What in the world? 1 Peter chapter
2. We're going to be here for a little
while, and I'm going to take a short break out of 1 Peter
to deal with something, some subject matter that will put
us into chapter 3. But that'll be some time. So put away all malice and all
deceit and hypocrisy and evil and all slander. Like newborn
infants, long for pure spiritual milk that by it you may grow
up into salvation if indeed you've tasted that the Lord is good.
As you come to Him, a living stone rejected by men, but in
the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves, like living stones,
are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood,
to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus
Christ. For it stands in Scripture, Behold,
I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious.
Whoever believes in him will not be put to shame. So the honor
is for you who believe, but for those who do not believe. The
stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone and
a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense. They stumble because
they disobeyed the word as they were destined to do. But you
are a chosen race. a royal priesthood, a holy nation,
a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies
of him who called you out of darkness into marvelous light.
Once you were not a people, now you are God's people. Once you
would not receive mercy, but now you would receive mercy.
Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the
passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. Keep
your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they
speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds
and glorify God on the day of visitation. I'm going to do something
a little different today. I'm going to comment again on
verses 9 and 10, then I'm going to teach verses 11 and 12 with
some application. And of course, verse 13 comes
into very much like Romans 13, be subject for the Lord's sake
to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme
or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do evil,
etc. This is the will of God that by doing good, you should
put to silence the ignorance of foolish people. And so on
and so forth. But in these things, I want to
remind us that we are to read this letter as one thing. We are to read this letter as
a letter. We are to read this letter as
instruction. And we are to read this letter within the context
of the totality of the New Testament, which includes the Gospels, so
that we may understand the picture of the Old Testament as it is
presented here for us. Beloved, the older I get, the
more I see the abuse, the malignment, the overlording that happens
in the name of the Bible in every institution on the earth that
uses it. The church is no exception. The
church, as we know it, has abused the scripture more than anyone.
And so when we see people in our world, when we see people
in the spaces where we hang out, like the internet and other places,
and they have this extreme response to things that are labeled Christian, we should understand why. We
should understand the reality that their reaction is because
of our lives as a people. Not indicting you or the person
sitting near you or us individually or specifically, but yes, us
as Christians, those who profess Christ. And all of us, no matter
who we are, have prejudices, have biases, have things in our
world that we have adopted as Christian living that are not
found in Scripture. I would say that we probably,
if this were a class, and I would ask for your input and we take
a minute to talk or to write things down, I probably could
ask the question, what are some things that you consider are
just uniquely Christian in our culture that Christians do say,
think, or believe? And I would say for you to write
two or three things down. It very well may be that all,
if not a majority of everything that is written down or spoken
is not biblical. Christians should do this. Christians
shouldn't do this. Christians should think this
way. Christians shouldn't think this way. Christians should speak
this way. Christians shouldn't speak this way. And all of a
sudden we realize that what we are is our identities are rooted
in a list of things that we are to display rather than a righteousness
that we've been granted. And there are some ought to's,
but I'm of the opinion at this point in my life that there is
no room for a believer who is really rooted in the gospel,
and when I say that, I mean by way of maturity and focus, and
that can fly out the window. No matter how mature you are
right now, it can fly out the window tomorrow. There's no room for us when we're
clear to say, I should've, or I could've, or I would've. We can say, I did, and that's
okay. Because who I am and whose I
am cannot be changed. We spend a lot of time culturally
trying to figure out who is and who is not with us, and every
identifier that we have seen in our lives, a majority of those
identifiers, is just another law. Even if it's theology, it's
just another law. It's just another act of the
flesh, an act of the mind, an act of the will. Some decision,
some mindset, some something. Friends, that's not what the
Bible teaches us. The Bible teaches us in verse nine, but you are
a chosen race. You are a royal priesthood. You are a nation that is set
apart, not Israel, not America, not Egypt, the body of Christ. And you are called out as holy
so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who called
you out of darkness into His marvelous light. Now would you
think about that for a second? Let's think about that for a second. We're in darkness and that darkness
according to the New Testament teaching in the gospel narratives
shows us that it is a spiritual darkness that results in spiritual
things and Christian things and godly things according to our
understanding. But when we as cultural religious
people think about darkness we think of things that are just
like really, really bad. Ideas that are really, really
off. desires that are, oh, don't speak of those. When in the mind
of the Jewish people who received these letters, this letter specifically,
this darkness was their daily prayer life, their daily tithe,
their daily synagogue, their daily dietary restrictions, and everything else. The 613
laws that they followed failed to follow. And all the while,
what we see here is that no matter what we are doing, if you look
at American evangelicalism, we are in a place where in order
to be identified, generally speaking, as a believer, or to be blessed
by God, not even as a believer, but as a believer who is blessed
by God, stuff better be going well. Things must be going right. You must have a right mind. You
must have a polish about you, spiritually, in some sense. I mean, when I was a kid, the
times we went to church, you dressed up. The guy who showed up to service
without a suit was either homeless, trying to kill us all, or on
drugs. We let them stand in the back
until after service when the seniors of the congregation could
take them out back and deal with them accordingly, whatever that
meant. Away from the eyes of the innocents. And they either never showed
back up or they showed back with a suit that didn't fit and a
tie that was way too wide because it was way too old, but the uniform
was acceptable. And that's where we live in the
world. We live in the world wearing a uniform, wearing a mask, wearing
whatever the heck's been hanged on the hanger for us to put on
and we're not aware of it. And all the while, while we're
doing that, we're seeking after a righteousness that we can't
obtain, that cannot be gained. We're in darkness. And Jesus,
who is the light that came into the world, shined upon us. He
found us cowering in the corner, walking into the wall of our
own self-righteousness, our own self-sufficiency, our own self-indoctrination,
our own cultural proclivities. And He blinded us with His light
and we could only see Him. And when the light was shining
on us, we could see the stupid things that we were wearing eventually,
not instantly. Sometimes it takes years for
that to really come to fruition, but what we could see was Him.
