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Pastor Vic's Message
“Who Am I?”
September 21, 2008
1 1:17-2:3
Peter is telling us about God and who we are. He uses
some unique and majestic words. Peter was just an ordinary fisherman who
chose to obey completely. He chose to say, "yes" when God's Spirit spoke to
him. As he grew in his spiritual life he found God to be greater than words
could describe.
He started his letter by describing our salvation from
God's point of view. Then he reminded us of all the blessings we have to be
thankful for. In 1:13-15 he challenges us to live holy lives just like our
Father. By disciplining our minds, our emotions, and our dreams we can live
the way we were designed to live.
Because our Father is holy Peter expects us to live holy
lives. God has set the standard. God is the standard. We are to be holy as
He is holy, to be perfect as He is perfect, to be merciful as He is, to love
as He does. Until we see the real standard, we assume the popular is the
standard. Everybody else is doing it.
I read a newsletter this week that identified some trends
in some Christian organizations to use mystery religions as our standard
rather than the Bible. They claim to believe the Bible, but they seek power,
influence and experiences that are not Biblical.
In Peter's letter he focuses on the Trinity. Peter does
not mention all the diseases that destroy our relationship with God. He does
not mention that bitterness is the cancer of the soul. He does not mention
that pride can wreck the church. He does not threaten us with some scare
tactics to entice us to live holy lives. He does not use a manipulative
argument to convince us we should be holy. He does not focus on what we get
out of salvation, but what God has done for us.
Peter only says, "Look how great God is! Look at all the
blessings and privileges He has given us!" Maybe some of you have always been
motivated by negative threats. But Peter asks you to consider God's love.
Maybe you need to hear about judgment, tribulation, and the wrath of God, but
Peter does not do that until the last chapter of his second letter. If you do
not live according to the instruction manual, you will self-destruct.
Peter is writing to Christians who were scattered around
the Roman Empire and were suffering. They knew what it was like to see loved
ones sacrificed to lions for Caesar's pleasure. They knew what it meant to
say "Jesus is Lord" and refuse to say that Caesar was lord. They all had
loved ones or knew of loved ones who had given their lives as a testimony for
Jesus. They did not need to be scared into living holy lives. They just
wanted to hear more about God. They wanted to hear again how great God is and
what He was doing. They wanted to see God.
In I Peter 1:2, Peter says we are what we are, where we
are, 'according to' the foremost knowledge of God. The foremost knowledge of
God is the standard on which the plan of our lives has been built. In 1 Cor,
Paul says that Jesus is the foundation on which we build His church. God is
in control. He is the standard for our lives.
We must not measure our lives by the expectations of man
or by our own self evaluation, but by the standard of God. You are who you
are in God’s eyes.
God is holy. He is our standard. God is holy and He has
made holiness the standard necessary for the health of His universe. Whatever
is holy is healthy; evil is a moral sickness that leads to death. Sin is
spiritual cancer. We are healthy when we live according to the owner’s manual
of our lives.
The Scripture is plain. We are commanded to live holy
lives. A holy life will be very different than what the world defines as
normal.
In the rest of the letter Peter tells us how to live a
holy life. In various ways he answers the question, "How can I be Christlike?"
In the Scripture today Peter says you were like slaves, but now you are
children. Obey your Father. You were like grass, but now you are eternal.
Your behavior was worldly, but now godly.
It is interesting in verses 17 and 18 that Peter says
conduct yourselves in fear "knowing". Normally we fear what we do not know or
understand. But the fear of God is a respect that grows greater as you know
Him more. Some people fear knowing an evil father. Christians fear knowing a
loving Father.
1. You call God, "Father", so live in reverence. We
are God’s CHILDREN (1:17)
2. You were redeemed, so live in freedom. We are God’s
SLAVES (1:18)
3. You were purified, so live in love. We are part of
the FAMILY of God (1:22)
4. You are eternal, so be different. FOREVER
BEAUTIFUL (1:25)
5. You have new clothes. Clean ATTITUDE and lifestyle
(2:1-3)
"And if you are calling upon for yourselves as Father,
the one who impartially judges according to each man's work, live like it."
It seems only fair that if you call God your Father, you should live like His
children remembering you are sojourners here and not citizens. (1:17)
You say you believe in God. Satan believes too. Satan
condemns. He judges each man by externals. He does not consider the motives
of the heart. God wants us to live like His children. He wants us to reflect
His nature and do good, be honest and pure. He is pleased when the world sees
our works and gives Him glory. I am pleased when people see my kids and give
them a complement. God judges my heart. God judges impartially. He judges
justly.
