We're tired. It's amazing what
a little bit of sleep deprivation can do for you. 1 Peter chapter 1. We're going
to be here a long time. I just want to read verses 3 through
5. Blessed be the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ. According to his great mercy,
he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the
resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. To an inheritance
that is imperishable, undefiled and unfading, kept in heaven
for you, who by God's power are being guarded through faith for
salvation, ready to be revealed in the last time. Now, last week we looked at the
reality of God our Father. And what we're going to talk
about today is going to really just be a continuation of that.
And that we see that God, according to His great mercy, and when
you see mercy you need to understand that that is inclusive of the
love of God. God is not giving mercy to some and love to others.
The mercy of God is His love. The mercy of God is the love
of God to give Jesus Christ, His Son, on behalf of His people,
that they may have eternal life. And so God's love for us, God's
love for us, sets us into a place where we are His children. We
are no longer born of the world, but we are born into Him. We
are no longer of this world, but we are in it. But we are
part of a new kingdom. We have been remade. And I'm
going to talk about that a little bit this morning. And so we see
that we're born again. We're born into the kingdom of
heaven. We're born into Christ. And that's a spiritual thing,
as we'll see. And the reality of that is that we have a living
hope. So the hope then, what we see
in being born again, and that's sort of the focus today, is that
we see at the fall that the wages of sin is death, but the free
gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus. We see Adam and
Eve being cursed. We see death coming into the
world because of not trusting the promises of God. But the
absolute sovereignty of God in that entire exchange was that
he may be seen, his glory, as a redeemer of his people by putting
himself in between sin and righteousness. He who knew no sin became sin
that we might become the righteousness of God. And so through this new birth
now we have something that is not death. We have something
to look forward to. Everything we have on this earth,
every relationship we have will not be the same in eternity. It will be better. So don't be
long-hearted about the idea that things aren't permanent. That's
the reality of everything in this world is that it's impermanent.
We do not long for that which is here. We long for that which
shall be in a spiritual sense. And because
the promises of God are true, we know that one day it shall
also be physically manifested for us. So we are born with an
inheritance, just like a child who receives an inheritance at
the death of their parents, we receive an inheritance. And that
inheritance has been sealed through the death of Christ, who is now
alive, and we are found in Him alive. No longer is the wage
of sin, death, our lot. But eternal life is our lot.
And so we'll really start unpacking this more and more every single
week, but I want to focus on this teaching of being born again
because we see it everywhere. We hear it everywhere. During
westward expansion, we saw a big push for open air evangelism
coming from England and then over to the colonies. And George
Whitfield was one of these guys, historically, I don't know if
you know much about history, but if you do, you understand
that he was one who came up and down the eastern seaboard and
he preached in every large town, what we would call the major
cities now. Every tiny little town, major town in the colonies,
he preached. And his message was a little
bit different. Instead of just preaching what was normally heard,
the open air preaching was the emphasis that you must be born
again. You must be born again. So from
that point until now in history, and then the resurgence back
in the 1950s, and we won't get into all that, but it became
sort of a mainstay. And so we've heard it our entire
lives, especially Southerners. You must be born again. Jesus
even says that in John chapter three, when Nicodemus is baffled,
you know, this foundational dialogue between this teacher of all Israel
and the Son of God, Jesus introduces this concept of being born again
in a way or being born above in a way that baffles this theologian. The theological nuance here is
that there is a necessity of spiritual rebirth. Jesus says,
you must be born again. Now the frustration there is
that what we have heard out of the mouth of Jesus, what Nicodemus
was told, in his human mind, he is thinking to himself, how
can that be done? What must I do? How can I make
myself born again? And he says so in such a way,
he says, am I to go back into my mother's womb and come out
again? The absurdity of that question shows the impossibility
of that comprehension. And Jesus makes it very clear
that this rebirth is not physical at all, that it's spiritual. And it's a spiritual transformation,
a renewal, a regeneration initiated by the Holy Spirit and it underscores
the divine origin of the entire teaching of regeneration and
the new birth and being born again. Emphasizing that this
is a work of God beyond human capability and beyond human understanding. So let me say that in the onset. Is that what we are going to
talk about and what we are talking about is beyond human understanding. So all we can do is take the
little nuanced expressions of scripture, four, five, six, seven,
eight, maybe nine of them, and just sort of see what they say.
