copy of the scriptures to 1st
Peter chapter 1. 1st Peter chapter 1. As a way of getting this in our
ears, I want to just read the first nine verses and we're only
going to talk about the first couple. Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ,
to those who are elect exiles of the dispersion in Pontus,
Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, Bithynia, according to the foreknowledge
of God the Father and the sanctification of the Spirit for obedience to
Jesus Christ and for the sprinkling with his blood, may grace and
peace be multiplied to you. 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
a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you
rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you've been
grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of
your faith, more precious than gold that perishes though it
is tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory
and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Though you have
not seen Him, you love Him. Though you do not now see Him,
you believe in Him, and you rejoice with a joy that is inexpressible
and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the
salvation of your souls." Now, there's a lot in these letters.
I've been floating around a lot of stuff over the last 10 months
or so, and I think it's time to settle on some verse-by-verse
and some letters now. And so I will be doing some 1
Peter, and then also going into some Old Testament as we can
throughout the year. But there's always an explanation
when we start a letter. There's always an occasion. There's
always something that we need to know about it that we may
or may not be able to gain from just reading the letter in and
of itself. Now, it's okay not to know this
stuff. For example, it's okay not to
know exactly who Peter is and why he wrote this and what's
going on here in the particular world, but we can look at Dr. Luke's writing, and we can look
at Acts, we can see the other writings of Paul, and we can
sort of piece together what's happening. And the good thing
is over the last few thousands of years, we've had other people
do a lot of that work for us. We're not living in obscurity. We're not in a place where we
don't have good archaeological data and historical data. But I say that to say this again,
that it's not necessary. It's not necessary for us to
grasp all of the ins and outs of what was going on with these
particular Jewish Christians and why Peter wrote this letter,
because within the context of his writing, it's sufficient
for our instruction. It's sufficient for our encouragement. for the power of God through
these writings to give us what He wants us to have. And so don't
ever feel like, well, I just don't know this stuff, or don't
ever put such emphasis on the historicity of things that you
miss the point, that you miss the point. But all that said,
let's ask ourselves for a minute, who is Peter? Well, Peter's name
is Simon. Jesus called him Peter. Jesus
called him Peter for many different reasons, but in one sense he
did so because Simon's just a hard guy. He's like a rock. The word
kepha or petra in the Greek means rock, and a rock is something
that, you know, from the context of its imagery, is hard, it's
like a foundation, etc. We even see Jesus talking to
Peter. Peter's like, you know, I'll die for you. He's whacking
ears off at the arrest and all this kind of stuff. So we know
who Peter is, but yet Peter didn't really know who he was. Peter didn't really know who
he was. And a lot of us don't know who we are when it comes
to our faith. We are just little mini-me's
of other things and other people. And Peter was no different during
the time of Christ and during his ministry. He had it all together.
He was hyper-confident, but yet he denied Christ. This is the
Peter that wrote these letters. This is the Peter who would be
willing to lay his life down for the Christ. This is the Peter
who was known across all of Palestine as this zealous disciple, the
one that you didn't mess with. He was sort of like the heavy.
Let's carry two swords around. I got your back, Jesus. And then
when the time came and the arrest was made, Peter indignantly would
say, I do not know who you're talking about. I do not know
this man. And Jesus told him that he would
do that. We also see the story in the scripture where Peter
is restored by Jesus. After that amazing rejection. I mean, you think about it for
a second. In the world that we live in, and in the tapestry
of our Christian experience, no matter how old we are, how
long we've been in the evangelical world that we live in, we have probably been taught
or had the idea, you know, you can't reject Jesus, you can't
deny Jesus, you can't say you don't believe. And that's just
the furthest thing from the truth. So that we're taught then, because
of fear of social issues, not to be honest about the struggles
with our faith. Not to be honest when we go, eh. You know, I've
been thinking, I'm just not quite sure the Bible is. Have you ever
had those thoughts? Or have you ever watched a video
on the History Channel and go, oh, this is making some sense
here. You know, these space men that, built all this stuff, wrote
this stuff to trick us. Yeah, this is it, this is it,
all right, you know. And I mean, there's usually an
opportunity for doubt. Now I will tell you, when it
comes to the authority and the power of the written word, I've
had very little times in my life where I've really labored over
it. Like, is this true? I've had these thoughts, I'm
going, is this some nonsense? And then almost immediately,
there's something powerfully supernatural about what God the
Spirit has done for me, is that I've never really labored over
that. But I have labored over whether I was in the faith, time
and time again. and measured those things based
on what was taught to me through osmosis, through culture. Oh
well, you know you're a child of God if, and then always, you
know you're a true believer if, and all these conditions, all
these tests, all these things, or you know someone who is the
epitome of what true faith looks like, and then we measure ourselves
by them for our entire lives. Always wanting. always lacking. And then heavens to Betsy if
