and we would be able to apply
it. We thank you, Lord, that Jesus
Christ came and made provision for us. so that we could be saved. And we ask, Lord, that you would
send your word around the world, that all the tribes and tongues
and peoples and nations would hear your word, and that you
would use your Holy Spirit to cause them to be born again and
to come to you in faith and repentance. And we ask you this, Lord, for
the sake of Christ, in whose name we pray, amen. Good morning, good morning, good
morning. Is it the best day of your life?
It should be. It can be. It can be. 1 Peter chapter 3,
still diligently moving through this
letter, unpacking not just what Peter is writing to us in the
Holy Spirit, but also what the whole of the Word of God is teaching. The beautiful reality of understanding
authentically who we are in Christ. The beautiful reality of knowing
that in every circumstance, every pain, every smile, every point
of despair, and every light of delight, He remains the same. I think one of the brightest
epiphanies for me over the last few years has been the fact that
that was almost a platitude. It had almost become cliche.
Because we say, well, if this is true, then why, right? If
this is true and it is, what's wrong with me? Why isn't it true
for me? Well, it is true for you. It's
like the mindset, and we'll see today that we're gonna talk about
Jesus as Lord, as holy, as set apart, as sanctified. And some
people will tell you, because your life is this way or that
way, or because you can't seem to get a grasp on this or that,
that something's wrong with you or your faith, that something's
wrong with the way you're operating in the world, and you need to
get that straight so that God's promises can be yes and amen
for you. This is so far from the truth.
And therein lies the lie of the enemy to tell us, and honestly,
the way our humanity is actually normalized, that we tell ourselves
all sorts of lies. We don't even know we're telling
them. We don't even know that we believe these things. We just
live day to day in such a way that we become frustrated. Or we can put on the right clothes,
we can put on the right attitude, we can put on the right expression,
and we can live out in a postured position. But deep down, when
things get really bad, either with some area of our lives,
we are found wanting. And then we're desperate. And
then we go clawing at the walls of hopelessness, trying to find
a way out. And so today, as we look at this
text, we see that there's an ever-present groundedness that
comes from understanding whose we are in Christ that is only possible by the
Holy Spirit through suffering, trials, failures, and weakness. I talk a lot to a lot of people
about vulnerability. And I can't speak for you ladies
and sisters, but for you men and brothers, being vulnerable
is not really a good thing. In the culture today, it's like,
that's not manly. It actually is. Because if we're men and women,
then we're human. And if we're not vulnerable,
then we're not human. If we're not vulnerable, we're a quasi-robot. If we're not vulnerable, we're
weak. Paul would say it this way, that
in my pain and suffering, I prayed for the Lord three times to remove
the storm from my life, from my flesh, from my mind, from
my heart, from my soul, from my body. And yet Christ said
to me, my grace is sufficient for you. So therefore now I will
boast all the more gladly about my weakness, for in my weakness
he is strong. So in our vulnerability, we are
our strongest. Why? Because we are real. We are authentic. We are not
playing a game with our own lives. You hear me tell the testimony.
I cursed God. audibly, out loud, pointed my
finger to wherever he might be standing. And it was in that moment, it
was in that moment that I knew more than I'd ever known the
love of God. Can't fake it with him. And as
long as we try to fake it with ourselves and with others, we
are living liars, we are living liars. And it's hard, so when we find
trials, when we find pain, when we find suffering, that is where
the greatest strength comes from, because that is where the greatest
rootedness of authenticity comes from. That is when we're able
to live as we are really. The question is, do you know
yourself in that way? Do you know yourself? 1 Peter 3, verses 13, 14, 15.
We started here a couple of weeks ago, and this should be, well,
we're not quite through with it. The question he asks is this,
now who is there to harm you if you are zealous for what is
good? But even if you should suffer for righteousness' sake,
you will be blessed. Have no fear of them, nor be
troubled, but in your hearts, honor Christ, the Lord is holy.
Always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks
you for a reason for the hope that is in you. Yet do it with
gentleness and respect. I'm gonna stop right there. Now
we've touched on this. We've also touched on everything
before it and around it and behind it, and we're gonna do it again,
and next week we're gonna focus a little bit more on the good
conscience. But today I wanna focus specifically
on this, but in your hearts, honor Christ the Lord as holy. See, this is where I believe
that many of us culturally get tangled up. This is where we
begin to start putting on self-righteousness in the name of righteousness.