And then from there, we cannot create a system of the doctrine
of regeneration and just go, we figured it out. The point
is we can't figure it out. We can't figure it out. We're
not going to be able to figure out when and where and how and
at what opportunity people are born again. The Bible doesn't
give us that prescription, yet it is a fool's errand for us
to continue to try to devise the reality of what that looks
like and what's necessary for it. And I have friends and loved
ones and family and enemies who are laboring over that very question
as we speak. How do I know that I'm born again?
and theologian and pastor and parent and grandparent throughout
the ages have always answered that question and in some way put the emphasis
on what we do rather than what Christ has done. Rather than what Christ has done.
In Titus chapter, we've heard about John in John three, three
through seven. You know, Jesus is very clear. You must be born
again. It is of the Spirit, He says. It is not something that
happens. Let's go there. Let's read that.
We're going to go to several different places today. He says, truly, truly, in verse
3, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of
God. Nicodemus asks, how can a man
be born when he's old? Can he enter a second time in
his mother's womb and be born? Jesus answered, truly, truly, I say
to you, truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water
and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of flesh is
flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not
marvel that I say to you, you must be born again. And Jesus
using a natural element, a natural occurrence, a natural experience.
As you see the wind, it blows where it wishes and you do not,
you hear it sound, but you do not know where it comes from
and you do not know where it goes. So it is with everyone
who is born of the spirit right there. That very phrase teaches
us we have no business trying to nail down the doctrine of
regeneration. We have no business trying to
put the template over other people and say, oh well, you don't quite
fit the mold. Because Nicodemus had that question.
He says, how can these things be? Verse nine. And Jesus answered
him, are you not the teacher of Israel? Are you not the teacher
of all of Israel and you do not understand these things? What
is it showing? It's showing that there is no amount of study No
amount of study that will apply these things to your soul. Jesus says again, truly, truly,
I say to you, we speak of what we know and bear witness to what
we have seen, but you do not receive our testimony. If I told
you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe
if I tell you heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven
except he who descended from heaven. The Son of Man, speaking
of Himself. And as Moses lifted up the serpent
in the wilderness, and I'll impose the whole point here, for the
salvation of God's people to rest in His power. So must the Son of Man be lifted
up that whoever is believing in Him will have eternal life.
So you see, it's about what God brings to us. It's about what God does in us.
That we rest in the simplicity of grace, in the simplicity of
the power of God, without parsing out the details of the doctrinal
intricacies. Literally resting in a disposition
of hope. I'm going to regret what I'm
about to say, but I disavow the idea, I disavow and dispute the
idea that one must have a prescribed, explicit expression of gospel
truths to a minimum standard of man in order for God to rebirth
them. I find it somewhat demonic to
impose that. And what I have not said is that
there is a false gospel that saves, and what I have not said
is that the gospel doesn't matter, and what I have not said is that
truth and theological things are not important, but what I
have said is what Jesus says. Are you not the teacher of all
Israel, yet you do not understand these things? If I tell you earthly
things like studying and knowing and acknowledging and apprehending,
and you don't understand them, how in the name of me are you
going to understand Heavenly things So what's gonna happen
for you is that you have to understand that's what Moses did in the
desert to say y'all are dying Because the wages of sin is death
Look at this little bronze serpent and live You've got to look at the Son
of Man and live And then the question is begged who is the
Son of Man that's why we have the Gospels and And we have no business imposing
evangelistically the letters of the New Testament on an unsaved
person. The story of Christ is sufficient.
The gospel of John is sufficient. Any part therein is sufficient.
For God is in the business of awakening his people to the trusting
of his promises. And bringing them into himself
and making them his. being born again into the unity
of Christ. In Titus, Paul begins to talk. In the verse 5 of chapter 3 of
Titus, it talks about the washing of regeneration and renewal of
the Holy Spirit. And it talks and specifically
deals with this idea that there's this spiritual cleansing and
rejuvenation, emphasizing that God the Holy Spirit imparts new
life. And it's a radical transformation,
and it's an inward transformation of the mind. Many people believe the propositions
of the New Testament, but it doesn't make them born of God. What makes us born of God is
God himself. And some of the evidences of
that ebb and flow, and so we can't even put our hope in our
rebirth. You understand that, beloved?
