singing. The primary instrument in worship
is your voice, the congregation, the assembly. And so, I want to encourage you
in that, that above all things, you need to be the loudest thing
in here. And you might say, sometimes
I don't have a song to sing. Yes, you do. Yes, you do. Just find it. Find it. And if you don't, then sing a
lament. But sing something. Well, I'm not musical. Yes, you
are. It doesn't matter if you're in tune. That's not musical.
Have you heard things? But I believe music is probably
one of the most powerful creations of God. That's why the metaphor
of melody and harmony and rhythm and the example of David and
the singing and the praises and the, just the imagery of what
it means to celebrate. What it means to feel. Last week I talked about how
we can be put in a place of high suggestion. And music does that. And one of the only safe places
and experiences to enjoy how God intended music is to be in
the place where you know that what you're experiencing with
the creation of music will also be a safe place for you to partake
of what is being told to you. That's why what we sing must
also teach. That's why what we sing must
also help us reflect on what we know and who we know. You understand that every psalm
is a song that was sung in open worship. Just think about that next time
we sing. Because there's nothing greater,
I believe, to the ears of our Father than when His children
exult in Him and exalt Him in song. I love it. I read Isaiah 49,
some out of Isaiah 49, at the beginning of service, and I'm
gonna refer to that briefly. But we're going to be in 1 Peter,
and there's so much in this. And I want you to know, too,
that the reason that the Word of God is written in a nutshell,
in a small little package, is for us to know Him. It's to teach us who He is. And then the gospel accounts,
the first four that we have in order in the New Testament writings,
are the story, the good report, the gospel, save you a couple
thousand years of language there, of Jesus Christ. It's who he
was and what he did on the earth. And each one of those gospels
are written to a different audience with a different focus, with
a different intention, with a different objective in some sense. But
the ultimate outcome is that it reveals who Jesus is in this
earth and his human body and what he accomplished. So then we get the letters of
the New Testament, and the letters of the New Testament are written
to those who know and understand the story of Christ, who have
said in their hearts, I see this. I know this Jesus, I know this
man from Nazareth. I know. I know the Lord of heaven, Jesus
the Christ. And more importantly, He knows
me. So I identify in Him. I identify
with Him. I identify for Him. What's next? There's a problem
in life. How do I fix it? You know, I've
come up with some really good ideas. I bet Jesus really is
like this. Or I bet God is really like that.
And New Testament letters respond to all those things. That's why
they're written. And while we can parse out gospel
truths in the letters of the Bible, they in and of themselves
are not the gospel of Christ. Folks, I want you to see the
simplicity in this. You don't evangelize with Romans
one through three. Unless you know the gospels, Because if you do, all you'll
find is that you are seeing converts who know they're sinners and
trying to figure out what to do about it. The question is posed in the
Old Testament. How can a man be right with God? How can one answer back to God? There is no answer to that. It's an ill-fated question. There
is not one person who has breathed breath in this world from the
creation of days who can be right with God of their own volition. And there is only one person
who has ever walked this cosmos who was right with God forever,
and that's Jesus Christ. And so when we read the letters, when we read the letters, we
do so enlightened. We do so from a place of wanting
instruction. We do so from a place that is
already standing before God, pure, holy, set apart, righteous,
loved, amazing, fulfilled, content in His eyes. We are not growing in grace and
learning through knowledge and gleaning understanding so that
we can be better for God. We are not maturing so that there
is more for God to love. God loves us as we are, while
we were dead, as we are sinners, and declared us his righteousness.
