourselves together as some are in the manner of doing?”What was he thinking about? There is something that happens in our life spiritually when the word of God is opened and read and proclaimed. And it goes beyond just kinda like sermons, but the personal experience of reading the Bible, studying God's word, memorizing it, meditating on it, being with other Christians, and talking about truth and talking about God, God grows us up. Why? Because as I'm doing that spiritually, I'm and I'm growing up into this salvation.I am maturing, and I'm growing. And if there is not a desire for that, that's one sick baby. Right? And it's also a sick Christian at best. What should our gatherings be like?If you listen if you had spiritual ears right before the service, what should it sound like as everybody's coming in? I I say that to be a little silly to bring the point home. Right? We're hungry. We're hungry.We wanna be fed. And it's not I don't do the feeding, by the way. I'm just a person. No pastor really does the feeding. It is the spirit of God through the word of God that feeds the people of God.And so who do we give glory to? We give glory to him. Right? He is the one that is nourishing us by his word. How important is the word of God in your life?Is it a kind of daily experience that you're having? And if not, why not? And if you don't care, what might that indicate? Where does this craving come from? In fact, I think just if we were to be honest, for some people, you know, drinking from God's word is like an eight year old boy having to eat his peas.Right? It's like, oh, is it almost done? I don't want to do it. I do it because I'm told I have to do it. I don't see that in this verse here.It's not it's not a kind of duty thing. He's talking about a delighting thing, isn't he? Where does delighting in God's word come from? And this is where I think verse three is the key here, and it's kind of my epiphany in studying this passage together. Notice again, what does it say?Crave the pure spiritual milk of the word that by it you may grow up to salvation. Verse three, if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good. Peter here quotes from Psalm thirty four eight, says, “Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good.” And he draws the analogy. He says, “if you have tasted that the Lord is good.”If you have tasted. So what is the connection then of the longing and the craving in verse two with the tasting in verse three? And what is this connection between these? And on this point, you all know the answer. You just don't realize it.I'm going to help you realize it. And to help you, I have a couple of pictures that I want you to look at here. I'm not sure if this is effective in this service, but it definitely will be in third service today, right before lunch. But I asked the guys to say, hey, just put up some pictures of some good looking food. And that may not be your favorite there, but we all can agree chocolate covered strawberries, we're in good stead there.Right? So maybe we'll just talk about chocolate covered strawberries a second. What is the experience of eating a chocolate covered strawberry like? Let's just walk through it a second. First of all, normally it's not sitting there in the fridge.You come upon it, somebody surprises you with it. You go to some kind of a gathering and they have chocolate covered strawberries and all of a sudden you're like, awesome. Right? You begin to think about the chocolate covered strawberry. There's a sense of anticipation about it.Right? And then the time comes where you actually get to eat it. And so you lift it up by the little green things on the end. I don't even know what they're called because you want to get as much strawberry and chocolate as possible. And you bring that fruit, that magical molecular combination of some chocolate bean from South America and a homegrown strawberry.Somehow God intended South American chocolate beans to magically, molecularly combine with fruit grown in Indiana. You bring it to your mouth, and you're like, this is going be fantastic. And you take a bite. Right? And that flavor comes into your mouth.And oh, how good it is. You sigh. You chew, which is the way that we kind of combine the flavors. And those two go together fantastic. You chew, you chew, you chew some more until every molecule of savor has been enjoyed by your taste buds.And then we all do what? Swallow. Yes, we swallow. Some of you don't. I've seen you eat.And then what is the next thing that happens? There is desire for more. That desire is verse two. The tasting is verse three. And the connection is this.When I have tasted of the goodness and the beauty and the glory and the mercy and the kindness and the love of God in Christ, when I have tasted of that in salvation, there is in my heart a desire for more, more if I have genuinely tasted it. In fact, we can say this. When I taste something, the better it is, the more I want more of it. So that growing up for me, when I when my mom made liver, which to this day is my all time least favorite food, I'd rather lick Broadway than eat liver. K?Some of you agree. When I taste liver, there is no desire that arises in my heart. But a chocolate covered strawberry or a blueberry pie or a number of other things that I'll not talk about because I don't have time. Instinctively, there is more. I don't even think about it.I want more. I want you to see the word if there. He doesn't say because you have tasted that the Lord is good. He says, if you have tasted. And I think Peter intends that if to be a kind of arrow into the conscience of the professing Christian who thinks nothing of going weeks without the word of God.What do we say about a child that drinks mommy's milk but then doesn't want anymore? That's a very unhealthy child. That that child is in serious trouble. What do you say about a Christian who has tasted of the goodness of God, which is the gospel? And that's all that they want.There's no craving or desire for anymore. I say that not to unnecessarily put any kind of a guilt on anybody here, but to just to honestly ask the question. In a day and even in our church where I just see people sort of haphazard about the hearing, the understanding, and the applying of God's word and yet resting somehow very comfortably with the fact, I must be a Christian. Why? Because I prayed this prayer.I made this profession. Okay. But in that, did you taste the goodness of God? Did you taste the love of God? Did you taste the forgiveness of God?Because if you have tasted of those spiritual delicacies, you will want more. So this is both an encouragement and an admonition to the growing active Christian who loves the milk of the word of God and a challenge to the marginal Christian about what healthy Christianity looks like. And I wanna ask you, my dear friend I'm looking around this room here. But can I hold that up like a mirror to you and for you to look into your heart of desires and to honestly ask the question, do I want more? And if the answer to that is yes, here's a great way forward, to do all that you can to drink in the word of God, to be a person of the word.And this goes into being in the word daily and having opportunity to talk about spiritual truth with other Christians, to milk the sermon for all that you can, Christian literature, etcetera, etcetera. It's not a sermon about those things. It is an encouragement towards those things. But it is also a challenge asking the question, do you crave it? And if there is no craving, what does it say about the tasting?Have you tasted of the goodness of God? So look into your heart, my dear friend. Ask yourself, is there a desire for more? And might a lack of desire call you to some kind of either repentance or maybe perhaps like one of our baptizees who shared that she had kinda tried out Christianity, but now my sense of it, I don't know her story personally, but now there's been a resurgence and a desire to step forward in a new chapter. And maybe that's what God would have for you.And wouldn't that be a wonderful thing? Taste and see that the Lord is good. He is good. He's tasty. He's succulent.He satisfies. Let's pursue that. Amen? Amen. Amen.I'm gonna ask you to stand with me for prayer. Heavenly Father, God, thank you for this passage and all that it teaches us. I pray that we would be a church where the word of Christ is dwelling richly amongst us. Lord, create in us a desire for more, that we might know you more, that we might love you more, that we might serve you more, that we might grow up as Christians into maturity. We thank you and pray this in Jesus' name.Amen.* This transcript was generated using AI transcription technology and reviewed for accuracy but may contain errors. Please refer to the original audio for precise wording..

Steve DeWitt Jesus: A Crushing Rock or a Saving Stone? - Part B Study Guide for Spiritual Exiles, 1 Peter 2:4-8 Scripture Reference: 1 Peter 2:4-8 Visit the series page: Exiles: A study in 1 Peter Donate to Support The Journey Sermon Transcript for Spiritual Exiles, 1 Peter 2:4-8 Sermon Series: Spiritual ExilesMessage: Jesus: A Crushing Rock or Saving Stone?Airdate: 9/24–9/25/26Programs: 2364 and 2365Alright, we're coming to our our teaching time now in in First Peter. We're continuing our series in First Peter, and we have a passage in front of us today that is both wonderful and challenging. It is wonderful because of the truth that's in it; it's challenging because the Peter who writes this uses these metaphors and these illustrations, and he kind of mixes them all up, and it's a little hard to get. I actually was looking at this thinking, how am I gonna teach this passage? But my job is to try to make it understandable and simple, and we'll try to do that today. But there's a wonderful truth, there's wonderful truths in here, and I hope God blesses our time in His Word. Are you with me?Alright, let's talk about stones today. Okay, let's talk about rocks. Rocks and stones. And one of the reasons that Peter talks about stones and rocks, and why we find it throughout Scripture, is because in the first century, in the ancient world, they didn't have things like we have for construction. They didn't have asphalt and steel and iron and things like that that make up the architecture of our cities and our towns. They just basically had wood and rocks. So when they were going to go to build something, whether it be a road or a building, they would have to have rocks. So everywhere you went, you saw stones and rocks. You walked on rocks, you lived in rocks, rocks and stones all the time. So when it came to illustrating things in in the first century, a very effective one was to talk about rocks and stones, because everybody could relate to that. And Peter here is going to describe Jesus as three different rocks, or three different stones, and I'm gonna read our text today and see if you can pick up on the three stones that Peter describes Jesus as.I'm reading now, First Peter chapter two, beginning in verse four: “As you come to Him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For it stands in Scripture: behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a a cornerstone, chosen and precious, and whoever believes in Him will not be put to shame. So the honor is for you who believe; but for those who do not believe, the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone and a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense. They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do.”Alright, did you pick up on the three? Can we say them in order? If you, if you did pick up on them, what's the first one? Jesus is a living stone. Secondly, Jesus is a cornerstone. And thirdly, Jesus is a stumbling stone. Yes. And that's just going to basically be our outline here, to talk about Jesus in those three respects. So we begin with Jesus as three kinds of stones.And just to note, it's a little ironic, isn't it, that Peter of all people is calling Jesus a stone, because after all, what did Jesus call Peter? Do you remember, his name was Simon, actually, and somewhere along the way Jesus says to him, he says, you know what, I'm changing your name, from now on your name is no longer Simon, your name is Peter. But what does Peter mean? Peter means rock. So here we have Jesus calling Peter a rock, and Peter calling Jesus a stone. I find that interesting. K. Very interesting.So Jesus as the living stone, what does that mean? "As you come to Him, a living stone", what might that be referring to? And when we see, for example, something that is an inanimate object now becoming alive, it sure sounds like, what does it sure sound like, resurrection, doesn't it? For something that is inanimate now to be animate, to be alive. Jesus was dead in the grave, now alive. Living stone refers to the resurrection of Jesus. Stones don't live, stones don't do anything, but in the Bible we find them occasionally being attributed some qualities like that. For example, you remember when Jesus, in His triumphal entry, the Pharisees come to Him, and as He's coming in they say, tell all these people to stop, they're singing your praises, tell them to stop. And what does Jesus say? If they stop, the rocks will cry out, right? So singing rocks, who's ever heard of singing rocks? Maybe the Rolling Stones is as close as we get to that, right? Rocks don't sing and stones don't live, so a living stone is the most remarkable thing.And here we're now continuing in the text here to see this illustration that Peter is working. He says he is a living stone rejected by men, but in the sight of God chosen and precious. And if you look at verse six, Peter is about to refer to Isaiah twenty-eight, which says, “behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone, chosen and precious,” and he applies the chosen and precious to Jesus. Now, how is Jesus chosen? How is Jesus precious? Well, Isaiah is foretelling the coming Messiah, and he uses this picture of a mason who is laying the most important stone in the building, the cornerstone. K. So how would a mason go about laying that cornerstone? Well, he probably would go to the quarry, or go to his inventory, and he would pick out the very best stone that he could find. Why? Because the cornerstone, the shape and the character of the cornerstone, becomes the shape and character of the entire building. The quality, the nature of that stone, shapes the quality and the nature of the rest of the building. And so you wanna make sure you have the very best stone that you can have. And so a mason would look over everything he had and he'd say, this is the cornerstone. And when he selected that stone, it became the chosen stone. K. The chosen stone. These words here are praising three aspects of Jesus' work: he is the living stone, resurrection; he is the chosen stone, Messiah; and he is the precious stone, speaking to his glorious and infinite worth.And Peter's goal in this language here is to encourage us in what way? Here's the principle: who Jesus is defines who we are when we are in a faith relationship with him. Let me say it again, who Jesus is defines who we are when we are in a faith relationship to him. Like a cornerstone to a building, the cornerstone defines the character and the nature of the rest of the building. Jesus is, for our faith and our salvation, he is that kind of a cornerstone, and when I am in a faith relationship with him, who he is defines who I am. K.And here's where the met metaphor is mixed a little bit, but he is the living stone because he is alive, because he was resurrected, we now live in that eternal life. I'm in a faith relationship with Jesus, as Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me will never die,” right? Because I live, so shall you, he says elsewhere. Because he is alive, because he was resurrected, when we are in a faith relationship with him, like a building in relationship to its cornerstone, the qualities that Jesus have become our qualities. And you'll notice then he says here that Jesus is the living stone, and we as, are are, like living stones. K. So he is alive, therefore we also are alive. I told you it's a little challenge here. K. But do you get what it's, what it's saying? I can go over that again. I'm looking around, nobody wants to say. K. More on this, we'll, we'll get going here.Look at verse five: “what are we, we're living stones, and we are being built up as a spiritual house. For it stands in Scripture: behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone, chosen and precious, and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.” And so here now we move to the second stone, he is the living stone, he is the cornerstone. Okay, cornerstone, and this quotation from Isaiah twenty-eight, Isaiah prophesies about the Messiah who would come, and his life and his ministry would be a kind of chosen and precious cornerstone. So the living stone is also the cornerstone of a great house, and we, like living stones, are the bricks and the mortar of that house.So the metaphor mixes here a little bit, but I think that we all can get this, especially if you like Lord of the Rings, and I haven't quoted from Lord of the Rings in at least two or three weeks, so it's time to do it again. If you like Lord of the Rings, or The Hobbit that's recently came out, you know that Tolkien, as he's describing Middle-earth, he talks about kingdoms, you have these various kingdoms, and the kingdoms are known as, for example, the house of Rohan. K. Now, the house of Rohan is not literally a house, but it is a kingdom. It describes the the king of the kingdom, the name of the king of the kingdom, and all who are in that kingdom are of the house of Rohan. Okay, or Gondor is another one. Okay, the kingdom of Gondor, if you are in, if you live in, the kingdom of Gondor, you are of the house of Gondor. It doesn't mean that you are a a brick or a stone, but the people of the kingdom are what make up the house of Gondor. And Peter is saying essentially the same thing here, that we are the of the house of Jesus. We are not literally bricks and mortar, we are living stones. Okay, we're people, but we make up the structure of this spiritual house, the house of Jesus Christ, that is made up of all who put their faith and their trust in him. We are in his kingdom, we are, we are his people.There's a story that goes about a king that was visiting ancient Sparta, the famous Spartan kingdom, and the the the the the Spartan king was boasting to this visiting Monarch about the walls of Sparta, and as the visiting king looked around, he could see no walled city, and he asked, where are the renowned walls of Sparta? And the Spartan king pointed to his army and replied, these are the walls of Sparta, every man a brick. Okay, and you can say right there, who are the walls of the house of Jesus Christ? Who are the, who are the structures and the beams and the and the the and the the materials of this house, this kingdom? It is those who have put their faith in Jesus, and his life now is their life, and his character now is their character, and we are the they, and we are living out this house, this spiritual house, as the people of God.For what purpose? Notice: to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God. We are priests, and this is a little bit of, again the metaphor keeps changing, but we are bricks in the house, but it doesn't mean that we just stand there like this and we do absolutely nothing. Rather, we are priests in this house. And the priests, if you look at the Old Testament, the priests in the Old Testament, what did they do? They represented men to God, and so you went to the temple and you went to the priest, and he took that sheep or that bull or that goat and he offered that sacrifice, and he represented you to God. But in the new covenant, no longer are priests needed, no, no more altars like that. We're not having something after the service, hey, take all your sheep and your bulls and your goats and go to the backroom and we'll offer those sacrifices for you, we don't do that anymore. Why? Because Christ's death was the once-for-all sacrifice. This new covenant is established by the blood of Jesus, not a bull or a goat or anything else. And so now, in this new covenant, we don't need that priest, that man that represents us to God, why? Because we are all priests in this house. We all have direct access to God, which Jesus has provided for us, he says that in the text, right, acceptable, acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. When Christ died, what happened to that veil in the temple? Torn in two, right? Representing the fact that from now on there is not one temple, and there are not priests; rather, there is one high priest, Jesus, and we are all priests, then, praying directly to God. We all have the ability to know and understand and interpret the word of God and apply it to our life. We minister to one another as priests in this house. It is a tremendous privilege to be a priest of God through Jesus Christ, and to offer, notice, spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God.Did you know, Christian, if you're a Christian, you're offering sacrifices? You're like, I didn't know that. Well, what kind of sacrifices might a Christian offer as a priest? Here are some, the Bible describes, Romans twelve one, we offer our bodies to God for service, my life, my body, the use of my body, my my day to day. I want this to be an act of worship to you, God. What was that song we started with, every praise to our God, every praise to our, here's the team over here, help me out, every praise to our God, every word of worship to our God, every praise, every praise to our God, yeah, they need me and Gary, what that means, but that's basically saying this point, that as a Christian and as a priest now, I have the privilege and the opportunity for everything that I do, every word of worship to our God, all my life now is to be, and can be, lived as a kind of offering directly to God through Jesus Christ, and God delights in it. K. When God, God delighted in the sacrifices in the Old Testament that were offered up in praise and worship to him, and now my whole life can be lived in a way that brings pleasure to God, as a kind of offering to God. Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all to the glory of God. And to, what a, what a freeing and joyous principle that is, to connect my whole life, all of it, my vocation and my recreation and my my health and my relationships and my marriage and my parenting and all the things that make up my life, all of it now, not just, not for me, but offered as a kind of glory to God.So if you're a Christian, you're a priest. The question is, are you a good one? Maybe to think about this week in your life: what did I do conscious of the presence of God, and intentionally done in a way pleasing to him? How did you do this week, Christian? Were you aware of God through the day? Were you aware of God, his watchful eye, the seeking of his pleasure with your words, your tongue, your giving, your love to others, all of it, as priests in this spiritual house of Jesus, pleasing to him? How might your week change if you saw each category of your life as an offering to God?Jesus is the cornerstone of the church. The third stone that we have here is a surprising one, I think, if you were just reading through First Peter, you wouldn't expect him to take the turn that he does here, but he talks about Jesus as the stumbling stone, and to do so he quotes again Old Testament, two passages that refer to, let me read them, let me read them here, a second, verse seven: “so the honor, the honor of being a priest, the honor of being in the house, is for you who believe; but for those who do not believe, the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone and a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense. They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do.” These are very sobering words here that Peter shares. He quotes from Isaiah one eighteen and Isaiah, I'm sorry, Psalm one eighteen and Isaiah eight, and both of these are using this stone language, but they're talking about a fearful truth: the fact that we either believe in Jesus unto everlasting life, or we reject him and stumble over him to our eternal destruction.Stumbling, the stumble stone, again, let's go back to the first century. If everywhere you walk you're walking on a path that's been worn down, or you're walking, maybe, in the city, you're on a a street that has cobblestones or is made up of some kind of stone, I would imagine that stumbling would be a daily occurrence. Okay, but now we're used to, here we have all smooth pathways, and if you know your sidewalk is off a little bit, the city is going to sue you, and you know, we live in a very smooth society, right? Everything we go, everything's smooth, everything's nice, if you stumble, you sue people. There was no suing of people in the first century, your rock is a little high there and I'm suing you because I I tripped on it. People stumbled all the time because you were walking in places that were uneven and you had stones that were jutting out.I have a picture here of a a path, just to give a little visual of this. If you've ever been hiking, then you know how important it is that you, you're watching where you're walking, right? Because as you're walking, there's gonna be certain places you gotta put your foot here or you put your foot there, and if you're not careful, a stone that could be helpful to you, that you could push off and go higher, instead of being a stone that pushes you higher, could be a stone that you stumble on. In fact, in a group of people, you could have a whole group of people walking, and the same stone that leads some people higher could be a stone that trips other people. And Jesus is like that jutting stone for humanity, he juts in the path of every person that is seeking spiritual answers. They're looking for that meaning, they're looking for that ultimate truth, and they begin to evaluate religions, and they begin to look for spiritual answers, and if you do that for any amount of time, you're gonna come across, you're gonna be confronted by the life, the teaching, and the claims of Jesus Christ, and what you do with him becomes then either a stone that leads to faith or a stone that leads to stumbling and destruction. Jesus is a stumbling stone.C.S. Lewis, the Oxford and Cambridge professor, describes this reality in his book Mere Christianity. He says, you know, if you study the life of Jesus and you wanna come to some conclusions, you really only have three options. If you study his miracles, if you study his claims regarding being deity and the Son of God and Savior of the world, you can only come to one of three conclusions: he is either the greatest liar in the history of mankind, and it could be true that he would be lying about all those things; he could be the greatest lunatic in history, and by lunatic he means there's deranged people that believe all kinds of crazy things, and there's probably facilities around here we could go to and you'd meet somebody that would claim to be, you know, Gandhi or some whatever, and you know, they, these people get deranged and they think certain things, and maybe he was just deranged; but the third option, and there's only a third, is that he is who he claimed to be and that he is Lord of all and Savior of all who believe in him. One of three options, liar, lunatic, or Lord, and what you decide of those three defines your entire eternal destiny.You know, Jesus had this as he lived his life, think about the people that came across his path in terms of whether they went this way or they went that way. Remember the rich young ruler that came to him and said, what must I do to be saved, what must I do to inherit eternal life? And Jesus looked at him, knowing his heart, he said, sell everything you have, give to the poor, and come follow me, and you'll have reward in heaven. And remember the rich young ruler, he was like, and he left sad. Why? Because he was very wealthy, and it was not the wealth that was the problem, it was the love of the wealth that was the problem, and Jesus knew his heart and he put his finger right on the idol in that man's life.Think about Caiaphas as another example of this. Caiaphas was the high priest there in Israel, very educated man, very accomplished man, very smart, spiritually attuned. I mean, this is a guy that grew up memorizing massive sections of the Old Testament, taught Israel from the Old Testament. If there was anybody in the whole land that you would expect would be able to ID the Messiah if he showed up, it would be Caiaphas the high priest. And yet Caiaphas heard the teachings of Jesus, heard the claims and the miracles and all the rest, and he did not come to the conclusion that Jesus was the Messiah, rather, he saw him as an impostor and a threat, and led the conspiracy to murder Jesus Christ. Apparently, really smart and accomplished people can miss who Jesus actually is.Now, how would this encourage Peter's audience? Let's remember the context here, who's Peter writing to? He's writing to a group of Christians who've been displaced, are living in Asia Minor. They're living around people that do not look kindly on their faith, do not look up to them at all because of their Christianity. Rather, they are suffering loss, they're suffering loss of business, they're, they're being mocked, they're being rejected in relationship, they're, they're exiles, they're living somewhere where people are not accepting them, they're dealing with rejection essentially. How might the fact that Jesus was rejected by men but accepted by God be an encouragement to a group of people who are also being rejected by men? Peter reminds them that their Savior Jesus faced this same kind of smirking and laughter and and rejection. I think the point that Peter's making is, if you're accepted by God, the rejection of men means very little. K. Means very little.And what a great principle that is for Christians today, all of us, right? I think about our students as an example, the Christian students in our church, who are, most of them, in public school settings, and I have to believe if they've got any sense of their faith being lived out, are either worried or in reality are facing levels of rejection from their teachers, from their friends, from whoever it might be. There's a price to pay to be a Christian, students, are you ready to accept that?I think about my brother as an example of this, and this was years ago, but my brother Scott, I remember attending high school basketball games, and my my brother Scott was a very good player, but was kind of upfront with his faith. The coach of the team did not like Christianity, didn't like Christians being on the team. My brother would miss, you know, some practices occasionally because of youth group events, etcetera, and so the coach just put my brother on the bench, and so I would attend the games, and my brother would get in like after the, you know, four minutes left, the game's already decided, in goes Dewitt, right? Well, he would often end up almost the leading scorer, with playing only four minutes of the game, and just boom boom boom boom, and people in the stands are like, why isn't this guy playing? But he sat the bench, sat the bench. Later would make a professional team in South America, but couldn't play at the high school level on a mediocre team, at that. Why was it about Scott?Or, I think about a man that I know who was up for tenure at a major university, professor, and that tenure process was put on hold because they became aware of his evangelical Christian faith, which was a concern for them. Now, was it about his faith, or what was that all really about? What is it really about, Christian, when your coworker or your neighbor or a family member scoffs at your belief in a creator that we were made for, or scoffs at your sense of morality, your sexual ethic, your view on marriage, etcetera, etcetera? Is it, is it about you? What is all of this really about? And Peter is saying to these exiles, and through the word of God to us today, that it is not about us. This goes all the way back to a stone that was rejected by men, a house that is rejected by men, and if we are in that house, we are going to feel the rejection of men as well.Second Timothy three twelve: “indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.” That's the reality in a world that is hostile to God, and that is true, that is felt somewhat by us. Imagine me preaching this message in the Middle East right now, imagine me preaching this with ISIS advancing on the town, would that be an encouragement, that the temporary rejection and hatred of men who are hostile to God in the end doesn't matter? It doesn't matter what men say about you, any more than what it mattered what men said about Christ, because in the end it was God who accepted him. K. In the end, if God accepts you, that is all that matters. That is all that matters.And this passage we find, then, is actually a warning, it is a warning not to Christians, but it is a warning to those that stumble over the person and the work of Jesus. He is the living stone for those who believe, and we become living stones by connection with him. He is the cornerstone of the whole house of faith, and if you are a believer in Jesus, you're a priest in that house. But if you reject Jesus, that stone that is chosen and precious to those who believe becomes a rock that crushes you. They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do, and I don't have time to get into all of that, but it's teaching here that God is sovereign over both those that are saved and those that are not, none of this is a surprise to him, but all men are accountable for the choices that they make, and the one choice that defines destiny for every single one of us is what we believe about this person, Jesus. He is the fork in the road, he is the decider of destiny.Do we believe that he is, as he claimed to be, the Son of God and Savior of the world? Or do we scoff at that, or never get around to believing that, or ignore that? All of those choices will lead to rejection by God and ultimately to punishment.Listen to this quote, it's so good: “Christ is laid across the path of humanity on its course into the future. In the encounter with him, each person is changed, one for salvation, another for destruction. One cannot simply step over Jesus to go on about the daily routine and pass him by to build a future. Whoever encounters him is inescapably changed through the encounter, either one sees and becomes a living stone, or one stumbles as a blind person over Christ and comes to ruin, falling short of one's creator and redeemer, and thereby of one's destiny.”It's an awesome and awful thought, isn't it, that every single person in all the world who has ever lived, their entire eternal future determined by what they believe about Christ, one to a path to life and eternal life and eternal bliss with God in heaven and on the new earth, and the other to judgment and to punishment and to ultimately eternal damnation.We live in a day that to believe that there's a creator, to believe that Jesus is God, that Mary was a virgin, you know, that there was an ark, that there was a resurrection, that there's anything supernatural in this world, it's kind of like, in many people's eyes, you know, believing in unicorns and and fairy tales, right? You can believe that if you want to, hey, believe what you want, that's the world that we live in, but don't act like it's actually true. And that's why it feels to me, I don't know how you feel about it, but it feels to me like we're losing. Don't you watch the news sometimes and just think, this world is going to hell, right? And isn't that what the Bible says, the world is doing? Right, but it feels so often in culture like we're losing somehow, and this text is here as a warning and as an encouragement, someday this is all going to change. Someday, all the rejection of men and all the things that we experience, as people sort of smirk and mock and say whatever they say, the stone that was rejected by men has become the cornerstone, which is metaphorical language saying that Jesus was rejected by men but accepted by God and is the all glorious King of the universe, and someday that reality is gonna break on all of humanity, and we will be with the one, with him, who is the accepted one by God, and if we are in faith in Jesus, we also are accepted by God. And someday the enemies of God and the mockers of God and and the ignores of God and the gospel will also receive their just punishment. So that, in the end, the only thing that really matters is what you do with Jesus. K. And you might want, don't argue some other doctrine or this or that, in the end, the big thing is what you do with Jesus. If you get Jesus right, you can get a lot wrong, but in the end you win, right? If you get Jesus right. By the same token, if you get Jesus wrong, you can get a lot right in this life, and in the end you lose. You can have people that sing your praises, you can have people that view you highly, you can be admired, you can be applauded, you can have material possessions, you can accomplish the goals that you had in your life, but if in the end you get Jesus wrong, you're wrong forever. You're wrong forever. And that's why Jesus, as the stone, he juts out in the path, and for some people he is the step into eternal life, and for others they stumble into eternal punishment.And I wonder for you, which is he? Is he the cornerstone of your faith, are you a living stone by faith connection to the living stone, or is he a stumbling stone for you? Are you allowing something to keep you from believing in who he is? Have you not got around to it? Are there other things more important, somehow?I was reading this morning, and I'm just going read this quickly, and I'm not going to look at the clock in case I'm, I'm going long, because I want to read this anyway. I was reading this morning, just getting ready for coming to worship today, I was reading in Second Thessalonians chapter one, and it just struck me as this is kind of the moment when those that were rejected by men suddenly find the ultimate acceptance, and those that were rejecting of Christ finally get their ultimate judgment. Listen to what Paul writes: “this is evidence of the righteous judgment of God, that you may be considered worthy of the kingdom of God, for which you are also suffering, since indeed God considers it just to repay with affliction those who afflict you, and to grant relief to you who are afflicted, as well as to us, when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting”, and this is rough, “inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will suffer the punishment”, and we say this soberly, but here's the truth, “they will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might, when he comes on that day to be glorified in his saints and to be marveled at among all who have believed, because our testimony to you was believed.”Did you hear that? There's coming a day when there's, there's gonna be this grand reversal, and right now, exiles ancient and present, living with a kind of rejection, living with smirking, living with a mockery, there is coming a day when Jesus is going to return, and in that moment, the the opinions of men and neighbors and family and all of that will not matter a bit. When Christ is revealed, all of a sudden the only thing that's gonna matter is not what men thought about me, but whether I am accepted by God through Jesus, am I accepted by him? Right. And down into this world steps the mighty Son of God in all of his glory, and all those that mocked and scoffed and said it wasn't true suddenly will realize the ultimate truth, and who he is will be revealed. And in that moment, for us who have put our faith in him and have believed that he is chosen and precious, the cornerstone, for us that will be a moment when all of a sudden we will feel in fullness the acceptance of God through Jesus, and we will receive the blessing that comes to us, and it's not a temporary one, it is an eternal one. And so the rejection of men is temporary, the acceptance by God lasts forever, and that is the ultimate hope that we have living in a world that is hostile to God and hostile to us.And I just wanna ask, which stone is he for you, cornerstone, living stone, stumbling stone? Might today be a day that, for the first time, instead of rejecting him, you accept and you believe that he is the Son of God and Savior of the world, and personally put your faith in him, and by doing that, join this spiritual house, who for us, Jesus is our chosen and precious cornerstone. To him be all glory. Amen. Amen.* This transcript was generated using AI transcription technology and reviewed for accuracy but may contain errors. Please refer to the original audio for precise wording.

Steve DeWitt Jesus: A Crushing Rock or a Saving Stone? - Part A Study Guide for Spiritual Exiles, 1 Peter 2:4-8 Scripture Reference: 1 Peter 2:4-8 Visit the series page: Exiles: A study in 1 Peter Donate to Support The Journey Sermon Transcript for Spiritual Exiles, 1 Peter 2:4-8 Sermon Series: Spiritual ExilesMessage: Jesus: A Crushing Rock or Saving Stone?Airdate: 9/24–9/25/26Programs: 2364 and 2365Alright, we're coming to our our teaching time now in in First Peter. We're continuing our series in First Peter, and we have a passage in front of us today that is both wonderful and challenging. It is wonderful because of the truth that's in it; it's challenging because the Peter who writes this uses these metaphors and these illustrations, and he kind of mixes them all up, and it's a little hard to get. I actually was looking at this thinking, how am I gonna teach this passage? But my job is to try to make it understandable and simple, and we'll try to do that today. But there's a wonderful truth, there's wonderful truths in here, and I hope God blesses our time in His Word. Are you with me?Alright, let's talk about stones today. Okay, let's talk about rocks. Rocks and stones. And one of the reasons that Peter talks about stones and rocks, and why we find it throughout Scripture, is because in the first century, in the ancient world, they didn't have things like we have for construction. They didn't have asphalt and steel and iron and things like that that make up the architecture of our cities and our towns. They just basically had wood and rocks. So when they were going to go to build something, whether it be a road or a building, they would have to have rocks. So everywhere you went, you saw stones and rocks. You walked on rocks, you lived in rocks, rocks and stones all the time. So when it came to illustrating things in in the first century, a very effective one was to talk about rocks and stones, because everybody could relate to that. And Peter here is going to describe Jesus as three different rocks, or three different stones, and I'm gonna read our text today and see if you can pick up on the three stones that Peter describes Jesus as.I'm reading now, First Peter chapter two, beginning in verse four: “As you come to Him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For it stands in Scripture: behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a a cornerstone, chosen and precious, and whoever believes in Him will not be put to shame. So the honor is for you who believe; but for those who do not believe, the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone and a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense. They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do.”Alright, did you pick up on the three? Can we say them in order? If you, if you did pick up on them, what's the first one? Jesus is a living stone. Secondly, Jesus is a cornerstone. And thirdly, Jesus is a stumbling stone. Yes. And that's just going to basically be our outline here, to talk about Jesus in those three respects. So we begin with Jesus as three kinds of stones.And just to note, it's a little ironic, isn't it, that Peter of all people is calling Jesus a stone, because after all, what did Jesus call Peter? Do you remember, his name was Simon, actually, and somewhere along the way Jesus says to him, he says, you know what, I'm changing your name, from now on your name is no longer Simon, your name is Peter. But what does Peter mean? Peter means rock. So here we have Jesus calling Peter a rock, and Peter calling Jesus a stone. I find that interesting. K. Very interesting.So Jesus as the living stone, what does that mean? "As you come to Him, a living stone", what might that be referring to? And when we see, for example, something that is an inanimate object now becoming alive, it sure sounds like, what does it sure sound like, resurrection, doesn't it? For something that is inanimate now to be animate, to be alive. Jesus was dead in the grave, now alive. Living stone refers to the resurrection of Jesus. Stones don't live, stones don't do anything, but in the Bible we find them occasionally being attributed some qualities like that. For example, you remember when Jesus, in His triumphal entry, the Pharisees come to Him, and as He's coming in they say, tell all these people to stop, they're singing your praises, tell them to stop. And what does Jesus say? If they stop, the rocks will cry out, right? So singing rocks, who's ever heard of singing rocks? Maybe the Rolling Stones is as close as we get to that, right? Rocks don't sing and stones don't live, so a living stone is the most remarkable thing.And here we're now continuing in the text here to see this illustration that Peter is working. He says he is a living stone rejected by men, but in the sight of God chosen and precious. And if you look at verse six, Peter is about to refer to Isaiah twenty-eight, which says, “behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone, chosen and precious,” and he applies the chosen and precious to Jesus. Now, how is Jesus chosen? How is Jesus precious? Well, Isaiah is foretelling the coming Messiah, and he uses this picture of a mason who is laying the most important stone in the building, the cornerstone. K. So how would a mason go about laying that cornerstone? Well, he probably would go to the quarry, or go to his inventory, and he would pick out the very best stone that he could find. Why? Because the cornerstone, the shape and the character of the cornerstone, becomes the shape and character of the entire building. The quality, the nature of that stone, shapes the quality and the nature of the rest of the building. And so you wanna make sure you have the very best stone that you can have. And so a mason would look over everything he had and he'd say, this is the cornerstone. And when he selected that stone, it became the chosen stone. K. The chosen stone. These words here are praising three aspects of Jesus' work: he is the living stone, resurrection; he is the chosen stone, Messiah; and he is the precious stone, speaking to his glorious and infinite worth.And Peter's goal in this language here is to encourage us in what way? Here's the principle: who Jesus is defines who we are when we are in a faith relationship with him. Let me say it again, who Jesus is defines who we are when we are in a faith relationship to him. Like a cornerstone to a building, the cornerstone defines the character and the nature of the rest of the building. Jesus is, for our faith and our salvation, he is that kind of a cornerstone, and when I am in a faith relationship with him, who he is defines who I am. K.And here's where the met metaphor is mixed a little bit, but he is the living stone because he is alive, because he was resurrected, we now live in that eternal life. I'm in a faith relationship with Jesus, as Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me will never die,” right? Because I live, so shall you, he says elsewhere. Because he is alive, because he was resurrected, when we are in a faith relationship with him, like a building in relationship to its cornerstone, the qualities that Jesus have become our qualities. And you'll notice then he says here that Jesus is the living stone, and we as, are are, like living stones. K. So he is alive, therefore we also are alive. I told you it's a little challenge here. K. But do you get what it's, what it's saying? I can go over that again. I'm looking around, nobody wants to say. K. More on this, we'll, we'll get going here.Look at verse five: “what are we, we're living stones, and we are being built up as a spiritual house. For it stands in Scripture: behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone, chosen and precious, and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.” And so here now we move to the second stone, he is the living stone, he is the cornerstone. Okay, cornerstone, and this quotation from Isaiah twenty-eight, Isaiah prophesies about the Messiah who would come, and his life and his ministry would be a kind of chosen and precious cornerstone. So the living stone is also the cornerstone of a great house, and we, like living stones, are the bricks and the mortar of that house.So the metaphor mixes here a little bit, but I think that we all can get this, especially if you like Lord of the Rings, and I haven't quoted from Lord of the Rings in at least two or three weeks, so it's time to do it again. If you like Lord of the Rings, or The Hobbit that's recently came out, you know that Tolkien, as he's describing Middle-earth, he talks about kingdoms, you have these various kingdoms, and the kingdoms are known as, for example, the house of Rohan. K. Now, the house of Rohan is not literally a house, but it is a kingdom. It describes the the king of the kingdom, the name of the king of the kingdom, and all who are in that kingdom are of the house of Rohan. Okay, or Gondor is another one. Okay, the kingdom of Gondor, if you are in, if you live in, the kingdom of Gondor, you are of the house of Gondor. It doesn't mean that you are a a brick or a stone, but the people of the kingdom are what make up the house of Gondor. And Peter is saying essentially the same thing here, that we are the of the house of Jesus. We are not literally bricks and mortar, we are living stones. Okay, we're people, but we make up the structure of this spiritual house, the house of Jesus Christ, that is made up of all who put their faith and their trust in him. We are in his kingdom, we are, we are his people.There's a story that goes about a king that was visiting ancient Sparta, the famous Spartan kingdom, and the the the the the Spartan king was boasting to this visiting Monarch about the walls of Sparta, and as the visiting king looked around, he could see no walled city, and he asked, where are the renowned walls of Sparta? And the Spartan king pointed to his army and replied, these are the walls of Sparta, every man a brick. Okay, and you can say right there, who are the walls of the house of Jesus Christ? Who are the, who are the structures and the beams and the and the the and the the materials of this house, this kingdom? It is those who have put their faith in Jesus, and his life now is their life, and his character now is their character, and we are the they, and we are living out this house, this spiritual house, as the people of God.For what purpose? Notice: to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God. We are priests, and this is a little bit of, again the metaphor keeps changing, but we are bricks in the house, but it doesn't mean that we just stand there like this and we do absolutely nothing. Rather, we are priests in this house. And the priests, if you look at the Old Testament, the priests in the Old Testament, what did they do? They represented men to God, and so you went to the temple and you went to the priest, and he took that sheep or that bull or that goat and he offered that sacrifice, and he represented you to God. But in the new covenant, no longer are priests needed, no, no more altars like that. We're not having something after the service, hey, take all your sheep and your bulls and your goats and go to the backroom and we'll offer those sacrifices for you, we don't do that anymore. Why? Because Christ's death was the once-for-all sacrifice. This new covenant is established by the blood of Jesus, not a bull or a goat or anything else. And so now, in this new covenant, we don't need that priest, that man that represents us to God, why? Because we are all priests in this house. We all have direct access to God, which Jesus has provided for us, he says that in the text, right, acceptable, acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. When Christ died, what happened to that veil in the temple? Torn in two, right? Representing the fact that from now on there is not one temple, and there are not priests; rather, there is one high priest, Jesus, and we are all priests, then, praying directly to God. We all have the ability to know and understand and interpret the word of God and apply it to our life. We minister to one another as priests in this house. It is a tremendous privilege to be a priest of God through Jesus Christ, and to offer, notice, spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God.Did you know, Christian, if you're a Christian, you're offering sacrifices? You're like, I didn't know that. Well, what kind of sacrifices might a Christian offer as a priest? Here are some, the Bible describes, Romans twelve one, we offer our bodies to God for service, my life, my body, the use of my body, my my day to day. I want this to be an act of worship to you, God. What was that song we started with, every praise to our God, every praise to our, here's the team over here, help me out, every praise to our God, every word of worship to our God, every praise, every praise to our God, yeah, they need me and Gary, what that means, but that's basically saying this point, that as a Christian and as a priest now, I have the privilege and the opportunity for everything that I do, every word of worship to our God, all my life now is to be, and can be, lived as a kind of offering directly to God through Jesus Christ, and God delights in it. K. When God, God delighted in the sacrifices in the Old Testament that were offered up in praise and worship to him, and now my whole life can be lived in a way that brings pleasure to God, as a kind of offering to God. Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all to the glory of God. And to, what a, what a freeing and joyous principle that is, to connect my whole life, all of it, my vocation and my recreation and my my health and my relationships and my marriage and my parenting and all the things that make up my life, all of it now, not just, not for me, but offered as a kind of glory to God.So if you're a Christian, you're a priest. The question is, are you a good one? Maybe to think about this week in your life: what did I do conscious of the presence of God, and intentionally done in a way pleasing to him? How did you do this week, Christian? Were you aware of God through the day? Were you aware of God, his watchful eye, the seeking of his pleasure with your words, your tongue, your giving, your love to others, all of it, as priests in this spiritual house of Jesus, pleasing to him? How might your week change if you saw each category of your life as an offering to God?Jesus is the cornerstone of the church. The third stone that we have here is a surprising one, I think, if you were just reading through First Peter, you wouldn't expect him to take the turn that he does here, but he talks about Jesus as the stumbling stone, and to do so he quotes again Old Testament, two passages that refer to, let me read them, let me read them here, a second, verse seven: “so the honor, the honor of being a priest, the honor of being in the house, is for you who believe; but for those who do not believe, the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone and a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense. They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do.” These are very sobering words here that Peter shares. He quotes from Isaiah one eighteen and Isaiah, I'm sorry, Psalm one eighteen and Isaiah eight, and both of these are using this stone language, but they're talking about a fearful truth: the fact that we either believe in Jesus unto everlasting life, or we reject him and stumble over him to our eternal destruction.Stumbling, the stumble stone, again, let's go back to the first century. If everywhere you walk you're walking on a path that's been worn down, or you're walking, maybe, in the city, you're on a a street that has cobblestones or is made up of some kind of stone, I would imagine that stumbling would be a daily occurrence. Okay, but now we're used to, here we have all smooth pathways, and if you know your sidewalk is off a little bit, the city is going to sue you, and you know, we live in a very smooth society, right? Everything we go, everything's smooth, everything's nice, if you stumble, you sue people. There was no suing of people in the first century, your rock is a little high there and I'm suing you because I I tripped on it. People stumbled all the time because you were walking in places that were uneven and you had stones that were jutting out.I have a picture here of a a path, just to give a little visual of this. If you've ever been hiking, then you know how important it is that you, you're watching where you're walking, right? Because as you're walking, there's gonna be certain places you gotta put your foot here or you put your foot there, and if you're not careful, a stone that could be helpful to you, that you could push off and go higher, instead of being a stone that pushes you higher, could be a stone that you stumble on. In fact, in a group of people, you could have a whole group of people walking, and the same stone that leads some people higher could be a stone that trips other people. And Jesus is like that jutting stone for humanity, he juts in the path of every person that is seeking spiritual answers. They're looking for that meaning, they're looking for that ultimate truth, and they begin to evaluate religions, and they begin to look for spiritual answers, and if you do that for any amount of time, you're gonna come across, you're gonna be confronted by the life, the teaching, and the claims of Jesus Christ, and what you do with him becomes then either a stone that leads to faith or a stone that leads to stumbling and destruction. Jesus is a stumbling stone.C.S. Lewis, the Oxford and Cambridge professor, describes this reality in his book Mere Christianity. He says, you know, if you study the life of Jesus and you wanna come to some conclusions, you really only have three options. If you study his miracles, if you study his claims regarding being deity and the Son of God and Savior of the world, you can only come to one of three conclusions: he is either the greatest liar in the history of mankind, and it could be true that he would be lying about all those things; he could be the greatest lunatic in history, and by lunatic he means there's deranged people that believe all kinds of crazy things, and there's probably facilities around here we could go to and you'd meet somebody that would claim to be, you know, Gandhi or some whatever, and you know, they, these people get deranged and they think certain things, and maybe he was just deranged; but the third option, and there's only a third, is that he is who he claimed to be and that he is Lord of all and Savior of all who believe in him. One of three options, liar, lunatic, or Lord, and what you decide of those three defines your entire eternal destiny.You know, Jesus had this as he lived his life, think about the people that came across his path in terms of whether they went this way or they went that way. Remember the rich young ruler that came to him and said, what must I do to be saved, what must I do to inherit eternal life? And Jesus looked at him, knowing his heart, he said, sell everything you have, give to the poor, and come follow me, and you'll have reward in heaven. And remember the rich young ruler, he was like, and he left sad. Why? Because he was very wealthy, and it was not the wealth that was the problem, it was the love of the wealth that was the problem, and Jesus knew his heart and he put his finger right on the idol in that man's life.Think about Caiaphas as another example of this. Caiaphas was the high priest there in Israel, very educated man, very accomplished man, very smart, spiritually attuned. I mean, this is a guy that grew up memorizing massive sections of the Old Testament, taught Israel from the Old Testament. If there was anybody in the whole land that you would expect would be able to ID the Messiah if he showed up, it would be Caiaphas the high priest. And yet Caiaphas heard the teachings of Jesus, heard the claims and the miracles and all the rest, and he did not come to the conclusion that Jesus was the Messiah, rather, he saw him as an impostor and a threat, and led the conspiracy to murder Jesus Christ. Apparently, really smart and accomplished people can miss who Jesus actually is.Now, how would this encourage Peter's audience? Let's remember the context here, who's Peter writing to? He's writing to a group of Christians who've been displaced, are living in Asia Minor. They're living around people that do not look kindly on their faith, do not look up to them at all because of their Christianity. Rather, they are suffering loss, they're suffering loss of business, they're, they're being mocked, they're being rejected in relationship, they're, they're exiles, they're living somewhere where people are not accepting them, they're dealing with rejection essentially. How might the fact that Jesus was rejected by men but accepted by God be an encouragement to a group of people who are also being rejected by men? Peter reminds them that their Savior Jesus faced this same kind of smirking and laughter and and rejection. I think the point that Peter's making is, if you're accepted by God, the rejection of men means very little. K. Means very little.And what a great principle that is for Christians today, all of us, right? I think about our students as an example, the Christian students in our church, who are, most of them, in public school settings, and I have to believe if they've got any sense of their faith being lived out, are either worried or in reality are facing levels of rejection from their teachers, from their friends, from whoever it might be. There's a price to pay to be a Christian, students, are you ready to accept that?I think about my brother as an example of this, and this was years ago, but my brother Scott, I remember attending high school basketball games, and my my brother Scott was a very good player, but was kind of upfront with his faith. The coach of the team did not like Christianity, didn't like Christians being on the team. My brother would miss, you know, some practices occasionally because of youth group events, etcetera, and so the coach just put my brother on the bench, and so I would attend the games, and my brother would get in like after the, you know, four minutes left, the game's already decided, in goes Dewitt, right? Well, he would often end up almost the leading scorer, with playing only four minutes of the game, and just boom boom boom boom, and people in the stands are like, why isn't this guy playing? But he sat the bench, sat the bench. Later would make a professional team in South America, but couldn't play at the high school level on a mediocre team, at that. Why was it about Scott?Or, I think about a man that I know who was up for tenure at a major university, professor, and that tenure process was put on hold because they became aware of his evangelical Christian faith, which was a concern for them. Now, was it about his faith, or what was that all really about? What is it really about, Christian, when your coworker or your neighbor or a family member scoffs at your belief in a creator that we were made for, or scoffs at your sense of morality, your sexual ethic, your view on marriage, etcetera, etcetera? Is it, is it about you? What is all of this really about? And Peter is saying to these exiles, and through the word of God to us today, that it is not about us. This goes all the way back to a stone that was rejected by men, a house that is rejected by men, and if we are in that house, we are going to feel the rejection of men as well.Second Timothy three twelve: “indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.” That's the reality in a world that is hostile to God, and that is true, that is felt somewhat by us. Imagine me preaching this message in the Middle East right now, imagine me preaching this with ISIS advancing on the town, would that be an encouragement, that the temporary rejection and hatred of men who are hostile to God in the end doesn't matter? It doesn't matter what men say about you, any more than what it mattered what men said about Christ, because in the end it was God who accepted him. K. In the end, if God accepts you, that is all that matters. That is all that matters.And this passage we find, then, is actually a warning, it is a warning not to Christians, but it is a warning to those that stumble over the person and the work of Jesus. He is the living stone for those who believe, and we become living stones by connection with him. He is the cornerstone of the whole house of faith, and if you are a believer in Jesus, you're a priest in that house. But if you reject Jesus, that stone that is chosen and precious to those who believe becomes a rock that crushes you. They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do, and I don't have time to get into all of that, but it's teaching here that God is sovereign over both those that are saved and those that are not, none of this is a surprise to him, but all men are accountable for the choices that they make, and the one choice that defines destiny for every single one of us is what we believe about this person, Jesus. He is the fork in the road, he is the decider of destiny.Do we believe that he is, as he claimed to be, the Son of God and Savior of the world? Or do we scoff at that, or never get around to believing that, or ignore that? All of those choices will lead to rejection by God and ultimately to punishment.Listen to this quote, it's so good: “Christ is laid across the path of humanity on its course into the future. In the encounter with him, each person is changed, one for salvation, another for destruction. One cannot simply step over Jesus to go on about the daily routine and pass him by to build a future. Whoever encounters him is inescapably changed through the encounter, either one sees and becomes a living stone, or one stumbles as a blind person over Christ and comes to ruin, falling short of one's creator and redeemer, and thereby of one's destiny.”It's an awesome and awful thought, isn't it, that every single person in all the world who has ever lived, their entire eternal future determined by what they believe about Christ, one to a path to life and eternal life and eternal bliss with God in heaven and on the new earth, and the other to judgment and to punishment and to ultimately eternal damnation.We live in a day that to believe that there's a creator, to believe that Jesus is God, that Mary was a virgin, you know, that there was an ark, that there was a resurrection, that there's anything supernatural in this world, it's kind of like, in many people's eyes, you know, believing in unicorns and and fairy tales, right? You can believe that if you want to, hey, believe what you want, that's the world that we live in, but don't act like it's actually true. And that's why it feels to me, I don't know how you feel about it, but it feels to me like we're losing. Don't you watch the news sometimes and just think, this world is going to hell, right? And isn't that what the Bible says, the world is doing? Right, but it feels so often in culture like we're losing somehow, and this text is here as a warning and as an encouragement, someday this is all going to change. Someday, all the rejection of men and all the things that we experience, as people sort of smirk and mock and say whatever they say, the stone that was rejected by men has become the cornerstone, which is metaphorical language saying that Jesus was rejected by men but accepted by God and is the all glorious King of the universe, and someday that reality is gonna break on all of humanity, and we will be with the one, with him, who is the accepted one by God, and if we are in faith in Jesus, we also are accepted by God. And someday the enemies of God and the mockers of God and and the ignores of God and the gospel will also receive their just punishment. So that, in the end, the only thing that really matters is what you do with Jesus. K. And you might want, don't argue some other doctrine or this or that, in the end, the big thing is what you do with Jesus. If you get Jesus right, you can get a lot wrong, but in the end you win, right? If you get Jesus right. By the same token, if you get Jesus wrong, you can get a lot right in this life, and in the end you lose. You can have people that sing your praises, you can have people that view you highly, you can be admired, you can be applauded, you can have material possessions, you can accomplish the goals that you had in your life, but if in the end you get Jesus wrong, you're wrong forever. You're wrong forever. And that's why Jesus, as the stone, he juts out in the path, and for some people he is the step into eternal life, and for others they stumble into eternal punishment.And I wonder for you, which is he? Is he the cornerstone of your faith, are you a living stone by faith connection to the living stone, or is he a stumbling stone for you? Are you allowing something to keep you from believing in who he is? Have you not got around to it? Are there other things more important, somehow?I was reading this morning, and I'm just going read this quickly, and I'm not going to look at the clock in case I'm, I'm going long, because I want to read this anyway. I was reading this morning, just getting ready for coming to worship today, I was reading in Second Thessalonians chapter one, and it just struck me as this is kind of the moment when those that were rejected by men suddenly find the ultimate acceptance, and those that were rejecting of Christ finally get their ultimate judgment. Listen to what Paul writes: “this is evidence of the righteous judgment of God, that you may be considered worthy of the kingdom of God, for which you are also suffering, since indeed God considers it just to repay with affliction those who afflict you, and to grant relief to you who are afflicted, as well as to us, when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting”, and this is rough, “inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will suffer the punishment”, and we say this soberly, but here's the truth, “they will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might, when he comes on that day to be glorified in his saints and to be marveled at among all who have believed, because our testimony to you was believed.”Did you hear that? There's coming a day when there's, there's gonna be this grand reversal, and right now, exiles ancient and present, living with a kind of rejection, living with smirking, living with a mockery, there is coming a day when Jesus is going to return, and in that moment, the the opinions of men and neighbors and family and all of that will not matter a bit. When Christ is revealed, all of a sudden the only thing that's gonna matter is not what men thought about me, but whether I am accepted by God through Jesus, am I accepted by him? Right. And down into this world steps the mighty Son of God in all of his glory, and all those that mocked and scoffed and said it wasn't true suddenly will realize the ultimate truth, and who he is will be revealed. And in that moment, for us who have put our faith in him and have believed that he is chosen and precious, the cornerstone, for us that will be a moment when all of a sudden we will feel in fullness the acceptance of God through Jesus, and we will receive the blessing that comes to us, and it's not a temporary one, it is an eternal one. And so the rejection of men is temporary, the acceptance by God lasts forever, and that is the ultimate hope that we have living in a world that is hostile to God and hostile to us.And I just wanna ask, which stone is he for you, cornerstone, living stone, stumbling stone? Might today be a day that, for the first time, instead of rejecting him, you accept and you believe that he is the Son of God and Savior of the world, and personally put your faith in him, and by doing that, join this spiritual house, who for us, Jesus is our chosen and precious cornerstone. To him be all glory. Amen. Amen.* This transcript was generated using AI transcription technology and reviewed for accuracy but may contain errors. Please refer to the original audio for precise wording.