that person who is our role model fails. Or that person who is our spiritual
example or our spiritual mentor decides something's wrong with
their faith. And that's why I'm glad that
God recorded people like Peter in the Bible. because I can so relate to Peter. I started to go into 1 Corinthians
chapter 9 and talk about Paul, where he says, I want to become
all things to all people that I might win some. And I really
been playing in my mind about that all week, back and to and
back and to and preparing next Sunday to start in 1 Peter. And
I thought, you know, let's just go with this. Because I think
the example of Peter will probably fit more of our lives than any
person in the Bible. If nothing else, it'll give us
an easier picture of the reality of the human condition. And sometimes
when we hear those words, when we're in this Christian bubble,
and we live in a bubble, people, let's just be honest, we live
in a tiny, little, eensy-teensy, microscopic, blind bubble. No
matter how broad our experiences are, no matter how many millions
of miles we travel, no matter how many cultures we live in,
we have blinders on, and we are looking through multi-layers
of certain types of lenses, and it is almost impossible for us
not to. It's almost impossible for us
not to. The horror comes in that is when we think that our viewpoint
is the right one. Or we think our way of seeing
the world is the correct biblical worldview. Beloved, we are so
far away as American Christians from a correct biblical worldview
that we would see the authentic worldview of scripture and we
would burn it to the ground as a witch. And you'll see that. Anytime
there's a reformed mindset, anytime there's any sense of correction
in the culture, historically, those who were just at, they're
not even doing anything, they're not like, let's burn it to the
ground. No, they're like, hey, can we talk? Have you ever noticed
that? It's not, let's burn it to the
ground, let's revolt, let's rebel. No, it's, hey, I got a couple
of questions. Don't you ask questions, buddy.
See, that's sort of where it is. And because we live in a
world that way, we don't ask ourselves questions. And because
we don't ask ourselves questions, Christian parents are scared
to death of secular schools. Which I would suppose to you,
and I would posit this, you ought to be scared to death of Christian
schools. Not holistically, just generally speaking. I spent a
lot of time in academia and I can tell you this, I have been taught
by many atheists who thought they were born again. And then I've had many professing
unbelievers that had more understanding of truth than the PhDs that mentored
me. The point being is the word of
God cannot be, cannot be set aside. No matter what we go through,
no matter what questions we ask, no matter what experiences we
have, no matter what infiltrates our lives, if we think that protecting
truth is our job, we have misunderstood the whole idea of God's sovereignty
and power in the first place. And so I say question it all.
Ask every question. Expose yourself to anything that
interests you and say, yay, this makes sense and sit peaceably
in it knowing that our God reigns. And His Word cannot be set aside. It does everything that it was
intended to do every time that it's proclaimed, every time that
it is read, and every time that it is considered in the mind
of believers or unbelievers by the Spirit of God Himself. He
does the work. Where do I get that Hebrews 4?
The prophet Isaiah. God Himself. I send my Word forth and it accomplishes
my purposes. The Word of God is living and
breathing, sharper than any two-edged sword. But when we think about
ourselves, beloved, why would I say these things? Because Peter
walked around in the ministry of four years with Jesus at heightened
levels of fear. Constant fear. Let's think about
it for a second. I mean, he's always ready to
give an answer, right? That's to be counted for something.
I mean, think about Peter for a second. Everywhere you look,
Jesus would ask a question, Peter's speaking up. Jesus needs a volunteer,
Peter's falling on the floor, trying to get up front. Who do you say that I am? Ah,
you're the Christ, the Son of the living God. Blessed are you,
Simon Barjona, for men have not revealed this to you, but my
Father who is in heaven. See, God speaking through Peter
and Peter didn't even know. He's just doing it. Constant
state of fear. The Last Supper. Jesus talks
about being deceived. I mean, being betrayed. Is it me? Oh, I'm not gonna do
it. Oh, no, I don't wanna do it. Is it gonna be me? I mean,
that's fear, y'all. I mean, this is not a grounded
man. This is not a man who is solid.
This is not a man nowhere in the New Testament narratives.
Peter is not a man to be modeled. He's a man to be pitied for all
intents and purposes. He's unstable in all of his ways. And he lives in constant agony,
constant fear, and constant anxiety. Well, if I stay close to Jesus,
he'll be safe. You're not going to die on my watch. And Jesus
goes, get behind me, Satan. I mean, how do you say you are
the son of the living God and then be called Satan in the same
breath? Because that's Peter. That's James, Tippins. That's you. So, I mean, it's important for
us to contemplate. So even if we don't have the
historical record of what this Dyspersia is and all these different
places, I mean, we know where Galatia is based on the Bible,
but where's Bithynia, you know? And does it matter? I tell you
what you can do, you can pull out a map, you can look at all
this kind of stuff, you can see it's all right there. I mean, they didn't
jump on the turbojet, so they sort of walked everywhere they
were, so that's about how you got there. If you could walk
it, you could get there. But you know what you can do?
You can read the New Testament and you can understand who Peter
is. And you can read the examples. And you can know that this guy
just couldn't rest. And then we get into that and
we start to study Peter and then in our infinite wisdom as human
beings, as educated Westerners, we have all the godly answers
and we have all the theological foundations and then therefore
we now can conclude that Peter was not a believer until after
the resurrection. You ever heard that? That's hogwash. That's silly. That's stretching, that's reaching.