I want you to hear that. And when we go through Peter,
oh, my goodness, there's so much that Peter knew that these Jewish
people knew already, and he just doesn't reteach it. But if you
don't know it, if you don't pause, you will impart an internal or
cultural identity on what's going on in that letter, and then you
will actively apply it in an incorrect way, and it's going
to be so discombobulated and so intensely frustrating, and
even worse, it's going to be very intricate and difficult
to grasp that you're going to become very frustrated in your
faith. And Jesus knew the heart of man,
and he says the answer to this question very simply when he's
teaching in the Gospels. He said, unless you come to me
with the mind and attitude and intellect of a child, you're never gonna see your end
of the kingdom of heaven. And as adults, you go, okay,
how can I be like a child? Wrong answer. You can't be like a child, we're
childish enough. But we're not, we're not resting enough. Jesus
had faith like a child concerning the Father. And that anything that he saw
with his human eyes, anything he felt with his human heart,
anything he needed with his human body, he never, ever broke his
identity or his purpose because he just trusted the Father.
You're gonna die, man. You need some food, man. Turn
these rocks to bread, man. Man. You know, that's how they
talked back in the days. Dude, bro. I mean, he's like,
yeah, I'm a man, you know. I'm a man's man. God the man. I don't need bread because I
live on the words that come out of my father's mouth. That sounds
like something a kid would say. I'm going to slap you sideways,
child. Check the back of your brain.
But that's the truth. And here's how we know we're
misunderstanding what it means to be childlike in the context
of our hope. We take affront at the actuality
that our identity could be considered juvenile. I don't know too many of my PhD
peers who want to be called childish. I dare not say that I'm childish. My vocabulary supersedes the
very Webster. I'm not kidding. The hubris. And it may not be
the PhD, it may be the person sitting on the front porch in
a rocking chair. Maybe you. Surely it was me. I've got childlike faith because
I can rest, but oh boy, there's a lot of unchildlike wisdom in
this head. That's as you know. When you
come to realize that that's really in there, and it starts shaking
out, well, you can say, what in the name of heaven is this?
It's like that electronic that you're using. It works, but you
hear this rattle on the inside. What is that? You try to find
that one space, and you shake it, and there's some diode of
some kind. Well, that did have a purpose. When we shake out
this garbage in our heads, when we shake out this garbage in
our identity, when we shake out this garbage in our personality,
it didn't have a purpose except to interfere with our joy, with
our hope. And so when we read 1 Peter,
we need to pay attention when this big, smart, intellectual
brain of ours gets in the way. We need to trust that the Holy
Spirit is going to guide us, and that even when we're way
out in left field in another stadium, and there's nobody at
bat, but we've got a glove going, that God has not lost us. And friends, if you knew, if
you knew the content of philosophy that I have put in this cerebral
gray matter, you would faint. If you knew, if I showed you
my journals, if I shared with you the frameworks
that I live by every day, I remember in the 90s there was
a comedic sketch, I don't even know who it was, but they made
fun of personal affirmations. Yeah, that's it. I won't say
it. It's not wholesome. But they made fun of it. They
made fun of people standing and just speaking outwardly who they
were. Who they wanted to be. Why is
that funny? Why is that funny? Don't we do
that as children? I'm going to be Spider-Man. And then we sing
Batman. So we don't know who the man
is. I'm going to be the president.
You go right ahead. I'm going to be Godzilla. Get on it, boy.
We'll have to pay for electricity then. We've got to realize something. You can't touch. with any part of your intellect. The hymn of Christ. It's in the way. It is in the
way. Can God use it? He does. But
not when it's in the way. And I've learned more recently
that every one of you, every one of you, either avoids who you are, or
is so secure in who you are, you don't know that you're not.
Or that you're ignoring the fact that you don't need to grow in
your understanding of who you are in Christ. And that's why
the Bible's written. That's why the Bible is written.
Once you see Him, then you learn who you are in Him. And if that's
not the goal, then there is no other purpose. Last week I talked
about two questions. Who am I and what do I want?
