Yearly Archives: 2011

1 Peter 1:17 (NIV), Lifestyle and Accountability God’s Way

John 3:36

By Spencer D Gear

I. Introduction

For the last 13 years in the Wide-Bay Burnett region of Queensland (Australia), I have been counselling families who are falling apart and devastated by many of life’s problems – divorce, severe conflict, rebel youth, parents who don’t know how to parent, domestic violence, sexual abuse, drug addiction, gambling problems, etc.

There is a constant that is ever before me: What will it take to have families and individuals healed so that these issues are solved or prevented from happening? Another burden is on my heart: Where can I find a community of people who will be an example for these fractured folks to see and receive help from?

We, the Christian church, need to demonstrate radically different relationships in our families and churches. Too often, the conflict in our families and in the church is such a poor example of what Christ wants to be and do in our families and church.

Where can I find a Christian community that is an example – a radical example – of loving, caring, relationships and that have a real burden to reach the lost folks of this community? A Christian community that will make the world sit up and take notice?

Peter cuts to the heart of this issue. In 1:10, he stated, “Concerning this salvation.”

In vv. 10-12, he links the salvation to the prophets and then Christ’s sufferings and the Gospel.

But in vv. 13-16, he says, THEREFORE, and links this salvation to your lifestyle as Christians:

Setting your hope fully/completely in the correct direction (v. 13);
You must be holy (v. 15).

Now Peter continues this emphasis on the need for a vital Christian community, its salvation, and a lifestyle that stands out. But this time he reminds us of our accountability. Why should we live Christian lives of holiness & hope?

The MAIN THRUST of my message from this passage (v. 17) is: Since you have experienced “this salvation”, your life must show that you are radically different through accountability.

There’s another command here that comes with lots of meat associated with it.

II. Your salvation means, your lifestyle & accountability must be done God’s way (v. 17).

“Since you call on a Father who judges each person’s work impartially, live out your time as foreigners here in reverent fear” (1:17, NIV).

We understand the meaning of “accountability” as the one who checks up on you. Who checks on how well you do your work in your employment? He or she is the person to whom you are accountable. Who supervises your actions? In living your Christian life here on this earth, who supervises your lifestyle? To whom are you accountable – ultimately?

A. This salvation means that you are accountable to God the Father

“Every word in this text is important and filled with meaning” (Kistemaker 1987, p. 63). The Greek’s had an important way to emphasise something. If we are speaking, we might shout for emphasis. When writing, we would put it in bold, underline, or italics. That was not possible when writing the koine Greek of the NT, so the writers would put a word near the beginning of a sentence and before the verb if they wanted to emphasise something. That’s what happens here. Our translation in the NIV states:

1. “Since you call on a Father” (v. 17)

But the Greek text literally says “And since a father you call on.” Why is this? Because if you are going to live a lifestyle of accountability, God’s way, your responsibility to your heavenly Father is at the centre of your accountability.

Not any old father, but God the Father. This is the language repeated many times in the OT. Take passages like:

Ps. 89:26: “He will call out to me, ‘You are my Father, my God, the Rock my Savior.'”

Jer. 3:19: “I myself said, ‘How gladly would I treat you like sons and give you a desirable land, the most beautiful inheritance of any nation.’ I thought you would call me ‘Father’ and not turn away from following me.”

Isa. 63:16: “But you are our Father, though Abraham does not know us or Israel acknowledge us; you, O LORD, are our Father, our Redeemer from of old is your name.”

Remember the beginning of the Lord’s prayer? When you pray, when you call on Him, whom are you calling on? “This, then, is how you should pray: ‘Our Father in heaven . . .” (Matt. 6:9).

Paul to the Romans wrote of the Holy Spirit: “And by him we cry, ‘Abba, Father.'”

Why is it important for the Scriptures to emphasise that God is our Father? Remember back in v. 14 of this chapter, Peter wrote to these believers as “obedient children.” He is our heavenly Father, we are his obedient children AND as obedient children, we can expect at the end of this life that we will get either his approval or reproof.

The Scriptures are clear here and elsewhere that for all believers . . .

2. He “judges each [person’s] [2] work impartially” (v. 17)

There are no dud judges in God’s court. He judges with absolute

justice and there are no favourites with him.

This emphasis comes elsewhere in Scripture.

James 2:1-9, God does not show favouritism, to the rich or to the poor.

Rom. 2:11, “For God does not show favoritism” to Jew or Gentile.

Eph. 6:9, “And masters, treat your slaves in the same way. Do

not threaten them, since you know that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no favoritism with him.”

Col. 3:25, “Anyone who does wrong will be repaid for his wrong, and there is no favoritism.”

Are you living daily for the approval of other Christians? Do you live so that your church leaders will play favourites with you? I think many of us would say that we are living for the Lord’s approval, but if that is so:

Why is there such conflict among us? If we were living for God’s approval, shouldn’t we relate to one another in a godly way that will gain God’s approval? I’m speaking to me as much as to you: I must think before I speak so that I am living in a godly way in my speech. I ask you: What have you done this week, this month, that would gain the Lord’s approval: “Well done good and faithful servant”? [3] OR, “That was a lousy job and I, the Father, am shocked with your performance after you became a Christian. I am displeased with you.”

3. What will God, the Father, judge?

We must be very clear on this point. Who is Peter addressing? Go back to v. 1, “God’s elect.” In v. 4, he wrote of those who have been given “new birth into a living hope.” V. 10, “Concerning this salvation.” He’s addressing Christians. So, when he says that he will judge each person’s work impartially, he is NOT talking about judging you as to whether you are going to heaven or not.

Whether you or saved or not, is based on what you have done with the crucified risen Lord. What have you done with the salvation through Christ’s death that has been offered to you? Have you repented of your sin, accepted his salvation by faith, and are you continuing to live a Christ-honouring life? If you have, Paul declares in Rom. 8:1, “There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”

So this is included in the final judgment of Matt. 25:31-46 when the sheep are separated from the goats. But, for the Christian, it is NOT the judgment for sinners who are still in unbelief. Christ took the sin punishment for you and me and you are declared righteous when you repent. This is the judgment of your actions AFTER salvation for your rewards. Your sins were taken care of when you repented. Here the sheep will be judged to receive rewards, based on their actions during their Christian life. Unbelievers will be judged for their sins of unbelief.

Paul to the Romans wrote: “You, then, why do you judge your brother? Or why do you look down on your brother? For we will all stand before God’s judgment seat. It is written: ‘As surely as I live,’ says the Lord, ‘every knee will bow before me; every tongue will confess to God.’ So then, each of us will give an account of himself to God” (Rom. 14:10-12).

Paul to the Corinthians: “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive what is due him for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad”(2 Cor. 5:10).

It is important for believers to understand that this judgment of believers “will be a judgment to evaluate and bestow various degrees of reward. . . but the fact that they will face such judgment should never cause believers to fear that they will be eternally condemned. Jesus said, ‘Whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life’ (John 5:24) ‘” (Grudem 1994, p. 1143).

What actions in your life will give you God’s favourable judgment? 2 Cor. 5:9, “So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him.” What does a life look like that is pleasing to God, and that will lead to his positive, impartial assessment of the deeds of our lives? You will get God’s “well done, good and faithful servant” when you do what God considers is good and faithful. One of the best recipes for that is to live a life governed by the fruit of the Spirit in Gal. 5:16-26:

So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under law.
The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery [ie eagerness for lustful pleasure (4)]; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other.”

In your daily life with your family, your employment, living in this community, you will gain the better, fair judgment from God if what you do is determined by these kinds of attitudes and actions every day::

I will respond lovingly to all people today.
I will have a joyful attitude today, whether I am shy, serious or jovial.
Today, I will do all in my power to promote peace in the church, at home, on the job, in my community.
With God’s help, I will be patient with all people today.
Today I will be kind to that difficult person.
I will do what God considers to be good today and this week. I cannot know what is good without studying God’s Word.
I will act faithfully to my spouse, children, boss and employees, my community, and most of all to my Lord today.
I will seek to do all things today in the gentlest way towards all people.
Lord, I need your help to be self-controlled in all my actions today – especially with my anger, eating food, the types of things I view. In what areas of self-control, do you need the Holy Spirit’s help?