Steve DeWitt Craving Spiritual Milk and Spiritual Growth - Part B Study Guide for Spiritual Exiles, 1 Peter 2:1-3 Scripture Reference: 1 Peter 2:1-3 Visit the series page: Exiles: A study in 1 Peter Donate to Support The Journey Sermon Transcript for Spiritual Exiles, 1 Peter 2:1-3 Sermon Series: Spiritual ExilesMessage: Craving Spiritual Milk and Spiritual Growth Airdate: 9/22-9/23/26Programs: 2362 & 2363We continue our series in First Peter today, and you can open your Bibles if you have one with you. And we get into the second chapter of this letter. And by way of introduction, you know, for about twenty years, the milk industry sponsored a series of advertisements. These were billboards, magazines, TV advertisements. Some of you old timers might remember this.It was called either got milk or milk, it does the body good. Right? And so they one of the strategies they incorporated with this is that they would get famous people and they would have the milk mustache, right? And they would put them up there. And I just dug up a couple here to remind you maybe of how they did this.You may remember him. You might remember him. And they did a lot of this kind of thing. And the idea was that, hey, if these famous people drink milk, look at how successful they've been and seemingly healthy they are, then therefore, who wouldn't wanna be healthy like them? So, therefore, drink, you know, drink milk.Well, here's a question. What about spiritually? Is the same thing true spiritually? Will a normal, healthy Christian have a desire to grow? And maybe what we need in this, I got thinking, was a slightly different ad campaign for Christians.And so here, I'll give you an example of kind of maybe what I was thinking possibly might work. This one, I think this will this will next one will really pastor Gary Butler here at Bethel Church. What would those insinuate? Well, if you want to be like Martin Luther or Gary Butler, then you better be drinking your milk.But how do we do that exactly?Like how do Christians grow? And Peter brings us here today to one of the core values of our church, which is growth. And it's great when God grows us in in width. Right? Today, we birth a new campus and things like that that that seem to indicate a growing sphere of of of spiritual growth.But what Peter is not he's not talking about this way. He's talking about this way. How do we grow deeper or how do we mature as Christians? And will a healthy Christian want that? That's where we're going today.Our passage is First Peter two verses one through three. I'm gonna read God's word, and then we're going to get into it. Here's what Peter writes. “So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander. Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk that by it, you may grow up to salvation.”“If indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.” It's important when you read the Bible to realize that those chapter divisions and those verse divisions, those were all added, like centuries after these letters were written. When Peter was writing this, he didn't say, okay. And now for chapter two of my book. He just was writing.And so the context and what's said before often is critical to understanding what that person is saying when they're actually saying it. And so if we just look a little bit to the latter part of chapter one, we see that there really are three themes that Peter has been developing. One of them is the need for moral purity and obedience in the Christian's life. We see that in verses 14 and following. Verses 22 and following are all about us loving one another.And then we have in verses twenty-four and twenty-five, teaching about the word of God. An authentic Christianity, you can study it in history. You can find it alive anywhere in the world. It will always prioritize those three things, the need for obedience, the the need for loving one another, and the role of the word of God in the hearts and the lives of the people of God. So what Peter does now is he's been talking about these things, and he he gets practical with it.You can almost sense him, you know, thinking of the people that are listening to the letter thinking they they may not know exactly what I'm talking about. So how about if I get a little bit specific now with what it looks like or maybe what it doesn't look like to be obedient, to love one another, and to prioritize the word of God. And what he does here now beginning in chapter two is that he lists five I'm calling them toxins. Five toxins to any Christian relationship and certainly any Christian church. Notice that he begins with the word so, at least in the ESV, the the Greek word there.It's just that word often translated therefore. And when you see these little conjunctions, it's easy to kinda skip over them. Right? You haven't really looked at a conjunction since grammar class, and you didn't even like doing it then. But when you read the Bible, these little words tell you what the author is intending.And so he begins the chapter by saying, therefore or so, based on everything I've been saying here, this now is what I want you to realize. And what does he want us to realize? That when it comes to loving one another, moral obedience, and the role of the word of God, he begins now with five things that will destroy all of that, particularly the loving and the unity part. And he lists now these five toxins that any Christian should try very hard not to have a part of their lifestyle, and every church should work very hard at not having a part of being kind of the culture of the church. So let's just walk through these one at a time.He begins with malice. K? Malice. Malice is a word it's a general word for evil of any kind. But because Peter is talking about interpersonal relationships, they translate it malice.And that's a pretty good word. It's not a word that we use all the time. Do we understand what it means? To have malice towards somebody is the opposite of loving them. It is to have evil in my heart towards somebody else.And because of that, you could view the first one in the list as kind of a general statement that summarizes all of them. Right? If you don't have malice in your heart, you're probably not slandering somebody. Right? Or you're not deceiving them.So malice is kind of generally having malintent, a lack of love towards somebody else. If love is giving of yourself for their good and their joy to build them up and bless them, malice is the opposite of that. It is to view them negatively. It is to think and plot in my mind, how can I take them down? How can I hurt them?How can I make myself look better than them? So we are to take just generally malice towards other people. We're to get rid of it. We're to put it aside. I skipped actually something I wanted to mention to you.The word there for get rid of in the ESV, also translated, put away or actually, it's put away in the ESV. It's also translated get rid of. It is the word for taking off a garment. Okay? Taking off a garment.And the imagery here is with these things, you are you're like clothes, you are taking them off and you're you're putting them away. Why do I do that? In fact, maybe to ask the question, how often should you do that? How often should you take off the clothes? First service thought that was a trick question.But then I sniffed the air, and I realized they had no idea. People, you should do this daily, and some of you should begin applying that right now. Right? Daily, we want to take off the dirty clothes and to put it in the hamper and to why why do I do that? Because I want I wanna wear clean clothes.I don't wanna wear dirty clothes. It's only in a desperate situation when you need to wear something do you begin going through those dirty clothes. I'm gonna put this on again. No. I want clean clothes.That's the imagery of this. Put off these things. Why? Because I wanna put something else and something better on. K.So put off malice. Secondly, put off deceit. Now I think most of us know what deceit is. This is to deceive. It is deception.It is lying. The word in the Greek here is actually a word that fisher it's used for fishermen. I don't if you have fishermen here, but all of us understand the concept of fishing. Right? Nobody fishes with a bare hook unless they're really biting, and that's a lot of fun.Always, when you're fishing, you have a hook, but it's hiding in something else. Right? There's a worm or there's a jig or there's a surface lure that looks like a frog or whatever it is. And that fisherman is putting that thing out, and he's doing all that he can to make it look real, to make it look like it's something the fish is going to like. But then in the end, it's something that the fish doesn't like.Right? Because he sets the hook, and now the fish is on the line. The deception has done its deed. In our relationships, deceit deceit is anytime that we are less than honest with one another. Now we live in a day where lying or shading the truth is almost acceptable, right?We listen to politicians. We listen to the superstars and all of that. We always wonder, are we getting the real story, right? Because there's such a pattern of of deceit but in the church, we are freed from that. Why?Because we know the truth in Christ. Right? Now I'm in a place where I don't I don't I don't want to walk in darkness. I want to walk in the light, John says. There is this freedom from having to to be deceitful towards others and certainly to use my words in a way that would be damaging or would mislead you.That is the key. He's not talking here about when you say, oh, I think I've I've got that appointment at noon on Friday, then you look at your calendar and actually it was Saturday. It's not where you're like, oh, I've gotta go and I've gotta ask forgiveness. But it was an honest mistake. K?Here's the test. What is my motivation with my words? Am I using my words in some way to either mislead the other person or in some way to cause for them to see me in a way that's not true, to pump myself up in front of them? That would also would be deceit. We're to put these things away.Third, hypocrisy. Now, I can skip that because you never see that in church. Actually, we see it so much that we have metaphors for this. It's to be two faced or to speak with a forked tongue. Have you ever heard that phrase?What is that referring to? It's the snake. Right? And they got the the end of their their tongue. It's it can it's got little like, it's got two parts to it.So the the snake's tongue, it can wiggle here and it can wiggle here. It's a forked tongue. And there are some people that are really good at saying one thing over here and saying another thing over here. They are duplicit. Literally, two faced is what hypocrisy means.They are one way to these people, and they're another way to these people. Is this a problem amongst amongst Christians? It's a problem in my life. I think to be a Christian is to struggle with a kind of reality that I'm following Jesus, I believe in him, I'm a Christian, I'm a Christ follower, But to also struggle with the reality of my humanity. Right?And so some people's solution to that is to act one way here and to act another over here instead of embracing the gospel which says that I am a sinner saved by grace. The gospel frees us from the need to be hypocrites. Right? Somebody said the church is the only organization you have to acknowledge that you're a sinner to get in, and then you spend the rest of your time trying to act like you're not one. Right?And so we all walk around and we're all good and we're all perfect and everything's fine, and I haven't sinned since I got saved thirty years ago. No laughter on that one. Indeed, hypocrisy. There was a recent poll amongst 20 somethings in The U. S. That said that I think it let me get the number right. 86% of non Christian 20 somethings perceived Christians as being hypocritical. Apparently, 20 somethings are in a wonderful moral standing to judge the quality of the lives of others, which itself is hypocritical, of course. But I digress regarding the self defeating question there. But the point being is that many people obviously view Christians and see you driving to church this morning.Right? And they say, oh, no. They're just a bunch of hypocrites in there. There's that kind of thing. That's not what Peter's talking about.He's talking about the intentional, duplicit living that lives this way, sanctimonious, I'm a follower of Jesus, I'm righteous, but they have another face, another life. This, I think, is one of the struggles of second generation Christians who grow up in the church. Right? Because they see mom and dad at church, small group, whatever it is, and, you know, everything's cheery and happy. And I'm, you know, I'm we're all very, very, very, very committed Christians.But then they see at home, and obviously no parents are perfect. But you realize this is why second and third generation Christians often struggle and maybe even reject the faith professed by their parents because they see intimately the two facedness. I could talk more about that. I don't have time. The point that Peter is making is that the gospel frees us from having to have two faces.We're free to be who we are in Christ. We don't have to play act. We don't have to wear a mask. We can be real and authentic. I sent some authenticity in the videos for the baptism today, did you not?That was that was very encouraging. Don't be sanctimonious. Don't act high and holy but secretly live another way. Be who you are. We are who we are in Christ, right?Just be who you are. The third one is envy. Okay? Envy. Envy or jealousy.Jealousy, they're they're like twin evil sisters. They're very similar. Slight difference between envy and jealousy. Envy? Envy says, I crave what you have.Jealousy says, I crave what you have, and I don't want you to have it. Right? I'm jealous of you. Think of Joseph's brothers as an example of this with the coat of many colors. Envy leads to jealousy because the more convinced I am that I would be happy if I had what you have, the more I'm going to resent you for actually having it.Jonathan Edwards about envy. Envy may be defined to be a spirit of dissatisfaction with and opposition to the prosperity and happiness of others as compared with our own. The thing that the envious person is opposed to and dislikes is the comparative superiority of the state of honor or prosperity or happiness that another may enjoy over that which he possesses. And the point that Edwards makes here, it's not just that you have the car, the house, the reputation, or the body that I want. It's that I sense that you're happy having it, and I resent you for that.It's a key insight, I think. Love is the opposite of that, isn't it? Love doesn't envy other people for having things that I don't have. Love is self giving for the good and joy of others. And so if you have something that I don't have and you're happy about it, I can be happy with your happiness.I can join in your happiness, not resent you for being happy. Why? Because I'm for you. Love is to be for other people. And when they succeed and when they have things that God allows them to have or whatever it might be, now we can be happy with one another.This is why I think envy and jealousy in the church is a kind of apostasy because what are we what's our gig here? I mean, of all things, what are we saying? We are saying that Jesus is our savior and that our satisfaction is in him. Right? Amen?Amen. That's what we believe. But when I have envy for a fellow Christian, I am saying that Jesus is not enough. I need Jesus and that car. My friend is driving.Then I'd be happy because he looks happy driving that car. And speaking of that, I don't like the car, and I don't like his happiness in the car. God, take both of those away from him, and let him join my own misery. James talks about where divisions come from in the church. Jealousy, selfish ambition.It can divide the church. It can divide this church. Put it off, he says. Get rid of it. The last one is slander.Okay? Slander. I would suspect most of us probably, we may not be able to define it, but we know it when we hear it or we should. Slander is not speaking to people but about people. Slander is it can be in front of people.Gossip is always behind people's back. K? So you can know it's gossip if what they're saying is something that that person, if they were to hear it, would think negatively about. Or they would sense the way that it's being said is not uplifting or prayerful or encouraging. It's damaging.It's seeking to tear that person down, tear down their reputation. You can know if you're slandering if the person that you're talking about was to come up and to hear you saying it, and you'd feel the need to go. That's probably slander. Slander is the opposite of love. Love seeks the good of others.Love uses its words to build others up. That's the call that we have in Ephesians four twenty nine. “Let your words be for the edification of others, for the building of them up.” And that means, essentially, I think, people were to hear the person here's a test. If the person that you are talking about was to hear the conversation that you're having, would they think that you love them?It doesn't mean that we don't we can't talk about other people, talk about life situations. That's just life. Right? But the way that we talk about them, is it tearing them down? Is it dragging down their testimony?Or is it in a way that is intended to build them up? Here's another test. Do I need to do I feel the need to whisper about this? Like if you say, did you hear about this? And you don't even know why, but your voice comes down like this.The whisper is probably an indication that this is something in the category of either slander or gossip. I ought not be doing it. Why? Proverbs says, “Whisperers separate close friends.” Have you ever had anybody whisper against you something not true or maybe just half true?By the way, slander can be true. A lot of people take that cover. Right? You shouldn't be saying that. It's true after all.As if the fact that it's true means that I have a right to repeat it in a way that drags that person down. It can be true. That's not the issue. The issue is my motive in the sharing of this. Is it love?Am I for them? Am I seeking their good? Is my sharing of this with somebody else helpful, profitable, or am I contributing to a kind of gossipy culture? You say, well, I can't I cannot slander, but I can't keep people from slandering me. There actually is a great way to do this.It works with gossips as well. Tell them, that's slander. You need to repent. They will never do it to you again. Right?Never. Why? Because gossips and gossip and slander is essentially cowardice. We're called to speak the truth in love to one another. Ephesians four again.Okay. That's mature Christianity. When we sort of drum up our courage and in love, we go to that person, we say, hey, I got I just I need to admonish you on on something. That's like robust Christianity. Gossip y, slander, Mrs. Olsen, Little House on the Prairie type stuff. Know? Young people are like, what's Little House on the Prairie? Who's Curly? Who's Billy Graham? Everybody knows Gary Butler.I digress. What are we to do with slander? Put it off. K? Put it off.Oh, that God would increasingly either create or protect a culture in our church free from the gossipy, whispering, slanders that too often even God's people will be a part of. They say, okay. Well, that's nice, pastor Steve. How do I do that? My whole life, I've been, like, angry with people, hateful towards people.I've used words that are damaging to people. I follow Jesus. Now, but how do I how do I get over these and a thousand other things that I know I'm supposed to be striving for as a Christian? And that's this growth thing. That's verse two and following here.Peter, how do we grow? Again, notice what he says. Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk that by it you may grow up into salvation, if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good. So the picture that he draws here is of a newborn infant. And I gotta tell you, I am so glad this was not planned, but in God's good providence, I am so glad that I can teach through First Peter after having become a father myself.There were so many times and nights, early on especially, with our daughter, where this verse would come to my mind as I would see mommy and daughter doing the feeding, the late night feeding, and I would see or hear, you know, Keira Lee indicating that the time had come. Children, they they don't know any words, but they they communicate effectively, don't they? Right? That's code for feed me now. Right?Feed me now. You ain't sleeping till I get some food in my belly. So I'm excited to be able to talk about this. I think about my daughter in this verse. You know, one of the things that was fun with her too is that once she was able to somewhat communicate, we started doing the little hand signals.You know, you can teach babies little hand signals. And our signal for more was this. K? So she'd be eating, and we go, more. And then she got to the place where she could go, more.So adorable. More on that in a little bit. Let's understand let's understand though, first of all, what is the milk that he's talking about here? Long for the pure spiritual milk. Our first clue is what the milk produces, what it does.Notice the rest of the verse. That by it, you may grow up into salvation. The spiritual milk he's talking about does for the Christian something analogous to what the mommy's milk does for the infant, which he describes here as being that we grow up into our salvation. And by that, he doesn't mean that we become saved by drinking this milk. He is talking about that growth into maturity, the growth into adulthood.Like a child will grow and become stronger and taller and move into adulthood. Spiritually, we all begin our our life in Jesus immature. Right? We grow up. At least we're supposed to.And there is something about this spiritual milk that contributes to the growing, like mommy's milk contributes to the infant. That's the analogy that he's drawing. It's not a hard one, but just to make clear to be sure, are you all with me? Okay. Now when we see this, I think, in context, it all points to and in the same direction.Look at the preceding verse. “But the word of the Lord remains forever.” That's verse 25 of chapter one. He's been talking about the gospel. He's been talking about the word of God.So at the very least, we can say the milk is the gospel of Christ. But I think more accurately, is broader than that. It is the word of God. It is what we call the Bible. God's inspired revelation to us is to the Christian milk like mommy's milk is to the infant.So we can literally look at the Bible as a kind of right? It is milk to us. It nourishes us. It spiritually feeds us. It causes us to grow.Now don't let infants here throw you off because there are other passages that talk about, like Hebrews five where the writer of Hebrews says, don't be infants. You need you need meat, not milk. Or you need milk. You shouldn't eat meat is what he says there. That's a totally different illustration.K? The people that Peter writes to have been Christians, some of them for thirty years. They are mature Christians. And yet, Peter says, you need spiritual milk. You need the word of God.Well, not the only way. The primary listen, Bethel Church. The primary means to growth that God has given us is the hearing, the understanding, and the applying of God's word to our lives. Should I say that again for emphasis? There are other ways that God grows us for sure, but the primary means by which he grows us is the hearing, the understanding, and the applying of God's word.That is how we drink this spiritual milk. Here's another passage that basically says the same thing. Colossians three sixteen. Put it up here on the screen a second. “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.”Drink it. K? How? Teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your heart to God. If you said, hey, Steve.Give me one verse that describes what you hope is the experience for the members and the people of Bethel Church, I would have a hard time beating that one. Why? What does it describe? A congregation and a community where the word of God is so evident, so a part of the experience that it's dwelling richly. And the fruit of that is that it produces a kind of speaking to one another that echoes the wisdom of God's word.Our words are not slander. Our words are not malice. Our words are not intended to drag each other down. But like the word of God, they are there to build us up and to encourage us. And that we are actively doing that and employing that great means of growth with one another.The fruit of that is joy, which sounds like singing and thanksgiving. Who would want to be a part of a church like that? Where does that come from? The word of Christ dwelling in you richly. It grows up the congregation.It's the same thing that Peter says. Drink deeply from the word of God. It will grow you up as a person and as a church. Alright. Now here's the question.Where does that craving come from? Where does it come from? Because we all know the natural person does not crave knowing the word of God. Many of you probably remember times in your life where, you know, you just the the Bible and people that listen to a sermon or reading some book or whatever, they'd be like, I'd rather do anything else but that. The natural man does not desire the milk of the word of God.So where does our craving come from? Well, here's where the analogy, I think, is so helpful with infants and milk. And just to share from my own experience with this, I, as as many of you know, I I got married later in life. We had our daughter, essentially a year later. And so we were doing marriage new.Now we're having doing parenting new. And there were a lot of things about the whole thing that we were quite nervous about, as most parents, new parents are. One of the things that we were uncertain about was the whole breastfeeding thing. Right? Like what's that going to be like?And how does that all exactly work? And on the surface, you look at it and you say, people have been doing this for like thousands of years. How hard can it be? Well, I'm here to tell all you single men out there, there's way more to it than I even began to realize. And part of it was, I think, because we had a hard time with it.Okay? We had a hard time with it, at least initially. And so we got this lactation nurse from the hospital that's doing coaching. And there's books you can read and tips and all this stuff. And we're trying to do it right, of course.We're very conscientious about all this. But we we had a hard time making it all work. You know what the key to the whole thing was? It wasn't the lactation nurse. It wasn't the coaching.It wasn't any pamphlet that we read. The key to the whole thing was that Keira Lee was hungry. If she didn't have an appetite, we could have had all the coaching and all the other that we that we wanted. Something would have been desperately wrong, wouldn't it? She was hungry.God puts within babies this basic instinct to want mommy's milk. And to see that, observe how strong that desire is is part of what I'm saying here. I often at night and different times where, you know, and they're sort of clawing and they're wanting of milk. I would think of this verse, actually. Like newborn infants crave the pure spiritual milk of the word.How inclined was our daughter to go, I don't know, day, two, couple weeks without any milk? Not gonna happen. Right? In fact, one of the things you have to do as a parent is you wanna get that child on a regular feeding schedule. Right?Why? Because the regular feeding is part of what nourishes that child. If it's hit and miss, how healthy is that baby going to be? I wonder, dear friends, does the analogy apply to us as it relates to the intake of God's word in our life? What does it mean when it's hit or miss?And what does it mean when I don't care that it's hit or miss? When I can kinda go, I'll take some of it. I'll get a little bit here. I'm good for a month. Why does the writer of Hebrews say, “do not forsake the assembling of yourselves together as some are in the manner of doing?”What was he thinking about? There is something that happens in our life spiritually when the word of God is opened and read and proclaimed. And it goes beyond just kinda like sermons, but the personal experience of reading the Bible, studying God's word, memorizing it, meditating on it, being with other Christians, and talking about truth and talking about God, God grows us up. Why? Because as I'm doing that spiritually, I'm and I'm growing up into this salvation.I am maturing, and I'm growing. And if there is not a desire for that, that's one sick baby. Right? And it's also a sick Christian at best. What should our gatherings be like?If you listen if you had spiritual ears right before the service, what should it sound like as everybody's coming in? I I say that to be a little silly to bring the point home. Right? We're hungry. We're hungry.We wanna be fed. And it's not I don't do the feeding, by the way. I'm just a person. No pastor really does the feeding. It is the spirit of God through the word of God that feeds the people of God.And so who do we give glory to? We give glory to him. Right? He is the one that is nourishing us by his word. How important is the word of God in your life?Is it a kind of daily experience that you're having? And if not, why not? And if you don't care, what might that indicate? Where does this craving come from? In fact, I think just if we were to be honest, for some people, you know, drinking from God's word is like an eight year old boy having to eat his peas.Right? It's like, oh, is it almost done? I don't want to do it. I do it because I'm told I have to do it. I don't see that in this verse here.It's not it's not a kind of duty thing. He's talking about a delighting thing, isn't he? Where does delighting in God's word come from? And this is where I think verse three is the key here, and it's kind of my epiphany in studying this passage together. Notice again, what does it say?Crave the pure spiritual milk of the word that by it you may grow up to salvation. Verse three, if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good. Peter here quotes from Psalm thirty four eight, says, “Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good.” And he draws the analogy. He says, “if you have tasted that the Lord is good.”If you have tasted. So what is the connection then of the longing and the craving in verse two with the tasting in verse three? And what is this connection between these? And on this point, you all know the answer. You just don't realize it.I'm going to help you realize it. And to help you, I have a couple of pictures that I want you to look at here. I'm not sure if this is effective in this service, but it definitely will be in third service today, right before lunch. But I asked the guys to say, hey, just put up some pictures of some good looking food. And that may not be your favorite there, but we all can agree chocolate covered strawberries, we're in good stead there.Right? So maybe we'll just talk about chocolate covered strawberries a second. What is the experience of eating a chocolate covered strawberry like? Let's just walk through it a second. First of all, normally it's not sitting there in the fridge.You come upon it, somebody surprises you with it. You go to some kind of a gathering and they have chocolate covered strawberries and all of a sudden you're like, awesome. Right? You begin to think about the chocolate covered strawberry. There's a sense of anticipation about it.Right? And then the time comes where you actually get to eat it. And so you lift it up by the little green things on the end. I don't even know what they're called because you want to get as much strawberry and chocolate as possible. And you bring that fruit, that magical molecular combination of some chocolate bean from South America and a homegrown strawberry.Somehow God intended South American chocolate beans to magically, molecularly combine with fruit grown in Indiana. You bring it to your mouth, and you're like, this is going be fantastic. And you take a bite. Right? And that flavor comes into your mouth.And oh, how good it is. You sigh. You chew, which is the way that we kind of combine the flavors. And those two go together fantastic. You chew, you chew, you chew some more until every molecule of savor has been enjoyed by your taste buds.And then we all do what? Swallow. Yes, we swallow. Some of you don't. I've seen you eat.And then what is the next thing that happens? There is desire for more. That desire is verse two. The tasting is verse three. And the connection is this.When I have tasted of the goodness and the beauty and the glory and the mercy and the kindness and the love of God in Christ, when I have tasted of that in salvation, there is in my heart a desire for more, more if I have genuinely tasted it. In fact, we can say this. When I taste something, the better it is, the more I want more of it. So that growing up for me, when I when my mom made liver, which to this day is my all time least favorite food, I'd rather lick Broadway than eat liver. K?Some of you agree. When I taste liver, there is no desire that arises in my heart. But a chocolate covered strawberry or a blueberry pie or a number of other things that I'll not talk about because I don't have time. Instinctively, there is more. I don't even think about it.I want more. I want you to see the word if there. He doesn't say because you have tasted that the Lord is good. He says, if you have tasted. And I think Peter intends that if to be a kind of arrow into the conscience of the professing Christian who thinks nothing of going weeks without the word of God.What do we say about a child that drinks mommy's milk but then doesn't want anymore? That's a very unhealthy child. That that child is in serious trouble. What do you say about a Christian who has tasted of the goodness of God, which is the gospel? And that's all that they want.There's no craving or desire for anymore. I say that not to unnecessarily put any kind of a guilt on anybody here, but to just to honestly ask the question. In a day and even in our church where I just see people sort of haphazard about the hearing, the understanding, and the applying of God's word and yet resting somehow very comfortably with the fact, I must be a Christian. Why? Because I prayed this prayer.I made this profession. Okay. But in that, did you taste the goodness of God? Did you taste the love of God? Did you taste the forgiveness of God?Because if you have tasted of those spiritual delicacies, you will want more. So this is both an encouragement and an admonition to the growing active Christian who loves the milk of the word of God and a challenge to the marginal Christian about what healthy Christianity looks like. And I wanna ask you, my dear friend I'm looking around this room here. But can I hold that up like a mirror to you and for you to look into your heart of desires and to honestly ask the question, do I want more? And if the answer to that is yes, here's a great way forward, to do all that you can to drink in the word of God, to be a person of the word.And this goes into being in the word daily and having opportunity to talk about spiritual truth with other Christians, to milk the sermon for all that you can, Christian literature, etcetera, etcetera. It's not a sermon about those things. It is an encouragement towards those things. But it is also a challenge asking the question, do you crave it? And if there is no craving, what does it say about the tasting?Have you tasted of the goodness of God? So look into your heart, my dear friend. Ask yourself, is there a desire for more? And might a lack of desire call you to some kind of either repentance or maybe perhaps like one of our baptizees who shared that she had kinda tried out Christianity, but now my sense of it, I don't know her story personally, but now there's been a resurgence and a desire to step forward in a new chapter. And maybe that's what God would have for you.And wouldn't that be a wonderful thing? Taste and see that the Lord is good. He is good. He's tasty. He's succulent.He satisfies. Let's pursue that. Amen? Amen. Amen.I'm gonna ask you to stand with me for prayer. Heavenly Father, God, thank you for this passage and all that it teaches us. I pray that we would be a church where the word of Christ is dwelling richly amongst us. Lord, create in us a desire for more, that we might know you more, that we might love you more, that we might serve you more, that we might grow up as Christians into maturity. We thank you and pray this in Jesus' name.Amen.* This transcript was generated using AI transcription technology and reviewed for accuracy but may contain errors. Please refer to the original audio for precise wording..

Steve DeWitt Craving Spiritual Milk and Spiritual Growth - Part A Study Guide for Spiritual Exiles, 1 Peter 2:1-3 Scripture Reference: 1 Peter 2:1-3 Visit the series page: Exiles: A study in 1 Peter Donate to Support The Journey Sermon Transcript for Spiritual Exiles, 1 Peter 2:1-3 Sermon Series: Spiritual ExilesMessage: Craving Spiritual Milk and Spiritual Growth Airdate: 9/22-9/23/26Programs: 2362 & 2363We continue our series in First Peter today, and you can open your Bibles if you have one with you. And we get into the second chapter of this letter. And by way of introduction, you know, for about twenty years, the milk industry sponsored a series of advertisements. These were billboards, magazines, TV advertisements. Some of you old timers might remember this.It was called either got milk or milk, it does the body good. Right? And so they one of the strategies they incorporated with this is that they would get famous people and they would have the milk mustache, right? And they would put them up there. And I just dug up a couple here to remind you maybe of how they did this.You may remember him. You might remember him. And they did a lot of this kind of thing. And the idea was that, hey, if these famous people drink milk, look at how successful they've been and seemingly healthy they are, then therefore, who wouldn't wanna be healthy like them? So, therefore, drink, you know, drink milk.Well, here's a question. What about spiritually? Is the same thing true spiritually? Will a normal, healthy Christian have a desire to grow? And maybe what we need in this, I got thinking, was a slightly different ad campaign for Christians.And so here, I'll give you an example of kind of maybe what I was thinking possibly might work. This one, I think this will this will next one will really pastor Gary Butler here at Bethel Church. What would those insinuate? Well, if you want to be like Martin Luther or Gary Butler, then you better be drinking your milk.But how do we do that exactly?Like how do Christians grow? And Peter brings us here today to one of the core values of our church, which is growth. And it's great when God grows us in in width. Right? Today, we birth a new campus and things like that that that seem to indicate a growing sphere of of of spiritual growth.But what Peter is not he's not talking about this way. He's talking about this way. How do we grow deeper or how do we mature as Christians? And will a healthy Christian want that? That's where we're going today.Our passage is First Peter two verses one through three. I'm gonna read God's word, and then we're going to get into it. Here's what Peter writes. “So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander. Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk that by it, you may grow up to salvation.”“If indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.” It's important when you read the Bible to realize that those chapter divisions and those verse divisions, those were all added, like centuries after these letters were written. When Peter was writing this, he didn't say, okay. And now for chapter two of my book. He just was writing.And so the context and what's said before often is critical to understanding what that person is saying when they're actually saying it. And so if we just look a little bit to the latter part of chapter one, we see that there really are three themes that Peter has been developing. One of them is the need for moral purity and obedience in the Christian's life. We see that in verses 14 and following. Verses 22 and following are all about us loving one another.And then we have in verses twenty-four and twenty-five, teaching about the word of God. An authentic Christianity, you can study it in history. You can find it alive anywhere in the world. It will always prioritize those three things, the need for obedience, the the need for loving one another, and the role of the word of God in the hearts and the lives of the people of God. So what Peter does now is he's been talking about these things, and he he gets practical with it.You can almost sense him, you know, thinking of the people that are listening to the letter thinking they they may not know exactly what I'm talking about. So how about if I get a little bit specific now with what it looks like or maybe what it doesn't look like to be obedient, to love one another, and to prioritize the word of God. And what he does here now beginning in chapter two is that he lists five I'm calling them toxins. Five toxins to any Christian relationship and certainly any Christian church. Notice that he begins with the word so, at least in the ESV, the the Greek word there.It's just that word often translated therefore. And when you see these little conjunctions, it's easy to kinda skip over them. Right? You haven't really looked at a conjunction since grammar class, and you didn't even like doing it then. But when you read the Bible, these little words tell you what the author is intending.And so he begins the chapter by saying, therefore or so, based on everything I've been saying here, this now is what I want you to realize. And what does he want us to realize? That when it comes to loving one another, moral obedience, and the role of the word of God, he begins now with five things that will destroy all of that, particularly the loving and the unity part. And he lists now these five toxins that any Christian should try very hard not to have a part of their lifestyle, and every church should work very hard at not having a part of being kind of the culture of the church. So let's just walk through these one at a time.He begins with malice. K? Malice. Malice is a word it's a general word for evil of any kind. But because Peter is talking about interpersonal relationships, they translate it malice.And that's a pretty good word. It's not a word that we use all the time. Do we understand what it means? To have malice towards somebody is the opposite of loving them. It is to have evil in my heart towards somebody else.And because of that, you could view the first one in the list as kind of a general statement that summarizes all of them. Right? If you don't have malice in your heart, you're probably not slandering somebody. Right? Or you're not deceiving them.So malice is kind of generally having malintent, a lack of love towards somebody else. If love is giving of yourself for their good and their joy to build them up and bless them, malice is the opposite of that. It is to view them negatively. It is to think and plot in my mind, how can I take them down? How can I hurt them?How can I make myself look better than them? So we are to take just generally malice towards other people. We're to get rid of it. We're to put it aside. I skipped actually something I wanted to mention to you.The word there for get rid of in the ESV, also translated, put away or actually, it's put away in the ESV. It's also translated get rid of. It is the word for taking off a garment. Okay? Taking off a garment.And the imagery here is with these things, you are you're like clothes, you are taking them off and you're you're putting them away. Why do I do that? In fact, maybe to ask the question, how often should you do that? How often should you take off the clothes? First service thought that was a trick question.But then I sniffed the air, and I realized they had no idea. People, you should do this daily, and some of you should begin applying that right now. Right? Daily, we want to take off the dirty clothes and to put it in the hamper and to why why do I do that? Because I want I wanna wear clean clothes.I don't wanna wear dirty clothes. It's only in a desperate situation when you need to wear something do you begin going through those dirty clothes. I'm gonna put this on again. No. I want clean clothes.That's the imagery of this. Put off these things. Why? Because I wanna put something else and something better on. K.So put off malice. Secondly, put off deceit. Now I think most of us know what deceit is. This is to deceive. It is deception.It is lying. The word in the Greek here is actually a word that fisher it's used for fishermen. I don't if you have fishermen here, but all of us understand the concept of fishing. Right? Nobody fishes with a bare hook unless they're really biting, and that's a lot of fun.Always, when you're fishing, you have a hook, but it's hiding in something else. Right? There's a worm or there's a jig or there's a surface lure that looks like a frog or whatever it is. And that fisherman is putting that thing out, and he's doing all that he can to make it look real, to make it look like it's something the fish is going to like. But then in the end, it's something that the fish doesn't like.Right? Because he sets the hook, and now the fish is on the line. The deception has done its deed. In our relationships, deceit deceit is anytime that we are less than honest with one another. Now we live in a day where lying or shading the truth is almost acceptable, right?We listen to politicians. We listen to the superstars and all of that. We always wonder, are we getting the real story, right? Because there's such a pattern of of deceit but in the church, we are freed from that. Why?Because we know the truth in Christ. Right? Now I'm in a place where I don't I don't I don't want to walk in darkness. I want to walk in the light, John says. There is this freedom from having to to be deceitful towards others and certainly to use my words in a way that would be damaging or would mislead you.That is the key. He's not talking here about when you say, oh, I think I've I've got that appointment at noon on Friday, then you look at your calendar and actually it was Saturday. It's not where you're like, oh, I've gotta go and I've gotta ask forgiveness. But it was an honest mistake. K?Here's the test. What is my motivation with my words? Am I using my words in some way to either mislead the other person or in some way to cause for them to see me in a way that's not true, to pump myself up in front of them? That would also would be deceit. We're to put these things away.Third, hypocrisy. Now, I can skip that because you never see that in church. Actually, we see it so much that we have metaphors for this. It's to be two faced or to speak with a forked tongue. Have you ever heard that phrase?What is that referring to? It's the snake. Right? And they got the the end of their their tongue. It's it can it's got little like, it's got two parts to it.So the the snake's tongue, it can wiggle here and it can wiggle here. It's a forked tongue. And there are some people that are really good at saying one thing over here and saying another thing over here. They are duplicit. Literally, two faced is what hypocrisy means.They are one way to these people, and they're another way to these people. Is this a problem amongst amongst Christians? It's a problem in my life. I think to be a Christian is to struggle with a kind of reality that I'm following Jesus, I believe in him, I'm a Christian, I'm a Christ follower, But to also struggle with the reality of my humanity. Right?And so some people's solution to that is to act one way here and to act another over here instead of embracing the gospel which says that I am a sinner saved by grace. The gospel frees us from the need to be hypocrites. Right? Somebody said the church is the only organization you have to acknowledge that you're a sinner to get in, and then you spend the rest of your time trying to act like you're not one. Right?And so we all walk around and we're all good and we're all perfect and everything's fine, and I haven't sinned since I got saved thirty years ago. No laughter on that one. Indeed, hypocrisy. There was a recent poll amongst 20 somethings in The U. S. That said that I think it let me get the number right. 86% of non Christian 20 somethings perceived Christians as being hypocritical. Apparently, 20 somethings are in a wonderful moral standing to judge the quality of the lives of others, which itself is hypocritical, of course. But I digress regarding the self defeating question there. But the point being is that many people obviously view Christians and see you driving to church this morning.Right? And they say, oh, no. They're just a bunch of hypocrites in there. There's that kind of thing. That's not what Peter's talking about.He's talking about the intentional, duplicit living that lives this way, sanctimonious, I'm a follower of Jesus, I'm righteous, but they have another face, another life. This, I think, is one of the struggles of second generation Christians who grow up in the church. Right? Because they see mom and dad at church, small group, whatever it is, and, you know, everything's cheery and happy. And I'm, you know, I'm we're all very, very, very, very committed Christians.But then they see at home, and obviously no parents are perfect. But you realize this is why second and third generation Christians often struggle and maybe even reject the faith professed by their parents because they see intimately the two facedness. I could talk more about that. I don't have time. The point that Peter is making is that the gospel frees us from having to have two faces.We're free to be who we are in Christ. We don't have to play act. We don't have to wear a mask. We can be real and authentic. I sent some authenticity in the videos for the baptism today, did you not?That was that was very encouraging. Don't be sanctimonious. Don't act high and holy but secretly live another way. Be who you are. We are who we are in Christ, right?Just be who you are. The third one is envy. Okay? Envy. Envy or jealousy.Jealousy, they're they're like twin evil sisters. They're very similar. Slight difference between envy and jealousy. Envy? Envy says, I crave what you have.Jealousy says, I crave what you have, and I don't want you to have it. Right? I'm jealous of you. Think of Joseph's brothers as an example of this with the coat of many colors. Envy leads to jealousy because the more convinced I am that I would be happy if I had what you have, the more I'm going to resent you for actually having it.Jonathan Edwards about envy. Envy may be defined to be a spirit of dissatisfaction with and opposition to the prosperity and happiness of others as compared with our own. The thing that the envious person is opposed to and dislikes is the comparative superiority of the state of honor or prosperity or happiness that another may enjoy over that which he possesses. And the point that Edwards makes here, it's not just that you have the car, the house, the reputation, or the body that I want. It's that I sense that you're happy having it, and I resent you for that.It's a key insight, I think. Love is the opposite of that, isn't it? Love doesn't envy other people for having things that I don't have. Love is self giving for the good and joy of others. And so if you have something that I don't have and you're happy about it, I can be happy with your happiness.I can join in your happiness, not resent you for being happy. Why? Because I'm for you. Love is to be for other people. And when they succeed and when they have things that God allows them to have or whatever it might be, now we can be happy with one another.This is why I think envy and jealousy in the church is a kind of apostasy because what are we what's our gig here? I mean, of all things, what are we saying? We are saying that Jesus is our savior and that our satisfaction is in him. Right? Amen?Amen. That's what we believe. But when I have envy for a fellow Christian, I am saying that Jesus is not enough. I need Jesus and that car. My friend is driving.Then I'd be happy because he looks happy driving that car. And speaking of that, I don't like the car, and I don't like his happiness in the car. God, take both of those away from him, and let him join my own misery. James talks about where divisions come from in the church. Jealousy, selfish ambition.It can divide the church. It can divide this church. Put it off, he says. Get rid of it. The last one is slander.Okay? Slander. I would suspect most of us probably, we may not be able to define it, but we know it when we hear it or we should. Slander is not speaking to people but about people. Slander is it can be in front of people.Gossip is always behind people's back. K? So you can know it's gossip if what they're saying is something that that person, if they were to hear it, would think negatively about. Or they would sense the way that it's being said is not uplifting or prayerful or encouraging. It's damaging.It's seeking to tear that person down, tear down their reputation. You can know if you're slandering if the person that you're talking about was to come up and to hear you saying it, and you'd feel the need to go. That's probably slander. Slander is the opposite of love. Love seeks the good of others.Love uses its words to build others up. That's the call that we have in Ephesians four twenty nine. “Let your words be for the edification of others, for the building of them up.” And that means, essentially, I think, people were to hear the person here's a test. If the person that you are talking about was to hear the conversation that you're having, would they think that you love them?It doesn't mean that we don't we can't talk about other people, talk about life situations. That's just life. Right? But the way that we talk about them, is it tearing them down? Is it dragging down their testimony?Or is it in a way that is intended to build them up? Here's another test. Do I need to do I feel the need to whisper about this? Like if you say, did you hear about this? And you don't even know why, but your voice comes down like this.The whisper is probably an indication that this is something in the category of either slander or gossip. I ought not be doing it. Why? Proverbs says, “Whisperers separate close friends.” Have you ever had anybody whisper against you something not true or maybe just half true?By the way, slander can be true. A lot of people take that cover. Right? You shouldn't be saying that. It's true after all.As if the fact that it's true means that I have a right to repeat it in a way that drags that person down. It can be true. That's not the issue. The issue is my motive in the sharing of this. Is it love?Am I for them? Am I seeking their good? Is my sharing of this with somebody else helpful, profitable, or am I contributing to a kind of gossipy culture? You say, well, I can't I cannot slander, but I can't keep people from slandering me. There actually is a great way to do this.It works with gossips as well. Tell them, that's slander. You need to repent. They will never do it to you again. Right?Never. Why? Because gossips and gossip and slander is essentially cowardice. We're called to speak the truth in love to one another. Ephesians four again.Okay. That's mature Christianity. When we sort of drum up our courage and in love, we go to that person, we say, hey, I got I just I need to admonish you on on something. That's like robust Christianity. Gossip y, slander, Mrs. Olsen, Little House on the Prairie type stuff. Know? Young people are like, what's Little House on the Prairie? Who's Curly? Who's Billy Graham? Everybody knows Gary Butler.I digress. What are we to do with slander? Put it off. K? Put it off.Oh, that God would increasingly either create or protect a culture in our church free from the gossipy, whispering, slanders that too often even God's people will be a part of. They say, okay. Well, that's nice, pastor Steve. How do I do that? My whole life, I've been, like, angry with people, hateful towards people.I've used words that are damaging to people. I follow Jesus. Now, but how do I how do I get over these and a thousand other things that I know I'm supposed to be striving for as a Christian? And that's this growth thing. That's verse two and following here.Peter, how do we grow? Again, notice what he says. Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk that by it you may grow up into salvation, if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good. So the picture that he draws here is of a newborn infant. And I gotta tell you, I am so glad this was not planned, but in God's good providence, I am so glad that I can teach through First Peter after having become a father myself.There were so many times and nights, early on especially, with our daughter, where this verse would come to my mind as I would see mommy and daughter doing the feeding, the late night feeding, and I would see or hear, you know, Keira Lee indicating that the time had come. Children, they they don't know any words, but they they communicate effectively, don't they? Right? That's code for feed me now. Right?Feed me now. You ain't sleeping till I get some food in my belly. So I'm excited to be able to talk about this. I think about my daughter in this verse. You know, one of the things that was fun with her too is that once she was able to somewhat communicate, we started doing the little hand signals.You know, you can teach babies little hand signals. And our signal for more was this. K? So she'd be eating, and we go, more. And then she got to the place where she could go, more.So adorable. More on that in a little bit. Let's understand let's understand though, first of all, what is the milk that he's talking about here? Long for the pure spiritual milk. Our first clue is what the milk produces, what it does.Notice the rest of the verse. That by it, you may grow up into salvation. The spiritual milk he's talking about does for the Christian something analogous to what the mommy's milk does for the infant, which he describes here as being that we grow up into our salvation. And by that, he doesn't mean that we become saved by drinking this milk. He is talking about that growth into maturity, the growth into adulthood.Like a child will grow and become stronger and taller and move into adulthood. Spiritually, we all begin our our life in Jesus immature. Right? We grow up. At least we're supposed to.And there is something about this spiritual milk that contributes to the growing, like mommy's milk contributes to the infant. That's the analogy that he's drawing. It's not a hard one, but just to make clear to be sure, are you all with me? Okay. Now when we see this, I think, in context, it all points to and in the same direction.Look at the preceding verse. “But the word of the Lord remains forever.” That's verse 25 of chapter one. He's been talking about the gospel. He's been talking about the word of God.So at the very least, we can say the milk is the gospel of Christ. But I think more accurately, is broader than that. It is the word of God. It is what we call the Bible. God's inspired revelation to us is to the Christian milk like mommy's milk is to the infant.So we can literally look at the Bible as a kind of right? It is milk to us. It nourishes us. It spiritually feeds us. It causes us to grow.Now don't let infants here throw you off because there are other passages that talk about, like Hebrews five where the writer of Hebrews says, don't be infants. You need you need meat, not milk. Or you need milk. You shouldn't eat meat is what he says there. That's a totally different illustration.K? The people that Peter writes to have been Christians, some of them for thirty years. They are mature Christians. And yet, Peter says, you need spiritual milk. You need the word of God.Well, not the only way. The primary listen, Bethel Church. The primary means to growth that God has given us is the hearing, the understanding, and the applying of God's word to our lives. Should I say that again for emphasis? There are other ways that God grows us for sure, but the primary means by which he grows us is the hearing, the understanding, and the applying of God's word.That is how we drink this spiritual milk. Here's another passage that basically says the same thing. Colossians three sixteen. Put it up here on the screen a second. “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.”Drink it. K? How? Teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your heart to God. If you said, hey, Steve.Give me one verse that describes what you hope is the experience for the members and the people of Bethel Church, I would have a hard time beating that one. Why? What does it describe? A congregation and a community where the word of God is so evident, so a part of the experience that it's dwelling richly. And the fruit of that is that it produces a kind of speaking to one another that echoes the wisdom of God's word.Our words are not slander. Our words are not malice. Our words are not intended to drag each other down. But like the word of God, they are there to build us up and to encourage us. And that we are actively doing that and employing that great means of growth with one another.The fruit of that is joy, which sounds like singing and thanksgiving. Who would want to be a part of a church like that? Where does that come from? The word of Christ dwelling in you richly. It grows up the congregation.It's the same thing that Peter says. Drink deeply from the word of God. It will grow you up as a person and as a church. Alright. Now here's the question.Where does that craving come from? Where does it come from? Because we all know the natural person does not crave knowing the word of God. Many of you probably remember times in your life where, you know, you just the the Bible and people that listen to a sermon or reading some book or whatever, they'd be like, I'd rather do anything else but that. The natural man does not desire the milk of the word of God.So where does our craving come from? Well, here's where the analogy, I think, is so helpful with infants and milk. And just to share from my own experience with this, I, as as many of you know, I I got married later in life. We had our daughter, essentially a year later. And so we were doing marriage new.Now we're having doing parenting new. And there were a lot of things about the whole thing that we were quite nervous about, as most parents, new parents are. One of the things that we were uncertain about was the whole breastfeeding thing. Right? Like what's that going to be like?And how does that all exactly work? And on the surface, you look at it and you say, people have been doing this for like thousands of years. How hard can it be? Well, I'm here to tell all you single men out there, there's way more to it than I even began to realize. And part of it was, I think, because we had a hard time with it.Okay? We had a hard time with it, at least initially. And so we got this lactation nurse from the hospital that's doing coaching. And there's books you can read and tips and all this stuff. And we're trying to do it right, of course.We're very conscientious about all this. But we we had a hard time making it all work. You know what the key to the whole thing was? It wasn't the lactation nurse. It wasn't the coaching.It wasn't any pamphlet that we read. The key to the whole thing was that Keira Lee was hungry. If she didn't have an appetite, we could have had all the coaching and all the other that we that we wanted. Something would have been desperately wrong, wouldn't it? She was hungry.God puts within babies this basic instinct to want mommy's milk. And to see that, observe how strong that desire is is part of what I'm saying here. I often at night and different times where, you know, and they're sort of clawing and they're wanting of milk. I would think of this verse, actually. Like newborn infants crave the pure spiritual milk of the word.How inclined was our daughter to go, I don't know, day, two, couple weeks without any milk? Not gonna happen. Right? In fact, one of the things you have to do as a parent is you wanna get that child on a regular feeding schedule. Right?Why? Because the regular feeding is part of what nourishes that child. If it's hit and miss, how healthy is that baby going to be? I wonder, dear friends, does the analogy apply to us as it relates to the intake of God's word in our life? What does it mean when it's hit or miss?And what does it mean when I don't care that it's hit or miss? When I can kinda go, I'll take some of it. I'll get a little bit here. I'm good for a month. Why does the writer of Hebrews say, “do not forsake the assembling of yourselves together as some are in the manner of doing?”What was he thinking about? There is something that happens in our life spiritually when the word of God is opened and read and proclaimed. And it goes beyond just kinda like sermons, but the personal experience of reading the Bible, studying God's word, memorizing it, meditating on it, being with other Christians, and talking about truth and talking about God, God grows us up. Why? Because as I'm doing that spiritually, I'm and I'm growing up into this salvation.I am maturing, and I'm growing. And if there is not a desire for that, that's one sick baby. Right? And it's also a sick Christian at best. What should our gatherings be like?If you listen if you had spiritual ears right before the service, what should it sound like as everybody's coming in? I I say that to be a little silly to bring the point home. Right? We're hungry. We're hungry.We wanna be fed. And it's not I don't do the feeding, by the way. I'm just a person. No pastor really does the feeding. It is the spirit of God through the word of God that feeds the people of God.And so who do we give glory to? We give glory to him. Right? He is the one that is nourishing us by his word. How important is the word of God in your life?Is it a kind of daily experience that you're having? And if not, why not? And if you don't care, what might that indicate? Where does this craving come from? In fact, I think just if we were to be honest, for some people, you know, drinking from God's word is like an eight year old boy having to eat his peas.Right? It's like, oh, is it almost done? I don't want to do it. I do it because I'm told I have to do it. I don't see that in this verse here.It's not it's not a kind of duty thing. He's talking about a delighting thing, isn't he? Where does delighting in God's word come from? And this is where I think verse three is the key here, and it's kind of my epiphany in studying this passage together. Notice again, what does it say?Crave the pure spiritual milk of the word that by it you may grow up to salvation. Verse three, if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good. Peter here quotes from Psalm thirty four eight, says, “Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good.” And he draws the analogy. He says, “if you have tasted that the Lord is good.”If you have tasted. So what is the connection then of the longing and the craving in verse two with the tasting in verse three? And what is this connection between these? And on this point, you all know the answer. You just don't realize it.I'm going to help you realize it. And to help you, I have a couple of pictures that I want you to look at here. I'm not sure if this is effective in this service, but it definitely will be in third service today, right before lunch. But I asked the guys to say, hey, just put up some pictures of some good looking food. And that may not be your favorite there, but we all can agree chocolate covered strawberries, we're in good stead there.Right? So maybe we'll just talk about chocolate covered strawberries a second. What is the experience of eating a chocolate covered strawberry like? Let's just walk through it a second. First of all, normally it's not sitting there in the fridge.You come upon it, somebody surprises you with it. You go to some kind of a gathering and they have chocolate covered strawberries and all of a sudden you're like, awesome. Right? You begin to think about the chocolate covered strawberry. There's a sense of anticipation about it.Right? And then the time comes where you actually get to eat it. And so you lift it up by the little green things on the end. I don't even know what they're called because you want to get as much strawberry and chocolate as possible. And you bring that fruit, that magical molecular combination of some chocolate bean from South America and a homegrown strawberry.Somehow God intended South American chocolate beans to magically, molecularly combine with fruit grown in Indiana. You bring it to your mouth, and you're like, this is going be fantastic. And you take a bite. Right? And that flavor comes into your mouth.And oh, how good it is. You sigh. You chew, which is the way that we kind of combine the flavors. And those two go together fantastic. You chew, you chew, you chew some more until every molecule of savor has been enjoyed by your taste buds.And then we all do what? Swallow. Yes, we swallow. Some of you don't. I've seen you eat.And then what is the next thing that happens? There is desire for more. That desire is verse two. The tasting is verse three. And the connection is this.When I have tasted of the goodness and the beauty and the glory and the mercy and the kindness and the love of God in Christ, when I have tasted of that in salvation, there is in my heart a desire for more, more if I have genuinely tasted it. In fact, we can say this. When I taste something, the better it is, the more I want more of it. So that growing up for me, when I when my mom made liver, which to this day is my all time least favorite food, I'd rather lick Broadway than eat liver. K?Some of you agree. When I taste liver, there is no desire that arises in my heart. But a chocolate covered strawberry or a blueberry pie or a number of other things that I'll not talk about because I don't have time. Instinctively, there is more. I don't even think about it.I want more. I want you to see the word if there. He doesn't say because you have tasted that the Lord is good. He says, if you have tasted. And I think Peter intends that if to be a kind of arrow into the conscience of the professing Christian who thinks nothing of going weeks without the word of God.What do we say about a child that drinks mommy's milk but then doesn't want anymore? That's a very unhealthy child. That that child is in serious trouble. What do you say about a Christian who has tasted of the goodness of God, which is the gospel? And that's all that they want.There's no craving or desire for anymore. I say that not to unnecessarily put any kind of a guilt on anybody here, but to just to honestly ask the question. In a day and even in our church where I just see people sort of haphazard about the hearing, the understanding, and the applying of God's word and yet resting somehow very comfortably with the fact, I must be a Christian. Why? Because I prayed this prayer.I made this profession. Okay. But in that, did you taste the goodness of God? Did you taste the love of God? Did you taste the forgiveness of God?Because if you have tasted of those spiritual delicacies, you will want more. So this is both an encouragement and an admonition to the growing active Christian who loves the milk of the word of God and a challenge to the marginal Christian about what healthy Christianity looks like. And I wanna ask you, my dear friend I'm looking around this room here. But can I hold that up like a mirror to you and for you to look into your heart of desires and to honestly ask the question, do I want more? And if the answer to that is yes, here's a great way forward, to do all that you can to drink in the word of God, to be a person of the word.And this goes into being in the word daily and having opportunity to talk about spiritual truth with other Christians, to milk the sermon for all that you can, Christian literature, etcetera, etcetera. It's not a sermon about those things. It is an encouragement towards those things. But it is also a challenge asking the question, do you crave it? And if there is no craving, what does it say about the tasting?Have you tasted of the goodness of God? So look into your heart, my dear friend. Ask yourself, is there a desire for more? And might a lack of desire call you to some kind of either repentance or maybe perhaps like one of our baptizees who shared that she had kinda tried out Christianity, but now my sense of it, I don't know her story personally, but now there's been a resurgence and a desire to step forward in a new chapter. And maybe that's what God would have for you.And wouldn't that be a wonderful thing? Taste and see that the Lord is good. He is good. He's tasty. He's succulent.He satisfies. Let's pursue that. Amen? Amen. Amen.I'm gonna ask you to stand with me for prayer. Heavenly Father, God, thank you for this passage and all that it teaches us. I pray that we would be a church where the word of Christ is dwelling richly amongst us. Lord, create in us a desire for more, that we might know you more, that we might love you more, that we might serve you more, that we might grow up as Christians into maturity. We thank you and pray this in Jesus' name.Amen.* This transcript was generated using AI transcription technology and reviewed for accuracy but may contain errors. Please refer to the original audio for precise wording..