And everything else around in the darkness was dispelled. And we lose that. Just like Jesus
speaking to John in his Revelation, in his Apocalypse, that's what
the word means, revealed things. He tells the church of Ephesus
that I have, I know all of the good deeds, I know your persistence
in doctrine, I know that you've taught, that means they stood
fast and taught truth. I know you didn't even put up
with people who, these knuckleheads, who didn't think rightly and
live rightly and made false statements about me, taught things that
weren't, y'all didn't even tolerate that kind of stuff, but I have
this one thing against you. And it's so bad, Jesus says to
the Ephesians, I'm gonna take out your lamp. You know what
the lamp, you know what the light, the life of men, of mankind is?
It's Jesus Christ in us. And we're to what? do and live
in such a way in our conduct, in such an honorable way, that
when people speak against us as evildoers, the light that
shines on us is obvious that we're not. And they will see your good deeds,
and the scripture says there in verse 12, they will glorify
God on the day of visitation. So how do we get to this place?
How do we get to the place where this rock of offense wasn't something
that we were tripping over? And why is it so many disobeyed
the rock? You know what the word there
really, they wouldn't hear. They wouldn't listen. There's
nothing to obey in the gospel. You just have to hear it. The
obedience is hear the word of the Lord, taste and see that
the Lord is good. And there's nothing to taste. There's nothing
for us to pick up. There's nothing for us to put
into our mouth. It's put into our mouth. And Jesus is saying,
I found you, I sought after you, I pursued you, I chased you,
and you ran from me, but I am bigger than you. I am the King
of kings, and I am the Lord of lords, and I am the master of
all things, and I own your soul because I bled for it. And no matter how you treat me,
no matter how you hate me, no matter how much you wish I would
just leave, I will not leave. I will stand here and I will
stand in the gap, my blood and my body for yours. And you cannot
escape it. You can't escape it. because I'm
the cornerstone and you've been set in place to be a house that
gives glory to my Father in such a way that no one can balk and
no one can convict you out of it. So what are we to do then? What
is our natural, in the supernatural sense in which we are Christians,
believers, saints, beloved, the elect of God, the household of
God, what is our place? To proclaim the excellencies
of Him who carried us out of darkness into His marvelous light. And we can do it by saying this,
look at me. Didn't Paul say that? Follow
me as I follow Christ. Or look at me and people go,
wow, look at you. And you go, ha, I'm just a reflection of
my Lord. So we really don't say, look
at me, we live in such a way that people notice. See, people notice any way we
live, right? No matter who we are, no matter
what we're standing for, no matter what our core values are, we'll
talk about that today. Because I believe Peter gets
into core values as Christians, as suffering saints. Verse 10, it says, we were not
a people. You were nobodies, but now you are. You had not
received mercy, but now you are the ones who receive mercy. And
I quoted that last week out of the Old Testament. You've received
mercy. You know the story of Jesus when
he, in the gospel accounts, where he goes into the temple. And the very things that were
used as sacrifices, what were they? Dove, sheep, and other
animals, and those who could not afford that, a sack of flour.
These are necessary elements to depict the picture of Christ,
the gravity of righteousness and justice, of which none of us could ever
really be truthful and say, I don't deserve justice. Yes, we do. But we will not receive it because
Christ received it. Just like he went into that temple
and the scripture teaches us the prophet says he will have
zeal for his father's house. Was it the church building? Was
it the temple? Was it the synagogue? No. It
was his body that he had zeal for. The house of God is the
body of Christ. The body of Christ are the saints.