It's not something that the scripture gives us the authority to just
subject Peter to. When Jesus says, commands, follow
me, and someone followed, we take that following as a credible
profession of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ until such a time
as Jesus says, no, the son of perdition, this one was. Everyone else, we take it at
face value. The scripture wasn't written
for us to parse out the details of when someone was and was not
converted. The scripture was given to us
that we may understand God's sovereignty. And by understanding
it, I mean being able to, even without really apprehending the
depths of it, because we can't, resting in the truth of it. And let me just phrase it this
way, not just resting in the truth of it, but resting in the
promises of Him. I've spent much of this calendar
year working through many things. Things that I never wanted to
open up in my mind. Things I never wanted to face. and thank God for His sovereignty. Beloved, it's okay to not be
able to rest in God's sovereignty. Just like Trey has said many
times this year, it is okay to not be okay. Part of that is
it's okay to not be able to rest in God's sovereignty. God is
not up there going, if I could just take a second No, this is not our father. It may be symbolic of, it may
be the mindset we have about worldly fathers and worldly mothers
or whatever, but this is not God's motherly and fatherly attitude
toward his people. It is always gentle. It is always
loving. It is always yearning. It is always patient. It is always
kind. It is always gracious. And people don't like that because
it gets them off the hook of their self-righteousness. And
it makes their working and striving and purity in this culture nothing. And it subjects our way of thinking
and our ideas to nothing except God's sovereignty. And as Peter was restored, so
you have been restored. And as others are flailing around
in this life and wondering how they're ever going to find a
place of solidarity, a place of peace, a place of hope, if
they're ever going to find true connection and intimacy, and
they're struggling but they can't be authentic, they can't be honest,
they can't be real, they have to pretend to not feel and think
the way they do because even if it's not said, it's just sort
of felt. Beloved, we can, because of the
grace we've received, give grace to others. And I think when I read the New
Testament, y'all know my heartbeat is the Yohannan literature, John's
writings, you know it is. But I see so much shepherding
in Peter that I don't see anywhere else in the Bible. Because I think Peter, as he
grew up Jewish, in a time where it was literal death in every
count, to not make the cut. And then the very thing that
he threw that all away for, he denies. And then to be restored. You know what happened when Peter
was restored? Other people never changed their view of him. Because even when the Lord restores
us, even when we've completely ruined things, even in relationships,
when we've sinned against other people and we fix it or we're
forgiven and we do better, other people will always look at us
and go, oh yeah, that's the guy that, you know, did, you know.
Oh yeah, things are okay now, but
do you know what they did? You know what they said to me? You
know how they acted? You can never live it up, that's
good, it doesn't matter. Because people with that attitude
have forgotten the grace of God for them. Peter has not forgotten
the grace of God. And the way I know that is you
read these two letters, and you see it. I mean, this man, he's
writing to these people. And then listen to these first
two verses. Listen to what he says. Peter, an apostle of Jesus
Christ. to those who are elect exiles
of the dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, Bithynia
according to the foreknowledge of God the Father in the holiness
of the Spirit for obedience to Jesus Christ and for the sprinkling
with his blood may grace and peace be multiplied to you." There's so much in there. So
much in there. And Peter, just like Paul and
other places, I mean, these weren't just, these were not leaders
of the early church. I want you to understand we have
an incredibly backward way of looking at what spiritual leadership
is. Spiritual leadership only and is ever only absolute slavery
to others, to become a slave to others. That's why I was so,
to the tension of 1 Corinthians chapter nine, I became a slave
to others. Paul says, I am not a slave to anyone, he
says. And I have all authority to exercise
every right that is mine in the gospel. But I make myself a slave
to all people. And I'm not saying you have to,
I will though. That's what Paul says. But then Paul writes to the church
at Philippi and he says, have this mind among you, which is
already presently yours in Christ this very second, as you read
these words, that though he was God, he did not take equality
with God, something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, a slave,
obedient unto death on a cross. This is the lordship of Jesus,
the God-man. This is the leadership of Jesus,
the creator of the cosmos. The leadership of God is to become
nothing and be a slave. to take off all of his clothes
and to get down on his knees and to do something that a Jewish
prisoner is not allowed by law to do because it's so disgusting
that even a slave can't do it if Jewish blood runs in their
body, and that is to wash the feet of another person. Only
a Gentile slave could wash the feet of another person. And the God of the cosmos in
His leadership, in His authority, in His kingship, disrobed naked
and washed the feet of men who thought Him garbage for doing
so. That is leadership. And that
is only ever leadership. No one who is a leader in the
gospel is in charge of anything except taking off their clothes
and digging the garbage and the dirt between the toes of the
people who hate them. Judas. What? No! This is not okay, you
see. This is where Peter could not
stomach. Remember Peter at the foot washing?