Since they are the fruit of God’s Holy Spirit, he needs to be the one to spiritually water your life so that His fruit will grow. I do not know how I can have the Holy Spirit’s fruit growing in my life without spending daily time in the presence of God’s Holy Spirit Himself. Daily time in the Word and in prayer are critical to developing fruit that will last.

Is God the central person in your life. Are you living so that when your work is judged impartially by God the Father, you will get this decision, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

This verse continues in dealing with our lives.

4. You are to “live your lives as strangers” (v. 17)

Do you ever feel you are out of place in this wicked world? “This world is not my home, I’m just a passing through.” Please note what v. 17 (NIV) says, “Live your lives as strangers.” The ESV reads: “Throughout the time of your exile.” In v. 1 of this chapter, there is a different word, but a similar idea: believers are “strangers in the world.” Here, the view is that we are living alongside our non-Christian neighbours as “pilgrims or strangers.” It’s the same word that appears in Acts 7:6, where it speaks of Abraham, whose “descendants will be strangers in a foreign country.”

Peter is preparing us for what he will tell us in 2:11, “I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world.” That’s for another time.

If you are true believers and you find yourself out of step with what is happening in the world, that’s the way it ought to be. I’m not talking about being mean-spirited to unbelievers and separating ourselves from contact with them. That would be contrary to the general emphasis of the Bible.

I did my master’s degree counsellor training at Ashland Theological Seminary in Ashland, Ohio, where there was an old-order Amish community where the people drove around the city and countryside using horses & buggies. They dressed in old-style, period costumes. I don’t think that this idea of being “strangers in the world” means that we refuse to use electricity, motor cars, and other mod cons like the Amish, but Peter is making it very clear that we are strangers in the world. If you are truly Christian you should never really feel at home in this wicked, materialistic, God-hating world.

That’s what we are to do: “Live as strangers” (v. 17).

God the Father is the impartial judge;
He is the judge of each Christian’s work while on earth;
While on earth, Christians are to live as strangers;
As strangers, accountable to God, Christians are to do it . . .

5. In reverent fear (v. 17)

Remember the core of this verse? We deal with God the Father who is the impartial judge of our works. How are we to live in his presence? “In reverent fear.” What does this mean biblically? It seems to be a country mile from the views of the seeker-sensitive, user friendly evangelical church today.

a. Whom should we fear?

The devil? Absolutely not! This is the “reverent fear” of God the Father, as this verse states.

b. What does it mean to fear God?

Does this mean to shake all over at the thought of God? Let me share a few other Scriptures so that we understand the absolute importance of the fear of God:

Ps. 112:1, “Praise the LORD. Blessed is the man who fears the LORD, who finds great delight in his commands.” The word, “fear” as it relates to God, appears 49 times [5] in the Book of Psalms.
Ps. 2:11, “Serve the LORD with fear and rejoice with trembling.”
Isa 8:13, “The LORD Almighty is the one you are to regard as holy, he is the one you are to fear, he is the one you are to dread.”
Prov. 1:7, “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge.”
Remember Job? Job 1:8-12 reads:

Then the LORD said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil.”

“Does Job fear God for nothing?” Satan replied. “Have you not put a hedge around him and his household and everything he has? You have blessed the work of his hands, so that his flocks and herds are spread throughout the land. But stretch out your hand and strike everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your face.”

The LORD said to Satan, “Very well, then, everything he has is in your hands, but on the man himself do not lay a finger.”

Then Satan went out from the presence of the LORD.

God allowed Satan to kill Job’s children, kill the animals, destroy his property & crops, bring horrible disease on Job, and a wife who urged Job, “Curse God and die” (Job 2:9). What was Job’s response?

In Job 23:14-17, Job replies to God:

“He [God] carries out his decree against me,
and many such plans he still has in store.
That is why I am terrified before him;
when I think of all this, I fear him.
God has made my heart faint;
the Almighty has terrified me.
Yet I am not silenced by the darkness,
by the thick darkness that covers my face.”

Job feared God, but it did not stop devastation in his life, that was allowed by God.

What does it mean to have “reverent fear” of the Father?

A.W. Tozer said that one of the perils for the preacher is “when he loses his solemn fear in the presence of the High and Holy One.” [6]

What is the fear of the Lord?

“It does not mean fear in our usual sense of being afraid. It means rather to quake or tremble in the presence of a Being so holy, so morally superior, so removed from evil, that in his presence, human boasting, human pride, human arrogance vanish as we bow in speechless humility, reverence, and adoration of the One beyond understanding.” [7]

This fear of God is not a dread or terror of Him in an horrific sense. It is a loving reverence of him that finds us falling on our faces before him in willing obedience to his commands.

The fear of God includes trust in God, knowledge of God from creation and His Word, recognition of God’s claim on my life. It is awe of the power and holiness of God. When I fear God, I cherish the sense of His presence. I tremble in his presence, knowing how puny I am, and how transcendently awesome He is.

We as human beings are dependent people. We depend, not on husbands or wives, not on children, bosses or government leaders. We must not depend on ourselves. We cannot act wisely if we are our own king.

Dependent human beings must fear God. We have a duty to obey Him. We must carry out the plans of our Creator. Life is only ordered correctly for us when God is in charge. We depend on the Almighty One for our very existence.

Paul, the Apostle, knew this: He wrote in 2 Cor. 5:11, “Since, then, we know what it is to fear the Lord, we try to persuade men.” You will not develop a burden to evangelise this community if you do not have an awesome fear of the Almighty, Holy God, to whom you are accountable. Do you fear Him? He is the one who judges your deeds, for rewards, with an impartial judgment.

I want to apply this message to you and me, here in the 21st century.

III. Application

1. Who are you living to please? Whose approval is most important in your life? Your peers? Your spouse, girlfriend/boyfriend, your boss? Do you seek the approval of your pastor, the church leaders? If you seek the approval of anyone less than God the Father, you are doomed to dissatisfaction and failure.

2. Honest now, do you live each day for God the Father’s, “Well done, good & faithful servant”? If you are not there yet, what do you need to change?

3. If you don’t live for God the Father’s approval, it probably means that you don’t really fear God as you need to. Where is your “reverent fear” of God Himself? Why don’t you have it?

4. Ps. 33:8 says, “Let all the earth fear the Lord; let all the people of the world revere him.”

Why is this sense of God’s awesome holiness virtually unknown among Christians today? Why is this holy reverence and overwhelming wonder missing in our lives and churches? How can we be so blind as to treat God as a daddy, a good bloke, rather than falling on our faces before Him in holy awe?

The apostle John, according to Rev. 1:17, fell as if he were dead at the feet of God. The reason for this lack of fear of God becomes clear:

“When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. Then he placed his right hand on me and said: ‘Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last. I am the Living One; I was dead, and behold I am alive forever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades.'”

Surely, there would be profound reverence and godly fear if we suddenly found ourselves in God’s presence.

In John’s words, the reason he had this holy fear was: “I saw him.” Our lack of passionate love for God. The fear of God is not among us because we are so far from our Lord. We need to seek Him. We need to see him and know him.

5. What’s stopping you from being an obedient child of God the Father?

6. You will be judged by God for your actions as a believer. Do you think that you ought to be on your face pleading for God to give you an awesome, reverential fear of Him?

7. Do you understand how radical the early church was? Acts 19:18 reads, “Many of those who believed now came and openly confessed their evil deeds.” But for believers, James 5:16 says that this is what should be happening among us: “Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.” Have you ever thought that our prayers may not be effective and God’s healing does not take place for people in our churches when we call upon him for a miraculous intervention, because we don’t confess our sins to God and to one another?