The saints are the ones for whom Christ died when he said it is
finished. And so he goes in and even the picture of Christ was
tainted. The spiritual things that they
needed to do to remind them of the gravity of God's mercy and
the gift of God's love and the overpowering supremacy of God's
grace. What happens? Jesus walks into
the temple and he sees where people could not travel with
these things. They could not carry a bunch
of birds with them. They could not carry a bunch
of sheep with them as they nomadically walked with camels and livestock
and different things and food. They don't have a transit system. So part of the temple worship
is that the priesthood, the Levites, would manage crops. And the people
that had would bring more, and of course you weren't required
to give all of your stuff away, but there was an exchange. So
you could bring coin, or you could bring something you could
exchange, and you could get what was needed for the ceremonies.
Instead of traveling 12 days with a bunch of sheep, you just
walk in there with a little money, or whatever it is you bartered
with, and they had the sheep ready for your, and it's supposed
to be an even trade. But it wasn't. The scales were
crooked. They were gouging these people. The very righteousness
that was symbolically seen in the killing of these animals
and the shedding of their blood was now a fool's market of thieves
and robbers and liars. And so Jesus seeing this thing,
what does He do? He walks in and says, can I have
your attention? I'd just like to see your books for a minute.
I want to just sort of talk about these things. I know some of
you probably preaching to the choir, but some of you are scoundrels
and we're going to get to the bottom of this and we're going
to fix this." No, he didn't do that. He also didn't walk in
there and start giving a sermon and start making him feel bad.
No, he walked in there. He saw what he saw. He went over
around the room and he found a way to make a scourge. You
know what a scourge is? Well, when I was a young child,
my grandmother and great-grandmother on my mother's side, when you
got in trouble, they made you walk to the redwood, to the red,
not the redwoods, that'd be a long way to walk, the red tips, and
you picked a switch, and you brought the switch back, and
the notion of what this was told was that, go get a switch, I'm
gonna tickle your legs. I never laughed. It wasn't funny. And they would just take that
thing, and it would blur. You know, you take a pencil,
make it look like it's rubber, hey, to that switch, and it would
blur, and you could hear, and it would tickle your legs and
you would dance and you would cry. Well, imagine if that were
ropes and leathers. Jesus took them and He found
these leather straps and these ropes and He bound them all together
like a pom-pom. on a Friday night football game,
and he made a scourge out of it. He went in with this three-foot
thing, and he just began to beat them over the head and face,
kicking over their tables, opening up the cages, letting out their
merchandise, opening the gates, letting the sheep go free. Now we like to say in our Christian
culture, that's right, a bunch of robbers and thieves, we got
to knock over their stuff. We got to tear them down. No,
Jesus gets to tear down what he built. Jesus built it. Jesus gets to
tear it down. And he did. You have been brought
out of darkness into his marvelous light. You have been uncaged
and set free. That's the reality of that, right?
By what authority do you have to come in here and destroy our
livelihood? These people went bankrupt. He
took their money and threw it into the crowd. Who has a right
to do that? God has a right to do that. And only God has a right to do
that. And there's nowhere in the New
Testament where God has ever told any believer or any congregation
or any pastor or any professor or any theologian or any apologist
to do that verbally, emotionally, ideology, with an ideology or
physically. We stay out of it. The point
of that is, just like Jesus came and tumped out all those animals
and freed them from the robbers and the thieves, when He said
it was finished on the cross, He did just that. The robbers
and the thieves today are not taking our checks and cashing
them in for false sacrifices. They're taking our minds. And what we think is righteous
is a dead bird that doesn't even fly. We've received mercy. Verse 11, so therefore he says,
beloved, beloved. I should just teach the rest
of the hour with this word. Beloved. That's who you are. No matter how someone else may
treat you or see you, that's who you are. And you know, when
you are the beloved of God, you're at the highest place that
you can ever be. Even if you're at the lowest
place in this life. I urge you as sojourners, that
means people that are passing through. It's not your home.
You're traveling. And exiles who have been kicked
out of their homes. I mean, think about it for a
second. Here are these Jewish people who now can't stay home. And they're looking at it as
a bad thing, but what Jesus did is kicked up in the cages and
let him go. Where is your identity in the
gospel? Because there's nothing that
you can say about yourself, nothing that you can say about who you
are, that will remain when you're
glorified, except that you are a child of God. Nothing. So let us look to that which
is immovable. So we're exiles, that means we're
free. But we're not free from each
other, we're free from the bondage of sin, from the bondage of the
church, from the bondage of biblical abuse, from the bondage of historical
things that aren't correct. And I've gotten what I'm about
to say every year of my life, to some degree, the statement Well, how do you know your interpretation
of all this is correct? See, that's the beauty of the
difference between interpretation and exposition. Those are fancy
words to say, what do I think it means versus what does it
just say? Take it at face value. And the teachings, the doctrines,
remember we talked about that two weeks ago? The doctrines
that we learn from the New Testament are very clear. Every believer
is in some sense obligated, but more importantly, out of adoration,
they get to live according to the gospel rather than according
to the flesh. We take off the things that we're
covering up, the robe of righteousness that can't be removed. Like Superman always had his
suit on under his suit, right? We can't. We get to. It's not we have to. We get to
live in this way. We get to be free. It's not interpretation. It's clear. What is it? If we're in Christ, we're a new
creation. The new man in us, Jesus Christ,
is now our righteousness. Jesus Christ is now our wisdom.