Our hope can't be in whether or not we're regenerate, or whether
or not we have the right faith, or whether or not we know the
right things. God given spirit life is like
a child when you say tomorrow we'll have eggs for breakfast
and they wake up expecting eggs and would be shocked if they
weren't there. Or waking up today and yes the
clocks have changed but the time has not. And the sun didn't come up. That's as simple as life is in
Christ. And everything else is added
unto us. We saw in this section of 1 Peter,
for weeks we looked, the setting apart of the spirit, the sanctification
of the spirit, the cleansing of the spirit, the righteousness
that comes by the spirit, the being born again by the spirit. It is a work of God. And this inward transformation,
this inward rest, this inward hope, it speaks to everything
that we are and to every aspect of our life and every relationship
that we have. And we become unified with Christ,
and in being so, we are unified with others. But it doesn't mean
that we have become disunified or ununified or disjointed with
the world around us. And I'm going to talk about that
as well. Another way of looking at regeneration, Ephesians chapter
2, Paul points to the rich mercy and the great love of God. It's
the same story over and over again. That God's love is the
motivation behind causing belief. He uses the phrase, we are alive
together in Christ, even when we were dead in our trespasses. Theologically, this includes
the concept of grace as something that cannot be earned or obtained,
that it is the favor of God, that is the love of God. and
that regeneration is a communal experience. I want you to hear
the way I'm saying this. Regeneration is a communal experience
that connects believers with Christ and connects believers with each
other in a new way, a new life, a new spiritual sense. It's why
we fight so hard sometimes. in so many areas of the faith,
because the world in which we live, and I don't even want to
say so-called, but the culture of believing, the culture of
Christianity in these United States is everything but unified. And there's some buzzwords in
the world today that just sort of get you in trouble, but you
know what? We can't worry about other people's triggers when
it comes to speaking things that need to be said. And I think we need to understand
that the gospel and its power to create in us a spiritual connection
to God and to one another implicates the idea that we are able to
have a spiritual connection with other people who are not in Christ,
not in the same way. I read out of Matthew before
Matthew 6 and 5, I read half of 5 and then most of 6. And Jesus talks there, He says,
you've heard that it was said to love your, excuse me, He says,
love your neighbor and hate your enemies. You've heard that it
was said, you've been taught that, theologically, that you
are to hate your enemies and to love your neighbor. But I
say to you, Jesus says these things, I say to you, love your
enemies and pray for those who persecute you so that you may
be children of your Father who is in heaven. Now that doesn't
mean if you love your enemies then you become a child of God.
What he's saying is that you live out your Inheritance you
live out your adoption you live out your role you live up to
your name. Does that make sense? Then he goes on and talks about
forgiveness he says even the wicked love Can you love the
way Christ love your love must be perfect as your father's love
is perfect Regeneration, the new birth,
it creates a unity. But sometimes we can't put our
finger on it. We can't understand it. It just
exists. It's happening around us. We
learn and grow from the experience. Paul, teaching to the church
of Corinth in his second letter, verse 17 of chapter 5, talks
about the Christian The child of God being a new creation.
Now, how many times have we heard that? I'm a new creation. The
old is gone. Behold, the new has come. Now,
what we've done in our theological circles is we've created a law,
and it's a doctrinal law and a practical law. The lawyers
need to be here to help make sure I'm saying this correctly. In which we subject other people
to and say, okay, If you are a new creation, then
these things will be evident in your life. Your life will
be new, your mind will be new, your head will be new, your hands
will be new, your eyes will be new, until they're not. And so
as long as we're looking inwardly, that's what I like to call navel-gazing,
is looking at ourselves. As long as we're looking inwardly,
we're not absolutely, at that moment, resting outwardly in
Christ. As long as we're looking at ourselves
and saying, well, I know that I'm a believer because of X,
Y, and Z, or that I'm growing, or the Spirit of God is within
me because of this or that or the way I feel, I know these
things are true. Well, your brain can trick you. Our rest is a disposition that
is given by the Spirit that the truth of things and the evidence
of things assist us in, but they cannot be the object of our hope.