IV. Conclusion

Maximilian Kolbe [may be unknown to you, but he] knew the fear of the Lord. It fueled his obedience—even to the point of pouring out his life for another. His fear of God was greater than his fear of the tyrants of Auschwitz [the Nazi concentration prison camp in Poland.’The overall number of victims of Auschwitz in the years 1940-1945 is estimated at between 1,100,000 and 1,500,000 people. The majority of them, and above all the mass transports of Jews who arrived beginning in 1942, died in the gas chambers.’ [8]. “The believers of Eastern Europe knew the fear of the Lord. They chose Christ over their communist [and Nazi] oppressors. (Now they must choose Christ over materialism or whatever elsefollows.)”[9]

The fear of the Lord was the secret of the early church. When Ananias and Sapphira dropped dead in judgment because they lied to God (they trampled on the holy), Acts 5:11 says, “Great fear seized the whole church and all who heard about these events.” Is it going to take this kind of judgment of people in the church to get them to sit up and take notice of the need to have an absolute holy fear of the Almighty God? Could the tsunami have been a wake-up call?

The Scriptures link an awesome, reverential fear of God with a determined pursuit of holiness. Second Cor. 7:1 (ESV), “Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God.”

Notes:

2. The NIV translated it, “man.” The NRSV says, “All people.” “Each one” in the NET Bible’s version, which it is “each person’s” in TNIV.

3. Matthew 25:21.

4. New Living Translation.

5. Psalm 2:11; 15:4; 19:9; 22:23, 25; 25:12, 14; 27:1; 31:19; 33:8, 18; 34:7, 9, ; 36:1; 40:3; 46:2; 52:6; 55:19; 56:4; 60:4; 61:5; 64:9; 66:6; 67:7; 72:5; 85:9; 86:11; 90:11; 96:9; 102:15; 103:11, 13, 17; 111:5, 10; 112:1; 115:11, 13; 118:4; 119:38, 63, 74, 120; 128:1, 4; 135:20; 145:19; 147:11.

6. A.W. Tozer, God Tells the Man Who Cares. Camp Hill, PA: Christian Publications, 1992, p. 92.

7. Caleb Rosado, “America the Brutal,” Christianity Today, August 15, 1994, p. 24.

8. “Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum” (Online), available from: http://www.auschwitz.org.pl/html/eng/historia_KL/liczba_narodowosc_ofiar_ok.html [8 May 2005].
9. Charles Colson, The Body. Dallas: Word Publishing, 1992, p. 383.

Works consulted

Grudem, W. 1994, Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine, Zondervan Publishing House, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Kistemaker, S. J. 1987, New Testament Commentary: Exposition of the Epistles of Peter and of the Epistle of Jude, Evangelical Press, Welwyn, Hertfordshire.

I Peter 1:13-16, Hope and holiness in an unholy world

(ChristArt)

By Spencer D Gear

A. Introduction

Viktor Frankl was an Austrian psychiatrist during World War II. “He tells of his years trapped in the indescribable horrors of [the Nazi prisoner of war camps] of Auschwitz and Dachau. He was transported there like a despised animal,

given two minutes to strip naked or be whipped,
every hair was shaved from his body,
and he was condemned to a living death.

His father, mother, brother and wife died in the camps or were sent to the gas ovens. His existence was full of cold, fear, starvation, pain, lice and vermin, dehumanization, exhaustion, and terror.

“Frankl wrote that he was able to survive because he never lost the quality of hope. Those prisoners who lost faith in the future were doomed. . . “Frankl said that this usually happened quite suddenly. One morning a prisoner would just refuse to get up. He wouldn’t get dressed or wash or go outside to the parade grounds. No amount of pleading by his fellow prisoners would help. No threatening by the captors would have any effect. . . [It] was called ‘give-up-it is.’

“When a prisoner lost hope, said Frankl, ‘he lost his spiritual hold'” (Frankl 1984, pp. 95, 163, cited in Morgan, 2000, pp. 449-450).

Where’s your hope? On whom do you place your hope? Is there any hope in this present evil world?

In vv. 1-12, Peter gives statements about hope and the circumstances of the people to whom he was writing – persecuted believers. I don’t believe it was Viktor Frankl’s kind of hope, but something much more fundamental. Here are some of those statements from vv. 1-12:

“In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead”(vv. 3-4).
“In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials.” (v. 6),
“Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy” (v. 8)
“Concerning this salvation, the prophets, who spoke of the grace that was to come to you, searched intently and with the greatest care” (v. 10).

All the way through these 12 verses, Peter gives us statements of fact “concerning this salvation.” But that changes in v. 13, through to 2:3 (Blum 1981, pp. 207-254). He now commands us to do certain things.
In the passage we will be covering today, he commands two things. One is about hope and the other about holiness.
Also note the first word of v. 13, “therefore.” What’s it there for? It’s a transition from the first 12 verses to the rest of ch. 1. Since you are saved and live in very difficult circumstances, God commands you to do these things.
Christians today seem to be minimising these commands and our lives suffer. You are commanded to do things because “greater is he who is in you than he who is in the world.”
If you use the NIV, you will note that it translates the first two clauses of v. 13 as commands: “Prepare your minds for action” and “be self-controlled.” They are really participles and the ESV translates better as: “Preparing your minds for action” and “being sober-minded.”
The first command in v. 13 is:

Set your hope (v. 13). The next is:
Be holy (v. 15);
Live your lives (or “conduct yourselves”, ESV) as strangers (v. 17);
Love one another (v. 22);
Long for (“crave” NIV) pure spiritual milk (2:2).

These five commands help us to unlock this passage.

The MAIN THRUST of my message from this passage is: Since you have experienced “this salvation”, your life must show that you are different in these ways.

Today we’ll look at just two commands from this passage:

Salvation means, set your hope fully/completely (v. 13)
Salvation means, you must be holy (v. 15);

At a time when the world is being rocked by wars, terrorists and tsunamis, Peter has the audacity to state that

B. Salvation means you must “set your hope completely” (v. 13)

In today’s values, this verse could be mutilated to say something like this: “Don’t let your feelings be judged by anybody. In your thoughts & actions, be open-minded. You do whatever brings you pleasure right now. Set your sights on your self-esteem and go for it with gusto.”

God’s view is radically different.

God commands Peter’s readers, you and me to “set your hope fully on the grace to be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed” (v. 13). These persecuted believers of the first century “were to set their hope completely, with finality, on the grace being brought to them in connection with Jesus Christ’s revelation” (Blum 1981, p. 52).

When the going gets tough and you are persecuted for your faith, your salvation means that you place your hope completely on the future grace that you will receive when Christ is revealed. When will Christ be revealed again? We know he was revealed at his birth, death and resurrection. But these believers are told that they must place their hope on the grace “that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ” (ESV). It was future for the first century church and it is still future for us.

It undoubtedly refers to Christ’s Second Coming (the Parousia). We read about it in I Peter 4:13, “But rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed.” Or, 1 Cor. 1:7, “Therefore you do not lack any spiritual gift as you eagerly wait for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed.” Also 2 Thess. 1:7, “and give relief to you who are troubled, and to us as well. This will happen when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with his powerful angels.”

Our hope is NOT based on the temporal, but on the future revelation of the Lord Jesus. It is sometimes said of Christians that “they are so heavenly minded that they are of no earthly good.” Folks, the true Christian is one who is not half-heartedly, but completely and fully, setting his/her hope on the Christ who is to come. We are of great earthly good, because our hope is set on Him and his coming to rule and reign forever. If you set your hope on anything in this world, you on a sinking ship. Chuck Colson’s view is that “the culture in which we live is nearly lost” (Colson 1994, p. x). What a tragedy that so many Christians have their hope on the sinking ship.

In order to “set your hope completely” on God’s grace at Christ’s second coming, Peter tells his persecuted readers that you must do two things:

First, you are “preparing your minds for action” and
Second, “you are being sober-minded.”

So that you are able to fulfil this command from God to hope in Christ, you will do it in these two ways:

1. First, you are preparing your minds for action (v. 13)

What does that mean? “It is literally, ‘Girding up the loins of your mind.'” But we who drive cars on bitumen highways don’t experience this analogy. In the first century Middle East, this phrase “refers to the long, loose robes worn by Orientals, which were drawn up” with a belt at the waist when these people worked and walked energetically (Lenski, 1966, p. 51). It’s a metaphor/figure about the mind and how we ought to use it as Christians. The idea is that instead of letting your thoughts and decisions be done leisurely whenever you get the urge, you are “to gird up [your] minds like people who are energetically set on going somewhere” (Lenski 1966, p. 51).