Jesus Christ is now our knowledge. Jesus Christ is the filter through
which we live this life. His work and His promises and
His power are ours. Everything He is belongs to us
and we belong to Him. But not in the way the world
says it. Not in the way the Christian world says it. How do you know? Because the
Bible says that joy is the command, freedom is the promise, glory
is the hope. Nothing can change that. So that
if we're doing everything, what about leadership? Who's the leader
of this here thing? Jesus Christ. And so we as sub-leaders,
in any particular issue we are the ones who then have to do
what Jesus did who spoke not a word in his own defense but
gave himself up entrusted himself to the one who judges faithfully
I don't want to do that and I have bit my tongue and
bowed to people for so long that there is a very strong I'm gonna
say this, and I don't mean it the way I say it, but there's
a very strong spirit in me. There is some spirit in me, like,
yay, go team type thing. There's a go team spirit in me
that sometimes just wants to put it out there and just let
people see it. And sometimes I do in behind
closed doors. And I've done that a lot in the
last year and a half. But I still have to arrest it,
not because I feel guilty doing it, because I have to ask myself,
what is the core of my identity? And it is my righteousness in
Christ Jesus. So therefore, if what I'm about
to say or do, it may be the right thing, but the wrong time. It may be justified, but the
wrong motive. More importantly, is what I'm
about to say, the way Christ would do it. And no, I don't
want to get into the bracelets and the t-shirts and the stickers
and WWJD. No, what did Jesus do? How did He leave us? And then
not only do we get to see Jesus in the life of His ministry through
the narratives, we are taught Then how to apply that into our
lives every single day and it boils down to one single thing. Love with compassion, kindness,
and patience in everything. How are we doing? How's our report
card? It don't look good, but guess
what? There is no report card because the record has been set.
We get all A's. Why? Because Christ did it right.
So we model our lives in that way. And so we filter everything. Are we always going to have that
opportunity? No. There's some things we're not
even going to be able to give time to think through these things.
But then when we do think through them, we don't do that, oh, was
I doing right? Did I hurt the Lord? Did I? Stop. You cannot hurt your Father. Grieve the Spirit. That doesn't
mean make Him sad. Doesn't mean make Him mad. You're going to find yourself
in, as an exile, whether you're doing great or whether you're
doing horribly. And if we're to measure it, this
is a gourmet meal, but I saw a roach on the plate. Well, too bad. I'm not paying
for it. I'm certainly not going to eat it. We are not doing well,
but we are righteous. That changes me. It helps me
realize that it doesn't matter what kind of face y'all give
me. With all these micro-expressions that I absorbed subconsciously
for so many years, now I absorb them with great intention. And I no longer think about them.
I just, huh. Must be tired. Must have gas. Must be whatever. Must be something funny about
the way I look or speak. Don't know, don't care, doesn't
bother me at all. I'm serious about it. Good. So here we are, and we're looking
at what it means to abstain from the passions of the flesh. But
beloved, that list is long. What does the flesh love? The
flesh loves everything that makes the flesh happy. The flesh loves
everything. The flesh loves control. The flesh loves power. The flesh
loves autonomy. The flesh loves independence.
The flesh loves money. The flesh loves to spend it.
The flesh loves food. The flesh loves to eat it. The
flesh loves to be on diets. The flesh loves to be healthy.
The flesh loves not to be healthy. The flesh loves to think that
we're better than everybody else because we're doing well, but
we're humble, so we don't say anything. We just pray for their souls.
Or even then, we've already told ourselves that, you know, we
really are humble. I'm not any better. I just wish
they'd do this, because it'd be better for them. That's busybodiness. I mean, the list goes on, and
then there's all the other stuff, you know, getting cold-stole
drunk, becoming a drug dealer, robbing a bank, yelling at your
spouse, yelling at your kids, slamming a door, saying fun words to the guy in
front of you because he brake-checked you because you were driving
too fast anyway on the freeway, and all the other things. But to abstain from the passions
of the flesh really has everything to do about keeping our focus
on who we are, not about what we should not
be doing. Let me tell you something, church,
and I've been preaching here for 12 years, and I haven't not said this in
any of those years, Overcoming sin in our bodies and in our
world will never happen if we look at that sin and try to overcome
it. If we're focused, whatever we
focus on is what we will become. Whatever we put our attention
to is what we will become. I don't care how much mind over
muscle you've got in your brain, sitting there with your feet
kicked up eating bonbons and watching Netflix, it's not going
to make you strong and healthy. Focusing on, I don't want to
do that, I can't do that, I can't do this, is just a one-way ticket
to those things. I don't want to be like that.
