As you all who have been here
the last three weeks, you see that I'm slowing down a little
bit, taking more time in some aspects of this text, and then
also making some application as much as possible for the sake
of our maturity and our joy and our hope. Because I mean,
think about that for a second. When you think about obedience, When you think about obedience,
I don't know about you, but for me, the innate response to obedience
in my flesh is always negative. Well, if I have to obey something,
I don't get to have fun. If I have to obey something,
I don't get to do what I really want to do. If I don't get to
obey something, even if it's good and profitable and I enjoy
it, somebody's making me do it. Somebody's telling me to do something.
So there's always this little war going on when it comes to
obedience. Sometimes we find that when we
think of obedience, it becomes self-deprecating. Well, I'm just
not good enough, I'm just not able, whatever, I'm just a worm. And while that may be true theologically
and anthropologically in the context of righteousness, because
we are indeed purchased by the blood of Christ, these things
are no longer our moniker. In other words, we can't call
ourselves these things. We are the saints. We are the
beloved of God. We are the adopted children. We're holy. We are set apart,
we are sanctified, we are righteous. And we know that these things
are not in and of ourselves, that we aren't being transformed
in some weird way that our lives are becoming more and more righteous,
but that we are forever declared righteous in the finished work
of Jesus Christ. That one day then in glorification, a new
work will take place that we are recreated to be exactly as
Christ is, completely. And we don't spend enough time
with that. We don't spend enough time with
that at all. We think about, oh, we're gonna be glorified,
I won't have arthritis. And we'll be glorified, I won't
have anxiety. I'll be glorified, I won't be hungry. I'll be glorified,
I won't be frustrated. I'll be glorified, I won't be
sinning. No, when you're glorified, you'll be sinless. Sinless in
our body, sinless in our intentions, sinless in our affections, sinless
in our... false in our words and our deeds,
sinless. Let's take it and put it in the
positive. We will be righteous. As Christ is righteous, we will
be holy as he is holy, we will reveal him, which is glory. Perfectly. And there is no measure
of getting close to any of that in this life, no matter how good
we grow, no matter how well we grow. It's just no measure. So when we dictate to our conscience
the street beatings of not being good enough, and then we placate
to that idea, we walk around in a state of dreading obedience. Let me say it a little clearer.
We beat ourselves up because we know that we don't measure
up. Not only do we deny the proclamation of the doctrine of sovereign
grace, but we bemoan our own lives that God has given us to
live joyfully. And we do so at the detriment
of God's promises and love in our lives. And we are miserable
and we cannot find joy. And we cannot find intimacy in
any good relationship whatsoever because we can't find intimacy
and joy in a relationship with our Father. We surely aren't
going to be able to do it with ourselves. And if we can't do
it with ourselves, we cannot do it with others. That's why
you hear me poke fun at the Puritans. And I'm not going to stand here
and tell you that God hasn't used some of that writing to
really just take my breath away. Especially the way they prayed.
But they prayed that way because that's all they ever did. They
prayed that way because that's all they ever knew. And there comes a point where
we have to understand that obedience to God has to get out of the
inflection stage and get out and into the projection stage.
We've got to get away from all ways. We have to be in our minds.
We have to answer these things. We have to think, but we don't
think all the time about thinking. You remember those jokes? Yeah,
they're funny, but I'm being serious. We don't think all the
time about our posture before the Father. Except in the lens
and through the economy of grace that the blood of Christ is the
only the blood of Christ is the only currency that establishes
us entrance into righteousness and It's been paid We need to get into the place
where we are so secure and so fulfilled and so assured of the
word of God and our standing before him because of the work
of Jesus that we can live out love in a way that is not destroy
our own lives nor violate our boundaries, but at the same time
establishes a presence in the world that people are amazed
with. God does not regenerate people
through observation of someone else's life. God does not declare
the gospel, you know, ambiguously. The gospel, by definition, is
a story, a good report, actually, literally meaning good report
from God that is explicitly told. And you'll never get it all.
It would take you five to six hours to iterate every established
teaching in the New Testament, the Old Testament, and the illusions
of everything in the prophecies. It would take you five or six
hours of constant straight talking at my speed to establish the
entirety of the gospel, and you'd miss half of it. So every time
we pronounce and we proclaim a gospel truth, it is the gospel.
There's no such thing as a partial gospel. It's the gospel when
it illustrates Christ. You don't have to have a whole
handful of stuff. Oh, I forgot this one thing.