Christians are people who take the decisive step of disciplining their minds for God’s cause. Where are your thoughts right now as I speak? Where will your thoughts be at work on in the home tomorrow?

To “gird up the mind” is the opposite of day-dreaming, idle thinking and drifting off into whatever attracts the eyes. Is your mind on worldly thinking, or do you place your thoughts in the hope that is yours in God?

2. Second, you are being sober-minded (ESV)

The NIV translates it as, “Be self-controlled.” That’s part of it, but it has a more comprehensive meaning than that. The KJV hit the mark: “gird up the loins of your mind, be sober” This is the present tense in the Greek, which means to be continually “sober-minded.” If it were in a context of alcohol drinking, it would refer to being sober – the opposite of being drunk. But in the NT it is only used figuratively.

It means to “be free from every form of mental and spiritual ‘drunkenness’, from excess passion, rashness, confusion” (Arndt & Gingrich 1957, p. 540). To be “sober” biblically “is the opposite of infatuation with the things of this world.” It is “a calm, steady state of mind which weighs things aright and thus enables us to make the right decision. Not only the world with its allurements but also the various forms of religious error and delusion [which] intoxicate the mind” (Arndt & Gingrich 1957, p. 52). To be “sober-minded” is to have clear biblical thinking about the world and doctrine. How we need this today in this era of fluffy, anything-goes Christianity.

Here in I Peter, you are commanded to be “sober-mined” in relation to the world. Isn’t this an amazing insight. You are commanded to set your hope on the grace of Christ’s Second Coming because you

“prepare your minds for action” and
are “sober” in your response to life.

There’s an interesting use of this word, “sober,” in 2 Timothy 4:1-5: “I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. As for you, always be sober-minded (there’s that word again; the NIV translates as “keep your head”), endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry” (ESV).

The application to you and me today, would be to be sober-minded, clear and serious in our thinking about the philosophies of this world and the teachings that are being offered in churches and through the mass media.

Paul to Titus: “You must teach what is in accord with sound doctrine” (Titus 2:1). If the Bible teacher must teach sound doctrine, you the people of God must be “sober-minded” in discerning the teaching.

The first command is:

A. Salvation means that you must hope completely in the grace of Christ

The second command is:

C. Your salvation means, you must be holy (v. 15)

This is not politically correct language in today’s church. We run a mile from this kind of teaching. Let’s get serious. Since you have experienced this salvation, God commands you to be holy, because He is holy. What is holiness?

Before we get to this incredible command for us to be holy, let’s note what Peter calls these believers:

“Obedient children.” Or, “Children of obedience.” A core quality of believers is that they are children of the Heavenly Father who are obedient to his commands. “It describes the constitution and the character of these children . . . [and] belongs to their very nature” (Lenski 1966, p. 54). Those of us who have been born again to a living hope (1:3), are by nature born to be obedient to our living God’s Word and commands. When I meet Christians who don’t have a desire to be holy, I am forced to ask: Are they really children of the King of Kings, with a living hope and a new life? Only God knows. However, God’s children are obedient members of God’s family. One of their marks forever is – OBEDIENCE.

But I must say this: Too often our view of obedience is extra-biblical. We label things that we consider are worldly thinking and doing and I wonder if this is exactly what the Word of God says.

Are you an obedient child of God? For which of the commands we are dealing with today, could you be called obedient children? Or, are you choosing to be disobedient?
Are you living a life of obedience in setting your hope completely on Christ’s Second Coming? Or would you rather live in the hope of brawn, bucks and beauty for today? Is your hope in this world rather than the next? Honest now? Are you an obedient child of God?
God’s obedient children have certain qualities: The negative & the positive

Before Peter launches into the command to be holy, he deals with

1. The Negative: “Do not conform to evil desires.”

Why would Peter be concerned about the Christian still living out the evil desires of his unsaved state? It’s because of what he said in 1:3, “In his great mercy [God] has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.”

To you who have this living hope, Peter urges that you:

“Do not conform” – i.e. susch?matizo. This word only appears twice in the Greek NT, the other time being in Rom. 12:2, where it reads, “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world.” In Greek, the “sch?ma” (conforming) refers not just to the outward “form” (which is morph?). It “is not concerned merely with making various concessions to this age, or coming down to the same level. It warns against being absorbed by it, surrendering oneself to it, and falling prey to it. To do so is to yield oneself to its power” (Braumann 1975, pp. 708-710, p. 709), which is what we see here in I Peter 1:14.
Do not conform to, surrender to what? “The evil desires.”
When did you have these evil desires? “When you lived in ignorance.” When was that? In their ungodly days.

This is the situation that Peter is warning against. In 1 Peter 2:22, Peter warns those who have known the Lord and have become entangled in the world again: “Of them the proverbs are true [Prov. 26:11]: ‘A dog returns to its vomit,’ and, ‘A sow that is washed goes back to her wallowing in the mud'” (NIV).

I think the analogy of a cleaned-up pig returning to the muck and mire of the sloppy mud in the sty is a good one. But that only refers to the externals. God, through Peter, is concerned about our returning to the inner garbage of thinking AND action that we had as unbelievers. It is screwed up inner thinking that ushers us into godless living AGAIN – after we have been born again. What could be more obnoxious to God.

Peter is warning, “It would be monstrous for children of obedience to fashion and fit themselves again to those lusts of a former time ‘in the ignorance’ in which they then lived” (Lenski 1966, p. 54).

Returning to the pig sty, metaphorically, could mean a return to:

a lust for love/sex;
Or, bucks, bucks and more bucks. I am staggered that an Australian Pentecostal pastor, Brian Houston, would write a book titled, You Need More Money (Houston 2000), and ironically, the publisher is called, Send the Light.
Peter warns against any conformity to a worldly way of thinking.

What passions do you have that are ungodly? Whatever they are, you will not have God’s kind of hope while you indulge in such passions. Why? You are not living life God’s way.

What can you do if this is your present way of thinking?

a. First, repent of those ungodly passions NOW;

b Second, stop doing them now?

c. Find a Christian with whom you can be 100% open, honest and accountable. Be discipled by that person. He/she can ask you at any time about those passions that pull you down and pray with you. But you must be absolutely honest about your ungodliness.

After Peter urges us to no longer be conformed to our old way of life, he launches into this positive command:

2. “Be holy, because I am holy” (v. 16)

What an incredible command! This is a quote from Leviticus 11:44.
a. What does it mean to say that God has the attribute of holiness?

Remember how the Lord’s prayer starts in Matt. 6:9, “This, then, is how you should pray: “ ‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.” “Holy is His name.”

Isaiah tells us that he saw the Lord and the seraphim (angels) “were calling to one another: ‘Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory'” (Isa. 6:3 NIV).

R. C. Sproul said, “How we understand the person and character of God the Father affects every aspect of our lives” (Sproul 1985, p. 25).

God gave A.W. Tozer the wonderful gift to get to the core of many issues for Christians. He wrote that “what comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us. . . For this reason the gravest question before the Church is always God Himself” (Tozer 1961, p. 1). Just think on this: What you believe about God is the most important thing about you! True or false?

What comes to your mind when you think of God being “holy”?

To be holy “is very closely related to God’s goodness. It has been customary to define holy as: ‘purity, free from every stain, wholly perfect and immaculate in every detail. . . But the idea of moral perfection is at best the secondary meaning of the term in the Bible'” ( Sproul 1985, p. 53).

The primary meaning of holy is “separate.” It comes from an old word meaning, “to cut,” or “to separate.” If we put this in down to earth language, it means that God is “a cut above something.” He is a “cut above” everything and every person else (Sproul 1985, p. 54)

b. To help us understand the supreme nature of God’s holiness, I want to introduce a theological word that is lofty, exceedingly high, absolutely beyond anything you can imagine.

I’m speaking about God’s transcendence. It means literally “to climb across.” R. C. Sproul helped me to understand the magnitude of “transcendence” in his book on The Holiness of God. God’s transcendence means, we are talking about that sense in which God is above and beyond us. It tries to get at His supreme and absolute greatness. The word is used to describe God’s relationship to the world. He is higher than the world. He has absolute power of over the world. The world has no power over Him. Transcendence describes God in His consuming majesty, His exalted loftiness. It points to the infinite distance that separates Him from every creature. He is an infinite cut above everything else.

