Sermon Transcript:As you guys have decided to worship with us, or you're listening later on line, we're in the series called First Peter. And it is the Peter, it's the Peter you think about, maybe if you grew up in the Catholic tradition, sort of the head of the church, or if you understand, just even with the Protestant understanding that this is the guy to whom Jesus Christ said that will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven, and the gates of hell will not be able to overcome it. It's this guy. And he is writing later on later in life, many years after the death, burial and resurrection and the ascension of our Lord and Savior. And he's helped us with a lot of things. First of all, he understands that we're, we're scattered across the earth, he talks about how they're scattered among the known region, at that time of Asia Minor or modern day, Turkey, he talks about a living faith that's rooted in a living Savior, and he calls Jesus Christ, the living cornerstone, we talked about that last week, and because of that, that we are living stones ourselves, representatives of Christ as we go. Today, he's going to talk to us and he, right from the get go calls us dear friends. So let's see that in the passage, First Peter, chapter two, sort of the second half of that chapter, dear friends, I warn you, as temporary residents and foreigners. Now, that's such a key term throughout this whole book. And one of the reasons I wanted to study First Peter, together is that I wanted us to see in the scriptures, what we feel over and over again, that we're trying to do something, and it feels like many audiences or just feels like, Man, I just feel like I'm sort of a foreigner in my own city country, land, he understood that, dear friends, it's not that I did, like I want to come around you and put my arm around you and squeeze you and call you that. Because you are. I warn you, as temporary residents and foreigners to keep away from worldly desires, that wage war against your very souls, that oftentimes we think it would be nice if I didn't tip toe, or dip my butt, or jump right into that worldliness, and we all know what that is instinctively in our own conscience. And then we come to the Bible. And we understand that there's ways of conducting ourselves that is not of God. But he says something pretty strong here, this whole idea that, that that we're to stay away from those kinds of things, because they wage war against our very souls, who we are our inner person, the inner you and the inner me, be careful to live properly among your unbelieving neighbors, then even if they accuse you of doing wrong, they will see your honorable behavior and they will give honor to God when He judges the world. So first point I want us to see this morning and straight from the text is stay away from things that wage war against your very soul. That's our that's our forte sort of first thing that he wants us to understand in the passage this morning. And we oftentimes have to think about this and say, Well, I don't know it's kind of on the line. I don't know if I should go there. I don't know if I should do that. I don't know if I should participate in that or watch that. You know, one of the things that I have sort of tried to do throughout my life as a believer first, not just as a pastor is ask myself, Is this redeemable? In other words, is there some good in this activity in this watching of this program? or participating in this or that with my neighbor or friend? Is there something good? Is there something redeemable in it, then yes, then try to participate in it and redeem it. You and I are the ones who can go as Livingstone's representatives of Jesus Christ, and be able to be about that activity in a good way. But oftentimes, we'll find ourselves in a position like, Ah, this has gone too far. This is a bridge too far, this is something I cannot participate in. And so he's saying stay away from those things that you have come to the conclusion that conviction your own conscience tells you in the word of God tells you this will wage war against your very soul. But if it's redeemable, let's redeem it. The other thing that we are to do is think about this in terms of how the passage has already come to us that we're holding people that were priests of God. And I hope you heard the testimony of Joshua last week, if he didn't, it's worth going back and listening to because no matter where you're at, you can start the Christian life today. You can start it today and living out for him. And we're an example even if you and I don't feel very holy, or priests like that's what we are in the eyes of God. We can live in such a way and do certain things, even if people charge us and call us ridiculous, right? That's what he's talking about here is that there will oftentimes be ways that we try to honor God, you know, whether it's with, you know, having certain restrictions on your screen time or having certain restrictions on your children or minors in your home with whether they should even have, you know, a smartphone or a certain amount of screen time. It can all look quite ridiculous, but we're trying to live an honorable life and whatever it is that you're trying to do to live an honorable life. God will bless