Notice that God sees our work as singular. My whole
style of life is seen as one. He does not have to weigh the good deeds
against the bad. Good deeds are only good when they are done with the right
heart and bad deeds can be used for good if my motive is right. God told
Isaiah He could not endure the nice religious ceremonies of the people when
their hearts were full of iniquity. (Is. 1:13) God judges our ‘work’ not our
‘works’.
If God is our Father, then this world is not our home and
we should with reverence live each day for Him in the time we have. If God is
our Father, then why fear Satan? If God is our Father then why get too
comfortable in this world? Fear God knowing God.
Peter gets excited when he thinks about our redemption.
"It is an obvious fact that you were not redeemed with
little corruptible coins of silver and gold in a slave market from the empty
way of life handed down by your fathers." All of Solomon's riches could not
redeem him. (1:18) All the worlds riches could not redeem you.
The word "redeem" means to buy back, to rescue. Like a
watch in a pawn shop we are redeemed from a useless, powerless, empty, vain,
idle way of life. You were not functioning as you were designed to do, but
redemption restored your freedom. You were prisoners of sin and self with
very little space to move and big guilt to carry.
Grammatically ‘redeem’ is in the aorist passive form,
which means at a definite time the subject received some action from an
outside source. We receive redemption. The work was completed when Jesus
said, "It is finished!" Jesus paid the price of our redemption. When we
believe, we receive!
By believing on Him, we accept His work on the cross as
our release from the chains of our sins. Our chains fall off when we bow at
the feet of Jesus. We are free from the chains of men's expectations. We are
free from the chains of customs, ritual, and routine. We are free from the
chains of our desires. We have been redeemed. The ransom has been paid. Our
life now can have meaning. Our horizons can expand. We can live as children
of the King.
At death we receive final salvation, unlimited space.
But in contrast to the little coins that are used to buy
back slaves, you were redeemed with the precious blood of Jesus. There is
some majesty here. I suspect Peter is on his knees in praise.
God did not use coins, money, cattle, kingdoms, or stars
to redeem me. He used the most precious thing He had. He gave His only Son.
All to Him I owe.
For hundreds of years the O.T. Temple sacrifices taught
them of their repeated and continuous need for atonement. But the blood of
animals could not wash away sins. Only the blameless and spotless Lamb of God
could take away the sins of the world.
"Before God threw the universe out into space, it was
already known that Jesus was our redeemer. Even though conceived before the
chaos, this plan has just been manifested and made totally visible in these
last times for your sake." (1:20) "You who through Him are believers unto
God, the God who raised Him from out of the dead and gave Him glory so our
faith and hope might be unto God." (1:21)
Our God is a raising from the dead kind. He is the
creator.
The word foreknown is a perfect participle which means an
action in the past is still the truth today. Jesus held a place in the
presence of God and He continues to hold that place. He was known by God
before creation and is still known today. The incarnation did not change
Jesus' relationship to the Father.
'Manifested' is an aorist participle, pointing to a
definite act at a given time. In time Jesus has been manifested. The
relationship remains eternal, but the manifestation occurred at a point in
time.
By believing in this manifestation we can have faith and
hope in God. When we were slaves to sin, our faith was in ourselves, our
money, our mind, our strength. Our hope was in ourselves. But we could not
give ourselves meaning. We did not really trust ourselves. We did not see
any hope out of the rat race we had put ourselves in. But all things were
changed when we said yes to Jesus. We were redeemed so our faith and hope are
in God.
1. We are God's children
2. We are God's slaves. He redeemed us and set us free,
to be no man’s slave again.
3. We are part of the family of God. The holy One. We
fear God, knowing His love. We love others because our hearts are changed.
"Our souls have been purified" we have been made holy and
set apart by our great High Priest "in the sphere of obedience to the truth."
We are the children of obedience. A consistent obedience to the truth,
purifies the heart. As we walk in the Light...we are cleansed from all sin.
The Holy Spirit purifies our hearts by faith. We live by faith. In Isaiah
35:7-10 we are shown that God intends that the highway of holiness on which we
walk will be a beautiful way amidst a chaotic and desolate world.
There is cleansing power in the Truth, the Word. Many
hear the Truth, but most are not purified because they will not obey it. But
if we obey we will have a sincere brotherly love. You will have a new nature.