Peter's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, hey, ho, slow your roll here,
master, teacher. You're not washing my feet. I
forbid it. Peter, if I don't wash your feet,
you have no place with me. Okay then, here's my head, here's
my, just bathe me then, all of me. If this is the way it is,
just do it all. I'll submit. I can imagine Peter tried to
wash everybody's feet for weeks after that, right? I ain't gonna
wash your feet. I ain't gonna wash your feet. I'm gonna wash
your feet. Mimicking is not being, by the way. Because you can only posture
for so long until the reality of our hearts and minds come
out. And this is Peter. Jesus says to Peter, feed my
sheep. And now Peter is an apostle of Christ. What does that mean? Well, Paul had to defend his
apostleship. Why? Because his leader as part of
the Sanhedrin, his leadership power, according to the world's
standards, was erased. And now to be a messenger, the
word apostle, A spokesperson. You're nothing. You're no one.
But you speak for the one who is. By the authority of Christ, I
write these things to you. I do not lie. Paul said that
many times over. My spirit gives testimony to
the Spirit of God within me. As he'd tell the church at Corinth.
And I stand before you and the conscience of all of you and
before God. And you know what kind of persons
we are. You know how we worked among
you. You know how we served you. You know how we wouldn't even
take money from you. Why didn't Paul take what was
due him? To be supported by the Gospel.
Because he did not want to be a slave to someone else's pocketbook. He wanted to be a slave to the
Gospel. And if you've never been there,
then you've not been in ministry long. When you're doing everything
that you think is right and all you're trying to do is love people
and the people who make all the decisions because of how much
they give come to you and say, James, we gotta have a discussion. We're gonna have to make some
cuts. And I remember being asked, if
you step down, we can't really afford things right now, but
if you step down, we'll give you six months severance of your
salary in one check. And if you don't step down, we're
firing these five people and their families. Mafia much? Paul never had that problem.
I'll tell you what you can do with what you haven't given me,
keep it. Leadership is slavery. I remember years ago, one of my
mentors said to me several different things in a conversation over
a couple of year period related to leadership. One of them was
that a man just going somewhere and he turns around, no one's
following him, he's just taking a walk, he's not leading anybody. And on another occasion he looked
at me and he said this very direct, he says, James, the day you ever
say you're the pastor or that you're in charge is the day that
you stop becoming any type of leader. He said, because you're not in
charge of anything. What's that mean? I have to under,
I have to rearrange what I mean when I think about rule. What is the rule of Christ? What is the apostleship of Peter? The apostleship of Peter is one who lays down his life
for the sake of the elect. So here's Peter defending his
apostleship. But he's not saying, I'm in charge. I'm the right hand of Jesus,
y'all. No, he's saying, I'm a messenger. Don't look at the man. Listen
to the message. That's what he's saying. Don't
worry about me. Don't worry about the man behind
the curtain. Just pay attention to the words. Pay attention to
the words. Pastors can't make you do anything.
Pastors can't lord over the church. Apostles can't lord over Christ's
people. because Christ doesn't lord over
them in that way. Remember last week when I made
mention of the fact that the marriage supper of the lamb?
I mean, you see that imagery in John's apocalypse? When did apocalypse become bad?
That word means revealed things. is that Jesus is serving His
church at the tables of the banquet. Peter, an apostle of Christ.
So when you see that, when you read that, I want you to think
this way. I know it seems like a lot. My goodness, you've just
done 15 minutes explaining the idea of spiritual leadership.
Yes, because it's necessary. I don't want to assume that I
keep the right mindset when it comes to what an apostle is,
nor do I want to assume that you and I are walking together
in that understanding. It's written there for a reason.
Peter's like, listen to the message here. Jesus Christ is speaking. I'm just this pair of hands. I'm just a mouth. And if it weren't
me, it'd be someone else. To steal away from the King James,
it's sort of tongue-in-cheek and a little bit funny and a
little bit edgy at the same time, but it's like I've always told
the brothers, we need to be half as effective as Balaam's ass
in speaking the oracles of God. And God can speak through that
animal and God can speak through a bush on fire. He can speak
through me, but it's not about me. But yet, sometimes the culture
does that, right? Sometimes the culture sets men
up on pedestals. Sometimes the culture sets women
up on pedestals. Sometimes the culture sets offices
up on pedestals. And I don't want to get into
politics, but look, when did public service become power? Because that's the nature of
humanity. And it's wrong, even though it's
common. especially when we tie it to
the Lord Jesus Christ. So Peter, an exile in his own
right, an exile in his own day, an exile. Paul, an exile, once was a man
of steam, now to be mocked and hated. And I hate that, don't you? I
don't want to be mocked and hated. Do you want to be mocked and
hated? I mean, let's just, let's just for a minute be honest.