that in due time. That's what this passage is talking about. And Peter's coming alongside you and me, and calling us dear friends and saying, This will be good for us. And he's calling us to do good among everyone. Because why we're always being watched you and I can live honorable lives, sometimes we, we give ourselves a pass, because we're like why can't live a perfect life. So therefore, who cares, you know, kick back your feet, sit back in the chair, or whatever. And don't even try. And that's not true, it is true that we can't live a perfect, sinless life. But it's not true that we can't live an honorable life, that we can conduct ourselves in such a way where people recognize and believe in the God that we espouse because of our conduct. And that's what he's talking about here. And he says, Everything will come to fruition in the end, because God will judge the world. All right, let's continue on the passage this morning. Let's look at verse 13. for the Lord's sake, submit to all human authority, the passage we're looking at today, and even in the next week, it's a lot of it having to do with authority, whether the king as the head of state, so you understand that certain countries and cultures then and now may have a king or President or the officials he has appointed for the king has sent them to punish those who do wrong, and to honor those who do right. It is God's will that you that your honorable lives, there's that word again, should silence those ignorant people who make foolish accusations against you, for you are free, yet, you are God's slaves. So don't use your freedom as an excuse to do evil. Respect everyone and love the family of believers, Fear God, and respect the king. It takes wisdom to know when to do what but the second point I wants to see this morning, and I just took it straight from Ecclesiastes is, there's a time to be quiet. And there's a time to speak. And when we think about this whole idea of being under authority, and we'll get into different authorities that we're all under later, it's hard to not always fight for our rights, we think we're right. Or he No, we're right. And therefore we want to let someone have it either with our words, or our offhanded comments, whether online or in person, or in some sort of text thread. But what he's saying here is the freedom from what you and I have been set free for is now we have a new master, it's God Himself. It's not so we can be our own master. And then he has certain requirements for how we are to conduct ourselves, and how we're to live. If we do this, everyone will eventually see the wisdom and how we live our lives. So Ecclesiastes is all about and all the, what we call the prose literature, whether it's Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, this whole idea that there's a time for everything, we have to ask ourselves and ask God give me the wisdom to know, should I speak up in this situation? Or should I be quiet? It's the same question if you want to think about it from an American context that we had to ask all the way back to the Revolutionary War. And we've had to ask it over and over again, not just as Americans, but as people of God, what is it that we're supposed to do? Isn't a time to fight? Is it a time to take up arms? Or time to put them down? Is it time to mend things? Or is it time to tear things up?And think about this first one, it starts with your conduct and my conduct in our speech and in our lives takes much wisdom, we're going to see that again, this all has to do with understanding the authority that God has put us under, for a time or a season. Let's go and go the next passage, and we'll see this in verses 18 and following you who are slaves. Now, again, we don't live in this context, or in this world anymore. And I'm gonna explain that in a minute. But we understand that we're now slaves of God, he's already used this language. But now he's just, he's just addressing those who would find themselves servants or slaves to their masters, you are slaves must submit to your Masters With all respect, do what they tell you, not only if they're kind and reasonable, but even if they are cruel, for God is pleased when conscious of his will you permanent, patiently endure unjust treatment, of course, you get no credit for being patient, if you are beating, we're doing wrong. But if you suffer if you're doing good, and then direct patient, like God is pleased with you. Every time we get to difficult passages in the scriptures, or in the Bible, you'll often see communicators preachers today, and even in days gone by, they'll either skip over them, or they'll try to twist them or they're trying to manipulate them or whatever. I want to be honest with kind of what I think is going on here and maybe be helpful as we think about difficult passages at times. Again, keep in mind, the whole thing is under the idea of authority, which we know we have authorities given to us that are good and from God and we know that we have authorities that are not good, but they're still there and we have to deal with them. I've already talked about this idea of slavery when I was preaching through the book of First Timothy and over the summer I preached that and I kind of talked about that in the Bible. There