Either in our actions, or our words, or our ideologies, or
our politics, or whatever it might be, we begin to dress a
certain way, wear the right clothing, put on the right bumper stickers,
go to the right restaurants, talk of the right lingo. It's
been so interesting and almost refreshing talking with people
who are not believers. some of which who are just staunch
atheists, and some of which who have come
to say that they believe, who now don't have the discombobulated
Christmas-like vernacular that's all tied up and twisted and you
can't figure out where the knot is, and to see them express themselves
honestly and openly without fear. of what they think, of what they're
going through, of how they're processing what they're reading
in the Bible. It's amazing, it's made me wanna just like, Lord,
if I could just flush it. If I could just go dump, I don't
want to, but if I could for just a moment, just dump it and go
to the Bible like when I was a child. When no one parsed the
scripture for me and told me what to think of what it was
saying, but I just heard it, and God showed us the truth. It's pure. And so I'll say this
to you in the context of the premise here, is that when we
think about honoring Christ as the Lord, the Lord as holy, there's
a lot that could be said. There's a sermon series that
could be done on this. Just out of the context of 1
Peter, we could unpack this and what's not this way and what
is this way, but for the sake of continuity and simplicity,
we'll just unpack it. as it sits. But I want to put
this flare on it. I want you to think about how
many times in your life that you thought to yourself, I want
to be better. I want to grow. I want to do more. I mean, some
of you might have never thought that. OK, that's great. I want
to talk to you because I really want to know where you're coming
from. Have you given up or you just don't care or you're there
already? What is it? I really do want to know. That's
not sarcasm. But for most of us, we've had that epiphany,
we've had, not epiphany, we've had that desire, that draw to
come to the conclusion that we wanted to do more, we wanted
to be more, we wanted to grow in some way. Whether it's a New
Year's resolution to lose weight or to gain weight or to be fit
or to do this or to change an attitude, wanna be more. And
we've always here in our world, we all need to be the best version
of ourselves. Now where the theology would
hit that like a Mack truck head on is that the cultural theological
The pretense of the Puritanism that so invades our teaching
would say, how dare you try to get better? How dare you try
to grow? The best way for you to grow
is to put yourself in a box and be quiet and let the Lord just
grow you like a dead flower. That's not true. This whole letter
is instruction to these people about who they are so that they
can actually do something with it every single day in lockstep
with the heart and mind of Christ. I mean, anybody that tells you
there's nothing for Christians to do is just purely silly. They're just silly. They're like
little kids thinking that they're a superhero and that they're
gonna fly if they jump off the cliff. No, you can't jump. You're
going to fall. You're going to die. I got faith.
Well, I got faith that gravity works. So instead of thinking, and here's
the thing, I don't believe you can become the best version of
you. I don't think it's possible. In a philosophical way, I don't
think it's possible. In a real way, I don't think
it's possible because what is that standard? When do you decide
to give up? When do you decide to look in
the mirror and go, good enough. I mean, that doesn't even sound
right. I have arrived. I mean, I don't want to say that's
arrogance, but it's naive. It could be arrogance. You cannot
be the best version of yourself because that means you've died.
That means you've stopped. That means you're stagnant. That
means you're at a standstill. That means there's nowhere else
to go. You're never on the apex. And as believers, we know that
where we are today is we're standing on whatever level of the mountain
we're climbing, and what's under our feet is not our hard work
and all the successes. What's under our feet are the
ashes of the failures that have hardened for us to climb. The
same thing is true in your spiritual life. And so a better frame,
and where I have just come to do this in my own life, instead
of constantly thinking about, and you shouldn't be constantly
thinking about this at all, it should be naturally flowing out
of you, like breathing and blinking your eyes. But until you get
there, you think about it a lot. Don't ruminate, reflect. There's
a difference. Reflection is intentional with boundaries. Rumination is
like this constant companion that won't shut up. But instead
of being the best version of you, be the purest. Be the purest
version of you. Authentically be who you are.
Embrace it. See what's not really there.
Take it all off until there's nothing left but who you really
are. For me, it took the bottom of
the barrel emotionally, financially, relationally, and spiritually,
and physically. That's what it works, right?
But what a beautiful place to be. There's nothing better than
birth, right? It's the beginning of all things.
Rebirth is the same thing. You think about the mythological
idea of the phoenix. It has to die and burn. My friends,
the scripture teaches us the same thing. There's a reason
that all these myths exist. Because even those who do not
understand who God is and who Christ is as God the Son, they
still discover some of these truths. So my charge to you today, as
you begin to hear what I'm going to say, and hopefully you will see that
it lines up with everything that Peter is saying, is that I want
you to think about what it means to be the purest and most authentic
you in your faith. And how many things that you
do in your life today because you think, someone else told
me that God doesn't like that. I had someone ask me last night,
person I've known my whole life, and we've reconnected over the
last few months, after probably almost 25 years of not even seeing
each other. And he says, is it a sin for
me to draw? I hope he's listening to this.