And then I get to stand here in this very contemporary setting,
very contemporary activity of high platform, you down there,
you be quiet, I have all the answers. And pretend that just saying
the right thing actually works for you. But what is the most significant
thing that worked for me in the last several years? Let me give
it to you, and then I'm going to dive in very fast into the
whole chapter of 1 Peter, the whole chapter, because I'm not
going to wait on some things that are already focused. I've
just got to get over into some other stuff. Two things. One, a statement
on March the 5th. I think it was March 5th of last
year. It is okay to not be okay. And Trey has said that several
times in the last few months. It is okay. And that was the Bible. That
was biblical. It was brought out of the text
of the narrative of the Gospels, the story of Jesus Christ who
bled and died and wept. We walked and we looked at John
11 last week and Jesus was grieved. He was so sad and stricken. He was in anguish and He was
angry at death because it hurt those He loved. That's a human
experience. But He never lost focus. So we're here to But the second
thing, yeah, I lose track of thought. The second thing is
the insistence by another brother that I read Psalm 40 that day. And the insistence on what the
power of God's word does. No matter where we're at. In life. Because when we are
at our wits end, when we are at the bottom of the barrel,
when we are at a place of uncertainty, God the Spirit will speak to
that childlikeness. So the purpose of today's sermon
then, as we get into 1 Peter 1 yet again, is to delve into the profound
nature of Christ's immutable love. Because what do we see?
Go to 1 Peter. You know it already. I don't have to read it every
time. You got it? Verse eight, though you've not
seen him, you'll love him. As he's talking to the Jews in
the dispersion. He's talking to these people who have lost
their identity. He's talking to the people who have lost their homes. He's
talking to the people who have lost everything because Christ
came to them and showed them the way. then all of a sudden
they're in insurmountable pain, insurmountable loss. And Peter's
like, no, you've not seen him. You know, your faith is going
to survive the test of fire. It's going to be okay. You're
going to rest like a child in the arms of your Father because
Jesus Christ has established you for an inheritance as brothers
and sisters with God as your Father that cannot be smoked
out, that cannot rot out, cannot be stolen. Nothing's going to
happen to it. You are secure because you're
being guarded by God's power. And one day when you see Christ,
I'm reminding you of last week, everything you've ever felt will
make sense when you see Jesus. It's gonna make sense. But even
so now, even if inexpressible, you can have that joy, that power,
that purpose. You can be that person. And we focus a lot in our culture
about loving Jesus, but we often don't know what loving Jesus
means. I say it all the time. It's loving others. But then
I came to realize, and I shared this with some of you already
this week, I've come to realize that sometimes we don't know
what it means to love others because we're not looking at
how Jesus loved others. And we're gonna remedy that.
Though you have not seen him, you love him. What does that
mean? It's not a feeling. Because feelings
change. It's not an emotion. Love is
not an emotion. Scientifically, biologically,
it is. But oh boy, what happens when
that goes away? I don't love you anymore. That's nonsense. I don't love
you anymore is When you've committed to love, someone is betrayal.
I don't feel loving towards you anymore. I don't want to love
you anymore, but I do see that's different. Though you do not now see him.
You believe in him. I'm going to add a few more words
there. You trust in him. You know him. You rest in him.
You hope in him. You believe in him. And you rejoice
with a joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining
the outcome of your faith, which is the salvation of your souls. Now, I want to move to verse
10. I want to read some more here so that I can put it in context
as we continue to talk. So concerning this salvation
that is your joy, who is Jesus Christ, the prophets who prophesied
about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully.
That was their mission. They wanted to find out more
about it. They wanted to see it being fulfilled. They searched
and inquired carefully who and when, what person and time, The
spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted
the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories of Christ. It was revealed to them that
they were serving not themselves, but serving you. Oh, dear, saint,
beloved of God, child of the most high, brothers and sisters
of the Lord Jesus, secure in his love. In your pain, they
were serving you. in the things that have now been
announced to you through those who preached the good report
to you by the power of the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things
into which angels long to see. Therefore, prepare your minds
for action. See, we like that, right? Being sober minded. Action number one, set your hope
fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the day
of Christ revealing. Number two, as obedient children,
don't be conformed to the affections and passions of your brain and
your desires and ignorance. But as he called you to be set
apart, aka holy, as he is holy, therefore be that way. in everything
you do in your conduct. Act as though you are. You were
righteous in Christ, so act like it. Since it is written there, you
shall be holy for I am holy. And if you call on him as father
who judges impartially according to each one's deeds, conduct
yourself with fear throughout your time of exile. Now, I'll
deal with that when I get there in a couple of weeks. But let
me say, that's not fear of judgment. Because John refutes that. Perfect love cast away all fear.