Steve DeWitt The Joy of Opposition - Part B Study Guide for Spiritual Exiles, Nehemiah 4:1-23 Scripture Reference: Nehemiah 4:1-23 Visit the series page: Exiles: A study in 1 Peter Donate to Support The Journey Sermon Transcript for Spiritual Exiles, Nehemiah 4:1-23 Sermon Series: Spiritual ExilesMessage: The Joy of OppositionAirdate: 9/18-9/21/26Programs: 2360 and 2361Morning, Bethel Church, and this is our challenging weekend with Daylight Savings. I said, or I just was thinking about our first service people today, that those are the really early risers to show up at the 815 on the spring ahead weekend of Daylight Savings. You're sort of more the hoi polloi, the sort of the normal folks, and we'll see who comes to the next service. I stand before you as a tired man. My daughter was up throughout most of the night, and I'm running on fumes today. So I say that to you in some way to mitigate my guilt for something stupid that I might say, because my eyes are like rolling in my head, I feel like today. So we'll get through the morning and go home and take a really good nap. And you parents who've been there, you know how I'm feeling today. I do want to greet our Cedar Lake campus this morning, and thank you so much for joining with us. Our Hobart Portage campus, which is not in this service with us, but are next week celebrating their... grand opening. I can say our grand opening. We're just one church. Really excited about that.So if you happen to just remember that in prayer, we've got a lot of work that's gone into kind of kicking that off, and I've seen the plans, and it's really going to be a great weekend next weekend over there. And how often do you, you know, grand open a new campus? You know, like, well, we've done it twice in the last six months, but we don't know how many more ever in the future, so we want to celebrate that, and we're going to next week. Today, we're going to stay in the stream of our teaching in 1 Peter without being exactly in 1 Peter. We've seen in 1 Peter this focus on trials. That trials are meant by God to reveal and to refine us. We look at them often as being bad things. God looks at them as being good things because of the effect that they have. And 1 Peter is written to people that are in exile, that are experiencing opposition.They're experiencing... ostracization, and Peter encourages them to see even those things as being part of God's refining fire, that work that he works in us, and to embrace them, not as being bad things, but in the end ultimately good things. So today I want to take a little break from 1 Peter and to look at one particular kind of trial that we so often run into as individuals and as a church. And that is just the trials of opposition, the trials of opposition. And my title is The Joy of Opposition, which sounds oxymoronic, right? Who looks at opposition and goes, yay, we don't naturally do that. There is from Scripture and from the teaching of Scripture every reason for us to even look at opposition as being something that we can rejoice in. James, of course, says, “count it all joy when you fall into various trials and temptations”, and that includes the trials of opposition. We all face opposition, don't we? Maybe as I say that, names come to mind. Perhaps that person is sitting next to you today. and try not to be poking them throughout the sermon, especially if you're married.But we all face opposition, and we have to know how to respond to it if we're ever going to make it through these trials that God brings our way and these people that God puts in our path. How should we respond to opposition? And Nehemiah is just a fantastic... book and a fantastic story about a man who suffered great opposition and who not only endured it, but who goes down in history as a great example of somebody going through it in a way that honors the Lord. And so... is that Nehemiah hears that the walls of Jerusalem were broken down and remained in that condition. He was serving King Artaxerxes in Susa, the capital of Persia, and he hears that Jerusalem is still in ruins, the wall is still in ruins, and he has a burden for that. He offers a prayer, and God blesses that prayer, and King Artaxerxes says, Nehemiah, you can go, and I'm going to... the thing. I'm going to provide what you need for this thing. I'm given a letter that ought to get you all the way there. And he was the most powerful man in the world at the time. And so that was like a huge endorsement.And so Nehemiah, he goes to Jerusalem and he inspects the walls and he gathers the Jews and he says, listen, my friends, let's rise and let us rebuild this wall. And Nehemiah is this amazing story of how a people that, you know, they weren't naturally masons and builders, but they come together and they accomplish this amazing feat of rebuilding the walls of the city of Jerusalem. And in the midst of all of this success, there is chapter 4 where there is trouble. There's trouble. Even in the midst of a great success, there's trouble. And it seems to me, my observation would be, and even my own experience, that whenever God is really doing something, whether that be in somebody's life, a new Christian, or maybe some victories that you've had spiritually in your life, or maybe it's your small group, or even a church or a mission work, wherever God is really moving, so often when there is a lot of momentum, something will happen or somebody will come or there'll be some sort of criticism that steps into that moment and can so easily derail the entire thing. And that's what Nehemiah faced.And I'd like to begin in our little study here of chapter four by looking at the strategies that the opponents of Nehemiah employed against him. So let me introduce you to the bad guys, okay? These are the bad guys. And their names are notorious, Sanballat, Tobiah, and Geshem. These were three kings of small kingdoms that surrounded Jerusalem. And they represent the opposition to the Jews rebuilding this. wall. We're introduced to them in chapter 2 verse 10 where they first hear that Nehemiah has come to rebuild the wall and the text tells us that they are displeased greatly. And they begin then to wage a kind of psychological war against Nehemiah. That continues throughout the story. Even after chapter 4, it's not the end of it, because as the story unfolds, they write an open letter, you know, a kind of assassination of Nehemiah's character. They post it on Facebook for everybody to see what this guy was really all about and what his motives were and questioning those. Later, they want to meet him in the fields of Ono. And when your enemies want to meet you in the fields of Ono, you say to them, Oh, no, I am not going to go there.They wanted to kill him. And so these guys were serious about this. And Sanballat is the ringleader. Tobiah is kind of... his sidekick, and Geshem was the schemer behind the scenes that was doing his scheming. This might help a little bit. Sanballat was the Sith Lord, Tobiah was Darth Vader, and Geshem was General Grievous, just to give some communication to some of you. Now, these guys surrounded Jerusalem. Their kingdoms surrounded Jerusalem. Maybe you're in a situation like that right now as I talk about opposition. You feel like you've got it on all sides. I got nowhere to go. There's no safe zone for me. There's no green zone for me. Everywhere I look, it seems like I've got opposition against me. That's what Nehemiah was facing. Everybody around them wanted them out of there. Now, these men couldn't attack Nehemiah directly because, remember, Artaxerxes, the king of Persia, the king of really the world at that time, had endorsed the project. So to come out overtly and to say, we're going to take you on, we're going to take you down, would have been in opposition to Artaxerxes. And even these guys didn't want to mess with Artaxerxes.So their strategy really is one more of cloak and dagger. All right, this is espionage. This is insinuation. It's the psychological guerrilla warfare that they employ against God's people in the rebuilding of this wall. So what are the strategies that they employ? Well, notice, first of all, that they begin where every schoolyard begins, and that is with taunting and with ridicule. Look at verse 1. “Now, when Sanballat heard that we were rebuilding the wall, He was angry and greatly enraged, and he jeered at the Jews. And he said in the presence of his brothers and of the army of Samaria, what are these feeble Jews doing? Will they restore it for themselves? Will they sacrifice? Will they finish up in a day? Will they revive the stones out of the heaps of rubbish and burn ones at that? Tobiah the Ammonite was beside him, and he said, yes, what they're building, if a fox goes up on it, he will break down their stone wall.” Emphasis added for effect, okay? So here you have Sanballat now. He's the ringleader. He's the spokesperson. He's the Sith Lord. And he begins by ridiculing the effort that these Jews are doing in rebuilding the wall.And the text literally says this. It says that he became very angry. Literally, his nose became hot. This is a Hebrew idiom for when somebody is really mad. It's like the blood. They get red in the face all the way to the end of their nose. Like if you see a guy who's red all the way to the end of their nose, he's mad, right? And that's Sanballat. He's mad to the end of his nose, mad. And so he begins by taunting them. And visualize this with me. He gathers his cronies, he gathers the army of Samaria, and he begins to jeer the Jews in a way that he knows they're going to hear what he is saying, and he begins to mock them. And this sounds like, you know, the local elementary schoolyard, or maybe an IU-Purdue football game, because he begins by saying this. He says, these feeble Jews. Okay, what's that? Name-calling, right? They're wimpy. They've got nothing. He derides their ambition. Will they restore the wall? In other words, this project's a joke. Come on. Putting this whole thing together. He ridicules their optimism. He says, what are they going to do? Pray the wall up? They can't build this wall.All they have is their prayers. He mocks their enthusiasm. He says, well, they finish in a day. Word had gotten out that they were busy little beavers working so hard on the wall. All of their enthusiasm. Do they really think they can do this thing? I mean, come on. He undermines their confidence. Can they bring the stones back to life? In other words, they can't do it. They can't. Do it. And if you can visualize this, here's all these people, and they hate the Jews. They're not for this wall going back up. And every one of these that he says, all the guys, you know, they've been drinking. Think of a sort of a drunken sort of mob scene where they're all, wow, no Jews, and they can't do it. And so it kind of is building a Sanballat, kind of does this and does that. And I don't know if you've ever been in a situation where somebody tells a really good joke and somebody else thinks it's a great time to pile on. Or jump on the bandwagon. There's not a lot of humor in the Bible, but this is one of them, actually.Sanballat very effectively rolls out these ridicules, and there's Tobiah. He thinks it's a great time to jump in, and he goes, yeah, if a fox ran on the wall, it would fall down. I hear everyone going, oh, Tobiah, that's so stupid. Why would you say something like that? And we know from history and archaeology that it is stupid. They've done studies of the wall that Nehemiah built. It was nine feet thick. That would be a big fox. Knock that wall down. The point here is that he wasn't saying this for the armies, and he wasn't saying this for his cronies. He was saying this hoping the Jews would hear it, hoping they'd hear the mockery and the laughter. You know, the old adage in the schoolyard is, sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. You've heard that before. You've probably said that. And the fact that you have to resort on the schoolyard to poetry ought to say that words are effective at discouraging us, aren't they? And even as adults, a little contrary word, a little criticism, a little taunt, a little mockery, and inside we can suddenly become so fleshly, we can be discouraged.And that is always the case. Words are effective. Now, why do you suppose Sanballat began with ridicule? Why not just march the armies out there and just take them all on? Because what is Satan? He's known as the father of what? Lies. Satan is the master of the subtlety. He's the master of the insinuation. We see that with Adam and Eve, or with Eve specifically in the garden, as he just twists the words and he plays with the mind. Those that Satan controls and follow his path, they do the same thing. Satan knows that he doesn't have to get a good Christian to deny the virgin birth or the fact that Jesus is coming back. All he has to do is discourage him a little bit. And with that discouragement, the good work that God's doing in them or the good work that God's doing through them, all of a sudden, it can come to a halt. Why? I'm so discouraged. And maybe you're there right now. You're rejoicing in what God's done in the past, but right now you're discouraged and somebody said something. Something's going on.This person's in my life. I got a Sanballat. I got a Tobiah. And you're just thinking, oh, that's the way the enemy operates. How should we respond? Notice how Nehemiah responds in verse 4 and verse 6. I won't read them, but in both cases, he prays. Now, I never saw anybody in the schoolyard do that. I'm going to pray for you. I'm going to pray over these words that you've said. It's not our natural response, is it? have an example here from Nehemiah, I'll come back to this later, in how to respond to criticism and opposition. Go to God in prayer. And notice what he adds after verse 6. He says that the response of the people was that they worked even harder. And the text says they worked because they had a heart to work. I love that little phrase there. And as I read that, you know what I think about? I honestly think about Bethel Church.One of the qualities of this church that I love so much is that this is a church that has a heart to work. And I've seen that over the years. I can think of just even recent examples of moments where it just comes pouring out. A year ago right now, we said, hey, we bought this building in Gary. We got a clean 30 or 40,000 square feet. Y'all come out now. And I know a terrible cold, I mean, I-65 was a sheet of ice. I know because I drove down it. You know, we had 400 people, volunteers that showed up and we scrubbed every inch of that building. And I saw the way that people were working and laboring and sweating and all of that. No pay for God, you know, that kind of a thing. And I just admire that so much. And like the, you know, a month ago we said, hey. somebody's given us two gym floors, come pull planks. Nobody wakes up in the morning and goes, I think I'm going to pull planks today.But we had all these people that showed up and they pulled planks all day and they got blisters and sore backs, but they did it to the glory of God. Why? Because they had a heart to work. And I just think about our church and even the day-to-day kind of week-to-week ministries, I think it's a wonderful quality of our congregation. We're good at building walls. and projects, and just having a heart to work for the Lord, and I commend you for it. So look at that verse and go, that's us right there. We're just like them. Encouraged? I want to be encouraging. The second thing that we find the enemy doing is, and you see how these escalate, okay? Escalates. Ridicule doesn't work, the people just work harder. So they amp it up now in verse 7 and 8, and they just seek to make trouble. But when Sanballat and Tobiah and the Arabs and the Ammonites and the Ashdodites heard that the repairing of the walls of Jerusalem was going forward and that the breaches were beginning to be closed, they were very angry. Now before they were greatly disturbed, greatly upset, now they are really mad. And what do they do?And they all plotted together to come and fight against Jerusalem and to cause confusion in it. The second thing that opposition will do when the ridicule doesn't work is they will just seek to do mischief. They will seek to do something that can frustrate the plans. They'll plot. They'll come together and strategize against the work of God. They will gossip. They will slander. They'll do whatever they can to create trouble. It's a kind of verbal terrorism that takes place. And of course, again, God's enemies do this because their Sith Lord Again, notice Nehemiah's response in verse 9. But we prayed and we posted a guard. That little verse I find to be one of the most helpful and insightful with a common problem amongst God's people. When opposition comes or trouble comes or some conflict comes, whatever it might be, there are really, it seems, two kinds of Christians. There are the kinds of Christians who say, we're just going to pray about it. We are going to pray about it. And indeed, they do pray about it. And then you have another group of people. They say, you know what? We're going to post a guard, right? We're weaponizing. We're getting the guns out.They want to do battle. Bring it on, okay? We are going to take practical steps. to take them out. They're more of the sort of practitioner type. So you have the kind of praying types, and you have the kind of post-a-guard types. And what I've seen pastorally, this plays out this way, where you have some people say they're just going to pray about it. I have seen in my ministry, I've seen people, they'll get like, I have cancer. And their response is, I am simply going to pray about this. And I have urged them, I'll say, pray about it, but why not get some medical help and do whatever you can medically as well as praying in order to take care of this problem? And I've seen people who have refused to seek medical advice because in their minds, I think, they think it's more faithful to simply... pray about it. At the other side of this, I have seen often, and I have done this myself, a problem arises and I skip the praying and I go to the posting of the guard stuff. Well, let's just think about how to make this happen.And we're going to do this and we're going to do that and we're going to take care of this and we're going to take care of that. And there's no regard for seeking God. It's like Israel when the Gibeonites faked him out and Joshua said, eh, we won't go to war with you. And then they find out they're the next country over. Why? Because they did not seek the Lord in the matter. And so it seems like there are those two kinds of Christians. And Nehemiah shows the beautiful balance of embracing both of those. What ought we do when we come to some trouble or trial in our life? First thing to do is to pray about it. And we see Nehemiah over and over again. He prays. His instinct is prayer. And for us as Christians, that ought to be our first thing. Hey, let's pray about that right now. Let's seek the Lord about this right now. But when we say amen, it doesn't mean now I don't have to think about anything else. There are all kinds of wisdom and prudent matters that the Bible also talks about.Read through the wisdom literature of Psalms, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes, and it's filled with practical advice for faithful living in the real world. We live in a real world where real things have to be taken care of. And the wise Christian and the wise church We'll do both of those. So maybe ask yourself, am I a I'm going to pray about it and then sort of take my hands off kind of person? Or am I a forget about praying about it, get right down to fixing it kind of person? And maybe Nehemiah could inspire us to be both of those. Okay, both of those. An example of both of those would be a dear woman in our church a few weeks ago had a very, very difficult surgery. According to James 5, she asked if the elders would pray over her, and we did. We anointed her with oil, we prayed over her, we prayed over that surgery. And then she went and she had the best medical care that she could possibly find. And to me, that is Nehemiah. Praying about it, posting a guard. A great example, I think, for prudent and prayerful living.The third thing we find happened now, again, an escalation, okay? Taunting, troublemaking, and now we see threats. Look at verse 11. “Also, our enemy said, before they know it or see us, we will be right there among them and we'll kill them and put an end to the work.” Then the Jews who lived near them came and told us ten times over, wherever you turn, they will attack us. Wherever you turn, they will attack us. Wherever you turn, they will attack us. Over. The language here in the Hebrew means over and over and over again. They were saying, they're going to get you. They're going to get you. They're going to kill you. Now, how fun would that be? Right? There you are. You're building a wall. You're hewing out stones. You're piling them up. You're making a wall. And at the same time, you've got some of your own people, cronies of your enemies, who are saying to you, you're going to die. Now, these people realize they didn't know they were Bible characters. Right? They're not in there, oh, this is a Bible story. We're going to be fine. They have no idea. They're living life like you and I live our lives.Would that be an effective, fearful tactic? I mean, what if, as you came in, there's all these people outside of the church going, you walk in there, they're going to kill you. How many of us would go, oh, no problem? No, it would have its effect, wouldn't it? And indeed, it did in that day. It had an effect of discouragement. Word gets out, they're going to kill us. In fact, let's look at that effect. What is the effect of the taunting? And what is the effect of the ridicule? And what is the effect of the troublemaking and the threats? of opposition in this story at this point is discouragement. Look at verse 10 of chapter 4. “In Judah it was said, the strength of those who bear the burdens is failing. There is too much rubble. By ourselves we will not be able to rebuild the wall.” What Nehemiah is recording there is what is the word on the street. What were people saying as they were building the wall? They're looking at all the rubble now and they're saying there's so much rubble. This is weeks after, or days after, Nehemiah said, let's rise and build.Was there more rubble now than there was before? No. But when we are discouraged, everywhere we look, there's rubble, right? Oh, yeah. I'm a little discouraged right now. My whole life stinks. There's rubble everywhere. When we're encouraged, there's no rubble. When we're discouraged, everything's rubble. Are you with me? Remember, I didn't have a good night of sleep, so I have no idea what I'm saying right now. I just hope it's connecting somehow. These words were having their effect in spite of the amazing progress that was being made. This goes down as one of the greatest and most unified team efforts that God's people have ever done. And in spite of this amazing accomplishment, and in the midst of it, You have all of this turmoil and opposition and drama and people actually saying, we're never going to make it. We can't do it. There's too much rubble and too much trouble. The danger, I think, in verbal attacks is we begin to believe what's being said, even when it's not true, right?Do you think, how likely is it that Geshem and Tobiah and Sanballat are going to take their armies against people that the most powerful man in the world said had permission to build this wall? Not very likely that they would do it. But if you hear something enough, you believe it to be true, don't you? If somebody tells you that you're nothing enough or somebody tells you that you can't do it enough or somebody tells you that, you know, your faith is a bunch of hooey because I know the kind of person that you are enough, you begin to believe it and discouragement kind of creeps in and now the progress that you were making, it slows down or stops, right? And you're like, oh, there's so much rubble. Why are we even trying this? We're never going to make it. I wonder if you've lived. In verse 10, have you had your face flush as your nose gotten red all the way to the tip as a colleague or a family member or a neighbor or a former friend or a former spouse tells you what a terrible person you are and questions every character quality in your life?Have you been, in verse 10, discouraged? As a pastor, you know, as a leader of any kind, if you take on any responsibility, expect that you're going to deal with this. I can tell you, I've been a pastor for 22 years. I can think of names that come to my mind of Sanballats of Tobias and Geshams over the years that have said this or that and questioned this or that and on and on and la la la. It's just, it's part of what it means to be a leader. But I know well that sense of discouragement, that deep down thought that I'm a failure or my faith isn't real because this person says they don't think I'm a good Christian, etc. I don't want to ruin the ending here again, but they rebuilt the wall in 52 days. They're halfway done. They're only like three weeks away from the time that Nehemiah said, let's begin rebuilding the wall. This is one of the greatest projects and team efforts in history, yet it was criticized. It was mocked. And this is the danger, I think, of criticism is that it can sap the energy from the most spiritual and noble of efforts.These people were rebuilding the wall to the glory of God. They heard from Nehemiah earlier all the things that Artaxerxes, all the things really that God had done. I mean, what are the chances that the most powerful man in the world is going to come to the aid of the Jews in rebuilding the wall of a city that had rebelled against his predecessor? Why would a king do that? And yet that king came to Nehemiah and the Jews' aid and provided the resources and gave the letter and made all the provisions. I mean, you look at all of that and what can you say? This is a God thing, right? This is a God thing. And yet, in spite of it being a God thing, a little bit of criticism just takes the wind out of the sails. This was tough for Nehemiah. opposition outside, discouragement within. Maybe you're in verse 10 right now, and you can relate to this. It's like, man, you're describing my life here, where I am today on this Sunday. I'm discouraged.And here's where Nehemiah, I think, provides an inspiring and helpful example of how to respond when life brings opposition. to what God is doing and what God wants to do in our life. And I've got four things, four responses that Nehemiah has here and four ways that we can actually experience these oppositions and turn them into actually a kind of joy. And I share these with you not because I do this perfectly or even 75%. This is as much for me as it is for anybody. And we have to be reminded of this because it happens so often in our life. But how do we respond when opposition comes to us? First of all, I think it is so critical that we expect it, that we expect opposition to come. There are some people that think mistakenly that to be a Christian or to be a part of a church, I mean, it's like... where it never is heard a discouraging word and the skies are not cloudy all day. I mean, that's every local church, isn't it? To go there would be just a blissful experience of happy Christians all the time.I'll never have anybody tell me anything but something that's uplifting and encouraging to me. Nothing will ever happen in the church that I don't walk out of there going, I'm so glad I'm a part of that church. I mean, it's just gonna be, it's like heaven on earth. Well, nobody amen'd that. And that's because you all have been in churches and in this church. The reality is, no matter what God is doing, there is always going to be negative opposition, criticism, a discouraging person, a Sanballat, a Tobias, somebody like that. J. Oswald Sanders, great Christian man, wrote a classic book on leadership, said this, “no leader is exempt from criticism, and his humility will nowhere be seen more clearly than in the manner in which he accepts it and reacts to it.” Do you think that Nehemiah thought to himself as he was on his camel or donkey or walking or however he got from Susa to Jerusalem, you know what, I'm just going to show up there. I'm going to give an inspiring speech. And not only are the Jews going to rally to the cause, but everybody around Jerusalem, they're all going to be happy about this. It's going to be fantastic.My speech will do it. No. He knew what was coming. He knew there would be trouble. Chuck Swindoll, many of you know Chuck Swindoll, says this, “there will always, always be opposition from those who are by nature negative and critical, but the work must go on. Progress should not stop because of a few who were critical of the plan.” I think it's a falsely idealistic perspective on the Christian life to think that it's going to somehow be easy. that I'm going to skate along and everyone's going to be happy with what God is doing in my life. It won't happen. And we can look at examples in the scripture, not just Nehemiah, but Jeremiah certainly faced that. Paul faced that. Well, how about Jesus? I mean, if there was ever a leader who was such an awesome leader that, I mean, everybody would have loved everything that he did and just rallied to him. I mean, everybody would just applaud him and be like, you know, be like Palm Sunday every day of his life, right? No. What happened to our perfect leader, Jesus?Not only were there many people that opposed him, famous now, men like Caiaphas and Pilate and the Pharisees, but even within his own circle. Judas betraying him. The greatest leader who's ever walked this earth, beginning the greatest organization that has ever been begun, the church, faced trouble, didn't he? And opposition. So who are we to think that in our... smaller context and in our own lives that we are going to be able to follow the Lord, fulfill his will for us, and somehow think everybody's going to love it and everybody's going to applaud it. It simply won't happen. In fact, I think if there is a key truth here, it is this one, is that God's will didn't allow the wall to be built without opposition. I mean, could God have rebuilt this wall without Sanballat, Tobiah, and Geshem? You bet he could have. Could he have rebuilt this wall in some way where everybody thought it was great? You bet that he could have. But it was God's will that there be a Sanballat. It's God's will that there was Tobiah and all the rest. God included that in the plan for Nehemiah and the plan for the rebuilding of the walls.It included the conflict. It included the slander. It included the threats that were made. And I wonder today if you might have a Sanballat in your life. Even as I've been talking about this, there's been somebody coming to mind. And in your heart, you're like, you know, God, if you love me, you will destroy them, right? Because you're not the author of evil, and you don't like evil people, and yet this evil person is in my life. And it seems to me that... this whole thing to work the way that, in my opinion, it ought to work, that person needs to be eliminated. And we try to pray the Sanballats out of our life because we think something's wrong, that they are in our life. And too often we think that with even criticism, right? We think, I must be out of God's will because somebody said something negative. Mrs. So-and-so said something. And so we look at and we listen to so-and-so who says such-and-such about this or that, and we think, well, I must not be a good Christian, or maybe this faith thing isn't true, or maybe I'm out of the will of God.Joe Stowell III, his dad was the first pastor of our church, and he was longtime president of Moody Bible Institute, once said, “in every church I have pastored, God has placed difficult people around me to keep me dependent on him.” Now, I have no idea what he's talking about there in my own personal experience. But there is truth there, isn't it? That opposition is not out of God's will, but it is a part of God's will. And that indeed, God gains greater victory when his people trust him in the midst of trouble and overcome in spite of opposition. that there's a greater glory that comes from that why do you think God created Satan? Did God know when He made him the highest archangel? Did He know the whole story? Indeed, did He purpose the whole story, that Satan was going to rebel against Him and take a third of the demons, or the angels, with him, and that all of this would ensue? Why? Why does God do that? As Luther said, even the devil is God's devil, right?That God uses The taunts and the ridicule and the criticism and all the rest to gain a greater victory and a greater glory. God thought it best that there be a Satan. And we have to look at these kind of situations and realize that apparently God thinks it's best that there's a Sanballat in our life. Now that's a hard thing, isn't it? Because we want them out of there. But God has them and sovereignly places them. in our life. Now, if I might make a very quick tangent here, you may be here and in an honest evaluation, you're not Nehemiah in the story. You're Sanballat. And maybe you're like, you know what? This vindicates my role in this church. Somebody's got to do it. And that somebody is me. We have to realize that while it is God's will for there to be Sanballats, it is never God's will for us to be a Sanballat. And I would call you to change. In fact, you could ask the question, why was Sanballat so upset about this? And this is where conflict reveals the opportunity. of our hearts, doesn't it? Was it about the wall for Sanballat? No, it wasn't about the wall.It was about influence. It was about economy and money. It was about power. And Nehemiah and that wall being reconstituted represented a threat to Sanballat. And that's why he wanted them out. So don't be a Tobiah. Don't be a Geshem. Don't be a Sanballat. We need to expect there to be opposition. And maybe next week, one of you will come up to me and say, I didn't think that sermon was very relevant, but boy, the week I had. And I'll say, good. I don't know if I should say it that way, but hey, you're applying God's word. That's a good thing. Second thing we see here is that Nehemiah provides this wonderful example of prayer, of prayer. Look at verse 4. Look at the first thing that Nehemiah does. It says, Nehemiah prays this, “Hear, O God, for we are despised. Turn back their taunt on their own heads and give them up to be plundered in a land where they are captives.” Now that doesn't sound like a very loving prayer.And if you read through the Psalms, there are Psalms that are known as imprecatory Psalms where David writes psalms that sound sort of like that, you know, where he is praying God's justice and wrath down upon his enemies. I'm not into the content of the prayer as much as I am in the fact that he prayed. And we see that pattern. Verses 6 through 8, there's troublemaking and scheming. What is Nehemiah's response? Verse 9, but we prayed to our God. When we face opposition, that has been sovereignly brought into our life by God, why would prayer be an effective strategy? Because if this person or this opposition is in my life by the sovereign hand of God, when I pray, I'm talking to the right person about the issue. I'm talking to the person who has the power to mediate the situation and to mitigate it and to take it away if he wants or to do whatever, but I'm praying to the right person. I'm praying to God. I wonder, the Sanballat in your life that I referred to earlier, have you prayed about this person? Have you prayed about this situation? Have you gone to the Lord in prayer?The example of Nehemiah throughout the whole story is that trouble comes, trouble comes, trouble comes. Nehemiah's response, he prays, he prays, he prays, he prays. It's a book on prayer. And that prayer in response to trouble. And we don't, I think, naturally do that. Naturally, we want to post the guard, right? We want to man up. We want to soldier up. We want to go take care of business. We want to take care of this person. We want to fight back. We want to sort of Mike Tyson in his prime. But Nehemiah begins with prayer. I would call you to pray. You say, ah, it's just Nehemiah. What did Jesus do? What did Jesus do the week of his passion when he knew what was coming? You say, well, he knew it was coming. Why pray about it, right? I mean, if you know it's coming, you can ask God all you want, but it's coming anyway, so what's the point? And yet he prayed. He prayed in Gethsemane. He prayed even on the cross. His last words were prayers.And if that doesn't eloquently show us the importance of prayer, especially when we are in trouble, and we have people in our church who are in trouble. Life has brought trouble. Life has brought pain. And prayer sometimes is like, oh yeah, we prayed. No, this is a key part of how Christians respond to trouble. We go to God. We open our hearts to him. We ask for his help. We pray about the Sanballat. We pray that that good work that God wants, may that refining work be done. I want to be that goal that is purified. I don't want to waste this trial. I don't want to waste my cancer. I don't want to waste this. unemployment. I don't want to waste this conflict with a fellow Christian. I want it to have its good effect and to embrace that and to tell God that. I wonder, do you do that, friend? One thing I've noticed when I've been dealing with a kind of Sanballat situation, you know, my natural instinct is to pray that God would take them out, right?But I find that when I pray for that person, especially if they're a fellow believer, When I pray for that person, I find a little impulse of charity towards them. Have you noticed this? It's hard to pray for somebody and hate them at the same time. I find that when I pray for that person, it's a little step towards the command to love your enemies and to do good to those who despitefully use you, Romans 12. Give that a try. You're like, I don't want to pray for this person. Try it. Pray that God's will would be done in their life. Pray that even their taunts and their ridicule and their criticism, whatever 1% gain that your spiritual life could have from it, say, God, I want that 1% gain. What they're saying is evil and their motives, I believe, to be bad. But whatever good can come from it in my life, I want that. And I find that when I get my heart around to praying that way, it has a way of restoring some encouragement. And when you're discouraged, what do you need? You need encouragement. Pray. Keep praying. The third thing is to prepare for it.And I've said this before, but notice that even in this chapter, Nehemiah, he doesn't simply pray, but he takes actions to meet the opposition. Back to the text again a second, verse 9. But we prayed and posted a guard. In verse 13, it says that Nehemiah armed the workers so they could respond to an attack. Now, there might have been someone going, you're not a man of faith. Why are you giving us swords? And he's like, I prayed and I'm giving you swords. In verses 16 through 18, he had workers work with a chisel in one hand and a sword in the other. Does that mean he wasn't a man of faith? He brought a trumpeter with him. And the idea was that if there was attack anywhere on the wall, they would blow the trumpet and everyone would rush to that place in order to engage the fight. He had people work in the low spots in the wall in verses 12 through 15. Now, why do you think Nehemiah would have people working in the low spots? Where do you think an attack would most likely happen? In the high spots or in the low spots?It seems to me it'd be the low spots, and that's what Nehemiah thought as well. And he had people in verse 22. He said, everyone stays in the city until the wall is done. What do we see there? Practical wisdom, okay? He got prepared for the opposition. I think we ought to expect it. We ought to pray for those who oppose it. Oppose us, but we also must be prudent and wise in responding to it. And the fourth thing here, and this is really, I would say, the most helpful, is that after we've prayed about it, after we have prepared for it, we've expected it, we know it's coming, here's the final point. Look at verses 19 and 20, what Nehemiah says. “I said to the nobles and to the officials and to the rest of the people, the work is great and widely spread and we are separated on the wall for far from one another. In the place where you hear the sound of the trumpet, rally to us there.” Here's the key phrase. “Our God will fight for us.” Nehemiah was a practical man. Nehemiah was a prayerful man.But Nehemiah was also a man who understood that in the end, the battle is the Lord's. And that bottom line for us has to be our bottom line, because all of our praying and all of our prudency, and I don't know if that's a word, but all of our, you know, sort of strategizing, in the end will feel superficial to us if our anchor and if our sort of our bottom line is not the God who has made promises to us. that he will fight for us, that he will come to our aid. And of course, as Christians, what do we know? We know the end of the story, don't we? You can read Revelation. At the end of the story, there is no opposition, there is no authority, there is no power that stands against the king of kings and lord of lords who comes riding out in that white horse. And he is going to return, and every enemy, Satan, included is going to go under his feet and in the end, Philippians 2, every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.We know the end of this story is that God wins, and because we are God's children, we win with Him. And our walls may build or not, our troubles may come or go, our critics may say or not, but in the end, we know that with the Lord, we win. Our God will fight for us, and faith is the victory that overcomes the world. But we are living now in this time where we have to We have the tension between what we know to be true by the promise of God and the realization of that. And the Bible says that in this world, you're going to have trouble, right? You are going to have trouble. New Christian, it is going to be hard. Do not be discouraged by the trouble that comes and the critics that come and the opposition that comes. You're going to have people that are going to say things to you. You might even have people in this church that are going to discourage you in some manner. But we cannot have our hope in the people of this church or in the critic changing his mind or coming around and saying, you know what, I was mistaken.You really are a wonderful person. Can I hug you? It's not likely to happen. Our hope is in the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth. “Where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord.” Psalm 121. And as God's people, when we face these temporary trials, which are achieving for us a glory that far outweighs them all, we look at that trial and we look even at that person, that Sanballat, and we see them as temporary in light of the big picture. And “though this world with devils filled should threaten to undo us, we will not fear for God hath willed his truth to triumph through us.” Martin Luther. A mighty fortress is our God. And on and on. I mean, there's songs and verses. This is where real life is lived. It's in the trenches and in the troubles. And this is how God refines us. And when I can see that this is how God does it, then I can even embrace the tough times and to see that there is good that comes from it. You say, oh, that's not true. Let's look to the cross of Christ. I've got one behind me.If there is one great example of how God uses the taunts, the ridicule, the betrayals, the enemies of God and all of their schemings to do an ultimate good, it is the cross of Christ, the perfect person, the perfect leader, the perfect sacrifice, killed at the hands of Satan and all his minions, and yet the greatest wrong producing the greatest good and glory. And our lives are little microcosms of that grand narrative. And you might not have a Caiaphas, you might not have a Pilate, it may not even be a, it's not the Sith Lord you're dealing with, it's General Grievous, or some lesser situation. But all of them are a part of a temporary trouble, but an ultimate victory. I heard somebody one time say, You know, for unbelievers, this life is the best that they'll ever experience. But for Christians, this is the worst that we will ever experience. The future is bright. The future is glorious. And we live in light of that in the troubles and the trials of today. “If God is for us, who can be against us?” That wasn't in the Bible when Nehemiah lived, but I think it might be today his favorite verse.And he lived it out very well. And I hope that we will as well as a church. And those are just some words from a tired pastor. I don't know if they connected at all. And when I get up from my nap, I'll wonder what I said this morning. But maybe God will use them, and I hope that he does. Let's stand together. I'd like to pray and give a final benediction.This transcript was generated using AI transcription technology and reviewed for accuracy but may contain errors. Please refer to the original audio for precise wording.

Steve DeWitt Our Calling: Right Thinking and Right Living Study Guide for Spiritual Exiles, 1 Peter 1:13-16 Scripture Reference: 1 Peter 1:13-16 Visit the series page: Exiles: A study in 1 Peter Donate to Support The Journey Sermon Transcript for Spiritual Exiles, 1 Peter 1:13-16 Sermon Series: Spiritual ExilesMessage: Our Calling: Right Thinking and Right LivingAirdate: 9/16-9/17/26Programs: 2358 and 2359Well, good morning, and good morning to our Cedar Lake campus, our Hobart Portage gang that's gathered, and, here at Crown Point as well. Good morning. I'm gonna begin my, message with a little personal touch. Many of you know that Jennifer and I are pregnant expecting our second child, and we found out what this week, what the gender is. Thought we'd share it with you.So put up on the screen if you would. Now this is our this is our child. If you look really carefully, look really carefully. So Some of you still don't know what that means. Ask somebody later.Yes. We're having a little girl, we found out this week. So that's two girls. It's lost lots of estrogen in the house, isn't it? So it'll just be one more reason to pray for your pastor.Right? We're excited. June, sometime in June is the arrival date, and, we're we're, pretty pretty fired up about that. So let's get into our time in God's word together. And I remember some some years ago, somebody coming up to me and saying, you know, pastor Steve, you spent all that time in your messages on exposition, And then you get to the application.And, honestly, we really prefer the application. Could you just, like, skip forward to the to the application and do less of the of the exposition? And the answer to that is no. I will not. And the reason for that is that, like a a family that says, you know what? The meat, the vegetables, the fruit, it's also unnecessary. Let's skip forward to the dessert and just do dessert all the time. Would be a very unhealthy family. Similarly, when it comes to studying God's word, it's we always wanna move towards application, but it is the the doctrinal, exegetical, the truth, the words of Scripture that form the grounds for the application. And if you just do application and without any doctrine, your applications aren't gonna last very long.They won't be very deep for sure. And we see this happening in the in the letters of the New Testament. Most, if not all of them, begin doctrinally. They begin with truth about God. They begin with truth about the gospel.They begin with truth about, you know, the the nature of salvation, and then they move towards us. So what? This is what it means. This is how we sort of live this out on the street level of life. And Peter is doing that and has done that here in our little study so far.We saw in verses of chapter one in verses one through 12, a wonderfully, like, amazing, rich, fantastic explanation of the gospel, the nature of salvation, what God has done to save us, how Jesus has been key in that in his resurrection, and it's been it's been filled with hope. It's been filled with joy and gladness. And then you get to verse 13, and there is that word therefore. And that word is code for time for some application. Whenever you see that in the Bible, it's probably the the writer drawing now some conclusions for the way that we ought to live.And so we're gonna talk about that kind of application today. And, let's get into the text. I'm I'm studying with you today verses, 13 through 16 of First Peter one. Please listen as I read God's word. “Therefore, preparing your minds for action and being sober minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.”“As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance. But as you who as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct since it is written, you shall be holy for I am holy.” Now if you look at that section of Scripture, you'll see that there really are two kind of, like, commands here, two big things that he's saying, this is what we ought to do. And he says, first of all, set your hope fully on the grace to come. And secondly, that we are to be holy in all of our conduct.So hope fully, be holy. And before you think that doesn't sound very practical to me, there's a lot more here than meets the eye. And I want you to see just first of all that these verses are part of a larger section here beginning in chapter in verse 13 and following that is all about what the gospel ought to do in the lives on the practical level as it's lived out by the Christian. Not just what we have here before us, but the fact that God is holy. We're gonna see in verses 17 following that God is our judge, And then finally, that we were redeemed from this way of, this sinful life by the precious blood of Jesus.And all of those, the holiness of God, the judgment of God, and the blood of Christ are to call the Christian out of a life of sin and living according to the old ways and to call us into the new life. This new life lived to the glory of God, lived free from the bondage of sin. And so there's lots more of this to come. We're just looking at one section here today. Notice, first of all, that he says that we are to focus on future grace.Look look again at verse 13. “Set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” K? Set your hope your hope fully. Now what is hope?Hope is, by definition, future oriented. I don't hope, you know, I I I don't hope about something that has already happened. I don't hope the Seahawks win the Super Bowl. Why? Because it's done already, isn't it?Hope doesn't orient backwards. Hope always orients forwards or towards the future. And we've seen Peter saying this throughout this letter. It's the it's actually the third reference to the return of Christ. He did it in verse five.He did it in verse eight. Now he does it in verse 13. Are you surprised that a letter about suffering would have a lot about the future in it? I'm not. I mean, this is it makes sense, doesn't it?To cast our eyes towards what is yet to come in the midst of our trials, in the midst of our sufferings, to think about the future. And here, he says the grace that is yet to be revealed. Now what is that talking about? Because I think we could look at salvation and say, wait a second, I already got the grace of God. Right?When I when I put my faith in in Jesus, I received from God grace. I was saved by grace. I go to a church that sings amazing grace. How sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I've already got the grace of God.How can I put my hope on some future grace? What might this be talking about? One of my favorite commentators, Wayne Grudem, says the grace that is coming to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ means the further store of undeserved blessings, which God will pour out on them when Christ returns. Whenever we talk about grace or the grace of God, it is always highlighting that God is giving us something that we don't deserve. That's why it's grace.Salvation is by grace through faith. To think about the future and to realize that there is a storehouse of grace, there are blessings that are yet to come to us that we have not realized, that we have not yet fully received. The future is even better than it is right now. Might that be encouraging if you're in a trial of some kind? That maybe the best is yet to come, and that what I have, while wonderful, is not yet the fullness of what God has in store for those who love him, for those who are called according to his purpose.You say, well, that sounds nice. Preach as well. But, like, what are you talking about? Well, here's just a short list I just kind of compiled of future grace yet to come. The ongoing conscious life upon our physical death, the physical presence with God, our resurrected and glorified bodies, seeing and worshiping and savoring the presence of Jesus Christ himself, eternal rewards that God will give to us based on the quality of our service to him while here on earth.How about eternal life, enjoyment, and pleasure that we will have forever in real time on a new earth that has no curse upon it? We're gonna live on that new earth, and it's gonna be a much better version than this one. Eternal fellowship with fellow Christians and loved ones. If you've if you've had a loved one that's died in the faith, I guarantee there's a future grace coming to you. You're gonna meet him or her again and fellowship with them forever.Eternal status and relationship as children of God, which right now we don't totally get and realize what a big deal that is. But to step into eternity and the God of heaven, the God of eternity, we are part of his family. We're not just servants in the house. We are sons and daughters of God. Many other things.Someday you're gonna come to me and say that list was terrible. It was so small. We you could have added so many more things. Indeed. None of them we deserve.All of these things are God's gift to us. We deserve hell. We deserve punishment, and yet God is giving us what we don't deserve. And much of what we're going to receive, we haven't even tasted yet. And so Peter writing to exiles, suffering trials says, put your hope not here and not in the trial or maybe the trial going away.Set your hope fully on grace yet to be received from God. The inverse of this is true. Don't put your hope on anything less than this. Don't put your hope, Scripture says, in your riches. Don't put your hope in your life and in your physical vitality.Don't put your hope in any fellow man or pastor or anybody else. Don't put your hope in who you are and your achievements and your big stuff or whatever it might be. Don't put your hope in things in this world. All of it is passing away. The Bible calls God's people with the same faith that trusts in Jesus in the past dying on our on the cross for our sins, to look to the future with the same kind of expectant hope and to believe the best is yet to come.That helps you endure in them trials, doesn't it? Now that sounds wonderful, but how do we do that? Peter, get practical for us. K? We're tired of these long expositions, Peter.Could we just skip to the dessert? Can we get to the application? And Peter provides two specific means by which our hope is set fully on the future. You might have missed them as I read it. But notice, first of all, he says that we are to prepare our minds for action.Somehow, there's a connection between setting my hope fully and the grace to come and a mind that is prepared for action. What does this mean? Well, it's an intriguing illustration. In fact, if you have a King James Bible possibly with you, you might look at that and say, my Bible says it a little bit different. Indeed, here's how the King James translates it.And if you grew up in the church in the seventies with a good Scofield Bible like I did, this is more what you're familiar with. Right? It says this, gird up the loins of your mind. Ain't that a blessing? Gird up the loins of your mind.And, technically, that is what the text is saying here. The problem is that for most of us, a loin is something to put barbecue on. Right? And so we don't feel like we can apply that very well. What do you mean loins?Well, this is a historical cultural thing. Let's talk about this a little bit. A loin was a robe or the bottom section of a robe. And if you've watched, you know, the Jesus film or some things like this, you've seen the kind of robes and garments that the men would wear as just that was the fashion of the day. And so what would happen is is that these men would wear these long longer kind of flowing gowns, but they had to do what men today have to do.They had to work. They had to go to war. They had different things. And so if you were going to do that, you had to gird up your loins. You had to take those flowing gowns, and you had to get them out of the way if you were to do serious business.Now I happened upon an illustration on a website that I kind of like called the art of manliness. I go there just to see if they're manly enough, in my opinion. But I came across this illustration of how they actually girded up their loins. Now this is gonna be a blessing to each of you. Notice that the the the the gown that the guy has, he would pull it up, bring it cinch it together, pull it through between his legs, and then stick it into his belt.And when he'd done that, now he's ready to go to war. The art of manliness. Okay? I actually thought about demonstrating this myself, but maybe this will suffice for that. Okay?Now here's the point. You girded up the loins of your mind or your your your actual loins, it meant that you're about to get serious about something. You are about to take care of business. And that could be working in the field, or it could be defending your home or defending your honor. I mean, if you saw a guy if if you're, you know, if you're at the local pub and a guy starts girding up his loins, you're like, hey. What's going on around here? Right? Why? Fight's about to break out. This guy's getting serious right here.Calm down, man. Stop the girding. Peter says, with our minds, we are to gird up our loins. What is he referring to there? What Peter is saying is the same thing that Paul says in Ephesians six when he writes, “stand therefore having fastened on the belt of truth.”I believe it's the same word, gird on the belt of truth. So for Paul, he's saying, get that belt of truth solidly in your mind. Peter is saying, get serious about truth with your mind and with your thinking. Why are our minds so important? Here's why.Right thinking leads to right living. When I am thinking rightly, my life is going to be consistent with that right thinking. When I am thinking poorly, when I am not thinking, when I am thinking with distraction, when I am thinking about lesser things, my life is going to reflect that also. Proverbs says, “as a man thinks in his heart, so is he.” If you wanna know who you really are, look at your thought life.Think about the things that you think about. Examine the way that you use your mind, and it will determine largely the shape of our lives, how important our thinking is. He doubles down on this. Peter does. And he says, secondly, be sober minded.Be sober minded. This word here is most commonly used in reference to alcohol and intoxication. He uses it Peter or Paul uses it in First Timothy three describing the qualifications of an elder. He is to be sober, and a godly woman is described as being sober. And it certainly includes not allowing alcohol or any other kind of substance like that to be a controlling influence in your life.But it's used here more broadly, not just alcohol, but a kind of soberness in thinking, not dour, not sad, not like I'm sober. We're Christians. We're very sober. Not like that. We can be we can be joyous, and we can be glad hearted, and we ought to be.But in our thinking, we are serious and sober. We are directing the thoughts of our minds, and it's shaping our whole approach to life. Another commentator. For Peter, the cares of this life and the pressure of persecution can intoxicate the Christian and distract his or her focus just as easily as wine might. The need of the hour is clear judgment and a mind and will prepared to resist anything that would distract them from a hope set on Jesus' appearing.Sober thinking is thinking with focus. It is clarity. It is the refusal to allow anything to distract. Again, it's not sober in personality. It is sober in thinking.It is a mind that says, I am. I refuse to think about life and my trials and my troubles in any other manner than this right here. I will look at life through the gospel. I will look at life through the grid of God's word, which is God's wisdom. I wanna look at my marriage.I wanna look at my parenting. I wanna look at my singleness. I wanna look at my schooling and my job and my hobbies and the dreams and hopes and my money and everything else. I wanna look at it through the wisdom of God's word, and I refuse to allow my mind to think anything else else than that. That is sober thinking.It is the Christian mind whose best and highest thoughts are reserved for kingdom and spiritual matters. So let me ask you. Think about what you think about when you don't have anything that you have to think about. What do you spend your time thinking about? How often in the course of the day do your thoughts turn towards spiritual realities?This is where I think some of the disciplines, Christian disciplines of prayer and Bible study and Scripture memory. These are all things that aid in this. It helps us to tune our hearts to sing his praise as the hymn writer says. It's in the day where my I am vertically oriented, and I'm looking at my life from the perspective that heaven vertically allows for me. How often do you think about God in the day or ministry or the needs spiritual needs of the people around you or Scripture or eternity?Do you intentionally direct your mind to think about what you want it to think about? And you say, I can't do that. My mind has a mind of its own. And now this is psychologically confusing, isn't it? But what I wanna say is we can direct our thoughts.We can, as Paul writes, take captive every or take captive every thought and and subject it to the lordship of Jesus Christ. It is a discipline. It is a way of using and thinking about life intentionally, but it takes habit. I've been thinking about this lately because I feel like in my life right now, I'm struggling in this regard. And I think why is it?Like, I I feel like I I I used to be able to think better than I do right now. And I think one of the reasons this is just one of them. One's just the aging process. But secondly, probably, I I think is that I find myself today often the the the gaps where I used to have time to think are now being filled with checking my email, social media, or passively watching something on a screen. Now maybe it's just me, but I don't think so.I think we are currently and unknowingly awash in a kind of mind muddling cultural habit of perpetual distraction. And I will never be able to say that sentence again. So I hope somebody wrote that down. Don't you think? I mean, now it's just common.We don't we think nothing of it to go to a restaurant and to look in the booth next to us and to see a family of five. They're not talking to each other. They're engrossed in their smartphone. Right? I have come to church and and walked through here before the service starts, and I've seen an entire family all sitting here minutes before the service is about to start.All of them are engrossed in their phone. And I don't think they're preparing for worship by reading the Westminster Catechism. What are they looking at? What are they reading? What are they filling their minds with?What are they directing their thoughts towards? And I say this to myself because I feel like my mind is I'm getting mushy. I don't like that. Distracted. You know, Satan doesn't have to convince us of a heresy.He just has to distract us from thinking about the truth. The one, if I got up and say Jesus isn't God, I hope you'd all rush the stage and beat me to a pulp in love. K? That's the obvious danger. How about the more subtle one where we just don't think about it at all and we're constantly distracted from the higher and holy things of life and eternity.We're awash, I think, in trivial things. Can I just sit on this a little longer? If you want I say, hey. Think about what you think about. If you if you view social media as any indication of the thoughts that people are having, I mean, if they're having the thoughts sufficiently that they think I need to post this, I need to communicate this with everybody that knows me, then this must be, one of their best thoughts.Right? And if you look at a at a news feed on Facebook or some other social media site and to see the kinds of thoughts that people in society and maybe even people in the church, what they're thinking about, what they are viewing, what they are finding humorous. Not all of it. There's lots of cute pictures of babies and gender announcements. And that's totally acceptable.But a lot of it is superficial, silly, banal. And it seems normal to us now. Right? Because it's just all the time going on. It troubles me to see on Facebook people, even in our church, posting, tweeting about, you know, the dresses at the Grammys or Katy Perry's Super Bowl performance.Really? Like, this is this what we're filling our thoughts and minds with? And then here comes the trial and life is devastating. I wonder why. I haven't set my hope fully on the grace to come in years.I've been filling my mind with all of these lesser things. I'm thinking poorly. Now this is not a rant against media or movies or Twitter. Not at all. I think Peter would have had a Twitter account, honestly.But I don't think he would talk about silly things. In fact, can we not look at First Peter as a kind of long Twitter account? What was Peter thinking about? He writes about what he was thinking about. And here we have before us the kinds of thoughts that the apostle Peter had about life.This is the kind of thing that he was dwelling on and thinking about. Does that not tell us something about what it means to be a spiritually mature Christian man or woman and the kinds of thoughts that we think about? And this is a struggle because our culture is so immoral and so materialistic and all the rest. But he was living in the Greco Roman culture, which would give ours a run for its money. And yet, he was thinking this way.I would encourage you to follow the example of the apostle Peter. Now one more thing, and I gotta move on here, because I wanna get particularly practical. How do we engage our mind in sober thinking? How do we make it intentionally oriented towards spiritual truth? Well, I thought I'd just have some fun with this.What's the gender of our baby? Girl. So how about maybe on the week that I announce this, here's my little acronym. K? Four ways to help think more seriously about higher things.Girl, g, get rid of distractions. If your whole life is beeping, humming, buzzing, smartphone, constantly calling your attention to something that somebody has said about this or that, you have no time to think high and holy thoughts. There's no time for prayer. You're distracted all the time. Now I sound like an old fuddy duddy with that, and the young people are going, he is so uncool.But let's see what happens to this generation in thirty years. Time will tell whether wisdom lies in the beeping and the humming and the buzzing or in the older folks who are saying, it didn't used to be like that. We used to talk. I thought maybe some of those old people would amen that point. But get rid of distractions.K? And I don't mean to focus on that one. There's a thousand distractions out there. Secondly, increase truth input. Get rid of the banal and the inane and the silly and the superficial and fill your mind. This is the garbage in garbage out principle. Fill your mind increasingly with truth. Philippians four eight. You know, “what sort of things are pure and lovely, of good report, excellent, and worthy of praise, think on these things.”Spend your time on the beautiful and the truthful and the glorious and the eternally significant. Third, r, recall the grace of God for all the times you don't do that and to seek his forgiveness and ask God to give you daily grace. And finally, love God with your mind. That's a whole another point we could make, but how critical it is that we're we are thinking Christians. And even from the beginning, we're called to love him with our body.I mean, we preach against, you know, sexual sin or, you know, abusing your body with drugs or something like that. But so we we're we're all about loving God with our bodies. But what about loving God with our minds? And to intentionally seek to think deeper and higher thoughts about God and to learn and to grow and to become a mature thinking Christian. Let's do that.K? Let's do that. Now I gotta move on. We got communion coming. Second thing that he is focusing on.First one is setting your, your hope fully on the grace that is to come. The second category is that we are to be holy or what I'm calling, we're to be like our daddy. Again, the text, verse 14. “As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance. But as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct since it is written, you shall be holy for I am holy.”So we see Peter here moving from right thinking to right living. What does holy thoughts in my brain look like in a holy expression in my life? And I want you to see, first of all, that this has a relational tone to this. He he began doesn't just say, be holy. He says, hey. As obedient children. And what is that referring to? It is referring to the relationship that we have with God. Right? The Bible says that when we become Christians, that God actually adopts us into his family.We are members of the family of God. We're brothers and sisters in this family. We're sons and daughters of the most high God. And because God is my Father, that relationship matters. It means something in regards to the way that I look at myself, the way that I want to live my life.God's my Heavenly Father. How should I live now? Well, he says here that we should live morally disciplined lives. And to proof text this, Peter reaches into the Old Testament, goes back to Leviticus, and he quotes from there's five passages in Leviticus that use the same statement. “You shall be holy for I am holy.”K? You shall be holy, not me. I'm I'm saying it like I'm I'm God. Okay? “You shall be holy for I am holy.”K? And so we see in that statement the ethical measure and the eth and the ethical motivation as well. God's character is the measure, and God's character is the motive. Because I am holy, you shall you shall be holy. God's holiness is the absolute moral unity of his entire being.He is completely good. He is morally without fail. He is not the author of evil. He has no inclination towards anything that is less than absolutely morally pure and upright. John writes this in First John one.“In him, God is light, and in him, there is no darkness at all.” There's no shadow. There's no little something hidden. He is absolutely, morally, purely bright and light. Everything he does always is holy.And so Peter says, this is our God. This is our Heavenly Father. This is the way that we are to strive to live our life in a morally disciplined manner where the ethics of life matter to us. We want to please our Heavenly Father. We wanna live consistent with what he is like.Notice in all your conduct. Okay? So it's not just, you know, be holy as I am holy. When you're at church on Sunday, when you are out with the pastor, when somebody is watching that maybe could look down on you, It is not in any sort of category. It is in all categories.Holiness of life impacts, shapes, directs every aspect of my life. Why? Because it shapes and directs every aspect of the very life and character of God himself. Now lest there be any confusion here, I wanna emphasize that we are not naturally holy. We are naturally sinners.And this is why Jesus came, and this is why Jesus died. He didn't die for holy people so that they could go, not go to hell. He died for I said that wrong. He let me just say it this way. He died for sinners.K? He died for sinners, and that's us. K? So without his righteousness, we have no standing with God. We have no adoption with God.But sometimes people confuse our position before God as righteous because of what Jesus has done and the calling that God has upon the practice of our life. You overemphasize the position and say, hey, I'm righteous before God, so who gives a rip? Right? I'm going to heaven anyway. That is an abuse of the grace of God.If I focus on the practice solely, then now I am all the time wondering if I'm good enough, wondering if I'm gonna earn my way to heaven. And that is a misuse of the gospel. The gospel is is that we are declared righteous by God. We are positionally righteous before God. We enter into a relationship with God through the gospel by faith that now shapes my desires where now I want to live like I'm a child of God.K? It is relational. It is not legalism. It's not antinomianism. No law.It is relationship. Grudem says to be holy as God is holy includes a full and pervading holiness that reaches to every aspect of our personalities. It involves not only avoiding outward sin, but also maintaining an instinctive delight in God and his holiness as an undercurrent of heart and mind throughout the day. God is our Father. He's always our Father.Everywhere we go, he's our Father. We're his children. And this is where I think the metaphor is helpful because children, not always, but naturally want to to please their or to be like their dad. I'm enjoying this almost every day. I have a 20 year old daughter.Okay? So here's here's what happens in my day. I find myself you know, I'll I'll be sitting at the couch or something and I'll stretch like this and I look over and there she is. She's looking for my affirmation. Right?I'm I'm I'm doing what you're doing, daddy. Right? I kinda like that. That's kinda fun. I'll say to her, I love you.And she'll say, I love you. Is that manipulation? I don't know. But I love it. I love it.Or the other day I was eating and I wasn't watching my manners very well. And so I'm kind of chomping away on something sort of loudly and all a sudden I look over and she's going, daddy needs to slow down and close his mouth while he chews apparently. Why does she raise her arms and mimic me? Why does she repeat the words that I say? Why does she mimic even some of my less wonderful qualities?Because at this point, at least in her life, she wants to be like me. That's a goal for her even though she couldn't articulate it. And here's where I think verse 13 and verse 15 come together. The goal of what God is doing in each of us is holiness and Christ likeness. That's the big picture.He is forming us into the likeness of Christ. As I muster my spiritual and my mental thoughts and energies towards loving God with my mind, my Heavenly Father, my will increasingly is shaped by that priority And the true thoughts that my now girded up mind, the loins of my mind, are thinking about and focusing on shape the desires that I have in my heart, which right thinking leads to right living. So I fill my thought, my heart, my mind with God's truth. And the more I think about the grace of God to me, both now and in the future, and the love of God to me both now and in the future, the more my life then is shaped around his will and his purposes. So that right thinking about God shapes my desires and produces a more righteous living, a more holiness in my life.And all of it is anticipating a future grace and goodness of God that he will shower upon me and is yet to be experienced. And the anticipation, the more I realize what God has already done for me, it elevates my anticipation of what God has yet to do for me. K? And anticipation is a very powerful motive in our life. I remember when, football season was about to start.I would run, and I would train. I would get ready for it. And when basketball season was gonna start, I would run and train and play and shoot. I would get I would get ready for it. I remember when we had, the Bethel five k here a couple years ago.I'm the pastor of the church. I don't wanna embarrass myself. I ran, and I got ready for it. And I remember, perhaps the best example for me is after forty-four years, I got married. And before my wedding, I'm here to tell you, after forty-four years I was thinking about my wedding, and I was thinking about my honeymoon.I wanted to get ready for it. So I swam, and I ran, and I got a tan, and I was thinking about anticipating being with my girl. And it shaped the way that I lived my life. And when we, as Christians, set our minds on things that matter, things that are spiritually true, the promises of God, gospel, the word of God, when my thoughts are high and holy as God would have them to be, I anticipate increasingly, this is good. The best is yet to come.And that anticipation of what is to come means I'm getting ready for it now. And it changes and it shapes the way that I think and the way that I live and the directions of my life, which increases my likeness to Christ and gets me ready for that day when Jesus returns and when his full grace will be revealed. So friends, set your mind on the grace to come. Be holy as God is holy. Is your mind disciplined?Is your life morally diligent? And is your hope oriented towards the amazing grace of God yet to come? To help us with that today, we are going to be partaking in the Lord's supper. And I'd like to pray, and you could begin to prepare your hearts as I do. Heavenly Father God, I do pray and ask that this very practical message would, lead to very practical results in our lives.Lord, help us to be a church that is disciplined in our thinking, that strives to know and understand the gospel, the God of the gospel, the Jesus of the gospel, that we would be serious about this. And that this might, Lord, grant to us an elevated sense of anticipation of what is yet to come. And as we take this communion now, I pray that the partaking in it, the reminder of the death of Jesus would serve to also prepare us with, holiness and anticipation of no more symbols but actual presence to see him and to be with him forever. All praise be to Jesus, we pray in his name. Amen.* This transcript was generated using AI transcription technology and reviewed for accuracy but may contain errors. Please refer to the original audio for precise wording.