When the Bible calls God holy it means primarily that God is transcendentally separate. He is so far above and beyond us that He seems almost totally foreign to us. To be holy is to be “other,” to be different in a special way (Sproul 1985, p. 55).

God applies this view of holiness to earthly things. The Bible speaks of these things as holy:

Holy ground, holy Sabbath, holy nation, holy place, holy tithe, holy jubilee, holy city, holy word, holy city, holy covenant, holy ones, and the holy of holies (Sproul 1985, pp. 55-56).

These are only examples of some earthly things that are called holy.

Here in I Peter 1:15-16, Peter says that the people of God are to “be holy in all you do, for it is written: ‘Be holy, because I [the Lord God] am holy.'” We cannot be transcendent holy like God Himself, but God is calling us to be different in a special way.

You know what the early Christians were called? Saints! In Rom. 1:7, Paul writes: “To all in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints [or holy ones].” Jude 3 states: “Contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints.”
One of the major problems we face as believers is that we know that we continue to sin, but God calls us “saints.” But he also calls us to become holy, to become righteous.
In all my years of Christian ministry I don’t remember anybody ever coming to me for counsel and asking: How can I become holy as God is holy? Or, how can I become more righteous?
How do we become holy, separate, other? Through the sanctifying work of the Spirit.
Martin Luther used a simple illustration of how to explain how we as the saints of God become holy, as God is holy. I share it with you:

He described the condition of a patient who was seriously ill and [close to death] [2]. The doctor proclaimed that he had medicine that would surely cure the man. The instant the medicine was administered, the doctor declared that the patient was well. At that instant the patient was still sick, but as soon as the medicine passed his lips and entered his body the patient began to get well. So it is with our justification. As soon as we truly believe, at that very instant we start to get better; the process of becoming pure and holy is underway and its future completion is certain (Sproul 1985, p. 214).

Do you know what bothers me? I don’t hear Christians asking: How can I become righteous; how can I be holy? Why aren’t we committed to being holy, as God is holy?
I am convinced that if we were as committed to holiness as God is committed to changing us to be holy, people might notice the radical difference and be attracted to our holy god. I’ll speak for me, but I consider that too often I live at a low level of mediocrity. When we become holy, as God is holy, I believe the world will become more interested in our Jesus.
C. S. Lewis once commented to an American friend: “How little people know who think that holiness is dull. When one meets the real thing, . . . it is irresistible. If even 10% of the world’s population had it, would not the whole world be converted and happy before a year’s end?” (1967, p. 19, in Green 1982, p. 189).
It is the Holy God who changes paedophiles, murderers, thieves, gossips & full blown sinners of all kinds into saints. We receive it when we are saved, but we grow to be more like Jesus as we grow in grace.
Are you and I really that committed to God’s holiness in our lives?
Remember 1 Peter 1:2 where Peter spoke of believers who are “God’s elect. . . chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, by the sanctifying work of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and sprinkling by his blood.”

D. Conclusion

How you understand the person of God will affect the way you live your life.

If you understand that your God is the only one who can offer you hope – complete and full hope for the future – it will change your whole life.
If your God is holy, absolutely transcendent above everything else, and he calls you to be holy, you will be radically changed and your whole world of influence will be transformed.

Do you love the one and only God who calls you to place your hope in him and to look forward to his second coming?

Do you love the transcendentally holy God? What will you do about his call to holiness?

Music has been one of the most divisive aspects of church life. Based on this passage in I Peter, I am convinced that I cannot be a true worshipper of God if my music is dominated by sensual middle of the road music, OR head-banger rock that drowns the lyrics.

God calls you and me to “prepare your minds for action” and to be “sober-minded” in worshipping the Almighty, transcendent, holy God, who commands us to be holy as He is holy.

About 20 years ago there was a survey of people who used to be members of churches. They asked what was the main reason why they stopped going to church. They found it boring. It is difficult for lots of people to find worship to be a moving experience (Sproul 1985, p. 40). When God appeared in the temple in Isaiah’s day, the “the doorposts and the thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke” (Isa. 6:4).

But what happened in the temple when Isaiah was confronted with God and the angels were calling to one another: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory” (Isa. 6:3)?

“Woe is me!” he cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty” (Isa. 6:5).

When we come here to worship with our heart centred on God Himself, the One and only Holy Lord, the style of music will not matter if we fall on our face before Him and acknowledge him, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord almighty.”

In such an environment, we see ourselves as we really are. Woe is me! I am ruined!

You know, if we have come to this gathering, with God alone as your worship focus, I do not believe that we can worship him if our focus is on a seductive, old-style sexy dance-band music. Neither do I think that we can truly worship Him and Him alone, if the clanging music drowns the lyrics of worship. I plead with you to come to every gathering of the church to worship Him and have an encounter with him.

When Isaiah saw the Lord, he cried, “Woe is me! I am ruined! I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.”

I challenge you to join me in worshipping the one who is “Holy, Holy, Holy, the Lord God Almighty”:

Notes:

2. Sproul called it “mortally ill.”

References:

Arndt, W. F. & Gingrich, F. W. 1957 (transl. & adapt. of W. Bauer), A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early ChristianLiterature, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago (limited ed., Zondervan Publishing House).

Braumann, G. 1975, ‘Sch?ma’, The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology (vol. 1), ed. Colin Brown, The Paternoster Press, Exeter.

Blum, E. A. 1981, ‘1 Peter’ in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary (vol. 12), gen. ed., Frank E. Gaebelein, Zondervan Publishing House, Grand Rapids,
Michigan.

Colson, C. 1994, ‘Foreword’, Ravi Zacharias, Can Man Live Without God? Word Publishing, Dallas.

Frankl, V. E. 1984, Man’s Search for Meaning, Washington Square Press, New York.

Green, M. P. (ed.) 1982, Illustrations for Biblical Preaching, Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Houston, B. 2000, You Need More Money, Send the Light, Kingstown Broadway, Carlisle.

Lenski, R. C. H. 1966, Commentary on the New Testament: The Interpretation of the Epistles of St. Peter, St. John, and St. Jude, Hendrickson Publishers, Inc.

Lewis, C. S. 1967, Letters to an American Lady, Wm. B. Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Morgan, R. J. 2000, Nelson’s Complete Book of Stories, Illustrations, & Quotes: The Ultimate Contemporary Resource for Speakers, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville.

Sproul, R. C. 1985, The Holiness of God, Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois.

Tozer, A. W. 1961, The Knowledge of the Holy, Harper & Row, San Francisco.

1 Peter 1:10, Tough times, terrorism and God’s answer

(Hamas rocket strike, public domain)

By Spencer D Gear

Introduction

There was plenty of news coverage during 1999 of the martyrdom, the horrible deaths of Graham Staines and his two sons, Philip aged 10, and Timothy, aged 6, burned alive in their car in the Eastern Indian state of Orissa in January 1999.[1b] A Hindu mob burned their jeep while they slept outside a church.[2] Graham had been ministering in a leper colony for 32 years.[3] Perhaps through his death, Beaudesert‘s Graham Staines, has had more opportunity to reach the Indian people with the gospel than through his life.

“[Some] victims of the Columbine High [School, in Littleton, Colorado, who were massacred, 20th April 1999] were evangelical Christians.” The killers “went to the library and asked Cassie Bernall and many of the others, ‘Do you believe in God?’ Thus it appears that the killers targeted evangelical Christians.”[4]

One of Cassie Bernall’s classmates, “Mickie Cain told Larry King on CNN [cable TV in USA], ‘She completely stood up for God. When the killers asked her if there was anyone who had faith in Christ, she spoke up and they shot her for it.”[5]

“A note written by . . . Cassie Bernall the night before she was killed and handed to her friend the next morning, April 20 1999, at school, reads:

“Honestly, I want to live completely for God. It’s hard and scary, but totally worth it.”[6]

These were martyrs, but you didn’t hear much coverage of that emphasis on the mass media.