And I don't know about you, but if you've read the Bible at all,
you realize that the heroes of the faith, men and women, children
and adults, aged and young, are doing a very poor job of meeting
the standard of perfection. As a matter of fact, I would
say that everyone listed in the narratives of scripture have
done the worst job of living their lives, as an example. of
faithfulness. So, to what comparison are we
finding our hope? And the only comparison that
we have is that of God Himself. And if we say that we are as
He is in the real sense, then we have really misunderstood
how to look at ourselves. But if we are saying that we
are as he is because he declared us so, then we understand there's
a deeper love here than we can put our finger on. That's how we really love one
another, beloved. We love one another by seeing each other
through the best of eyes. And as Christians, we love each
other by seeing each other through the eyes of righteousness. Don't love someone because of
what you hope they will become. Love them for who they are. For
God has loved you in that way. The old life of sin is replaced
by a new life in Christ, it's true, but it's a spiritual reality. Now
does that spiritual reality speak to our life? Absolutely. In every
way, in every way. In Romans 6, Paul uses the metaphor
of baptism, talking about how we're united with Christ in baptism,
in his death and in his resurrection, being found immersed. The word baptized means to be
put under. So we've been put under the water
in a way that Christ has been put under the water of death
and righteousness and judgment and justice. It's a symbol, it's
a metaphor. And then we come out of the water,
it's a symbol of when Christ beat death, because he was not
sinful, so death had no warrant on him, could not hold him. This is a very particular aspect
of regeneration. We are co-resurrected with Christ
to walk in newness of life, is what we say when we come out
of the baptismal waters. We've been buried with Christ in baptism,
raised to walk in newness of life. This newness of life, yes,
will include maturing and growing and transformation of our attitudes,
our actions, our affections, all the other A's that we could
come up with. And we do see changes until we
don't. And then we do very well until
we're not doing well. And we walk really good until
something, whatever that straw that finally tips the balance
puts us over the edge. And what does the world say? What does the Christian world
say? Well, I never did think they were truly Christians. Yeah, I knew something was wrong.
You ever heard that? Well, I knew something was wrong. Something
was off. Here's a newsflash. Go look in
the mirror and say, you know what? Something's off with the
guy I'm looking at. Because there's something off with all of us.
We just might not know it yet. We need to put our eyes on what
Christ has made us. We've been born again to walk
in a resurrected promise. We are no longer enemies of God,
but children of God, friends with God. I mean, this fights
against history, doesn't it? It fights against the puritanistic
idea that, you know, we're still the worm. And that we're gonna grovel at
the feet of our Father. We're not. And it feels blasphemous,
doesn't it? It feels blasphemous for us to
call God, which is not even His name, It's what he is, Elohim,
the highest of all things. And every language under the
son has a word for God. To call him daddy. And even that word now has been
ruined by son. It's a sad day. When we can't
walk bold into the home of our father and our mother and sit down and be loved. And
that's exactly how we should look at our relationship with
God. He has born us anew that we can be His righteousness. Then we have that calling because
of who we are, because of this unity in Christ, because of this
new relationship, this new righteousness that is not ours, but it's been
credited to us, we now can see through eyes that can be transformative,
that do have the implication. We can see the implications of
being born again and that we have a calling that reflects
the reality of our new identity in ethics and morals and life
and love. and in every relationship. Because, beloved, I don't care
how you shake it, this world is about relationships. All of it. Nothing you do. Well, I do everything online.
There's another person on the other side of that online. And
the only reason that you do business online is because somebody wants
to make money for the pockets of somebody else that they love
to feed them, to take care of them, to have time with them. Everything is about relationships. In the Old Testament, God, through
the prophet Ezekiel, promises a new heart. And it anticipates this new covenant,
this inward transformation, moving from this external adherence
to the law to an internal motivation and capacity to follow God's
statutes by faith. In Romans 12, verse 2, talks
about the renewal of the mind, the renewal of the mind. So we see all these things, and
there's several other places in Scripture, but if I went everywhere,
we'd intersect in some areas that begin to make us lose our
focus. You must be born again. And beloved,
we sit here as a born-again people. How do you know? You know. The worst thing you can do is
try to figure it out. The best thing you can do is rest in the
promises of God. And when you do doubt, rest again. It's okay to play the game of
I don't know. It's okay to have a season and
even binge that season. 40,000 episodes, if you want,
of Am I Really a Child of God? Go ahead. But at the end of the
day, even when you get to the final cliffhanger and it says,
you're not even saved, and it goes off, dun-dun-dun, you better
go to bed and rest. And you better rest in Him. Because
this is your only hope. And the crazy thing is, your
ability to rest is not your hope. It's something He gives. And
He gives it sometimes in peace, and He gives it sometimes in
pressure. Whoever you are, you can rest. And it's why relationships
are essential to the Christian faith, essential to the world,
essential to life. Jesus is not just being cheeky
in the metaphors he uses when he says, I am the bread of life
and the living water. Even scientists and all the great
neurological realities that we know about the chemistry of our
bodies and brains is fascinating. Even the staunchest of agnostics
and atheists who can parse the periodic table for everything
that goes on in the human mind can only say this about love. and they say this, it is eternal
and it transcends life. All of them. We cannot understand
it. Regeneration, as we've seen,
is a work of God's mercy. It's not earned, Titus 3, 5. We've seen that it is is what
makes us able to see and to enter into the kingdom of having, John
3. It is something that we cannot understand, nor should we try
to understand. We should just accept these little
nuanced revelations. We understand that it results
in us becoming a new creation, and what that looks like is that
we are now in a different place with God. And it does have an
impact on our reality, but not perfectly. And so here in 1 Peter 1, verse
3, it says we have a living hope through regeneration, through
the new birth. We've been born again to a living hope through
the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It connects us as believers to
the reality of the resurrection, making spiritual birth a source
of hope. How am I going to be a child
of God? How am I going to do this? How am I going to be faithful? You're not. God is faithful. You have a living hope in Christ.