Here, we need to understand respect. We need to understand image.
We need to understand consequence. We need to understand temporal
consequences. There's a lot going on there.
So there is things to fear, but it's not the judgment of God. Without knowing that you were
ransomed from the worthlessness of your inherited, the ways,
excuse me, from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers,
that is your traditions, not with perishable things such as
silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like
that of a lamb without spot or blemish. He was foreknown before
the foundation of the world, but was made known in the last
times for your sake, who through Him are believers in God, who
raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory, so that your
faith and hope are in God. having purified your souls by
obedience to the truth for a sincere, here it is, brotherly love, love
one another earnestly from a pure heart since you have been born
again, not of something that perishes, but something that
imperishes through the living and abiding word of God. And
I'm gonna talk about all of that in the context of you have not
seen him yet you love him. By emphasizing my objective today,
which is to draw from Christ's example of how he loved as a
human being so that we may better understand how we can remain
steadfast in that love. I'm going to give you the punchline
at the beginning so you can follow along. And here it is. Jesus
never stopped driving toward his purpose and his calling,
and he never neglected to love others no matter what. He worried not about what was
happening to him because he knew it was the Father's will. He
focused on who he was and who he was sent to save. That's it. So what is Christ's mission?
If we want to love Him, we need to know what He did. And these Jews
knew all of that stuff when they talked about the prophets. I
mean, could you imagine going somewhere in a secular society
with modern identities, where the church hasn't been in, you
know, 75, 80 years in a public space, and going to a 13-year-old
and saying, hey, what do you know about the prophets? They're
going to have a halo reference. Or they're going to talk about
something they've seen in some television show or some book they read.
Or they may even say, oh, you mean the Bible prophets that
brought down hellfire and brimstone and all that kind of stuff, you
know, like turn fish to rainbows and frogs? It's really discombobulated. But if I'm telling that person
about the gospel and about the, if I'm reading 1 Peter, they're
not going to understand that. Now, is it necessary? In some
sense, yes. when it causes inquiry, when
it collides with, well, how am I supposed to love? And so we need to take some time
out to understand these things. We have so modernized the gospel
narratives and the New Testament teachings that they've lost their
place in antiquity. So I want to explore Christ.
If we're to love Him, we need to know how He loved, because
if we're to love Him accurately, we need to love according to
His standard. And if we see what Peter is telling
these people, here's what I want you to do. Prepare your mind
for action, sober-minded. Don't go back to your old disciplines.
Don't go back to your old coping mechanisms. Don't go back to
your old behaviors and your old habits. Don't go back to your
old people. Don't fall back into your old
religion. Don't fall back into these things. I want you to love
one another with genuine brotherly love, with a pure heart because
you have been saved and redeemed, not because somebody's bought
something from you with gold and silver, but you've been purchased
by the blood of Christ. I've been purchased? See, you
understand that because you've been around long enough to have
heard the language. But I'm not so sure everybody
knows it. I had a conversation with some people yesterday about
wisdom. Wisdom is an extremely difficult thing to... populate. Can wisdom be a core value? The
answer is no and yes. Because wisdom has to apply to
something. Love has to apply to something.