In 1995, there were more martyrs for Christ in that one year than in the whole first century after Christ. “According to a study done at Regent University, USA, there were close to 164,000 Christians martyred around the world in 1999.”[7] “A Christian dies for his or her faith every 3 minutes.”[8]

“We are talking… about… persecution of the worst sort: Slavery, starvation, murder, looting, burning [and] torture.”[9] “Why then, are 200 million Christians facing severe persecution [in the year 2004]?”[10]

Most of us are blissfully unaware of the horrible persecution for their faith that many Christians TODAY are suffering.

“For example, 30 to 60 million people belong to house churches in China. Its pastors have been tortured, murdered and imprisoned.”[11] There are “several reports that there are now more than 80 million Christians in China.”[12]

Do you remember how the apostle Paul described his persecution?

Phil. 3: 10 “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death…”

Now Paul’s description of the persecution:

2 Corinthians 11: 23ff:

23b …I have worked much harder, been in prison more frequently, been flogged more severely, and been exposed to death again and again.

24 Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one.

25 Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I was shipwrecked, I spent a night and a day in the open sea,

26 I have been constantly on the move. I have been in danger from rivers, in danger from bandits, in danger from my own countrymen, in danger from Gentiles; in danger in the city, in danger in the country, in danger at sea; and in danger from false brothers.

27 I have labored and toiled and have often gone without sleep; I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone without food; I have been cold and naked.

28 Besides everything else, I face daily the pressure of my concern for all the churches (NIV).

Voice of the Martyrs tells us that “since 1985, approximately two million people have perished due to war and genocide [in the Sudan]. Because of the war, famine has also plagued the country.

“While the conflict was officially about control of land and wealth, it had a strong religious factor in that they government of Khartoum was strongly Islamic and the people of the south were predominantly Christian or animist. The Muslim government declared a jihad against the people of the south. Churches and Christian relief agencies have been specifically targeted for attack. As an example, in June 2003, Pastor Jacob Gadet Manyiel of the Presbyterian Church of Sudan, along with his wife and four children, were burned to death in their home, while troops threatened to kill anyone who came near to help.”[13]

The title of this message is, Tough times, Terrorism and God’s Answer.

If you are about to die for your faith, what will it take for you to go to a martyr’s grave full of hope and assurance? If terrorism comes to Australia, what will keep to strong in the faith?

I want you to keep these questions in mind as we consider I Peter 1:10

Never forget it: We live by faith and not by sight. If you keep your eyes on the trouble you experience, the persecution, the worldwide terrorism, you will crumble. Get God’s Word in your heart — BELIEVING is SEEING.

If you are persecuted for your faith; if terrorism comes to this Lucky Country, what will keep you strong so that you will not chuck it in under the pressure? v. 10 in the NIV gives the answer in the first three words: “CONCERNING THIS SALVATION”

The whole tone of I Peter shows that these people were going through a horrible time of severe trials.

1:6, “to suffer grief in all kinds of trials”;

4:12, “Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you”;

4:13, “Rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ”;

4:16, “If you suffer as a Christian, do not be ashamed, but praise God that you bear that name”.

What Peter says to these suffering Christians, he wants to drive home to us. If you are persecuted for your faith – and it’s here in isolated pockets for those who speak out for Christ – what will you need to keep you strong so that you won’t crack under pressure?

Get this right at the beginning of v. 10, “CONCERNING THIS SALVATION” (NIV).

“Salvation” means:

“present deliverance from sin;

“everlasting life;

“the joy of our Lord;

“the deep, full blessedness of his elect in heaven.”[14]

But it means much, much more — as we’ll discover today.

Unless you get a hold of what your salvation is and what it means for Christ to die on the cross for you to be saved, you will NEVER be able to stand up in the fiery trials that lie ahead. Faith that brings salvation is:

“not only (agreement) of the mind, though it includes that.

“Nor only consent of the heart, though it is also that.

“But it is response of the will. ‘Believe, and be saved.'”[15]

If you don’t get a handle on this phrase, “Concerning this salvation,” you will not:

experience this salvation;
you will never be able to stand firm when trials come;
you may very well chuck it in.

What have you been saved from?

What have you been saved for?

What does this salvation mean in the here and now?

What will it mean in the future?

This salvation that Christ offers is illustrated in the Bible by vivid imagery. Just remember these five words. This salvation means at least these. Christ’s death provides for those who have faith in Christ (read quickly):

propitiation;

redemption;

justification;

reconciliation;[16]

atonement;[17]

I hope you got those because they are core to understanding “this salvation.”

Your salvation means you have been propitiated – and I’m not swearing!

A. Propitiation

Take a verse like, I John 2:2, speaking of Jesus Christ, “He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins…” (NIV, NRSV, ISV). It is very unfortunate that these Bibles translate the word, hilasmos, as “atoning sacrifice.” While it is true that Christ did provide an atonement for our sins, that is NOT what this verse says.

Hilasmos is as the KJV, NASB & ESV put it: “He is the propitiation

for our sins” (KJV, ESV). But what on earth does that mean? In years gone by, that would be understood, but not today. We live in a day of biblical ignorance.

“To ‘propitiate’ somebody means to appease or pacify his anger…

“Does God then get angry?

“If so, can offerings or rituals [lessen or appease][18] his anger?

“Does [God] accept bribes?

“Such concepts sound more pagan than Christian.

“It is understandable that primitive animists [who worship evil spirits][19] should consider it essential to placate the wrath of gods, spirits or ancestors, but are notions like these worthy of our Almighty God?

“Should we not have grown out of [this primitive stuff]?

“In particular, are we really to believe that Jesus by his death propitiated the Father’s anger, inducing him to turn from it and to look upon us with favour instead?”[20]

We have got to get something very clear:

Your sin and mine arouse the wrath/anger of God. Take a verse like Rom. 1:18: “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of human beings who suppress the truth by their wickedness” (TNIV).

This is core Christianity. The anger of God DOES NOT MEAN what the animists fear – “that [God] is likely to fly off the handle” when He is provoked in some trivial way. God never loses His temper for no apparent reason. There is nothing spiteful, malicious or vindictive about our holy God. He is not an irrational, unpredictable, venomous tyrant. God’s anger is always predictable “because it is provoked by evil and evil alone.”[21]

We could say that “the wrath of God… is his steady, unrelenting, unremitting, uncompromising antagonism to evil in all its forms and manifestations. In short, God’s anger is poles apart from ours.” What provokes our anger (eg., injured pride), never provokes His; what provokes God’s anger (his antagonism to all forms of evil), seldom provokes ours.[22]

Contrary to what the promoters of self-esteem say today, you and I are NOT of great worth to God. In fact, Rom. 3:10-12 nails our true condition:

As it is written: “There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; [23] there is no one who does good, not even one” (NIV).

Christ died for filthy, rotten, dirty sinners that the Scriptures describe as “worthless.” Other translations say that we are “unprofitable, useless and have gone wrong” (KJV, NKJV, RV, NASB, Amplified).[24] What is it that permits worthless, useless reprobates like us to have somebody even think about salvation, let alone provide it for us? That’s the enormous grace of God. Favour that we cannot possibly earn or deserve!

Nothing you or I could do could turn away the wrath of God towards us. Nothing! We can’t persuade or bribe God to forgive us. We deserve His judgment. We deserve to be sent to hell forever — and that’s where the ungodly will go on God’s guarantee. “The initiative has been taken by God himself in his sheer mercy and grace.”

Christ’s death and His death alone, propitiates (appeases) the anger of God. It happens in the courts of heaven when you repent and trust Christ alone for your salvation.

Question: (1) So, what is propitiation?

(2) Why do you need it?

Do you understand the incredible depth of meaning in this short phrase, “concerning this salvation”? BUT THERE’S MORE!!

Remember Rom. 3:23, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”? Many of us know that verse by heart, but too few of us understand and can quote the next two verses, which are so crucial to our understanding of salvation. Vv. 24-25,

“and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, [25] whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins” (ESV).

There are those three words that are at the core of our salvation:

Justification,

Redemption,

Propitiation.

We’ve looked at “propitiation”, now it’s critical that we understand “redemption which is in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 3:24).