I've met a lot of people through the years like, yeah, I just
want to be beat up on by all God's enemies. I'm just one of
them. Yeah, bring it. No, let's just quit pretending
like we're on WWF at 11 o'clock on Friday night. Yeah, I mean,
you know, that's I just aged myself, but Hulk Hogan, Bobby
the Brain, all that. I mean, this is just entertainment. We're not wrestlers, we're not
warriors. People, there is no room for
warriors in the gospel of grace. And we hear that stuff, especially
as boys, man, we hear that stuff. I'm like, yeah, I want to be
a warrior for Jesus. No, I don't. I do not. I want to be the painter
for Jesus. I want to be the poet. Let me
write the harpy songs. You stay over there and leave
me alone. I'll work out over here in my little corner gym,
and that's all the masculinity I need. I don't want to be boxing for Jesus
for the love of all things crazy. I don't want to be hated. Peter, as an apostle, was hated. Read the book of Acts. And Jesus says, hey, listen,
if they hate me, ho, ho, ho, are they ever going to hate you?
Because I established my word in you. You've been cleansed
by it. You've been made alive through it. And so as you then
live out this word and as you share it, not in a bullying way,
but in a blessed way, and when you share this and when you write
these things and when you teach, And when you're humble, people
are going to hate you even worse than they ever hated me because
if they hate the master, they're going to hate the followers anymore
because they can't touch me because they already did and I showed
them. They're going to touch you. They're going to take you. They're going to arrest you.
They're going to what? They're going to destroy you. So here, Peter. As an apostle of Christ, he is
talking to these Jewish people who have come to be born again
to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ
from the dead, who are exiles. But they're exiles, not trash. They're seen as trash, they're
seen as, they're hated people, they're despised, but they're
elect exiles. Why? Because you didn't get to
stay in Jewish culture when you confessed that Christ is Messiah. You didn't get to hang out and
just have it easy. It got worse and worse and worse. And the harder the religion pressed
into the politics of society, the worse it got for people who
did not renounce it. Now let me just say, with that
being said, beloved, there are no believers in these United
States who are being persecuted because of their humble resolve
to believe the gospel of Christ. It is not happening. And I would
love any true, real example that's not tied to some political platform
of that persecution. So I'll just say that, because
some people say, yeah, we're being, you are not being persecuted
in America because you believe the gospel. The best might be
from the religious zealots and the theological watchdogs who
will press you into a place of death because you don't agree
with everything they say. But as a whole, culture? Ah,
Christians, Mischians. And I'd say the evangelical culture,
by and large, is more the oppressor and the persecutor than the persecuted
and the oppressed. So here we are, and these people
are suffering. I mean, we see it in the United
States. We see people have to leave their homes because of
fires. You ain't got to stay farmed, though. I mean, everything's
good, right? Just rebuild. We lost all those heirlooms.
Oh, well. It's just stuff. It's just stuff. We see the news. If you watch
the news or read the news, I skim in the mornings and I haven't
clicked through anything in a long, long time that peaked my interest. We see the death and destruction. We see the shootings and the
stabbings and the killings and the hatefulness and all the stuff
all over the world. It's just, you know, it's in
our backyard. It's across the street. It's this state, that state,
the other. It's in this country, that country, and the other.
And it's just death and destruction. We see it. We see natural disaster. We see things happening all the
time. So it's nothing new for people to have to just like get
up and just leave. But imagine 2,000 years ago when
everything you had and everything that you were able to do was
taken away from you by force because you believed that this
man Jesus of Nazareth, what good comes from Nazareth, was raised
from the dead. You really believe that? Well,
you know what? You and your family can leave. We season this property
in the name of God Almighty, the very one you say you could
serve and he's not here for you. So you take all of that people
that are with you and you just leave. Where are we going to
live? Oh, I don't care. You just can't
live here inside this walls. You can't live inside these properties.
You can't. You got to go outside the camp. You got to go outside
the boundaries. You got to go outside society.
Go get away from here. And if you don't, we're going
to kill you all. And eventually they did. So these people just had to get
up, take what they could put in their tunic, and walk away. Paul has something to say there.
I mean, Peter has something to say there. Look at this. You are elect exiles of this
dispersion, according to the foreknowledge
of God the Father. in the sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience
to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with His blood." Let me say this last line here.
May grace and peace be multiplied to you. Now, Christian platitudes
make me want to eat my shoes. Saying something to someone in
word without embracing their needs emotionally and physically
is worthless. It's the same sentiment that
we hear, thoughts and prayers, my thoughts and prayers, and
I'm not mocking thoughts and prayers. But thoughts and prayers
without hands and feet is just dumb. Action is love, not attitude. Not this internal, let me find
some love in there. Yeah, I love you. Just wish the
best for you. I wish the best. No, this is
not Christian living. And sometimes, hey, grace and
peace to you, God bless you, doesn't feed you. It doesn't
make you connected. It doesn't make you feel loved.
Unless there's some teeth behind it and there's some teeth behind
what Peter has written here because he's writing to a people who
are suffering greatly because of the gospel and he too was
suffering and now he knows what it means to be restored and for
the love of God to manifest to him. And so he's about to address
these people with more than just thoughts and prayers. He's going
to show them the literal action of God. And so when we say things
like that to people, we need to make sure that the emphasis
of what God's grace is and has accomplished is at the forefront
of what we're trying to illustrate. Sometimes terms by themselves
are just insufficient. Just like we said, Apostle, we
sometimes think, well, they're in charge. They're not in charge.