It's not ambiguous. It's not like Sophos. We're not
just thinking. We're doing. And so I've broken down this,
whatever you want to call it, lecture, sermon, teaching, observation. It's really an observation and
an application for me, ergo sermon for you, from the text that I'm
studying for the sake of the call of God in my life as an
overseer, a shepherd of your joy. First thing let's look at
is Christ's divine nature and his human experience. Jesus, in his flesh, was born
as a human being. Jesus is a human being all the
way. There's no part of Jesus that
isn't human because he's all human. Jesus is also God at the same
time, but Jesus' humanity is not God. Jesus is God as a human
being. And that's as simple as it gets,
and that's as rich as you're gonna get it. Because if I take
time to begin to do all the ridiculous work that so many people have
tried to do, talking about the hypostatic union, and the dual
nature, and the dual identity, and all of these other things,
and to parse it out about what informed who, when, where, and
how this worked, and how the Spirit of God interceded on behalf
of the Son, and when the Son actually came, and when the Son
actually became God, or was He always God? He was always God.
He was God as a zygote. He was God as an embryo. He was
God as an infant. He was God as a toddler. He was
God as a 10-year-old. He was God as a young man. He
was God at the age of 30 when the father said very clearly,
this is my son. And for three and a half, four
years, he served his only mission. And he did so because of his
love, because he is love. But he was completely human.
He hungered. He hurt. He fell down. He scuffed his knees. He probably
had nosebleeds. I've heard people have also.
Could you imagine growing up and being the mother and father,
the surrogate parents of Jesus? I mean, they weren't surrogate
parents. They were his parents. Jesus Christ was born from Mary. came from her. She raised him.
He didn't raise himself. He wasn't sitting there as an
infant going, well, I better poop so I can be genuine baby. He
was completely human. He learned to speak and write,
to pronounce words. He didn't come out speaking Koinon
Greek and Hebrew and Syriac and all the other languages that
they spoke in that time. But at the same time, he was
still fully God. and that's supposed to make us go, oh, and that's
it, you got it. That's the lecture, that's the
seminary PhD lecture. That's the advanced placement
course on the dual nature of Jesus Christ. It is, so it is,
oh. You've graduated. Welcome, doctors. You have it. His humanity was necessary. He
became. The only thing that could stand
in the place of what needed to be judged humanity. He had to be tempted as he was
in this fallen world like you are. Verse 20. He was foreknown before
the foundation of the world, but was made manifest in the
last times for the sake of you. Who through him are believers
in God that you have not seen him, you love him, he was before
you. He was before all things, all
things are made through him and for him and by him, there's nothing
made that he did not make. And friends, this ought to just
make us a little bit cognitively numb and emotionally giddy. If I were to impose some thoughts
and feelings on you, embody those. Because when we go into a place
of inhaling the diaphragm, bringing the shoulders back and feeling
a little confident in our grasp of the theological intricacies
of this, we've missed the point. It's supposed to make us exhale.
Not go, oh yeah, some ammunition. Some stuff. I'm a hoarder of
things, of ideas. I'm a hoarder of ideas. 500 plus napkins I've scanned
pictures of where I've written down things. Stupid. I don't
want to forget that. You will forget all of that.
You can't. You can't. Limitless, it's not real. It's
not going to happen. Until I get the A.I. chip. My
experience with A.I. is I don't want it in my head. I'd be dumber. And John one and the word became
flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen we have seen his
glory, glory as the only son of the father, full and grace,
full of grace and truth. Who, Paul says in Philippians
2, though he was, what? In the form of God, he did not
count equality with God, he did not count being God, he did not
count being the God of the cosmos, a thing to be grasped, but he
emptied himself by taking the form of a slave, being born in
the likeness of men. Hebrews 4, somewhere around verse
15, And we do not have a high priest, or for we do not have
a high priest that does not sympathize with our weaknesses, but in every
way, in every aspect, in every respect, he has been tempted
as we are, yet he has not sinned. There it is. I've got a Lord who took on flesh,
and He walked with me, and this is Jesus, and He loved me, and
He loves me, and I've not seen Him yet, but I love Him. He did that. He is that. You see, and I can't make you
feel these things. I can't make you know these things.