B. Redemption

This is the language of the markets. We are talking about a business transaction. “Redeem” means “to buy or buy back, whether as a purchase or a ransom.” We are in a sorry state through our sin and need a divine rescue operation. Somebody who will buy us back from the power of sin.[25]

Propitiation focuses on the wrath of God that has been pacified by the cross and fellowship with God that is restored. Redemption zooms in on the plight of sinners who have been ransomed by the cross.[26]

“When anybody heard the Greek word, lutron, ‘ransom’ in the first century, it was natural for him [or her] to think of the purchase-money for [freeing][27] slaves.”[28]

The debt was not paid to Satan but to God. The debt that human beings have to God is due to God’s justice. God’s mercy through Christ’s death on the cross, pays the price to ransom human beings from God’s justice. If we got God’s justice — His absolute perfect standard – all of us would be dead.

Folks, a large part of the Scripture teaches us “that we are redeemed from the penalty of the law, from the law itself, from sin as a power, from Satan, and from all evil, by the death of Christ.”[29]

I heard of a little boy who worked very hard to make his very own, little yacht out of a nice hunk of wood. He loved his yacht and took it to the lake often with other boys who had yachts and sailed it on the calm waters, when there were light winds, near his house.

One day, it drifted out of sight, carried away by a stronger breeze. He splashed out into the water, grasping to reach his yacht – but he couldn’t reach it. Eventually he lost sight of it. He was devastated that his own hand-made yacht had gone.

Some days later he was going through a busy street and he saw his yacht in a shop window. He went in to claim the yacht as his own. But no matter how much he tried to persuade the owner, repeatedly telling him that he had made that yacht with his own hands, the shop-keeper would not change his mind.

The shop-keeper was adamant: “If you want it, you must pay for it.” The boy returned home, counted out his money, asked for a little from his parents to help meet the cost of the yacht.

So, he went in and bought it back. “You’re twice mine!” he exclaimed and as he looked proudly at his own little yacht, he said, “I made you and I’ve purchased you.”[30]

Christian friends, that is how God sees you. Paul said in I Cor. 6:19-20, “You are not your own; you were bought at a price” (NIV). God, by Christ’s shed blood, has purchased us from the power of sin. We have been redeemed.

But God doesn’t take his redeemed merchandise (us) immediately to heaven. Instead, he gives us the token of our redemption — the Holy Spirit who lives in us. We have redemption, the forgiveness of sin. And one day, when Jesus returns, we’ll be in the presence of the One who purchased us — or we’ll meet him at death.

Application: Don’t raise your hands, but I want you to think carefully about what you have been redeemed from by your salvation.

How many of you can identify with being slaves to sin in your life before Christ purchased you?

It does us good to think back on where God has brought us. You still have your daily struggles with sinful thoughts and actions as God causes you to become more like him. This is growth through sanctification.

But let’s face it: your slavery to sin is not what it used to be. That power is broken. You have been redeemed. If the power of sin in your life is the same as or worse than it used to be before Christ, I’d be asking serious questions about the reality of your salvation.

Salvation means

propitiation — God’s wrath against us has been appeased;
redemption — the price has been paid to God. You have been bought back and the power of sin is broken.

But there’s more:

C. Justification

Take that verse from Rom. 3:24, we “are justified freely by his grace.” When I say that my staff member was justified in taking that action, I mean that he has every reason to believe that what he did was OK. He was right in doing it.

That is not what God means when he says that believers “are justified freely by his grace.” We often say, “justification means: ‘Just as if I’d never sinned.'” But that doesn’t get to the heart of what God means when he says that we receive justification freely by God’s grace.

For God, justification is the language of the law courts. Justification is the OPPOSITE of condemnation.

Take Rom. 5:18, “Consequently, just as the result of one trespass [speaking of Adam’s sin] was condemnation for all [people][31], so also the result of one act of righteousness [Christ’s death on the cross] was justification that brings life for all [people][32] (NIV).

This is in the package of salvation:

Propitiation – appeasing the wrath of God;

Redemption – we are rescued from the grim captivity of our sin and guilt.

Also justification. Since there is nobody who is righteous, not even one, how

can we who are sinners by nature, ever be ushered into the presence of an absolutely holy God?

We are justified by God’s grace (Rom. 3:24) through faith in Christ (Eph. 2:8-9). But what does that mean?

When God justifies sinners, he is not declaring bad people to be good;

He is NOT saying that they are not sinners after all;

He is saying that the person who places his/her trust in Jesus Christ for salvation, is pronounced legally righteous before God;

How is this possible? Because [God] himself in his Son has borne the penalty of your breaking God’s law.

That is why Paul is able to bring together in a single sentence the depth of salvation: justification, redemption and propitiation in Rom. 3:24-25(ESV),

The reasons why we are ‘justified freely by God’s grace’ are that Christ Jesus paid the ransom-price and that God presented Christ as a sacrifice to appease God’s wrath.

In other words, we are ‘justified by his blood’. There could be no justification without atonement.”[33]

But how does this justification become yours in your life? This was the great theme of Martin Luther’s Reformation and the apostle Paul’s favourite expression : JUSTIFIED BY FAITH (see Rom. 3:28; 5:1; Gal. 2:16; Phil. 3:9).[34]

Perhaps the most straightforward verses that help us to understand what happens with justification is Phil. 3:8-9,

What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ

v. 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith.

You are not condemned by Christ, but justified because of the cross. You are

declared righteous before the just and holy Lord God. When you are justified, God reverses his “attitude to the sinner, because of the sinner’s new relation to Christ.”[35]

When you are justified, it has nothing to do with what happens inside you when you become a Christian. It is everything about what God declares about you. You are no longer condemned as a sinful criminal before God and going to hell, you are right before God’s law.

But God goes one step further. As Phil. 3:9 puts it: “ not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith.”

Let’s put it this way: Negatively, God has declined to count our sins against us. That’s justification. Of course we deserved to get the full weight of God’s judgment. But if he did that we would die and be damned forever. By an act of God the Judge, he has justified us. He has not counted our sins against us.

Positively, 2 Cor. 5:21, puts it this way: “God made him [Jesus]who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

This “is surely one of the most startling statements in the Bible.”[36] James Denney wrote an outstanding book on The Death of Christ. He puts it this way, “Mysterious and awful as this thought is, it is the key to the whole of the New Testament.”[37]

Because of the sinless death of His Son, Jesus Christ, God refused to count our sins against us. In fact, Jesus’ personal sinlessness gave him unique qualifications to bear our sins. He had none of his own to deal with. Christ became sin for us so that “in him we might become the righteousness of God.” Mysterious, “Yes!” What a glorious rescue!

Throughout the history of the Christian church, disciples “have meditated on this exchange between the sinless Christ and sinners, and have marvelled at it.” How could “the wickedness of [so] many… be hid in a single Righteous One, and that the righteousness of One should justify many transgressors”?[38]

At the time of the Reformation, Martin Luther was “writing to a monk [who was] in distress about his sins.” Luther said it this way: “Learn to know Christ and him crucified. Learn to sing to him and say ‘Lord Jesus, you are my righteousness, I am your sin. You took on you what was mine [my sin]; yet set on me what was yours [righteousness]. You became what you were not, that I might become what I was not.'”[39]

“Justification means this miracle: that Christ takes our place and we take his.”[40]^,[41]^,[42]

Some of you might have read Merlin Carothers’ book, Prison to Praise.[43] He “had firsthand experience of what it is like to be declared righteous.

“During World War II he joined the army. Anxious to get into some action, Carothers went AWOL but was caught and sentenced to five years in prison. Instead of sending him to prison, the judge told him he could serve his term by staying in the army for five years. The judge told him if he left the army before the five years ended, he would have to spend the rest of his term in prison.

“Carothers was released from the army before the five-year term had passed, so he returned to the prosecutor’s office to find out where he would be spending the remainder of his sentence.

“To his surprise and delight, Carothers was told that he had received a full pardon from President Truman [of the USA]. The prosecutor explained: ‘That means your record is completely clear. Just as if you had never gotten involved with the law.'”[44]

When you come to faith in Christ for salvation, your sinful record is completely clear — you have been declared righteous by God. It’s not that your sinful record has been ignored. God has wiped the slate. You are righteous before him.