Nope, I didn't scare the gospel. Yes, you did. If you proclaim
the goodness of Christ, if you proclaim the love of God in Christ,
if you proclaim the person of Christ in any part or whole,
you are proclaiming the gospel. So when we come to these things
and we start to think about them, we need to understand that proclaiming
the gospel is about what we say. So it's important to know what
we know. It's important to study. But to what end? See, evangelicalism would tell
you that the entire purpose of the Christian is to just propagate
the gospel and purvey the person of Christ to the nations, to
the end of everything, so that every Charlotte's Web would scream,
Jesus. I mean, you know, it would just be out there. But that's not what we see. God
will send his people and he sends, let me make a statistic up, 99%
of his gospel Proclamation is done in personal
relationships. So the greatest examples of historical
evangelism with these masses of people coming to faith are
insignificant in the whole of evangelism and the whole of human
history. Because God is doing more in
the invisible, in the small, in the unintelligent. in the
not professional realm of his world than he will ever do with
the people standing on stages, standing on the platforms, preaching
to the masses. This is not first century apostolic
proclamation. This is living the word of God
out in absolute trust and rest, trusting that God will, in his
time, put us into the place where we can share the gospel in his
timing. How many times have you been
made to feel guilty because you're not evangelistic enough? That
is not of God. God does call some people to
the calling of like, you know what, I mean, as a pastor, I
evangelize more than I teach. More than I preach, more than
I study, more than I pray. Daily. All the time, no matter who I'm
talking to, no matter what the context. And I'm just used to
it now. It's just natural. But you're
not going to see a string of people lining up outside the
door. Yeah, we all got saved last week under James. I mean,
just there's no such thing. And the only way that that actually
becomes visible is when we then press people into doing something
that the Bible doesn't prescribe in order for them to be certain
or to display or as you've all heard before. I remember as a
kid going to a tent revival one time. You don't stand for Jesus
right now. You know, I mean everybody stands
up. Little cats over in the corner
standing up. Squirrels coming out of their nest at night standing
up. We've done a number. But yet
we are called to obedience. We're called to do some things.
And I'll go ahead and give you the reality of the last, like,
19 points of this sermon. The obedience that God is calling
us to is the obedience of loving our neighbor. Like I said a couple of weeks
ago when I actually preached a sermon by that title, Who Is
Our Neighbor, just because someone doesn't believe the gospel or
believes the gospel wrongly or is unconverted, doesn't mean,
they might mean that they're not our sibling. You might not
mean my brother, this is how I said it, you might not mean
my brother, but you're still my neighbor. And I still have a divine obligation
to love you. Actively, not in my heart, by
keeping it real to tell you you're going to hell because of the
way you think. That is not prescribed in scripture. I never forget the first time
I heard I'm not even going to put labels anymore because I'm
really getting pushback on this, but the first time I heard someone
from a particular Protestant persuasion, I was a junior in
high school, and I heard this person stand in the pulpit and
for 30 to 40 minutes give every example of who wasn't in the
faith and why. about the heathen and the pagan
and the ones that wore flip-flops or the one that wore hats or
the ones that wore, you know, let me see what else I can pick
out here. You know, the ones that did not come early or the ones
that drank coffee or the ones that watched TV or had a picture
of their grandma on the wall and, you know, all these different
things and I'm sitting here thinking, you know, what is this? And nothing's
changed because it's always easier for us to find somebody to hate
and to boil them down to being a problem, to get a common enemy
that really they're not an enemy at all, but an object of affection
by our Father, and we should love them as a neighbor. That's what we do. And that type
of thing, every example that I've given this morning, it drives
us further and further away from the gospel of grace. And it drives
us further into what we would call legalism, but we don't see
it like that anymore because it's not about following precepts
and laws for salvation, but it still drives us to a form of
new law. And so here this morning, let's
read the first two verses of chapter 1 of 1 Peter. Peter,
an apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who are elect exiles of
the dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, Bithynia, according
to the foreknowledge of God the Father and the sanctification
of the Spirit for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling
with his blood, may grace and peace be multiplied to you. So we've talked about all of
these things. We've looked at the life of Peter. We've seen
what it means to be an apostle. We've seen what it means to be
a messenger, that these people and their authority is nothing
but a mouthpiece for the one who is authoritative, who has
the authority. And that their role in leadership is to serve
for the sake of the gospel, not be in charge. And then we've looked and seen
what the cost of salvation is in the human realm of that day.