They're the slaves of slaves. the messengers, and could not make anyone do
anything with any authority whatsoever given them by the Lord. They
could call for it. They could even, by the words
of Christ, command things, like, you're not going to act this
way. You're going to live this way. Stop doing this. The same thing is true for grace
and peace. Grace and peace. I used to sign
my emails with that for years. I'm like, people are like, okay,
grace and peace. How about grits and cheese? I
mean, does it have the same power? For most people it does. Grits
and cheese is a little more heartwarming. It makes you feel full. And I'm not making a lot of it,
I'm just saying it. We need to think about things
a little bit. Not just say them, not just go
out there and go through these motions. Because half the time
when we're in this robotic trap of Christian living, we're doing
nothing fruitful. So for Peter to say, may grace
and peace be multiplied to you, then there must be something
worth multiplying. I'm not a math genius, but I
know if I got nothing and I put an exponent after it, it's still
nothing. Unless there's some weird theoretical crap I don't
know about. I'll talk to Trey about later, but I mean, I think
if you do anything in zeros and add zero to zero is zero, I mean,
I don't get it. So how can there be nothing multiplied
to me and make something? That's why according to the foreknowledge
of God the Father and the sanctification of the Spirit for obedience to
Jesus Christ and to strengthen with His blood, there's something.
That's grace and peace and it's something. And we're not gonna
get through with all this today. That's something. And this is the reminder
that I need right now, today, for everything that flows through
my little gray matter up in here. And it shrinks by the hour. And if I need it, Chances are
maybe some of you need it. And if some of you need it, then
somebody else that we know needs it. But we need it with teeth. We need it with hands. We need
it with feet. We need the grace and the peace
being multiplied to us with power, not platitudes. In Romans chapter 8, We see Paul saying, for those
whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image
of his Son. We've heard recently in the last
few months, Ephesians 1, verses 4 and 5, even as he chose us
in him before the foundation of the world, that we would be
what? Predestined for adoption. In Acts chapter 2 verse 23, we
see Dr. Lute write these words that Jesus
would be delivered up according to the definite plan of the foreknowledge
of God. God says through the prophet
Jeremiah, before I formed you in the womb,
I knew you. I want you to think about that
for a second. According to the foreknowledge
of God the Father, you are elect exiles. According to the love of God
eternally, before there ever was anything to see with the
eye, He knew you. And He loved you everlasting,
for He does not change. Before you were, God loved you. Oh God, how I've screwed that
up in my own life. There's so many ways in which
in our infinite wisdom as intellectual idiots, we have come to parse
and understand theological things. And if left unbridled, we will
come up with all sorts of interesting ways in which we would decide
God is. And when it comes to the foreknowledge
or the election of God, there's a lot of people who believe it's
just this idea of arbitrary, eeny, meeny, miny, moe, catch
a tiger by the toe, you know, that kind of thing. I don't even
know what that means. I really don't. And then some people say, well,
you know, God is omniscient. He knows all things. He knows
all the free agency of every creature that ever shall be and
every gnat and wind and feather and all that. So he's got knowledge
of it at all times. So therefore he sees what will
and he knows and elects to make that the plan. But that the Bible
doesn't teach us that either. And then you get some really
neat stuff where, you know, Of all the timelines that could
possibly be, God has elected this one. And then we're into some Norse
mythology and Marvel. Yes. I don't want to bog down trying
to figure out what God has not said about himself. I would rather
just stand firmly upon the rock of what He's revealed. And that is that God in all ways
at all times eternally has always had a people that He has loved
and He created this world that they might be glorified in Him
in it. and to hate the reality that
it means every single thing about my life and your life in Christ
is by the foreknowledge of God. But at the same time, I love
that truth because therein can I rest in spite of me. God is not just digging into
his foresight or predictive knowledge. But what the scripture teaches
about God's foreknowledge is that it is an intimate, affectionate,
authoritative, effectual love. We are not elect by chance or
merit or blood. but by grace and the peace to
be multiplied to us through Christ. Before I formed you in the womb,
I knew you. Beloved, if you don't get that,
nothing else we talk about in these letters are gonna really
sink in. But do you see the rub? I've had it, I mean, our building
across town over there, you know? I've had people come after me
after service and pull me to the side and get in my face and
say, you had them! And then you let them go! I'm like, what? Oh man, the whole
church was just... breathless right there on the
edge of just Feeling that tension that condemnation and then you
let them go. You told them God loved them Should have buried that in a
few weeks, you know, just let them know Is that what we do
to our children? we avoid them or dismiss them
or belittle them and We make fun of them or mock them or roll
our eyes at them until the point where they start to become really,
really broken. And we see it and we go, you know what, serves
them right. I'll just let them, I will carry on just a little bit longer
until they know what it means to be loved by daddy. No. When we act like that as parents
and when it comes down, we go, oh, I'm so sorry. Don't judge
the Heavenly Father based on me. We don't leave loved ones in
the pressure pot. Matter of fact, we try to avoid
them ever being put in the pressure pot. Take the pressure pot off.