Steve DeWitt The Joy of Opposition - Part A Study Guide for Spiritual Exiles, Nehemiah 4:1-23 Scripture Reference: Nehemiah 4:1-23 Visit the series page: Exiles: A study in 1 Peter Donate to Support The Journey Sermon Transcript for Spiritual Exiles, Nehemiah 4:1-23 Sermon Series: Spiritual ExilesMessage: The Joy of OppositionAirdate: 9/18-9/21/26Programs: 2360 and 2361Morning, Bethel Church, and this is our challenging weekend with Daylight Savings. I said, or I just was thinking about our first service people today, that those are the really early risers to show up at the 815 on the spring ahead weekend of Daylight Savings. You're sort of more the hoi polloi, the sort of the normal folks, and we'll see who comes to the next service. I stand before you as a tired man. My daughter was up throughout most of the night, and I'm running on fumes today. So I say that to you in some way to mitigate my guilt for something stupid that I might say, because my eyes are like rolling in my head, I feel like today. So we'll get through the morning and go home and take a really good nap. And you parents who've been there, you know how I'm feeling today. I do want to greet our Cedar Lake campus this morning, and thank you so much for joining with us. Our Hobart Portage campus, which is not in this service with us, but are next week celebrating their... grand opening. I can say our grand opening. We're just one church. Really excited about that.So if you happen to just remember that in prayer, we've got a lot of work that's gone into kind of kicking that off, and I've seen the plans, and it's really going to be a great weekend next weekend over there. And how often do you, you know, grand open a new campus? You know, like, well, we've done it twice in the last six months, but we don't know how many more ever in the future, so we want to celebrate that, and we're going to next week. Today, we're going to stay in the stream of our teaching in 1 Peter without being exactly in 1 Peter. We've seen in 1 Peter this focus on trials. That trials are meant by God to reveal and to refine us. We look at them often as being bad things. God looks at them as being good things because of the effect that they have. And 1 Peter is written to people that are in exile, that are experiencing opposition.They're experiencing... ostracization, and Peter encourages them to see even those things as being part of God's refining fire, that work that he works in us, and to embrace them, not as being bad things, but in the end ultimately good things. So today I want to take a little break from 1 Peter and to look at one particular kind of trial that we so often run into as individuals and as a church. And that is just the trials of opposition, the trials of opposition. And my title is The Joy of Opposition, which sounds oxymoronic, right? Who looks at opposition and goes, yay, we don't naturally do that. There is from Scripture and from the teaching of Scripture every reason for us to even look at opposition as being something that we can rejoice in. James, of course, says, “count it all joy when you fall into various trials and temptations”, and that includes the trials of opposition. We all face opposition, don't we? Maybe as I say that, names come to mind. Perhaps that person is sitting next to you today. and try not to be poking them throughout the sermon, especially if you're married.But we all face opposition, and we have to know how to respond to it if we're ever going to make it through these trials that God brings our way and these people that God puts in our path. How should we respond to opposition? And Nehemiah is just a fantastic... book and a fantastic story about a man who suffered great opposition and who not only endured it, but who goes down in history as a great example of somebody going through it in a way that honors the Lord. And so... is that Nehemiah hears that the walls of Jerusalem were broken down and remained in that condition. He was serving King Artaxerxes in Susa, the capital of Persia, and he hears that Jerusalem is still in ruins, the wall is still in ruins, and he has a burden for that. He offers a prayer, and God blesses that prayer, and King Artaxerxes says, Nehemiah, you can go, and I'm going to... the thing. I'm going to provide what you need for this thing. I'm given a letter that ought to get you all the way there. And he was the most powerful man in the world at the time. And so that was like a huge endorsement.And so Nehemiah, he goes to Jerusalem and he inspects the walls and he gathers the Jews and he says, listen, my friends, let's rise and let us rebuild this wall. And Nehemiah is this amazing story of how a people that, you know, they weren't naturally masons and builders, but they come together and they accomplish this amazing feat of rebuilding the walls of the city of Jerusalem. And in the midst of all of this success, there is chapter 4 where there is trouble. There's trouble. Even in the midst of a great success, there's trouble. And it seems to me, my observation would be, and even my own experience, that whenever God is really doing something, whether that be in somebody's life, a new Christian, or maybe some victories that you've had spiritually in your life, or maybe it's your small group, or even a church or a mission work, wherever God is really moving, so often when there is a lot of momentum, something will happen or somebody will come or there'll be some sort of criticism that steps into that moment and can so easily derail the entire thing. And that's what Nehemiah faced.And I'd like to begin in our little study here of chapter four by looking at the strategies that the opponents of Nehemiah employed against him. So let me introduce you to the bad guys, okay? These are the bad guys. And their names are notorious, Sanballat, Tobiah, and Geshem. These were three kings of small kingdoms that surrounded Jerusalem. And they represent the opposition to the Jews rebuilding this. wall. We're introduced to them in chapter 2 verse 10 where they first hear that Nehemiah has come to rebuild the wall and the text tells us that they are displeased greatly. And they begin then to wage a kind of psychological war against Nehemiah. That continues throughout the story. Even after chapter 4, it's not the end of it, because as the story unfolds, they write an open letter, you know, a kind of assassination of Nehemiah's character. They post it on Facebook for everybody to see what this guy was really all about and what his motives were and questioning those. Later, they want to meet him in the fields of Ono. And when your enemies want to meet you in the fields of Ono, you say to them, Oh, no, I am not going to go there.They wanted to kill him. And so these guys were serious about this. And Sanballat is the ringleader. Tobiah is kind of... his sidekick, and Geshem was the schemer behind the scenes that was doing his scheming. This might help a little bit. Sanballat was the Sith Lord, Tobiah was Darth Vader, and Geshem was General Grievous, just to give some communication to some of you. Now, these guys surrounded Jerusalem. Their kingdoms surrounded Jerusalem. Maybe you're in a situation like that right now as I talk about opposition. You feel like you've got it on all sides. I got nowhere to go. There's no safe zone for me. There's no green zone for me. Everywhere I look, it seems like I've got opposition against me. That's what Nehemiah was facing. Everybody around them wanted them out of there. Now, these men couldn't attack Nehemiah directly because, remember, Artaxerxes, the king of Persia, the king of really the world at that time, had endorsed the project. So to come out overtly and to say, we're going to take you on, we're going to take you down, would have been in opposition to Artaxerxes. And even these guys didn't want to mess with Artaxerxes.So their strategy really is one more of cloak and dagger. All right, this is espionage. This is insinuation. It's the psychological guerrilla warfare that they employ against God's people in the rebuilding of this wall. So what are the strategies that they employ? Well, notice, first of all, that they begin where every schoolyard begins, and that is with taunting and with ridicule. Look at verse 1. “Now, when Sanballat heard that we were rebuilding the wall, He was angry and greatly enraged, and he jeered at the Jews. And he said in the presence of his brothers and of the army of Samaria, what are these feeble Jews doing? Will they restore it for themselves? Will they sacrifice? Will they finish up in a day? Will they revive the stones out of the heaps of rubbish and burn ones at that? Tobiah the Ammonite was beside him, and he said, yes, what they're building, if a fox goes up on it, he will break down their stone wall.” Emphasis added for effect, okay? So here you have Sanballat now. He's the ringleader. He's the spokesperson. He's the Sith Lord. And he begins by ridiculing the effort that these Jews are doing in rebuilding the wall.And the text literally says this. It says that he became very angry. Literally, his nose became hot. This is a Hebrew idiom for when somebody is really mad. It's like the blood. They get red in the face all the way to the end of their nose. Like if you see a guy who's red all the way to the end of their nose, he's mad, right? And that's Sanballat. He's mad to the end of his nose, mad. And so he begins by taunting them. And visualize this with me. He gathers his cronies, he gathers the army of Samaria, and he begins to jeer the Jews in a way that he knows they're going to hear what he is saying, and he begins to mock them. And this sounds like, you know, the local elementary schoolyard, or maybe an IU-Purdue football game, because he begins by saying this. He says, these feeble Jews. Okay, what's that? Name-calling, right? They're wimpy. They've got nothing. He derides their ambition. Will they restore the wall? In other words, this project's a joke. Come on. Putting this whole thing together. He ridicules their optimism. He says, what are they going to do? Pray the wall up? They can't build this wall.All they have is their prayers. He mocks their enthusiasm. He says, well, they finish in a day. Word had gotten out that they were busy little beavers working so hard on the wall. All of their enthusiasm. Do they really think they can do this thing? I mean, come on. He undermines their confidence. Can they bring the stones back to life? In other words, they can't do it. They can't. Do it. And if you can visualize this, here's all these people, and they hate the Jews. They're not for this wall going back up. And every one of these that he says, all the guys, you know, they've been drinking. Think of a sort of a drunken sort of mob scene where they're all, wow, no Jews, and they can't do it. And so it kind of is building a Sanballat, kind of does this and does that. And I don't know if you've ever been in a situation where somebody tells a really good joke and somebody else thinks it's a great time to pile on. Or jump on the bandwagon. There's not a lot of humor in the Bible, but this is one of them, actually.Sanballat very effectively rolls out these ridicules, and there's Tobiah. He thinks it's a great time to jump in, and he goes, yeah, if a fox ran on the wall, it would fall down. I hear everyone going, oh, Tobiah, that's so stupid. Why would you say something like that? And we know from history and archaeology that it is stupid. They've done studies of the wall that Nehemiah built. It was nine feet thick. That would be a big fox. Knock that wall down. The point here is that he wasn't saying this for the armies, and he wasn't saying this for his cronies. He was saying this hoping the Jews would hear it, hoping they'd hear the mockery and the laughter. You know, the old adage in the schoolyard is, sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. You've heard that before. You've probably said that. And the fact that you have to resort on the schoolyard to poetry ought to say that words are effective at discouraging us, aren't they? And even as adults, a little contrary word, a little criticism, a little taunt, a little mockery, and inside we can suddenly become so fleshly, we can be discouraged.And that is always the case. Words are effective. Now, why do you suppose Sanballat began with ridicule? Why not just march the armies out there and just take them all on? Because what is Satan? He's known as the father of what? Lies. Satan is the master of the subtlety. He's the master of the insinuation. We see that with Adam and Eve, or with Eve specifically in the garden, as he just twists the words and he plays with the mind. Those that Satan controls and follow his path, they do the same thing. Satan knows that he doesn't have to get a good Christian to deny the virgin birth or the fact that Jesus is coming back. All he has to do is discourage him a little bit. And with that discouragement, the good work that God's doing in them or the good work that God's doing through them, all of a sudden, it can come to a halt. Why? I'm so discouraged. And maybe you're there right now. You're rejoicing in what God's done in the past, but right now you're discouraged and somebody said something. Something's going on.This person's in my life. I got a Sanballat. I got a Tobiah. And you're just thinking, oh, that's the way the enemy operates. How should we respond? Notice how Nehemiah responds in verse 4 and verse 6. I won't read them, but in both cases, he prays. Now, I never saw anybody in the schoolyard do that. I'm going to pray for you. I'm going to pray over these words that you've said. It's not our natural response, is it? have an example here from Nehemiah, I'll come back to this later, in how to respond to criticism and opposition. Go to God in prayer. And notice what he adds after verse 6. He says that the response of the people was that they worked even harder. And the text says they worked because they had a heart to work. I love that little phrase there. And as I read that, you know what I think about? I honestly think about Bethel Church.One of the qualities of this church that I love so much is that this is a church that has a heart to work. And I've seen that over the years. I can think of just even recent examples of moments where it just comes pouring out. A year ago right now, we said, hey, we bought this building in Gary. We got a clean 30 or 40,000 square feet. Y'all come out now. And I know a terrible cold, I mean, I-65 was a sheet of ice. I know because I drove down it. You know, we had 400 people, volunteers that showed up and we scrubbed every inch of that building. And I saw the way that people were working and laboring and sweating and all of that. No pay for God, you know, that kind of a thing. And I just admire that so much. And like the, you know, a month ago we said, hey. somebody's given us two gym floors, come pull planks. Nobody wakes up in the morning and goes, I think I'm going to pull planks today.But we had all these people that showed up and they pulled planks all day and they got blisters and sore backs, but they did it to the glory of God. Why? Because they had a heart to work. And I just think about our church and even the day-to-day kind of week-to-week ministries, I think it's a wonderful quality of our congregation. We're good at building walls. and projects, and just having a heart to work for the Lord, and I commend you for it. So look at that verse and go, that's us right there. We're just like them. Encouraged? I want to be encouraging. The second thing that we find the enemy doing is, and you see how these escalate, okay? Escalates. Ridicule doesn't work, the people just work harder. So they amp it up now in verse 7 and 8, and they just seek to make trouble. But when Sanballat and Tobiah and the Arabs and the Ammonites and the Ashdodites heard that the repairing of the walls of Jerusalem was going forward and that the breaches were beginning to be closed, they were very angry. Now before they were greatly disturbed, greatly upset, now they are really mad. And what do they do?And they all plotted together to come and fight against Jerusalem and to cause confusion in it. The second thing that opposition will do when the ridicule doesn't work is they will just seek to do mischief. They will seek to do something that can frustrate the plans. They'll plot. They'll come together and strategize against the work of God. They will gossip. They will slander. They'll do whatever they can to create trouble. It's a kind of verbal terrorism that takes place. And of course, again, God's enemies do this because their Sith Lord Again, notice Nehemiah's response in verse 9. But we prayed and we posted a guard. That little verse I find to be one of the most helpful and insightful with a common problem amongst God's people. When opposition comes or trouble comes or some conflict comes, whatever it might be, there are really, it seems, two kinds of Christians. There are the kinds of Christians who say, we're just going to pray about it. We are going to pray about it. And indeed, they do pray about it. And then you have another group of people. They say, you know what? We're going to post a guard, right? We're weaponizing. We're getting the guns out.They want to do battle. Bring it on, okay? We are going to take practical steps. to take them out. They're more of the sort of practitioner type. So you have the kind of praying types, and you have the kind of post-a-guard types. And what I've seen pastorally, this plays out this way, where you have some people say they're just going to pray about it. I have seen in my ministry, I've seen people, they'll get like, I have cancer. And their response is, I am simply going to pray about this. And I have urged them, I'll say, pray about it, but why not get some medical help and do whatever you can medically as well as praying in order to take care of this problem? And I've seen people who have refused to seek medical advice because in their minds, I think, they think it's more faithful to simply... pray about it. At the other side of this, I have seen often, and I have done this myself, a problem arises and I skip the praying and I go to the posting of the guard stuff. Well, let's just think about how to make this happen.And we're going to do this and we're going to do that and we're going to take care of this and we're going to take care of that. And there's no regard for seeking God. It's like Israel when the Gibeonites faked him out and Joshua said, eh, we won't go to war with you. And then they find out they're the next country over. Why? Because they did not seek the Lord in the matter. And so it seems like there are those two kinds of Christians. And Nehemiah shows the beautiful balance of embracing both of those. What ought we do when we come to some trouble or trial in our life? First thing to do is to pray about it. And we see Nehemiah over and over again. He prays. His instinct is prayer. And for us as Christians, that ought to be our first thing. Hey, let's pray about that right now. Let's seek the Lord about this right now. But when we say amen, it doesn't mean now I don't have to think about anything else. There are all kinds of wisdom and prudent matters that the Bible also talks about.Read through the wisdom literature of Psalms, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes, and it's filled with practical advice for faithful living in the real world. We live in a real world where real things have to be taken care of. And the wise Christian and the wise church We'll do both of those. So maybe ask yourself, am I a I'm going to pray about it and then sort of take my hands off kind of person? Or am I a forget about praying about it, get right down to fixing it kind of person? And maybe Nehemiah could inspire us to be both of those. Okay, both of those. An example of both of those would be a dear woman in our church a few weeks ago had a very, very difficult surgery. According to James 5, she asked if the elders would pray over her, and we did. We anointed her with oil, we prayed over her, we prayed over that surgery. And then she went and she had the best medical care that she could possibly find. And to me, that is Nehemiah. Praying about it, posting a guard. A great example, I think, for prudent and prayerful living.The third thing we find happened now, again, an escalation, okay? Taunting, troublemaking, and now we see threats. Look at verse 11. “Also, our enemy said, before they know it or see us, we will be right there among them and we'll kill them and put an end to the work.” Then the Jews who lived near them came and told us ten times over, wherever you turn, they will attack us. Wherever you turn, they will attack us. Wherever you turn, they will attack us. Over. The language here in the Hebrew means over and over and over again. They were saying, they're going to get you. They're going to get you. They're going to kill you. Now, how fun would that be? Right? There you are. You're building a wall. You're hewing out stones. You're piling them up. You're making a wall. And at the same time, you've got some of your own people, cronies of your enemies, who are saying to you, you're going to die. Now, these people realize they didn't know they were Bible characters. Right? They're not in there, oh, this is a Bible story. We're going to be fine. They have no idea. They're living life like you and I live our lives.Would that be an effective, fearful tactic? I mean, what if, as you came in, there's all these people outside of the church going, you walk in there, they're going to kill you. How many of us would go, oh, no problem? No, it would have its effect, wouldn't it? And indeed, it did in that day. It had an effect of discouragement. Word gets out, they're going to kill us. In fact, let's look at that effect. What is the effect of the taunting? And what is the effect of the ridicule? And what is the effect of the troublemaking and the threats? of opposition in this story at this point is discouragement. Look at verse 10 of chapter 4. “In Judah it was said, the strength of those who bear the burdens is failing. There is too much rubble. By ourselves we will not be able to rebuild the wall.” What Nehemiah is recording there is what is the word on the street. What were people saying as they were building the wall? They're looking at all the rubble now and they're saying there's so much rubble. This is weeks after, or days after, Nehemiah said, let's rise and build.Was there more rubble now than there was before? No. But when we are discouraged, everywhere we look, there's rubble, right? Oh, yeah. I'm a little discouraged right now. My whole life stinks. There's rubble everywhere. When we're encouraged, there's no rubble. When we're discouraged, everything's rubble. Are you with me? Remember, I didn't have a good night of sleep, so I have no idea what I'm saying right now. I just hope it's connecting somehow. These words were having their effect in spite of the amazing progress that was being made. This goes down as one of the greatest and most unified team efforts that God's people have ever done. And in spite of this amazing accomplishment, and in the midst of it, You have all of this turmoil and opposition and drama and people actually saying, we're never going to make it. We can't do it. There's too much rubble and too much trouble. The danger, I think, in verbal attacks is we begin to believe what's being said, even when it's not true, right?Do you think, how likely is it that Geshem and Tobiah and Sanballat are going to take their armies against people that the most powerful man in the world said had permission to build this wall? Not very likely that they would do it. But if you hear something enough, you believe it to be true, don't you? If somebody tells you that you're nothing enough or somebody tells you that you can't do it enough or somebody tells you that, you know, your faith is a bunch of hooey because I know the kind of person that you are enough, you begin to believe it and discouragement kind of creeps in and now the progress that you were making, it slows down or stops, right? And you're like, oh, there's so much rubble. Why are we even trying this? We're never going to make it. I wonder if you've lived. In verse 10, have you had your face flush as your nose gotten red all the way to the tip as a colleague or a family member or a neighbor or a former friend or a former spouse tells you what a terrible person you are and questions every character quality in your life?Have you been, in verse 10, discouraged? As a pastor, you know, as a leader of any kind, if you take on any responsibility, expect that you're going to deal with this. I can tell you, I've been a pastor for 22 years. I can think of names that come to my mind of Sanballats of Tobias and Geshams over the years that have said this or that and questioned this or that and on and on and la la la. It's just, it's part of what it means to be a leader. But I know well that sense of discouragement, that deep down thought that I'm a failure or my faith isn't real because this person says they don't think I'm a good Christian, etc. I don't want to ruin the ending here again, but they rebuilt the wall in 52 days. They're halfway done. They're only like three weeks away from the time that Nehemiah said, let's begin rebuilding the wall. This is one of the greatest projects and team efforts in history, yet it was criticized. It was mocked. And this is the danger, I think, of criticism is that it can sap the energy from the most spiritual and noble of efforts.These people were rebuilding the wall to the glory of God. They heard from Nehemiah earlier all the things that Artaxerxes, all the things really that God had done. I mean, what are the chances that the most powerful man in the world is going to come to the aid of the Jews in rebuilding the wall of a city that had rebelled against his predecessor? Why would a king do that? And yet that king came to Nehemiah and the Jews' aid and provided the resources and gave the letter and made all the provisions. I mean, you look at all of that and what can you say? This is a God thing, right? This is a God thing. And yet, in spite of it being a God thing, a little bit of criticism just takes the wind out of the sails. This was tough for Nehemiah. opposition outside, discouragement within. Maybe you're in verse 10 right now, and you can relate to this. It's like, man, you're describing my life here, where I am today on this Sunday. I'm discouraged.And here's where Nehemiah, I think, provides an inspiring and helpful example of how to respond when life brings opposition. to what God is doing and what God wants to do in our life. And I've got four things, four responses that Nehemiah has here and four ways that we can actually experience these oppositions and turn them into actually a kind of joy. And I share these with you not because I do this perfectly or even 75%. This is as much for me as it is for anybody. And we have to be reminded of this because it happens so often in our life. But how do we respond when opposition comes to us? First of all, I think it is so critical that we expect it, that we expect opposition to come. There are some people that think mistakenly that to be a Christian or to be a part of a church, I mean, it's like... where it never is heard a discouraging word and the skies are not cloudy all day. I mean, that's every local church, isn't it? To go there would be just a blissful experience of happy Christians all the time.I'll never have anybody tell me anything but something that's uplifting and encouraging to me. Nothing will ever happen in the church that I don't walk out of there going, I'm so glad I'm a part of that church. I mean, it's just gonna be, it's like heaven on earth. Well, nobody amen'd that. And that's because you all have been in churches and in this church. The reality is, no matter what God is doing, there is always going to be negative opposition, criticism, a discouraging person, a Sanballat, a Tobias, somebody like that. J. Oswald Sanders, great Christian man, wrote a classic book on leadership, said this, “no leader is exempt from criticism, and his humility will nowhere be seen more clearly than in the manner in which he accepts it and reacts to it.” Do you think that Nehemiah thought to himself as he was on his camel or donkey or walking or however he got from Susa to Jerusalem, you know what, I'm just going to show up there. I'm going to give an inspiring speech. And not only are the Jews going to rally to the cause, but everybody around Jerusalem, they're all going to be happy about this. It's going to be fantastic.My speech will do it. No. He knew what was coming. He knew there would be trouble. Chuck Swindoll, many of you know Chuck Swindoll, says this, “there will always, always be opposition from those who are by nature negative and critical, but the work must go on. Progress should not stop because of a few who were critical of the plan.” I think it's a falsely idealistic perspective on the Christian life to think that it's going to somehow be easy. that I'm going to skate along and everyone's going to be happy with what God is doing in my life. It won't happen. And we can look at examples in the scripture, not just Nehemiah, but Jeremiah certainly faced that. Paul faced that. Well, how about Jesus? I mean, if there was ever a leader who was such an awesome leader that, I mean, everybody would have loved everything that he did and just rallied to him. I mean, everybody would just applaud him and be like, you know, be like Palm Sunday every day of his life, right? No. What happened to our perfect leader, Jesus?Not only were there many people that opposed him, famous now, men like Caiaphas and Pilate and the Pharisees, but even within his own circle. Judas betraying him. The greatest leader who's ever walked this earth, beginning the greatest organization that has ever been begun, the church, faced trouble, didn't he? And opposition. So who are we to think that in our... smaller context and in our own lives that we are going to be able to follow the Lord, fulfill his will for us, and somehow think everybody's going to love it and everybody's going to applaud it. It simply won't happen. In fact, I think if there is a key truth here, it is this one, is that God's will didn't allow the wall to be built without opposition. I mean, could God have rebuilt this wall without Sanballat, Tobiah, and Geshem? You bet he could have. Could he have rebuilt this wall in some way where everybody thought it was great? You bet that he could have. But it was God's will that there be a Sanballat. It's God's will that there was Tobiah and all the rest. God included that in the plan for Nehemiah and the plan for the rebuilding of the walls.It included the conflict. It included the slander. It included the threats that were made. And I wonder today if you might have a Sanballat in your life. Even as I've been talking about this, there's been somebody coming to mind. And in your heart, you're like, you know, God, if you love me, you will destroy them, right? Because you're not the author of evil, and you don't like evil people, and yet this evil person is in my life. And it seems to me that... this whole thing to work the way that, in my opinion, it ought to work, that person needs to be eliminated. And we try to pray the Sanballats out of our life because we think something's wrong, that they are in our life. And too often we think that with even criticism, right? We think, I must be out of God's will because somebody said something negative. Mrs. So-and-so said something. And so we look at and we listen to so-and-so who says such-and-such about this or that, and we think, well, I must not be a good Christian, or maybe this faith thing isn't true, or maybe I'm out of the will of God.Joe Stowell III, his dad was the first pastor of our church, and he was longtime president of Moody Bible Institute, once said, “in every church I have pastored, God has placed difficult people around me to keep me dependent on him.” Now, I have no idea what he's talking about there in my own personal experience. But there is truth there, isn't it? That opposition is not out of God's will, but it is a part of God's will. And that indeed, God gains greater victory when his people trust him in the midst of trouble and overcome in spite of opposition. that there's a greater glory that comes from that why do you think God created Satan? Did God know when He made him the highest archangel? Did He know the whole story? Indeed, did He purpose the whole story, that Satan was going to rebel against Him and take a third of the demons, or the angels, with him, and that all of this would ensue? Why? Why does God do that? As Luther said, even the devil is God's devil, right?That God uses The taunts and the ridicule and the criticism and all the rest to gain a greater victory and a greater glory. God thought it best that there be a Satan. And we have to look at these kind of situations and realize that apparently God thinks it's best that there's a Sanballat in our life. Now that's a hard thing, isn't it? Because we want them out of there. But God has them and sovereignly places them. in our life. Now, if I might make a very quick tangent here, you may be here and in an honest evaluation, you're not Nehemiah in the story. You're Sanballat. And maybe you're like, you know what? This vindicates my role in this church. Somebody's got to do it. And that somebody is me. We have to realize that while it is God's will for there to be Sanballats, it is never God's will for us to be a Sanballat. And I would call you to change. In fact, you could ask the question, why was Sanballat so upset about this? And this is where conflict reveals the opportunity. of our hearts, doesn't it? Was it about the wall for Sanballat? No, it wasn't about the wall.It was about influence. It was about economy and money. It was about power. And Nehemiah and that wall being reconstituted represented a threat to Sanballat. And that's why he wanted them out. So don't be a Tobiah. Don't be a Geshem. Don't be a Sanballat. We need to expect there to be opposition. And maybe next week, one of you will come up to me and say, I didn't think that sermon was very relevant, but boy, the week I had. And I'll say, good. I don't know if I should say it that way, but hey, you're applying God's word. That's a good thing. Second thing we see here is that Nehemiah provides this wonderful example of prayer, of prayer. Look at verse 4. Look at the first thing that Nehemiah does. It says, Nehemiah prays this, “Hear, O God, for we are despised. Turn back their taunt on their own heads and give them up to be plundered in a land where they are captives.” Now that doesn't sound like a very loving prayer.And if you read through the Psalms, there are Psalms that are known as imprecatory Psalms where David writes psalms that sound sort of like that, you know, where he is praying God's justice and wrath down upon his enemies. I'm not into the content of the prayer as much as I am in the fact that he prayed. And we see that pattern. Verses 6 through 8, there's troublemaking and scheming. What is Nehemiah's response? Verse 9, but we prayed to our God. When we face opposition, that has been sovereignly brought into our life by God, why would prayer be an effective strategy? Because if this person or this opposition is in my life by the sovereign hand of God, when I pray, I'm talking to the right person about the issue. I'm talking to the person who has the power to mediate the situation and to mitigate it and to take it away if he wants or to do whatever, but I'm praying to the right person. I'm praying to God. I wonder, the Sanballat in your life that I referred to earlier, have you prayed about this person? Have you prayed about this situation? Have you gone to the Lord in prayer?The example of Nehemiah throughout the whole story is that trouble comes, trouble comes, trouble comes. Nehemiah's response, he prays, he prays, he prays, he prays. It's a book on prayer. And that prayer in response to trouble. And we don't, I think, naturally do that. Naturally, we want to post the guard, right? We want to man up. We want to soldier up. We want to go take care of business. We want to take care of this person. We want to fight back. We want to sort of Mike Tyson in his prime. But Nehemiah begins with prayer. I would call you to pray. You say, ah, it's just Nehemiah. What did Jesus do? What did Jesus do the week of his passion when he knew what was coming? You say, well, he knew it was coming. Why pray about it, right? I mean, if you know it's coming, you can ask God all you want, but it's coming anyway, so what's the point? And yet he prayed. He prayed in Gethsemane. He prayed even on the cross. His last words were prayers.And if that doesn't eloquently show us the importance of prayer, especially when we are in trouble, and we have people in our church who are in trouble. Life has brought trouble. Life has brought pain. And prayer sometimes is like, oh yeah, we prayed. No, this is a key part of how Christians respond to trouble. We go to God. We open our hearts to him. We ask for his help. We pray about the Sanballat. We pray that that good work that God wants, may that refining work be done. I want to be that goal that is purified. I don't want to waste this trial. I don't want to waste my cancer. I don't want to waste this. unemployment. I don't want to waste this conflict with a fellow Christian. I want it to have its good effect and to embrace that and to tell God that. I wonder, do you do that, friend? One thing I've noticed when I've been dealing with a kind of Sanballat situation, you know, my natural instinct is to pray that God would take them out, right?But I find that when I pray for that person, especially if they're a fellow believer, When I pray for that person, I find a little impulse of charity towards them. Have you noticed this? It's hard to pray for somebody and hate them at the same time. I find that when I pray for that person, it's a little step towards the command to love your enemies and to do good to those who despitefully use you, Romans 12. Give that a try. You're like, I don't want to pray for this person. Try it. Pray that God's will would be done in their life. Pray that even their taunts and their ridicule and their criticism, whatever 1% gain that your spiritual life could have from it, say, God, I want that 1% gain. What they're saying is evil and their motives, I believe, to be bad. But whatever good can come from it in my life, I want that. And I find that when I get my heart around to praying that way, it has a way of restoring some encouragement. And when you're discouraged, what do you need? You need encouragement. Pray. Keep praying. The third thing is to prepare for it.And I've said this before, but notice that even in this chapter, Nehemiah, he doesn't simply pray, but he takes actions to meet the opposition. Back to the text again a second, verse 9. But we prayed and posted a guard. In verse 13, it says that Nehemiah armed the workers so they could respond to an attack. Now, there might have been someone going, you're not a man of faith. Why are you giving us swords? And he's like, I prayed and I'm giving you swords. In verses 16 through 18, he had workers work with a chisel in one hand and a sword in the other. Does that mean he wasn't a man of faith? He brought a trumpeter with him. And the idea was that if there was attack anywhere on the wall, they would blow the trumpet and everyone would rush to that place in order to engage the fight. He had people work in the low spots in the wall in verses 12 through 15. Now, why do you think Nehemiah would have people working in the low spots? Where do you think an attack would most likely happen? In the high spots or in the low spots?It seems to me it'd be the low spots, and that's what Nehemiah thought as well. And he had people in verse 22. He said, everyone stays in the city until the wall is done. What do we see there? Practical wisdom, okay? He got prepared for the opposition. I think we ought to expect it. We ought to pray for those who oppose it. Oppose us, but we also must be prudent and wise in responding to it. And the fourth thing here, and this is really, I would say, the most helpful, is that after we've prayed about it, after we have prepared for it, we've expected it, we know it's coming, here's the final point. Look at verses 19 and 20, what Nehemiah says. “I said to the nobles and to the officials and to the rest of the people, the work is great and widely spread and we are separated on the wall for far from one another. In the place where you hear the sound of the trumpet, rally to us there.” Here's the key phrase. “Our God will fight for us.” Nehemiah was a practical man. Nehemiah was a prayerful man.But Nehemiah was also a man who understood that in the end, the battle is the Lord's. And that bottom line for us has to be our bottom line, because all of our praying and all of our prudency, and I don't know if that's a word, but all of our, you know, sort of strategizing, in the end will feel superficial to us if our anchor and if our sort of our bottom line is not the God who has made promises to us. that he will fight for us, that he will come to our aid. And of course, as Christians, what do we know? We know the end of the story, don't we? You can read Revelation. At the end of the story, there is no opposition, there is no authority, there is no power that stands against the king of kings and lord of lords who comes riding out in that white horse. And he is going to return, and every enemy, Satan, included is going to go under his feet and in the end, Philippians 2, every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.We know the end of this story is that God wins, and because we are God's children, we win with Him. And our walls may build or not, our troubles may come or go, our critics may say or not, but in the end, we know that with the Lord, we win. Our God will fight for us, and faith is the victory that overcomes the world. But we are living now in this time where we have to We have the tension between what we know to be true by the promise of God and the realization of that. And the Bible says that in this world, you're going to have trouble, right? You are going to have trouble. New Christian, it is going to be hard. Do not be discouraged by the trouble that comes and the critics that come and the opposition that comes. You're going to have people that are going to say things to you. You might even have people in this church that are going to discourage you in some manner. But we cannot have our hope in the people of this church or in the critic changing his mind or coming around and saying, you know what, I was mistaken.You really are a wonderful person. Can I hug you? It's not likely to happen. Our hope is in the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth. “Where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord.” Psalm 121. And as God's people, when we face these temporary trials, which are achieving for us a glory that far outweighs them all, we look at that trial and we look even at that person, that Sanballat, and we see them as temporary in light of the big picture. And “though this world with devils filled should threaten to undo us, we will not fear for God hath willed his truth to triumph through us.” Martin Luther. A mighty fortress is our God. And on and on. I mean, there's songs and verses. This is where real life is lived. It's in the trenches and in the troubles. And this is how God refines us. And when I can see that this is how God does it, then I can even embrace the tough times and to see that there is good that comes from it. You say, oh, that's not true. Let's look to the cross of Christ. I've got one behind me.If there is one great example of how God uses the taunts, the ridicule, the betrayals, the enemies of God and all of their schemings to do an ultimate good, it is the cross of Christ, the perfect person, the perfect leader, the perfect sacrifice, killed at the hands of Satan and all his minions, and yet the greatest wrong producing the greatest good and glory. And our lives are little microcosms of that grand narrative. And you might not have a Caiaphas, you might not have a Pilate, it may not even be a, it's not the Sith Lord you're dealing with, it's General Grievous, or some lesser situation. But all of them are a part of a temporary trouble, but an ultimate victory. I heard somebody one time say, You know, for unbelievers, this life is the best that they'll ever experience. But for Christians, this is the worst that we will ever experience. The future is bright. The future is glorious. And we live in light of that in the troubles and the trials of today. “If God is for us, who can be against us?” That wasn't in the Bible when Nehemiah lived, but I think it might be today his favorite verse.And he lived it out very well. And I hope that we will as well as a church. And those are just some words from a tired pastor. I don't know if they connected at all. And when I get up from my nap, I'll wonder what I said this morning. But maybe God will use them, and I hope that he does. Let's stand together. I'd like to pray and give a final benediction.This transcript was generated using AI transcription technology and reviewed for accuracy but may contain errors. Please refer to the original audio for precise wording.

Steve DeWitt Our Calling: Right Thinking and Right Living - Part B Study Guide for Spiritual Exiles, 1 Peter 1:13-16 Scripture Reference: 1 Peter 1:13-16 Visit the series page: Exiles: A study in 1 Peter Donate to Support The Journey Sermon Transcript for Spiritual Exiles, 1 Peter 1:13-16 Sermon Series: Spiritual ExilesMessage: Our Calling: Right Thinking and Right LivingAirdate: 9/16-9/17/26Programs: 2358 and 2359Well, good morning, and good morning to our Cedar Lake campus, our Hobart Portage gang that's gathered, and, here at Crown Point as well. Good morning. I'm gonna begin my, message with a little personal touch. Many of you know that Jennifer and I are pregnant expecting our second child, and we found out what this week, what the gender is. Thought we'd share it with you.So put up on the screen if you would. Now this is our this is our child. If you look really carefully, look really carefully. So Some of you still don't know what that means. Ask somebody later.Yes. We're having a little girl, we found out this week. So that's two girls. It's lost lots of estrogen in the house, isn't it? So it'll just be one more reason to pray for your pastor.Right? We're excited. June, sometime in June is the arrival date, and, we're we're, pretty pretty fired up about that. So let's get into our time in God's word together. And I remember some some years ago, somebody coming up to me and saying, you know, pastor Steve, you spent all that time in your messages on exposition, And then you get to the application.And, honestly, we really prefer the application. Could you just, like, skip forward to the to the application and do less of the of the exposition? And the answer to that is no. I will not. And the reason for that is that, like a a family that says, you know what? The meat, the vegetables, the fruit, it's also unnecessary. Let's skip forward to the dessert and just do dessert all the time. Would be a very unhealthy family. Similarly, when it comes to studying God's word, it's we always wanna move towards application, but it is the the doctrinal, exegetical, the truth, the words of Scripture that form the grounds for the application. And if you just do application and without any doctrine, your applications aren't gonna last very long.They won't be very deep for sure. And we see this happening in the in the letters of the New Testament. Most, if not all of them, begin doctrinally. They begin with truth about God. They begin with truth about the gospel.They begin with truth about, you know, the the nature of salvation, and then they move towards us. So what? This is what it means. This is how we sort of live this out on the street level of life. And Peter is doing that and has done that here in our little study so far.We saw in verses of chapter one in verses one through 12, a wonderfully, like, amazing, rich, fantastic explanation of the gospel, the nature of salvation, what God has done to save us, how Jesus has been key in that in his resurrection, and it's been it's been filled with hope. It's been filled with joy and gladness. And then you get to verse 13, and there is that word therefore. And that word is code for time for some application. Whenever you see that in the Bible, it's probably the the writer drawing now some conclusions for the way that we ought to live.And so we're gonna talk about that kind of application today. And, let's get into the text. I'm I'm studying with you today verses, 13 through 16 of First Peter one. Please listen as I read God's word. “Therefore, preparing your minds for action and being sober minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.”“As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance. But as you who as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct since it is written, you shall be holy for I am holy.” Now if you look at that section of Scripture, you'll see that there really are two kind of, like, commands here, two big things that he's saying, this is what we ought to do. And he says, first of all, set your hope fully on the grace to come. And secondly, that we are to be holy in all of our conduct.So hope fully, be holy. And before you think that doesn't sound very practical to me, there's a lot more here than meets the eye. And I want you to see just first of all that these verses are part of a larger section here beginning in chapter in verse 13 and following that is all about what the gospel ought to do in the lives on the practical level as it's lived out by the Christian. Not just what we have here before us, but the fact that God is holy. We're gonna see in verses 17 following that God is our judge, And then finally, that we were redeemed from this way of, this sinful life by the precious blood of Jesus.And all of those, the holiness of God, the judgment of God, and the blood of Christ are to call the Christian out of a life of sin and living according to the old ways and to call us into the new life. This new life lived to the glory of God, lived free from the bondage of sin. And so there's lots more of this to come. We're just looking at one section here today. Notice, first of all, that he says that we are to focus on future grace.Look look again at verse 13. “Set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” K? Set your hope your hope fully. Now what is hope?Hope is, by definition, future oriented. I don't hope, you know, I I I don't hope about something that has already happened. I don't hope the Seahawks win the Super Bowl. Why? Because it's done already, isn't it?Hope doesn't orient backwards. Hope always orients forwards or towards the future. And we've seen Peter saying this throughout this letter. It's the it's actually the third reference to the return of Christ. He did it in verse five.He did it in verse eight. Now he does it in verse 13. Are you surprised that a letter about suffering would have a lot about the future in it? I'm not. I mean, this is it makes sense, doesn't it?To cast our eyes towards what is yet to come in the midst of our trials, in the midst of our sufferings, to think about the future. And here, he says the grace that is yet to be revealed. Now what is that talking about? Because I think we could look at salvation and say, wait a second, I already got the grace of God. Right?When I when I put my faith in in Jesus, I received from God grace. I was saved by grace. I go to a church that sings amazing grace. How sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I've already got the grace of God.How can I put my hope on some future grace? What might this be talking about? One of my favorite commentators, Wayne Grudem, says the grace that is coming to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ means the further store of undeserved blessings, which God will pour out on them when Christ returns. Whenever we talk about grace or the grace of God, it is always highlighting that God is giving us something that we don't deserve. That's why it's grace.Salvation is by grace through faith. To think about the future and to realize that there is a storehouse of grace, there are blessings that are yet to come to us that we have not realized, that we have not yet fully received. The future is even better than it is right now. Might that be encouraging if you're in a trial of some kind? That maybe the best is yet to come, and that what I have, while wonderful, is not yet the fullness of what God has in store for those who love him, for those who are called according to his purpose.You say, well, that sounds nice. Preach as well. But, like, what are you talking about? Well, here's just a short list I just kind of compiled of future grace yet to come. The ongoing conscious life upon our physical death, the physical presence with God, our resurrected and glorified bodies, seeing and worshiping and savoring the presence of Jesus Christ himself, eternal rewards that God will give to us based on the quality of our service to him while here on earth.How about eternal life, enjoyment, and pleasure that we will have forever in real time on a new earth that has no curse upon it? We're gonna live on that new earth, and it's gonna be a much better version than this one. Eternal fellowship with fellow Christians and loved ones. If you've if you've had a loved one that's died in the faith, I guarantee there's a future grace coming to you. You're gonna meet him or her again and fellowship with them forever.Eternal status and relationship as children of God, which right now we don't totally get and realize what a big deal that is. But to step into eternity and the God of heaven, the God of eternity, we are part of his family. We're not just servants in the house. We are sons and daughters of God. Many other things.Someday you're gonna come to me and say that list was terrible. It was so small. We you could have added so many more things. Indeed. None of them we deserve.All of these things are God's gift to us. We deserve hell. We deserve punishment, and yet God is giving us what we don't deserve. And much of what we're going to receive, we haven't even tasted yet. And so Peter writing to exiles, suffering trials says, put your hope not here and not in the trial or maybe the trial going away.Set your hope fully on grace yet to be received from God. The inverse of this is true. Don't put your hope on anything less than this. Don't put your hope, Scripture says, in your riches. Don't put your hope in your life and in your physical vitality.Don't put your hope in any fellow man or pastor or anybody else. Don't put your hope in who you are and your achievements and your big stuff or whatever it might be. Don't put your hope in things in this world. All of it is passing away. The Bible calls God's people with the same faith that trusts in Jesus in the past dying on our on the cross for our sins, to look to the future with the same kind of expectant hope and to believe the best is yet to come.That helps you endure in them trials, doesn't it? Now that sounds wonderful, but how do we do that? Peter, get practical for us. K? We're tired of these long expositions, Peter.Could we just skip to the dessert? Can we get to the application? And Peter provides two specific means by which our hope is set fully on the future. You might have missed them as I read it. But notice, first of all, he says that we are to prepare our minds for action.Somehow, there's a connection between setting my hope fully and the grace to come and a mind that is prepared for action. What does this mean? Well, it's an intriguing illustration. In fact, if you have a King James Bible possibly with you, you might look at that and say, my Bible says it a little bit different. Indeed, here's how the King James translates it.And if you grew up in the church in the seventies with a good Scofield Bible like I did, this is more what you're familiar with. Right? It says this, gird up the loins of your mind. Ain't that a blessing? Gird up the loins of your mind.And, technically, that is what the text is saying here. The problem is that for most of us, a loin is something to put barbecue on. Right? And so we don't feel like we can apply that very well. What do you mean loins?Well, this is a historical cultural thing. Let's talk about this a little bit. A loin was a robe or the bottom section of a robe. And if you've watched, you know, the Jesus film or some things like this, you've seen the kind of robes and garments that the men would wear as just that was the fashion of the day. And so what would happen is is that these men would wear these long longer kind of flowing gowns, but they had to do what men today have to do.They had to work. They had to go to war. They had different things. And so if you were going to do that, you had to gird up your loins. You had to take those flowing gowns, and you had to get them out of the way if you were to do serious business.Now I happened upon an illustration on a website that I kind of like called the art of manliness. I go there just to see if they're manly enough, in my opinion. But I came across this illustration of how they actually girded up their loins. Now this is gonna be a blessing to each of you. Notice that the the the the gown that the guy has, he would pull it up, bring it cinch it together, pull it through between his legs, and then stick it into his belt.And when he'd done that, now he's ready to go to war. The art of manliness. Okay? I actually thought about demonstrating this myself, but maybe this will suffice for that. Okay?Now here's the point. You girded up the loins of your mind or your your your actual loins, it meant that you're about to get serious about something. You are about to take care of business. And that could be working in the field, or it could be defending your home or defending your honor. I mean, if you saw a guy if if you're, you know, if you're at the local pub and a guy starts girding up his loins, you're like, hey. What's going on around here? Right? Why? Fight's about to break out. This guy's getting serious right here.Calm down, man. Stop the girding. Peter says, with our minds, we are to gird up our loins. What is he referring to there? What Peter is saying is the same thing that Paul says in Ephesians six when he writes, “stand therefore having fastened on the belt of truth.”I believe it's the same word, gird on the belt of truth. So for Paul, he's saying, get that belt of truth solidly in your mind. Peter is saying, get serious about truth with your mind and with your thinking. Why are our minds so important? Here's why.Right thinking leads to right living. When I am thinking rightly, my life is going to be consistent with that right thinking. When I am thinking poorly, when I am not thinking, when I am thinking with distraction, when I am thinking about lesser things, my life is going to reflect that also. Proverbs says, “as a man thinks in his heart, so is he.” If you wanna know who you really are, look at your thought life.Think about the things that you think about. Examine the way that you use your mind, and it will determine largely the shape of our lives, how important our thinking is. He doubles down on this. Peter does. And he says, secondly, be sober minded.Be sober minded. This word here is most commonly used in reference to alcohol and intoxication. He uses it Peter or Paul uses it in First Timothy three describing the qualifications of an elder. He is to be sober, and a godly woman is described as being sober. And it certainly includes not allowing alcohol or any other kind of substance like that to be a controlling influence in your life.But it's used here more broadly, not just alcohol, but a kind of soberness in thinking, not dour, not sad, not like I'm sober. We're Christians. We're very sober. Not like that. We can be we can be joyous, and we can be glad hearted, and we ought to be.But in our thinking, we are serious and sober. We are directing the thoughts of our minds, and it's shaping our whole approach to life. Another commentator. For Peter, the cares of this life and the pressure of persecution can intoxicate the Christian and distract his or her focus just as easily as wine might. The need of the hour is clear judgment and a mind and will prepared to resist anything that would distract them from a hope set on Jesus' appearing.Sober thinking is thinking with focus. It is clarity. It is the refusal to allow anything to distract. Again, it's not sober in personality. It is sober in thinking.It is a mind that says, I am. I refuse to think about life and my trials and my troubles in any other manner than this right here. I will look at life through the gospel. I will look at life through the grid of God's word, which is God's wisdom. I wanna look at my marriage.I wanna look at my parenting. I wanna look at my singleness. I wanna look at my schooling and my job and my hobbies and the dreams and hopes and my money and everything else. I wanna look at it through the wisdom of God's word, and I refuse to allow my mind to think anything else else than that. That is sober thinking.It is the Christian mind whose best and highest thoughts are reserved for kingdom and spiritual matters. So let me ask you. Think about what you think about when you don't have anything that you have to think about. What do you spend your time thinking about? How often in the course of the day do your thoughts turn towards spiritual realities?This is where I think some of the disciplines, Christian disciplines of prayer and Bible study and Scripture memory. These are all things that aid in this. It helps us to tune our hearts to sing his praise as the hymn writer says. It's in the day where my I am vertically oriented, and I'm looking at my life from the perspective that heaven vertically allows for me. How often do you think about God in the day or ministry or the needs spiritual needs of the people around you or Scripture or eternity?Do you intentionally direct your mind to think about what you want it to think about? And you say, I can't do that. My mind has a mind of its own. And now this is psychologically confusing, isn't it? But what I wanna say is we can direct our thoughts.We can, as Paul writes, take captive every or take captive every thought and and subject it to the lordship of Jesus Christ. It is a discipline. It is a way of using and thinking about life intentionally, but it takes habit. I've been thinking about this lately because I feel like in my life right now, I'm struggling in this regard. And I think why is it?Like, I I feel like I I I used to be able to think better than I do right now. And I think one of the reasons this is just one of them. One's just the aging process. But secondly, probably, I I think is that I find myself today often the the the gaps where I used to have time to think are now being filled with checking my email, social media, or passively watching something on a screen. Now maybe it's just me, but I don't think so.I think we are currently and unknowingly awash in a kind of mind muddling cultural habit of perpetual distraction. And I will never be able to say that sentence again. So I hope somebody wrote that down. Don't you think? I mean, now it's just common.We don't we think nothing of it to go to a restaurant and to look in the booth next to us and to see a family of five. They're not talking to each other. They're engrossed in their smartphone. Right? I have come to church and and walked through here before the service starts, and I've seen an entire family all sitting here minutes before the service is about to start.All of them are engrossed in their phone. And I don't think they're preparing for worship by reading the Westminster Catechism. What are they looking at? What are they reading? What are they filling their minds with?What are they directing their thoughts towards? And I say this to myself because I feel like my mind is I'm getting mushy. I don't like that. Distracted. You know, Satan doesn't have to convince us of a heresy.He just has to distract us from thinking about the truth. The one, if I got up and say Jesus isn't God, I hope you'd all rush the stage and beat me to a pulp in love. K? That's the obvious danger. How about the more subtle one where we just don't think about it at all and we're constantly distracted from the higher and holy things of life and eternity.We're awash, I think, in trivial things. Can I just sit on this a little longer? If you want I say, hey. Think about what you think about. If you if you view social media as any indication of the thoughts that people are having, I mean, if they're having the thoughts sufficiently that they think I need to post this, I need to communicate this with everybody that knows me, then this must be, one of their best thoughts.Right? And if you look at a at a news feed on Facebook or some other social media site and to see the kinds of thoughts that people in society and maybe even people in the church, what they're thinking about, what they are viewing, what they are finding humorous. Not all of it. There's lots of cute pictures of babies and gender announcements. And that's totally acceptable.But a lot of it is superficial, silly, banal. And it seems normal to us now. Right? Because it's just all the time going on. It troubles me to see on Facebook people, even in our church, posting, tweeting about, you know, the dresses at the Grammys or Katy Perry's Super Bowl performance.Really? Like, this is this what we're filling our thoughts and minds with? And then here comes the trial and life is devastating. I wonder why. I haven't set my hope fully on the grace to come in years.I've been filling my mind with all of these lesser things. I'm thinking poorly. Now this is not a rant against media or movies or Twitter. Not at all. I think Peter would have had a Twitter account, honestly.But I don't think he would talk about silly things. In fact, can we not look at First Peter as a kind of long Twitter account? What was Peter thinking about? He writes about what he was thinking about. And here we have before us the kinds of thoughts that the apostle Peter had about life.This is the kind of thing that he was dwelling on and thinking about. Does that not tell us something about what it means to be a spiritually mature Christian man or woman and the kinds of thoughts that we think about? And this is a struggle because our culture is so immoral and so materialistic and all the rest. But he was living in the Greco Roman culture, which would give ours a run for its money. And yet, he was thinking this way.I would encourage you to follow the example of the apostle Peter. Now one more thing, and I gotta move on here, because I wanna get particularly practical. How do we engage our mind in sober thinking? How do we make it intentionally oriented towards spiritual truth? Well, I thought I'd just have some fun with this.What's the gender of our baby? Girl. So how about maybe on the week that I announce this, here's my little acronym. K? Four ways to help think more seriously about higher things.Girl, g, get rid of distractions. If your whole life is beeping, humming, buzzing, smartphone, constantly calling your attention to something that somebody has said about this or that, you have no time to think high and holy thoughts. There's no time for prayer. You're distracted all the time. Now I sound like an old fuddy duddy with that, and the young people are going, he is so uncool.But let's see what happens to this generation in thirty years. Time will tell whether wisdom lies in the beeping and the humming and the buzzing or in the older folks who are saying, it didn't used to be like that. We used to talk. I thought maybe some of those old people would amen that point. But get rid of distractions.K? And I don't mean to focus on that one. There's a thousand distractions out there. Secondly, increase truth input. Get rid of the banal and the inane and the silly and the superficial and fill your mind. This is the garbage in garbage out principle. Fill your mind increasingly with truth. Philippians four eight. You know, “what sort of things are pure and lovely, of good report, excellent, and worthy of praise, think on these things.”Spend your time on the beautiful and the truthful and the glorious and the eternally significant. Third, r, recall the grace of God for all the times you don't do that and to seek his forgiveness and ask God to give you daily grace. And finally, love God with your mind. That's a whole another point we could make, but how critical it is that we're we are thinking Christians. And even from the beginning, we're called to love him with our body.I mean, we preach against, you know, sexual sin or, you know, abusing your body with drugs or something like that. But so we we're we're all about loving God with our bodies. But what about loving God with our minds? And to intentionally seek to think deeper and higher thoughts about God and to learn and to grow and to become a mature thinking Christian. Let's do that.K? Let's do that. Now I gotta move on. We got communion coming. Second thing that he is focusing on.First one is setting your, your hope fully on the grace that is to come. The second category is that we are to be holy or what I'm calling, we're to be like our daddy. Again, the text, verse 14. “As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance. But as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct since it is written, you shall be holy for I am holy.”So we see Peter here moving from right thinking to right living. What does holy thoughts in my brain look like in a holy expression in my life? And I want you to see, first of all, that this has a relational tone to this. He he began doesn't just say, be holy. He says, hey. As obedient children. And what is that referring to? It is referring to the relationship that we have with God. Right? The Bible says that when we become Christians, that God actually adopts us into his family.We are members of the family of God. We're brothers and sisters in this family. We're sons and daughters of the most high God. And because God is my Father, that relationship matters. It means something in regards to the way that I look at myself, the way that I want to live my life.God's my Heavenly Father. How should I live now? Well, he says here that we should live morally disciplined lives. And to proof text this, Peter reaches into the Old Testament, goes back to Leviticus, and he quotes from there's five passages in Leviticus that use the same statement. “You shall be holy for I am holy.”K? You shall be holy, not me. I'm I'm saying it like I'm I'm God. Okay? “You shall be holy for I am holy.”K? And so we see in that statement the ethical measure and the eth and the ethical motivation as well. God's character is the measure, and God's character is the motive. Because I am holy, you shall you shall be holy. God's holiness is the absolute moral unity of his entire being.He is completely good. He is morally without fail. He is not the author of evil. He has no inclination towards anything that is less than absolutely morally pure and upright. John writes this in First John one.“In him, God is light, and in him, there is no darkness at all.” There's no shadow. There's no little something hidden. He is absolutely, morally, purely bright and light. Everything he does always is holy.And so Peter says, this is our God. This is our Heavenly Father. This is the way that we are to strive to live our life in a morally disciplined manner where the ethics of life matter to us. We want to please our Heavenly Father. We wanna live consistent with what he is like.Notice in all your conduct. Okay? So it's not just, you know, be holy as I am holy. When you're at church on Sunday, when you are out with the pastor, when somebody is watching that maybe could look down on you, It is not in any sort of category. It is in all categories.Holiness of life impacts, shapes, directs every aspect of my life. Why? Because it shapes and directs every aspect of the very life and character of God himself. Now lest there be any confusion here, I wanna emphasize that we are not naturally holy. We are naturally sinners.And this is why Jesus came, and this is why Jesus died. He didn't die for holy people so that they could go, not go to hell. He died for I said that wrong. He let me just say it this way. He died for sinners.K? He died for sinners, and that's us. K? So without his righteousness, we have no standing with God. We have no adoption with God.But sometimes people confuse our position before God as righteous because of what Jesus has done and the calling that God has upon the practice of our life. You overemphasize the position and say, hey, I'm righteous before God, so who gives a rip? Right? I'm going to heaven anyway. That is an abuse of the grace of God.If I focus on the practice solely, then now I am all the time wondering if I'm good enough, wondering if I'm gonna earn my way to heaven. And that is a misuse of the gospel. The gospel is is that we are declared righteous by God. We are positionally righteous before God. We enter into a relationship with God through the gospel by faith that now shapes my desires where now I want to live like I'm a child of God.K? It is relational. It is not legalism. It's not antinomianism. No law.It is relationship. Grudem says to be holy as God is holy includes a full and pervading holiness that reaches to every aspect of our personalities. It involves not only avoiding outward sin, but also maintaining an instinctive delight in God and his holiness as an undercurrent of heart and mind throughout the day. God is our Father. He's always our Father.Everywhere we go, he's our Father. We're his children. And this is where I think the metaphor is helpful because children, not always, but naturally want to to please their or to be like their dad. I'm enjoying this almost every day. I have a 20 year old daughter.Okay? So here's here's what happens in my day. I find myself you know, I'll I'll be sitting at the couch or something and I'll stretch like this and I look over and there she is. She's looking for my affirmation. Right?I'm I'm I'm doing what you're doing, daddy. Right? I kinda like that. That's kinda fun. I'll say to her, I love you.And she'll say, I love you. Is that manipulation? I don't know. But I love it. I love it.Or the other day I was eating and I wasn't watching my manners very well. And so I'm kind of chomping away on something sort of loudly and all a sudden I look over and she's going, daddy needs to slow down and close his mouth while he chews apparently. Why does she raise her arms and mimic me? Why does she repeat the words that I say? Why does she mimic even some of my less wonderful qualities?Because at this point, at least in her life, she wants to be like me. That's a goal for her even though she couldn't articulate it. And here's where I think verse 13 and verse 15 come together. The goal of what God is doing in each of us is holiness and Christ likeness. That's the big picture.He is forming us into the likeness of Christ. As I muster my spiritual and my mental thoughts and energies towards loving God with my mind, my Heavenly Father, my will increasingly is shaped by that priority And the true thoughts that my now girded up mind, the loins of my mind, are thinking about and focusing on shape the desires that I have in my heart, which right thinking leads to right living. So I fill my thought, my heart, my mind with God's truth. And the more I think about the grace of God to me, both now and in the future, and the love of God to me both now and in the future, the more my life then is shaped around his will and his purposes. So that right thinking about God shapes my desires and produces a more righteous living, a more holiness in my life.And all of it is anticipating a future grace and goodness of God that he will shower upon me and is yet to be experienced. And the anticipation, the more I realize what God has already done for me, it elevates my anticipation of what God has yet to do for me. K? And anticipation is a very powerful motive in our life. I remember when, football season was about to start.I would run, and I would train. I would get ready for it. And when basketball season was gonna start, I would run and train and play and shoot. I would get I would get ready for it. I remember when we had, the Bethel five k here a couple years ago.I'm the pastor of the church. I don't wanna embarrass myself. I ran, and I got ready for it. And I remember, perhaps the best example for me is after forty-four years, I got married. And before my wedding, I'm here to tell you, after forty-four years I was thinking about my wedding, and I was thinking about my honeymoon.I wanted to get ready for it. So I swam, and I ran, and I got a tan, and I was thinking about anticipating being with my girl. And it shaped the way that I lived my life. And when we, as Christians, set our minds on things that matter, things that are spiritually true, the promises of God, gospel, the word of God, when my thoughts are high and holy as God would have them to be, I anticipate increasingly, this is good. The best is yet to come.And that anticipation of what is to come means I'm getting ready for it now. And it changes and it shapes the way that I think and the way that I live and the directions of my life, which increases my likeness to Christ and gets me ready for that day when Jesus returns and when his full grace will be revealed. So friends, set your mind on the grace to come. Be holy as God is holy. Is your mind disciplined?Is your life morally diligent? And is your hope oriented towards the amazing grace of God yet to come? To help us with that today, we are going to be partaking in the Lord's supper. And I'd like to pray, and you could begin to prepare your hearts as I do. Heavenly Father God, I do pray and ask that this very practical message would, lead to very practical results in our lives.Lord, help us to be a church that is disciplined in our thinking, that strives to know and understand the gospel, the God of the gospel, the Jesus of the gospel, that we would be serious about this. And that this might, Lord, grant to us an elevated sense of anticipation of what is yet to come. And as we take this communion now, I pray that the partaking in it, the reminder of the death of Jesus would serve to also prepare us with, holiness and anticipation of no more symbols but actual presence to see him and to be with him forever. All praise be to Jesus, we pray in his name. Amen.* This transcript was generated using AI transcription technology and reviewed for accuracy but may contain errors. Please refer to the original audio for precise wording.