These people who were exiled, who lost everything. And we see that the reason that
is is because God had ordained it. We talked about those things. Then we talked about election,
electing love, the foreknowledge of God, the sovereignty of God
as a resting place in the midst of great suffering. And then
last week we talked about the sanctification of the spirit,
about what it means to be holy, about what it means to be set
apart, and today we're gonna talk about obedience to Christ. Just like that. Very simple. The spirit sets the elect apart
for obedience to Christ. Okay, so that's the first thing
I want you to see today. Why do we exist as Christians for
obedience to Christ. What does Christ tell us? Go
make disciples, love one another, and everything else that the
New Testament letters show the New Testament church with specific
context, with very narrow context, with wide and broad context,
with theological oversight throughout the millennia. Jesus boils it down into these
two things, to love the Lord your God with all that you have,
love your neighbor as you love yourself. And you find anything
that's taught in the New Testament, it will always go to that second
one of equal importance. Why? Because
when we focus on loving our neighbor as we love ourselves, you know,
that's what it means, right? We are literally loving God actively
in that time. I want to get this across to
you right now, beloved. There is no sense, philosophically,
psychologically, theologically, historically, no sense whatsoever
that love has anything to do with our enmeshment, affection,
infatuation, or feelings to another person. It is not love. Love
is a willful choice to do something for the joy or the blessing of
another person, whether you like it or not. That is love. And the cool thing
is you can test to see if it's love, and if it's motivated by
a right heart, by that which you do, actually gives you joy. Because
our joy comes from loving someone by choice. Yes, there are boundaries. Yes, there are things. I'm not
saying there's just this carte blanche because someone who is
entitled to our love is surely not someone that we can love
very well. So you might say, well, what is the very narrow
sense in which we can love? What's the minimum we can do
to love someone? You can pray for them. That's an active attitude
of service. Sometimes we can love them by
just being quiet, not stepping in it. Sometimes we can love
them by just encouraging them and listening, being present,
listening, just listening. I have a terrible, not as bad,
but it's still a terrible habit of when I hear a problem, I'm
going to fix it. I'm gonna fix it, I'm gonna fix it, I'm gonna
fix it, I'm gonna fix it. So now I'm learning, after 28 years
of marriage, this February, Robin and I have been together for
29 years. Y'all are coming up close on
that number too. I'm learning to ask, are you
just sharing that or you need me to fix it? You need my thoughts? And nine times out of 10, you
go, no, I don't. The newlyweds in the room shaking,
I mean, you know, yeah, learn that now. But love is a willful choice
to serve. And when we are in the faith,
oh my goodness, it goes so much further, doesn't it? And see,
loving is not always It's not obligatory in the way that we
like to look at it, like obedience. We say, okay, what's the obedience
to Jesus Christ? That's why it's a lot easier.
Let me go back to sort of where I want to segue this. It's a
lot easier for us to go, you know what? God's called me to
be an evangelist. I'm getting on a sailboat and I'm going somewhere
in the sea and the first piece of land I find, I'm going to
evangelize it. Because it's much easier to be on that trajectory
than to be on this trajectory, seeing you every day, seeing
you once a week, thinking about you, hearing from you, always
top of mind. Because the novelty wears off in every relationship unless we willfully choose to
love. Taking care of someone can be
an act of love, but taking care of someone is not an act of love
in and of itself. Let that sit for a second. Doing
godly things and following the precepts of the Bible is obedience,
I guess. But it's not real obedience unless
it's done out of love, a willful desire. So let's unpack this for a second.
We are here that we may obey Christ. Now the Greek there literally
says, for obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ.
And so we have to take some time, and I may go next week, I haven't
decided if I'm just gonna continue in this short trajectory here,
or step in a mud hole for a couple of weeks, and just go into Exodus,
and go into the covenant. I might, I might do it. I mean,
I'm in there, I'm reading it, and I'm reminding myself of what
it all says, but it might be good for us to go together, we'll
see. Depends on my time. Obedience and sprinkling of the
blood of Christ. The blood of Christ. That's the real subject
there, right? What does it do? So, this points
to a place in Scripture in Exodus chapter 24 where God confirmed
the covenant with Moses and his people. The contract. And what Moses does there is
he sprinkles the blood. He says, okay, we'll do everything
you've told us to do. We're going to obey you, Father.
We're going to obey you, God, Lord. I don't think he called
him Father at that time. We're going to obey you, Lord. So Moses
sprinkled the blood on the people and said these words. This is
the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in
accordance with all these words. Paul, when he wrote to the Hebrews,
he comments on the shedding blood of Jesus. He comments there that
the shed blood of Jesus covers our sins, forgives us
of our sins, sets us right before Him once and for all because
He purchased us. He purchased us on the cross. So here in this introduction
to Peter, We have to put it all together. Sometimes we just have
to unpack it, and it's a bigger box than what we thought. It's
like throwing a gremlin in the swimming pool. I mean, you're
going to have a lot of them, for those of you who watched that movie in the
80s. It's just going to expand and expand. So let's look at two things very
quickly. The Old Testament regarding obedience
to Christ, and the New Testament regarding obedience to Christ.