Take the lid, throw it away. Turn off the heat. Bring them
into our presence. Sit them into our laps. Hold
them into our bosom. This is the image of God the
Father and His motherliness. caring, feeding, sustaining,
coddling. Boy, Jonathan Edwards needed
to read more of the New Testament. You see? And it doesn't take away God's
righteousness, but God's righteousness is effectually, spiritually,
judicially established in the death of Jesus, so there is no
condemnation, there is no wag of the finger, even in church
discipline of the highest corrective order, which is expulsion due
to the unwillingness to resolve personal conflict and tension
within relationships because of pride and arrogance, Even
in that, we do it through tears, knowing that our whole point
is that we might justly walk together in a loving way, despite
our differences, so that we could set aside those things, set aside
what we want, set aside everything that we think we must have, and
everything that must be right in our eyes, because God has
made everything right in His eyes in the death of Jesus Christ. I know I'm getting ahead of myself. That's the sanctification of
the Spirit. The role of the Holy Spirit.
Sanctification. That's a word that we've used
so much we've forgotten what it means and we don't understand
a whole lot, but it literally means to be set apart for. And
we've had a lot of theological decades behind us where we've
got, well there's two types of sanctification and we've named
them and all these professors who wouldn't know the grace of
God if it drowned them in the ocean. It's something very weird
about the clinical expression of God's love through systematic
theology. Sometimes it's just so sterile.
It's like opening up an alcohol wipe. It's very pleasing, but
it has only one real purpose. To clean something with and then
drop it in the toilet and watch it run around in a circle as
it dissipates. You ever done that? Dip a q-tip in there and
bend the tub and watch it run. A little propulsion. The sanctification is literally
being set apart for God's purposes. Yes, there is a practical sense
in which we set apart our lives. Every single day we set apart
our lives in marriage, in relationships, as parents we set apart our lives.
We set apart some of our income to pay our bills, some for saving,
whatever. We set apart our attitudes, our minds, our thoughts, our
hands, our actions. We set apart We do all things
for the glory of God, whether we eat or drink, whether we speak,
whether we sing, dance, or moonwalk, it doesn't really matter. We
are instructed to do so based on the teaching of God's love
and grace toward us. That we do it all for His purposes
and for His namesake. So sanctification, in a real and spiritual sense,
is not a process. We're not going to become more
righteous or more holy the longer we live. That's not okay because
the Bible doesn't teach us that. It doesn't matter how many years
you haven't used profanity, you might do well to tell somebody
something sometimes. It doesn't matter how many movies
you haven't watched, or how many Christian books that you have
read, or how much you pray, or how much you don't do this or
don't do that. It's not about that. It's about the perfection
of Jesus Christ credited to us, that His blood has satisfied
the wrath of God, and it is a finished work. We are sanctified forever,
eternally, always in the person of Christ. God is satisfied in
the death of Jesus Christ. And we know it so because He
was raised from the dead. It was a working task. And the Spirit of God speaks
and testifies to the ongoing work of God in our lives. And we do not sit down at the
end of the day and go, OK, I know that I'm Christian because of
these things in my life. I know that I'm, you know, moving
toward holiness. No, let's set our day apart every
day. And the worst thing that we could
ever do is sit in the mirror and say, wow, thank you so much,
God, that I have become so much more set apart in these areas
of my life that I'm not like these other people. You know,
we're going to use a proof text. Make sure we understand the context. That was death. The one who says
that is dead. The one who says that is condemned.
The one who says that is not justified. The one who says,
have mercy on me, propitiate for me, O sinner. This is the
one who has the right mind. Yes, there is moral and spiritual
transformation. There is growth in the context
of our Christian life, but it is measured by one thing. One thing! How we actively love
one another. That's it. Nothing else. Because the more
we know about being set apart by the foreknowledge of God in
love by the Spirit for obedience to Jesus Christ and for the sprinkling
with His blood, the more love we actively engage in in this
life. God has chose you to be the first
fruits for salvation, Paul tells the church at Thessalonica. The fruit of the Spirit, Galatians
5. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,
etc. These are the things that the
Spirit of God grows in us and puts in us and establishes in
us because we are set apart in Christ. But these things ebb
and flow. Remember we talked about posturing,
we want to be like Peter, we want to be like Paul and do these
things. We can only do that for so long. We can only posture
spiritual things for so long. We must be about the transformation
of our hearts and minds through the constant meditation and discipline
of the Word of God. And even when we've done well,
we've not done good enough. Even when we perfected these
things in the flesh, we are still only righteous by the Spirit
of God. because we haven't perfected
them. Paul would say in Galatia, you know, what are you going
to be? Are you going to start life by the Spirit and only now to perfect it in
the flesh? Are you crazy? He literally says that. Are you
crazy? Have you lost your minds? Has someone bewitched you? Has somebody put a curse on you?