are prescriptive passages and there are described passages. Now don't get too technical, but we understand what a prescription is. When you and I are sick, we go the doctor, you end up getting a prescription that we go and we'll get it filled by the pharmacist because we believe it will help us to get better if we take the pills in the way that we're asked to do. So that's prescriptive. Also, there are descriptive passages, I'm just telling you how it is. I'm just telling you what, if you peered into the culture and time period in which this was written in, this is the kind of things they would have been dealing with, just as humans on the planet at that time. And in that culture that's descriptive. It's instructions given to a particular person, time, culture or place. And it may not be directive for how we are delivered to conduct ourselves today, you'll see this all over in the Scriptures. And so we often have to ask ourselves, what is the kernel of truth? What is the nugget of truth that sort of transcends this? Oftentimes, this is hard when we see the issue of slavery come up because of our American context of chattel slavery and that horrendous evil or our modern day context of human trafficking and slavery and that evil. We understand that chattel slavery viewed the slave as property and not human, and that led to all kinds of evil, for sure. And even back then, and 1800s, you would have maybe even had preachers or communicators who would have even defended slavery itself, using the Bible. So it becomes very difficult sometimes for us to even approach these passages. In the ancient world, of course, in Rome, they would have had classes and slavery would have been widely practice for season or for life. But I hope that you'll see that this is really just descriptive of what the culture that they found themselves in. And that we know if you look at other passages, and you think about the freedom that we have in Christ, and if you look at the word itself, that even though we had a horrendous history, with chattel or ownership, slavery, that slavery could have also meant servant, that whole idea for a season, you have a master and there is a servant relationship. And so again, we have to ask ourselves, what is it that God wants us to understand about ourselves, and how we view authority that we are to be under. And I want to be careful, because one of the ways even as a preacher, Pastor communicator, that you understand that I understand that there are such things that are bad in this world, and that people can use the scriptures to abuse those that they have authority over. So be careful with something of what we often call spiritual abuse, what is spiritual abuse, I'm gonna give you sort of my definition of that it sort of it floats around a lot, maybe online, or as you think about Christian churches or communicators. It's making someone do something they don't want to do, often in the name of Jesus, or name a church or name of Christ, but it's for personal gain. And so what happens is, is that you'll see this happen from time to time, and everybody has a history, and now it sort of is coming to light, some of the things that the practice of what you and I may consider to be spiritual abuse. And you'll see this in in verse 19, that you can take a passage like verse 19, that says, For God is pleased when even though you're conscious of his will, you patiently endure unjust treatment, if you find someone who is an abuser, what they'll do is they'll take a passage that God is using maybe to help people endure punishment that they can't do anything about. And they're saying, See, you should have this punishment that I'm giving you, right? That says crazy, that's when you know, you're being manipulated. I'll give you kind of a funny example that I used to use when I was in college. When I was in college, I lived in a dorm room with a bunch of other guys, and most of us were heading towards ministry. And so I knew the Bible, we all knew the Bible, kind of at that age 18 to 22. And I remember that one of the passages I love to read was from Luke 1413 to 15. I don't know if you know this passage was talking about when you have a banquet, invite the poor, invite the cripple invite the lame, invite the blind, and although they cannot repay you back, you will read be repaid back at the resurrection of the just. And so when I used to do is I used to go to my dorm neighbors, and I used to go and I would steal food from them, I'd take their fruit, or their moms would give them really nice care packages with good brownies and cookies. And I would just go and stick my hand in there and take it. And then sometimes I would get caught. I mean, you say like, literally it's not good, random and the guys say, What are you doing? You're taking my food, you're taking my sweet, you're taking my breakfast, let's say Whoa, don't worry, you're gonna get paid back at the resurrection of the just. What I was doing is I was manipulating a scripture, not ever so funny. But I was manipulating the scripture for what for my own personal gain. And you know, there's not just something funny and neat. But if you know that if that's being done to you and us by anyone who supposedly is a leader or authority and spiritual over