Is it a sin for me to draw? Now, I don't even want to answer
that question. The answer is no. Can I sinfully draw? Yes. But
is it a sin to draw? No. Should I be worried about
it? And the answer to that is no. Should I be worried about the
fact that I'm going to write a love song or a rap song or I'm going to
draw a painting of a dragon or a demon? Oh, the Christians don't
draw demons. Dragons don't exist. It's not
truth. Or that I'm going to put up a Christmas tree or not. Or is that where we are in our
faith, that we're walking around thinking, well, this is what
it means to keep the Lord in our hearts and honor Him as holy. We gotta do everything exactly
right. Well, come on then, let's just go and just start the Sabbath
laws over. Let's just get these automatic
light switches and automatic toilet flushers and automatic
this and automatic that. Let's just go all the way. I mean,
folks, let's get into the line for circumcision for those of
you who have not yet done it and get it over with. Pull out
the phylacteries, put it in front of you, be like a carrot for
a horse, and walk in the way of Christ. Oh, wait a minute,
that wasn't Christ. That was man. And I'm here to tell you that
this is not a license unto sin. This is freedom from sin. We are not supposed to be boggled
and bogged down in our minds and in our lives every single
day wondering if every step is sinful or not. How many of you have ever had
a resolution that you wanted to be healthier? You're like,
I'm gonna go to the gym nine days a week. It's not gonna happen. I'm gonna eat well. I'm gonna
change my diet. I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna
study the Bible. I'm going to never yell again.
Go ahead, say it louder for those in the back. It's nonsense. discover yourself
in Christ. And then every step of the way,
the gentle shepherd will guide you in the mountains, in the
valleys, by the streams of still water. And you'll need nothing,
and you'll want nothing, even when you have nothing, because
you have everything. Almost sounds like Buddhism,
doesn't it? Yeah, because that's where they
went. But they didn't understand the source of everything. They
didn't understand who was the treasure, the pearl of great
price, the treasure hidden in a field is Jesus Christ. So we need to understand what
it means to honor Christ the Lord as holy in our hearts. What
does it mean? No, I think it's an affirmation
of his sovereignty. I think it's an affirmation of
his holiness. But what do those things mean?
See, we use the word, right? Yes, I believe in the sovereignty
of God, in salvation, in the world, and blah, blah, blah,
blah. And we get in there, and it sounds good. I mean, those
sermon jams, it's funny that I see sermon jams sometimes that
come up in real. Sermon jams where you take a
sound bite from a guy like me, and you put it with really exciting
music. and some crazy pictures and you
put it on there for like three minutes and it's like oh god
I got chills you know and it's just a man talking someone sometimes
just reading scripture but because of the emphasis of the music
it sounds silly I mean it sounds powerful well let's put let's
put that behind it see how powerful it sounds or put some horror
music behind it can you hear me talking about the love of
God with the Jaws theme or the psycho theme going on behind it That's because the way we're
made, the way our minds work, the way our psychology works,
is that we can be impressed upon to bring moods and things just
by the environment, just by the ambiance. There's sermon jams. I mean,
it gets us fired up. Or a quote. I love the quotes. I love the guys who quote themselves. I did that a few times and I
just put dash me, just to be funny. Me. That'd be a funny meme, wouldn't
it? You know, there's nothing more pompous than people who
quote themselves, quote me. Love it. Love it. There's nothing wrong with it.
I mean, if you've got something to say, say it. Doesn't matter. But it can
fire us up, and there's nothing more fiery than hearing the words,
our God is a sovereign God. Our God is a powerful God. Our
God is holy. He can't look upon sin. That's
not true. He looks upon sin every day.
He relates to sin every day. He is not sinful. And then you are nothing but
a worm. Be glad as you grovel to the foot of the cross and
God lifts you out of the mire and shakes the doo-doo off of
you. Put you on a shelf. Don't you dare look left or right.
You look straight ahead. Hell's still hot. God's still
holy. You know? This is so ridiculous. But that is what it has come
to when we talk about honoring Christ the Lord is holy. What
does the word holy mean? Let me give it to you in a nutshell.
Not like us. Unique, set apart, different. So God, in his purest way, the
word for that is glory. You see him for exactly how he
is. He's completely different than anything else that ever
was. And he always will be. How so? Well, he's righteous,
he's just, he's loving, he's all-powerful, he's all-knowing,
he's sovereign. See, these are the attributes
that actually, the adjectives that actually define what it
means for God to be purely seen, holy. So that when we start measuring
God and talking about everything that we see, we go, wow, I don't
know anybody like that. That's set apart, that's sanctified,
that's holy, all the same word. It's literally the same meaning. And so when we are set apart,
that's something that God does. God sees us for who we are, knows
us for who we are, created us as we are, and we are subject
to the consequences of all of the things that have happened
in this world in our nature. Yet for God's people, he's selected
us out of this and put us over here in the light of his son.