Steve DeWitt Our Calling: Right Thinking and Right Living - Part A Study Guide for Spiritual Exiles, 1 Peter 1:13-16 Scripture Reference: 1 Peter 1:13-16 Visit the series page: Exiles: A study in 1 Peter Donate to Support The Journey Sermon Transcript for Spiritual Exiles, 1 Peter 1:13-16 Sermon Series: Spiritual ExilesMessage: Our Calling: Right Thinking and Right LivingAirdate: 9/16-9/17/26Programs: 2358 and 2359Well, good morning, and good morning to our Cedar Lake campus, our Hobart Portage gang that's gathered, and, here at Crown Point as well. Good morning. I'm gonna begin my, message with a little personal touch. Many of you know that Jennifer and I are pregnant expecting our second child, and we found out what this week, what the gender is. Thought we'd share it with you.So put up on the screen if you would. Now this is our this is our child. If you look really carefully, look really carefully. So Some of you still don't know what that means. Ask somebody later.Yes. We're having a little girl, we found out this week. So that's two girls. It's lost lots of estrogen in the house, isn't it? So it'll just be one more reason to pray for your pastor.Right? We're excited. June, sometime in June is the arrival date, and, we're we're, pretty pretty fired up about that. So let's get into our time in God's word together. And I remember some some years ago, somebody coming up to me and saying, you know, pastor Steve, you spent all that time in your messages on exposition, And then you get to the application.And, honestly, we really prefer the application. Could you just, like, skip forward to the to the application and do less of the of the exposition? And the answer to that is no. I will not. And the reason for that is that, like a a family that says, you know what? The meat, the vegetables, the fruit, it's also unnecessary. Let's skip forward to the dessert and just do dessert all the time. Would be a very unhealthy family. Similarly, when it comes to studying God's word, it's we always wanna move towards application, but it is the the doctrinal, exegetical, the truth, the words of Scripture that form the grounds for the application. And if you just do application and without any doctrine, your applications aren't gonna last very long.They won't be very deep for sure. And we see this happening in the in the letters of the New Testament. Most, if not all of them, begin doctrinally. They begin with truth about God. They begin with truth about the gospel.They begin with truth about, you know, the the nature of salvation, and then they move towards us. So what? This is what it means. This is how we sort of live this out on the street level of life. And Peter is doing that and has done that here in our little study so far.We saw in verses of chapter one in verses one through 12, a wonderfully, like, amazing, rich, fantastic explanation of the gospel, the nature of salvation, what God has done to save us, how Jesus has been key in that in his resurrection, and it's been it's been filled with hope. It's been filled with joy and gladness. And then you get to verse 13, and there is that word therefore. And that word is code for time for some application. Whenever you see that in the Bible, it's probably the the writer drawing now some conclusions for the way that we ought to live.And so we're gonna talk about that kind of application today. And, let's get into the text. I'm I'm studying with you today verses, 13 through 16 of First Peter one. Please listen as I read God's word. “Therefore, preparing your minds for action and being sober minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.”“As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance. But as you who as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct since it is written, you shall be holy for I am holy.” Now if you look at that section of Scripture, you'll see that there really are two kind of, like, commands here, two big things that he's saying, this is what we ought to do. And he says, first of all, set your hope fully on the grace to come. And secondly, that we are to be holy in all of our conduct.So hope fully, be holy. And before you think that doesn't sound very practical to me, there's a lot more here than meets the eye. And I want you to see just first of all that these verses are part of a larger section here beginning in chapter in verse 13 and following that is all about what the gospel ought to do in the lives on the practical level as it's lived out by the Christian. Not just what we have here before us, but the fact that God is holy. We're gonna see in verses 17 following that God is our judge, And then finally, that we were redeemed from this way of, this sinful life by the precious blood of Jesus.And all of those, the holiness of God, the judgment of God, and the blood of Christ are to call the Christian out of a life of sin and living according to the old ways and to call us into the new life. This new life lived to the glory of God, lived free from the bondage of sin. And so there's lots more of this to come. We're just looking at one section here today. Notice, first of all, that he says that we are to focus on future grace.Look look again at verse 13. “Set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” K? Set your hope your hope fully. Now what is hope?Hope is, by definition, future oriented. I don't hope, you know, I I I don't hope about something that has already happened. I don't hope the Seahawks win the Super Bowl. Why? Because it's done already, isn't it?Hope doesn't orient backwards. Hope always orients forwards or towards the future. And we've seen Peter saying this throughout this letter. It's the it's actually the third reference to the return of Christ. He did it in verse five.He did it in verse eight. Now he does it in verse 13. Are you surprised that a letter about suffering would have a lot about the future in it? I'm not. I mean, this is it makes sense, doesn't it?To cast our eyes towards what is yet to come in the midst of our trials, in the midst of our sufferings, to think about the future. And here, he says the grace that is yet to be revealed. Now what is that talking about? Because I think we could look at salvation and say, wait a second, I already got the grace of God. Right?When I when I put my faith in in Jesus, I received from God grace. I was saved by grace. I go to a church that sings amazing grace. How sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I've already got the grace of God.How can I put my hope on some future grace? What might this be talking about? One of my favorite commentators, Wayne Grudem, says the grace that is coming to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ means the further store of undeserved blessings, which God will pour out on them when Christ returns. Whenever we talk about grace or the grace of God, it is always highlighting that God is giving us something that we don't deserve. That's why it's grace.Salvation is by grace through faith. To think about the future and to realize that there is a storehouse of grace, there are blessings that are yet to come to us that we have not realized, that we have not yet fully received. The future is even better than it is right now. Might that be encouraging if you're in a trial of some kind? That maybe the best is yet to come, and that what I have, while wonderful, is not yet the fullness of what God has in store for those who love him, for those who are called according to his purpose.You say, well, that sounds nice. Preach as well. But, like, what are you talking about? Well, here's just a short list I just kind of compiled of future grace yet to come. The ongoing conscious life upon our physical death, the physical presence with God, our resurrected and glorified bodies, seeing and worshiping and savoring the presence of Jesus Christ himself, eternal rewards that God will give to us based on the quality of our service to him while here on earth.How about eternal life, enjoyment, and pleasure that we will have forever in real time on a new earth that has no curse upon it? We're gonna live on that new earth, and it's gonna be a much better version than this one. Eternal fellowship with fellow Christians and loved ones. If you've if you've had a loved one that's died in the faith, I guarantee there's a future grace coming to you. You're gonna meet him or her again and fellowship with them forever.Eternal status and relationship as children of God, which right now we don't totally get and realize what a big deal that is. But to step into eternity and the God of heaven, the God of eternity, we are part of his family. We're not just servants in the house. We are sons and daughters of God. Many other things.Someday you're gonna come to me and say that list was terrible. It was so small. We you could have added so many more things. Indeed. None of them we deserve.All of these things are God's gift to us. We deserve hell. We deserve punishment, and yet God is giving us what we don't deserve. And much of what we're going to receive, we haven't even tasted yet. And so Peter writing to exiles, suffering trials says, put your hope not here and not in the trial or maybe the trial going away.Set your hope fully on grace yet to be received from God. The inverse of this is true. Don't put your hope on anything less than this. Don't put your hope, Scripture says, in your riches. Don't put your hope in your life and in your physical vitality.Don't put your hope in any fellow man or pastor or anybody else. Don't put your hope in who you are and your achievements and your big stuff or whatever it might be. Don't put your hope in things in this world. All of it is passing away. The Bible calls God's people with the same faith that trusts in Jesus in the past dying on our on the cross for our sins, to look to the future with the same kind of expectant hope and to believe the best is yet to come.That helps you endure in them trials, doesn't it? Now that sounds wonderful, but how do we do that? Peter, get practical for us. K? We're tired of these long expositions, Peter.Could we just skip to the dessert? Can we get to the application? And Peter provides two specific means by which our hope is set fully on the future. You might have missed them as I read it. But notice, first of all, he says that we are to prepare our minds for action.Somehow, there's a connection between setting my hope fully and the grace to come and a mind that is prepared for action. What does this mean? Well, it's an intriguing illustration. In fact, if you have a King James Bible possibly with you, you might look at that and say, my Bible says it a little bit different. Indeed, here's how the King James translates it.And if you grew up in the church in the seventies with a good Scofield Bible like I did, this is more what you're familiar with. Right? It says this, gird up the loins of your mind. Ain't that a blessing? Gird up the loins of your mind.And, technically, that is what the text is saying here. The problem is that for most of us, a loin is something to put barbecue on. Right? And so we don't feel like we can apply that very well. What do you mean loins?Well, this is a historical cultural thing. Let's talk about this a little bit. A loin was a robe or the bottom section of a robe. And if you've watched, you know, the Jesus film or some things like this, you've seen the kind of robes and garments that the men would wear as just that was the fashion of the day. And so what would happen is is that these men would wear these long longer kind of flowing gowns, but they had to do what men today have to do.They had to work. They had to go to war. They had different things. And so if you were going to do that, you had to gird up your loins. You had to take those flowing gowns, and you had to get them out of the way if you were to do serious business.Now I happened upon an illustration on a website that I kind of like called the art of manliness. I go there just to see if they're manly enough, in my opinion. But I came across this illustration of how they actually girded up their loins. Now this is gonna be a blessing to each of you. Notice that the the the the gown that the guy has, he would pull it up, bring it cinch it together, pull it through between his legs, and then stick it into his belt.And when he'd done that, now he's ready to go to war. The art of manliness. Okay? I actually thought about demonstrating this myself, but maybe this will suffice for that. Okay?Now here's the point. You girded up the loins of your mind or your your your actual loins, it meant that you're about to get serious about something. You are about to take care of business. And that could be working in the field, or it could be defending your home or defending your honor. I mean, if you saw a guy if if you're, you know, if you're at the local pub and a guy starts girding up his loins, you're like, hey. What's going on around here? Right? Why? Fight's about to break out. This guy's getting serious right here.Calm down, man. Stop the girding. Peter says, with our minds, we are to gird up our loins. What is he referring to there? What Peter is saying is the same thing that Paul says in Ephesians six when he writes, “stand therefore having fastened on the belt of truth.”I believe it's the same word, gird on the belt of truth. So for Paul, he's saying, get that belt of truth solidly in your mind. Peter is saying, get serious about truth with your mind and with your thinking. Why are our minds so important? Here's why.Right thinking leads to right living. When I am thinking rightly, my life is going to be consistent with that right thinking. When I am thinking poorly, when I am not thinking, when I am thinking with distraction, when I am thinking about lesser things, my life is going to reflect that also. Proverbs says, “as a man thinks in his heart, so is he.” If you wanna know who you really are, look at your thought life.Think about the things that you think about. Examine the way that you use your mind, and it will determine largely the shape of our lives, how important our thinking is. He doubles down on this. Peter does. And he says, secondly, be sober minded.Be sober minded. This word here is most commonly used in reference to alcohol and intoxication. He uses it Peter or Paul uses it in First Timothy three describing the qualifications of an elder. He is to be sober, and a godly woman is described as being sober. And it certainly includes not allowing alcohol or any other kind of substance like that to be a controlling influence in your life.But it's used here more broadly, not just alcohol, but a kind of soberness in thinking, not dour, not sad, not like I'm sober. We're Christians. We're very sober. Not like that. We can be we can be joyous, and we can be glad hearted, and we ought to be.But in our thinking, we are serious and sober. We are directing the thoughts of our minds, and it's shaping our whole approach to life. Another commentator. For Peter, the cares of this life and the pressure of persecution can intoxicate the Christian and distract his or her focus just as easily as wine might. The need of the hour is clear judgment and a mind and will prepared to resist anything that would distract them from a hope set on Jesus' appearing.Sober thinking is thinking with focus. It is clarity. It is the refusal to allow anything to distract. Again, it's not sober in personality. It is sober in thinking.It is a mind that says, I am. I refuse to think about life and my trials and my troubles in any other manner than this right here. I will look at life through the gospel. I will look at life through the grid of God's word, which is God's wisdom. I wanna look at my marriage.I wanna look at my parenting. I wanna look at my singleness. I wanna look at my schooling and my job and my hobbies and the dreams and hopes and my money and everything else. I wanna look at it through the wisdom of God's word, and I refuse to allow my mind to think anything else else than that. That is sober thinking.It is the Christian mind whose best and highest thoughts are reserved for kingdom and spiritual matters. So let me ask you. Think about what you think about when you don't have anything that you have to think about. What do you spend your time thinking about? How often in the course of the day do your thoughts turn towards spiritual realities?This is where I think some of the disciplines, Christian disciplines of prayer and Bible study and Scripture memory. These are all things that aid in this. It helps us to tune our hearts to sing his praise as the hymn writer says. It's in the day where my I am vertically oriented, and I'm looking at my life from the perspective that heaven vertically allows for me. How often do you think about God in the day or ministry or the needs spiritual needs of the people around you or Scripture or eternity?Do you intentionally direct your mind to think about what you want it to think about? And you say, I can't do that. My mind has a mind of its own. And now this is psychologically confusing, isn't it? But what I wanna say is we can direct our thoughts.We can, as Paul writes, take captive every or take captive every thought and and subject it to the lordship of Jesus Christ. It is a discipline. It is a way of using and thinking about life intentionally, but it takes habit. I've been thinking about this lately because I feel like in my life right now, I'm struggling in this regard. And I think why is it?Like, I I feel like I I I used to be able to think better than I do right now. And I think one of the reasons this is just one of them. One's just the aging process. But secondly, probably, I I think is that I find myself today often the the the gaps where I used to have time to think are now being filled with checking my email, social media, or passively watching something on a screen. Now maybe it's just me, but I don't think so.I think we are currently and unknowingly awash in a kind of mind muddling cultural habit of perpetual distraction. And I will never be able to say that sentence again. So I hope somebody wrote that down. Don't you think? I mean, now it's just common.We don't we think nothing of it to go to a restaurant and to look in the booth next to us and to see a family of five. They're not talking to each other. They're engrossed in their smartphone. Right? I have come to church and and walked through here before the service starts, and I've seen an entire family all sitting here minutes before the service is about to start.All of them are engrossed in their phone. And I don't think they're preparing for worship by reading the Westminster Catechism. What are they looking at? What are they reading? What are they filling their minds with?What are they directing their thoughts towards? And I say this to myself because I feel like my mind is I'm getting mushy. I don't like that. Distracted. You know, Satan doesn't have to convince us of a heresy.He just has to distract us from thinking about the truth. The one, if I got up and say Jesus isn't God, I hope you'd all rush the stage and beat me to a pulp in love. K? That's the obvious danger. How about the more subtle one where we just don't think about it at all and we're constantly distracted from the higher and holy things of life and eternity.We're awash, I think, in trivial things. Can I just sit on this a little longer? If you want I say, hey. Think about what you think about. If you if you view social media as any indication of the thoughts that people are having, I mean, if they're having the thoughts sufficiently that they think I need to post this, I need to communicate this with everybody that knows me, then this must be, one of their best thoughts.Right? And if you look at a at a news feed on Facebook or some other social media site and to see the kinds of thoughts that people in society and maybe even people in the church, what they're thinking about, what they are viewing, what they are finding humorous. Not all of it. There's lots of cute pictures of babies and gender announcements. And that's totally acceptable.But a lot of it is superficial, silly, banal. And it seems normal to us now. Right? Because it's just all the time going on. It troubles me to see on Facebook people, even in our church, posting, tweeting about, you know, the dresses at the Grammys or Katy Perry's Super Bowl performance.Really? Like, this is this what we're filling our thoughts and minds with? And then here comes the trial and life is devastating. I wonder why. I haven't set my hope fully on the grace to come in years.I've been filling my mind with all of these lesser things. I'm thinking poorly. Now this is not a rant against media or movies or Twitter. Not at all. I think Peter would have had a Twitter account, honestly.But I don't think he would talk about silly things. In fact, can we not look at First Peter as a kind of long Twitter account? What was Peter thinking about? He writes about what he was thinking about. And here we have before us the kinds of thoughts that the apostle Peter had about life.This is the kind of thing that he was dwelling on and thinking about. Does that not tell us something about what it means to be a spiritually mature Christian man or woman and the kinds of thoughts that we think about? And this is a struggle because our culture is so immoral and so materialistic and all the rest. But he was living in the Greco Roman culture, which would give ours a run for its money. And yet, he was thinking this way.I would encourage you to follow the example of the apostle Peter. Now one more thing, and I gotta move on here, because I wanna get particularly practical. How do we engage our mind in sober thinking? How do we make it intentionally oriented towards spiritual truth? Well, I thought I'd just have some fun with this.What's the gender of our baby? Girl. So how about maybe on the week that I announce this, here's my little acronym. K? Four ways to help think more seriously about higher things.Girl, g, get rid of distractions. If your whole life is beeping, humming, buzzing, smartphone, constantly calling your attention to something that somebody has said about this or that, you have no time to think high and holy thoughts. There's no time for prayer. You're distracted all the time. Now I sound like an old fuddy duddy with that, and the young people are going, he is so uncool.But let's see what happens to this generation in thirty years. Time will tell whether wisdom lies in the beeping and the humming and the buzzing or in the older folks who are saying, it didn't used to be like that. We used to talk. I thought maybe some of those old people would amen that point. But get rid of distractions.K? And I don't mean to focus on that one. There's a thousand distractions out there. Secondly, increase truth input. Get rid of the banal and the inane and the silly and the superficial and fill your mind. This is the garbage in garbage out principle. Fill your mind increasingly with truth. Philippians four eight. You know, “what sort of things are pure and lovely, of good report, excellent, and worthy of praise, think on these things.”Spend your time on the beautiful and the truthful and the glorious and the eternally significant. Third, r, recall the grace of God for all the times you don't do that and to seek his forgiveness and ask God to give you daily grace. And finally, love God with your mind. That's a whole another point we could make, but how critical it is that we're we are thinking Christians. And even from the beginning, we're called to love him with our body.I mean, we preach against, you know, sexual sin or, you know, abusing your body with drugs or something like that. But so we we're we're all about loving God with our bodies. But what about loving God with our minds? And to intentionally seek to think deeper and higher thoughts about God and to learn and to grow and to become a mature thinking Christian. Let's do that.K? Let's do that. Now I gotta move on. We got communion coming. Second thing that he is focusing on.First one is setting your, your hope fully on the grace that is to come. The second category is that we are to be holy or what I'm calling, we're to be like our daddy. Again, the text, verse 14. “As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance. But as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct since it is written, you shall be holy for I am holy.”So we see Peter here moving from right thinking to right living. What does holy thoughts in my brain look like in a holy expression in my life? And I want you to see, first of all, that this has a relational tone to this. He he began doesn't just say, be holy. He says, hey. As obedient children. And what is that referring to? It is referring to the relationship that we have with God. Right? The Bible says that when we become Christians, that God actually adopts us into his family.We are members of the family of God. We're brothers and sisters in this family. We're sons and daughters of the most high God. And because God is my Father, that relationship matters. It means something in regards to the way that I look at myself, the way that I want to live my life.God's my Heavenly Father. How should I live now? Well, he says here that we should live morally disciplined lives. And to proof text this, Peter reaches into the Old Testament, goes back to Leviticus, and he quotes from there's five passages in Leviticus that use the same statement. “You shall be holy for I am holy.”K? You shall be holy, not me. I'm I'm saying it like I'm I'm God. Okay? “You shall be holy for I am holy.”K? And so we see in that statement the ethical measure and the eth and the ethical motivation as well. God's character is the measure, and God's character is the motive. Because I am holy, you shall you shall be holy. God's holiness is the absolute moral unity of his entire being.He is completely good. He is morally without fail. He is not the author of evil. He has no inclination towards anything that is less than absolutely morally pure and upright. John writes this in First John one.“In him, God is light, and in him, there is no darkness at all.” There's no shadow. There's no little something hidden. He is absolutely, morally, purely bright and light. Everything he does always is holy.And so Peter says, this is our God. This is our Heavenly Father. This is the way that we are to strive to live our life in a morally disciplined manner where the ethics of life matter to us. We want to please our Heavenly Father. We wanna live consistent with what he is like.Notice in all your conduct. Okay? So it's not just, you know, be holy as I am holy. When you're at church on Sunday, when you are out with the pastor, when somebody is watching that maybe could look down on you, It is not in any sort of category. It is in all categories.Holiness of life impacts, shapes, directs every aspect of my life. Why? Because it shapes and directs every aspect of the very life and character of God himself. Now lest there be any confusion here, I wanna emphasize that we are not naturally holy. We are naturally sinners.And this is why Jesus came, and this is why Jesus died. He didn't die for holy people so that they could go, not go to hell. He died for I said that wrong. He let me just say it this way. He died for sinners.K? He died for sinners, and that's us. K? So without his righteousness, we have no standing with God. We have no adoption with God.But sometimes people confuse our position before God as righteous because of what Jesus has done and the calling that God has upon the practice of our life. You overemphasize the position and say, hey, I'm righteous before God, so who gives a rip? Right? I'm going to heaven anyway. That is an abuse of the grace of God.If I focus on the practice solely, then now I am all the time wondering if I'm good enough, wondering if I'm gonna earn my way to heaven. And that is a misuse of the gospel. The gospel is is that we are declared righteous by God. We are positionally righteous before God. We enter into a relationship with God through the gospel by faith that now shapes my desires where now I want to live like I'm a child of God.K? It is relational. It is not legalism. It's not antinomianism. No law.It is relationship. Grudem says to be holy as God is holy includes a full and pervading holiness that reaches to every aspect of our personalities. It involves not only avoiding outward sin, but also maintaining an instinctive delight in God and his holiness as an undercurrent of heart and mind throughout the day. God is our Father. He's always our Father.Everywhere we go, he's our Father. We're his children. And this is where I think the metaphor is helpful because children, not always, but naturally want to to please their or to be like their dad. I'm enjoying this almost every day. I have a 20 year old daughter.Okay? So here's here's what happens in my day. I find myself you know, I'll I'll be sitting at the couch or something and I'll stretch like this and I look over and there she is. She's looking for my affirmation. Right?I'm I'm I'm doing what you're doing, daddy. Right? I kinda like that. That's kinda fun. I'll say to her, I love you.And she'll say, I love you. Is that manipulation? I don't know. But I love it. I love it.Or the other day I was eating and I wasn't watching my manners very well. And so I'm kind of chomping away on something sort of loudly and all a sudden I look over and she's going, daddy needs to slow down and close his mouth while he chews apparently. Why does she raise her arms and mimic me? Why does she repeat the words that I say? Why does she mimic even some of my less wonderful qualities?Because at this point, at least in her life, she wants to be like me. That's a goal for her even though she couldn't articulate it. And here's where I think verse 13 and verse 15 come together. The goal of what God is doing in each of us is holiness and Christ likeness. That's the big picture.He is forming us into the likeness of Christ. As I muster my spiritual and my mental thoughts and energies towards loving God with my mind, my Heavenly Father, my will increasingly is shaped by that priority And the true thoughts that my now girded up mind, the loins of my mind, are thinking about and focusing on shape the desires that I have in my heart, which right thinking leads to right living. So I fill my thought, my heart, my mind with God's truth. And the more I think about the grace of God to me, both now and in the future, and the love of God to me both now and in the future, the more my life then is shaped around his will and his purposes. So that right thinking about God shapes my desires and produces a more righteous living, a more holiness in my life.And all of it is anticipating a future grace and goodness of God that he will shower upon me and is yet to be experienced. And the anticipation, the more I realize what God has already done for me, it elevates my anticipation of what God has yet to do for me. K? And anticipation is a very powerful motive in our life. I remember when, football season was about to start.I would run, and I would train. I would get ready for it. And when basketball season was gonna start, I would run and train and play and shoot. I would get I would get ready for it. I remember when we had, the Bethel five k here a couple years ago.I'm the pastor of the church. I don't wanna embarrass myself. I ran, and I got ready for it. And I remember, perhaps the best example for me is after forty-four years, I got married. And before my wedding, I'm here to tell you, after forty-four years I was thinking about my wedding, and I was thinking about my honeymoon.I wanted to get ready for it. So I swam, and I ran, and I got a tan, and I was thinking about anticipating being with my girl. And it shaped the way that I lived my life. And when we, as Christians, set our minds on things that matter, things that are spiritually true, the promises of God, gospel, the word of God, when my thoughts are high and holy as God would have them to be, I anticipate increasingly, this is good. The best is yet to come.And that anticipation of what is to come means I'm getting ready for it now. And it changes and it shapes the way that I think and the way that I live and the directions of my life, which increases my likeness to Christ and gets me ready for that day when Jesus returns and when his full grace will be revealed. So friends, set your mind on the grace to come. Be holy as God is holy. Is your mind disciplined?Is your life morally diligent? And is your hope oriented towards the amazing grace of God yet to come? To help us with that today, we are going to be partaking in the Lord's supper. And I'd like to pray, and you could begin to prepare your hearts as I do. Heavenly Father God, I do pray and ask that this very practical message would, lead to very practical results in our lives.Lord, help us to be a church that is disciplined in our thinking, that strives to know and understand the gospel, the God of the gospel, the Jesus of the gospel, that we would be serious about this. And that this might, Lord, grant to us an elevated sense of anticipation of what is yet to come. And as we take this communion now, I pray that the partaking in it, the reminder of the death of Jesus would serve to also prepare us with, holiness and anticipation of no more symbols but actual presence to see him and to be with him forever. All praise be to Jesus, we pray in his name. Amen.* This transcript was generated using AI transcription technology and reviewed for accuracy but may contain errors. Please refer to the original audio for precise wording.

Steve DeWitt Love for the Unseen Christ - Part B Study Guide for Spiritual Exiles, 1 Peter 1:6-8 Scripture Reference: 1 Peter 1:8-9 Visit the series page: Exiles: A study in 1 Peter Donate to Support The Journey Sermon Transcript for Spiritual Exiles, 1 Peter 1:8-9 Sermon Series: Spiritual ExilesMessage: Love for the Unseen ChristAirdate: 9/14-9/15/25Programs: 2356 & 2357It's great to see and an encouragement to us. We come now to God's word, and we are back in our series in First Peter today. You know, Peter wrote to exiles in Asia Minor this letter we call First Peter, but he really might as well have written it to us. It'd be easy to read this letter and to just change the personal pronouns, change the names, and insert our own names and our own church family because what he's talking about here is totally appropriate to us as well. He writes to Christians who are experiencing trials.They're experiencing loneliness. They are ostracized in their society. They are struggling to do, you know, Christian lifestyle in a very pagan environment, which, of course, is what we're doing as well. Here today, no doubt, we have people who are dealing with crushing trials, things that even as I say the word trial, boom, it comes to your mind, and you you're thinking about that, and you you brought that discouragement into this service with you, and you're hoping for a word from God to help you. And we live in this world that is increasingly difficult, I think, to live Christianly, especially in America as it continues to slide more secular.It makes you wonder what are the days ahead gonna be like? What's coming around the bend? What are our children, Lord willing, if they embrace the Christian faith, what are they gonna experience in living the Christian life in a, America that's going the direction that it is? I doubt it's gonna be easier for them than it is for us. So how do we prepare ourselves for the trials that lie ahead?And what Peter is going to talk about here, I believe to be the high point of his letter and really is one of the most wonderful passages in all of the New Testament. The word that comes to my mind with this verse is it's magisterial. I mean, it is just, it's a it's a wonderful, wonderful word that God has for us. And for me, it is a privilege to exposit it and to teach it today, and I hope the Lord blesses it truly. So let me read First Peter one verses eight and nine, our text today.“Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.” Now I know it's been a couple weeks. We had snowmageddon in the in between here, but I hope you haven't forgotten what Peter has been already saying to us and teaching us, especially in, the preceding verses where he talks about trials. And he compares trials to, the fiery furnace that gold would go to.So the analogy is our faith is like gold, and our trials are like fiery furnace. And he draws the analogy, and he says, you know, when they would purify gold, they heat up gold in a furnace. And when it it's heated, the impurities rise to the surface, and they're able to skim off those impurities. And the net effect is that the gold is unveiled in a more valuable way, a more wonderful way. Its genuineness is revealed, but it is also purified by the heat of the trial.And this is intended, I think, to get us ready for what is to come. In fact, he says that. He says at the end of verse seven, that “our faith may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” Now that revelation for us personally will either happen when Jesus returns and there is the revelation of Jesus in this world, or personally, it's going to happen when we die. Because when we die, something becomes true in our faith that has never been true before.What is it? All of a sudden in that moment, I will see him. Right? I am going to see the Lord. “To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.”And that moment of death for us will be when our faith becomes sight, as the as the hymn writer writes. So this moment will be a wonderful, wonderful moment. But for now, it highlights the fact that we are believing in somebody, trusting in somebody, talking about somebody, singing songs to somebody, gathering in the name of somebody that none of us have ever seen. Is that weird? I mean, if if just your average person was to they didn't know anything and they walked in here and they were like, hey.What are you guys doing here? You're like, oh, this is a church that we're all about Jesus here. Really? You're all about Jesus? Yeah.We worship him. We sing to him. We try to live our lives to his glory. Really? Really?What's he what's he what's he like? What's he look like? I don't know. Never met him. The guy would probably be like, these people are strange.Right? I mean, what is going on here in living the Christian faith following the ascension of Jesus when Jesus went to heaven? Other than the Apostle Paul in Scripture, we don't know of anybody who's actually seen Jesus. Right? We are all living a kind of faith and a belief in somebody that we have never met, which on the surface looks strange and weird, like we're all nut jobs somehow.Is this kinda like a religious version of marrying a woman you've never met? Is it eHarmony for eternity? Or is there something else going on, something more wonderful that is going on here? And, of course, Peter writes this letter. And Peter, of all people, is himself an eyewitness.Right? I mean, other than Jesus' family, Peter probably had more eye time with Jesus than anybody else. He was part of Jesus' disciples. He lived with him for three years. They ate.They talked. They they, ministered together. He went to the top of the Mount of Transfiguration. He was there in the Garden of Gethsemane. He was part of the inner three.Jesus appeared to Peter after the resurrection more than anybody else. So you could say that Peter, of all people, had eye time with Jesus, and now here he is writing about people who have no eye time with Jesus. You might think that Peter be like, oh, you age of minor people. I've seen him. I know.You have no idea what you're missing. And we, of course, are in the same situation here today, singing “Crown him with many crowns, the Lamb upon his throne.” “Your great name.” These songs, very Christ centered, uplifting songs to somebody we've never seen with our eyes. And Peter writes here so wonderfully about the Christian experience post ascension.And he says here, you have never seen Christ, yet three things are true. We love him, we believe in him, and we rejoice in him. And let's just walk through the text here now, those three things. First of all, unseen, yet we love him. “Though you have not seen him, you love him.”Now for us, love and sight naturally go together. You sometimes hear couples, they'll say, oh, it was love at first sight. Well, now on my side of the marital covenant, I will say to you that only a very superficial understanding of love would make that kind of statement true. What kind of love or is is Peter talking about? That kind of love?Is it a is it a is it a marital love? Is it I mean, it it's not. It's not an erotic love. It's not even a friendship love that is used here. In fact, the Greek word in this text is that Greek word that the New Testament writers pulled and infused with all kinds of redemptive truth and meaning.Agape love. Agape is the is the word there. We've talked about this at length here at Bethel. We've defined it as self giving for the good and joy of another. It is a kind of love, the kind of love that God has.It is a it is a love of a different kind, a love of a deeper quality. It was this love, this agape love that God expressed to us when he sent his Son Jesus into this world. “For God so loved, agape the world, that he gave his only Son,” John three sixteen. It is this agape love that Jesus expressed to us as he hung on the cross. “Greater love is no man than this, than a man lay down his life for his friend.”“But God demonstrated his love toward us, and that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” This giving of myself, geez God expresses it to us through Jesus. Jesus expresses it to us through his cross and his death in our place. So what is our response then as as believers? First John four nineteen.“We love him because he first loved us.” Amen. Right? And so our love for for God is not self generated. It doesn't it doesn't come from us.We would naturally not love God Jesus this way. But it is an act of God's sovereign grace whereby through the gospel, we come to hear and to understand what Jesus has done for us. And that work of God by his spirit, this new birth, this regeneration explodes in our heart. We believe in Jesus, and the response to the love of God to us is that we love him. K?We don't take credit for that love. We would never come up with that love on our own. This is a part of God's good work in us. It is producing agape for God, agape for Jesus. But our agape of Jesus is different because we've never seen him.It is an unseen love or it's an unseen Christ that we are loving. I tried to think of some analogy of of this. And for obvious reasons in my life right now, I think about a parent's love for a child in the womb. Never seen that child yet. Love him or her already.Unseen child, love for the unseen child, love for the unseen Christ. The love that saving faith creates in us is a genuine love, but it is an agape kind of love even though we've never laid eyes on him. Unseen, yet we love him. Secondly, unseen, yet we believe in him. “Though you do not see him now, you believe in him.”Notice the tense change. The first clause was you did not see him, yet you love him, present tense. Here, you do not see him now, presently, yet you presently believe in him. Now I wonder, does this remind you of anybody? Somebody in the story in the gospels who, refused to believe something that he couldn't see.Now maybe this is coming to your mind already if you're with me. I think about the disciple Thomas. Do you know the story? I trust that you do. The story is that Jesus is resurrected from the dead.He makes his first appearance to the disciples in the upper room. Everybody's there except Thomas. And Jesus is there. He says, here I am. Give me food to eat.Believe. I'm alive. And the disciples, of course, are in awe at this, and they just are marvel at Jesus leaves. Well, Thomas comes in, and they're like, he's alive. And Thomas famously says this.“Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails and place my finger into the mark of the nails and place my hand into his side, I will never believe.” Thomas is like the patron saint of the cynic or the skeptic. The kind of person who says, unless I have empirical evidence with my eyes, unless I can put this in a in a test tube and and sort of prove it, I will not believe until the empirical evidence that my own eyes have seen tell me that this is true. These are the people that refuse to believe the testimony of other people regarding Jesus' claims to deity, regarding the miracles that he did in his earthly ministry and his supernatural life, his resurrection, and all the rest. It's not enough for them.They refuse to believe unless they see it with their own eyes. Notice what happens to Thomas. Eight days later, his disciples were inside again, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” Then he said to Thomas imagine this moment, by the way.The disciples are like, we've seen him. We've seen him. We've seen him. Thomas said, I don't I refuse to believe. Now all of a sudden, Jesus is there.What's the look on Thomas' face? I want a picture of that someday in heaven. Jesus says to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands, and put out your hand and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe.” And Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God.”Notice Thomas doesn't say, okay. Well, let me come over there a second and see if I can put my finger in that hole. And how about if I put my side my fist in the side? He doesn't have to do any of that. He sees Jesus standing before him, and now it is enough, and he says, “My Lord and my God.”Notice the next verse though. Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you've seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” Who is Jesus talking about in that verse? He's talking about us, isn't he?Has anybody here seen Jesus? I doubt it very much. And yet, there we have Jesus saying, the real blessing is not the person who is in the upper room and actually sees the resurrected Jesus. The real blessing is the person who doesn't see that and yet has put their faith and trust in him. He's talking about us.He's talking about 99.999% of people who have ever believed. He's talking about Old Testament saints. He's talking about Moses. He's talking about Abraham. He's talking about David.These are all people that they they they had revelation a little bit from God in the Old Testament. They believed in the coming Messiah. They believed in the one that God promised who would come. They never saw him, and yet they believed. The Old Testament states he's talking about every Christian after the ascension of Jesus.Here we are, having never seen him, and yet we believe. And here we are now in a central truth about the kind of faith that saves us. Christian faith, saving faith, has a kind of seeing, a kind of perceiving, a kind of discerning that goes beyond the eyes. Faith has its own eyes, if we could say it that way. Faith sees the unseen.The writer of Hebrews gives the classic definition. “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen.” You know, Christianity, some people wrongly, in my opinion, accuse it of being somehow anti intellectual. It is not anti intellectual. It is a thinking faith.There is enough evidence in the world around us in the testimony of the eyewitnesses, and the story of Scripture that we can think deeply and intellectually about our faith. But here's the thing. There is not enough evidence to simply reason our way to saving faith. There comes a point where I have to see the unseen. I have to believe in something that I can't put in a test tube.I have to trust in the eyewitness account of others who saw these things. And if you're here today and maybe you have not yet believed, I want to encourage you, and my prayer has been before even preaching this message, that God would somehow use it for that person who maybe is high on the kind of the Thomas scale to help you realize that the faith that saves even by the description of Scripture is a kind of seeing that goes beyond the eyes. But it is a kind of seeing all the same. A kind of faith and trusting in the claims of Christianity, in the claims of Jesus being the Son of God, the eyewitness accounts of people who saw him dead and who saw him alive, and the testimony of two thousand years of Christians whose lives have been changed by faith in this Jesus. And maybe God would use this message to draw you into, finally, a faith relationship with Jesus and that you would put your hope and trust in him.That would be a great thing. And join the rest of us who have not seen Christ but who believe in him truly and fully. So unseen, yet we love him. Unseen, yet we believe in him. Thirdly, unseen, yet we rejoice in him.Again, the text. “Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not see him now, you believe in him. And rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory.” And that little phrase right there, in my opinion, is one of the most sublime, one of the most wonderful little clauses in all of Scripture describing the Christian experience.Rejoicing with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory. Here, I think Peter is describing the Christian experience at its highest, at its its most joyous expression. Our faith sees through the gospel. Our faith sees the loveliness, the beauty, the desirability of Jesus. And inside, there is a kind of resting, trusting in who he is and the fact that he did indeed die for my sins.And there is then in this resting and this assurance that I have that Jesus indeed is not just the savior but my savior, there flows then within us a love, a gladness, a a joy. I mean, imagine somebody receiving Jesus as savior, knowing now my sins are forgiven. My guilt is not held against me. I have the righteousness of Jesus by justification. I have eternal life.I'm a child of God. Heaven and the new earth is mine forever. And on the other side of that being like, bummer. Can you imagine that? I mean, that would be so inappropriate.Right? How can you not have all of these things now by faith and truly in your heart believe them to be true and there not be joy from it? Are you with me? Indeed, joy inexpressible. The word here for rejoice in the original means this.Here's the lexicon. To experience a state of great joy and gladness, often involving verbal expression and appropriate body movement. Some of you are getting uncomfortable now. To be extremely joyful, to be overjoyed, to rejoice greatly. And the lexicon adds this.I shout because of my joy. K? So glad that I'm just raw. But then Peter adds, this joy is inexpressible. So Peter takes it to another level then and says that it is beyond words or description.Now we've probably seen a child open a present or have some moment of such joy that they're just they they run-in place. Right? And they they go in circles like this. They're just they're just so excited. Right?They can't hardly contain themselves. There's an overflow of joy because of it. Adults, similarly, although somewhat more subdued, typically, we clap, we shout, we dance. There is a kind of joy that goes beyond verbal expression. That is this joy inexpressible.Now it would be easy for me right now to lay a massive guilt trip on the church and to say, alright, you Christian people. This is what it's supposed to look like all the time. And if you're here right now and you if I gave you the chance that you would run-in circles and dance and shout but not be able to say words, if that's not your experience right now, you're a bad Christian. And what's wrong with you people? And there are probably a few good meaning people here that would even amen something like that.It's about time we get more that way around here. But I suspect if I did that, most of us would leave very depressed. And I would as well because my Christian experience would not match up with joy inexpressible every moment of every day. My Christian experience and having been around this church long enough now, the vast majority of us are struggling to be faithful to the Lord in the ups and the downs of life. And there is a lot of times that I don't feel joy, I feel disappointment.And there are times that I don't feel joy, I feel depressed. There are times when the criticism hits home. There are times when the relationship struggles just cause despair. There are times where, like, following Jesus, it's not running in places like literally grabbing this leg and forcing it, you know, to follow the Lord and saying, I will, but inside, it doesn't feel like it. Can you relate to that?Life is painful. In fact, you could in mass Peter, why would you talk about joy inexpressible in the verse following the verses about fiery furnace trials? Like, how do those go fiery furnace trial, joy inexpressible? Like for me, when I'm in a trial, I'm not happy. And when I'm when I'm happy, I'm probably not in a in a trial at that moment.Right? I can have some joy inexpressible when everything is fantastic. I wanna live on that plane. Life isn't that way, though. And I have wrestled with this passage, and I wanna tell you what I think it's saying.At least at this point in my spiritual walk and my spiritual maturity and my understanding of scripture, maybe in ten years, I'll say, I think something different. But as best I can tell, this is what Peter is doing. Peter is describing here in such emotionally rejoicing language, he is describing the Christian faith as it can be, as it should be, and as it will be. As it can be, as it should be, and as it will be. Let's start with the as it will be because I think all of us are on the same page with this one.Who here wouldn't want to experience joy in Jesus like he's describing here? Well, be encouraged. Our entire eternity will be this. Listen, Christian. Our entire eternity is going to be the experience of perpetual and unending joy inexpressible.What am I talking about? I am talking about the day that is coming for us when we are standing in the presence of the Lord, when we are living on that new earth, when we are in our glorified bodies, when we have received all of the redemptive benefits that God has promised to us, when we are not living in this sin sick world anymore, when we are living in the next one, that experience there is going to be so far beyond this one and so far better than this one, I I wonder how we'll look back on these days. Imagine it. Every moment, joy inexpressible. That's our eternity.To think that our brothers and sisters who've died and have already gone there to think about Pete Erhammer and Merle McCleskey, two members of our church that died recently, both faithful, godly men. If we had, like, a little if we could FaceTime them right now and say, hey, Merle and Pete, how's it going up there? What would they say? I think they would say, it is so much better than I ever imagined. And we'd be like, why do you say that?I believe they would say, we have seen him. We've seen him in all of his glory, in all of his beauty, in all of his majesty. We have seen him. He talked to me. He talked to me.He ministered to me. He's seen me. I see him. You're not gonna believe what it's like. It's fantastic.Why? What's so great about there? There, the faith has become sight. And that sight is not Jesus in his more subdued, stealthy, incarnate human body. It is Jesus in all of the splendor that is his as the Son of God at the right hand of God the Father.And that will be for us since he is our savior, Lord, and friend. That will be for us a source of unending, unexhausting joy inexpressible. And our dear brothers and sisters, they're there right now, and they are experiencing that. And our faith, even right now, has capacity for that. And we have moments of that, but not like it is there.Psalm sixteen eleven, “in thy presence is fullness of joy, and at thy right hand is pleasures evermore.” And so Peter here is giving us a glimpse of what eternity's joy will be like. It'll be perfect joy. It'll be inexpressible joy, and that day is coming for us. But Peter is also here describing Christian faith as it can be and as it should be.And this is what I think he is getting at in context here in the passage is that heaven's joy is part of the present Christian experience. Only here, we have to fight for it. In this world and in this body, I have to fight for heaven's joy to be a part of my experience here. And the reason that it is a fight is because of indwelling sin. It is a fight because there are all of these joy stealers all the time that are wanting me to put my hope, trust, identity, and belief in them, but they are not Jesus.And they ultimately are disappointing. Trials are this. Trials cloud our thinking so easily. You know, in moments when I have spiritual clarity, and maybe you can relate to this, there are there are moments I could tell you some of the high points of my whole Christian experience where maybe it's on the other side of a trial or maybe it's in a particular worship service or there's something going on in my life. All of a sudden, I have clarity.Like I see things truly biblically. I see my life and I see my forgiveness in Jesus and I I don't know. I just have these sometimes these moments of clarity and I have inside of me, I just feel like a yes. There's a there's a genuine joy that I that I I'll have. And I'll bet, Christian, you've had some high points in your walk as well.Somehow, there's just a refreshment in your perspective, and there comes in your soul a kind of gladness in all that you have in Jesus and all that God has done for you and the love of God and just all the promises and the hopes that comes in him. These are wonderful moments in our life. But then we give into a temptation or some opportunity comes and we think there's greater joy in gossip or in porn than in Jesus and a life lived to his glory. There's more joy in having what my neighbor has or wishing he didn't have it. There's more joy in some other kind of sin or some good thing, but a lesser thing.And what happens in that? Where does the joy go? Boo. Out the window. Right?There it goes. Think of David as an example of this. David, King David, the the sweet singer of Israel, the writer of the Psalms, the man who God himself said was “a man after my own heart,” wrote beautiful language about his relationship to God, to the Lord. He says just says, “I love the Lord.” Right?“The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want.” I mean, he he must have had such joy in his heart as he was writing such beautiful language about what God is like. What happened to David? One day David sinned with Bathsheba.And in Psalm 51, he describes the experience of one year of living without repentance. And he says, “my bones groaned within me.” And he writes in Psalm 51, his desire is this, “restore to me the joy of my salvation.” What did David miss in his time away from God? He missed that sense of gladness in God, that everything was right.I'm living for the glory of God. And maybe you're there right now. You remember good old days spiritually. You remember times of gladness in Jesus, but you've been living for something else. Or you've given into some temptation, and your heart longs for the good old days spiritually, so did David.He wanted that joy back, but it had been stolen from him. What is David writing in Psalm 23 or Psalm 51? It's the same thing that Peter's writing in First Peter one eight. What are trials? What is the what is “the valley of the shadow of death”?What do these have what to do with joy? Simply this. Trials magnify like nothing else the joy of knowing Jesus. And the result of that is that we love him more. Is this not true?Think about it in your own life. Think about it from scripture. The writer of Hebrews I'm gonna give you one example. The writer of Hebrews writes to a group of people that had gone through a particular experience. Listen carefully to what how he describes what they went through.This is Hebrews 10. “But recall the former days when after you were enlightened, in other words, after you had come to saving faith, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings, sometimes being publicly be a And You're since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one.” He's talking about Christians who went through horrible experiences, persecutions, plundering of what they have. Imagine a Christian, for example, today living in Syria and seeing ISIS approaching. What would you expect to find in their hearts?Are they they're going, yes. Here they come. On one level, obviously, no. But on another level, all the trials and sufferings that come into our life do something good for us. They refine our thinking about what really matters in life, and they magnify to us the enduring value of knowing Jesus.Because, typically, all these trials involve losing something. They lost their possessions. Imagine, for example, that you're here in church, and we come to find out that even right now, there's a group of people, and they're robbing your house. How many of us are going, love that? We're not happy about that in one respect.But in another respect, if somebody did rob your house or like the family in our church whose house burned down this last year, give the testimony that spiritually, it's been a wonderful experience for them. Why? Because when your house burns down, it helps refine what really matters in life, doesn't it? And this is what trials do. They help us realize that these temporary things that in the matter in the end don't matter, that knowing Christ is the thing that matters.He is the enduring source of joy, and the joy in Jesus is magnified by the loss. Let me illustrate it this way. Let's just imagine that it's last week and you're in Phoenix. And you didn't realize it, but the Super Bowl was going on in Phoenix. And you're like, that's I've always wanted to go to the Super Bowl like you're a lifelong NFL fan.It's been a dream of yours, but they never have the Super Bowl in at Soldier Field, so you never have the opportunity. But you just happen to be in Phoenix, Arizona, and the Super Bowl is going on. You get online, and sure enough, there's a ticket. You buy this ticket. It's extraordinarily expensive, but you're like, I'm going anyway.It's a once in a lifetime chance. And so you go to the Super Bowl and you got your ticket and you you go in there and you're like, okay, where's my seat at? They say it's up there. And the next guy goes, it's up there. And the next guy goes, it's up You're in the last row of the stadium.You're all the way at the top. You're sitting behind a pillar next to a drunk guy. And you're sitting there, I can't believe this is gonna be my Super Bowl experience sitting here. And you're, like, looking around the pillar trying to see the game. When all of a sudden the guy comes up to you and says, he goes, hey.How'd you like to be in the front row? And you're like, really? He goes, here's the thing though. To be in the front row, you gotta give me your back row ticket. Now what would be the natural response to that?No problem. Best day of my entire life. You bet. You can have this ticket right here. You just frame it for all I care.You can have that. I get the front row ticket. And so down you go all the way to the front row, and there you are, best seat in the house, 50 yard line. The game's going on in front of you. And and what do you do in the entire game?You're watching the game, but every once in a while, you're looking back up at the seat that you were supposed to be sitting in. And you're thinking to yourself every time you look at it, what? Yes. Right? Look where I am.Look what I have. Fantastic. How many of us would be in the front row going, oh, the old ticket. Sounds like a country song. Right?The old ticket. Maybe I shouldn't have given that up. We don't think that. Why? Because we realize what we have.And trials are that for us. Suffering is that for us. It is always loss. Trials are it's a loss of my health. It's the loss of my job.It's the loss of my spouse. It's the loss of my financial security. It's it's somehow it involves the losing or the threatening of losing something that I am deeming valuable, but they are always things that are temporary. Even life itself is the loss of something temporary. I don't get to keep any of these things anyway, including my life.But as I go through these trials, they are and I'm losing things or maybe losing things. They are reminding the Christian that there is one thing that is enduring. There is one possession that trumps all of them. It is the front row ticket. And my joy is in this, not in that.Are you with me? And so we have to live our lives. And this is what Peter is saying. You haven't seen him, but you love him. You don't see him now.You believe in him. And the result of my gladness, my hope, my assurance being in Jesus and not in these other things is that I can have a joy that is paired with the pain. I can have a joy in the midst of the sorrow. I can have joy in the midst of the plundering of my possessions. I can have joy in the midst of the cancer treatment.I can have joy in the midst of the marital counseling. I can have joy in the midst of the painful pregnancy. I can have joy in the midst of anything that is temporary because my joy isn't something that is eternal. Right? And this joy, in the words of the old preacher, the world didn't give it, and the world can't take it away.Trials magnify what really matters. When I think about things that I've gone through in my life, I turned 47 two weeks ago. I'm not the oldest in the room, and I am not the youngest anymore. I've been around the block a few times, and I've had a few hard things that I've gone through. When I think about even the worst moments of my life, I look back at them now, and I can appreciate them because God used them in my life to refine my faith, to get my clinging from things and people and affirmation from people and a host of other things.And they have been good for me. Good for me. And I got a long way to go in this. And you catch me on the wrong day, and you're gonna walk away thinking he ain't living out his sermon very well. But neither are you, friend.And that's why heaven will be all of us living the sermon out perfectly. Joy inexpressible, filled with glory, seeing him by sight, being in proximity to him, knowing his love, not by faith, but by the full experience of human sensory knowledge to touch him, to hear him, to see him will be for us as a joy that our hearts can't even imagine now. And that day is coming. So how about you, friend? You're in a trial right now?You got some pain going on? Is your joy in the thought that maybe that trial's gonna go away? Is your joy in the thought that maybe that pain will go away? You got everybody praying that God would take the pain away. Might not the actual solution be pairing the pain with joy in the Lord?“Rejoice in the Lord always. And again, I say rejoice.” And that is how we live the Christian life in the ups and the downs, in the trials and in the blessings, awaiting a day when our faith will be sight and we will see him. That will be a great day. Amen.Would you please join me for a word of prayer?* This transcript was generated using AI transcription technology and reviewed for accuracy but may contain errors. Please refer to the original audio for precise wording.

Steve DeWitt Love for the Unseen Christ - Part A Study Guide for Spiritual Exiles, 1 Peter 1:6-8 Scripture Reference: 1 Peter 1:8-9 Visit the series page: Exiles: A study in 1 Peter Donate to Support The Journey Sermon Transcript for Spiritual Exiles, 1 Peter 1:8-9 Sermon Series: Spiritual ExilesMessage: Love for the Unseen ChristAirdate: 9/14-9/15/25Programs: 2356 & 2357It's great to see and an encouragement to us. We come now to God's word, and we are back in our series in First Peter today. You know, Peter wrote to exiles in Asia Minor this letter we call First Peter, but he really might as well have written it to us. It'd be easy to read this letter and to just change the personal pronouns, change the names, and insert our own names and our own church family because what he's talking about here is totally appropriate to us as well. He writes to Christians who are experiencing trials.They're experiencing loneliness. They are ostracized in their society. They are struggling to do, you know, Christian lifestyle in a very pagan environment, which, of course, is what we're doing as well. Here today, no doubt, we have people who are dealing with crushing trials, things that even as I say the word trial, boom, it comes to your mind, and you you're thinking about that, and you you brought that discouragement into this service with you, and you're hoping for a word from God to help you. And we live in this world that is increasingly difficult, I think, to live Christianly, especially in America as it continues to slide more secular.It makes you wonder what are the days ahead gonna be like? What's coming around the bend? What are our children, Lord willing, if they embrace the Christian faith, what are they gonna experience in living the Christian life in a, America that's going the direction that it is? I doubt it's gonna be easier for them than it is for us. So how do we prepare ourselves for the trials that lie ahead?And what Peter is going to talk about here, I believe to be the high point of his letter and really is one of the most wonderful passages in all of the New Testament. The word that comes to my mind with this verse is it's magisterial. I mean, it is just, it's a it's a wonderful, wonderful word that God has for us. And for me, it is a privilege to exposit it and to teach it today, and I hope the Lord blesses it truly. So let me read First Peter one verses eight and nine, our text today.“Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.” Now I know it's been a couple weeks. We had snowmageddon in the in between here, but I hope you haven't forgotten what Peter has been already saying to us and teaching us, especially in, the preceding verses where he talks about trials. And he compares trials to, the fiery furnace that gold would go to.So the analogy is our faith is like gold, and our trials are like fiery furnace. And he draws the analogy, and he says, you know, when they would purify gold, they heat up gold in a furnace. And when it it's heated, the impurities rise to the surface, and they're able to skim off those impurities. And the net effect is that the gold is unveiled in a more valuable way, a more wonderful way. Its genuineness is revealed, but it is also purified by the heat of the trial.And this is intended, I think, to get us ready for what is to come. In fact, he says that. He says at the end of verse seven, that “our faith may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” Now that revelation for us personally will either happen when Jesus returns and there is the revelation of Jesus in this world, or personally, it's going to happen when we die. Because when we die, something becomes true in our faith that has never been true before.What is it? All of a sudden in that moment, I will see him. Right? I am going to see the Lord. “To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.”And that moment of death for us will be when our faith becomes sight, as the as the hymn writer writes. So this moment will be a wonderful, wonderful moment. But for now, it highlights the fact that we are believing in somebody, trusting in somebody, talking about somebody, singing songs to somebody, gathering in the name of somebody that none of us have ever seen. Is that weird? I mean, if if just your average person was to they didn't know anything and they walked in here and they were like, hey.What are you guys doing here? You're like, oh, this is a church that we're all about Jesus here. Really? You're all about Jesus? Yeah.We worship him. We sing to him. We try to live our lives to his glory. Really? Really?What's he what's he what's he like? What's he look like? I don't know. Never met him. The guy would probably be like, these people are strange.Right? I mean, what is going on here in living the Christian faith following the ascension of Jesus when Jesus went to heaven? Other than the Apostle Paul in Scripture, we don't know of anybody who's actually seen Jesus. Right? We are all living a kind of faith and a belief in somebody that we have never met, which on the surface looks strange and weird, like we're all nut jobs somehow.Is this kinda like a religious version of marrying a woman you've never met? Is it eHarmony for eternity? Or is there something else going on, something more wonderful that is going on here? And, of course, Peter writes this letter. And Peter, of all people, is himself an eyewitness.Right? I mean, other than Jesus' family, Peter probably had more eye time with Jesus than anybody else. He was part of Jesus' disciples. He lived with him for three years. They ate.They talked. They they, ministered together. He went to the top of the Mount of Transfiguration. He was there in the Garden of Gethsemane. He was part of the inner three.Jesus appeared to Peter after the resurrection more than anybody else. So you could say that Peter, of all people, had eye time with Jesus, and now here he is writing about people who have no eye time with Jesus. You might think that Peter be like, oh, you age of minor people. I've seen him. I know.You have no idea what you're missing. And we, of course, are in the same situation here today, singing “Crown him with many crowns, the Lamb upon his throne.” “Your great name.” These songs, very Christ centered, uplifting songs to somebody we've never seen with our eyes. And Peter writes here so wonderfully about the Christian experience post ascension.And he says here, you have never seen Christ, yet three things are true. We love him, we believe in him, and we rejoice in him. And let's just walk through the text here now, those three things. First of all, unseen, yet we love him. “Though you have not seen him, you love him.”Now for us, love and sight naturally go together. You sometimes hear couples, they'll say, oh, it was love at first sight. Well, now on my side of the marital covenant, I will say to you that only a very superficial understanding of love would make that kind of statement true. What kind of love or is is Peter talking about? That kind of love?Is it a is it a is it a marital love? Is it I mean, it it's not. It's not an erotic love. It's not even a friendship love that is used here. In fact, the Greek word in this text is that Greek word that the New Testament writers pulled and infused with all kinds of redemptive truth and meaning.Agape love. Agape is the is the word there. We've talked about this at length here at Bethel. We've defined it as self giving for the good and joy of another. It is a kind of love, the kind of love that God has.It is a it is a love of a different kind, a love of a deeper quality. It was this love, this agape love that God expressed to us when he sent his Son Jesus into this world. “For God so loved, agape the world, that he gave his only Son,” John three sixteen. It is this agape love that Jesus expressed to us as he hung on the cross. “Greater love is no man than this, than a man lay down his life for his friend.”“But God demonstrated his love toward us, and that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” This giving of myself, geez God expresses it to us through Jesus. Jesus expresses it to us through his cross and his death in our place. So what is our response then as as believers? First John four nineteen.“We love him because he first loved us.” Amen. Right? And so our love for for God is not self generated. It doesn't it doesn't come from us.We would naturally not love God Jesus this way. But it is an act of God's sovereign grace whereby through the gospel, we come to hear and to understand what Jesus has done for us. And that work of God by his spirit, this new birth, this regeneration explodes in our heart. We believe in Jesus, and the response to the love of God to us is that we love him. K?We don't take credit for that love. We would never come up with that love on our own. This is a part of God's good work in us. It is producing agape for God, agape for Jesus. But our agape of Jesus is different because we've never seen him.It is an unseen love or it's an unseen Christ that we are loving. I tried to think of some analogy of of this. And for obvious reasons in my life right now, I think about a parent's love for a child in the womb. Never seen that child yet. Love him or her already.Unseen child, love for the unseen child, love for the unseen Christ. The love that saving faith creates in us is a genuine love, but it is an agape kind of love even though we've never laid eyes on him. Unseen, yet we love him. Secondly, unseen, yet we believe in him. “Though you do not see him now, you believe in him.”Notice the tense change. The first clause was you did not see him, yet you love him, present tense. Here, you do not see him now, presently, yet you presently believe in him. Now I wonder, does this remind you of anybody? Somebody in the story in the gospels who, refused to believe something that he couldn't see.Now maybe this is coming to your mind already if you're with me. I think about the disciple Thomas. Do you know the story? I trust that you do. The story is that Jesus is resurrected from the dead.He makes his first appearance to the disciples in the upper room. Everybody's there except Thomas. And Jesus is there. He says, here I am. Give me food to eat.Believe. I'm alive. And the disciples, of course, are in awe at this, and they just are marvel at Jesus leaves. Well, Thomas comes in, and they're like, he's alive. And Thomas famously says this.“Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails and place my finger into the mark of the nails and place my hand into his side, I will never believe.” Thomas is like the patron saint of the cynic or the skeptic. The kind of person who says, unless I have empirical evidence with my eyes, unless I can put this in a in a test tube and and sort of prove it, I will not believe until the empirical evidence that my own eyes have seen tell me that this is true. These are the people that refuse to believe the testimony of other people regarding Jesus' claims to deity, regarding the miracles that he did in his earthly ministry and his supernatural life, his resurrection, and all the rest. It's not enough for them.They refuse to believe unless they see it with their own eyes. Notice what happens to Thomas. Eight days later, his disciples were inside again, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” Then he said to Thomas imagine this moment, by the way.The disciples are like, we've seen him. We've seen him. We've seen him. Thomas said, I don't I refuse to believe. Now all of a sudden, Jesus is there.What's the look on Thomas' face? I want a picture of that someday in heaven. Jesus says to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands, and put out your hand and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe.” And Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God.”Notice Thomas doesn't say, okay. Well, let me come over there a second and see if I can put my finger in that hole. And how about if I put my side my fist in the side? He doesn't have to do any of that. He sees Jesus standing before him, and now it is enough, and he says, “My Lord and my God.”Notice the next verse though. Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you've seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” Who is Jesus talking about in that verse? He's talking about us, isn't he?Has anybody here seen Jesus? I doubt it very much. And yet, there we have Jesus saying, the real blessing is not the person who is in the upper room and actually sees the resurrected Jesus. The real blessing is the person who doesn't see that and yet has put their faith and trust in him. He's talking about us.He's talking about 99.999% of people who have ever believed. He's talking about Old Testament saints. He's talking about Moses. He's talking about Abraham. He's talking about David.These are all people that they they they had revelation a little bit from God in the Old Testament. They believed in the coming Messiah. They believed in the one that God promised who would come. They never saw him, and yet they believed. The Old Testament states he's talking about every Christian after the ascension of Jesus.Here we are, having never seen him, and yet we believe. And here we are now in a central truth about the kind of faith that saves us. Christian faith, saving faith, has a kind of seeing, a kind of perceiving, a kind of discerning that goes beyond the eyes. Faith has its own eyes, if we could say it that way. Faith sees the unseen.The writer of Hebrews gives the classic definition. “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen.” You know, Christianity, some people wrongly, in my opinion, accuse it of being somehow anti intellectual. It is not anti intellectual. It is a thinking faith.There is enough evidence in the world around us in the testimony of the eyewitnesses, and the story of Scripture that we can think deeply and intellectually about our faith. But here's the thing. There is not enough evidence to simply reason our way to saving faith. There comes a point where I have to see the unseen. I have to believe in something that I can't put in a test tube.I have to trust in the eyewitness account of others who saw these things. And if you're here today and maybe you have not yet believed, I want to encourage you, and my prayer has been before even preaching this message, that God would somehow use it for that person who maybe is high on the kind of the Thomas scale to help you realize that the faith that saves even by the description of Scripture is a kind of seeing that goes beyond the eyes. But it is a kind of seeing all the same. A kind of faith and trusting in the claims of Christianity, in the claims of Jesus being the Son of God, the eyewitness accounts of people who saw him dead and who saw him alive, and the testimony of two thousand years of Christians whose lives have been changed by faith in this Jesus. And maybe God would use this message to draw you into, finally, a faith relationship with Jesus and that you would put your hope and trust in him.That would be a great thing. And join the rest of us who have not seen Christ but who believe in him truly and fully. So unseen, yet we love him. Unseen, yet we believe in him. Thirdly, unseen, yet we rejoice in him.Again, the text. “Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not see him now, you believe in him. And rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory.” And that little phrase right there, in my opinion, is one of the most sublime, one of the most wonderful little clauses in all of Scripture describing the Christian experience.Rejoicing with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory. Here, I think Peter is describing the Christian experience at its highest, at its its most joyous expression. Our faith sees through the gospel. Our faith sees the loveliness, the beauty, the desirability of Jesus. And inside, there is a kind of resting, trusting in who he is and the fact that he did indeed die for my sins.And there is then in this resting and this assurance that I have that Jesus indeed is not just the savior but my savior, there flows then within us a love, a gladness, a a joy. I mean, imagine somebody receiving Jesus as savior, knowing now my sins are forgiven. My guilt is not held against me. I have the righteousness of Jesus by justification. I have eternal life.I'm a child of God. Heaven and the new earth is mine forever. And on the other side of that being like, bummer. Can you imagine that? I mean, that would be so inappropriate.Right? How can you not have all of these things now by faith and truly in your heart believe them to be true and there not be joy from it? Are you with me? Indeed, joy inexpressible. The word here for rejoice in the original means this.Here's the lexicon. To experience a state of great joy and gladness, often involving verbal expression and appropriate body movement. Some of you are getting uncomfortable now. To be extremely joyful, to be overjoyed, to rejoice greatly. And the lexicon adds this.I shout because of my joy. K? So glad that I'm just raw. But then Peter adds, this joy is inexpressible. So Peter takes it to another level then and says that it is beyond words or description.Now we've probably seen a child open a present or have some moment of such joy that they're just they they run-in place. Right? And they they go in circles like this. They're just they're just so excited. Right?They can't hardly contain themselves. There's an overflow of joy because of it. Adults, similarly, although somewhat more subdued, typically, we clap, we shout, we dance. There is a kind of joy that goes beyond verbal expression. That is this joy inexpressible.Now it would be easy for me right now to lay a massive guilt trip on the church and to say, alright, you Christian people. This is what it's supposed to look like all the time. And if you're here right now and you if I gave you the chance that you would run-in circles and dance and shout but not be able to say words, if that's not your experience right now, you're a bad Christian. And what's wrong with you people? And there are probably a few good meaning people here that would even amen something like that.It's about time we get more that way around here. But I suspect if I did that, most of us would leave very depressed. And I would as well because my Christian experience would not match up with joy inexpressible every moment of every day. My Christian experience and having been around this church long enough now, the vast majority of us are struggling to be faithful to the Lord in the ups and the downs of life. And there is a lot of times that I don't feel joy, I feel disappointment.And there are times that I don't feel joy, I feel depressed. There are times when the criticism hits home. There are times when the relationship struggles just cause despair. There are times where, like, following Jesus, it's not running in places like literally grabbing this leg and forcing it, you know, to follow the Lord and saying, I will, but inside, it doesn't feel like it. Can you relate to that?Life is painful. In fact, you could in mass Peter, why would you talk about joy inexpressible in the verse following the verses about fiery furnace trials? Like, how do those go fiery furnace trial, joy inexpressible? Like for me, when I'm in a trial, I'm not happy. And when I'm when I'm happy, I'm probably not in a in a trial at that moment.Right? I can have some joy inexpressible when everything is fantastic. I wanna live on that plane. Life isn't that way, though. And I have wrestled with this passage, and I wanna tell you what I think it's saying.At least at this point in my spiritual walk and my spiritual maturity and my understanding of scripture, maybe in ten years, I'll say, I think something different. But as best I can tell, this is what Peter is doing. Peter is describing here in such emotionally rejoicing language, he is describing the Christian faith as it can be, as it should be, and as it will be. As it can be, as it should be, and as it will be. Let's start with the as it will be because I think all of us are on the same page with this one.Who here wouldn't want to experience joy in Jesus like he's describing here? Well, be encouraged. Our entire eternity will be this. Listen, Christian. Our entire eternity is going to be the experience of perpetual and unending joy inexpressible.What am I talking about? I am talking about the day that is coming for us when we are standing in the presence of the Lord, when we are living on that new earth, when we are in our glorified bodies, when we have received all of the redemptive benefits that God has promised to us, when we are not living in this sin sick world anymore, when we are living in the next one, that experience there is going to be so far beyond this one and so far better than this one, I I wonder how we'll look back on these days. Imagine it. Every moment, joy inexpressible. That's our eternity.To think that our brothers and sisters who've died and have already gone there to think about Pete Erhammer and Merle McCleskey, two members of our church that died recently, both faithful, godly men. If we had, like, a little if we could FaceTime them right now and say, hey, Merle and Pete, how's it going up there? What would they say? I think they would say, it is so much better than I ever imagined. And we'd be like, why do you say that?I believe they would say, we have seen him. We've seen him in all of his glory, in all of his beauty, in all of his majesty. We have seen him. He talked to me. He talked to me.He ministered to me. He's seen me. I see him. You're not gonna believe what it's like. It's fantastic.Why? What's so great about there? There, the faith has become sight. And that sight is not Jesus in his more subdued, stealthy, incarnate human body. It is Jesus in all of the splendor that is his as the Son of God at the right hand of God the Father.And that will be for us since he is our savior, Lord, and friend. That will be for us a source of unending, unexhausting joy inexpressible. And our dear brothers and sisters, they're there right now, and they are experiencing that. And our faith, even right now, has capacity for that. And we have moments of that, but not like it is there.Psalm sixteen eleven, “in thy presence is fullness of joy, and at thy right hand is pleasures evermore.” And so Peter here is giving us a glimpse of what eternity's joy will be like. It'll be perfect joy. It'll be inexpressible joy, and that day is coming for us. But Peter is also here describing Christian faith as it can be and as it should be.And this is what I think he is getting at in context here in the passage is that heaven's joy is part of the present Christian experience. Only here, we have to fight for it. In this world and in this body, I have to fight for heaven's joy to be a part of my experience here. And the reason that it is a fight is because of indwelling sin. It is a fight because there are all of these joy stealers all the time that are wanting me to put my hope, trust, identity, and belief in them, but they are not Jesus.And they ultimately are disappointing. Trials are this. Trials cloud our thinking so easily. You know, in moments when I have spiritual clarity, and maybe you can relate to this, there are there are moments I could tell you some of the high points of my whole Christian experience where maybe it's on the other side of a trial or maybe it's in a particular worship service or there's something going on in my life. All of a sudden, I have clarity.Like I see things truly biblically. I see my life and I see my forgiveness in Jesus and I I don't know. I just have these sometimes these moments of clarity and I have inside of me, I just feel like a yes. There's a there's a genuine joy that I that I I'll have. And I'll bet, Christian, you've had some high points in your walk as well.Somehow, there's just a refreshment in your perspective, and there comes in your soul a kind of gladness in all that you have in Jesus and all that God has done for you and the love of God and just all the promises and the hopes that comes in him. These are wonderful moments in our life. But then we give into a temptation or some opportunity comes and we think there's greater joy in gossip or in porn than in Jesus and a life lived to his glory. There's more joy in having what my neighbor has or wishing he didn't have it. There's more joy in some other kind of sin or some good thing, but a lesser thing.And what happens in that? Where does the joy go? Boo. Out the window. Right?There it goes. Think of David as an example of this. David, King David, the the sweet singer of Israel, the writer of the Psalms, the man who God himself said was “a man after my own heart,” wrote beautiful language about his relationship to God, to the Lord. He says just says, “I love the Lord.” Right?“The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want.” I mean, he he must have had such joy in his heart as he was writing such beautiful language about what God is like. What happened to David? One day David sinned with Bathsheba.And in Psalm 51, he describes the experience of one year of living without repentance. And he says, “my bones groaned within me.” And he writes in Psalm 51, his desire is this, “restore to me the joy of my salvation.” What did David miss in his time away from God? He missed that sense of gladness in God, that everything was right.I'm living for the glory of God. And maybe you're there right now. You remember good old days spiritually. You remember times of gladness in Jesus, but you've been living for something else. Or you've given into some temptation, and your heart longs for the good old days spiritually, so did David.He wanted that joy back, but it had been stolen from him. What is David writing in Psalm 23 or Psalm 51? It's the same thing that Peter's writing in First Peter one eight. What are trials? What is the what is “the valley of the shadow of death”?What do these have what to do with joy? Simply this. Trials magnify like nothing else the joy of knowing Jesus. And the result of that is that we love him more. Is this not true?Think about it in your own life. Think about it from scripture. The writer of Hebrews I'm gonna give you one example. The writer of Hebrews writes to a group of people that had gone through a particular experience. Listen carefully to what how he describes what they went through.This is Hebrews 10. “But recall the former days when after you were enlightened, in other words, after you had come to saving faith, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings, sometimes being publicly be a And You're since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one.” He's talking about Christians who went through horrible experiences, persecutions, plundering of what they have. Imagine a Christian, for example, today living in Syria and seeing ISIS approaching. What would you expect to find in their hearts?Are they they're going, yes. Here they come. On one level, obviously, no. But on another level, all the trials and sufferings that come into our life do something good for us. They refine our thinking about what really matters in life, and they magnify to us the enduring value of knowing Jesus.Because, typically, all these trials involve losing something. They lost their possessions. Imagine, for example, that you're here in church, and we come to find out that even right now, there's a group of people, and they're robbing your house. How many of us are going, love that? We're not happy about that in one respect.But in another respect, if somebody did rob your house or like the family in our church whose house burned down this last year, give the testimony that spiritually, it's been a wonderful experience for them. Why? Because when your house burns down, it helps refine what really matters in life, doesn't it? And this is what trials do. They help us realize that these temporary things that in the matter in the end don't matter, that knowing Christ is the thing that matters.He is the enduring source of joy, and the joy in Jesus is magnified by the loss. Let me illustrate it this way. Let's just imagine that it's last week and you're in Phoenix. And you didn't realize it, but the Super Bowl was going on in Phoenix. And you're like, that's I've always wanted to go to the Super Bowl like you're a lifelong NFL fan.It's been a dream of yours, but they never have the Super Bowl in at Soldier Field, so you never have the opportunity. But you just happen to be in Phoenix, Arizona, and the Super Bowl is going on. You get online, and sure enough, there's a ticket. You buy this ticket. It's extraordinarily expensive, but you're like, I'm going anyway.It's a once in a lifetime chance. And so you go to the Super Bowl and you got your ticket and you you go in there and you're like, okay, where's my seat at? They say it's up there. And the next guy goes, it's up there. And the next guy goes, it's up You're in the last row of the stadium.You're all the way at the top. You're sitting behind a pillar next to a drunk guy. And you're sitting there, I can't believe this is gonna be my Super Bowl experience sitting here. And you're, like, looking around the pillar trying to see the game. When all of a sudden the guy comes up to you and says, he goes, hey.How'd you like to be in the front row? And you're like, really? He goes, here's the thing though. To be in the front row, you gotta give me your back row ticket. Now what would be the natural response to that?No problem. Best day of my entire life. You bet. You can have this ticket right here. You just frame it for all I care.You can have that. I get the front row ticket. And so down you go all the way to the front row, and there you are, best seat in the house, 50 yard line. The game's going on in front of you. And and what do you do in the entire game?You're watching the game, but every once in a while, you're looking back up at the seat that you were supposed to be sitting in. And you're thinking to yourself every time you look at it, what? Yes. Right? Look where I am.Look what I have. Fantastic. How many of us would be in the front row going, oh, the old ticket. Sounds like a country song. Right?The old ticket. Maybe I shouldn't have given that up. We don't think that. Why? Because we realize what we have.And trials are that for us. Suffering is that for us. It is always loss. Trials are it's a loss of my health. It's the loss of my job.It's the loss of my spouse. It's the loss of my financial security. It's it's somehow it involves the losing or the threatening of losing something that I am deeming valuable, but they are always things that are temporary. Even life itself is the loss of something temporary. I don't get to keep any of these things anyway, including my life.But as I go through these trials, they are and I'm losing things or maybe losing things. They are reminding the Christian that there is one thing that is enduring. There is one possession that trumps all of them. It is the front row ticket. And my joy is in this, not in that.Are you with me? And so we have to live our lives. And this is what Peter is saying. You haven't seen him, but you love him. You don't see him now.You believe in him. And the result of my gladness, my hope, my assurance being in Jesus and not in these other things is that I can have a joy that is paired with the pain. I can have a joy in the midst of the sorrow. I can have joy in the midst of the plundering of my possessions. I can have joy in the midst of the cancer treatment.I can have joy in the midst of the marital counseling. I can have joy in the midst of the painful pregnancy. I can have joy in the midst of anything that is temporary because my joy isn't something that is eternal. Right? And this joy, in the words of the old preacher, the world didn't give it, and the world can't take it away.Trials magnify what really matters. When I think about things that I've gone through in my life, I turned 47 two weeks ago. I'm not the oldest in the room, and I am not the youngest anymore. I've been around the block a few times, and I've had a few hard things that I've gone through. When I think about even the worst moments of my life, I look back at them now, and I can appreciate them because God used them in my life to refine my faith, to get my clinging from things and people and affirmation from people and a host of other things.And they have been good for me. Good for me. And I got a long way to go in this. And you catch me on the wrong day, and you're gonna walk away thinking he ain't living out his sermon very well. But neither are you, friend.And that's why heaven will be all of us living the sermon out perfectly. Joy inexpressible, filled with glory, seeing him by sight, being in proximity to him, knowing his love, not by faith, but by the full experience of human sensory knowledge to touch him, to hear him, to see him will be for us as a joy that our hearts can't even imagine now. And that day is coming. So how about you, friend? You're in a trial right now?You got some pain going on? Is your joy in the thought that maybe that trial's gonna go away? Is your joy in the thought that maybe that pain will go away? You got everybody praying that God would take the pain away. Might not the actual solution be pairing the pain with joy in the Lord?“Rejoice in the Lord always. And again, I say rejoice.” And that is how we live the Christian life in the ups and the downs, in the trials and in the blessings, awaiting a day when our faith will be sight and we will see him. That will be a great day. Amen.Would you please join me for a word of prayer?* This transcript was generated using AI transcription technology and reviewed for accuracy but may contain errors. Please refer to the original audio for precise wording.