This love is a love of reciprocity. We love because He
first loved us. We love because we really enjoy being with the object of our
love. We have a very special love for other Christians. We have many of the
same likes, goals, and desires. We enjoy being together and the more we are
together, the more our love grows.
We have a sincere love of our brothers and sisters in
Christ because Christ has redeemed us. A sincere brotherly love is not common
outside the church. Before they were believers, their love was not sincere.
It was hypocritical. Often it was just pretending for the expediency of the
moment.
If you do not have a sincere love for other Christians,
you better check your faith and hope.
According to the N.T., there are only 3 things that are
sincere or real: faith, love, and wisdom. These all come from a pure heart.
Peter says, some Christians may not be sincere. They are
wearing different masks with different people. They were pretending. The
reason for their insincerity is that they have strayed from the Word. Failure
to obey the word brings division. Failure to obey the Word brings sin in my
heart. Obedience purifies my heart so I have a sincere love "from a pure
heart".
You can't be holy without obedience. But if you are
walking in obedience you can do what Peter commands: "From a pure heart love
one another fervently."
There is an interesting change in this phrase. The
pronoun 'one another' is a reciprocal pronoun. Which means Peter expects some
give and take. However, the word for love is no longer reciprocal. It is one
way. It is the commitment kind of love that loves because of the nature of
the lover and has nothing to do with the object that is loved. We sometimes
say that this is God's kind of love because He loved us when we did not
deserve it and we were unlovely and repulsive in our sin. However, God is
love. He has to love because His nature is love. He loves because He is
love. This is the love that is in harmony with all His other attributes of
mercy, grace, justice, holiness, etc. This is the kind of love we need.
God also has a brotherly kind of love for us as mentioned
in John 5:20 and 16:27. When Jesus asked Peter if he loved him 3 times, the
first 2 times he used agapao and the third time he changed to phileo as if to
say, "Are we still friends?" But this word here is agape and not phileo. The
sincere love is phileo; this fervent love is agapao.
We are to love one another with a love that expects no
love in return. Peter makes up a word here to describe this love. It must be
intense, stretched out, fervent, with effort. Not a flash in the pan, but
continuous. Stretched out like the neck of a race horse at the finish line.
To you who now love one another with a brotherly love,
with fondness and affection because they are nice to be around, God is
saying, "Make love your nature." Put love in your pure heart. The feeling of
fondness is good and proper, but now let the Spirit purify your heart by faith
and give you perfect love. Make perfect love your very nature. This is a
command to love, with a perfect love, which is holiness. Allow the fruit of
the Spirit to grow in your life. If the fruit of the Spirit is growing "you
will never sin." (II Peter 1:10)
Watch the transition here. Following the command to be
holy, again Peter reminds us why.
1. We are God's children.
2. We are God's slaves.
3. We are part of God's holy family.
4. We are eternal.
"Having been born again not of corruptible seed, but
undying seed through the living and undying word of God." (1:23)
I want to think about the thought of being born again
with an imperishable seed. If everything in this life is born to get old and
die, then when we are born again with the Word we get younger. So the oldest
angel is the youngest? We just experienced a physical birth this week. Nancy
and I have a new grand daughter. The spiritual birth metaphor suggests
similarity, but a radical difference.
Peter states that we are eternal and contrasts our nature
with grass and flowers. The inference is, you are eternal so don't live like
the flowers with no hope. We have been born again of a seed that never dies.
Our very nature is eternal so the activities of our lives should reflect our
hope. We should be building one another up not destroying. We should see all
of life as part of God’s eternity. We should understand death and see it as
part of life.
When we accepted Jesus as Lord of our lives and we
committed our lives to Him, we received the seed/Word of the Kingdom of God
which was planted within us. An undying seed in us has come alive. It needs
to be nourished and cared for. Our lives are the soil that we keep weeded and
watered as the power of God works within us. It’s a mystery. The
imperishable seed has started something growing in us.
We have a future. Our faith and hope are in God.
In Palestine there are 243 species of grass. They all
wither with the first frost. But in contrast to the grass our nature never
fades away. The living and eternal word is the Kingdom of God abiding in us.
Within the seed is the power of eternity. Within the seed is our deliverance
from sin and death. Our hope is in the seed.