It's going to be very fast, okay? And then we're going to look
at Christ We're going to look at the Bible
in the context of practically applying love as, I believe, the center of
obedience. That's what we're going to do.
And I know we preach about this a lot. I know we talk about this
a lot because it is the current of the New Testament. And it covers a multitude of
sins, right? The love of God. God is love.
God loves us. How do I know? He did for us. He embraced us. He condescended
to us. He lent down to us. He gave himself
for us. He secured us through becoming
a human being to stand in the place of us without a complaint. I remember a season, a season,
I remember my life to this point of always struggling to put forth
this stoic discipline of not complaining. I even put practices in place,
spoke out loud, changed my behavior. When I thought frustrating things,
because I'm persnickety, y'all, I've got problems. I've got problems. I'm a good punch list guy. You
bring me into a situation, I will show you every problem. I got
problems, I can find problems. I'd even say, okay, when I feel
like I've got a problem, when I feel flustered, or not even
flustered, just administratively irritated by something I see,
think, or feel, or notice, then I will outwardly say something
positive in a way of praise. You know what, it was just platitudes.
It was just vocal platitudes. And what I've learned to discover
about the New Testament is obedience to Christ handles that. Love handles that. Love helps
us to reframe, in other words, what we initially think and feel
in the story that we write ourselves in our mind, which is nine times
out of ten a lie. We reframe it through the gospel.
We think about it. That means we take this picture
and we go, okay, let's look at it from this perspective. The
Bible teaches us to do that. We've spent most of last year
into that mindset, starting in Psalm 40 all the way into just
a couple of weeks ago. And so we look at things differently
in such a way that we may see how we can love. Then we may
see how we can look at things from a different perspective
because of the love of God for us. So God loves us and we know
that because Christ is alive. He's raised from the dead. We see the Old Testament context
of obedience to Christ. In Deuteronomy 6, the second
reading of the law, here, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is
one. You shall love the Lord, your
God, with all your heart and with all your soul and with all
your might. See, obedience in the Old Testament
is directly tethered to what? To the covenant between God and
Israel. It's not a rule following. It's not a do this and you'll
deserve it. It's a response of love and faithfulness
to God's sovereign, well, God's sovereignty. So what does this mean? Well,
face value, it means we have to live a life of wholehearted
devotion to the Lord. There's also prophetic calls
to obedience in the Old Testament. First Samuel. Has the Lord as
great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying
the voice of the Lord? Behold then, to obey is better
than sacrifice, and to listen is better than the fat of rams.
And I love Paul's allusion to that reality to explain it. Remember
how I say it, the New Testament apostolic authority trumps Old
Testament theology. It actually explains it. So without
Paul and James and Peter and John, we really can't see what
the Old Testament was literally trying to teach. Paul was a perfect example of
that. Peter is an example of that, but Paul more profound
as a Pharisee. So through the prophets, God
continued to emphasize this, that obedience is more valuable
than religion, than ritual. Even though there
is some obedience in those things, Now we live in a New Testament
era of understanding what all of those things pointed to, which
all of them pointed to the love of God for his people. Now we
are to love our neighbor in like manner. You know, loving your
neighbor is the whole crux of Ephesians 5, 4, the marital relationship. Husbands, love your wives in
the same way that Christ loved the church, and in the same way
that you love your own body? Holy moly, can you even say that? Some of us say, well, I don't
love myself. That's not true. I promise you, you love yourself.
I don't care. Listen, I have been in dark places
where I considered my whole essence, my ontological reality void and
worthless. And that's a pathetic place to
be as a child of God. But I still loved myself. So
much so that I would opine constantly internally about how miserable
I was. We give attention to what we
love the most, even when it's dark. and negative. Let me say that again. We give
attention to what we love the most and when it's our thoughts
and when it's our problems, we love ourselves. Because loving
is not feelings of happiness and pleasure and security. Loving is action, focus, attention. What? The question is, are we loving That's what the New Testament
teaches us. Philippians, being found in human
form, Philippians chapter 2, he humbled himself by becoming
obedient. Obedient to the point of death,
even death on a cross as a criminal. So Jesus exemplifies perfect
obedience. That's the whole matter of the
contract between the father and the son, that he would prepare
a people for himself, and in justice, he would secure them
through the right payment, through the right consequence, through
the right sacrifice, through the right offering. Jesus became
that payment. He became that currency. And
in doing so, he did it in obedience. And there is nothing in the New
Testament that shows us that Jesus wanted, enjoyed, or could
hardly stand to get on the cross. It's the exact opposite. Looking
beyond the cross, He despised the shame, but He looked to the
glory that was His before the world began. even prayed that
to the Father. Father, now bestow upon me the
glory that is due me. Show all of these people who
I really am before You, even though I have in all obedience
subjected myself to submission to Your glory and to Your name,
not having taken any credit or any fame or any glory to this
point. Now, I want to be glorified as
I was, because it was His to claim. But nevertheless, he would pray,
your will be done. After he first prayed, please
take this cup from me. And what Jesus was facing is
not like us going to get a root canal or going to have a doctor's
visit and get some bad reports or having issues in relationships
or financial troubles. It wasn't even like us if we
knew we were dying. It's greater than that. The fear
and the trembling and the anxiety goes beyond just the physical. You know, we have a word for
the pain and the suffering that comes from crucifixion called
excruciating, out of the cross, out of crucifixion. And it's
the highest level of pain. Oh, that's excruciating. We use
it now when the toddlers are too loud. Oh, this is excruciating.