He is alive. You see how it takes the emphasis
off of us and puts the emphasis completely on Christ. So the
onus of salvation is not on us, it's completely on Christ. The
hope of salvation is not on what we do with what Christ is or
who he is, but on what Christ has done with us in our sin. And what does that do for us?
It does everything. In my mind, it does everything. There's some application that
I have that I think is not something I haven't said
already in this teaching, but we need to be reminded of it.
Look what that's teaching. Because we are children of God,
because of the love of God, we can embrace a hope-filled outlook
of life. Now if I'm completely honest,
and I'm going to be more so than I've ever been in my life, this
world is not worth much. This life is not worth much.
And in comparison, when we see all of the pain, You hear me
talking for years about rest, rest, rest. Sometimes that desire
for rest is fueled by just the absolute suffering that we endure
internal, external, and observationally. It's overwhelming. And so every good, faithful Christian
has in some sense what psychological people would say have suicidal
ideation, which is like, I don't want to die, but if I did, I
would be upset about it. And I think that's okay. I think
it's healthy. I think it's normal. But it's
no way to live. A better way to live is knowing that we, as a child
of God, when God is ready, will take us to Himself. But until
He is ready, He has a glorious purpose and promise for our joy. And so we ask the question, then,
why am I not joyful? Well, that's why Peter wrote
this letter. Peter wrote this letter so that these people who
lost everything and everyone and every freedom and possibly
their own lives, had no idea what they would eat tomorrow,
could rejoice. But that rejoicing, that joy,
sometimes was inexpressible. Sometimes it was just like this
new birth, it just, I get it, there's joy there, there's hope
there, but I just don't, when I open my eyes, it's no longer. Being born again instills a living
hope that influences how we look at our present life, at the future
of this world. And this hope is grounded in
the eternal reality of the resurrection of Christ, which empowers us
as believers to face this life every single day. And not just
face it and go, oh, I don't know that I'll make it. Face it with
confidence and face it with resilience. You know what I've learned? Finally,
I hate to even say this, because God's like, you don't learn enough,
let's give it to you again. I've learned that God, in His mercy,
allows us to be resilient. That means we do bounce back. And it's been my experience that
that resilience, while it may not be The best place in our
emotions or our bodies or relationships, it is better than it was in our
hope. For me, joy is no longer a feeling. It is not an emotion. It can
be. It can produce emotion. Joy is
a settled place of rest and satisfaction. I pray you don't lose sight of
it once you see it. But that takes discipline. And
when we do lose sight of it, we just have to know that while
we can't see it and we're not going to want to see it and we
refuse to acknowledge that it will be, we will come out on
the other side of it. and we will be made new and be
shown who we are, and we will be at rest. And it may, and I
pray, oh God, I pray so much that the season of rest, when
we find it, will be longer. Lord, give me five years, give
me 10 years, give me five minutes, whatever it takes, longer than
I had before. So we are born again, we can
embrace a hope-filled outlook. We can also live out this new
identity. We can live it. We can get up
off our chair. We can get up off the bed. We
can get into the world. We can go to work. We can relate
to our family. We can invest in our marriage.