Now Jesus Christ came into the earth, so God in all of his goodness,
his holiness, his set-apartness, his sanctification, all of this
thing, all of the stuff that he is and everything that he
wants us to know about him, he came into the world through the
virgin birth and lived a life of 34 years. Died and rose from
the dead because the wages of sin is death. He had no sin,
so it couldn't hold him. And there's a reason behind that,
a justified reason, a reason of justice, a reason of righteousness. It's the only way. And so then
when we are declared to be like Christ in our humanity, we are,
listen to what I'm about to say, we are in every sense, in every
way, absolutely and forevermore the righteousness of God. Why? Because we are in and found in
Christ. What does that mean? Am I inside
Jesus? No. Is He inside me? No. This isn't about spatial
proximity. This is about spiritual justice,
righteousness, and promises. So Jesus, we are in Him in that
we are in His righteousness. As He walks, so we are. We are
in His obedience as He obeyed, so we have. We are in His death,
so the wages of sin that we deserve, we've died with Him. And we are
in His life because we've been raised to the newness of life
in Him. It's a position of a promise with great power. The realization
of that is a daily walk of striving to be rawly, naked, unashamed,
and true about who we really are in Him. Not pretending to
put it on, but being who we really are. So that when we begin to
see things that don't match to the level of who He is in His
holiness, what do we do? We take them off. Because our raw spiritual skin
and DNA is righteousness now. While I'm righteous, it's the
righteousness of Christ imputed to me. It is finished. But I'm still really good at
putting on self-righteousness, putting on wickedness, putting
on envy, malice, jealousy, self-absorption, you name it. I'm really good
at it. And when I see all that stuff,
oh no, I got to find the Jesus robe hanging in the closet and
put it on. So I walk around, I can't even move, breathing,
I'm about to burn up. What's wrong with you James,
I'm carrying so many loads. But I got Jesus on now. Take it all
off. Take it all off. So that's what it means to affirm
his holiness. We recognize he's not like us,
but we have been called, declared, and made to be like him. So that's
the daily fight, right? Whether it's just a tiny little
head covering that we wanna wear, or whether it's an entire wardrobe
that we've been trying to put on, take it off. Then you will
know who you are. And when you see that which is
not congruent with righteousness, take that off, too. It's not
permanent. How many times are we going to
take it off? Every single day. You know those masks that you
sisters like to wear, some of you brothers like to wear, too,
to help your pores and your skin and all? You don't keep them
on, you take them off. Masks for masquerade, masks for
balls, masks for Halloween, how dare we, or whatever it might
be. Masks, we put them on because
we do. We wear them emotionally. We
wear them to protect ourselves. We wear them to disguise ourselves.
We don't even know that we're doing it. There was a song, I
think Caveman's Call sang it years ago, The Plastic People. The
masquerade. And we're just masquerading.
But even when we are living authentically and we are growing every single
day to become the purest form of who we are in Christ, we are
also very, very, very likely to start putting on a mask. So
every day we have to peel some of it off. And while we're peeling
off this side, we might be applying it up here. Or we might be putting
on a glove. It's okay, that's never going
to stop, beloved. It's never going to stop. Do
not think that you have arrived. That's why I say the best version
is just really a fool's errand. But as we take off that mask,
it doesn't make us closer to who we are in Christ. It reveals
it more and more. It reveals it more and more.
this acknowledgement of who Christ is as set apart and perfect and
not like us and that he is sovereign. That means he is the ultimate
ruler of all rules, of all rulers. He is the ultimate ruler of all
circumstances. He holds the keys to every door. He holds the scepter of authority
over everything. What things? Well, we can go
through the entirety of the Bible. We can even go through the Psalms
and see the poetry of it. He spoke and the cosmos came
into being. He holds the planets in their
place. He creates things that we have
not ever even seen, stuff to the molecular level that we've
never yet discovered, and on and on and on. He breathes into
us the breath of life. This is not physically God going,
I mean, you know, this is this is the power of God in creation
The scripture says that he makes a king travel to this land and
he makes a bird fly from here to there That he's so aware and
mindful of everything at all times all at once everywhere
that he never learns omniscient He doesn't discover, he doesn't
figure out. He knows all things and at every
step. Man may throw the dice, but God
determines the outcome. How many more things do we want
to say? We can talk about it all day long. Sovereignty is
sovereignty, everything but God, if they have sovereignty as just
a limited, tiny little thimble space of sovereignty. The President
of the United States and I needle sovereignty. A king of a major nation? Less
than that. Sovereignty. What else? Sovereignty over our
suffering. Sovereignty over our growth, aka discipline. He's
never punitive. He doesn't beat us. He doesn't
throw us in a hole to hope we learn our lesson. He picks us
out of that. He's kept our steps from falling.
And in every way, Hebrews 4 says that Jesus knows everything we've
ever suffered. He suffered in the same way,
yet he sinned not. How did he not sin? He never
missed the mark of his true identity. He never stepped outside of who
he really was. Because if he had, he would not
be holy. Also, a better way of putting
that, but we don't even know what it means anymore, is he
never sinned. He never missed the mark of who he really was.