Steve DeWitt Indestructibly Saved Study Guide for Spiritual Exiles, 1 Peter 1:3-5 Scripture Reference: 1 Peter 1:3-5 Visit the series page: Exiles: A study in 1 Peter Donate to Support The Journey Sermon Transcript for Spiritual Exiles, 1 Peter 1:3-5 Sermon Series: Spiritual ExilesMessage: Indestructibly SavedAirdate: 9/8 & 9/9/26Programs 2352 & 2353Good morning, Crown Point Campus. And let's go to the Lord in prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the opportunity to be here today. And we pray simply this, that your spirit would come, that he would minister to your people by your word for your glory and for our good. God, we pray that this would be a day truly where your name would be lifted higher. And we want to be a part of that. So we thank you. We pray it in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, last week we began our new series in 1 Peter entitled Exiles.And the title was taken from the first verse of the book, which says this, “Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who are elect exiles of the dispersion.” And we saw that Peter was writing to Christians who had been part of this colonization, this dispersion, Christians living in Rome or that region sent now to Asia Minor, and they are there living as foreigners, essentially living as exiles, geopolitical exiles. And what Peter does is he draws from their geopolitical situation spiritual truth and application as they dealt with the feelings of alienation. and ostracization from people that saw them as part of the conquering army, people that weren't from there. And so much that we're going to see in this letter. Last week was our introduction, and we saw that... exiles want more than anything is they want a change of location.They think to themselves, what really needs to happen is I need to be somewhere else. And if I was somewhere else, then I would be happy. Then I would feel like I belong. And we see that what Peter is wanting them to realize is that we want to change our location. God wants to change who we are. And that is inward. And that's the work of the spirit. That's the work of the gospel. That's a part of changing us. Now, what might exiles need to know? Think about this with me for a moment. What do they need to know? There they are living in a land of uncertainty, living in a place where they don't, you know, you think of what people experience when they move into a new area. They need a new doctor. They need a new, where do I get my groceries?How do I find my way around? All the things that are sort of new and different and uncertain. That is compounded in the experience of moving in the first century to a whole new region. And there they are, and everything is uncertain. Nothing feels normal. Everything's sort of weird. What do they need to know spiritually? Well, they need to know that there is a day coming when they will not be exiles anymore and where they will feel welcomed and they will feel like they belong. And that's what Peter now moves to in pastoring this group of people. He wants them to realize that they will not always be exiles. It will not always be like it is. There's coming a day when it will be very much different. And our text in our sermon today is 1 Peter 1, verses 3 through 5.And today is a day where I get to preach at Crown Point and at Cedar Lake. And we do this with the use of technology. And hopefully a fast commute. That's where we're going today. That's where I'm going today. But our text today is verses 3 through 5. So please listen as I read from God's word. “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.” 1 Peter, if you ask most people what 1 Peter is about, it's about remaining faithful in suffering and in persecution. And I just want to note to you that a letter that begins, a letter that is about suffering, begins with, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now that seems out of place, except for when you view your suffering from a Christian perspective. It sounds to me like Job, the famous book on suffering.Job, who endured all of these things in chapter 1. He loses everything, and what is his response to that? The Lord gives, the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name. There is within Christianity a kind of faith and a kind of confidence in the goodness of God that allows Christians to suffer loss and to remain doxological, to remain praising, to remain giving thanks to God. And we see that modeled here with Peter. He begins with praise and thanksgiving to the Lord. These verses, verses 3 through 5, they are, it's, This is a jewel, okay? This is a jewel passage in all of the Bible, and there are lots of jewel passages, but this is certainly one of them, because what Peter does here is he lays out the gospel. He goes from praising God, and he says, now, why? Why do we praise the Lord?What is there about what God has done for us that allows us to give praise to God even in the midst of persecution and suffering? And we see him now talking about salvation in this passage from the perspective of the past, what God has done, the present, what God is doing, and the future, what God is yet to do. And I want to hasten to say this. These truths that I'm talking about here, that Peter talks about, only apply to genuine Christians. This is not just a general truth for all of humanity. Let's all feel good about it. This is a truth that applies to people who have genuinely trusted in the Lord Jesus. And the promises that God has made to those that are his children apply then to us and are enumerated here. by Peter.So if you're here and you have not trusted in Jesus as your Savior, what I hope happens today as we talk about the blessings that come to those that are under the grace of God, that it might woo you, that it might draw you to put your hope and your faith in the Lord Jesus and for these promises then to become real and true for you. And that can happen in this service here today. Now, if you're an exile far from home, You are having to accept certain realities about life now. It's almost like a college student who goes away from home for the first time. And suddenly, the reality of being responsible for yourself, doing your own laundry, and managing your own money, and all of the rest comes crashing down on the freshmen.And some of them flunk out as a result of that, right? They're in a faraway land. Everything's sort of strange. And indeed, to be one of these people that he's writing to, in a faraway land where everything feels creepy and people look at you as creepy because you're different created a whole set of problems and difficulties your homeland that where you used to be it felt safe it felt normal it felt secure you had friends that made you feel like you were cared for you had possessions that you had had for a long time They felt normal to you. You had maybe a home. You had a network. You had all of these things that felt cozy and made you feel cared for.To be a person in exile is to live without these things, to live away from all of those identities and all of those securities. In fact, I don't know if you've noticed our series graphic, but just to put that up if we have it a second. I really like this because what is it? It's a guy sitting on a pile of rubble and he's looking to a faraway place, right? And there's sort of this sense of, I wish I was there instead of where I am here. This feels like rubble where I'm at. I wish I was back where I came from. And that is a picture, not a bad one, of what it's like to be in exile.And what Peter wants them, and through this letter and through the Holy Spirit, wants us to realize here today is that what we have in Christ, even as an exile, is far greater and far better than anything we had prior to coming to faith in Christ. I said that very clumsily. And clumsily is a clumsy word itself. Let me try that again. What Peter is wanting to say is that what we have presently as Christians, even as exiles, even on the pile of rubble, is far greater and far better than anything we had back when everything felt cozy, back prior to our faith in Christ. And he lays that out again in terms of past, present, future. So let's begin by looking at the past. And notice what he says here. Wonderful verse. about being born again to a living hope.According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Now we saw in verse 1 that their exile was by God's choice. We see here in verse 3 that their new birth is by the mercy of God. Born again. Born of what? What are you talking about? That sounds crazy. And that is exactly what Nicodemus said to Jesus when Jesus brought this up to him as well. In John chapter 3, you may know the story. Nicodemus, he's sort of a bigwig spiritual leader in Israel. He comes to Jesus in the night, and he asks him about spiritual, he has spiritual questions for him. And he says, no one except they're born from God could do what you do. And Jesus says to him, you must be born again.You have to be born again. Nicodemus says, what? How can I be born again? I was born of my mother once, I gotta be born of her twice? What are you talking about? And you see that Nicodemus is only looking at things materially. He is not seeing things spiritually, which is what Jesus wants him to see, is there's a whole thing going on here spiritually. You have to be born again. What was Jesus talking about? The New Testament calls it new birth, calls it regeneration. All of these are biblical descriptions of what God does in the heart of the sinner who turns in faith and believes in Jesus as their Lord and Savior. There is a miracle, a powerful supernatural work that God does inwardly in the life of the sinner where like being born again, he makes the sinner alive spiritually.Regeneration is also the word there. The Bible says that we are dead in our sins, that spiritually we are corpses. What has to happen for a corpse to live again? It has to be regenerated. In a sense, it has to be resurrected. And what God does inwardly in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, when we believe, is he births life in us again. Almost like Jesus saying to Lazarus, come forth. There is a summoning and a giving of life that God does within us where all of a sudden now our eyes are opened, our ears are opened, and we become attuned to spiritual realities and spiritual things. And notice that it's God that does this. He has caused us to be born again. Regeneration is something that God does. We can't manufacture it. We can't create it.We can't do enough things to make us think that now spiritually I'm alive.We are dead. Burns Funeral Homes across the street, you can go to every corpse there and try to manufacture life. It's not going to happen. Only God can manufacture life. And God does that within us. We are born again. We are passive in this. You ever hear a baby come out being born and go, wow, look what I did. I'm amazing. No, that mother birthed that child. Amen, mothers? You ain't going to ever forget that, are you? Babies don't take credit for being born, and Christians don't take credit for being born again. This is something God does. We are made spiritually alive, but the change affects our entire being. 2 Corinthians says it this way.If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old is gone, the new has come. It is a miracle of life that permeates our entire being. Suddenly, it's like the switch is turned on. We become aware of spiritual truth. What? I never realized that before. We become aware of the presence of God. We become aware of the presence of sin in our life. All of a sudden we realize, that we indeed are sinners. We become aware of forgiveness. We all of a sudden have an interest in Scripture, which prior to this we would have thought is silly. No, what does it say, actually? I'm kind of interested in that. We become interested in prayer and a host of other things. All of them kind of just, it's like springtime. Here come the leaves, here come the flowers.All of a sudden there is life. God does that. God does that. A few examples of how this is God's work and the change that it brings. I recently heard the story of Rosaria Butterfield, and maybe you've seen this online possibly, but she was a professor. She's very upfront about her sexuality. She was a lesbian. She was a professor at Syracuse University. She was just totally into kind of that whole worldview. And it's a great story because there was just a normal local church that began to kind of care for her and love her. And she, in her own words, writes this about her conversion. “The church had been praying for me for years was there. The church that had been praying for me for years was there. Jesus triumphed, and I was a broken mess. Conversion was a train wreck. I did not want to lose everything that I loved, but the voice of God sang a sanguine love song in the rubble of my world. I weakly believed that if Jesus could conquer death, he could make right my world. I drank tentatively at first, then passionately of the solace of the Holy Spirit.” And now she's married to a Presbyterian minister. So come to Jesus and you get to marry a Presbyterian minister. I would keep most people away. Listen to the words of C.S. Lewis. We've talked at length about him and how God drew him to faith. He writes this about his conversion. “You must picture me alone in that room at Magdalen College. Night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet.” Who's causing this regeneration? Hear it in these words. “That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me in the Trinity term of 1929. I gave in and admitted that God was God and knelt and prayed, perhaps that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.” Christian, think about your own life story. Think about the change that has taken place in your life. Is there a natural explanation? for the interest that you have in spiritual things and the course and trajectory of your life. The fact that you're sitting here right now listening to some guy talk about what the Bible has to say.All of these things are things if we knew our natural selves, we would say, I would never do that. And that sounds crazy and that sounds stupid. Just like the people in Asia Minor looked at these Christians and said, what planet are you from? Why are you interested in that stuff? And maybe you have people in your family and friends that similarly look at you and go, you're living your life according to what? What planet are you from? We share the same mother, but you're an alien. I don't know you. How have you come to care about the things that you care about and to love God in the way that you love him and to desire to obey and please and live to his glory in the way that you do? Where did all of that come from? It didn't come from you.That can only come from God. He has birthed life in us, and we are changed. Born again to a living hope, the text says, through the resurrection from the dead. Now, why do you suppose he calls it a living hope? It is because our hope is in a living Savior. Do you see the parallel there? One writer says it this way, Christian hope is ever living because Christ, the ground of that hope, is ever living. So Peter looks back. He says, exiles, look back in your story and realize that this change has not come from you. God has given you life, and he has given you hope. And that hope is a living hope because your Savior is a living Savior. And there we are looking at the passage. Well, that's pretty fantastic, isn't it?Don't you think exiles might be a little encouraged by that? And maybe even Christians living here today might be a little bit encouraged to look back and to see the grace of God in our life. As the hymn writer wrote, “oh God, our help in ages past, our hope for years to come.” We look to the past and we see God's grace to us. And it gives us, man, God is for me. God is with me. He has done this change in my life. The past, a living hope, a new birth. It is not simply a past, it is a present. And even right there is an interesting thought, which I don't have time to explore right now, but how important it is for us to realize that what God is doing is not just stuff in the past.You ever talk to people like that? Tell me about your spiritual life. Well, back in the past, and all they've got is like old stuff. And to realize that our faith, this thing that we're living, this Christian life, is a today thing. There is something that God is doing today. It doesn't matter how long you've been a Christian. There is a work that God is doing right now for you in your life. And Peter highlights it here. What are we saved to? “An inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who, by God's power, are being guarded through faith.” Now, there's a lot there, okay? There's a lot there, but let's just walk through it. You're going to get this, and you're going to love it. We've been born again to an inheritance, okay?So most of us are probably familiar with the concept of an inheritance. What is an inheritance? An inheritance is something that you receive normally based on a relationship, typically a family relationship, right? So when a person dies, there is a reading of the will. And if your name is in the will, it means that whether you knew it or not, you were an heir to the inheritance. So if you're in the will, you have an inheritance. Most people view that as good news, right? Okay. Now what is true about an inheritance? Inheritances are very, very slippery. Very slippery. Your name can be on the will, but guess what? It can be removed from the will. You were an heir, but now you're not anymore. So you better be careful what you say at the family gathering about grandma. And inheritance can shrink in value.Did you know that? You could be an heir to something that is incredibly valuable, but by the time you get it, it's not so valuable. So that your name is in the will, and they read the will, and your sister gets grandma's diamonds, and you get the cabbage patch collection. And you're like, my sister gets... and I get dolls and you know grandma puts in the notes when I bought these they were really valuable. You're like these aren't worth anything. This is like soft firewood. They can diminish in value. People can steal inheritances. There's a story or two in my own family tree of stolen inheritance and maybe you got a few of those in your family tree. It's amazing what family gets like when money is on the table.Inheritance can be stolen did you know that there are unscrupulous lawyers out there who now there's really godly and fair-minded ones as well but there are unscrupulous lawyers out there who can sometimes get their fingers in the pot and diminish an inheritance. Did you know that there are thieves — there are thieves — and that has no connection whatsoever with Steve. There are thieves who can steal inheritances. They can steal grandma's jewelry instead of the dolls. Did you know that massive inheritances can be squandered? Some time ago, I got watching on the History Channel, had this series called The Men Who Build America. Maybe some of you saw it, but we got into it for whatever reason. Tell the story of these icons of industry in the past.I got a little interested in the Vanderbilt family some years ago. I got a tour of the Biltmore, which is one of the descendants of, he built that with just an inheritance that he got. If you've ever seen that place, it's incredible. But I got interested in the Vanderbilt family. And just to give you an idea very quickly about the Vanderbilt fortune, they at one time, at the height of their power and value, they were worth over $300 billion in today's money. Now, $300 billion, to give you an idea, Bill Gates, who's currently the richest man in the world, is somewhere around $70 billion. They had $300 billion. The world has hardly ever, if ever, seen, other than Rockefeller, a fortune like the Vanderbilt family fortune.In 1973, this is just 75 years from the height of their power and wealth, There was a gathering of 120 direct descendants of Cornelius Vanderbilt, and there wasn't one millionaire amongst them. 75 years, 300 billion to, you know, not so wealthy. How does that happen? Inheritances can be squandered. They can just simply disappear. And I say all of that because that connects with the world that we're in, right? Everything is kind of diminishing. Everything that once was cool is kind of getting old now. And that's the world that we live in, right? Our money isn't worth today what it was worth yesterday. There's inflation. There's the stock market. Everything's up and down and all around. But what about spiritually? The inheritance, the Bible describes the inheritance that we have. We are heirs. What is our inheritance like?And he uses some very powerful words to emphasize that our inheritance is not subject to all of the insecurities that everything in this world has. And he uses these words, notice them, imperishable. Okay? To perish is to die. Everything in this world... dies right it's alive it dies the the flowers of the field the grass in the in the in the in the field all of it there and it dies and it withers and we're all withering right look around there's withering people all around you but this is an imperishable inheritance that he wants us to realize that we have undefiled and this speaks to the moral quality of our inheritance It is pure. It is good. Our inheritance doesn't come from unseemly business practices.There's nothing about it to make us feel sort of dirty in taking it or that there's something evil about it. It is holy. It is good. It is beautiful. It is pure, and it will be eternally beautiful and pure. Unfading. This is very similar to the perishing and the withering. It's, again, the human beauty and fame and everything that seems to be cool now. It's all going downhill. And young people don't realize that, but it is, right? It's all going down. Everything fades. And each one of these words is, it's perishable, defiled, and fading, only it has the negating ah in front of each one of those. It is not imperishable. I'm sorry, it's not perishable. It's not defiling. It is not fading. Our inheritance, you say, well, what is it then exactly? Number one, our inheritance is God himself.The number one thing that we look forward to in going to heaven is not seeing grandma, not seeing, you know, whoever. Number one is God. We go to heaven and we get God and we see God and we have him forever. We are his children. He lavishes blessings on us for all of eternity, eternal life, heaven, new earth, rewards that Jesus will give to us for the quality of our service while here on earth, bliss, beauty, and most importantly, and I include this in the God category, is the seeing and the savoring of Jesus himself, our blessed Lord and Savior, who is our inheritance. Christians talk about, oh, my mansion in heaven and all of that. Forget the mansion. Our mansion truly is Christ.And one day when we see him and we sense from him what eternal, pure, sacrificial, agape love is like, and he looks at us and we feel the love of the divine for us, the thought of a house or something else will just sort of fade away. This will be our greatest moment. It is that beatific vision that theologians talk about. and then to feel and to receive from him the lavishing of his grace and his love in material ways, even in the new earth, in the experience of what all of that is going to be like, and to realize that all of it is according to his mercy, that none of it we deserve, maybe with a vision of hell, and to realize that's what I deserve right there.And I'm getting this, how and why it is the mercy of God and his love for us. This is the inheritance, and Peter says it never goes away. It never diminishes. It never somehow dies. It remains secure in the character and the promises of God, and it's going to be great. And you, my friend, if you are a Christian, you are an heir, an heir to the most wonderful fortune, the fortune of God, the spiritual blessing of being a child of God forever. The verse goes on, kept in heaven for you who by God's power are being guarded through faith. This inheritance that we have is located in heaven. Jesus describes it as a place where moth and rust do not decay and thieves don't break in and steal. That's a pretty good bank vault, isn't it? Anybody's bank here make that kind of guarantee?Probably not. Now notice there's a little shift here in the text because he's describing our inheritance. That is kept in heaven. That's our inheritance. The next word, though, is who. See that? Who. So he moves from our inheritance to us. He moves from keeping our inheritance to God keeping us. So the inheritance is kept in heaven, but we are kept in earth. We are kept in faith on our time on earth. By God's power, our being guarded through faith. And the word there, the Greek word for the word guarded there, it's the word garrisoned, okay? So military people, this is like a word for you. This is the protection. This is the, in the ancient days, they would protect the city gates, the armament of the city gates. We are guarding the city walls, the walls of our faith.It also can refer to keeping us from escaping, okay? So it's both. It is both the attacks from without, and it is me fleeing from within. God is working in our faith, keeping us from both of those dangers. And here we have, and we can do a whole message on this, the doctrine of preservation. The doctrine of preservation, which says that God is the one who keeps us saved. We are preserved in our faith by the power of God. So notice the flow in the text. We are exiles by the choice of God. We are born again by the mercy of God. We are kept in our salvation by the power of God. Our faith is being guarded. And the tense of the verb there is ongoingly, continuously being guarded.It's as if each one of us has a 24-hour, seven days a week security detail. Now, the closest thing that I can think of to illustrate this would be What the President of the United States has, of course, which is the famous Secret Service. And all of us probably are familiar with the Secret Service and what they do 24 hours a day, seven days a week to keep the President alive, to protect him. That is their job. And so for whatever reason, they've decided wearing dark suits and sunglasses helps with that. And so wherever the president is, there's these guys walking around near him and they've got dark suits on and they've got sunglasses. All of them look like they've lifted weights their entire life. You know, they're big, they're bad, they're tough. There's little bulges around in their suit.You know what's in there, right? They can call upon what they need in a moment's notice to take care of business. And so they're there and they're talking into their hands and they got the little wires out of their ears. And you know that there's satellites and there's, you know, who knows all the things that they've got going on wherever the president goes. 24 hours a day, seven days a week, always keeping him safe. But as history shows, they can't even guarantee that, can they? Even the best of the best in the world today can't perfectly protect the life of the president. Notice what Peter says here about us, okay? Kept by the infinite power of God. It's almost like By the power of God, we each have our own spiritual secret service detachment.Everywhere we go, all the time, we are protected spiritually by the power of God. I got thinking about what this might be like. She's about to speak to Miss Gossip. Move in right now. He's leaving on a business trip with Mr. Skeptic and Mrs. Temptation, all units code red. He's in church right now. He's not listening. Taze him. Did anybody just feel something, by the way? No? God's power is always at work protecting our faith, keeping us from running away from our commitment to Christ, keeping us from the wolves, keeping us from doctrine and beliefs and temptations that would ultimately undermine our faith commitment to Christ. And that doesn't mean that we don't sin. It doesn't mean that we don't have seasons and all of that.But it does mean that even through those dark times, God is by his power protecting a faith that he has promised that he will carry on to completion, Philippians 1. And my dear Christian, that is true for you. Think of it just for a moment. Think of it. Right now, God's power is focused upon you and your faith and is ensuring that you are going to make it. That faith will not die. It's the power of God. It's like being born, right? We don't take credit for that. And I don't take credit for my faith continually because naturally I am a sinner and I am human and I am wishy -washy. None of us would make it through this week left to ourselves. But we are not left to ourselves, not by God who loves us. We are kept in this faith.Past, we were born again in the present. We're being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. And the future aspect of this is when our inheritance changes into a possession, okay? An heir is no longer an heir when the inheritance now is something that they own. Think of Prince Charles, like all these years waiting to become king. He's heir to the throne. There's probably a day coming when he will no longer be an heir. When? When he's actually king. And Buckingham Palace and the crown jewels and all the things, all of it is his then. No longer an heir, but a possessor. And our salvation is like that. We are already saved. We are already children of God. But the full experience of our salvation is yet to come.Someday, and the text here says, in the last time, referring to that future consummation of history. Someday, when Jesus returns and final judgment takes place, our ultimate inheritance will be ours. And our ultimate inheritance is Christ himself. And from that point on, we will see and know and worship him. From that point on, we will serve him. fully and faithfully. From that point on, we will be in awe that the Holy Son of God that we see with our own eyes died for us, gave his life for us, and now showers his love upon us for all of eternity. And we will never get over that he did that. We will never get over the mercy of God to us. So that we can say that the Vanderbilts had their fortune by family right, and Prince Charles has his inheritance by birthright.We will have our inheritance forever by new birth and the mercy and the power of God. And so we get to that truth, and what can we say? How about we say what he says in verse 3? “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Amen. Would you pray with me, please? Heavenly Father God, we thank you.This transcript was generated using AI transcription technology and reviewed for accuracy but may contain errors. Please refer to the original audio for precise wording.

Steve DeWitt God, Why Am I Hurting? - Part B Study Guide for Spiritual Exiles, 1 Peter 1:6-8 Scripture Reference: 1 Peter 1:6-8 Visit the series page: Exiles: A study in 1 Peter Donate to Support The Journey Sermon Transcript for Spiritual Exiles, 1 Peter 1:6-8 Sermon Series: Spiritual ExilesMessage: God Why Am I Hurting? Airdate: 9/10-9/11/26Programs: 2354 23552014, what a year around this place. I mean, it was something else. And just on the surface to go from two campuses to four campuses all in one year, a remarkable, remarkable, thing that God has done. We give him glory for it, and, we want 2015 to be another year of, faithful ministry here, and thank you for your part in that. I really mean that.This is our weekend of the annual meeting, and that's partly why we made this video. It's a it's a year or it's a a weekend where our members, we have our annual meeting, and so it's kind of a year to look back, a time to look back on the on the past year. It also means that, because our meeting is between this service and the next, I know this is gonna be disappointing. The sermon's a little shorter. Little shorter.So appropriate, that I'm speaking on trials in this sermon. And I'm gonna get right into it because our time is fleeting. First Peter one verses six through seven, I've entitled this message, God, why am I hurting? That resonate resonate here today? Are you in a time in your life maybe where you are hurting, where there is a trial maybe that is a pain in your life right now, you might say, no.Not really. Just wait. K? Just wait. It's coming.Life in a broken world brings sorrows to us in all kinds of directions and in ways that we cannot anticipate. That day is most certainly coming. And Peter is writing this letter to a group of geographical exiles in the first century sent from Rome, living in Asia Minor, but they are they are spiritual exiles as well. They are suffering in a community that looks at their Christian faith, looks at their rejection of the immorality around them. They look down at them, and they are feeling alienated.They are feeling ostracized, and they are suffering in many different ways. And so Peter writes this letter to them to encourage them, and it is perhaps more than the only one maybe competing with the book would be the book of Job of, delivering to us, giving to us a theology of Christian suffering. How do I handle it? How should I look at it when God sovereignly brings pain into my life? First Peter is a very honest letter.It looks pain in the face and gives an answer. Did you know Christianity has an answer to suffering that the other religions of the world, the other philosophies struggle to provide in ways that we'll get into? So maybe you're here today and you're in pain, and you're thinking this is the sermon for me. Maybe you're here today and you're not in pain, but that day is coming. I want to prepare all of us to suffer so that when we are the ones experiencing that pain, we have a kind of grid.We have a kind of understanding that is ready to embrace the trials that come. I also wanna note that Christianity is based on suffering. I mean, our entire faith is built upon the suffering savior who came into this world, God steps into our pain in the person of Jesus, incarnates into this world, lives amongst us, experiences all of the weaknesses, all of the sufferings that we experience, and then suffered himself dying on the cross bearing the guilt and shame for all of our sins. Our savior was a suffering savior. We can say it that Christianity is is built on suffering.Now that doesn't sound so good. It doesn't look great on a billboard. You know, we're not gonna put up a billboard that says, Bethel Church, come suffer with us. Right? Because many people, they don't wanna hear that, and they want a faith that doesn't include any suffering, and yet it inevitably comes.Are we ready for that? Are you ready for that in your life? So our text is verses, six and seven, First Peter one. Please listen as I read. “In this, you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials so that the tested genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.”This passage is Peter's first salvo of teaching on suffering. It's gonna continue through the letter. So this isn't everything that he has to say about it. There's much more to come. Notice that he begins with the the little phrase there, in this, you rejoice.You wouldn't expect a passage on suffering to have a and to begin with a word of joy, and he's referring there to what he's just talked about regarding our living hope. Our hope is living because our hope is in a living savior. And so because of that, we are we rejoice in this salvation, this new birth that God has given to us. Notice that joy and pain can coexist. We typically think, you know, when I am in pain, then I'm not joyous.Right? Or when I'm in joyous, I don't have any pain. And yet these two come together, indeed, they have to come together in a Christian theology of suffering because there is going to be ongoing problems and pain in life. There are gonna be ups and downs, and yet our Christian joy is not based upon our circumstances. It is grounded and based upon something that is enduring.Even Jesus himself, Hebrews, “who for the joy set before him endured the cross and despised its shame.” So don't see the these as enemies. These actually can be friends, joy, and pain. We'll get into more of that later. But in this passage, Peter gives four certainties in the midst of suffering.Four certainties that a Christian can hold on to, trust, and believe in even when life is hurting. So let's get into these now. Notice the first one is that our trials as Christians are temporary. They are temporary. The text now, “though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials.”Peter's first point here is chronological. He is pointing something out that is obviously true. Now it doesn't seem that way to us when we are in the midst of pain. When we are hurting, what do we often think about the pain that we're feeling? We say things like this.This is never going to change. This is never gonna be fixed. I will always feel this way. This pain will never go away. That's how it seems to us.Right? Peter says, yes. It will. Yes. It will.Chronologically speaking, our sufferings and our trials and our pains are very small in duration when compared to the future that the Christian confidently expects, this eternal life that we have. Our lives are fleeting. Our days are numbered. They're short. Eternity is long.Peter points that out. He says, you know what now? For a little while, it's just a little while. It's temporary. You're not always going to feel this way.It's not always going to be this way. A day of change is coming. Chapter five verse 10, he writes, and after you have suffered a little while, there he says it again, “the God of all grace who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.” Peter's wanting us to realize that that this trial that I am in is finite. Eternity is unending.My trial is temporary. Eternity is forever. And when I look at things from that grand perspective, it helps me put it into proper perspective. When I obsess about my trials, I think it's always going to be this way. Do you ever get sort of melodramatic about things?Right? Oh, it's never gonna be better. My life is over. You know, teenage girl says that when who knows what happened to her. Right?And she's, oh, you know. And we look at her and we say that is so immature. Peter says when we look at our trials like it's always going to be that way, we're looking immaturely. We're not seeing things from the grand perspective. Our trials are temporary.Someday, the present pain of our life will be over. Someday, Jesus himself is going to confirm, establish, comfort, minister. Someday, we are going to look back at our trials, and we are going to agree with God regarding them. Can you believe that? Now you might be in a trial right now going, I will never say that this was okay.I will never agree with this. Someday, God, I believe, is going to give us understanding regarding why this happened and why that happened and why that happened. I talked with a man after first service today. He's losing his job. He has thirty days.He was talking to somebody about this and that person said to him, I haven't been to church since Vietnam. But in light of the way you're responding to this, I might give it another chance. He always had tears in his eyes after first service to this point that I'm making. He goes, oh, these three years have been so hard, but maybe I see why God's doing it. Don't Don't you think heaven is going to be that kind of an experience where God goes, see when that happened right there?I did this with that with that person's life, and then this was the fruit of it. And we're gonna be going, I had no idea. And when we see it in the big picture, don't you think we will go, you know, God, you are infinitely wise. I now agree with that. And if I was you, I would have brought that into my life.Praise be to God. Okay? Heaven will be that I think. For a Christian, realize friends, for a Christian, this life that we're in right now, this is as bad as it gets. Our lives right now are the worst experience that we are ever going to have.Why? Because eternity is going to be bliss, heaven, and joy. So this is as bad as it gets for the Christian. For the unbeliever, it's the opposite. This is as good as it gets.Life in this broken world with all of its pain and all of its uncertainty is far better than what lies ahead for the unbeliever. But for us, this is as bad as it gets. This is temporary pain. That helps, doesn't it? Indeed, it does.Secondly, Peter points out that trials are painful. Trials are painful. Though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials. That's a pretty good word to describe what pain feels like. Right?It's grievous to us. And do I really need a lot of proof text on this one? Just to prove to you that trials are painful, that we feel within us when we are in a trial. And by trial here, I it's it's all of it, the various trials that he talks about. It can be physical.It can be emotional. It can be relational. It can be marital. It can be financial. It can be political.It can be injustice. It can be emotional worry, fear, misery, depression, and I mean, the things that the things that can create pain in us are incredibly varied, aren't they? All of them, we feel very personally when we experience them. I also find over time in my life that not only are the trials varied, but my ability to handle them is varied. There are things that when I was younger wouldn't have bothered me, now they bother me, like birthdays.There are things that when I was young bothered me, but now from a perspective of maturity doesn't bother me anymore. Right? It's so varied. It's so changing. But over all of that, we certainly can say the trials are painful.We would rather not be in them. Amen? Okay. That'd be my preference. A trouble free life.No more trials. I mean, that'd be like heaven, wouldn't it? Oh, wait. It is heaven. Are you with me?Okay. Alright. Third, reality and certainty with trials. And this now gets into kind of the nub of what Peter is wanting us to see is that trials are revealing and trials are refining. Again, the text, “so that the tested genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.”What is one of the biggest things that we wanna know when we are in the midst of a trial? We search for why. Right? Why is this happening? Why am I feeling this?Why am I sorrowing like I am? Why am I so depressed about this? And atheism comes along and gives what answer? Nothing. Secular humanism comes along and gives what answer?Nothing. Agnosticism comes along and gives what answer? E. Evolutionary theory comes along and gives what answer to our pain? Nothing.Christianity comes along, and it's got a purpose statement. Right there, you see it. So that. Why do I go through the troubles that I do? Why do I go through these things?Is there some reason behind it? And indeed, there is. In fact, you see, previously, he says, if necessary about our trials. If necessary what do you mean if necessary? That seems to indicate somebody is determining whether I ought to go through this or not.Is there a sovereign somebody that is sovereignly guiding and directing in the details of my life and determining whether this is good or not, necessary or not. Indeed, that is Christianity, that there is a sovereign God who doesn't simply, like the agnostics teach, live out there in the extended world and hope the best for us, but rather he is sovereignly over every single detail of our life. There's nothing that will ever happen to the Christian that we that that God did not sovereignly bring to us. Now by that, it doesn't mean that God endorses evil. And someday, we will never endorse evil either.We'll never look at the Holocaust and say, yeah. Great. But God uses evil, and God uses these things to accomplish his purposes. That's what Joseph said in Genesis, right, to his brothers. “You intended it for evil.God intended it for good.” That's the the the wonder of the mystery of God that he can, in the complexities of the universe, use even evil for his divine good and sovereign purposes. And so we see then that in Christian in a Christian theology of suffering, there is a purpose to it. And I think that alone is one of the great certainties that we have to cling to, that this is not random. This is not chaos.This is not Satan winning. Rather, this is something that God is sovereignly guiding and directing. There is a purpose behind it. Sometimes that doesn't make sense to us when the kind and godly young man dies or when the righteous suffer and the unrighteous prosper. Do you ever feel that way?Maybe you feel about that way about yourself. I'm I'm busting my butt. I'm trying to be a good employee, student, wife, husband, parent, whatever. And here I am. I'm dying on the vine, and you look at your neighbor who they're immoral, they profane God's name, and they just smile all the time.And you're like, that doesn't seem fair to me. As the hymn says, it is our God who does each day what he deems best. We trust that pain has a purpose and that God is behind it. The same faith that can believe in Jesus and trust my entire eternity to the truthfulness that Jesus did bear my guilt as he died on the cross is the same faith that now as a Christian in the midst of my suffering appropriates the promises of God and believes that this trial is as well under the sovereign hand of God and that he is doing something with it. We say, well, what is that something?Pastor Steve, could you please help? Notice what Peter says. What purpose do they serve? “So that the tested genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire.” What Peter does here is he anticipates maybe people sort of getting lost in his theology, and he gives a very clear illustration that they could all understand and we can all understand here as well.He brings up gold. Now ancient people were interested in gold. Why? It was the most precious commodity that they had. I mean, today, if you listen to the radio and different things, you see these advertisements.The stock market's uncertain. Buy gold. Right? And they show gold bars and people smiling because they have gold bars, and they encourage you to buy gold. It's the only lasting value in the world.That's the way that they viewed it in the first century. It was their most precious commodity. It was the most long lasting thing that they had, gold. So if you've ever seen, King Tut's tomb or pictures of the jewelry and the gold at King Tut's tomb, then you know that the ancient world, they were really good with gold. I mean, they had figured out how to take gold out of the mountain and turn it into something very beautiful, incredibly beautiful, and intricate.So how do they do it? Well, like today, what they would do is they would mine the gold, and then they would heat it. Right? They would heat up that gold with fires in a furnace. They would heat it up and heat it up and heat it up.And gold reaches a point where it melts. And as it gets hotter, the hotter it gets, the more the impurities of the gold rise to the surface. And so the ancients would heat up that gold and they would heat up that gold and the impurities. In other words, everything that was not gold would rise to the top, and then they would just skim off the top. And by doing that, the gold then, the karat of the gold, and by that, I mean k a r a t.Not to confuse some of you that are thinking about lunch right now. Carat, the the purity of the gold, and the value then would would increase. Okay? And they all got how that worked, and I hope that maybe, you get how that works as well. Because Peter is drawing an analogy here.Do you see it? The analogy is that fire reveals the gold and fire refines the gold. It reveals what is actually gold and separates the impurities and by doing that it refines it. And what he's saying here is that our faith is like gold and our trials are like fire. Fire reveals the genuine gold, and trials reveal the genuine faith.Should I say that again? Fire reveals the genuine gold. Trials reveal the genuine faith within us. Now you don't have to be around the church very long to see this in action. If you're around a church, some family or some individual is gonna suddenly find themselves in a trial, a fiery trial, as Peter calls it elsewhere.And you can watch how this works. And sometimes it's beautiful. Right? Because here you have sort of generic family a, and you didn't know them that well. You didn't know that much about them, but you hear about the trial.And out of that trial, you see a family that is turning to God in ways that you had never seen before. They're wanting the church to be in prayer for them. They're seeking spiritual, counsel and help. They're turning to God in the midst of their trial. They're trusting in things that they they don't know how it's gonna work out, but our trust is in God.And please, won't you pray for us? And you see in that trial a faith that you had never seen before. And it's a beautiful thing to see that. The genuineness of their faith is being revealed by the trial. In a sense, they didn't know what was in them.They didn't realize what they had, that saving faith in them, now showing its true color, its true karat in the midst of a fiery trial. At the same time, you don't have to be around the church very long to have generic family b in the church who comes under a similar trial. And they are unprepared for it. Their faith is has no, bandwidth for it. In that trial, all of a sudden, they are overwhelmed.Or they feel like, wait. This is not what I signed up for. They're like kinda like bandwagon Christians. They sort of join the church. They get on the Christianity bandwagon, and then paint then life hurts.And they're like, I need a different bandwagon. And off they go in a 100 different directions forsaking what they profess to be true in their life. What has the trial done for them? The trial has revealed that their faith was not genuine. The heat of the trial has done that.It is our response to trials that says so much. And by the way, this doesn't mean that we're like super Christians. And like from now on here at Bethel Church, if you ever have a trial, you must be like, my faith is being revealed and I love it. You know, it's not like that at all. There is room in this for normal human concern and worry and fear and the battling of fear and faith and all of that.So it's not like we're all walking around on some great spiritual plane somehow. But in the essence of it, there is an endurance that faith, genuine faith has that comes through the trial different, better, refined, revealed in ways that previously had been unknown. Trials are also great purifiers. Great purifiers. I read a little bit this week in preparation for this that modern gold refining, they heat up the gold to 3,000 degrees.That's hot, isn't it? And I got thinking to myself, what if you could interview the gold while it's being heated up, while it's coming under this kind of temperature? What might the gold be saying as it's getting hot? I see statements like this: “This is hot! This hurts! This stinks! Get me out of here! Why is this happening? Why do I get this and silver gets off easy? Please stop this right now. The guy in charge of this doesn't love me.” But what does the goldsmith know? The goldsmith knows that the only way for that gold to be purified is by heat. Now I stand before you a man who wished that wasn't true.I mean, wouldn't it be great if if the way that our faith could be built and we could grow spiritually would be for God to lavish us with every desire of our hearts? And for there never to be a single problem the rest of our life that we would just be rich and happy and fat and, you know, healthy and eat what we want and have all these. I mean, wouldn't it be great if that was the way that our faith was built? Amen. You're not sure if you want to amen that or not.I think that would be fantastic. That's not the way that it works, is it? In fact, what happens to people who get everything they want? What do we call children like that? Brats.That's what we call them. The surest way to raise a brat is to give that kid everything he wants all the time. And spiritually, there's a lot of immature Christians running around wanting that same kind of an experience. That's immaturity. How do we grow friends?It's through pain. And you'd better be ready for it. And again, this doesn't look great on the church billboards. Come to Bethel Church and suffer along with us. But that's the Bible.And that's the experience of Jesus who, by the way, we're told to do what? Take up our cross and follow him. Is there room in your understanding of your Christian faith that when trials come into your life, it doesn't mean that God doesn't love you? Now that's easy to say when you're not in a trial. But Thursday of this week, you might be.Are you ready to embrace that trial? Does your faith in God have a bandwidth that can bear that? Peter says your faith is more valuable than gold. Gold was the most valuable thing that they had in that day. Peter says your faith trumps it.Why? Because gold perishes. Gold perishes. But our faith will last forever. Not because of us, but because of that persevering, preserving work of God in our life.When the heat is turned up on us, we wanna say stop. God's answer is this. You may not realize it, but your faith is far more valuable than your comfort. I am going to reveal it and refine it. This will be a short term pain, but it will be a long term gain.Are you ready? You know, as a pastor, our elders, our pastors, we often are called into those moments of pain. I did two funerals yesterday morning. Two very wonderful godly men in our church, Peter Hammer and Merle McCluskey, both families suffering loss. Dear, dear brothers in the Lord, these kinds of things happen.They heard me preach sermons like this all the time, and now they're dead. They their sojourn is over. Are you ready? Are you ready, or are just hoping it doesn't happen or that Jesus comes back before it happens? Now with that said, I don't think we should intentionally bring trouble to ourselves.So don't leave the service today and be like, you know what? Trials refine my faith. I want trials in my life and run your car into a guardrail or a light pole or something like that. K? There's enough pain in this world we don't need to add to it.It also doesn't mean that we should be trying to refine our other people's faith and say, you know what? He needs to grow. Especially you married couples. I don't want you thinking that way. Life has enough fiery trials all by itself.So what should we be thinking when we're in a trial? I've got some questions. When the heat is up, when the heat in life is coming up, what should I ask? Here's a few. Am I looking at this from a temporal or eternal perspective?Obsess over the problem, and it will be overwhelming. Pull back from it and see it from the grand perspective of the gospel and the story of God, now I have it in perspective. Do I do I realize that trials are necessary at times and are for my good? This is one of the things that I, in my difficult times in my life, I try to bring to bear the thought in my heart, this is good for me. And that's hard at times.Right? Because I got this other part of me going, no, it isn't. And then I've got my faith part going, yes. It is. No.It isn't. Yes. It is. No. It is.Yes. You lay in bed at night. You can't sleep because this is going on. Right? But faith refuses to give up the belief that there is a sovereign God and that these light and momentary trials are achieving for us a glory that far outweighs them all.Romans eight. I'm sorry. Second Corinthians four. Is my perspective shaped by confidence in God's sovereign and good plan for my life? Do you think God loves you or only when things are good and going the way you want?Do you believe he loves you? Friend, he does. He sent Jesus. Right? That is Romans eight.“If God didn't spare his own son but gave him up for us all, how will we not also along with him graciously give us all things?” How can we doubt the love of God for us? He sent his son for us. Do I want to grow spiritually more than I want to live comfortably? How many people could honestly say, yes, I want to grow spiritually more than to have a comfortable life?Is faith refinement a personal goal? Do I aspire to a high karat content? I think those are all very helpful, and maybe we'll get those up on the web in case you would like those. They come right from the text. Now look at the end result here, and we have our fourth certainty in the text.Let me read it again. “So that the tested genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” The fourth certainty is that purified faith has a goal in mind. If my goal is to grow spiritually, I have another goal in that, and it's an eternal perspective where I believe that this trial that I am going through is going to bring honor to God and also is going to bring commendation and honor to me. And this was my aha moment in my studies here because whenever you see it may result in praise and glory and honor, you just assume that this is talking about God.Right? Because there's so many passages in the Bible that say that. Philippians two, for example, “every knee shall bow, every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.” And so you can look at that and say, well, who is the honor going to? It must be going to God.And indeed, in the end, all honor does go to God. But the text doesn't say that the honor here goes to God. It just says when it comes. It comes when Jesus is revealed. It comes at the end of time.And I think what Peter is doing here is he is including both. There is in my trouble and in my pain. Why do I want to respond in a God honoring way? Because I want God to be honored in this trial. And that is a very good motive for the Christian enduring suffering that Jesus may be honored in my life. I want him to be glorified in all things.Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen? Alright.So that we got down, especially at a church that is an all about him church. We got that down. But notice also that there is this reward that is also taught in Scripture that I receive. This commentation that I receive from Jesus in honor as he commends, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant.”Or a cup of cold water extended my name shall not be forgotten. And a host of other passages that teach us that as we honor the Lord in the ups and the downs of life, that we are putting our treasure in heaven as another example and that Jesus will reward us. Can that be motivating? I think so. I think so.In fact, to illustrate this, I'd like to return to the illustration that Peter is using, how both honors can happen, God and us. Let's go back to gold a second and to talk about gold used in in artwork. You know, back in the first century, they were doing what man has done for centuries, millennia, and that is use gold in art. Beautiful gold in, for example, jewelry. If you've, been to the museums in Chicago, there are displays there of ancient gold jewelry.And to this day, people pay to have tickets, and they go and they stand in front of the display, and they marvel at the intricate, jewelry and the and the craftsmanship of that those beautiful pieces of art. They stand there, and they're like, wow. And the wife's like, you ought to get me one of those. And, you know, these you just kinda stand there, and you admire the craftsmanship. You admire the artistic ability.You you admire the the art and the worth of that. Wow. That is just so absolutely beautiful. And so gold has itself a kind of I'm sorry. Art has its own kind of praise as we admire the art itself.But there is this other kind of honor that art produces, and that is honor for the maker of the art. So that it's not just the Messiah, it is Handel's Messiah. And it's just not the Fifth, it is Beethoven's fifth. And with great pieces of art, the art is valued and treasured, but then the real honor is for the amazing ability of the person who crafted it in the first place. And so how does that apply to what God is doing in the midst of my pain and my sorrow?As I realize that everything that comes into my life is from the sovereign hand of God, as I appropriate that faith, the same faith that trusted in Jesus for my eternity, I now trust him for this trial that I'm experiencing. And I remain faithful to the Lord. I try with the the strength that God provides to obey or to be steadfast or whatever I need to do in that trial. As I do that, God is shaping and forming in me in the story of my life a kind of artistic beauty. And the people around you see that, and they admire it.And they're like, isn't it beautiful and wonderful what that family is doing in response to that trial in their life? Isn't it great and wonderful what that man is doing as he prepares to lose his job by faith in Jesus, believing God is sovereign over it? And a host of other things as we admire and see that we are we're like the gallery of God. Our lives are a kind of masterpiece, a kind of artistic expression of the amazing power of God, but for our own honor as well. We hang in the gallery of God and people and angels and God himself admiring the beauty of what our lives live by faith in times of trouble, what that is, so that we as the art and God is the maker of the art, both receive honor and praise.And one motivating factor when I am in a time of trouble is I don't want to lose that reward. I don't want to lose that commendation from God. “Well done, good and faithful servant.” I don't wanna lose the opportunity to bring honor to him. By the way, I live by faith even when life hurts.So that at the end then of all of our troubles and all of our pains, there is God and there is us. His artwork, his masterpieces, honored and honored. Little h honor to us, big h honor to God. Paintings and painters, symphonies and composers, sinners and savior may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Much more on suffering in First Peter.We're just getting going. I'm gonna ask you, just to join me for a word of prayer. Would you stand with me, please, as we conclude our service together?* This transcript was generated using AI transcription technology and reviewed for accuracy but may contain errors. Please refer to the original audio for precise wording.