you, they're doing it for personal gain. You can rest us Your that is what's going on there. So I want to be also clear that abuse is not simply when someone in authority is asking you to do something you don't want to do. We're very confused on authority right now, we're just living in sometimes there's different words for it, I don't even want to use them because they're politically charged. But I just want to use the biblical term of authority, and the saying that all of us, right now, we tolerated certain authorities for most of our existence, or our parents exist in our grandparents existence. But it's not abuse, if simply someone in authority has asked you to do something you don't want to do. Think about this with a parent child relationship. I can't tell you how many times I had to go to my children and say, Hey, clean your room, clean your room, oh, put away the dishes, put away your clothes, or whatever, do your homework or whatever. Now nine times out of 10 your children and my children, what is their gut reaction? I don't want to do it. And so and so some of them who are smart, they'll say, Oh, this is abuse, this is child abuse. Is that abuse? No, it's simply asking you to do something you don't want to do. Same thing happens with teachers, right? We're living in this age, I go, I'll pull up the cell phone, I'm gonna record him. What are you talking about? I'm here to love you to care for you. And I'm not asking you to do something for personal gain. But for your good, do it, right. That's what this passage is all about. But we're hardwired right now because of the culture and the context that we live in. Because they now know that I'm gonna buck up against authority. Think about this was police officers, and we know that they're given to us, and that nine times out of 10 They're, they're doing the right thing. And they're always trying to protect as long as they know, no, I'm gonna I'm gonna pull out the camera, I'm gonna know what's going on here. Are you think about this in terms of my own profession, where I might sit across from someone or I may say, from this stage that, you know, God designed sex for marriage, and they say, Whoa, that's not that's, that's wrong, like you're going against what I think isn't, listen, that's not for personal gain. In fact, for me to say that in modern day context, may cause you to lose a few people, I get that. But what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to help you, if I'm trying to help you, and I'm trying to use any god given authority for good and for your good and for not your ILL, whether it's parents, teachers, police officers, or your pastor or spiritual leaders, it is good. But we have to admit, it's hard for us to take isn't it? It's so hard for us to take. I think there's there's so many practical examples, I'll just speak my own life. I'm in the childbearing ages. So you have, you know, teachers that you run up against. And so we often will find ourselves using man, that didn't seem right, that didn't seem just my kid got caught up in that, I think he was innocent, or they forgot to do this and it caused harm to my child are, you know, all these kinds of things. And I would just say same thing at work, you and I are sort of hardwired to sort of, you know, defend self and to buck up against, you know, our bosses or our authorities over us, we're, we're in a time right now, where we want to shoot those at the top and any institution or organization. What I try to do is I try to ask ourselves, unless it's an urgent need, like your child just got the snot beat out of him at school today. Ask yourself in those situations, can I just wait a week? Let me just process this, let me just think, is it big enough to rise to the level I need to deal with it in terms of addressing that authority?Then you look for patterns? Has this consistently been true? I'm just saying there's little things that we need to do as believers who live honorable lives, that of course, we have to address things sometimes. I mean, I don't think our forefathers were wrong to eventually go to war, you know, with England, but it's through a lot of different trying of different means. And in same way with us is that, that not only is it true, that will, you know, catch more bees with honey than with vinegar. But to be believers who live honorable lives before watching world, let's be men and women who figure out ways to honor those in authority, even when we have to address things that are a concern for us. Boy, just even that right there is so radical, isn't it? Just this church, if everyone under the sun, my boys would just say, when I address things to authorities, when I think that they are in the wrong or awful little bit, I'm going to do it in such a way that honors them and honors My God. And sometimes what that means is that we let it go. How hard is that? Right? We want to get on our little text thread. We want to get on our we want someone to know how we've been wronged and one of the things you're going to learn as I continue in this passage is you're gonna see we already have one who has wronged in more ways than you and eyes could ever imagine. And yet somehow he was silent before his accusers. Let's continue on the passage and see this. I think