See, that's what sin is in the life of the believer. We're missing
the mark of who we really are in Christ. It's gonna happen. It's there. It's there right
now. We shouldn't be worried about,
I mean, we can see what we commit. We know when we're actually acting
out. But let's let God establish his purpose and way in these
other things. So this acknowledgment then happens
in the heart. What's the heart? It's like the
center of the soul, the consciousness of the person, of the being.
See this old meat suit that we walk around with, it works biologically,
and electronically, and psychologically, and emotionally, and even spiritually
as a believer. It works, and it operates, and
it does what it needs to do, and then sometimes it doesn't.
But it does what it needs to do, and here we are, but ultimately
at the day, if we're laying down in the bed and asleep, our consciousness,
our heart, the center of who we are, the awareness, our mind,
this is what he's talking about. So in our heart, the core of
our being, internally, we recognize Christ's preeminence. Internally, we recognize that
he is the first and the last, the beginning and the end. So
his lordship is not dependent upon our response or an acknowledgment. I remember as a kid hearing that
sometimes when we'd go to like summer camps or vacation Bible
schools randomly. You gotta make Jesus your Lord. How? You better watch out. You better not cry. You better
not pout. I'm telling you why. Jesus Claus
is coming to town He's making a list. He's checking it twice
He's gonna have out cookies or he's gonna give you head loss.
I mean, you know, what is this? Crime and punishment Gifts and
glee How do you make him Lord you can't make him Lord You recognize
his lordship. You see it. And you know that
that's who he is. That's one of the other reasons
he's holy, is he is the Lord. And we're all lords, right? In
some way, even in the Old Testament. The Old Testament, some of the
judges and some of the actually Hebrew people were called gods
and lords. It just means the highest of all. The Lord is the
one who has supreme authority over. We have supreme authority
over certain things in our life, but yet they're still restricted,
so he is the Lord of lords. It's one of the things that in
one of my programs we teach our men. We call them lords. You
need to be a lord. You need to lead with humility as an example. But Jesus is the Lord and we
recognize it in our hearts and we understand and we acknowledge
and emphasize his preeminence. But it doesn't, his preeminence
is not dependent upon our response to it. It's an objective reality
established by His resurrection, proven by the fact that He is
alive. That's Philippians 2, 9 through
11. And when we honor Him, we see Him, we know Him, we walk
in this way that our lives are a reflection of who He is by
aligning our thoughts and our desires and our actions with
His will. What did we learn about five
weeks ago? What is that? Submission. What is submission? Lovingly aligning our lives with
another. That's why God the Son himself
submitted. That's why husbands submit to
their wives and wives submit to their husbands. Jesus gave this example in the
wilderness in Matthew chapter four. This exemplifies his allegiance,
his submission to the Father's will. He resisted the enemy's
temptations. What was the temptation? To misuse
his true identity and his true authority for himself. He honors the lordship of the
Father through submission to the Word of God. And here's something
really fun if you want to go home and not sleep. He is the
Word. He is the perfect. It's not the
text we have right here. He is. So how do we do that? We honor Christ in our heart
as Jesus honored the Father by resisting anything that contradicts
who we really are in Him and what we're supposed to be doing.
So how do we do that? We depend, just like Jesus did,
on the word of God, the written scripture, to guard our hearts
and to guard our minds against distractions, against temptation. What is a temptation but a distraction
of our true identity? I mean, you've probably never heard
it put this way before, right? Therefore God has highly exalted
him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so
that the name of Jesus every knee should bow. And heaven and
on the earth and under the earth and every tongue confess that
Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. That's Philippians
2, 9, 10, and 11. So Paul emphasizes Christ's exaltation
as the culmination of his humble submission and obedience to the
Father, showing what? that His Lordship encompasses
everything. Everything that exists is His.
So as I've already said, His Lordship is cosmic. It's eternal.
It never started and it's never going to end. So we can trust,
we can rest in the fact that He reigns over all circumstances.
Just gonna review what I said in long form. We can rest in
the fact that He has control over all circumstances, including
our trials, and surrender in that way, like a child, in our
hearts, with worship and hope. In Colossians, I mentioned this
just in passing, but I'll read the text to you. For by him all
things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible,
whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all
things were created through him and for him. And he is before
all things, and in him all things hold together. I sort of explained
that without reading it. Sometimes the scripture's just
sufficient in itself. So we honor his lordship. with bold humility in our witness. Look at the second part of that. Always being prepared to make
a defense for anyone ask you for a reason for the hope that
is in you, yet do it with gentleness and respect. I'm not gonna lie. I would love for the sake of
justification of my own heart to stomp up and down for a good
30 minutes on what this is not. I'm just going to be honest.
And the trolls would fall out of the trees and hit their heads
on rocks and start hurling the rocks. You see what I mean? You
ever felt that way? You ever felt like, you know
what? I'm a little triggered. And I would love to prove the
point. But Peter's not telling us to prove the point as pastors.