Only the Spirit of God can do that through the exposition of
His Word. through the hearing of the Bible. My commentary,
it helps the church sometimes build a little bit in understanding,
and more importantly, application, but at the same time, it could
confuse all of you. The second thing. Why did I say
that? Because I wanted to reinforce
the humanity of Jesus. as a separate and complete nature
from his divine nature. If he were sitting in here with
us today, we wouldn't know it. There's nothing special about
him. He was not white and he did not
have blonde hair and blue eyes. He did not have that glow. Sorry guys, that's Uncle Billy,
not Jesus. He rode in on a stallion in the
first century and a Harley in the 21st. Jesus came in on a
donkey. Isaiah 49, he says, we're going
to ride on the shoulders of kings. Consider that for a minute, that
we are standing on the shoulders of the king of kings. who became
a person to die in our place. My commentary doesn't matter.
Christ's response to his suffering. So he lived in this world. He
lived as a human being. He's going to suffer. He got sick. He got hurt. He
got his feelings hurt. He was scared. I don't know what the boogeyman
was in the first century, but I'm sure there was one. And there's
not even a boogeyman anymore. You can be scared of what's real
now. It's all right there in your
face. Most people are scared of what doesn't even affect them
or is not even logically around them, but that's what we do. Jesus had endurance in suffering.
When he responded to suffering, when he responded to rejection,
It illustrates his unwavering identity and his mission. Now
I want you to understand this. See, I could easily take this
into a purpose-driven thing. You do have a mission. It's okay
to understand your purpose. My purpose is just to be in church.
No. That's one of your responsibilities.
Your purpose is to be part of a body that's bigger than you. After Sunday. But if you can't
do Sunday, you can't do Monday. Why? Because what God does powerfully
here when we're together is not something you can get. And I
don't know why, because I don't have God's answer book. But you
can't get that watching it on the television. When I revisit my sermons every
week, I don't feel what I'm feeling right now. I don't think what
I'm thinking right now because everything Seems spontaneous. That's just
my nature. But I think it's divinely prepared. For God's purpose in your purpose. And this. Now you rejoice, Peter
says, though for a little while, if necessary, you've been grieved
by various trials. There's no one that's been grieved by trials
more than Jesus. And Isaiah, as I was out in 49
this morning, 53, just a few chapters over, the prophet speaks
of Christ. He was despised. He was rejected
by men. One of my greatest hymns, my
most favorite hymns, not greatest, but one of my favorite hymns
is a man of sorrows. It says he was a man of sorrows
and acquainted with grief as one from whom men hide their
faces. He was despised and the world
esteemed him not. You ever felt that way? Well,
I can't love anybody. I can't love myself. Jesus doesn't
understand. Jesus doesn't. Yes, he does. I mean, if he came in like a
supermodel with superhuman strength, I mean, everybody would have
loved him, but nobody loved him. Except those that the Holy Spirit
opened their eyes to hear the Word. To see the love of God
in a way that human logic and reason cannot fathom. To comprehend
that before the ages were, he was. And in His infinite wisdom
and His infinite love and His infinite glory, He chose to create
us for Himself to receive the joy of who He is and share and
bask in the very light of Him. Not, hey, let me shine on you.
No, hey, shine with me. Hear that, church. It's no wonder
the doctrinal heresy of little Christ is so prominent. Because
some people see this without the Spirit. They're like, oh
yeah, I'm Jesus too, I'm a God too. No, you're not. We share
in the glory of the Son of God. It's not our light, it's His
light given to us. And it's not yet, but it will
be. Jesus was despised, Jesus hurt.