I don't want to feel like that. I don't want to think like that. Great, there you go. You're
there already. You're there already. Even when you're not doing it,
you're walking on the edge of the thing you don't want to do
with your one foot touching the water, trying to do this. I'm
not doing it. Hopping along. The Bible says to put our thoughts
on that which is eternal. Put our thoughts on that which
is holy. And I never, just until recently, In the last months
or so, did I realize, like my grandmother, when she would say
some things to me as a child, and she would say things so emphatically,
and I'd make a comment, she'd say, uh-uh, son, no, you're a
child of the king, you don't have to think that way. But then
I always thought about what I didn't want to think about. And now
I'm starting to see that and frame it in such a way of going,
you know what, if I think about being the child of the king,
I can get a little haughty, but when I think about what he paid
for me, I'm humble. Being born into royalty, hey,
but what did my father do? He killed his son so that I could
be adopted. He paid my debt so that I wouldn't
die. He sealed my fate so that I wouldn't
get lost. He created the world so that
He could find me. Okay. You see the difference? I know it seems like just a little
nuance. But beloved, when you say something,
why does the Bible say over and over again to renew your mind,
to change your thinking? The word repentance is about
changing your thinking. It has nothing to do with what
you do and everything to do with how you think. So as long as
you think repentance is putting something down, you've missed
the point. Repentance is putting something
up. Repentance is lifting up your righteousness. Repentance
is saying, you know what, I'm the righteousness of God. Not
while we sin and put something in people's faces, which I've
done. Standing on a pulpit with thousands of people standing
out there, pointing at them. Because I'm mad at three of them, so
I hurt all of them. You know? That's abuse. That's
spiritual abuse. Lording over, which the Bible
says disqualifies me until I get under control. Well, when you
first season of your entire ministry, you're taught to do it, you think
that's qualified. What does it mean? See, Peter
has transitioned from discussing identity now to calling us and
exhorting us on how to live in that identity and not only live
in that identity, but look, live in this identity in a world that
hates us. And see, everybody's like, oh,
social media is on fire. Oh, you see what's going on at
the Olympics? Who cares? The painting's not even... Guys,
get over it. This is not an attack on Christianity.
It's an attack on stupidity that people have called Christianity
for a thousand years. It's an attack on hatefulness.
It's an attack on the reality that most people who bear the
name Christ publicly are hateful, wicked, awful people who do not
know how to love their neighbor much less themselves. But it feels good to be part
of a crowd, not that crowd. I'd rather die and live in a
box and be hated by men. Wait a minute, that's the cornerstone
that was rejected by men. We shall be rejected, not because
of what we stand for, but because of whose we are. I want you to
hear that, church. The purpose of the pulpit is
to equip the saints to do the work of the ministry with joy
and peace and calmness. We, if you didn't know, are in
an election year. And I don't want to hear how
Jesus would vote. Because you will not like my
discussion. I'd love to have it, but it's
not going to be an official thing, right? But I can tell you what is official
from this pulpit is you will love your neighbor as yourself
and your enemy. Why? Because that's what you want
to do. That's who you are. You see the difference? It's
because when I said you will love your neighbor as yourself
and your enemy, you're like, oh, you're going to tell me what
to do? No, because that's who you are. You will breathe today. Your eyes will blink. You will
think, I can hold my breath and not blink. and you will try, and your eyes
will water, and you will pass out, and your lungs will breathe. We will. And it may come through
pain, it may come through tears, it may come through irritation,
but God will work on us in His time. He will bring us to a place
of compassion. How do we come to a place of
compassion? By knowing who we are, but also by going through
times where our flesh rises up. Beloved, listen to this. Yes,
I'm preaching the truth that you will sin, and in that sin,
God will use it to declare you righteous again and again and
again and again and again. Eh, my son paid for that one, my son,
my son, my son. Come on, dude. 52-card pickup. We got it. Then eventually, these
things, whether they be internal, external, or just ridiculous
things or whatever, will ultimately then come to a place of praise
for you. You will proclaim His excellencies. But you won't look at yourself
like a worm deserving of death because you're a saint, the righteousness
of God. Why? Because that's what God
says about you. Why am I not living like that?
Because you've got your mind off of Him. We take our focus
off. And you're going to do it today.