And I've wasted a lot of time doing that in many different
It doesn't mean we don't get to sometimes, as the occasion
fits. But right now, we're together
so that you can know yourself in such a way in the Lord that
you can actually do the work of building the community of
faith. Ephesians chapter four, for the Lord gave, oh, look at
that, I turned right to it. Man, I am so good. Golly, that
was almost uncanny. He says that we have done all
of it. God has given all of these things, all of these gifts, all
of these people who have gifts, so that the church may grow up
into the head who is Christ in love, so that they may be equipped
to do the work of the ministry. And I wanna change the word ministry,
and I wanna use it to caring for community. There's nothing
that's literally what it is, right? For a community, whose
community? Your community, you and yourself,
you and your spouse, You and your family, you and your household,
you and your neighbor, you and your church, we are a community. We are a community. And so therefore
we have to have, we, no, I'm gonna change this. We don't have
to have a witness, we do have a witness. I want you to hear
this. Evangelism needs to be turned
upside down on its head. We are already a witness to what we
profess. The question is, are we showing
the world the trueness of who God has created us to be in Christ,
or are we pretending, stacking, hiding, masquerading, hoping
that we get it right? Vulnerability is a strength.
The greatest, gosh, I don't even know how to say this, but some
of the greatest Silly. I have been given much
appreciation over the years for being honest about my weaknesses.
I have also had great attacks that came from that same thing. You too, when we are able to
have compassion and empathy, especially if we've gone there
with someone else, we've gone where they've gone, we've hurt
and suffered, we have failings, we have weakness, we have doubt,
we have unbelief, and we're able to share that with somebody,
when people see us as believers being honest about that, it is
powerful. Because, I mean, think about
your own life for a minute. You come to the place where there are people
in your spiritual walk, or people in the world that you esteem.
Man, if I could just be like that guy. I could just have an
ounce of what this person has. Man, if I could just be as faithful
as she is. If I could just have the attitude. And we esteem these
people, but when we get to know them, if they're authentic, they're
honest. Child, please. I did that because
I was about to pop that dude in his eye. And then eventually,
the popping of the eye, we realize isn't really who we are, or the
chopping in the throat. We're really not that person.
It's just a defense mechanism. It's just a trigger. And then
we don't have to press so hard to actually love and have compassion.
It just naturally flows out of us. That's who Christ is. It naturally flowed out of him
because that's who he was. Well, he got angry, yeah, but it was
intentional. It was a calculated, intentional act of cleanliness
that has spiritual implications about what he was going to do
when he died on the cross. When that same anger from God
the Father was turned on him, when his side was open, when
the cage of his ribs were open, we were set free. It's beautiful
stuff. And so we are a witness. The
question is, what are we showing people? Are we showing people
who we are? Or are we kowtowing to the culture
that is supposedly Christlike? And it doesn't feel good. How
dare you? How could you be a Christian?
How could you be, you know, I actually follow Christ. Do you know what
the word means? That's my sarcastic response. It's not necessarily
the best way. But we're called to be prepared to articulate
our hope. Because what does it look like?
Remember what we talked about, the whole context of this letter
is about suffering, and that through suffering we grow, and
through growth we become authentic, and through authenticity we become,
we find our peace and our hope, and in that then we are unshakable,
why? Because we're standing rawly
and securely attached without 20 pairs of shoes to the rock
of offense who is Jesus Christ our Lord and sovereign holy God. So. This defense, in every way,
is to reflect the character of who Christ is in us. With gentleness
and respect. With permission. With permission. That's respect. I don't really want to talk about
that. Okay. But what does evangelism become?
in your face. Real evangelism doesn't create
mobs in the street. And the mobs in the street aren't
unbelievers by profession. They're typically God's people,
historically. Look at the first century. Who
crucified Jesus? The Sanhedrin. Those who held
the oracles of God. Those who were the arbiters of
holiness. Those who managed the sacrifices. In the apostles' days, who killed
them? Who put them in prison? The very
same people. Throughout church history, who
persecuted? who put certain spiritual religious
groups in chains, other religious groups, who felt threatened. Typically, why did they allow
that? Because typically they were the
compassionate ones. They were the ones who embodied
and exuded the mind and the heart of Christ above all things. Why do you think people are so
angry? when you're compassionate because
you depower them. You take away all their power.
So the only thing they can do then is become violent and angry. Anger is a secondary emotion.
Anger is a cover for fear. Every time. Except when it's righteous. and
when righteous anger stands, I don't think there's but one
that can exercise it, and his name is Jesus. Vengeance is mine,
I will repay. If your enemy slaps you, give
him your other cheek. When you're in the mood to hit,
make it symmetrical. If your enemy's hungry, feed
him. Thirsty, give him something to drink. Naked, give him the
shirt off your back. In doing so you fulfill all the laws of
righteousness against whom there is no charge. Jesus and the Samaritan woman,
John chapter four, one of my favorite places in the whole
Bible. It is my evangelistic shtick if I had one. It's where
I go when I talk to anybody about the gospel. And God has brought many people
to faith just by hearing it. Despite what people might say,
well what theological truth did they believe in there? How about
the spirit of God brought them alive? And they had a disposition
of faith, rest in the fact that Christ alone was their answer.