I just love pizza. See how we butcher meaning in
context, because context is 100% of the meaning, no matter what
the definition is. I can use any word I want in
any place I want, in any way I mean, and you can't tell me
I'm wrong because I know what I mean, you see. Now, it may
be improper use, it may be ridiculous, but give it a couple of weeks,
give it a couple of centuries, I'll change the meaning. Jesus obeyed in the face of the
wrath of God, facing death that wasn't His to take. Why? Because He loved the Father.
Why? Because He loved His people.
How? You saw it. You saw it. And the greatest joy of obedience
through love is to see the joy of others when we do it. And we're going to get some application
here because I know it's very ambiguous. When we look at the New Testament,
we see Christ as the model of obedience, which is what I've
just said. We see obedience as an expression of faith. James chapter 2. So also, faith
by itself, James says, if it does not have works, it is dead. So let's put that in the context
of the New Testament teaching holistically and let's understand
James and his teaching. The context there that there
was some animosity between these Jewish Christians. There were
Christians of great, there were people of great honor and prestige,
of good social structure and status. And then there were the,
you know, guys like us who just didn't have much, didn't know
much, weren't really connected. And then there were people that
were even below that. And people began to show favoritism
and honor to the dignitaries, you know. It's always, I don't
like it. I've gone to places before and
traveling, you know, and they see me in the audience, oh, Pastor
Tippins, oh, Pastor Tippins, you and the First Lady, y'all
come sit up there on the stage while we preach, and I ain't doing
that. I'm not the president. I've seen
that, too. I've seen dignitaries, servants
of humanity, public slaves, be sat in places of honor. And that's what was happening
with James, with the people there. And it's like, no, no, no, no,
this isn't how it works. Y'all are fighting with each other.
You're frustrated with each other. You're showing favoritism. What do you
say? That's not works. That's a dead faith. What's a
dead faith? It's like a dead horse. You still
got the horse. It can't work for you. It's not
unto salvation, it's out of salvation. So James says, if it doesn't
have works, faith is dead. But someone will say, you've
got faith and I have works. Show me your faith apart from your
works and I'll show you my faith by my works. If we believe in
the gospel and we're resting in the gospel, then why, pray
tell, can we not live it out? Or even simpler, why can we not
receive the instruction of the Lord in His loving revelation
through the Bible for us to learn how to love and to be patient
and silent and put away what we think is absolute for just
enough time for the Spirit of God to teach us something? No,
because we think, well, God will force me. Well, God forced Jonah
and Jonah still was miserable. And that is the spirit in which
I live a lot of my days, the spirit of Jonah. I used to think
it was Jeremiah, and I was just crying because I was miserable.
You ever had that kind of spirit? So obedience is an expression
of faith. So what Peter's talking about
here then, based on what we've seen so far in this introduction,
is that introduction of the letter, not the sermon. is that obedience is more than just adherence
to certain things. Do this, don't do this. Think
this way, talk this way, whatever. It's not just a set of rules.