Father, if you're willing, remove this cup. Nevertheless, not my
will, but yours be done, Father. And the scripture says, Luke
writes it this way, and being in agony, he prayed more earnestly. And his sweat became like drops
of blood falling from falling from his forehead to the ground. And about the ninth hour, Jesus
cried out with a loud voice. My God, my God, why have you
forsaken me? It's what Isaiah writes in the
49th chapter. That Zion has said, the Lord
has forsaken me. My God has forgotten me. But God said, just as a woman
will not forget her nursing child, I will not forget you. I will
raise you up. You will be my people. Beloved,
we are raised up. Christ is raised up. The resurrection
of Jesus is our hope. And we live in that place today,
knowing that it is ours. It is how Jesus dealt with His
suffering. It's how Jesus dealt with His
rejection. He never lost who He was. He never lost why He
was here. But He was always confronted
with those dilemmas. Now imagine being completely
human, but knowing you had the power to exercise
as God. Jesus did not deem that important. Philippians 2. He did not deem
that important. It wasn't important. It wasn't
His purpose. It wasn't His mission. And to
be seen as God is to be seen in His love and His suffering
as God in the flesh. And so Jesus got up from the
garden and He went out and He never missed a beat in His mission
to love, His mission to have empathy. His mission to do the
will of the Father. He never stopped. And beloved,
suffering stops us in our tracks. And it's why we don't love. It's
why we say, I can't love. I've got nothing else to give.
I understand that. God understands that too. And this sermon is
not for you to go, oh poor me, I need to start loving. No, the
sermon is to confront you with the reality that we're not able
to love, but we're called to do so anyway. and that our hope
is to put our focus on the resurrection of Christ, on the power of Christ,
on the love of God and His examples so that we can measure if what
we're doing, thinking and wanting today is like the love of Christ
and if not, then we surrender to the reality that only Christ
can love this way. Oh God, have mercy. He already
has given you mercy in Christ and all of that is paid so we
stand up and then we can take a deep breath. Then we can stand
up with our shoulders raised. Then we can inhale and go, oh,
I have purpose. Because I'm in Christ. That's
who I am. That's what I'm supposed to be.
That's what I'm supposed to be doing. Where? Everywhere. With
yourself, in your marriage, in your dating relationships, in
your desires, in what you do as a job. God gave us those jobs
so that we may work as unto Christ. No matter how good or bad, how
amazing we may appear to our co-workers and bosses, or how
pathetic they look at us. No matter how much we make or
how less we make. No matter how much money they steal from us,
or how much money they pay us. It is unto Christ. It is unto
Christ. Verses 18 and 19 of 1 Peter there,
it says, knowing that you were ransomed from the feudal ways
inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such
as silver or gold, with the precious blood of Christ, like that of
a lamb without spot or blemish. And I mentioned it earlier, but
in this context here, Christ's mission was redemption and love. And he gave his life that He
would take it up again and give us life. And so the life we have
is not ours. Beloved, listen to this. We know
the verse, I live this life. It's not mine. I live by faith
in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me. This
life is not my own. I've been bought with a price.
And over and over again, we see in the narratives, the Old Testament,
the men and women and the children of the Old Testament. I mean,
listen, look at Isaac. I mean, imagine taking your child
and then to keep asking about where's the sacrifice? And Abraham
says, son, God will provide a sacrifice for himself. And they go, where's
the sacrifice? Well, God told me you're the
sacrifice. Let's do it, dad. Boy, Randall
would have had to fly off that mountain. Where's Jay? He's gone. He's
gone. But God gives us that resolve.
And we're gonna be shocked and moved because something tragic
happens. Something tragic changes and
that's humanity. That's what we're going to do.
But yet God can give us the peace to be like a young boy says,
okay, dad, cut my throat. And if it weren't for the Spirit
of God stopping him, Abraham would have. He didn't have to
prove it to God. He proved it to himself. He proved
it to his son. He proved it for us. The prophets were not doing what
they were doing for them. They were doing it for us. Now
imagine living the whole of life, the whole of human history, so
that all of it would come to the place of Christ, so that
we on this side of the cross can look back at the stories
of men, women and children and go, that was for me. Moses' suffering
was for me. Jeremiah, he kept Kleenex in
business. There's a weeping. That was for
me. David, that was for me. Personalize it. It's not wrong
to do that. But don't forget that me includes
we, because I'm only one little fingernail part of a whole body. Somebody's got to be the earwax.