That's called repentance. A change of disposition of the
brain, thoughts, heart, mind. So boldness. is gentleness and
respect. That's what boldness is. Being
bold and courageous is actually being humble and compassionate. Because the world loves a fighter,
right? I mean, who would pay to watch
two boxers box while the other one just stood there and took
punches and said, I understand you're angry. I said, okay, get
it out. I mean, I'd probably pay to see
that just to see how long it took for the guy to go. An MMA fight or a wrestling match
wouldn't be very exciting if one of the competitors just decided,
you know, my biggest way to win this fight is to let you win
it. And everybody who bet on that guy's like, what a dummy. If you want to save your own
life, you're going to lose it. Gentleness and respect is boldness. Arrogance and combativeness is
counter to the heart of Christ. God does not need us to be his
warriors up in arms. God needs us to be warriors of
compassion. And this humble confidence is
grounded in the good report of Jesus. Peter's emphasis here
on the tone of interaction ensures what? That the message of Christ
is not compromised or undermined by the messenger's attitude.
What would be their hope? Why would somebody ask them about
hope? Now put it, let's go in the context here. What's he saying?
Here's all these people in the dispersion. You know what they've
lost, you know what it's cost them, you know what they're struggling
with, you know they're having to be subject to all this weird
cultural stuff that is not theirs. The food they eat, places they
go, the stuff they wear, they had to just acclimate to everything
so they could survive. And Peter says, you need to just
be calm and patient, and they're gonna hate you just because of
who you are, but you proved them wrong. You let them be ones with
egg on their face. But there are going to be other
people who notice who you are because you are a witness. Not Judaism, they
were no longer Judaistic people. Though they may have been ethnically
Jewish, they were not religiously Jewish. They were kicked out
of their homeland. And so there would be people
that see who you are, and they will see how you act, and they
will see how people mistreat you, and they will see you stand
firm with great, bold courage, humbly, loving, and going, and
after a while, it takes the fire out of the people who are just
following along with the wind, and there's always gonna be the
haters, and some of these other people in the periphery are gonna
come up to you and go, how do you tolerate this? Why don't you stand up
for yourself? I'm not saying that there's not
a time to stand up for yourself, but in this context, what is it that he says to do? Be gentle and respectful and
tell them about the hope that is in you. Tell them about this
hope with the attitude and the mind of Christ. Jesus engages
with the woman at the well in John chapter four with great
compassion, with great sensitivity, with great gentleness. She came
there distraught, living her life every day wondering what
she could put on over her grossness that the culture around her would
actually embrace her. What music could she put in her
car? What type of Bible could she
be using to try to get some compassion or some fellowship? It's too late, she was burned.
She was a real human being who couldn't hide what she was. But
Jesus approached her with respect and said, I'll give you some
living water. And then the very people that
she did not want to see her, she runs into town and says,
hey, y'all. Oh, gosh, this is so beautiful.
I've found the Christ. Now, how burned was the evangelistic
authorities of Sychar? How dare she? That's our job,
this old heathen woman telling us about the Messiah. What a
waste. People got fired. Those evangelistic
strategists, they were fired that day. See, you know, missed
the boat, and now this kind of woman has told us that Messiah's
here. Not everybody was happy to hear
Messiah was here. Who wasn't happy? The arrogant,
the proud, the self-absorbed. The ones who wanted the glory
rather than seeing it for what it really was. So the scripture tells us to
share our faith boldly but graciously. And know that the faith is the
good report, the story of Jesus. Not the call to action, not the
slander, not the ugly stuff, not well you're probably going
to hell, none of that stuff, that's not, where is it, show
it to me. Let your speech always be gracious,
Paul says to the Church of Colossae. Season with salt so that you
may know how you ought to answer and act with people. John 8, of course, we can have
a controversy over it, but the spirit is the same. Neither do
I condemn you, so go and sin no more. The woman caught in
adultery. So we've got to understand all
this stuff. We've got, in our suffering as, and see it as a
blessing. We've already talked about that.