It's a holistic, and I'm gonna say some words that I've been
saying for a while, embodied. That means in us, we are going
to show and be response to the lordship, to the sovereignty,
and to the love of Christ. And it encompasses belief, it
encompasses trust and rest, and it encompasses an ethical living
that loves people. Remember those five or six Sundays
I preached on biblical compassion and empathy and have to have
empathy and freedom? Because Jesus is the model of
these things. We must think about these things. The problem is
we can't continue to use English New Testament words if they have
no teeth in society. So let's just use the language
that we're actually using in the world in which we live so
that we understand what we're talking about. It's not psychobabble,
it's Christianity. And what is philosophy but thinking
about things and coming to conclusions? What is meditation except storing
it away in our minds and really putting heartfelt time into consideration
of something or nothing? Depends on what you want. Our actions, our lifestyle, our
love for others is a reflection of what God has done, not proof Not assurance, but
a reflection. A reflection. And honestly, I believe that
my obedience to love others, to have a genuine good about
my life concerning other people, is intrinsically and divinely
linked to my identity and my Savior. I've always used the expression
that my grandmother always said, it's, you need to remember whose
you are. Well, in order to do that, I
need to remember that I'm called to love my neighbor. And that is obedience to Christ. And no matter what else I do,
no matter what I don't do, no matter what I put forth, no matter
how I may mold myself into whatever the culture has decided should
be pure, If I'm not loving my neighbor, I am dirty. But as children who are adopted
in Christ, we, even when that might be true for us this moment,
cannot live in the guilt and the shame and the condemnation
that our minds give us when we think about that, for we are
not condemned. Isn't that the craziest dichotomy
in the world? that we literally can be fighting
against the grains of goodness, kicking against the goads, we
can fight against the righteousness of God, we can cut our finger
in the face of God through our attitudes, and all the well,
just absolutely be guilty of insurrection and rebellion, yet
we are not guilty of insurrection and rebellion, for Christ stood
in our place in our guilt, and God's justice is satisfied. No
wonder the world thinks we're insane. That's ridiculous, but
it's absolutely beautiful. But we never get that, and it's
not a balance. It's a full meal. It's not about, oh, we gotta
peach the balance. Condemnation, regeneration. No. God's mercy. is all about justice
and justice is satisfied. That is the good report. And
from there, we can go, wait a minute. This is the love of God for me.
He chooses to love me eternally in every single moment of my
life. He proved this to me. I can love somebody. I can love
me. Why? What have you ever done
to be deserving of love? I can love me because God loves
me. I don't even have to go anywhere
but there. And if that's true, what can
I do for you? Christ is this model, but He's
also the motivation for obedience. It's not legalistic, but an absolute
overflow, a response to the grace received through the life and
death of Christ. I read through chapter 2 last
week of 1 Peter. It gives us all of these things.
And Peter tells us, and will show us as we'll see, is that
our obedience in love, motivated by love, is a key aspect to our Christian
witness. Peter even says that our ethical,
compassionate, loving resolve will attract people to the message
that we have. Think about that for a second. that they may see your good deeds
and glorify God on the day of visitation." Chapter 2, verse
12, somewhere in there, I can't find it. And then after Peter gives that
broad instruction, that application, he starts to delve into the picture
of the gospel through husband and wife, and I'm gonna tell
you, when we get there, I'm gonna probably spend 12 to 16 weeks
in that chapter, first seven verses of chapter three, because
I'm going to expand some things holistically from the Bible that
need correcting. And I've avoided trying to knee
jerk, throw all this stuff out, because it's often very misappropriated
when I'm too quick to share what I've learned. So some practical applications
before we get to some theological implications and then some changes
that could happen. What do we do? Paul in Romans
1 verse 5 talks about the obedience of faith. So the connecting that
even obeying by believing is an act of obedience and that
is something that God grants us. Faith is a gift that God
gives us. Just put that in there somewhere.
We're not in Romans right now, but I preached through Romans
some years ago, and I think I want to go back and do this again
with a little more cohesiveness. John 14, 15, if you love me,
you will obey my commands, Jesus says. The term for obedience in the
Greek, in 1 Peter 1, verse 2, connotates this idea of listening
well. Are you listening? Remember that
podcast? But it's listening that leads
to response. James talks about it, right?
Don't be just hearers, but be doers. Listen. So there is a response and active
obedience for the Christian. In what areas? bunch of areas
let's pull it down to four what areas of our life so where am
I supposed what am I supposed to be I'm gonna go home I gotta
obey how some I spoke how am I supposed to clean my dishes
how am I supposed to put on my shoes what brand of shoes can
I wear folks I still get questions, by the way. We don't do theology
on call, but I still get questions, dozens of questions every week.
And I answer one of them privately. Sometimes you'll see me post
this random stuff on my blog. Where'd that come from? Somebody
asked me a question. When I answer it, I'm going to publish it. But most of the questions are
these really hard, things that people are like, what am I supposed
to do? Am I honoring God by wearing a gold ring? My grandpa said I should have
got stainless steel rings because gold is pretentious. Young girls
who go to a summer camp and they come back and say, well, I'm
not supposed to wear a braid. Am I supposed to, should I cut
off all my hair? Oh, I had a terrible thought.