You're going to do it tomorrow. And that's okay. It's okay. People hate when I
say it's okay. But if God is sovereign, it's
okay. The culture that we live in,
just like the culture that these Jews lived in, you might say,
this ain't even out of the text. This is exactly what Peter's
talking about, y'all. And I'd take any other PhD in
the space to argue otherwise. The problem is we've stopped
being pastoral from a pulpit and we've just become theological. One of the brothers shared with
me just a few weeks ago. We've got to be pastoral. What's
that mean? Caring for people. Walking with them. Sharing the
journey. If what we teach out of the things
that were given to us by the Spirit of God in the Word isn't
going to impact how we approach the world in which we live and
then empower us to go out, the only other alternative is to
develop programs that we can assimilate people into to think
they're actually doing the work while never actually doing the
work at all of changing their lives and their attitudes and
their hearts and their minds toward Christ. One will just
get the image of it done. The other will change the world. abstaining from sinful desires. In Genesis 4, we hear these words, verse 7,
If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin
is crouching at the door. Its desire is contrary to you,
but you must rule over it. You can't rule over something
that doesn't exist. Beloved, we are free of this. We are free. There is no guilt. There's no shame. Christ has
ruled over our sin. Keep your heart with all vigilance.
For from it flow the springs of life. See Joseph and Daniel, I mentioned
them last week, Joseph had this temptation, had these things. And what does he do? He refuses
to give in to the things that are offered to him. Even though
they would have been good for him, they could have given him
power, they could have given him glory, they could have given
him pleasure, he refused. And he says, how can I do? a
wickedness and sin against God. I can't. My conscience won't
bear it. So we have to live with integrity.
That means we are to live as God has created us in the gospel,
recreated us with contentment to be who we are in Him. In the
reality that we are going to be in the flesh until the day
we die or until the day we're glorified, whichever comes first.
And in that flesh we're going to fall down. Daniel, the same thing. I mean,
imagine, you go in there and you're telling them, I talked
about the vision of the big boulder crushing all the nations. And
they love Daniel so much, they're like, Daniel, you can have the
royal feast. You can eat of the king's food. He's like, no thanks.
Got to keep fit. Got things to do. I appreciate
it. I'm not going to do it. Scripture
says, but Daniel resolved that he would not defile himself with
the king's food or with the wine that the king drank. So we should
maintain a purity and a faithfulness of who we are by avoiding the
defilement of sinful things. The problem is we can't say,
well, food is sinful. It wasn't sinful to eat the food
that Daniel was on. The food that itself was not
sinful, right? We know that in the New Testament. But it was
a picture of something else. So Daniel, because of the Spirit
of God, was told not to do it. It's not prescriptive. You know
how many books I've seen on shelves were like the Daniel diet? And this is God's blessing, you
know, and I'm going, and I'm not picking at you if you feel
like that. Go ahead, try it. Just don't shove it on me because
I'm eating a cheeseburger on Saturdays. And I'm going to drink
some wine. Not every Saturday. But maybe, it was a picture of something
else. What are we going to get? We get everything that Jesus
is as a drink. And we get everything that Jesus
is as a meal. That's the picture. We don't
have to go after what the world has for our righteousness and
for our joy and for our contentment. We don't have to eat of the table
of the world. That's the picture of Joseph
as a precursor to Christ. Jesus didn't embrace the world.
He saved us from it. Come of me who are thirsty, I
will give you water, living water. I will give you water that you
never have to come and thirst again. It will well up to eternal
life. Come to me, eat of my flesh, and you will never hunger again.
Do not labor for the food that perishes, but labor for the bread
that endures to eternal life, John 6. This is the point of
all these stories in the Old Testament. And there's freedom here. I said recently that some of
the best Christians are unbelievers when it comes to living authentically.
And I stand by that. Being honest about who they are
and honest about what they need. And then they what? the Lord's prayer today. Ask and you'll find. Ask and
you'll receive. Seek and you'll find. Are we
seeking? But what does this all boil down
to? How do I do it? It's just about self-control
and mindfulness, being mindful about what we're doing and thinking,
and asking ourselves, is this taking me to where I want to
go, and is this being done in my life right now because of
who I really am? Yeah, I got some thing, I got
some, you know, this shirt, when you buy shirts, it has a price
tag on it, right? We take that tag off. But we
don't take the brand tag out, or the care tag, unless it irritates
it, we cut it out. And then, when it gets all wrinkled
up, dirty, care, now here are the cleaners, and when I get
it, they've stapled another tag in it. So I have to take that
one out. We're always gonna have other
little tags. I've got a lot of little tags, and I'll be honest
with you, beloved, some of those tags I know do not honor the
Lord, but I'm being quiet about them, but I put them in as a
part of my core values. I'm like, this is a tag I'm keeping,
this is a tag I keep, this is a tag I keep, and one day I'm
going to show those tags. By the Lord's mercy, I won't. But when I do, those of you who
are my brothers and sisters will go, huh. And you'll see very
shortly after that, yeah, I've taken this tag off now. It's
in the way. It was scratching me real bad.