If we are the children of God, if our faith and hope are
in God, if our nature is to love, if we are eternal, then stop looking like
the flowers and the grass. There is no place for wickedness, fraud,
hypocrisy, envies and gossiping in your life. We should not be affected by
every little breeze. We should not be affected by every temperature change.
We are not fragile to the abuse of this world. If you are a Christian, you
will not suddenly fall into sin.
The word which has been preached to you is the word that
abides forever. As the word is undying, you are undying because that is the
seed planted within your spirit when you were born again.
So, 2:1-3 says dress like you belong to God and you have
eternal life. Peter tells us what to take off, but does not describe our
righteous robes except to say we will be hungering for God.
The first verb in chapter 2 is used 7 times in the NT and
6 of those are strong holiness passages. It is always used in the middle
voice which means that the subject is acting upon himself. The subject does
the action to himself.
An extended translation here would be, "put away from
yourself once and for all". The form of the verb tells us that Peter expects
us to do this at a definite point in time. In the last chapter we were
recipients of salvation. God acted and we passively received the action. We
have been born again because we have received redemption from God. As we have
noticed in Acts, our salvation was preceded by a sharp conviction of our sin
and a desire to repent and be forgiven.
Peter is writing to Christians. Now this verb,
apothemenoi, means to lay aside, take off, put off, rid yourselves at a
definite point in time of some old clothes. The combination literally means
"from + to place". There is emphasis on separation. Some things should not
be part of my life.
I want us to look at the other 6 places this word occurs
in the N.T. Then we'll come back and see what Peter is telling us in these 3
verses.
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Acts 7:58 In a physical sense I become separated from my
coat. I do it for myself in preparation for an activity.
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Rom. 13:11-14 We put off the deeds of darkness. We put
on the armor of light, the Lord Jesus Christ.
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Eph. 4:22-25 We put off the old self, put on the new,
and put off falsehood.
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Col. 3:1-14 Put off (3:8); Put on (3:12).
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Heb. 12:1 Put off to prepare for a race.
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James 1:21 Put off moral filth.
You have some old rags on, some old patterns of thinking,
some habits, ways of reacting, some ways of doing things, some things you
dismiss as "it's just my personality." You need to look at those areas of
your life. You are now a child of the King. You now have eternity planted in
you and spiritually you are living in the Kingdom of God, so dress like it
spiritually.
"Put off malice" - This is a word for evil and sometimes
translated wickedness. Peter told Simeon the sorcerer to put off wickedness
because it is totally contrary to Kingdom attitudes. This is a vicious
attitude that destroys the one who has it and the one who receives it. Malice
is my desire for someone else’s harm.
"Put off Guile" - This means fraud, deceit, to connive,
to trap, to catch with bait. Christians don't have to be crafty. We can
trust God to make all things work for good. Look at 2:22 & 3:10. The same
word is used with an "a" prefix in vs. 2 which means "not" or "without". A
contrast between what we are and what Jesus is. We are to be like Him;
without impurities, no hidden tricks, no sugar coating, just natural.
"Put off Hypocricies" - play acting, to wear many masks.
It refers to the act of impersonating; hiding your true identity. Having two
faces. You're a child of God, don't settle to be king even for a day. The
praise of man is very passing. It's hard to be 2-faced unless I am ashamed of
a part of me. In Christ I live in the light and I can be natural. God loves
me as I am.
"Put off Jealousies" - envies. This is the feeling of
displeasure produced by witnessing or hearing of the advantage or prosperity
of another. Envy is usually the last sin to die. Envy only dies when I die
to myself and I can say that "it is no longer me that lives but Christ living
in me." Envy destroys relationships; love builds.
"Put away Slanders" - Literally evil speakings,
gossiping, speaking against. When envy dies, so does slander. The great
destroyer of the individual is slander. Not the person who is slandered, but
the one making the accusations.
Peter says, take off your rags. Get rid of destructive
attitudes. Just like babies who come into the world with nothing but a desire
for colostrum milk, you too must long for and desire the Word, the bread of
heaven, the living seed that abides forever. The pure milk that makes the
physical baby immune to the diseases of this world illustrates how God's Word
makes the diseases of the spiritual world powerless in our lives.
The metaphor changes. We have been born again. We are
babes. Jesus Christ is like our mother. The spiritual milk is the life of
God given in mercy and grace through Jesus. The goal is not adulthood, but
salvation.
Sunday
Morning Family Worship -- 9:00 a.m.
Vic Dunton,
Chaplain
Phone: (503) 829-8591
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