Pastor Tippins, can you help me know that if I'm lost because
I had a terrible thought, because my pastor told me if that was
in my heart, I probably wasn't filled with the Spirit. And it's
so hard for me, the way I am right now, I'm like, your pastor's
a dumb butt. He's silly. I said a bad word
last week, so I don't want to say it again. Didn't I, Ellie? She caught me on it. I don't
want to be silly like that. So a lot of people are like,
what am I supposed to do? But there is some application. There is
some application when it comes to loving, to obedience. I mean,
personal and communal ethics. There's an issue that emphasizes
the importance of our personal maturity and our personal separation
from certain things that the world says and does. And that
is a personal decision. Some people can't watch certain
things. And I'm not saying that it's
beneficial to watch certain things. I mean, I tell you, right now,
I spend a whole lot of time wasted in certain aspects of my week
because I'm so busy. I'm very, very busy. So I find
this, like, dumb. Where did the hour go? What did
I just look at? What am I doing? My brain's on
fire. So yes, there are some prudent
ways, but I'm not gonna tie that to a place of guilt because I
could have spent that hour parsing Greek, you know, or burning incense,
or I could have also spent that hour napping, or playing with
my dog, or talking with my family. So there's always going to be
a payoff. There's always going to be something more that we
could do. We know the things that control us, but there's
an issue that needs to be always top of mind for us is that we
need to reflect on how our daily choices and interactions demonstrate
our love for the Lord. Not how the culture and history
has taught us, but how our personal experience in growing and resting
is. And we respond to that in kind
because of the love of God for us, not out of guilt. And maybe
I should teach about that, but I'm still trying to unpack that
for myself. I am learning. I've written a lot this week
in my journals about forgiving myself. Never realized that I
wasn't forgiving myself. If there's always a kick in the
butt in your own brain about what you wish you could do better,
well, I can't believe I did that, you're not forgiving yourself.
You are bound by that unforgiveness. So we've got personal application
of obeying Christ in our ethics, in our goodness, in our community,
and then personally. And then also the big one that
I always, that I ended up with last week that I'm like, wow,
that was really melancholy, but suffering and perseverance. I
left the perseverance part out, you know, because the time was
up. But suffering, I mean, we're going to suffer, and so obedience
to Christ encourages believers to look at these sufferings.
We talked about it last week. If you didn't hear the sermon,
you can listen to it, or you can read the Bible, and God will show
it to you. But this suffering is opportunities to demonstrate,
to demonstrate obedience, to deepen our faith. And let me
tell you what obedience looks like in suffering. as one of
your pastors. It is an absolute nightmare. Seven days in the week I might
obey one when you're in suffering mode. I might get one good 10
minute spiel out of a 168 hour week. Beloved, it is a trial
by fire. If you think I wake up every
day floating on the Word of God, I would say I'd put a camera
in my house. You don't want to see that. You don't want to be
disillusioned. But I'm a human being. I'm a
man. And all the bad stuff that comes with those two things is
me. And the greatest part about it
is that it's okay. It's okay. It's okay for you
to be human. It's okay for you to be honest, because you're
not going to ever be perfect. And even when you are, something's
going to happen with your body, your mind, or a relationship's
going to throw it right out the window. The third area of application
is evangelism. I broached it, the subject, right?
We need to obey in evangelism. We need to share. But what does
that look like? And I've even made plugs, right?
And they've been pejorative. I'm sorry. I've upset some people. I've hurt some people. I've hurt
some of you. Because then my humor is highly
sarcastic. Sarcasm is a way of saying pointed
mean things and saying, I'm just joking, you know. And it's not
something I should engage in here. But it's so habitual, it
just comes natural. It's like alliteration. If I
could do sarcastic alliteration, oh my goodness. So here we go. Mission and evangelism. I've
plugged it. We need to have some conversations about what that
looks like for the common person. For the not full time out there,
not on furlough. Thank God for them. But I mean,
it's an integral part of the Christian witness. Obedience. How do we engage in the world?
How do we engage in justice? How do we engage in society?
How do we engage with compassion? It's all about the evangel, right? Ultimately, the message of Christ,
the message of the cross, the message of the love of God, where
is it? But you know what I've found
in these things? A lot of times that obedience in that context
is typically just doing the same rote thing, looking for the same
rote output and then telling people, now change this about
yourself and you will be right with God. And that's a lie. It's a lie. Obedience also forms
us spiritually, the last thing. Forms us spiritually. In what ways? Well, we grow. Put away all malice. We grow a holy nation of people
for his own possession that you may proclaim the excellencies
of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.
And the more that we stand in our love for others, the greater
it is for us to stand in the resolve of God's love for us.
And the more we stand in our understanding of the love of
God for us, the more than we can stand in the resolve to love
others. And you know what's crazy about it? Is that in this way
of obeying the Lord, I think it will help us to be
less judgmental, not about others, but about us. I think it will
help us to literally be free. I'm not going to have time to
go through all the other things that I want to talk about today,
so we'll pick it up next week in part two, but I have to close
with this idea, is that obedience has a motivation. I've already
said this, I just want to make sure that it's clear for us.