Has a magician come along and, like, cast a spell? Are you insane
that you would begin by the Spirit and then continue in the flesh? We're not. But there is a call to obedience.
There's a call to submission to the Lordship of Jesus Christ
as a servant who gave His life for us. You see, we're not to
fear Christ. We're to love Christ. We're not
to be scared of God our Father. We are to revere the reality
of His righteousness and justice through the death of Jesus Christ
for our sake. for our benefit, for our joy. We sang about that this morning
already. The response to true love is service, serving the
Lord Jesus Christ, obedient to the Lord Jesus Christ. In what
way must we be obedient? We must love our neighbor as
ourselves. We must love our spouse as Christ
loved the church. We must not be embittered because
it is not the way of love. Oh, why can't we just get that
cleaned out of us? Why can't we go through like
a 10-day cleanse, a 10-day fast, a 10-day worship service, a 10-day
prayer vigil, and then when all we're said and done, we've got
it all out and there's never any bitterness or frustration
or self-righteousness in us at all. We're just so free. Hallelujah. It's just not the
way it is. We are slaves of the one whom
we obey. Do we obey our flesh or do we obey the grace of God
and Jesus Christ? John 14, Jesus says, If you love
me, you'll obey my commandments. These are that you love love
for one another. They will know that you follow after me because
you have love for one another. Be doers, not only hearers of
the word of God, have an act of living faith. Why? Because grace and peace being
multiplied to you is established through the sprinkling of the
blood of Jesus Christ, to whom we are servants, for He is a
servant to us in salvation. We can be a servant to Him in
love. When you've done it under the
least of these, my brethren, you've done it under me. And you realize
the word brethren and the word man was not gender specific until
like recently, right? Okay. It's my part-time job as
an entomologist. We'll walk through that one day
later. This Old Testament sacrificial
system, this sprinkling of the blood, this covenant that we
see in Exodus 24, symbolizing the atoning work of death, as
a symbol of the atoning work of the death of Jesus Christ,
the mercy seat inside this ark of the covenant, this promise
of God, this contract God made with himself to make a people
for himself, to cleanse a people, this law, this killer of the
brethren, this killer of sin, that we're all subject to the
law of God, thou shalt not, thou shalt not, thou shalt not. And
we're all guilty over and over again of violating every one
of these things. and that is held in this golden
ark over which the lid now is these cherubim of righteousness,
these guardians of holiness. And the blood of these pure animals
as a symbol is sprinkled, it's poured over these things and
forgiveness is symbolized for the day when Jesus Christ's blood
was poured out and forever We were made righteous
once and for all. Forever we were sanctified once
and for all. How much more then will the blood
of Christ cleanse us from our conscience of dead works? We have redemption through his
blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses. Grace to you and peace from him
who is and was and is to come and from the seven spirits who
are before his throne and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness,
the firstborn of the dead and the ruler of the kings on earth,
to him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood
and made us a kingdom. Priest to his God and father,
to him be the glory and dominion forever and ever. Behold, he
is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even
those who pierced him, and all the tribes of the earth will
wail on account of him, even so, Armin. I am the Alpha and
the Omega, says the Lord God, who is and was and who is to
come, the Almighty. Revelation 1. May grace and peace be multiplied
to you, so that your faith may be tested
and preserved and result in the praise and glory and honor of
the revelation of Jesus Christ that we just heard in John's
Apocalypse chapter 1. Though you have not seen him,
you love him. And though you do not now see him, you believe
in him and you rejoice with a joy that is inexpressible and filled
with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation
of your souls. God has established your soul
before him. And you are an elect child, a
recipient of the love of God, proven and effectual to you through
the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ, through whom we
have access to this great and wonderful promise, even though
for a little while, as we suffer exiles, we rejoice, even though
it may be inexpressible. And those are the next six weeks
of preachings. And nothing, nothing, nothing
can keep it from being multiplied to you. Even you, beloved. And that settles my soul. It
settles my soul. Jesus said it is finished. And
Tippins doesn't have to pick up the reins. for any of it. And my weakest discipline and
my greatest discipline is equally sufficient. Not sufficient. Because Christ's death has satisfied
it all. Rest in that, beloved. Let this
new year be a year of grace and peace multiplied to you. That's
where I'm headed. Join me. Father, we are glad
that you love us. And that you've given your son
for us. Father, there is much in this world that is wrong.
May we speak to those things as you call us. May we love those around us.
May we stand in the gap for the unloved and the fatherless. Father, may every day and every
moment of our day be about your love for us. Lord, soften us, guide us, mold
us, and make us as we know that we are truly
righteous and sanctified fully and forever. Lord, help us to
strive to do all things that please you. by being reminded
of what you have done by loving us and calling us into the light
of your wonderful son. It is by his death and by his
resurrection that we stand beloved, free and hopeful. For this is
our hope. You alone, Father, in your promise.
In his name we pray. Amen. Let's take the table.