We can encourage our neighbor as new creations. We can live as new creations. What does that mean? We live
in a way that reflects Christ. What is Christ? Is Christ walking around happy
all the time? Nope. Was Christ walking around saying, Father's
good all the time and all the time? No. Sometimes Jesus was broken beyond
words. Sometimes Jesus was fearful.
and unable to move. Sometimes Jesus was hungry and
couldn't function. Sometimes Jesus was angry and
needed to speak up. Sometimes Jesus was embraced
and loved and many times he was hated. Sometimes Jesus, I won't say
doubted, but it certainly looked like doubt to me. If nothing
else, it was anguish. Many times Jesus was not OK. But he was never hopeless. He was never without promise. Christ rested in the promises
of his father. and we are born into this family,
and all these promises are ours. I want to say that again. Christ rested in the promises
of His Father, and we now, by the Spirit of God, are born into
this family, and all of the promises of Christ belong to us. What's that mean? Well, we gotta
go beyond it. Jesus was tempted to sin, but
He never did. Everything Jesus did, even when
He was angry in how He spoke, when He was sarcastic, when He
was a little bit cheeky, when He was downright harsh, was never
wrong. We can't model that because we
don't know the hearts of people. And so there's something that
we have to do that's because of who we are in Christ that
Christ didn't have to do. And that is that we have to constantly
be inundated with the reality of our guilt and our shame and
our shortcomings and our desires and our passions and our longings
and our, all that stuff. And we're in this blender of
trying to make all this stuff come out some type of smoothie
that's palatable on the outside. But we've got to let go of that. We've got to let go of what we
did this morning, what we thought before we came in here, what
we did last week and last year and 10 years ago and 20 years
ago and 30 years ago and 40 years ago. We have to let go of that
continually presence in things that constantly cause us to feel
guilty and unworthy because Christ died for it. And part of being
a new creation and being adopted into the child as a child of
God is that we are worthy because of Christ to be here. We are
worthy to be loved by God because He said so. He set us right. We have to let go of our attitudes. We have to do things and put
in discipline sometimes to help overcome certain sins that characterize
our flesh. And in doing so, or in order
to do so, we must embrace the virtues and the values of the
Kingdom of Heaven. And oh my goodness, I could just
stop here, take a sip of water, and start a whole new message
on what are the values of the kingdom of heaven, and I can
show you what they're not, and that's the values of American
Christianity, and American politics, and American culture, and American
nationalism. So we'll just set that aside. They have nothing
to do with Christ whatsoever in any way. And every talking point therein
has nothing to do with it. Where do you see that in the
Bible? You just don't see it. These people are in, have been
dispersed from society, from country, from kinsmen. There is no such thing as a nation
of God, much less one under God. Never has been. So let's live it out. Not adopting what other people
say living as a Christian is, but what Christ's word says.
That's why we're here today, that we may be trained to do
the work of the ministry. You realize that everything that I teach
in this pulpit is supposed to encourage you in your personal
reflection, in your personal worship, in your personal life,
that you may impact the lives of those around you from the
most intimate relationship out to the broader ones. And doing the work. Loving and serving. and finding
fulfillment therein. And when we get this new identity
and begin to live it out, it helps us to cultivate our relationship
with our Father. We have a new heart, a new spirit,
and the knowledge of this prompts us to cultivate a deeper relationship
with our Father. Now here is where the rubber
hits the road. or the windshield, depending
on how we're doing it. If we're not disciplined in prayer
and scripture, to some degree, none of these things will be
added unto us. To seek the righteousness of
God, by definition, is to seek after Christ, to long after Him. Beloved, it's not easy. The first thing to go in my life
is my prayer life. My prayer life becomes a work
of the Holy Spirit. Things to mind, I pray, things
to mind. But the formal, sit down, wait around, let's pause
a minute, praying, psh, gone. And when that goes, The reason
it goes, and then the cause of it, it's a double-edged sword.