I took it off. And inner purity is about being true to our identity. Not about putting a bunch of
stuff away. And if that's confusing, I'd love to talk to you. Because
I can prove to you within just a few seconds of talking that there is a level of stress
in your spiritual and emotional mind when all you're doing is
trying to not do something. So church, we need to be the
community of faith that is open to these things and these people,
like us. Don't hide when you're here. If there's a sin that offends
somebody to find out, it's just because they're projecting and
they're going, ah, they're going to find out about mine. Peter says to be holy in all
of our conduct. And Peter, over in chapter 5,
you'll see he talks about the battle that's within. I read
it, y'all, last week. We're gonna face this battle like an Ephesians
6 type battle. There's never a time when we're
without tension, without the potential for chaos. There's
never a time when there's not something clawing at us. The
question is, is Christ the Master? And if He is, let's go lay down
at the bottom of the boat and quit trying to toss something
overboard. Live honorably among unbelievers. Isaiah 52 verse 5 says, Now therefore
what I have here, declares the Lord, seeing that my people are
taken away for nothing, their rulers well, declares the Lord,
and continually all the day my name is despised. Likewise Jeremiah
29 7, But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you
into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare
you will find your welfare. So think about that. What did
Daniel's enemies want to do with him? They wanted to find corruption
in him. They wanted to find a way to sling dirt, sling mud, but
they couldn't. So keep your conduct among the
Gentiles honorable, so when they speak against you as evildoers,
they can't see anything but your good deeds. And they will glorify God on
the day of visitation. Now, what? How does an unbeliever glorify
God when the works that they tried to find you doing of darkness
are not there? God is seen in your works. Doesn't
mean that they believe in. But they could. Honorable conduct. He says they could find no ground
for complaint or any fault, Daniel, because he was faithful and no
error or fault was found in him. Living with integrity. Ruth. Ah, I feel like I want
to preach that entire book. Ruth's honorable conduct and
faithfulness to Naomi and the God of Israel gave her the reputation
among the people as such. Beloved, as the body of Christ,
well let me quote Ruth 2.12, the Lord will repay you for what
you have done and full reward will be given to you by the Lord,
the God of Israel under whose wings you have come to take refuge.
So we should live honorably. We should live faithfully, faithfully
with integrity as a way of showing God in the midst of adversity,
in the midst of struggle, in the midst of strife. We know who is and who is not
an honorable person. We should never see a dishonorable
person doing dishonorable things, saying dishonorable remarks,
or acting in dishonorable ways and say, that's an honorable
person because of this little thing. What a man says is worthless
when it doesn't match with what he does. woman, man, child, mankind. There's a lot of talking about
what? I'm going to be this and I'm
going to do that. We even tell ourselves. How about we just
do it? Doesn't James say that? Don't
be just hearers of the word but be doers also. And the reality,
if we do have ears to hear, it will impact us. It may be slow. Sometimes we're slow to launch.
Sometimes we get in a sludge. Sometimes we're just going through
stuff that it's just not gonna be there. It's okay if you have
a fruitless place in your life. March of 2023, I cursed God to
his face. Many times. Out loud. And I cursed a few other people,
too. one of which will not speak to
me. What do you do with that? I don't have the habit of doing
that. It's the first time in my life that I've ever done that
in the context of my ministry, to curse another pastor. And I'm not going to justify
it. But oh my, did God let loose me from the cage? Because even
though we are free, In the Lord, we are still in little cages,
right? It's like the nesting, the Russian
dolls that are little nesting dolls. You get down and you get,
you know, just breathe. And it makes me wonder and somewhat
worry if I think about it too much so I don't ruminate and
just go, boop, your will be done, Lord. I wonder, like, what cage am
I in now that I'm going to be set free from? What will I have
to go through? to find myself at the bottom so that I can be
set free from that cage. What things have I just been living
blindly doing? And what cost has it had with
the lives of those around me, my home, my church, my community,
my wife and kids? And then the guilt, you know? You'll never understand freedom
until you realize you've got on chains. Find you a smithy and get them
knocked off. His name's Jesus. So we must be true in our conduct,
witness through our deeds. I used to mock stuff like this,
you know, because it became evangelism so backwards anyway. All of it. We must live what we proclaim
more than we say it. So that when we do something
that doesn't match what we say, it is so like, what? That people
go, wow, and then we get to what? Proclaim the excellencies of
Him who brought us out of darkness into light. Integrity. What else? A couple of things
in closing. We need to have love and compassion,
just as a reminder. We need to have this honorable
mindset as a core value as a church. We need to have this holy mindset,
but not what the culture says it is, what Christ is, who we
are in Him. We need to have compassion and
love. I've already said it. Let us love one another. By this,
all people, Jesus says in John 13. By this, all people will
know that you are my followers. If you have love for one another. Acts of service, empathy and
support. You know, empathy is a trained thing. Once we get
a certain age, empathy has to be trained and it has to be continually
maintained. Empathy means I can put myself
in other people's shoes and feel exactly what they feel as if
it's going on in me. And the other side of empathy
is I can understand the circumstances. It's both. Without both, it's
not empathy. But we seek to find understanding
and compassion. This grows as we put ourselves
in other people's shoes, as we are able to filter what we don't
like about this person with what God shouldn't like about us.