Steve DeWitt God, Why Am I Hurting? - Part A Study Guide for Spiritual Exiles, 1 Peter 1:6-8 Scripture Reference: 1 Peter 1:6-8 Visit the series page: Exiles: A study in 1 Peter Donate to Support The Journey Sermon Transcript for Spiritual Exiles, 1 Peter 1:6-8 Sermon Series: Spiritual ExilesMessage: God Why Am I Hurting? Airdate: 9/10-9/11/26Programs: 2354 23552014, what a year around this place. I mean, it was something else. And just on the surface to go from two campuses to four campuses all in one year, a remarkable, remarkable, thing that God has done. We give him glory for it, and, we want 2015 to be another year of, faithful ministry here, and thank you for your part in that. I really mean that.This is our weekend of the annual meeting, and that's partly why we made this video. It's a it's a year or it's a a weekend where our members, we have our annual meeting, and so it's kind of a year to look back, a time to look back on the on the past year. It also means that, because our meeting is between this service and the next, I know this is gonna be disappointing. The sermon's a little shorter. Little shorter.So appropriate, that I'm speaking on trials in this sermon. And I'm gonna get right into it because our time is fleeting. First Peter one verses six through seven, I've entitled this message, God, why am I hurting? That resonate resonate here today? Are you in a time in your life maybe where you are hurting, where there is a trial maybe that is a pain in your life right now, you might say, no.Not really. Just wait. K? Just wait. It's coming.Life in a broken world brings sorrows to us in all kinds of directions and in ways that we cannot anticipate. That day is most certainly coming. And Peter is writing this letter to a group of geographical exiles in the first century sent from Rome, living in Asia Minor, but they are they are spiritual exiles as well. They are suffering in a community that looks at their Christian faith, looks at their rejection of the immorality around them. They look down at them, and they are feeling alienated.They are feeling ostracized, and they are suffering in many different ways. And so Peter writes this letter to them to encourage them, and it is perhaps more than the only one maybe competing with the book would be the book of Job of, delivering to us, giving to us a theology of Christian suffering. How do I handle it? How should I look at it when God sovereignly brings pain into my life? First Peter is a very honest letter.It looks pain in the face and gives an answer. Did you know Christianity has an answer to suffering that the other religions of the world, the other philosophies struggle to provide in ways that we'll get into? So maybe you're here today and you're in pain, and you're thinking this is the sermon for me. Maybe you're here today and you're not in pain, but that day is coming. I want to prepare all of us to suffer so that when we are the ones experiencing that pain, we have a kind of grid.We have a kind of understanding that is ready to embrace the trials that come. I also wanna note that Christianity is based on suffering. I mean, our entire faith is built upon the suffering savior who came into this world, God steps into our pain in the person of Jesus, incarnates into this world, lives amongst us, experiences all of the weaknesses, all of the sufferings that we experience, and then suffered himself dying on the cross bearing the guilt and shame for all of our sins. Our savior was a suffering savior. We can say it that Christianity is is built on suffering.Now that doesn't sound so good. It doesn't look great on a billboard. You know, we're not gonna put up a billboard that says, Bethel Church, come suffer with us. Right? Because many people, they don't wanna hear that, and they want a faith that doesn't include any suffering, and yet it inevitably comes.Are we ready for that? Are you ready for that in your life? So our text is verses, six and seven, First Peter one. Please listen as I read. “In this, you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials so that the tested genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.”This passage is Peter's first salvo of teaching on suffering. It's gonna continue through the letter. So this isn't everything that he has to say about it. There's much more to come. Notice that he begins with the the little phrase there, in this, you rejoice.You wouldn't expect a passage on suffering to have a and to begin with a word of joy, and he's referring there to what he's just talked about regarding our living hope. Our hope is living because our hope is in a living savior. And so because of that, we are we rejoice in this salvation, this new birth that God has given to us. Notice that joy and pain can coexist. We typically think, you know, when I am in pain, then I'm not joyous.Right? Or when I'm in joyous, I don't have any pain. And yet these two come together, indeed, they have to come together in a Christian theology of suffering because there is going to be ongoing problems and pain in life. There are gonna be ups and downs, and yet our Christian joy is not based upon our circumstances. It is grounded and based upon something that is enduring.Even Jesus himself, Hebrews, “who for the joy set before him endured the cross and despised its shame.” So don't see the these as enemies. These actually can be friends, joy, and pain. We'll get into more of that later. But in this passage, Peter gives four certainties in the midst of suffering.Four certainties that a Christian can hold on to, trust, and believe in even when life is hurting. So let's get into these now. Notice the first one is that our trials as Christians are temporary. They are temporary. The text now, “though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials.”Peter's first point here is chronological. He is pointing something out that is obviously true. Now it doesn't seem that way to us when we are in the midst of pain. When we are hurting, what do we often think about the pain that we're feeling? We say things like this.This is never going to change. This is never gonna be fixed. I will always feel this way. This pain will never go away. That's how it seems to us.Right? Peter says, yes. It will. Yes. It will.Chronologically speaking, our sufferings and our trials and our pains are very small in duration when compared to the future that the Christian confidently expects, this eternal life that we have. Our lives are fleeting. Our days are numbered. They're short. Eternity is long.Peter points that out. He says, you know what now? For a little while, it's just a little while. It's temporary. You're not always going to feel this way.It's not always going to be this way. A day of change is coming. Chapter five verse 10, he writes, and after you have suffered a little while, there he says it again, “the God of all grace who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.” Peter's wanting us to realize that that this trial that I am in is finite. Eternity is unending.My trial is temporary. Eternity is forever. And when I look at things from that grand perspective, it helps me put it into proper perspective. When I obsess about my trials, I think it's always going to be this way. Do you ever get sort of melodramatic about things?Right? Oh, it's never gonna be better. My life is over. You know, teenage girl says that when who knows what happened to her. Right?And she's, oh, you know. And we look at her and we say that is so immature. Peter says when we look at our trials like it's always going to be that way, we're looking immaturely. We're not seeing things from the grand perspective. Our trials are temporary.Someday, the present pain of our life will be over. Someday, Jesus himself is going to confirm, establish, comfort, minister. Someday, we are going to look back at our trials, and we are going to agree with God regarding them. Can you believe that? Now you might be in a trial right now going, I will never say that this was okay.I will never agree with this. Someday, God, I believe, is going to give us understanding regarding why this happened and why that happened and why that happened. I talked with a man after first service today. He's losing his job. He has thirty days.He was talking to somebody about this and that person said to him, I haven't been to church since Vietnam. But in light of the way you're responding to this, I might give it another chance. He always had tears in his eyes after first service to this point that I'm making. He goes, oh, these three years have been so hard, but maybe I see why God's doing it. Don't Don't you think heaven is going to be that kind of an experience where God goes, see when that happened right there?I did this with that with that person's life, and then this was the fruit of it. And we're gonna be going, I had no idea. And when we see it in the big picture, don't you think we will go, you know, God, you are infinitely wise. I now agree with that. And if I was you, I would have brought that into my life.Praise be to God. Okay? Heaven will be that I think. For a Christian, realize friends, for a Christian, this life that we're in right now, this is as bad as it gets. Our lives right now are the worst experience that we are ever going to have.Why? Because eternity is going to be bliss, heaven, and joy. So this is as bad as it gets for the Christian. For the unbeliever, it's the opposite. This is as good as it gets.Life in this broken world with all of its pain and all of its uncertainty is far better than what lies ahead for the unbeliever. But for us, this is as bad as it gets. This is temporary pain. That helps, doesn't it? Indeed, it does.Secondly, Peter points out that trials are painful. Trials are painful. Though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials. That's a pretty good word to describe what pain feels like. Right?It's grievous to us. And do I really need a lot of proof text on this one? Just to prove to you that trials are painful, that we feel within us when we are in a trial. And by trial here, I it's it's all of it, the various trials that he talks about. It can be physical.It can be emotional. It can be relational. It can be marital. It can be financial. It can be political.It can be injustice. It can be emotional worry, fear, misery, depression, and I mean, the things that the things that can create pain in us are incredibly varied, aren't they? All of them, we feel very personally when we experience them. I also find over time in my life that not only are the trials varied, but my ability to handle them is varied. There are things that when I was younger wouldn't have bothered me, now they bother me, like birthdays.There are things that when I was young bothered me, but now from a perspective of maturity doesn't bother me anymore. Right? It's so varied. It's so changing. But over all of that, we certainly can say the trials are painful.We would rather not be in them. Amen? Okay. That'd be my preference. A trouble free life.No more trials. I mean, that'd be like heaven, wouldn't it? Oh, wait. It is heaven. Are you with me?Okay. Alright. Third, reality and certainty with trials. And this now gets into kind of the nub of what Peter is wanting us to see is that trials are revealing and trials are refining. Again, the text, “so that the tested genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.”What is one of the biggest things that we wanna know when we are in the midst of a trial? We search for why. Right? Why is this happening? Why am I feeling this?Why am I sorrowing like I am? Why am I so depressed about this? And atheism comes along and gives what answer? Nothing. Secular humanism comes along and gives what answer?Nothing. Agnosticism comes along and gives what answer? E. Evolutionary theory comes along and gives what answer to our pain? Nothing.Christianity comes along, and it's got a purpose statement. Right there, you see it. So that. Why do I go through the troubles that I do? Why do I go through these things?Is there some reason behind it? And indeed, there is. In fact, you see, previously, he says, if necessary about our trials. If necessary what do you mean if necessary? That seems to indicate somebody is determining whether I ought to go through this or not.Is there a sovereign somebody that is sovereignly guiding and directing in the details of my life and determining whether this is good or not, necessary or not. Indeed, that is Christianity, that there is a sovereign God who doesn't simply, like the agnostics teach, live out there in the extended world and hope the best for us, but rather he is sovereignly over every single detail of our life. There's nothing that will ever happen to the Christian that we that that God did not sovereignly bring to us. Now by that, it doesn't mean that God endorses evil. And someday, we will never endorse evil either.We'll never look at the Holocaust and say, yeah. Great. But God uses evil, and God uses these things to accomplish his purposes. That's what Joseph said in Genesis, right, to his brothers. “You intended it for evil.God intended it for good.” That's the the the wonder of the mystery of God that he can, in the complexities of the universe, use even evil for his divine good and sovereign purposes. And so we see then that in Christian in a Christian theology of suffering, there is a purpose to it. And I think that alone is one of the great certainties that we have to cling to, that this is not random. This is not chaos.This is not Satan winning. Rather, this is something that God is sovereignly guiding and directing. There is a purpose behind it. Sometimes that doesn't make sense to us when the kind and godly young man dies or when the righteous suffer and the unrighteous prosper. Do you ever feel that way?Maybe you feel about that way about yourself. I'm I'm busting my butt. I'm trying to be a good employee, student, wife, husband, parent, whatever. And here I am. I'm dying on the vine, and you look at your neighbor who they're immoral, they profane God's name, and they just smile all the time.And you're like, that doesn't seem fair to me. As the hymn says, it is our God who does each day what he deems best. We trust that pain has a purpose and that God is behind it. The same faith that can believe in Jesus and trust my entire eternity to the truthfulness that Jesus did bear my guilt as he died on the cross is the same faith that now as a Christian in the midst of my suffering appropriates the promises of God and believes that this trial is as well under the sovereign hand of God and that he is doing something with it. We say, well, what is that something?Pastor Steve, could you please help? Notice what Peter says. What purpose do they serve? “So that the tested genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire.” What Peter does here is he anticipates maybe people sort of getting lost in his theology, and he gives a very clear illustration that they could all understand and we can all understand here as well.He brings up gold. Now ancient people were interested in gold. Why? It was the most precious commodity that they had. I mean, today, if you listen to the radio and different things, you see these advertisements.The stock market's uncertain. Buy gold. Right? And they show gold bars and people smiling because they have gold bars, and they encourage you to buy gold. It's the only lasting value in the world.That's the way that they viewed it in the first century. It was their most precious commodity. It was the most long lasting thing that they had, gold. So if you've ever seen, King Tut's tomb or pictures of the jewelry and the gold at King Tut's tomb, then you know that the ancient world, they were really good with gold. I mean, they had figured out how to take gold out of the mountain and turn it into something very beautiful, incredibly beautiful, and intricate.So how do they do it? Well, like today, what they would do is they would mine the gold, and then they would heat it. Right? They would heat up that gold with fires in a furnace. They would heat it up and heat it up and heat it up.And gold reaches a point where it melts. And as it gets hotter, the hotter it gets, the more the impurities of the gold rise to the surface. And so the ancients would heat up that gold and they would heat up that gold and the impurities. In other words, everything that was not gold would rise to the top, and then they would just skim off the top. And by doing that, the gold then, the karat of the gold, and by that, I mean k a r a t.Not to confuse some of you that are thinking about lunch right now. Carat, the the purity of the gold, and the value then would would increase. Okay? And they all got how that worked, and I hope that maybe, you get how that works as well. Because Peter is drawing an analogy here.Do you see it? The analogy is that fire reveals the gold and fire refines the gold. It reveals what is actually gold and separates the impurities and by doing that it refines it. And what he's saying here is that our faith is like gold and our trials are like fire. Fire reveals the genuine gold, and trials reveal the genuine faith.Should I say that again? Fire reveals the genuine gold. Trials reveal the genuine faith within us. Now you don't have to be around the church very long to see this in action. If you're around a church, some family or some individual is gonna suddenly find themselves in a trial, a fiery trial, as Peter calls it elsewhere.And you can watch how this works. And sometimes it's beautiful. Right? Because here you have sort of generic family a, and you didn't know them that well. You didn't know that much about them, but you hear about the trial.And out of that trial, you see a family that is turning to God in ways that you had never seen before. They're wanting the church to be in prayer for them. They're seeking spiritual, counsel and help. They're turning to God in the midst of their trial. They're trusting in things that they they don't know how it's gonna work out, but our trust is in God.And please, won't you pray for us? And you see in that trial a faith that you had never seen before. And it's a beautiful thing to see that. The genuineness of their faith is being revealed by the trial. In a sense, they didn't know what was in them.They didn't realize what they had, that saving faith in them, now showing its true color, its true karat in the midst of a fiery trial. At the same time, you don't have to be around the church very long to have generic family b in the church who comes under a similar trial. And they are unprepared for it. Their faith is has no, bandwidth for it. In that trial, all of a sudden, they are overwhelmed.Or they feel like, wait. This is not what I signed up for. They're like kinda like bandwagon Christians. They sort of join the church. They get on the Christianity bandwagon, and then paint then life hurts.And they're like, I need a different bandwagon. And off they go in a 100 different directions forsaking what they profess to be true in their life. What has the trial done for them? The trial has revealed that their faith was not genuine. The heat of the trial has done that.It is our response to trials that says so much. And by the way, this doesn't mean that we're like super Christians. And like from now on here at Bethel Church, if you ever have a trial, you must be like, my faith is being revealed and I love it. You know, it's not like that at all. There is room in this for normal human concern and worry and fear and the battling of fear and faith and all of that.So it's not like we're all walking around on some great spiritual plane somehow. But in the essence of it, there is an endurance that faith, genuine faith has that comes through the trial different, better, refined, revealed in ways that previously had been unknown. Trials are also great purifiers. Great purifiers. I read a little bit this week in preparation for this that modern gold refining, they heat up the gold to 3,000 degrees.That's hot, isn't it? And I got thinking to myself, what if you could interview the gold while it's being heated up, while it's coming under this kind of temperature? What might the gold be saying as it's getting hot? I see statements like this: “This is hot! This hurts! This stinks! Get me out of here! Why is this happening? Why do I get this and silver gets off easy? Please stop this right now. The guy in charge of this doesn't love me.” But what does the goldsmith know? The goldsmith knows that the only way for that gold to be purified is by heat. Now I stand before you a man who wished that wasn't true.I mean, wouldn't it be great if if the way that our faith could be built and we could grow spiritually would be for God to lavish us with every desire of our hearts? And for there never to be a single problem the rest of our life that we would just be rich and happy and fat and, you know, healthy and eat what we want and have all these. I mean, wouldn't it be great if that was the way that our faith was built? Amen. You're not sure if you want to amen that or not.I think that would be fantastic. That's not the way that it works, is it? In fact, what happens to people who get everything they want? What do we call children like that? Brats.That's what we call them. The surest way to raise a brat is to give that kid everything he wants all the time. And spiritually, there's a lot of immature Christians running around wanting that same kind of an experience. That's immaturity. How do we grow friends?It's through pain. And you'd better be ready for it. And again, this doesn't look great on the church billboards. Come to Bethel Church and suffer along with us. But that's the Bible.And that's the experience of Jesus who, by the way, we're told to do what? Take up our cross and follow him. Is there room in your understanding of your Christian faith that when trials come into your life, it doesn't mean that God doesn't love you? Now that's easy to say when you're not in a trial. But Thursday of this week, you might be.Are you ready to embrace that trial? Does your faith in God have a bandwidth that can bear that? Peter says your faith is more valuable than gold. Gold was the most valuable thing that they had in that day. Peter says your faith trumps it.Why? Because gold perishes. Gold perishes. But our faith will last forever. Not because of us, but because of that persevering, preserving work of God in our life.When the heat is turned up on us, we wanna say stop. God's answer is this. You may not realize it, but your faith is far more valuable than your comfort. I am going to reveal it and refine it. This will be a short term pain, but it will be a long term gain.Are you ready? You know, as a pastor, our elders, our pastors, we often are called into those moments of pain. I did two funerals yesterday morning. Two very wonderful godly men in our church, Peter Hammer and Merle McCluskey, both families suffering loss. Dear, dear brothers in the Lord, these kinds of things happen.They heard me preach sermons like this all the time, and now they're dead. They their sojourn is over. Are you ready? Are you ready, or are just hoping it doesn't happen or that Jesus comes back before it happens? Now with that said, I don't think we should intentionally bring trouble to ourselves.So don't leave the service today and be like, you know what? Trials refine my faith. I want trials in my life and run your car into a guardrail or a light pole or something like that. K? There's enough pain in this world we don't need to add to it.It also doesn't mean that we should be trying to refine our other people's faith and say, you know what? He needs to grow. Especially you married couples. I don't want you thinking that way. Life has enough fiery trials all by itself.So what should we be thinking when we're in a trial? I've got some questions. When the heat is up, when the heat in life is coming up, what should I ask? Here's a few. Am I looking at this from a temporal or eternal perspective?Obsess over the problem, and it will be overwhelming. Pull back from it and see it from the grand perspective of the gospel and the story of God, now I have it in perspective. Do I do I realize that trials are necessary at times and are for my good? This is one of the things that I, in my difficult times in my life, I try to bring to bear the thought in my heart, this is good for me. And that's hard at times.Right? Because I got this other part of me going, no, it isn't. And then I've got my faith part going, yes. It is. No.It isn't. Yes. It is. No. It is.Yes. You lay in bed at night. You can't sleep because this is going on. Right? But faith refuses to give up the belief that there is a sovereign God and that these light and momentary trials are achieving for us a glory that far outweighs them all.Romans eight. I'm sorry. Second Corinthians four. Is my perspective shaped by confidence in God's sovereign and good plan for my life? Do you think God loves you or only when things are good and going the way you want?Do you believe he loves you? Friend, he does. He sent Jesus. Right? That is Romans eight.“If God didn't spare his own son but gave him up for us all, how will we not also along with him graciously give us all things?” How can we doubt the love of God for us? He sent his son for us. Do I want to grow spiritually more than I want to live comfortably? How many people could honestly say, yes, I want to grow spiritually more than to have a comfortable life?Is faith refinement a personal goal? Do I aspire to a high karat content? I think those are all very helpful, and maybe we'll get those up on the web in case you would like those. They come right from the text. Now look at the end result here, and we have our fourth certainty in the text.Let me read it again. “So that the tested genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” The fourth certainty is that purified faith has a goal in mind. If my goal is to grow spiritually, I have another goal in that, and it's an eternal perspective where I believe that this trial that I am going through is going to bring honor to God and also is going to bring commendation and honor to me. And this was my aha moment in my studies here because whenever you see it may result in praise and glory and honor, you just assume that this is talking about God.Right? Because there's so many passages in the Bible that say that. Philippians two, for example, “every knee shall bow, every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.” And so you can look at that and say, well, who is the honor going to? It must be going to God.And indeed, in the end, all honor does go to God. But the text doesn't say that the honor here goes to God. It just says when it comes. It comes when Jesus is revealed. It comes at the end of time.And I think what Peter is doing here is he is including both. There is in my trouble and in my pain. Why do I want to respond in a God honoring way? Because I want God to be honored in this trial. And that is a very good motive for the Christian enduring suffering that Jesus may be honored in my life. I want him to be glorified in all things.Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen? Alright.So that we got down, especially at a church that is an all about him church. We got that down. But notice also that there is this reward that is also taught in Scripture that I receive. This commentation that I receive from Jesus in honor as he commends, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant.”Or a cup of cold water extended my name shall not be forgotten. And a host of other passages that teach us that as we honor the Lord in the ups and the downs of life, that we are putting our treasure in heaven as another example and that Jesus will reward us. Can that be motivating? I think so. I think so.In fact, to illustrate this, I'd like to return to the illustration that Peter is using, how both honors can happen, God and us. Let's go back to gold a second and to talk about gold used in in artwork. You know, back in the first century, they were doing what man has done for centuries, millennia, and that is use gold in art. Beautiful gold in, for example, jewelry. If you've, been to the museums in Chicago, there are displays there of ancient gold jewelry.And to this day, people pay to have tickets, and they go and they stand in front of the display, and they marvel at the intricate, jewelry and the and the craftsmanship of that those beautiful pieces of art. They stand there, and they're like, wow. And the wife's like, you ought to get me one of those. And, you know, these you just kinda stand there, and you admire the craftsmanship. You admire the artistic ability.You you admire the the art and the worth of that. Wow. That is just so absolutely beautiful. And so gold has itself a kind of I'm sorry. Art has its own kind of praise as we admire the art itself.But there is this other kind of honor that art produces, and that is honor for the maker of the art. So that it's not just the Messiah, it is Handel's Messiah. And it's just not the Fifth, it is Beethoven's fifth. And with great pieces of art, the art is valued and treasured, but then the real honor is for the amazing ability of the person who crafted it in the first place. And so how does that apply to what God is doing in the midst of my pain and my sorrow?As I realize that everything that comes into my life is from the sovereign hand of God, as I appropriate that faith, the same faith that trusted in Jesus for my eternity, I now trust him for this trial that I'm experiencing. And I remain faithful to the Lord. I try with the the strength that God provides to obey or to be steadfast or whatever I need to do in that trial. As I do that, God is shaping and forming in me in the story of my life a kind of artistic beauty. And the people around you see that, and they admire it.And they're like, isn't it beautiful and wonderful what that family is doing in response to that trial in their life? Isn't it great and wonderful what that man is doing as he prepares to lose his job by faith in Jesus, believing God is sovereign over it? And a host of other things as we admire and see that we are we're like the gallery of God. Our lives are a kind of masterpiece, a kind of artistic expression of the amazing power of God, but for our own honor as well. We hang in the gallery of God and people and angels and God himself admiring the beauty of what our lives live by faith in times of trouble, what that is, so that we as the art and God is the maker of the art, both receive honor and praise.And one motivating factor when I am in a time of trouble is I don't want to lose that reward. I don't want to lose that commendation from God. “Well done, good and faithful servant.” I don't wanna lose the opportunity to bring honor to him. By the way, I live by faith even when life hurts.So that at the end then of all of our troubles and all of our pains, there is God and there is us. His artwork, his masterpieces, honored and honored. Little h honor to us, big h honor to God. Paintings and painters, symphonies and composers, sinners and savior may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Much more on suffering in First Peter.We're just getting going. I'm gonna ask you, just to join me for a word of prayer. Would you stand with me, please, as we conclude our service together?* This transcript was generated using AI transcription technology and reviewed for accuracy but may contain errors. Please refer to the original audio for precise wording.

Steve DeWitt Indestructibly Saved - Part B Study Guide for Spiritual Exiles, 1 Peter 1:3-5 Scripture Reference: 1 Peter 1:3-5 Visit the series page: Exiles: A study in 1 Peter Donate to Support The Journey Sermon Transcript for Spiritual Exiles, 1 Peter 1:3-5 Sermon Series: Spiritual ExilesMessage: Indestructibly SavedAirdate: 9/8 & 9/9/26Programs 2352 & 2353Good morning, Crown Point Campus. And let's go to the Lord in prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the opportunity to be here today. And we pray simply this, that your spirit would come, that he would minister to your people by your word for your glory and for our good. God, we pray that this would be a day truly where your name would be lifted higher. And we want to be a part of that. So we thank you. We pray it in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, last week we began our new series in 1 Peter entitled Exiles.And the title was taken from the first verse of the book, which says this, “Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who are elect exiles of the dispersion.” And we saw that Peter was writing to Christians who had been part of this colonization, this dispersion, Christians living in Rome or that region sent now to Asia Minor, and they are there living as foreigners, essentially living as exiles, geopolitical exiles. And what Peter does is he draws from their geopolitical situation spiritual truth and application as they dealt with the feelings of alienation. and ostracization from people that saw them as part of the conquering army, people that weren't from there. And so much that we're going to see in this letter. Last week was our introduction, and we saw that... exiles want more than anything is they want a change of location.They think to themselves, what really needs to happen is I need to be somewhere else. And if I was somewhere else, then I would be happy. Then I would feel like I belong. And we see that what Peter is wanting them to realize is that we want to change our location. God wants to change who we are. And that is inward. And that's the work of the spirit. That's the work of the gospel. That's a part of changing us. Now, what might exiles need to know? Think about this with me for a moment. What do they need to know? There they are living in a land of uncertainty, living in a place where they don't, you know, you think of what people experience when they move into a new area. They need a new doctor. They need a new, where do I get my groceries?How do I find my way around? All the things that are sort of new and different and uncertain. That is compounded in the experience of moving in the first century to a whole new region. And there they are, and everything is uncertain. Nothing feels normal. Everything's sort of weird. What do they need to know spiritually? Well, they need to know that there is a day coming when they will not be exiles anymore and where they will feel welcomed and they will feel like they belong. And that's what Peter now moves to in pastoring this group of people. He wants them to realize that they will not always be exiles. It will not always be like it is. There's coming a day when it will be very much different. And our text in our sermon today is 1 Peter 1, verses 3 through 5.And today is a day where I get to preach at Crown Point and at Cedar Lake. And we do this with the use of technology. And hopefully a fast commute. That's where we're going today. That's where I'm going today. But our text today is verses 3 through 5. So please listen as I read from God's word. “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.” 1 Peter, if you ask most people what 1 Peter is about, it's about remaining faithful in suffering and in persecution. And I just want to note to you that a letter that begins, a letter that is about suffering, begins with, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now that seems out of place, except for when you view your suffering from a Christian perspective. It sounds to me like Job, the famous book on suffering.Job, who endured all of these things in chapter 1. He loses everything, and what is his response to that? The Lord gives, the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name. There is within Christianity a kind of faith and a kind of confidence in the goodness of God that allows Christians to suffer loss and to remain doxological, to remain praising, to remain giving thanks to God. And we see that modeled here with Peter. He begins with praise and thanksgiving to the Lord. These verses, verses 3 through 5, they are, it's, This is a jewel, okay? This is a jewel passage in all of the Bible, and there are lots of jewel passages, but this is certainly one of them, because what Peter does here is he lays out the gospel. He goes from praising God, and he says, now, why? Why do we praise the Lord?What is there about what God has done for us that allows us to give praise to God even in the midst of persecution and suffering? And we see him now talking about salvation in this passage from the perspective of the past, what God has done, the present, what God is doing, and the future, what God is yet to do. And I want to hasten to say this. These truths that I'm talking about here, that Peter talks about, only apply to genuine Christians. This is not just a general truth for all of humanity. Let's all feel good about it. This is a truth that applies to people who have genuinely trusted in the Lord Jesus. And the promises that God has made to those that are his children apply then to us and are enumerated here. by Peter.So if you're here and you have not trusted in Jesus as your Savior, what I hope happens today as we talk about the blessings that come to those that are under the grace of God, that it might woo you, that it might draw you to put your hope and your faith in the Lord Jesus and for these promises then to become real and true for you. And that can happen in this service here today. Now, if you're an exile far from home, You are having to accept certain realities about life now. It's almost like a college student who goes away from home for the first time. And suddenly, the reality of being responsible for yourself, doing your own laundry, and managing your own money, and all of the rest comes crashing down on the freshmen.And some of them flunk out as a result of that, right? They're in a faraway land. Everything's sort of strange. And indeed, to be one of these people that he's writing to, in a faraway land where everything feels creepy and people look at you as creepy because you're different created a whole set of problems and difficulties your homeland that where you used to be it felt safe it felt normal it felt secure you had friends that made you feel like you were cared for you had possessions that you had had for a long time They felt normal to you. You had maybe a home. You had a network. You had all of these things that felt cozy and made you feel cared for.To be a person in exile is to live without these things, to live away from all of those identities and all of those securities. In fact, I don't know if you've noticed our series graphic, but just to put that up if we have it a second. I really like this because what is it? It's a guy sitting on a pile of rubble and he's looking to a faraway place, right? And there's sort of this sense of, I wish I was there instead of where I am here. This feels like rubble where I'm at. I wish I was back where I came from. And that is a picture, not a bad one, of what it's like to be in exile.And what Peter wants them, and through this letter and through the Holy Spirit, wants us to realize here today is that what we have in Christ, even as an exile, is far greater and far better than anything we had prior to coming to faith in Christ. I said that very clumsily. And clumsily is a clumsy word itself. Let me try that again. What Peter is wanting to say is that what we have presently as Christians, even as exiles, even on the pile of rubble, is far greater and far better than anything we had back when everything felt cozy, back prior to our faith in Christ. And he lays that out again in terms of past, present, future. So let's begin by looking at the past. And notice what he says here. Wonderful verse. about being born again to a living hope.According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Now we saw in verse 1 that their exile was by God's choice. We see here in verse 3 that their new birth is by the mercy of God. Born again. Born of what? What are you talking about? That sounds crazy. And that is exactly what Nicodemus said to Jesus when Jesus brought this up to him as well. In John chapter 3, you may know the story. Nicodemus, he's sort of a bigwig spiritual leader in Israel. He comes to Jesus in the night, and he asks him about spiritual, he has spiritual questions for him. And he says, no one except they're born from God could do what you do. And Jesus says to him, you must be born again.You have to be born again. Nicodemus says, what? How can I be born again? I was born of my mother once, I gotta be born of her twice? What are you talking about? And you see that Nicodemus is only looking at things materially. He is not seeing things spiritually, which is what Jesus wants him to see, is there's a whole thing going on here spiritually. You have to be born again. What was Jesus talking about? The New Testament calls it new birth, calls it regeneration. All of these are biblical descriptions of what God does in the heart of the sinner who turns in faith and believes in Jesus as their Lord and Savior. There is a miracle, a powerful supernatural work that God does inwardly in the life of the sinner where like being born again, he makes the sinner alive spiritually.Regeneration is also the word there. The Bible says that we are dead in our sins, that spiritually we are corpses. What has to happen for a corpse to live again? It has to be regenerated. In a sense, it has to be resurrected. And what God does inwardly in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, when we believe, is he births life in us again. Almost like Jesus saying to Lazarus, come forth. There is a summoning and a giving of life that God does within us where all of a sudden now our eyes are opened, our ears are opened, and we become attuned to spiritual realities and spiritual things. And notice that it's God that does this. He has caused us to be born again. Regeneration is something that God does. We can't manufacture it. We can't create it.We can't do enough things to make us think that now spiritually I'm alive.We are dead. Burns Funeral Homes across the street, you can go to every corpse there and try to manufacture life. It's not going to happen. Only God can manufacture life. And God does that within us. We are born again. We are passive in this. You ever hear a baby come out being born and go, wow, look what I did. I'm amazing. No, that mother birthed that child. Amen, mothers? You ain't going to ever forget that, are you? Babies don't take credit for being born, and Christians don't take credit for being born again. This is something God does. We are made spiritually alive, but the change affects our entire being. 2 Corinthians says it this way.If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old is gone, the new has come. It is a miracle of life that permeates our entire being. Suddenly, it's like the switch is turned on. We become aware of spiritual truth. What? I never realized that before. We become aware of the presence of God. We become aware of the presence of sin in our life. All of a sudden we realize, that we indeed are sinners. We become aware of forgiveness. We all of a sudden have an interest in Scripture, which prior to this we would have thought is silly. No, what does it say, actually? I'm kind of interested in that. We become interested in prayer and a host of other things. All of them kind of just, it's like springtime. Here come the leaves, here come the flowers.All of a sudden there is life. God does that. God does that. A few examples of how this is God's work and the change that it brings. I recently heard the story of Rosaria Butterfield, and maybe you've seen this online possibly, but she was a professor. She's very upfront about her sexuality. She was a lesbian. She was a professor at Syracuse University. She was just totally into kind of that whole worldview. And it's a great story because there was just a normal local church that began to kind of care for her and love her. And she, in her own words, writes this about her conversion. “The church had been praying for me for years was there. The church that had been praying for me for years was there. Jesus triumphed, and I was a broken mess. Conversion was a train wreck. I did not want to lose everything that I loved, but the voice of God sang a sanguine love song in the rubble of my world. I weakly believed that if Jesus could conquer death, he could make right my world. I drank tentatively at first, then passionately of the solace of the Holy Spirit.” And now she's married to a Presbyterian minister. So come to Jesus and you get to marry a Presbyterian minister. I would keep most people away. Listen to the words of C.S. Lewis. We've talked at length about him and how God drew him to faith. He writes this about his conversion. “You must picture me alone in that room at Magdalen College. Night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet.” Who's causing this regeneration? Hear it in these words. “That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me in the Trinity term of 1929. I gave in and admitted that God was God and knelt and prayed, perhaps that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.” Christian, think about your own life story. Think about the change that has taken place in your life. Is there a natural explanation? for the interest that you have in spiritual things and the course and trajectory of your life. The fact that you're sitting here right now listening to some guy talk about what the Bible has to say.All of these things are things if we knew our natural selves, we would say, I would never do that. And that sounds crazy and that sounds stupid. Just like the people in Asia Minor looked at these Christians and said, what planet are you from? Why are you interested in that stuff? And maybe you have people in your family and friends that similarly look at you and go, you're living your life according to what? What planet are you from? We share the same mother, but you're an alien. I don't know you. How have you come to care about the things that you care about and to love God in the way that you love him and to desire to obey and please and live to his glory in the way that you do? Where did all of that come from? It didn't come from you.That can only come from God. He has birthed life in us, and we are changed. Born again to a living hope, the text says, through the resurrection from the dead. Now, why do you suppose he calls it a living hope? It is because our hope is in a living Savior. Do you see the parallel there? One writer says it this way, Christian hope is ever living because Christ, the ground of that hope, is ever living. So Peter looks back. He says, exiles, look back in your story and realize that this change has not come from you. God has given you life, and he has given you hope. And that hope is a living hope because your Savior is a living Savior. And there we are looking at the passage. Well, that's pretty fantastic, isn't it?Don't you think exiles might be a little encouraged by that? And maybe even Christians living here today might be a little bit encouraged to look back and to see the grace of God in our life. As the hymn writer wrote, “oh God, our help in ages past, our hope for years to come.” We look to the past and we see God's grace to us. And it gives us, man, God is for me. God is with me. He has done this change in my life. The past, a living hope, a new birth. It is not simply a past, it is a present. And even right there is an interesting thought, which I don't have time to explore right now, but how important it is for us to realize that what God is doing is not just stuff in the past.You ever talk to people like that? Tell me about your spiritual life. Well, back in the past, and all they've got is like old stuff. And to realize that our faith, this thing that we're living, this Christian life, is a today thing. There is something that God is doing today. It doesn't matter how long you've been a Christian. There is a work that God is doing right now for you in your life. And Peter highlights it here. What are we saved to? “An inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who, by God's power, are being guarded through faith.” Now, there's a lot there, okay? There's a lot there, but let's just walk through it. You're going to get this, and you're going to love it. We've been born again to an inheritance, okay?So most of us are probably familiar with the concept of an inheritance. What is an inheritance? An inheritance is something that you receive normally based on a relationship, typically a family relationship, right? So when a person dies, there is a reading of the will. And if your name is in the will, it means that whether you knew it or not, you were an heir to the inheritance. So if you're in the will, you have an inheritance. Most people view that as good news, right? Okay. Now what is true about an inheritance? Inheritances are very, very slippery. Very slippery. Your name can be on the will, but guess what? It can be removed from the will. You were an heir, but now you're not anymore. So you better be careful what you say at the family gathering about grandma. And inheritance can shrink in value.Did you know that? You could be an heir to something that is incredibly valuable, but by the time you get it, it's not so valuable. So that your name is in the will, and they read the will, and your sister gets grandma's diamonds, and you get the cabbage patch collection. And you're like, my sister gets... and I get dolls and you know grandma puts in the notes when I bought these they were really valuable. You're like these aren't worth anything. This is like soft firewood. They can diminish in value. People can steal inheritances. There's a story or two in my own family tree of stolen inheritance and maybe you got a few of those in your family tree. It's amazing what family gets like when money is on the table.Inheritance can be stolen did you know that there are unscrupulous lawyers out there who now there's really godly and fair-minded ones as well but there are unscrupulous lawyers out there who can sometimes get their fingers in the pot and diminish an inheritance. Did you know that there are thieves — there are thieves — and that has no connection whatsoever with Steve. There are thieves who can steal inheritances. They can steal grandma's jewelry instead of the dolls. Did you know that massive inheritances can be squandered? Some time ago, I got watching on the History Channel, had this series called The Men Who Build America. Maybe some of you saw it, but we got into it for whatever reason. Tell the story of these icons of industry in the past.I got a little interested in the Vanderbilt family some years ago. I got a tour of the Biltmore, which is one of the descendants of, he built that with just an inheritance that he got. If you've ever seen that place, it's incredible. But I got interested in the Vanderbilt family. And just to give you an idea very quickly about the Vanderbilt fortune, they at one time, at the height of their power and value, they were worth over $300 billion in today's money. Now, $300 billion, to give you an idea, Bill Gates, who's currently the richest man in the world, is somewhere around $70 billion. They had $300 billion. The world has hardly ever, if ever, seen, other than Rockefeller, a fortune like the Vanderbilt family fortune.In 1973, this is just 75 years from the height of their power and wealth, There was a gathering of 120 direct descendants of Cornelius Vanderbilt, and there wasn't one millionaire amongst them. 75 years, 300 billion to, you know, not so wealthy. How does that happen? Inheritances can be squandered. They can just simply disappear. And I say all of that because that connects with the world that we're in, right? Everything is kind of diminishing. Everything that once was cool is kind of getting old now. And that's the world that we live in, right? Our money isn't worth today what it was worth yesterday. There's inflation. There's the stock market. Everything's up and down and all around. But what about spiritually? The inheritance, the Bible describes the inheritance that we have. We are heirs. What is our inheritance like?And he uses some very powerful words to emphasize that our inheritance is not subject to all of the insecurities that everything in this world has. And he uses these words, notice them, imperishable. Okay? To perish is to die. Everything in this world... dies right it's alive it dies the the flowers of the field the grass in the in the in the in the field all of it there and it dies and it withers and we're all withering right look around there's withering people all around you but this is an imperishable inheritance that he wants us to realize that we have undefiled and this speaks to the moral quality of our inheritance It is pure. It is good. Our inheritance doesn't come from unseemly business practices.There's nothing about it to make us feel sort of dirty in taking it or that there's something evil about it. It is holy. It is good. It is beautiful. It is pure, and it will be eternally beautiful and pure. Unfading. This is very similar to the perishing and the withering. It's, again, the human beauty and fame and everything that seems to be cool now. It's all going downhill. And young people don't realize that, but it is, right? It's all going down. Everything fades. And each one of these words is, it's perishable, defiled, and fading, only it has the negating ah in front of each one of those. It is not imperishable. I'm sorry, it's not perishable. It's not defiling. It is not fading. Our inheritance, you say, well, what is it then exactly? Number one, our inheritance is God himself.The number one thing that we look forward to in going to heaven is not seeing grandma, not seeing, you know, whoever. Number one is God. We go to heaven and we get God and we see God and we have him forever. We are his children. He lavishes blessings on us for all of eternity, eternal life, heaven, new earth, rewards that Jesus will give to us for the quality of our service while here on earth, bliss, beauty, and most importantly, and I include this in the God category, is the seeing and the savoring of Jesus himself, our blessed Lord and Savior, who is our inheritance. Christians talk about, oh, my mansion in heaven and all of that. Forget the mansion. Our mansion truly is Christ.And one day when we see him and we sense from him what eternal, pure, sacrificial, agape love is like, and he looks at us and we feel the love of the divine for us, the thought of a house or something else will just sort of fade away. This will be our greatest moment. It is that beatific vision that theologians talk about. and then to feel and to receive from him the lavishing of his grace and his love in material ways, even in the new earth, in the experience of what all of that is going to be like, and to realize that all of it is according to his mercy, that none of it we deserve, maybe with a vision of hell, and to realize that's what I deserve right there.And I'm getting this, how and why it is the mercy of God and his love for us. This is the inheritance, and Peter says it never goes away. It never diminishes. It never somehow dies. It remains secure in the character and the promises of God, and it's going to be great. And you, my friend, if you are a Christian, you are an heir, an heir to the most wonderful fortune, the fortune of God, the spiritual blessing of being a child of God forever. The verse goes on, kept in heaven for you who by God's power are being guarded through faith. This inheritance that we have is located in heaven. Jesus describes it as a place where moth and rust do not decay and thieves don't break in and steal. That's a pretty good bank vault, isn't it? Anybody's bank here make that kind of guarantee?Probably not. Now notice there's a little shift here in the text because he's describing our inheritance. That is kept in heaven. That's our inheritance. The next word, though, is who. See that? Who. So he moves from our inheritance to us. He moves from keeping our inheritance to God keeping us. So the inheritance is kept in heaven, but we are kept in earth. We are kept in faith on our time on earth. By God's power, our being guarded through faith. And the word there, the Greek word for the word guarded there, it's the word garrisoned, okay? So military people, this is like a word for you. This is the protection. This is the, in the ancient days, they would protect the city gates, the armament of the city gates. We are guarding the city walls, the walls of our faith.It also can refer to keeping us from escaping, okay? So it's both. It is both the attacks from without, and it is me fleeing from within. God is working in our faith, keeping us from both of those dangers. And here we have, and we can do a whole message on this, the doctrine of preservation. The doctrine of preservation, which says that God is the one who keeps us saved. We are preserved in our faith by the power of God. So notice the flow in the text. We are exiles by the choice of God. We are born again by the mercy of God. We are kept in our salvation by the power of God. Our faith is being guarded. And the tense of the verb there is ongoingly, continuously being guarded.It's as if each one of us has a 24-hour, seven days a week security detail. Now, the closest thing that I can think of to illustrate this would be What the President of the United States has, of course, which is the famous Secret Service. And all of us probably are familiar with the Secret Service and what they do 24 hours a day, seven days a week to keep the President alive, to protect him. That is their job. And so for whatever reason, they've decided wearing dark suits and sunglasses helps with that. And so wherever the president is, there's these guys walking around near him and they've got dark suits on and they've got sunglasses. All of them look like they've lifted weights their entire life. You know, they're big, they're bad, they're tough. There's little bulges around in their suit.You know what's in there, right? They can call upon what they need in a moment's notice to take care of business. And so they're there and they're talking into their hands and they got the little wires out of their ears. And you know that there's satellites and there's, you know, who knows all the things that they've got going on wherever the president goes. 24 hours a day, seven days a week, always keeping him safe. But as history shows, they can't even guarantee that, can they? Even the best of the best in the world today can't perfectly protect the life of the president. Notice what Peter says here about us, okay? Kept by the infinite power of God. It's almost like By the power of God, we each have our own spiritual secret service detachment.Everywhere we go, all the time, we are protected spiritually by the power of God. I got thinking about what this might be like. She's about to speak to Miss Gossip. Move in right now. He's leaving on a business trip with Mr. Skeptic and Mrs. Temptation, all units code red. He's in church right now. He's not listening. Taze him. Did anybody just feel something, by the way? No? God's power is always at work protecting our faith, keeping us from running away from our commitment to Christ, keeping us from the wolves, keeping us from doctrine and beliefs and temptations that would ultimately undermine our faith commitment to Christ. And that doesn't mean that we don't sin. It doesn't mean that we don't have seasons and all of that.But it does mean that even through those dark times, God is by his power protecting a faith that he has promised that he will carry on to completion, Philippians 1. And my dear Christian, that is true for you. Think of it just for a moment. Think of it. Right now, God's power is focused upon you and your faith and is ensuring that you are going to make it. That faith will not die. It's the power of God. It's like being born, right? We don't take credit for that. And I don't take credit for my faith continually because naturally I am a sinner and I am human and I am wishy -washy. None of us would make it through this week left to ourselves. But we are not left to ourselves, not by God who loves us. We are kept in this faith.Past, we were born again in the present. We're being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. And the future aspect of this is when our inheritance changes into a possession, okay? An heir is no longer an heir when the inheritance now is something that they own. Think of Prince Charles, like all these years waiting to become king. He's heir to the throne. There's probably a day coming when he will no longer be an heir. When? When he's actually king. And Buckingham Palace and the crown jewels and all the things, all of it is his then. No longer an heir, but a possessor. And our salvation is like that. We are already saved. We are already children of God. But the full experience of our salvation is yet to come.Someday, and the text here says, in the last time, referring to that future consummation of history. Someday, when Jesus returns and final judgment takes place, our ultimate inheritance will be ours. And our ultimate inheritance is Christ himself. And from that point on, we will see and know and worship him. From that point on, we will serve him. fully and faithfully. From that point on, we will be in awe that the Holy Son of God that we see with our own eyes died for us, gave his life for us, and now showers his love upon us for all of eternity. And we will never get over that he did that. We will never get over the mercy of God to us. So that we can say that the Vanderbilts had their fortune by family right, and Prince Charles has his inheritance by birthright.We will have our inheritance forever by new birth and the mercy and the power of God. And so we get to that truth, and what can we say? How about we say what he says in verse 3? “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Amen. Would you pray with me, please? Heavenly Father God, we thank you.This transcript was generated using AI transcription technology and reviewed for accuracy but may contain errors. Please refer to the original audio for precise wording.

Steve DeWitt Indestructibly Saved - Part A Study Guide for Spiritual Exiles, 1 Peter 1:3-5 Scripture Reference: 1 Peter 1:3-5 Visit the series page: Exiles: A study in 1 Peter Donate to Support The Journey Sermon Transcript for Spiritual Exiles, 1 Peter 1:3-5 Sermon Series: Spiritual ExilesMessage: Indestructibly SavedAirdate: 9/8 & 9/9/26Programs 2352 & 2353Good morning, Crown Point Campus. And let's go to the Lord in prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the opportunity to be here today. And we pray simply this, that your spirit would come, that he would minister to your people by your word for your glory and for our good. God, we pray that this would be a day truly where your name would be lifted higher. And we want to be a part of that. So we thank you. We pray it in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, last week we began our new series in 1 Peter entitled Exiles.And the title was taken from the first verse of the book, which says this, “Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who are elect exiles of the dispersion.” And we saw that Peter was writing to Christians who had been part of this colonization, this dispersion, Christians living in Rome or that region sent now to Asia Minor, and they are there living as foreigners, essentially living as exiles, geopolitical exiles. And what Peter does is he draws from their geopolitical situation spiritual truth and application as they dealt with the feelings of alienation. and ostracization from people that saw them as part of the conquering army, people that weren't from there. And so much that we're going to see in this letter. Last week was our introduction, and we saw that... exiles want more than anything is they want a change of location.They think to themselves, what really needs to happen is I need to be somewhere else. And if I was somewhere else, then I would be happy. Then I would feel like I belong. And we see that what Peter is wanting them to realize is that we want to change our location. God wants to change who we are. And that is inward. And that's the work of the spirit. That's the work of the gospel. That's a part of changing us. Now, what might exiles need to know? Think about this with me for a moment. What do they need to know? There they are living in a land of uncertainty, living in a place where they don't, you know, you think of what people experience when they move into a new area. They need a new doctor. They need a new, where do I get my groceries?How do I find my way around? All the things that are sort of new and different and uncertain. That is compounded in the experience of moving in the first century to a whole new region. And there they are, and everything is uncertain. Nothing feels normal. Everything's sort of weird. What do they need to know spiritually? Well, they need to know that there is a day coming when they will not be exiles anymore and where they will feel welcomed and they will feel like they belong. And that's what Peter now moves to in pastoring this group of people. He wants them to realize that they will not always be exiles. It will not always be like it is. There's coming a day when it will be very much different. And our text in our sermon today is 1 Peter 1, verses 3 through 5.And today is a day where I get to preach at Crown Point and at Cedar Lake. And we do this with the use of technology. And hopefully a fast commute. That's where we're going today. That's where I'm going today. But our text today is verses 3 through 5. So please listen as I read from God's word. “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.” 1 Peter, if you ask most people what 1 Peter is about, it's about remaining faithful in suffering and in persecution. And I just want to note to you that a letter that begins, a letter that is about suffering, begins with, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now that seems out of place, except for when you view your suffering from a Christian perspective. It sounds to me like Job, the famous book on suffering.Job, who endured all of these things in chapter 1. He loses everything, and what is his response to that? The Lord gives, the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name. There is within Christianity a kind of faith and a kind of confidence in the goodness of God that allows Christians to suffer loss and to remain doxological, to remain praising, to remain giving thanks to God. And we see that modeled here with Peter. He begins with praise and thanksgiving to the Lord. These verses, verses 3 through 5, they are, it's, This is a jewel, okay? This is a jewel passage in all of the Bible, and there are lots of jewel passages, but this is certainly one of them, because what Peter does here is he lays out the gospel. He goes from praising God, and he says, now, why? Why do we praise the Lord?What is there about what God has done for us that allows us to give praise to God even in the midst of persecution and suffering? And we see him now talking about salvation in this passage from the perspective of the past, what God has done, the present, what God is doing, and the future, what God is yet to do. And I want to hasten to say this. These truths that I'm talking about here, that Peter talks about, only apply to genuine Christians. This is not just a general truth for all of humanity. Let's all feel good about it. This is a truth that applies to people who have genuinely trusted in the Lord Jesus. And the promises that God has made to those that are his children apply then to us and are enumerated here. by Peter.So if you're here and you have not trusted in Jesus as your Savior, what I hope happens today as we talk about the blessings that come to those that are under the grace of God, that it might woo you, that it might draw you to put your hope and your faith in the Lord Jesus and for these promises then to become real and true for you. And that can happen in this service here today. Now, if you're an exile far from home, You are having to accept certain realities about life now. It's almost like a college student who goes away from home for the first time. And suddenly, the reality of being responsible for yourself, doing your own laundry, and managing your own money, and all of the rest comes crashing down on the freshmen.And some of them flunk out as a result of that, right? They're in a faraway land. Everything's sort of strange. And indeed, to be one of these people that he's writing to, in a faraway land where everything feels creepy and people look at you as creepy because you're different created a whole set of problems and difficulties your homeland that where you used to be it felt safe it felt normal it felt secure you had friends that made you feel like you were cared for you had possessions that you had had for a long time They felt normal to you. You had maybe a home. You had a network. You had all of these things that felt cozy and made you feel cared for.To be a person in exile is to live without these things, to live away from all of those identities and all of those securities. In fact, I don't know if you've noticed our series graphic, but just to put that up if we have it a second. I really like this because what is it? It's a guy sitting on a pile of rubble and he's looking to a faraway place, right? And there's sort of this sense of, I wish I was there instead of where I am here. This feels like rubble where I'm at. I wish I was back where I came from. And that is a picture, not a bad one, of what it's like to be in exile.And what Peter wants them, and through this letter and through the Holy Spirit, wants us to realize here today is that what we have in Christ, even as an exile, is far greater and far better than anything we had prior to coming to faith in Christ. I said that very clumsily. And clumsily is a clumsy word itself. Let me try that again. What Peter is wanting to say is that what we have presently as Christians, even as exiles, even on the pile of rubble, is far greater and far better than anything we had back when everything felt cozy, back prior to our faith in Christ. And he lays that out again in terms of past, present, future. So let's begin by looking at the past. And notice what he says here. Wonderful verse. about being born again to a living hope.According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Now we saw in verse 1 that their exile was by God's choice. We see here in verse 3 that their new birth is by the mercy of God. Born again. Born of what? What are you talking about? That sounds crazy. And that is exactly what Nicodemus said to Jesus when Jesus brought this up to him as well. In John chapter 3, you may know the story. Nicodemus, he's sort of a bigwig spiritual leader in Israel. He comes to Jesus in the night, and he asks him about spiritual, he has spiritual questions for him. And he says, no one except they're born from God could do what you do. And Jesus says to him, you must be born again.You have to be born again. Nicodemus says, what? How can I be born again? I was born of my mother once, I gotta be born of her twice? What are you talking about? And you see that Nicodemus is only looking at things materially. He is not seeing things spiritually, which is what Jesus wants him to see, is there's a whole thing going on here spiritually. You have to be born again. What was Jesus talking about? The New Testament calls it new birth, calls it regeneration. All of these are biblical descriptions of what God does in the heart of the sinner who turns in faith and believes in Jesus as their Lord and Savior. There is a miracle, a powerful supernatural work that God does inwardly in the life of the sinner where like being born again, he makes the sinner alive spiritually.Regeneration is also the word there. The Bible says that we are dead in our sins, that spiritually we are corpses. What has to happen for a corpse to live again? It has to be regenerated. In a sense, it has to be resurrected. And what God does inwardly in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, when we believe, is he births life in us again. Almost like Jesus saying to Lazarus, come forth. There is a summoning and a giving of life that God does within us where all of a sudden now our eyes are opened, our ears are opened, and we become attuned to spiritual realities and spiritual things. And notice that it's God that does this. He has caused us to be born again. Regeneration is something that God does. We can't manufacture it. We can't create it.We can't do enough things to make us think that now spiritually I'm alive.We are dead. Burns Funeral Homes across the street, you can go to every corpse there and try to manufacture life. It's not going to happen. Only God can manufacture life. And God does that within us. We are born again. We are passive in this. You ever hear a baby come out being born and go, wow, look what I did. I'm amazing. No, that mother birthed that child. Amen, mothers? You ain't going to ever forget that, are you? Babies don't take credit for being born, and Christians don't take credit for being born again. This is something God does. We are made spiritually alive, but the change affects our entire being. 2 Corinthians says it this way.If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old is gone, the new has come. It is a miracle of life that permeates our entire being. Suddenly, it's like the switch is turned on. We become aware of spiritual truth. What? I never realized that before. We become aware of the presence of God. We become aware of the presence of sin in our life. All of a sudden we realize, that we indeed are sinners. We become aware of forgiveness. We all of a sudden have an interest in Scripture, which prior to this we would have thought is silly. No, what does it say, actually? I'm kind of interested in that. We become interested in prayer and a host of other things. All of them kind of just, it's like springtime. Here come the leaves, here come the flowers.All of a sudden there is life. God does that. God does that. A few examples of how this is God's work and the change that it brings. I recently heard the story of Rosaria Butterfield, and maybe you've seen this online possibly, but she was a professor. She's very upfront about her sexuality. She was a lesbian. She was a professor at Syracuse University. She was just totally into kind of that whole worldview. And it's a great story because there was just a normal local church that began to kind of care for her and love her. And she, in her own words, writes this about her conversion. “The church had been praying for me for years was there. The church that had been praying for me for years was there. Jesus triumphed, and I was a broken mess. Conversion was a train wreck. I did not want to lose everything that I loved, but the voice of God sang a sanguine love song in the rubble of my world. I weakly believed that if Jesus could conquer death, he could make right my world. I drank tentatively at first, then passionately of the solace of the Holy Spirit.” And now she's married to a Presbyterian minister. So come to Jesus and you get to marry a Presbyterian minister. I would keep most people away. Listen to the words of C.S. Lewis. We've talked at length about him and how God drew him to faith. He writes this about his conversion. “You must picture me alone in that room at Magdalen College. Night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet.” Who's causing this regeneration? Hear it in these words. “That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me in the Trinity term of 1929. I gave in and admitted that God was God and knelt and prayed, perhaps that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.” Christian, think about your own life story. Think about the change that has taken place in your life. Is there a natural explanation? for the interest that you have in spiritual things and the course and trajectory of your life. The fact that you're sitting here right now listening to some guy talk about what the Bible has to say.All of these things are things if we knew our natural selves, we would say, I would never do that. And that sounds crazy and that sounds stupid. Just like the people in Asia Minor looked at these Christians and said, what planet are you from? Why are you interested in that stuff? And maybe you have people in your family and friends that similarly look at you and go, you're living your life according to what? What planet are you from? We share the same mother, but you're an alien. I don't know you. How have you come to care about the things that you care about and to love God in the way that you love him and to desire to obey and please and live to his glory in the way that you do? Where did all of that come from? It didn't come from you.That can only come from God. He has birthed life in us, and we are changed. Born again to a living hope, the text says, through the resurrection from the dead. Now, why do you suppose he calls it a living hope? It is because our hope is in a living Savior. Do you see the parallel there? One writer says it this way, Christian hope is ever living because Christ, the ground of that hope, is ever living. So Peter looks back. He says, exiles, look back in your story and realize that this change has not come from you. God has given you life, and he has given you hope. And that hope is a living hope because your Savior is a living Savior. And there we are looking at the passage. Well, that's pretty fantastic, isn't it?Don't you think exiles might be a little encouraged by that? And maybe even Christians living here today might be a little bit encouraged to look back and to see the grace of God in our life. As the hymn writer wrote, “oh God, our help in ages past, our hope for years to come.” We look to the past and we see God's grace to us. And it gives us, man, God is for me. God is with me. He has done this change in my life. The past, a living hope, a new birth. It is not simply a past, it is a present. And even right there is an interesting thought, which I don't have time to explore right now, but how important it is for us to realize that what God is doing is not just stuff in the past.You ever talk to people like that? Tell me about your spiritual life. Well, back in the past, and all they've got is like old stuff. And to realize that our faith, this thing that we're living, this Christian life, is a today thing. There is something that God is doing today. It doesn't matter how long you've been a Christian. There is a work that God is doing right now for you in your life. And Peter highlights it here. What are we saved to? “An inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who, by God's power, are being guarded through faith.” Now, there's a lot there, okay? There's a lot there, but let's just walk through it. You're going to get this, and you're going to love it. We've been born again to an inheritance, okay?So most of us are probably familiar with the concept of an inheritance. What is an inheritance? An inheritance is something that you receive normally based on a relationship, typically a family relationship, right? So when a person dies, there is a reading of the will. And if your name is in the will, it means that whether you knew it or not, you were an heir to the inheritance. So if you're in the will, you have an inheritance. Most people view that as good news, right? Okay. Now what is true about an inheritance? Inheritances are very, very slippery. Very slippery. Your name can be on the will, but guess what? It can be removed from the will. You were an heir, but now you're not anymore. So you better be careful what you say at the family gathering about grandma. And inheritance can shrink in value.Did you know that? You could be an heir to something that is incredibly valuable, but by the time you get it, it's not so valuable. So that your name is in the will, and they read the will, and your sister gets grandma's diamonds, and you get the cabbage patch collection. And you're like, my sister gets... and I get dolls and you know grandma puts in the notes when I bought these they were really valuable. You're like these aren't worth anything. This is like soft firewood. They can diminish in value. People can steal inheritances. There's a story or two in my own family tree of stolen inheritance and maybe you got a few of those in your family tree. It's amazing what family gets like when money is on the table.Inheritance can be stolen did you know that there are unscrupulous lawyers out there who now there's really godly and fair-minded ones as well but there are unscrupulous lawyers out there who can sometimes get their fingers in the pot and diminish an inheritance. Did you know that there are thieves — there are thieves — and that has no connection whatsoever with Steve. There are thieves who can steal inheritances. They can steal grandma's jewelry instead of the dolls. Did you know that massive inheritances can be squandered? Some time ago, I got watching on the History Channel, had this series called The Men Who Build America. Maybe some of you saw it, but we got into it for whatever reason. Tell the story of these icons of industry in the past.I got a little interested in the Vanderbilt family some years ago. I got a tour of the Biltmore, which is one of the descendants of, he built that with just an inheritance that he got. If you've ever seen that place, it's incredible. But I got interested in the Vanderbilt family. And just to give you an idea very quickly about the Vanderbilt fortune, they at one time, at the height of their power and value, they were worth over $300 billion in today's money. Now, $300 billion, to give you an idea, Bill Gates, who's currently the richest man in the world, is somewhere around $70 billion. They had $300 billion. The world has hardly ever, if ever, seen, other than Rockefeller, a fortune like the Vanderbilt family fortune.In 1973, this is just 75 years from the height of their power and wealth, There was a gathering of 120 direct descendants of Cornelius Vanderbilt, and there wasn't one millionaire amongst them. 75 years, 300 billion to, you know, not so wealthy. How does that happen? Inheritances can be squandered. They can just simply disappear. And I say all of that because that connects with the world that we're in, right? Everything is kind of diminishing. Everything that once was cool is kind of getting old now. And that's the world that we live in, right? Our money isn't worth today what it was worth yesterday. There's inflation. There's the stock market. Everything's up and down and all around. But what about spiritually? The inheritance, the Bible describes the inheritance that we have. We are heirs. What is our inheritance like?And he uses some very powerful words to emphasize that our inheritance is not subject to all of the insecurities that everything in this world has. And he uses these words, notice them, imperishable. Okay? To perish is to die. Everything in this world... dies right it's alive it dies the the flowers of the field the grass in the in the in the in the field all of it there and it dies and it withers and we're all withering right look around there's withering people all around you but this is an imperishable inheritance that he wants us to realize that we have undefiled and this speaks to the moral quality of our inheritance It is pure. It is good. Our inheritance doesn't come from unseemly business practices.There's nothing about it to make us feel sort of dirty in taking it or that there's something evil about it. It is holy. It is good. It is beautiful. It is pure, and it will be eternally beautiful and pure. Unfading. This is very similar to the perishing and the withering. It's, again, the human beauty and fame and everything that seems to be cool now. It's all going downhill. And young people don't realize that, but it is, right? It's all going down. Everything fades. And each one of these words is, it's perishable, defiled, and fading, only it has the negating ah in front of each one of those. It is not imperishable. I'm sorry, it's not perishable. It's not defiling. It is not fading. Our inheritance, you say, well, what is it then exactly? Number one, our inheritance is God himself.The number one thing that we look forward to in going to heaven is not seeing grandma, not seeing, you know, whoever. Number one is God. We go to heaven and we get God and we see God and we have him forever. We are his children. He lavishes blessings on us for all of eternity, eternal life, heaven, new earth, rewards that Jesus will give to us for the quality of our service while here on earth, bliss, beauty, and most importantly, and I include this in the God category, is the seeing and the savoring of Jesus himself, our blessed Lord and Savior, who is our inheritance. Christians talk about, oh, my mansion in heaven and all of that. Forget the mansion. Our mansion truly is Christ.And one day when we see him and we sense from him what eternal, pure, sacrificial, agape love is like, and he looks at us and we feel the love of the divine for us, the thought of a house or something else will just sort of fade away. This will be our greatest moment. It is that beatific vision that theologians talk about. and then to feel and to receive from him the lavishing of his grace and his love in material ways, even in the new earth, in the experience of what all of that is going to be like, and to realize that all of it is according to his mercy, that none of it we deserve, maybe with a vision of hell, and to realize that's what I deserve right there.And I'm getting this, how and why it is the mercy of God and his love for us. This is the inheritance, and Peter says it never goes away. It never diminishes. It never somehow dies. It remains secure in the character and the promises of God, and it's going to be great. And you, my friend, if you are a Christian, you are an heir, an heir to the most wonderful fortune, the fortune of God, the spiritual blessing of being a child of God forever. The verse goes on, kept in heaven for you who by God's power are being guarded through faith. This inheritance that we have is located in heaven. Jesus describes it as a place where moth and rust do not decay and thieves don't break in and steal. That's a pretty good bank vault, isn't it? Anybody's bank here make that kind of guarantee?Probably not. Now notice there's a little shift here in the text because he's describing our inheritance. That is kept in heaven. That's our inheritance. The next word, though, is who. See that? Who. So he moves from our inheritance to us. He moves from keeping our inheritance to God keeping us. So the inheritance is kept in heaven, but we are kept in earth. We are kept in faith on our time on earth. By God's power, our being guarded through faith. And the word there, the Greek word for the word guarded there, it's the word garrisoned, okay? So military people, this is like a word for you. This is the protection. This is the, in the ancient days, they would protect the city gates, the armament of the city gates. We are guarding the city walls, the walls of our faith.It also can refer to keeping us from escaping, okay? So it's both. It is both the attacks from without, and it is me fleeing from within. God is working in our faith, keeping us from both of those dangers. And here we have, and we can do a whole message on this, the doctrine of preservation. The doctrine of preservation, which says that God is the one who keeps us saved. We are preserved in our faith by the power of God. So notice the flow in the text. We are exiles by the choice of God. We are born again by the mercy of God. We are kept in our salvation by the power of God. Our faith is being guarded. And the tense of the verb there is ongoingly, continuously being guarded.It's as if each one of us has a 24-hour, seven days a week security detail. Now, the closest thing that I can think of to illustrate this would be What the President of the United States has, of course, which is the famous Secret Service. And all of us probably are familiar with the Secret Service and what they do 24 hours a day, seven days a week to keep the President alive, to protect him. That is their job. And so for whatever reason, they've decided wearing dark suits and sunglasses helps with that. And so wherever the president is, there's these guys walking around near him and they've got dark suits on and they've got sunglasses. All of them look like they've lifted weights their entire life. You know, they're big, they're bad, they're tough. There's little bulges around in their suit.You know what's in there, right? They can call upon what they need in a moment's notice to take care of business. And so they're there and they're talking into their hands and they got the little wires out of their ears. And you know that there's satellites and there's, you know, who knows all the things that they've got going on wherever the president goes. 24 hours a day, seven days a week, always keeping him safe. But as history shows, they can't even guarantee that, can they? Even the best of the best in the world today can't perfectly protect the life of the president. Notice what Peter says here about us, okay? Kept by the infinite power of God. It's almost like By the power of God, we each have our own spiritual secret service detachment.Everywhere we go, all the time, we are protected spiritually by the power of God. I got thinking about what this might be like. She's about to speak to Miss Gossip. Move in right now. He's leaving on a business trip with Mr. Skeptic and Mrs. Temptation, all units code red. He's in church right now. He's not listening. Taze him. Did anybody just feel something, by the way? No? God's power is always at work protecting our faith, keeping us from running away from our commitment to Christ, keeping us from the wolves, keeping us from doctrine and beliefs and temptations that would ultimately undermine our faith commitment to Christ. And that doesn't mean that we don't sin. It doesn't mean that we don't have seasons and all of that.But it does mean that even through those dark times, God is by his power protecting a faith that he has promised that he will carry on to completion, Philippians 1. And my dear Christian, that is true for you. Think of it just for a moment. Think of it. Right now, God's power is focused upon you and your faith and is ensuring that you are going to make it. That faith will not die. It's the power of God. It's like being born, right? We don't take credit for that. And I don't take credit for my faith continually because naturally I am a sinner and I am human and I am wishy -washy. None of us would make it through this week left to ourselves. But we are not left to ourselves, not by God who loves us. We are kept in this faith.Past, we were born again in the present. We're being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. And the future aspect of this is when our inheritance changes into a possession, okay? An heir is no longer an heir when the inheritance now is something that they own. Think of Prince Charles, like all these years waiting to become king. He's heir to the throne. There's probably a day coming when he will no longer be an heir. When? When he's actually king. And Buckingham Palace and the crown jewels and all the things, all of it is his then. No longer an heir, but a possessor. And our salvation is like that. We are already saved. We are already children of God. But the full experience of our salvation is yet to come.Someday, and the text here says, in the last time, referring to that future consummation of history. Someday, when Jesus returns and final judgment takes place, our ultimate inheritance will be ours. And our ultimate inheritance is Christ himself. And from that point on, we will see and know and worship him. From that point on, we will serve him. fully and faithfully. From that point on, we will be in awe that the Holy Son of God that we see with our own eyes died for us, gave his life for us, and now showers his love upon us for all of eternity. And we will never get over that he did that. We will never get over the mercy of God to us. So that we can say that the Vanderbilts had their fortune by family right, and Prince Charles has his inheritance by birthright.We will have our inheritance forever by new birth and the mercy and the power of God. And so we get to that truth, and what can we say? How about we say what he says in verse 3? “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Amen. Would you pray with me, please? Heavenly Father God, we thank you.This transcript was generated using AI transcription technology and reviewed for accuracy but may contain errors. Please refer to the original audio for precise wording.