this beautiful idea here in first Peter for God called you to do good, even if it means suffering, just as Christ suffered for you. He is your example. We might not like it but guys, we don't have it on the front door but we're Christian. Since I was asked this week, so I'm pulled around the parking lot looking for a hardware store. What is this place? Is this a place where Christians gather? Yes, this is a Christian church. And so we are Christ's followers. He is our example. And you must follow in his steps. He never sinned, nor ever deceived anyone. He did not retaliate when he was insulted. Not you and me right? When you like mama bear, Papa Bear, you come after my kids, you come after someone, I love my friend, I'm gonna let you have it. He did not retaliate when he was insulted, nor threatened revenge when he suffered, he left his case in the hands of God, who always judges fairly, he personally carried our sins in his body, on the cross so that we can be dead to sin and live for what is right by his wounds. You and I are healed. Once you were like sheep who wandered away. But now you have turned to your Shepherd, the guardian of your souls. See this, this this strength that I'm talking about? It's not in you and me. Okay? Because we have to admit what's in you and me. When someone comes up against you in me, what we want to do is we're either ones who want to shoot first and ask questions later. Or we we sort of push it in, right, so some of y'all internalize pain and wrong until us outbursts, when we have pain and wrong, and some of us are combination of both, depending on the situation. And what he's saying here is that the only way we're going to respond in different ways to the wrong that's done to us is if we first turn to the shepherd, the guardian of our souls, at least our third and final point this morning, by His wounds, we are healed. Do we really believe that? That what we just did we partook of the cup, and partook of the unleavened bread, that God Himself that were proclaiming something that is true about the God of the universe, that is also true for us that His blood is enough. That it really is enough to cover our sins, cover our brokenness, cover our hate, cover our times were misunderstood. cover our struggles. When we try to live honorably, and we fall and we stumble, we don't even care if we live honorably, we don't have to retaliate. Why not? Because what someone's doing to us is no big deal. It is a big deal. There's a lot of pain and hurt in this room, I get that. But it's saying it's got to be dealt with one way or the other, in the way that I'm able to find comfort is because the God of the universe saved your soul in mind is that it's going to be dealt with either on the cross, or at the final judgment seat. And let's just call it MIT around the room. When you and I have had thoughts of revenge and retaliation, it eats us up inside, doesn't it? You ever been there where you're holding something against someone and they're either clueless or they don't care, or they're moved on to go and destroy someone else's life? What you and I do is we're walking wounded, aren't we, we're walking around with a hole inside of us what some of us are walking around, and that we're actually a shell of who God created us to be. God says you are loved. We don't feel it. We don't see it. We don't sense it. God says you are forgiven. And we're like, I don't know, I don't think that's me. And what we're doing is, we're just denying the reality of the universe that God wants to say, by the blood of Christ, by His wounds by Jesus Christ wounds himself, we can be healed. We're finding all kinds of other things to try to heal us up. Let's spend the money we don't have whether it's addiction to legal things, or illegal things, we're all trying to fill the holes that are there because of the hurt and the pain and the brokenness that we've experienced. And we just don't let God heal us. So this morning, I don't know where you're at in this journey with all this, but I don't want to walk around like a zombie. I don't want to walk around like a shell of the person that God created me to be, I want to be fully his and I want to be fully known. I want to be whole and he promises that he can do that. If we will yet open ourselves up and say, God make me whole. I'm hurting and I've hurt. And I believe that by your wounds, I'm going to count on your wounds. I'm going to count on the scars that you took in order to make me whole may it be Let's pray. Father, we thank You for Your Word. We thank you how you don't leave us wandering or wondering who you are or what you're capable of doing in our lives. I pray for many in this room that feel like there is something missing. There is things that we have in our hearts where we're upset because someone's hurt us. Me hurting right now me and I don't even know why we hurt we did hurt. We tried to numb it and so many other ways. The God you've come through are you to say, let me be your God and you can be my people. So Father, I pray that you do that for many in this room as they are leaning in to what you have for him. God help us we pray this day and all the days of our life. In Christ's name we pray, Amen.

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