And then we go, wait a minute, this is not a good exercise.
The gospel, whoo, I'm free of that. You're free of that. Witnessing evangelism. It's an
outflow of the life. It's not about the outline and
all this other stuff and handing out a tract. I honestly don't
even think we should do that again. I think a believer should
hand out a tract. And I've got a reason. Now if
you do, no problem. Do it. Me, I'm done. I've been done
for a long time with tracts and I haven't used a gospel presentation
in probably 17 years. I just share the faith. read
the Bible, talk about what God has done
to transform my mind in the context of what he's done on the cross
for me. The final thing we need to really
focus on as we do every Sunday is that we are to be in fellowship
with the community of faith. And I know how I tend at Sundays
like these, it's hard to get to know everybody. but we can
get to know somebody. We are living stones being built
into a house that God has established. That means we need to be in regular
fellowship. It's not just about the Sunday. It's not just about
having a picnic at somebody's house or doing something fun
together. It's about intimate involvement
and concern at the level that we're able to depending on where
our life is. And sometimes we're really able
and sometimes we're not. That's okay, too. That's okay, too. Let us consider
how to stir one another up to love and good works. They devoted
themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship. Why? Because everything that we do
and say for each other should be for the mutual benefit and
the edification, that means the building up of the body. And
who is the body? Each one of us. Each one of us. And I know Pastor Trey's probably
going to try to start doing a midweek here in the fall. I don't know
if it's going to be every week, but it'll be some. And that's
going to be good because there's a lot of people who are evangelized
every week in my life who can't get here because they work on
Sundays. Or they don't want to get up early because they work
late on Saturday nights and they just can't drive 30 minutes to
an hour. That's okay. There's no guilt in that. But
what they need is fellowship, real fellowship, real life. Somebody
that they know is not going to judge them, going to embrace
them, and going to point them in the right direction of focus
so that their life and their mind can be renewed on the gospel
so that we can support one another. This morning I got up after just
like an hour and a half. And like every good American,
I picked up my phone and just looked at it to see if there
was anything blinking or on fire or sounding. And there was some
Facebook messages. Oh, that's neat. Two friends
from around the globe, one locally and one overseas, had sent me
something around 6 o'clock, my time. One was a passage out of
the Proverbs, praying for you today as you preach. Thank you,
brother. And another one was, Pastor,
you don't often hear this, but your words matter. And what you're
saying into the world makes a difference in a lot of lives. You don't
need to know it, but sometimes it feels good to know it. And
then he sent me a bunch of scripture. Take care and be calm. Have no
fear. Do not be fainthearted because of these two stubs of
smoldering firebrands on account of the fierce anger of Rezin
and Aram and the son of Remaliah." What's the point? Isaiah 7. Take
care and be calm. Have no fear. Peace to you do
not fear, you shall not die. Judges 6.23. The Lord will fight
while you keep silent. Exodus 14.14. and so on and so
forth. Passage after passage after passage. Behold, God is my salvation.
I will trust and not be afraid, for the God, Lord my God, is
my strength and my song, and He has become my salvation. Isaiah
12, 2. So all this said, we take the
table today because Christ has become our food. Christ has become
our wine. He's become the very sustenance
of us, and that even when nobody else can be depended upon, He
can. He's faithful. So take the table in that spirit
today. Take the table, and if you're not here with us, beloved,
because you can't be, remember us. Remember others. Remember
the body and the blood of Jesus Christ. Remember that we are
the body. and know that people here are
praying for you. And I pray that we all pray for
one another in Christ. Let's pray. We thank you, Father,
for the word, Lord, for the reality of the gospel, for everything
that is ours in Christ. And Father, for even in the state
that I'm in, with fatigue or whether it be sin or whatever
it might be, Father, every single week, Even when I feel great
about everything, Father, that is a frail place to be, declaring
Your Word. Continue to humble me so that I may be confident in
You and not me. So that we can go together as
a body to become a people We have great impact in the small
little world in which we live, that one day you will use as
you see fit in the level and the degree that you see fit.
We don't have the jobs we have because it's just what's there.
We don't live in the place we live because it's just what we
decided. Lord, you have ordained it all. So let us be. And help
us to fight the fight of joy. It is an everlasting struggle. Father, through Christ, You have
given us everlasting life. Thank You for that. In His name
we pray, Amen.