Steve DeWitt Spiritual Exiles - Part B Study Guide for Spiritual Exiles, I Peter 1:1-2 Scripture Reference: 1 Peter 1:1-2 Visit the series page: Exiles: A study in 1 Peter Donate to Support The Journey Sermon Transcript for Spiritual Exiles, I Peter 1:1-2 Message: Spiritual ExilesAirdate: 9/4 & 9/7/26, Programs 2350 & 2351Studying through books of the Bible has been, has really been the bread and butter of our church over the years. And, today, we begin a new series as you've seen on the screen in the, the book or the letter of First Peter. And you might ask, well, why First Peter? I mean, because from one perspective, we really could open the Bible anywhere and have things that would be profitable to us. That's what, Scripture says about itself, that all Scripture is God breathed, that is profitable. So we really could go. We could go to Leviticus. We could go to Psalms. We could go to Revelation, and there would be a quality word that God would have for us. But why First Peter? Well, I've chosen First Peter because it is so wonderfully relevant to, life as we are living it increasingly here in our culture and our society where we find ourselves as Christians and particularly as evangelical Christians increasingly on the margins of society. More and more it seems that to actually believe in Jesus is a, you know, small s scandalous sort of thing. And by that, I mean, not nominal Christianity. Nominal Christianity will fit in anywhere. Nominal Christians are accepted. But if you actually believe it, like you're one of those crazy people that actually believe the gospel, and you really believe in, the resurrection, and you really believe in that the world was created and things like that, more and more, people are looking down their nose at that and pushing us to the fringe of the culture. And First Peter is written for the church in exile. First Peter is written for a church on the margins. It is written for the persecuted church. It's written, for the ostracized church. It is written for the hated church. I read somebody that basically said, the more irrelevant Christianity becomes, the more relevant First Peter becomes because it's written for that church that is in exile in its culture. The title of the series comes from the first words in, Peter's letter where he addresses it and says, to those who are elect exiles. Exiles where and exiles why we're going to, get into. And I dare say that by the time we're done with this series, I'll bet First Peter might be in the running for your favorite book in all the Bible. Luther himself said about First Peter that it is, quote, “one of the noblest books in the New Testament,” and he put it on par with Romans and the Gospel of John, which is saying something, isn't it? So, it's a wonderful letter, and I think it's gonna be a real blessing to all of us. We're going to work through it in a style of teaching, known as expository preaching. And what that means is that week in and week out, we're going to look at the text as Peter, inspired by the Holy Spirit, wrote it. We're gonna ask the question, what did Peter and the Holy Spirit mean when they wrote that particular text? And then we are going to draw out of that meaning as it was originally intended and apply it to our lives today. What does that mean for us today? I wanna encourage you to come each week, every week with expository preaching is a fresh text, which means that it is a fresh word from God for us. And I think that it will be, it will be a blessing. So with that, let me just pray and ask God's blessing on this entire teaching series. Father, we ask that you would please, as you have done down through the centuries, that you would take your holy word, that you would enlighten it to our understanding, and that you would powerfully apply it to our lives and to our church and through us to the culture around us. We pray that this series would be just uniquely blessed by you, and all the good that can be done from it has little to do with, me or any of our teachers and pastors, but it depends on your Holy Spirit's blessing, and we seek that and we ask for it. Bless even now in in in in this day as we begin in in our study. We pray that this would be a great launch, and we pray it in Jesus' name. Amen. Now as we always do when we begin a a book study, we spend time talking about the background to the letter. Now you might say, well, why is that so important? Can't we just get going in this? Here's why it's important. It's important for the same reason that if you were walking along the street and the wind blew a letter into your to your path and you picked it up and you read it, on one level, you could understand the letter, couldn't you? Because you can read English, you can read the words, etcetera. But to know who wrote it, who they wrote it to, and why they wrote it would fill in all of those things that you can read with all kinds of meaning, wouldn't it? And so that's why we spend time figuring out who wrote this thing and why he wrote it and who he was writing it to. So let's begin by asking that question. Who wrote this letter? And you might say, well, that's simple. The top of my page, it says it says Peter wrote this letter. Right? And indeed, the first verse says, “Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ.” So you could say, well, it must be it must be Peter. But realize that just because it says that Peter wrote it is not undeniable proof that Peter wrote it. This could have been written by somebody else who claimed to have been Peter. And, there are always scholars that wanna argue against these people actually being the authors of these letters, whether that be Paul or John or or here Peter. And so there are some scholars that try to stir up controversy, but to me, it's really, difficult seeing it not be Peter because later in the letter, he's going to say that he was an eyewitness to the sufferings of Christ. Well, how many Peters are there that were eyewitnesses to the sufferings of Christ? And the early church fathers, and by that, I mean, the leaders of the church in the post apostolic age. So after John and Peter and others had died, you have certain church leaders, and they all attribute this letter to being written by the Peter of the gospels, the disciple, the apostle Peter. So I think that there is little reason to doubt that Peter actually wrote this letter. And this Peter is the Peter of the gospels. This is the Peter who had a brother named Andrew who brought him to Jesus, and Jesus met him and changed his name. Do you remember? His name had been Simon. And he said, from this point on, your name is Peter or which is the Greek word, by the way, for rock, which is like a cruel joke, I think, on Peter if you read the story because perhaps he should have been named Feather because he sees the blows in the wind. But what happens in the story of Peter is that he becomes the rock at the end of the story as he assumes leadership of the disciples after Jesus' resurrection as he is a leader in the early church, and history tells us that he was crucified upside down in Rome and and refused to be crucified upright like his savior Jesus. He didn't feel he was worthy to die the same way that Jesus died. Part of the importance of First Peter and Second Peter is that given the prominence of Peter in the church, we have very little that he wrote, actually, as compared to, like, Luke, John, or Paul. Luke wrote Luke and Acts. John wrote the Gospel of John, First, Second, Third John, and Revelation. And Paul obviously wrote a bunch of letters in the New Testament. So we got lots from those guys. But Peter, in his stature, we have very little. We have First Peter and Second Peter. And so it's like the smallness of what we have actually makes it more valuable as we can see the the teaching and the emphases of this key leader in the early church. Now to who did Paul Peter write this and why did he write? And just look at verse one with me a moment. It says, “Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who are elect exiles of the dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia.” Now I'll bet that in your private devotional reading, you get to a verse like that and you sort of skip ahead, don't you? You're like, there's gotta be some more applicable thing here than ancient geography. Right? I didn't get up this morning to read my Bible, to read ancient geography. Isn't there something a little bit more helpful to me than that? And so we easily skip over those things and uniquely, I think in First Peter, probably true of all of them, but this is actually one of the keys to understanding the entire letter. Is that verse right there? Who are these people? What is it talking about? Again, those who are elect exiles of the dispersion. Now what is that all about? Alright. Quick history lesson. Hang with me. Some of you hated it your sophomore year. This will be short. Okay? But a very quick history lesson. We go back to the Roman Empire, and most of us probably heard of the Roman Empire, one of the great human empires in in history, ruled the known world for, like, five hundred years. And they were able to pull that off because they were really smart. They had policies and things that they did that allowed them to remain in power for, like, five centuries. And one of the things that they did is actually what Peter is referring to here, and and that is what is called colonization. K? Colonization. Here's the way that it worked. The Romans had the great armies. Maybe you've seen movies that portray the Roman armies and the eagle and all of that. They would go into an area that they wanted to conquer. And largely, they would conquer. They were really good at warfare. And after they had conquered this region, they would move on to go, you know, do battle in other places. But they needed to maintain power in that region that their army had already conquered. So the strategy for them was that they would colonize that area by sending, people from Rome or who at least were Roman into that community where they would establish their lives. They would establish business. They would establish some of the things that Roman culture was known for, like the theater or the auditorium or whatever. And by doing that, essentially, they would integrate into the cult actually, the culture, the indigenous culture, would integrate into the Roman culture. And by doing that, they were able to exert Roman influence and thought and power into those, particular areas. K? So these were known as dispersions. K? Sometimes these were, political friends who wanted if it was a nice area, like if suddenly we conquered Hawaii and said, wants to go live? Well, I think I'd like to so all the friends, you know, the friends of the people in charge, they would go and they would colonize Hawaii. Sometimes these were political enemies that they wanted out of Rome. Alright. Take that family and those people and get them over in Galatia. We don't wanna see them ever again. And so off they would go. And and sometimes it was just people that were like, you know what? We think we can have a better life there. Like, you can think about even the story of The United States and the colonies on the East Coast and how people came across on the boats because they wanted a better life in the new the new world. So Rome would do that. And by doing that, they essentially would, retain a kind of control over that area by repopulating and integrating. It was essentially colonization by deportation for the purpose of domination. And that's how you retain control for five hundred years. So these people that would leave Rome or a Roman, community to go into some of these new areas, they essentially lived as exiles there. They were foreigners there. They were Romans there. And, the people that were from there knew that they were these people that had come. And this was not always a comfortable thing. Realize the Roman armies would come and conquer. They would wipe out, you know, how how many people's husbands and fathers in in, in winning the war. And now you've got representatives from there coming and living amongst us. The people from that land did not look favorably necessarily on them, especially initially. They were always from somewhere else. Right? It's kind of like living up here in the North when we hear somebody with a thick southern accent. What do you do? You look at them and you think to yourself or maybe you even say it, you're not from here are you? Right? And they're like, no I'm not. I'm from Georgia or Mississippi. Right? And you're like, what are you doing up here? Why don't you go home where you belong? Explain some people we have on staff even. But as awkward as that might be for Southerners to live up here amongst the Yankees, It was much more uncomfortable back in this day. And so they lived in a kind of ostracized way, and there was social awkwardness representing the ideology of the conquering army. So Peter here is writing then to colonists who were also Christians, who for political, social, who knows what reason had gone into Asia Minor and are now living there as representatives of the Roman Empire. Now to give you an idea of where we're talking, here's a map. And it's essentially modern day Turkey. And some of you maybe are not up on your you know, Turkey to you is a, November celebration. But it's actually a country as well. And so you see some of you see the Black Sea, and you see these communities that are being referred to, Bithynia, Galatia, Cappadocia, these would have been well known in that time and would have been places of influence, cultural influence. Essentially, what Peter does in the letter is he takes these Christians' social political situation and he draws spiritual meaning from it. He says, yes, you're exiles politically and geographically, but I wanna talk to you about what it means to be a spiritual exile. What does it mean to live in an area where you it's not your homeland. What does it mean to live in an area where people look at you a little cross eyed and they say to themselves, that person isn't they're not really of us. Their values are not our values. Their priorities are not our part. They're like those Christian people. They're those marginalized people. What is it like, and how do we live when we are the ones that are in exile, when we are the weird ones? So Peter writes to these political exiles, but he wants them to see that they are really spiritual exiles and to learn what it means to live amongst people that are very, very different. K? Very different. And so what he's gonna say in this letter is he's gonna encourage them to stand strong, to remain faithful, to live obedient to Jesus in spite of the immoral culture around them, to remain faithful even though people look at them like we look at Amish people. Kinda like, man, what's your problem? What's get with the program here. Right? Why aren't you kind of along with what we're doing? That's how they felt. And here's where I think First Peter is so helpful to us is is and I don't know if you feel this or not. I certainly do. If you talk to some of the old timers around here who remember what it was like to be a Christian, like in the nineteen forties or the nineteen fifties and maybe the early nineteen sixties, it's a much different feel back then to be a Christian in America than it is in 2015. Right? Where even to pronounce Christian faith in public media in some way is to be scorned or to have the plug pulled. Right? Get him off of there immediately. We don't want any of that kind of stuff going across the airwaves. What do we do? How do we live? What are we supposed to be like? And again, I'm talking about real Christians, nominal Christians, fit in just fine. K? I'm talking about the people that actually believe this stuff and try to live it out. How do we do it? These are the exiles that Peter is writing to. Now let's ask why are we exiles, and what is the purpose for all of this? So let's get into the text now and and begin to kind of do our little exposition here. I begin again in verse one. “To those who are elect exiles of the dispersion in Pontius, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bethenia Church.” Do you kinda get what that means now? K. “According to the foreknowledge of God the Father in the sanctification of the Spirit for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood.” May grace and peace be multiplied to you. Now a quick read here, and again, that morning devotional, moment where I'm trying to find something for my day, we could easily miss how important what Peter is saying here is. Because essentially what Peter is doing here is he's tipping his hand to the entire letter. It's kind of like in a symphony or something where in the prelude, you hear a little piece of the of the melody, and you're like, you pick up on it. Or that little Star Wars theme, if you're watching a Star Wars movie, you sort of hear that, it's either Vader or it's Skywalker. You know? And you're like you pick you pick up on it. Even in the in the in the opening scene of the movie, you kinda get a sense of what's coming. That's what this is. He's he's basically it's it's First Peter in microcosm. Peter, what are you gonna say? What is your big point to these people that are living in spiritual exile? And he begins in verse two with a series of purpose statements. The why question.Now my wife Jennifer and I, we have a 19 year old daughter. And what's wonderful at this point is that she has not discovered the word why. It's just not there yet. Did I say something wrong? Did I say year old? Peter's got something to say about that too. 19 month old daughter. Yes. So and see, we're getting that kind of Gary feel going on here. Like that. Keep it up. Keep it up. 19 month old daughter. So she's learning words at an amazing clip right now. We're thankful she's not yet learned the word why. She is unaware at this point that in life, there is all of this sort of philosophical stuff that underlies why we do what we do. So at this point, we just say, don't throw your food. She's never said, well, why is that not allowed? Right? She's unaware of purpose behind things. Peter wants to make sure that we understand that there is purpose behind things, even exile. Even the experience of spiritual exile, there's a purpose behind it. There is a why behind it, and we see that from the get go. Notice what kind of exiles are they? And can I say the question, what kind of exiles are we? What is the descriptive word for exiles? It is what? You have Bibles. Look. What is the word before exiles? We are what exiles? We're elect exiles. Elect exiles. What? I am experiencing what I'm experiencing because there's somebody that chose to put me here, chose to give me this experience? Because that's what the word elect means. It just it means chose, chosen. We are chosen exiles. You know, most exiles don't think that they are chosen exiles. You can think about the Jews in World War two, for example, in in Poland and the ghetto there, if you've seen that or studied that, they were victims of circumstance. They were victims of sociopolitical things that were beyond their control, and they suffered greatly in, in that experience. Or the Syrian refugees in our contemporary world, who there's all these, you know, there's big sort of, sociopolitical things that are at play that are creating the circumstances that they find themselves in. You could go to a Syrian refugee and say, you know, how did this happen? And he would say, well, my the president of this company country and this is going on and all of that. They would never have the thought in their mind that they were chosen to be Syrian refugees. Why? Because it's circumstantial. But here, Peter doesn't say, I'm so sorry that you are having this experience living as Christians in that land. He says, you are having that experience by divine choice. There is a God behind all of this. You are not just exiles randomly. You are exiles divinely. You have been chosen for this experience. And what a difference it makes when I realize that there is a purpose behind the pain. There is an answer to the question of why. And behind all of that is a God who is sovereignly working out everything according to the purpose of his will, Ephesians one eleven. Think about the Israelites as another sort of exile example. If you know the story of Israel, descendants of Abraham. Right? They were all time living in tents, never having a land of their own. God takes them down to Egypt. Four hundred years, they live largely under oppression there in Egypt. They're living as exiles. They're not in their the land that they're not in the promised land. They're not in the land where they're supposed to be. But there they are, and they have horrible, terrible experiences. Well, God leads them out into the hand of Moses, and they go through the Red Sea. It's not that far of a walk from Egypt to the promised land. Right? As the crow flies, where does God take them? Forty years wandering around in the wilderness. Are they like, God, is your GPS messed up? Because we could just it's just right there. We just gotta go right there. Why you guys going all over here and wandering around like this? What is the purpose behind our wanderings? What is the purpose behind our exile? Why are we experiencing all of these difficulties living a million people in a desert? Why are you doing this, God? And from the words of Moses himself, God says, “you shall remember the whole way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not. And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” In other words, God was using their physical experience, their geographical experience for spiritual purposes. And all of the difficulties and all of the uncomfortableness and all of the challenges of living in a desert for forty years was not about living in a desert for forty years, but what God wanted that desert to do in them and to teach them. There was a purpose behind it. There was a why behind it. Do you see? So that the sorrows, what Peter is saying here, the sorrows of Christianity on the margins is comforted by the confident knowledge that we have that I am where God wants me to be, and the challenges are from the hand of God as well. I am an elect exile. I am not a political exile. I am I am not a chaotic exile. I am where I am by the sovereign choice of God, which then brings meaning in the midst of the pain and the sorrows and the issues. What do people ask when they're going through a trial? What do we hear even in our church when somebody gets the cancer call? Why? God, why are you doing this? Why am I the one of all the people having to suffer this? And what do you say pastorally to people that hear that kind of news? Wow. That's really chaotic. Maybe there isn't a God. No. We say that there is a God, and that circumstance in your life is not chance. And you can trust him. He is a good God. He loves you. He sent Jesus. Right? And now the Christian begins to derive meaning from even the pain of the exile and to see that God is doing something good in it. Would this not have been wonderfully comforting? I mean, about these Christians. They're living there in Asia Minor. Would this not have been, comforting for a businessman living in Pontus who is suffering financially because he's a Christian? They know he's a Christian. They don't wanna do business with him. He's suffering because of it. Or how about the wife of a pagan husband? You want to talk about personally uncomfortable? How about the wife of a Christian wife of a pagan husband? You want to talk about issues. How about a husband who's living according to the values of the immoral Greco Roman world around him, and yet you're married to him? How do you derive any kind of hope or comfort in the midst of that? You read chapter three, and you see what Peter has to say to wives who are married to pagan husbands. And you see, whatever pick your category. All of them. The Christian sees through the physical, political, social issue a good God who is providentially behind that and is actually using that for some good in our life that maybe we can't see and maybe you can't see right now. I mean, my wife had trouble finding parking today. We have a lot of people sitting right here in front of me. Is it possible maybe one person here is in a time of trouble or has a circumstance they wish was different? What does the word of God have to say to you? You are an elect exile. There is a God who is sovereignly doing the choosing, and it is painful, and it's awkward, and it's difficult, but there is a God behind it. And we believe that by faith. Amen? Amen. Amen. So I'm not in Cappadocia by accident after all. I'm here because God wants me to be in Cappadocia. Nothing is random. Now the second thing that we have here besides being chosen by God to be in this exile is that Peter wants us to he he lifts our eyes to God himself, and he wants us to see what the triune God is doing here. And you see in the text here a very clear Trinitarian statement. “According to the foreknowledge of God the Father in the sanctification of the Spirit for the obedience to Jesus Christ who is the Son.” It's one of the clearest Trinitarian statements in all of Scripture. Father, Son, and Spirit, each of them with a slightly different role in, as being described here. The foreknowledge, first of all, of the Father. Okay? Foreknowledge basically means to to know in advance. Right? To know in advance. Their exile was sovereignly known by God. God was not surprised. What are those Christians doing over there in Bithynia? I had no idea that they were gonna end up in Cappadocia. What are they up to in Galatia? God is never surprised by anything, which is itself a incredible thought, isn't it? If you're God, there are no surprise parties for God. He already knows everything. Right? He has known all of it and purposed it in eternity past, which means that when I find myself in Bithynia, God knew in eternity past that this was part of the plan. In fact, that word there is used in later in the chapter to say that Christ himself was foreknown. In eternity past, the Father knew the Son. In eternity past, the Father knew that you would be living and doing what you're doing here today. All of it, a sovereign God. There is no there are no surprises with God. There is nothing that is random with God. There is nothing that is chaotic with God. He is the sovereign God. No surprises. The sanctifying work of the Spirit. K? Sanctification is this word in the New Testament to talk about the process of God working in our lives to shape and mold us into the likeness of Jesus, the holy Son of God. And so sanctification is this kind of progressive growth and development. When I become a Christian, I to use this text, I I enter into the realm of sanctification. I am now in a process that the Holy Spirit is working in my life. Verse one says that they are in Asia, but verse two says they're actually in sanctification. So they may wanna define themselves geographically. Right? We're for the Bithynia bulldogs. Bulldogs. K. I am who I am. Some of you may be cheering sports teams today somehow related to a geography that used to have a Packer fan or I'm a Cowboys fan or whatever. Like, I'm born in Dallas or something. So you wanna define yourself geographically. When your teams aren't doing well, you don't wanna define yourself geographically. So most of us will be cheering for the Big Ten tomorrow. Sad. But Peter wants them to realize that they're not defined by their locale. They are defined their locale geographically, but by their locale spiritually. You're in the Holy Spirit now. You're in a process. You're in a world, not a pagan land. The life changing work of Jesus in us is the last thing “for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood.” And we see in this that that the electing work of God, the choosing work of God is never without its effect. That not only did God sovereignly choose to put them in Bithynia or Galatia, but he chose through that experience to change them, to transform them for the obedience, a life of obedience to Jesus Christ. That's what God is working in all of us. If you're a Christian here today, what's God doing in my life? Well, he's doing a lot of things. But one of the things he's doing is that he is shaping and molding your heart and value mine as well so that I increasingly want to obey the will of God. I wanna be obedient to my savior Jesus. The obedience to Jesus is part of what we're doing here. And for sprinkling with his blood, and I gotta tell you, I don't know what that means. Just being honest. Commentators are all over the place. I'm not sure what that means. I think it refers somehow to the atoning work of Jesus for us, but I'm not exactly sure. Is that okay to say that? Okay. I don't know. But broadly, what this is saying is this, the Father foreknew us, the Spirit sanctifies us, the Son atoned for us and frees us from a life of sin to now this new life in Christ where I am living to the will of God, and I am pleasing God with my life, and all of it is by God and for God. He foreknew it. He purposed it. He's working in it right now. He is the sovereign hand, the loving hand behind all of it. So that these people might have thought to themselves if they were political exiles, they might have thought to themselves, I am in Galatia by the choice of man. And Peter writes this letter and says, you are in Galatia by the choice of God. He is the one that is behind all that is happening here. Alright. With the time remaining, I have one application point. And this is just the salutation of the letter. Okay? But one application point that I'd like to talk with you about, and it's this. When we are in exile, we wanna change where we are. God wants to change who we are. When we are in exile, God wants or we wanna change where we are. God wants to change who we are. If you talk to an exile and you say, hey. What is the solution to your problem? They are generally going to say, the answer to my problem is to change where I am. Like, I'm not in my homeland. I'm not where I'm supposed to be. And if I was to get where I'm supposed to be, in other words, if I was to change my geography, then everything would be great. Like, take a week like this as an example. This week, I feel like a climate exile. I experienced a week like we've had around here, and I think to myself, I do not live where I'm supposed to live. I am supposed to live in a warmer climate than this. Friday night, Jennifer and I were we spent some time with some friends, and we came back to the church here to pick up my car. I forget how cold it was Friday night, but it was like, you know, zero or minus or something. And we get there, and I get in my car. No. So we spent, I don't know, forty five minutes trying to jump my car off of our van. And it was one of those experiences where there's cold and then there's that cold. Right? I was so cold trying to get that thing started. It took us like forty five minutes, and I was just absolutely frozen. This was a terrible week around here. Right? Horrible week. We're all climate exiles. What do we need? We need to change our geography. We need to live somewhere different. We need a different climate than the one that we've been experiencing. They would have amen in Gary on that. So if you talk to the climate exile, they're going to say, I need a change of geography, right? There's some other place that they would rather be. Do we have any marriage exiles? What's a marriage exile? You've come to the conclusion that the person that you're married to is not the person that you're supposed to be married to, and the solution for you would be to be either not married or married to somebody different. Do we have any vocational exiles here? The solution to happiness in your life would be a different job. You feel like you're being persecuted on the job or you feel like you have an unfair boss, you got some other thing going on. So what's the solution? I need a different job. Do we have any health exiles here? You've got some ailment, you've got some problem, you've got the cancer call in your mind, what's the solution? I need a different body, right? If had a different body, then everything would be fine or pick your category. Generally speaking, our solution to our problems is to change where we are. And then we read this verse here. Elect exiles. Elect exiles. Do you mean that the exile that I am experiencing, that trial that I am going through, that experience that I wish was different and in my mind I can think of three different ways to get out of it? That that is something that God has brought into my life by his sovereign hand and good. Yes. And Peter goes on here to say that good is something not about changing where you are, but changing the person that you are. In other words, my heart, my mind, my my my my spiritual depth and quality, God is in the process of changing that. And you know what? He oftentimes puts us in Cappadocia to do it. We wanna get back to Rome. In fact, what's striking here is he doesn't say to exiles of the dispersion, get out of Bithynia now. Get back to Rome. The streets are clean, and the coffee's good, and the sun is shining. Get out of there. He doesn't say that one place in the whole letter. Why not? Because Peter realized something, that they were elect exiles, that their experience of all of this discomfort was something that God wanted in their life. Well, why would God want that in our life? Because he uses Bithynia, Cappadocia, and the people and the experiences of our life to produce change that would never happen in Rome. And so here you are today, and spiritually speaking or, you know, in your life, you feel like you're in exile, and you want change. I wonder if you can hear the word of God today saying to you. Here's the word. The change that I want is within you. And as Christians, for us to embrace trials, and this is not easy. I think about trials that I've gone through in my life, and in the midst of it, you're like, I want out now. But to pray to God, heavenly Father, I'm not sure what you're doing in this, but I sense in my heart that you are breaking me. You're breaking my pride. You're breaking my self dependence. You're helping me to live by faith. And I just want to say that I surrender to your purpose in Cappadocia. Don't you think I have a loving heavenly Father would answer that prayer? Don't you think that he delights? In fact, is it possible that he put you there to get you to that point of surrender in the first place? And now from that point, God's purpose can be lived out because that aspect of me, pride, whatever is taken away in a way now that I can live in obedience to the will of Jesus Christ according to the foreknowledge of the of of the Father in the sanctification of the Spirit as I made more and more into likeness of Christ. Oh, by the way, what does that sound like? That whole, I'm not where I'm supposed to be. I'm not where I'm from. I'm experiencing pain and yet I want your will in my life. Who does that sound? Does that sound familiar to me? Is that not Christ himself who left his Father's throne above, left his experience of heaven, came into this broken world with all of its pain and all of its sin and all of its brokenness. You you wanna talk about somebody who didn't fit in. How about the Son of God on earth with us? Right? How often people looked at him and thought you must not be from here because you are not buying into the way that we do things at all. And for him to go through that entire experience and to suffer. I think of the old song, he could have called 10,000 angels to destroy the world and set him free in a moment. Gone. You can't afford the plane ticket. That was not an issue with Jesus. And yet he remained. And the night before he was crucified, prayed. “Father, if there's any way for this cup to pass from me, I ask that it would be so.” There's an honest prayer. We've all prayed that. Right? Take this cup from me, please. “Yet not my will, but your will be done.” There is the bottom line. When we are in an experience that we deem undesirable, a long term trial, I think we can be honest with God. I don't wanna live in Bithynia. I'm tired of Cappadocia. But my bottom line, God, is that I want what you want in my life. I believe that your plan is better than mine, and I embrace the change that you are working within me. This is the example of Jesus himself. And I hope that his example would help us realize that even if you're about to be crucified, you can know that there is a sovereign God who is doing good through it. And indeed he did, through that crucifixion, a savior for the world. And that's just the prelude. That's First Peter. So much more good stuff to come. I hope God blesses and uses it. Let's stand together for prayer.* This transcript was generated using AI transcription technology and reviewed for accuracy but may contain errors. Please refer to the original audio for precise wording.

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Steve DeWitt Spiritual Exiles - Part A Study Guide for Spiritual Exiles, I Peter 1:1-2 Scripture Reference: 1 Peter 1:1-2 Visit the series page: Exiles: A study in 1 Peter Donate to Support The Journey Sermon Transcript for Spiritual Exiles, I Peter 1:1-2 Message: Spiritual ExilesAirdate: 9/4 & 9/7/26, Programs 2350 & 2351Studying through books of the Bible has been, has really been the bread and butter of our church over the years. And, today, we begin a new series as you've seen on the screen in the, the book or the letter of First Peter. And you might ask, well, why First Peter? I mean, because from one perspective, we really could open the Bible anywhere and have things that would be profitable to us. That's what, Scripture says about itself, that all Scripture is God breathed, that is profitable. So we really could go. We could go to Leviticus. We could go to Psalms. We could go to Revelation, and there would be a quality word that God would have for us. But why First Peter? Well, I've chosen First Peter because it is so wonderfully relevant to, life as we are living it increasingly here in our culture and our society where we find ourselves as Christians and particularly as evangelical Christians increasingly on the margins of society. More and more it seems that to actually believe in Jesus is a, you know, small s scandalous sort of thing. And by that, I mean, not nominal Christianity. Nominal Christianity will fit in anywhere. Nominal Christians are accepted. But if you actually believe it, like you're one of those crazy people that actually believe the gospel, and you really believe in, the resurrection, and you really believe in that the world was created and things like that, more and more, people are looking down their nose at that and pushing us to the fringe of the culture. And First Peter is written for the church in exile. First Peter is written for a church on the margins. It is written for the persecuted church. It's written, for the ostracized church. It is written for the hated church. I read somebody that basically said, the more irrelevant Christianity becomes, the more relevant First Peter becomes because it's written for that church that is in exile in its culture. The title of the series comes from the first words in, Peter's letter where he addresses it and says, to those who are elect exiles. Exiles where and exiles why we're going to, get into. And I dare say that by the time we're done with this series, I'll bet First Peter might be in the running for your favorite book in all the Bible. Luther himself said about First Peter that it is, quote, “one of the noblest books in the New Testament,” and he put it on par with Romans and the Gospel of John, which is saying something, isn't it? So, it's a wonderful letter, and I think it's gonna be a real blessing to all of us. We're going to work through it in a style of teaching, known as expository preaching. And what that means is that week in and week out, we're going to look at the text as Peter, inspired by the Holy Spirit, wrote it. We're gonna ask the question, what did Peter and the Holy Spirit mean when they wrote that particular text? And then we are going to draw out of that meaning as it was originally intended and apply it to our lives today. What does that mean for us today? I wanna encourage you to come each week, every week with expository preaching is a fresh text, which means that it is a fresh word from God for us. And I think that it will be, it will be a blessing. So with that, let me just pray and ask God's blessing on this entire teaching series. Father, we ask that you would please, as you have done down through the centuries, that you would take your holy word, that you would enlighten it to our understanding, and that you would powerfully apply it to our lives and to our church and through us to the culture around us. We pray that this series would be just uniquely blessed by you, and all the good that can be done from it has little to do with, me or any of our teachers and pastors, but it depends on your Holy Spirit's blessing, and we seek that and we ask for it. Bless even now in in in in this day as we begin in in our study. We pray that this would be a great launch, and we pray it in Jesus' name. Amen. Now as we always do when we begin a a book study, we spend time talking about the background to the letter. Now you might say, well, why is that so important? Can't we just get going in this? Here's why it's important. It's important for the same reason that if you were walking along the street and the wind blew a letter into your to your path and you picked it up and you read it, on one level, you could understand the letter, couldn't you? Because you can read English, you can read the words, etcetera. But to know who wrote it, who they wrote it to, and why they wrote it would fill in all of those things that you can read with all kinds of meaning, wouldn't it? And so that's why we spend time figuring out who wrote this thing and why he wrote it and who he was writing it to. So let's begin by asking that question. Who wrote this letter? And you might say, well, that's simple. The top of my page, it says it says Peter wrote this letter. Right? And indeed, the first verse says, “Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ.” So you could say, well, it must be it must be Peter. But realize that just because it says that Peter wrote it is not undeniable proof that Peter wrote it. This could have been written by somebody else who claimed to have been Peter. And, there are always scholars that wanna argue against these people actually being the authors of these letters, whether that be Paul or John or or here Peter. And so there are some scholars that try to stir up controversy, but to me, it's really, difficult seeing it not be Peter because later in the letter, he's going to say that he was an eyewitness to the sufferings of Christ. Well, how many Peters are there that were eyewitnesses to the sufferings of Christ? And the early church fathers, and by that, I mean, the leaders of the church in the post apostolic age. So after John and Peter and others had died, you have certain church leaders, and they all attribute this letter to being written by the Peter of the gospels, the disciple, the apostle Peter. So I think that there is little reason to doubt that Peter actually wrote this letter. And this Peter is the Peter of the gospels. This is the Peter who had a brother named Andrew who brought him to Jesus, and Jesus met him and changed his name. Do you remember? His name had been Simon. And he said, from this point on, your name is Peter or which is the Greek word, by the way, for rock, which is like a cruel joke, I think, on Peter if you read the story because perhaps he should have been named Feather because he sees the blows in the wind. But what happens in the story of Peter is that he becomes the rock at the end of the story as he assumes leadership of the disciples after Jesus' resurrection as he is a leader in the early church, and history tells us that he was crucified upside down in Rome and and refused to be crucified upright like his savior Jesus. He didn't feel he was worthy to die the same way that Jesus died. Part of the importance of First Peter and Second Peter is that given the prominence of Peter in the church, we have very little that he wrote, actually, as compared to, like, Luke, John, or Paul. Luke wrote Luke and Acts. John wrote the Gospel of John, First, Second, Third John, and Revelation. And Paul obviously wrote a bunch of letters in the New Testament. So we got lots from those guys. But Peter, in his stature, we have very little. We have First Peter and Second Peter. And so it's like the smallness of what we have actually makes it more valuable as we can see the the teaching and the emphases of this key leader in the early church. Now to who did Paul Peter write this and why did he write? And just look at verse one with me a moment. It says, “Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who are elect exiles of the dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia.” Now I'll bet that in your private devotional reading, you get to a verse like that and you sort of skip ahead, don't you? You're like, there's gotta be some more applicable thing here than ancient geography. Right? I didn't get up this morning to read my Bible, to read ancient geography. Isn't there something a little bit more helpful to me than that? And so we easily skip over those things and uniquely, I think in First Peter, probably true of all of them, but this is actually one of the keys to understanding the entire letter. Is that verse right there? Who are these people? What is it talking about? Again, those who are elect exiles of the dispersion. Now what is that all about? Alright. Quick history lesson. Hang with me. Some of you hated it your sophomore year. This will be short. Okay? But a very quick history lesson. We go back to the Roman Empire, and most of us probably heard of the Roman Empire, one of the great human empires in in history, ruled the known world for, like, five hundred years. And they were able to pull that off because they were really smart. They had policies and things that they did that allowed them to remain in power for, like, five centuries. And one of the things that they did is actually what Peter is referring to here, and and that is what is called colonization. K? Colonization. Here's the way that it worked. The Romans had the great armies. Maybe you've seen movies that portray the Roman armies and the eagle and all of that. They would go into an area that they wanted to conquer. And largely, they would conquer. They were really good at warfare. And after they had conquered this region, they would move on to go, you know, do battle in other places. But they needed to maintain power in that region that their army had already conquered. So the strategy for them was that they would colonize that area by sending, people from Rome or who at least were Roman into that community where they would establish their lives. They would establish business. They would establish some of the things that Roman culture was known for, like the theater or the auditorium or whatever. And by doing that, essentially, they would integrate into the cult actually, the culture, the indigenous culture, would integrate into the Roman culture. And by doing that, they were able to exert Roman influence and thought and power into those, particular areas. K? So these were known as dispersions. K? Sometimes these were, political friends who wanted if it was a nice area, like if suddenly we conquered Hawaii and said, wants to go live? Well, I think I'd like to so all the friends, you know, the friends of the people in charge, they would go and they would colonize Hawaii. Sometimes these were political enemies that they wanted out of Rome. Alright. Take that family and those people and get them over in Galatia. We don't wanna see them ever again. And so off they would go. And and sometimes it was just people that were like, you know what? We think we can have a better life there. Like, you can think about even the story of The United States and the colonies on the East Coast and how people came across on the boats because they wanted a better life in the new the new world. So Rome would do that. And by doing that, they essentially would, retain a kind of control over that area by repopulating and integrating. It was essentially colonization by deportation for the purpose of domination. And that's how you retain control for five hundred years. So these people that would leave Rome or a Roman, community to go into some of these new areas, they essentially lived as exiles there. They were foreigners there. They were Romans there. And, the people that were from there knew that they were these people that had come. And this was not always a comfortable thing. Realize the Roman armies would come and conquer. They would wipe out, you know, how how many people's husbands and fathers in in, in winning the war. And now you've got representatives from there coming and living amongst us. The people from that land did not look favorably necessarily on them, especially initially. They were always from somewhere else. Right? It's kind of like living up here in the North when we hear somebody with a thick southern accent. What do you do? You look at them and you think to yourself or maybe you even say it, you're not from here are you? Right? And they're like, no I'm not. I'm from Georgia or Mississippi. Right? And you're like, what are you doing up here? Why don't you go home where you belong? Explain some people we have on staff even. But as awkward as that might be for Southerners to live up here amongst the Yankees, It was much more uncomfortable back in this day. And so they lived in a kind of ostracized way, and there was social awkwardness representing the ideology of the conquering army. So Peter here is writing then to colonists who were also Christians, who for political, social, who knows what reason had gone into Asia Minor and are now living there as representatives of the Roman Empire. Now to give you an idea of where we're talking, here's a map. And it's essentially modern day Turkey. And some of you maybe are not up on your you know, Turkey to you is a, November celebration. But it's actually a country as well. And so you see some of you see the Black Sea, and you see these communities that are being referred to, Bithynia, Galatia, Cappadocia, these would have been well known in that time and would have been places of influence, cultural influence. Essentially, what Peter does in the letter is he takes these Christians' social political situation and he draws spiritual meaning from it. He says, yes, you're exiles politically and geographically, but I wanna talk to you about what it means to be a spiritual exile. What does it mean to live in an area where you it's not your homeland. What does it mean to live in an area where people look at you a little cross eyed and they say to themselves, that person isn't they're not really of us. Their values are not our values. Their priorities are not our part. They're like those Christian people. They're those marginalized people. What is it like, and how do we live when we are the ones that are in exile, when we are the weird ones? So Peter writes to these political exiles, but he wants them to see that they are really spiritual exiles and to learn what it means to live amongst people that are very, very different. K? Very different. And so what he's gonna say in this letter is he's gonna encourage them to stand strong, to remain faithful, to live obedient to Jesus in spite of the immoral culture around them, to remain faithful even though people look at them like we look at Amish people. Kinda like, man, what's your problem? What's get with the program here. Right? Why aren't you kind of along with what we're doing? That's how they felt. And here's where I think First Peter is so helpful to us is is and I don't know if you feel this or not. I certainly do. If you talk to some of the old timers around here who remember what it was like to be a Christian, like in the nineteen forties or the nineteen fifties and maybe the early nineteen sixties, it's a much different feel back then to be a Christian in America than it is in 2015. Right? Where even to pronounce Christian faith in public media in some way is to be scorned or to have the plug pulled. Right? Get him off of there immediately. We don't want any of that kind of stuff going across the airwaves. What do we do? How do we live? What are we supposed to be like? And again, I'm talking about real Christians, nominal Christians, fit in just fine. K? I'm talking about the people that actually believe this stuff and try to live it out. How do we do it? These are the exiles that Peter is writing to. Now let's ask why are we exiles, and what is the purpose for all of this? So let's get into the text now and and begin to kind of do our little exposition here. I begin again in verse one. “To those who are elect exiles of the dispersion in Pontius, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bethenia Church.” Do you kinda get what that means now? K. “According to the foreknowledge of God the Father in the sanctification of the Spirit for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood.” May grace and peace be multiplied to you. Now a quick read here, and again, that morning devotional, moment where I'm trying to find something for my day, we could easily miss how important what Peter is saying here is. Because essentially what Peter is doing here is he's tipping his hand to the entire letter. It's kind of like in a symphony or something where in the prelude, you hear a little piece of the of the melody, and you're like, you pick up on it. Or that little Star Wars theme, if you're watching a Star Wars movie, you sort of hear that, it's either Vader or it's Skywalker. You know? And you're like you pick you pick up on it. Even in the in the in the opening scene of the movie, you kinda get a sense of what's coming. That's what this is. He's he's basically it's it's First Peter in microcosm. Peter, what are you gonna say? What is your big point to these people that are living in spiritual exile? And he begins in verse two with a series of purpose statements. The why question.Now my wife Jennifer and I, we have a 19 year old daughter. And what's wonderful at this point is that she has not discovered the word why. It's just not there yet. Did I say something wrong? Did I say year old? Peter's got something to say about that too. 19 month old daughter. Yes. So and see, we're getting that kind of Gary feel going on here. Like that. Keep it up. Keep it up. 19 month old daughter. So she's learning words at an amazing clip right now. We're thankful she's not yet learned the word why. She is unaware at this point that in life, there is all of this sort of philosophical stuff that underlies why we do what we do. So at this point, we just say, don't throw your food. She's never said, well, why is that not allowed? Right? She's unaware of purpose behind things. Peter wants to make sure that we understand that there is purpose behind things, even exile. Even the experience of spiritual exile, there's a purpose behind it. There is a why behind it, and we see that from the get go. Notice what kind of exiles are they? And can I say the question, what kind of exiles are we? What is the descriptive word for exiles? It is what? You have Bibles. Look. What is the word before exiles? We are what exiles? We're elect exiles. Elect exiles. What? I am experiencing what I'm experiencing because there's somebody that chose to put me here, chose to give me this experience? Because that's what the word elect means. It just it means chose, chosen. We are chosen exiles. You know, most exiles don't think that they are chosen exiles. You can think about the Jews in World War two, for example, in in Poland and the ghetto there, if you've seen that or studied that, they were victims of circumstance. They were victims of sociopolitical things that were beyond their control, and they suffered greatly in, in that experience. Or the Syrian refugees in our contemporary world, who there's all these, you know, there's big sort of, sociopolitical things that are at play that are creating the circumstances that they find themselves in. You could go to a Syrian refugee and say, you know, how did this happen? And he would say, well, my the president of this company country and this is going on and all of that. They would never have the thought in their mind that they were chosen to be Syrian refugees. Why? Because it's circumstantial. But here, Peter doesn't say, I'm so sorry that you are having this experience living as Christians in that land. He says, you are having that experience by divine choice. There is a God behind all of this. You are not just exiles randomly. You are exiles divinely. You have been chosen for this experience. And what a difference it makes when I realize that there is a purpose behind the pain. There is an answer to the question of why. And behind all of that is a God who is sovereignly working out everything according to the purpose of his will, Ephesians one eleven. Think about the Israelites as another sort of exile example. If you know the story of Israel, descendants of Abraham. Right? They were all time living in tents, never having a land of their own. God takes them down to Egypt. Four hundred years, they live largely under oppression there in Egypt. They're living as exiles. They're not in their the land that they're not in the promised land. They're not in the land where they're supposed to be. But there they are, and they have horrible, terrible experiences. Well, God leads them out into the hand of Moses, and they go through the Red Sea. It's not that far of a walk from Egypt to the promised land. Right? As the crow flies, where does God take them? Forty years wandering around in the wilderness. Are they like, God, is your GPS messed up? Because we could just it's just right there. We just gotta go right there. Why you guys going all over here and wandering around like this? What is the purpose behind our wanderings? What is the purpose behind our exile? Why are we experiencing all of these difficulties living a million people in a desert? Why are you doing this, God? And from the words of Moses himself, God says, “you shall remember the whole way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not. And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” In other words, God was using their physical experience, their geographical experience for spiritual purposes. And all of the difficulties and all of the uncomfortableness and all of the challenges of living in a desert for forty years was not about living in a desert for forty years, but what God wanted that desert to do in them and to teach them. There was a purpose behind it. There was a why behind it. Do you see? So that the sorrows, what Peter is saying here, the sorrows of Christianity on the margins is comforted by the confident knowledge that we have that I am where God wants me to be, and the challenges are from the hand of God as well. I am an elect exile. I am not a political exile. I am I am not a chaotic exile. I am where I am by the sovereign choice of God, which then brings meaning in the midst of the pain and the sorrows and the issues. What do people ask when they're going through a trial? What do we hear even in our church when somebody gets the cancer call? Why? God, why are you doing this? Why am I the one of all the people having to suffer this? And what do you say pastorally to people that hear that kind of news? Wow. That's really chaotic. Maybe there isn't a God. No. We say that there is a God, and that circumstance in your life is not chance. And you can trust him. He is a good God. He loves you. He sent Jesus. Right? And now the Christian begins to derive meaning from even the pain of the exile and to see that God is doing something good in it. Would this not have been wonderfully comforting? I mean, about these Christians. They're living there in Asia Minor. Would this not have been, comforting for a businessman living in Pontus who is suffering financially because he's a Christian? They know he's a Christian. They don't wanna do business with him. He's suffering because of it. Or how about the wife of a pagan husband? You want to talk about personally uncomfortable? How about the wife of a Christian wife of a pagan husband? You want to talk about issues. How about a husband who's living according to the values of the immoral Greco Roman world around him, and yet you're married to him? How do you derive any kind of hope or comfort in the midst of that? You read chapter three, and you see what Peter has to say to wives who are married to pagan husbands. And you see, whatever pick your category. All of them. The Christian sees through the physical, political, social issue a good God who is providentially behind that and is actually using that for some good in our life that maybe we can't see and maybe you can't see right now. I mean, my wife had trouble finding parking today. We have a lot of people sitting right here in front of me. Is it possible maybe one person here is in a time of trouble or has a circumstance they wish was different? What does the word of God have to say to you? You are an elect exile. There is a God who is sovereignly doing the choosing, and it is painful, and it's awkward, and it's difficult, but there is a God behind it. And we believe that by faith. Amen? Amen. Amen. So I'm not in Cappadocia by accident after all. I'm here because God wants me to be in Cappadocia. Nothing is random. Now the second thing that we have here besides being chosen by God to be in this exile is that Peter wants us to he he lifts our eyes to God himself, and he wants us to see what the triune God is doing here. And you see in the text here a very clear Trinitarian statement. “According to the foreknowledge of God the Father in the sanctification of the Spirit for the obedience to Jesus Christ who is the Son.” It's one of the clearest Trinitarian statements in all of Scripture. Father, Son, and Spirit, each of them with a slightly different role in, as being described here. The foreknowledge, first of all, of the Father. Okay? Foreknowledge basically means to to know in advance. Right? To know in advance. Their exile was sovereignly known by God. God was not surprised. What are those Christians doing over there in Bithynia? I had no idea that they were gonna end up in Cappadocia. What are they up to in Galatia? God is never surprised by anything, which is itself a incredible thought, isn't it? If you're God, there are no surprise parties for God. He already knows everything. Right? He has known all of it and purposed it in eternity past, which means that when I find myself in Bithynia, God knew in eternity past that this was part of the plan. In fact, that word there is used in later in the chapter to say that Christ himself was foreknown. In eternity past, the Father knew the Son. In eternity past, the Father knew that you would be living and doing what you're doing here today. All of it, a sovereign God. There is no there are no surprises with God. There is nothing that is random with God. There is nothing that is chaotic with God. He is the sovereign God. No surprises. The sanctifying work of the Spirit. K? Sanctification is this word in the New Testament to talk about the process of God working in our lives to shape and mold us into the likeness of Jesus, the holy Son of God. And so sanctification is this kind of progressive growth and development. When I become a Christian, I to use this text, I I enter into the realm of sanctification. I am now in a process that the Holy Spirit is working in my life. Verse one says that they are in Asia, but verse two says they're actually in sanctification. So they may wanna define themselves geographically. Right? We're for the Bithynia bulldogs. Bulldogs. K. I am who I am. Some of you may be cheering sports teams today somehow related to a geography that used to have a Packer fan or I'm a Cowboys fan or whatever. Like, I'm born in Dallas or something. So you wanna define yourself geographically. When your teams aren't doing well, you don't wanna define yourself geographically. So most of us will be cheering for the Big Ten tomorrow. Sad. But Peter wants them to realize that they're not defined by their locale. They are defined their locale geographically, but by their locale spiritually. You're in the Holy Spirit now. You're in a process. You're in a world, not a pagan land. The life changing work of Jesus in us is the last thing “for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood.” And we see in this that that the electing work of God, the choosing work of God is never without its effect. That not only did God sovereignly choose to put them in Bithynia or Galatia, but he chose through that experience to change them, to transform them for the obedience, a life of obedience to Jesus Christ. That's what God is working in all of us. If you're a Christian here today, what's God doing in my life? Well, he's doing a lot of things. But one of the things he's doing is that he is shaping and molding your heart and value mine as well so that I increasingly want to obey the will of God. I wanna be obedient to my savior Jesus. The obedience to Jesus is part of what we're doing here. And for sprinkling with his blood, and I gotta tell you, I don't know what that means. Just being honest. Commentators are all over the place. I'm not sure what that means. I think it refers somehow to the atoning work of Jesus for us, but I'm not exactly sure. Is that okay to say that? Okay. I don't know. But broadly, what this is saying is this, the Father foreknew us, the Spirit sanctifies us, the Son atoned for us and frees us from a life of sin to now this new life in Christ where I am living to the will of God, and I am pleasing God with my life, and all of it is by God and for God. He foreknew it. He purposed it. He's working in it right now. He is the sovereign hand, the loving hand behind all of it. So that these people might have thought to themselves if they were political exiles, they might have thought to themselves, I am in Galatia by the choice of man. And Peter writes this letter and says, you are in Galatia by the choice of God. He is the one that is behind all that is happening here. Alright. With the time remaining, I have one application point. And this is just the salutation of the letter. Okay? But one application point that I'd like to talk with you about, and it's this. When we are in exile, we wanna change where we are. God wants to change who we are. When we are in exile, God wants or we wanna change where we are. God wants to change who we are. If you talk to an exile and you say, hey. What is the solution to your problem? They are generally going to say, the answer to my problem is to change where I am. Like, I'm not in my homeland. I'm not where I'm supposed to be. And if I was to get where I'm supposed to be, in other words, if I was to change my geography, then everything would be great. Like, take a week like this as an example. This week, I feel like a climate exile. I experienced a week like we've had around here, and I think to myself, I do not live where I'm supposed to live. I am supposed to live in a warmer climate than this. Friday night, Jennifer and I were we spent some time with some friends, and we came back to the church here to pick up my car. I forget how cold it was Friday night, but it was like, you know, zero or minus or something. And we get there, and I get in my car. No. So we spent, I don't know, forty five minutes trying to jump my car off of our van. And it was one of those experiences where there's cold and then there's that cold. Right? I was so cold trying to get that thing started. It took us like forty five minutes, and I was just absolutely frozen. This was a terrible week around here. Right? Horrible week. We're all climate exiles. What do we need? We need to change our geography. We need to live somewhere different. We need a different climate than the one that we've been experiencing. They would have amen in Gary on that. So if you talk to the climate exile, they're going to say, I need a change of geography, right? There's some other place that they would rather be. Do we have any marriage exiles? What's a marriage exile? You've come to the conclusion that the person that you're married to is not the person that you're supposed to be married to, and the solution for you would be to be either not married or married to somebody different. Do we have any vocational exiles here? The solution to happiness in your life would be a different job. You feel like you're being persecuted on the job or you feel like you have an unfair boss, you got some other thing going on. So what's the solution? I need a different job. Do we have any health exiles here? You've got some ailment, you've got some problem, you've got the cancer call in your mind, what's the solution? I need a different body, right? If had a different body, then everything would be fine or pick your category. Generally speaking, our solution to our problems is to change where we are. And then we read this verse here. Elect exiles. Elect exiles. Do you mean that the exile that I am experiencing, that trial that I am going through, that experience that I wish was different and in my mind I can think of three different ways to get out of it? That that is something that God has brought into my life by his sovereign hand and good. Yes. And Peter goes on here to say that good is something not about changing where you are, but changing the person that you are. In other words, my heart, my mind, my my my my spiritual depth and quality, God is in the process of changing that. And you know what? He oftentimes puts us in Cappadocia to do it. We wanna get back to Rome. In fact, what's striking here is he doesn't say to exiles of the dispersion, get out of Bithynia now. Get back to Rome. The streets are clean, and the coffee's good, and the sun is shining. Get out of there. He doesn't say that one place in the whole letter. Why not? Because Peter realized something, that they were elect exiles, that their experience of all of this discomfort was something that God wanted in their life. Well, why would God want that in our life? Because he uses Bithynia, Cappadocia, and the people and the experiences of our life to produce change that would never happen in Rome. And so here you are today, and spiritually speaking or, you know, in your life, you feel like you're in exile, and you want change. I wonder if you can hear the word of God today saying to you. Here's the word. The change that I want is within you. And as Christians, for us to embrace trials, and this is not easy. I think about trials that I've gone through in my life, and in the midst of it, you're like, I want out now. But to pray to God, heavenly Father, I'm not sure what you're doing in this, but I sense in my heart that you are breaking me. You're breaking my pride. You're breaking my self dependence. You're helping me to live by faith. And I just want to say that I surrender to your purpose in Cappadocia. Don't you think I have a loving heavenly Father would answer that prayer? Don't you think that he delights? In fact, is it possible that he put you there to get you to that point of surrender in the first place? And now from that point, God's purpose can be lived out because that aspect of me, pride, whatever is taken away in a way now that I can live in obedience to the will of Jesus Christ according to the foreknowledge of the of of the Father in the sanctification of the Spirit as I made more and more into likeness of Christ. Oh, by the way, what does that sound like? That whole, I'm not where I'm supposed to be. I'm not where I'm from. I'm experiencing pain and yet I want your will in my life. Who does that sound? Does that sound familiar to me? Is that not Christ himself who left his Father's throne above, left his experience of heaven, came into this broken world with all of its pain and all of its sin and all of its brokenness. You you wanna talk about somebody who didn't fit in. How about the Son of God on earth with us? Right? How often people looked at him and thought you must not be from here because you are not buying into the way that we do things at all. And for him to go through that entire experience and to suffer. I think of the old song, he could have called 10,000 angels to destroy the world and set him free in a moment. Gone. You can't afford the plane ticket. That was not an issue with Jesus. And yet he remained. And the night before he was crucified, prayed. “Father, if there's any way for this cup to pass from me, I ask that it would be so.” There's an honest prayer. We've all prayed that. Right? Take this cup from me, please. “Yet not my will, but your will be done.” There is the bottom line. When we are in an experience that we deem undesirable, a long term trial, I think we can be honest with God. I don't wanna live in Bithynia. I'm tired of Cappadocia. But my bottom line, God, is that I want what you want in my life. I believe that your plan is better than mine, and I embrace the change that you are working within me. This is the example of Jesus himself. And I hope that his example would help us realize that even if you're about to be crucified, you can know that there is a sovereign God who is doing good through it. And indeed he did, through that crucifixion, a savior for the world. And that's just the prelude. That's First Peter. So much more good stuff to come. I hope God blesses and uses it. Let's stand together for prayer.* This transcript was generated using AI transcription technology and reviewed for accuracy but may contain errors. Please refer to the original audio for precise wording.

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