I just want to remind you about verses 13 and 14. Remember our suffering
is a blessing. A blessing. So how do we live
all this out? Oh gosh. Let me give you something
to think about. Something to think about as you
leave today. some practical outcomes of framing
our lives every day in this way. And I suggest you go back and
listen to this sermon again, because there's a lot here. The first thing is to align your
priorities. What's important? And now some of us are thinking,
well, yeah, well, I'm doing that, and I got this, and I'm trying
to find this, and whatever. No, let me change that train
track for you. Whose approval are you trying
to get? What security are you looking
for? What significance are you really
trying to find in your life? Those are the priorities I'm
talking about. Well, are these important? Yes,
very much. But we've got it already. In Christ, we have it all. So
then let's focus our minds and shift our focus on loving God
and others out of gratitude for who we really are, that we have
the approval of God, we have security in Jesus Christ, and
we have significance because we are the righteousness of God,
the children of God. How does that look? We seek first
the kingdom of God and how we think and make decisions. We
measure success by faithfulness, not by the standard of the world
or the Christian culture. We use our time and resources
to make sure that we're doing what we need to do to love ourselves
so that we also then can use those time and resources to love
others. We can respond to suffering with faith. So trials no longer
feel purposeless. Fear is now fuel. Pain is now
power. because they're part of God's
refining work in our lives because of who we are in Christ that
we get to know ourselves more purely. So we can grow in character
and hope like James talks about with our trials. We can pray
for those who oppose us like we learned in Luke 23. We can
rejoice in the assurance that present struggles are nothing
in comparison to the future glory, Romans 8. We can relate to others
with boldness and humility. Relationships are transformed
when we know ourselves in Christ. They're transformed, not because
we impart wisdom or we dig into them or we lay out meticulous
groundwork and little breadcrumbs for people to pick up and finally
they're like, I'm full. No, we just live and then people,
by the power of God, follow. They enter into, we invite them
into our lives by being who we are. Not by manipulating them
or coercing them or encouraging them. We don't fear rejection because
our worth is secure. So I look forward to difficult
conversations now. I know that may seem funny because
it's the very thing that almost put me in the deathbed. I like
them. I said this on Thursday. Why,
someone says. I said, well, because if I'm
having a difficult conversation with someone, I'm going to learn
something about them, and I'm gonna learn something about me.
Here's how it works. If they're right, I get to become
a purer part of me, a purer version of me, because I can take off
that garbage. If they're wrong, I can lead
them to understand why they feel the way they do and that I understand
that they are hurting, but that they need to decide who they
are and what they need, because I can't give it to them. And that allows us to do what
I believe the fourth thing is. It's to live with unshakable
peace and joy. And when I say unshakable, I
mean we can be shaken like a pecan shaker on a summer afternoon,
but I can promise you that we will not lose our footing. and
our hair may fly off, and our teeth may fly out, and our eyeballs
might be crossed, but we can be unshakable in our peace and
our joy, because anxiety is the fear of tomorrow and the uncertainty
of what might happen again from yesterday. I have not had anxiety
in my body in 603 days, in one sense. It does not exist. and you really just have to die
to that. But it's an unshakable peace.
Nothing can separate us from the love of God. Think about
that for a second. So our joy flows from knowing
we are fully accepted and secure in him. How does that look? Replace our worry and our rumination
with prayer and thanksgiving. Philippians chapter four. Choose
gratitude in every circumstances, every challenge. First Thessalonians
518. Radiate hope. It's the best day of my life. What happened to you? And I love
it on a day like this past few days where I had a flat tire
and a dead battery and this, that, and the other, hit my knee
and all. I said, well, what happened to you today? Oh, what happened
to me today was this. Why is it the best day of your life?
And I get to tell them who I am and invite them into my life. It's amazing. Radiating that hope causes others
to ask about it. You can't fake it. You gotta
be it. So the question then is, do you have that freedom? And
the answer to that question is, yes you do. Where is it? It's
in you right now. It's in you right now. The love
of God, the spirit of God, the hope of God, the truth of God,
the gospel of Christ is in you right now. It's okay if you don't know where
to go. That's why we're here, right? That's why we're here. These aren't one-offs. It's a
series for a reason. And we'll grow together, it's
okay. How is this ever even all possible?
Because Christ is alive, he died, he gave his life that we may
live. And we live in him today with
all freedom and all power and all hope and all joy. So let's
pray. Father, I thank you for the opportunity
to share this journey. Lord, that we might live together
as a witness to this world. And to each other, to so many
believers everywhere who, they do church and they do Bible and
they do this and they do that and they clean up their act and
they walk in a certain way, but Father, they're so far. They're
so far from peace and hope and joy. They're so far from freedom. And they just don't know what's
wrong with them, Lord. Lord, help us, help us. Help us to be there with them
when you put them through the fire of refinement, through the
fire of pain, which is the fire of purpose. Help us to stand
and weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice,
Lord. Help us to be all that we can
be by being authentically who we are. And we are not the answer. We
are just a witness to the one who is, Jesus Christ, your son,
who gave himself for us, and now we are your righteousness.
And we thank you for this opportunity to worship and to learn, and
we thank you, Father, for the peace that surpasses all the
reason and understanding of our minds as we settle like a child
cuddled in a warm blanket at your feet, knowing that all is
well. and that nothing can separate
us from your love. And we pray these things because of who Christ
is.