No, we're just talking about body parts. Christ's mission
was to redeem, to love. Even as the Son of Man came not
to serve, but to be served. I mean, I got that wrong. Not
to be served, but to serve. We often say it the other way,
right? So if we love like Jesus loved,
then we ought to serve. And then we sit there and say,
we've got to serve Jesus. Well, Jesus doesn't need service. He came
to serve. So now we can serve others, and
in doing so, we love Christ. But we don't need to serve others
to make ourselves feel better. We need to serve others because
we are better. We are righteous. We are His
people. Oh, I shouldn't have put this
text in here. I know I'm running out of time. John 10, 17, 18. For this reason the Father loves
me because I lay down my life that I may take it up again and
no one takes it from me but I lay it down of my own accord. And
he goes and cries, Father forgive them. They don't know what they're
doing. Now think about that. Christ's
mission to die, nothing kept him from it. Christ's
unwavering love and empathy. Having purified your hearts and
souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly
love. Love one another earnestly from a pure heart. Jesus says
greater love has no one than this that someone would lay down
his life for his friends. And the context of this is not
for us to die for people. The context of this is for us
to live for people. When Jesus saw the crowds, the
gospel tell us, he had what? Compassion, not irritation. He had irritation for self-righteousness.
Nah, he had anger justified so for self-righteousness. It'd
be irritation for me because I'm just like it. These people
think they're better than me. But I think we need to live out
Christ's examples. I think we need to live out holiness
because that's who we are. And I think we need to be imitators
of God, as Paul tells us to be in Ephesians 5. And when we get
over there and we say, husbands, love your wife as Christ loved
the church, we need to know what that means. You know what it means
for husbands to submit to their wives and wives to submit to
their husbands and the church to submit to one another and
everyone submitting to Christ. Everybody is to submit to everybody
else. And some role. In some sense. As unto Christ. Paul tells the church of Colossae
to put on as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, put on these
things, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness,
and patience, bearing with one another, and if anyone has a
complaint, forgiving each other as the Lord has forgiven you,
you must also forgive. Friends, there is power in understanding
God's love for us. And until we do, We're not going
to be able to love Christ. And when we do, we love Christ
by doing that which Christ did in the lives of those people
with us. With us. We don't have to go looking for
somebody. With us. And that's what the rest of this
letter is about. Those with us. in suffering, those with us in
good times, those with us when things are really, really awful
and when things are really, really amazing. This. Is our example. Christ never lost who he was. And I've heard me use the illustration
before about how my grandmother used to always tell us, you know,
remember whose you are. What Jesus said, they will know
that you are my disciples because you have love for one another.
So let's put it in her voice. They will know whose you are
because you love the church, because you love your spouse,
because you love your neighbor, because you love your enemies. Let's understand the love of
God that way. Let's pray. Father, as we approach the table, Let's remember. Let's remember
all these things that we've talked about this morning. Let's embrace. What it means to be loved by
you. What it means to be restored,
what it means to be renewed. Because suffering is not going
to go away, it's just going to change. Lord, help us to find
whose we are, to know who we are in Christ, that nothing can
separate us from you, that we ourselves cannot run far away
or swim deep enough or fly high enough to get away from you.
Lord, you have found us, you have secured us, you have embraced
us, and you are keeping us by your power. Even when we kick
and scream and try to squirm away and wallow in our pain,
you are there. We thank you for it. Lord, help
us to be light in this truth. Help us to walk patiently with
people as they traverse this incredibly complex and delicate
world, knowing that, simply put, you are our Father, and you will
not leave us behind. We thank you for this in Christ,
amen.