And that motivation is either external or internal. Extrinsic
or intrinsic. From within, from without. So
in our minds, in our thoughts, obedience that stems from the
internal from our understanding, from our trust, from our beliefs
is incredibly more authentic. But obedience that stems from
external pressure becomes obligatory chore. And honestly, when there is an
external pressure to obey, that obedience is never good enough. Because if you, if you ever had
a relationship in your spiritual journey as a Christian in the
church, where somebody brings something to your attention and
it's actually good and prudent and they're like, wow, this is, thank you
so much for helping me. And they help you through whatever
this might be, a little problem, a little sin, a little frustration,
a little thing, a little thing about your attitude or your character.
And then you get through it and you've overcome it. And then
months later, it's like, wow, you're walking on sunshine. Everything
is good. And they say, well, now that
you got that out of the way, I've noticed something else. These little spiritual narcs,
these theology watchdogs, these church police, vault police, gatekeepers. You never escape it. So if we're
trying to mold ourselves into obeying the Lord so that pastor
will see me, or my spouse will see me, or I want people to see
that I'm good, I want the world to know that I'm a Christian. It must come from the transformative
power of the love of God resting deep inside of you. That's why
Peter says it this way. In verse 6, all the salvation that he's given
God praise for, this living hope through the resurrection of Jesus
Christ from the dead, this absolute suffering that these people are
experiencing, But one day, through God's power, it's going to be
revealed to them, their salvation. And he says in verse 6 of chapter
1, in this you rejoice now for a little while. If necessary,
you will be grieved by various trials so that the tested genuineness
of your faith, which is more precious than gold that perishes
through, though it is tested by fire, may be found to result
in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Christ.
Though you have not seen Him, you'll love Him. Though you do
not now see Him, you believe in Him, and here's the key, and
rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory. Obtaining
the outcome of your faith the salvation of your souls so see
the intrinsic power of God's love for us comes from within
that we Overflow with rejoicing we overflow in the midst of all
of these dark things and it doesn't change the external circumstances
sometimes and Oftentimes these things are inexpressible and Beloved, do not let your Christian
obedience be motivated by what somebody else may say or think. I don't know how I'm going to
coach you into that, because I'm not a therapist. But I do
know what I can teach you from the Word of God about your identity. And I think that's where it starts.
But hearing me preach next week about that is not going to establish
a security in you. It's not going to establish a
foundation that you just, oh, I heard it, now I know it, I'm
good. It's gonna take a lot of practice. It's gonna take a lot of practice. But disobedience does not earn
God's favor, so if it doesn't earn God's favor, why in the
world would I try to obey to earn yours? Just hear that. There's like
20 minutes there, but that's enough. Why would I do that? My obedience
is a fruit of my salvation. And it's wanting in every breath. And my obedience is a power of
my Christian freedom. It's not restrictive. It's liberating. It frees us from the burden of
rule following, of getting it right, of putting on airs, of
standing before others in a way that they want us to be. It enables
us to live in the freedom of the grace of God. For freedom
you have been set free, Galatians 5. So walk in that freedom. Walk in that freedom. And I pray
that this would be the stepping stone, one, the first level of
an incredible journey that we will walk together in so that
we may grow into rejoicing in the grace of God. Beloved, it's
gonna feel sticky. It's going to feel vulnerable. It's going to feel hard. We gotta
lean into that feeling of discomfort. I'm gonna say it again, we gotta
lean into that feeling of discomfort, because if you can't lean into
the feeling of discomfort, you can't grow beyond where you are
right now, in anything, especially your faith. I'm walking it, and
I wanna walk with you in it. For the sake of the name of Christ,
we're gonna do it. Let's pray. Father, we thank
you for the love that you've given us. Lord, for all the things
that You teach us in Your Word. Lord, that my words would be
true because they come from Your Word. And Lord, when they are
not, Your Word surpasses them. Father, help us to not depend
on the preaching or the preacher to change our lives. But Lord,
help us to rest internally in the power of your spirit and
the power of the resurrection and the power of your promises
and the power of your purposes and your love for us that we
may become a transformed people for the joy of each other. Well, we can't change what has
been done in our lives, but we can rejoice in spite of it. So Lord, help us to grow intimate
intimately, vulnerably, and authentically in such a way that we begin to
know each other as we learn to know you more. Because it is
the heartbeat of the gospel is that you know us and we know you. And we thank
you for that. In Christ's name we pray, amen. Let's take the table together,
beloved.