Then the Bible intimacy goes. I don't want to read the love
letters God's written to me. It happens. But when we embrace this, being
His child, when we stay in the discipline, then the discipline
grows. And it's not something we're obligated to. It's something
that we need, and it's something that we want. The greatest transformation
in anything in life is to take a chore and turn it to a treasure. You need to look at one another
as treasure. The hardest thing to swallow
in our soul is when we know that we're looked at in such a way
that causes other people pain. Guess what, beloved? That's life. And there's going to be some
times when we are very unlovable and people are going to love
us through gritted teeth and clenched fists. And they're going
to serve us and shove that meal under the door as if we're in
a prison. I hope you choke. Enjoy your food. I mean, you
know. But ultimately, when we grow
in our relationship with our Heavenly Father, we will temper. We will soften. and we will learn to serve and
love others. That's what the new birth will do. It will overflow
in acts of love and service to others. It will demonstrate the
love of Christ in tangible ways, tangible ways. And then we as
Christians, as children of the Most High, will impact our community
as we reflect the transformative power of the gospel. The final two things that this
will do for us, as I've already said, it'll foster resilience
through our trials. As Peter writes this letter to
these Christians who are facing extreme persecution, the hope
that comes from knowing that they are born again provides
a foundation for this resilience, a place of standing. Isn't that
the hardest thing in life when we suffer is we don't know where
to stand, we don't know what to do? Sometimes we don't know if we
have a place. But knowing that we're born of
God, that's our place. We are His, and nothing can change
that. Nothing can change His love for
us. Nothing can take us away. We can't take ourselves away
from the love of God. I don't care how many fists we
put into the air, how many curses that we spew. We can't take ourselves away
from Him. We will endure the trials. And here's the reality, beloved.
Learn from me. You can't function taking care
of everybody and thinking that that's what God's called you
to do without taking care of yourself. Because God may make you sick
and put you in the bed for months. And when you stand up, you might
pass out in pain. Or He may kill you. I'm saying
that sort of cheeky. He may put you in a place where
you can't be the hero. And when we're not in the place
where we can do, God will do greater things. When we have all these responsibilities,
all these obligations, all this service, all this stuff, because
sometimes it's the other side, and we're serving and serving
and serving, and then we find our identity in serving, instead
of our identity in our new birth. And then God says, okay, it's
enough of that. Now it's your turn to be served. Now it's someone
else's turn to learn. Now it's someone else's turn.
Now it's your turn to understand the love of God through the hands
of others. Now think about that. Because sometimes when I and
I say that, because sometimes I preach about service and love
and everybody goes, oh, yeah, I got to do better. And they
roll up their sleeves and then they burn themselves to the ground.
And then they love and love and love and they get hit or slapped
or stabbed. And there's no appreciation that resentment sets in. And
we've all been there. And it's not just in the church,
it's in the home, it's in the community, it's with family.
It's in the workplace. But we can only endure while
we rest in the promises of our Father. And what does that do? It restores our joy. How? It puts our eyes on the promise
of this inheritance. What is eternal life? The promise
of God. This living hope from being born
again is not only for this life. but it anchors our heart in the
promise of eternal life. So we're in this flux. Peter,
I mean Paul, oh, I just want to go be with the Lord. It would
be so great for me, but it would be better for you if I remain
and suffer for the sake of your joy. Because this life is light, momentary
affliction in comparison to the eternal weight of glory. The eternal weight of glory. And beloved, this applies to
our marriage, to our children, to our family and friends, to
our neighbors, to our church, to our community, to everything. Everything that we do, everything
that we are. This identity, this promise, this hope, this power
is ours to apply. But there's one that I didn't
say, that I have said, but I want you to see, it applies to ourself. The missing link in most of our
lives as Christians in this culture, especially my generation, is
that we do not take care of us. And then when we finally figure
out we need to, we burn it all down. Model the life of Jesus. There's
a thousand invalids. He rescues one, vanishes. There's thousands of people being
fed. They all want to talk to him, get their Q&A, get their
counseling on. Poof. The disciples don't even know
where they are, where he is. Remember? And then Jesus teleports them
across the sea. Three and a half miles to go.
And immediately they're on dry land. We didn't know, where did you
come? You're not looking after me because you want me. You want
what I have. You want to get full again. You
want a meal. You don't want the bread that I am. That's John
6. Do not labor for the bread that
perishes, but labor for the bread that endures to eternal life.
That includes living out self-care in the faith. Renew your mind.
You can't renew my mind. You can't change my mind. You
can't know my mind. Your head would pop off. Because
I have a hard time keeping mine on because it's so squirrely
sometimes. Take the time. Make the discipline. Know that
Christ is your righteousness. He is your hope. He is your life. And nothing can separate you
from his love. Rest in that, beloved, because as of next week,
we're going to get wound up again. Let's pray. We thank you, Father,
for the simplicity of grace. The simplicity of hope. The good
report of Jesus. Lord, help us to just be still. To be still. And to know You
are the Most High. To know that You are our Father. To know that You have promised
us life. Lord, give us the strength to
endure. Give us the discipline to be resilient. Give us the joy of our eternal
hope. As we take the table today, Father, help us to remember what
Christ has done so that we may serve others. In His name we
pray, amen.