“Concerning this salvation!” What a mighty God we have to

provide such a Saviour!

Your salvation not only means you have received

propitiation, redemption and justification. But there’s more: you have received …

reconciliation – that will be for another time if I am invited;

put them all together — propitiation, redemption, justification and reconciliation and you have a good idea of what is included in the

atonement (but that will also be for another time)

but “an even broader term than ‘atonement’ is salvation.”[45]

Salvation

Let’s summarise This salvation means:

God’s incredible eternal plan for the salvation of sinners – planned from “before the foundation of the world” (Eph. 1:3);

The OT preparation for Christ’s coming;

Jesus Christ’s incarnation – his birth into this world;

His death, resurrection and ascension;

The present ministries of Jesus and the Holy Spirit;

The wonderful future we have with the second coming of Christ;

Living in the presence of God forever in heaven.

That’s a quick overview of salvation. But when we are not referring to it in its full-orbed arrangement, we settle for the more specific terms like sacrifice, propitiation, forgiveness, redemption, victory over evil powers of darkness, reconciliation with God and God’s people, justification and sanctification.[46]

Brothers and sisters:

This is what will take you to a martyr’s grave with confidence;
You will not face terrorism without this assurance;
When you KNOW this Christ “concerning this salvation,” no persecution will be so intolerable that you will want to chuck in your salvation;
You can face the future with confidence, no matter what the pain, heartache and disappointment, if you put your absolute trust in THIS Christ, for THIS salvation;

The “godly Dr Archibald Alexander of Princeton [Seminary (USA)] had been a preacher for Christ for sixty years and a professor of divinity for forty [years]. On his death-bed he was heard to say to a friend, ‘All my theology is reduced to this narrow compass—Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners.'”[47]

Helen Keller was deaf, dumb, and blind. She “was taken to Phillips Brooks for spiritual instruction. [Brooks (1835-93) was a powerful preacher at Church of the Holy Trinity, Philadelphia & Trinity Church, Boston.][48] In the simplest of terms the great preacher told the girl about Jesus. As she heard the Gospel, her face lit up and she spelled out in the hand of the preacher-teacher, ‘I knew all the time there must be one like that, but I didn’t know His name.'”[49]

“Concerning this salvation,” even the severely handicapped Helen Keller knew of his work.

If this salvation ever grips you, you will never be the same again.

You will face any opposition that comes along – martyrs grave or terrorism.

You will know that God sends trials to strengthen your faith in Him.

You could even face that kind of martyrdom that Graham, Phillip and Timothy Staines experienced.

Tough times, Terrorism and God’s Answer: “Concerning This Salvation” Hallelujah!!

Notes:

[1] For example, “Lives of charity meet a fiery end,” The Courier-Mail, January 25, 1999, 1.

[2] See the story, Life for Aussie missionary killer – News.com.au

(

[3] Religions in India, “Staines murder trial deferred until Sept. 5,” available from: http://hss.fullerton.edu/comparative/new_religions_in_india.htm#Staines%20murder%20trial [1st November 2004].

[4] Dr Ted Baehr’s personal view, “Who was targeted? The politically incorrect truth about Columbine,” New Life, 20 May 1999, 14.

[5] “Littleton’s martyrs,” New Life, 6 May 1999, 3, emphasis in original. This article stated: “As the ‘Washington Post’ reported, the two students who shot 13 people, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, did not choose their victims at random — they were acting out of a kaleidoscope of ugly prejudices. Media coverage has centred on the killers’ hostility toward racial minorities and athletes, but there was another group the pair hated every bit as much, if not more: Christians. And there were plenty of them to hate at Columbine High School. According to some accounts eight Christians — four evangelicals and four Catholics — were killed” (ibid., emphasis in original).

[6] Available from: http://maxpages.com/gemsofhope/ThoughtSpot [4th November 2004].

[7] Available from “Jesus Freaks” at: http://www.parentsandteens.com/freaks.htm [4th November 2004].

[8] Available from “Revival Times” at: http://www.revivaltimes.org/index.php/493.htm [4th November 2004].

[9] Michael Horowitz, a fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C., in “The Persecuted Church” (Feb. 2004), available from: http://www.google.com.au/search?q=cache:V4SIm3PryIwJ:www.lucayakirk.com/HTMLobj-499/Feb.1.rtf+%22persecution+of+the+worst+sort+slavery,+starvation,+murder,+looting,+burning%22+horowitz&hl=en [4th November 2004].

[10] Kristin Wright, ” Standing with the Persecuted Church: Why Christians Should Help Suffering Believers,” Breakpoint,

November 6, 2003, available from: http://www.pfm.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=BreakPoint1&template=/CM/HTMLDisplay.cfm&ContentID=10879 [1st November 2004].

[11] Ibid.

[12] Andrew Tuck, General Manager of The Voice of the Martyrs in Australia, “The Persecuted Church,” Press Release for Immediate Release, March 3, 1998, http://www.awakening.org.au/persecuted/com030398.html, spotted 16 August 99, 1.

[13] Voice of the Martyrs, Canada, available from: http://www.persecution.net/country/sudan.htm [4th November 2004].

[14] B.C. Caffin, “I Peter: Exposition and Homiletics,” in H.D.M. Spence and Joseph S. Exell (Eds.), The Pulpit Commentary (Volume 22). Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1950, 5.

[15] Caffin, 56.

[16]The last four are based on John R. W. Stott, The Cross of Christ. Leicester, England: Inter-Varsity Press, 1986, 167.

[17] Based on Henry Clarence Thiessen, Introductory Lectures in Systematic Theology. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1949, 325-26.

[18] The original word was, “assuage.”

[19] “Animism may be simply defined as ‘spirit worship.'” These spirits may inhabit stones, trees, water, the hills, and the air around themselves and the sky above. It often involves ancestor worship, as well as fetishism and magic. They fear the spirits. Sickness is feared; death is the greatest fear. When misfortune and sickness happen, the medicine man is called in to discover the spirits responsible. Which spirit has been offended. The cause of the trouble is believed to be evil spirits that need to be appeased. It has been said that the animist “resembles a captivated slave pledged to a satanic system, from which he struggles hopelessly to be delivered” [Howard F. Vos (Ed.), Religions in a Changing World. Chicago: Moody Press, 1959, 22, 25, 27]. Animists worship spirits that are believed to live in natural objects such as trees, rocks or springs. They endeavour to appease those spirits. Animists sometimes use fetishes and magical practices of various sorts [Sir Norman Anderson, Christianity and World Religions. Leicester, England: Inter-Varsity Press, 1984, 60].

[20] Stott, 169.

[21] Stott, 173.

[22] Ibid.

[23] This is also the translation of the NRSV and ISV; “unprofitable” (KJV, NKJV, RV); “useless” (NASB); “have gone wrong and have become unprofitable and worthless” (Amplified); “have gone wrong” (NLT).

[24] See footnote 23 for details.

[25] Stott, 175.

[26] Ibid.

[27] The original quote said, “manumitting.”

[28] Deissmann in Thiessen, 328.

[29] Shedd, in Thiessen 328-29. “From the penalty of the law, or as Paul says in Gal. 3:13, from the ‘curse’ of the law, by Christ’s having become a curse for us. From the law itself, by our being made dead to the law by the body of Christ (Rom. 7:4), so that we are no longer under it but under grace (Rom. 6:14). From sin as a power, by Christ’s death to sin and our death to it in Him (Rom. ^:2, 6; Tit. 2:14; 1 Peter 1:18, 19), so that we need no longer submit to the domination of sin (Rom. 6:12-14). From Satan, who held man in captivity (2 Tim. 2:26), likewise by His death on the cross (Heb. 2:14, 15). And from all evil, including our present mortal body (Eph. 1:14; Rom. 8:23), to be fully granted at the return of Christ (Luke 21:28). We thus observe that the term redemption alludes sometimes to the payment of a debt and sometimes to the liberation of a captive” [Thiessen, 329].

[30] A. Naismith, 1200 Notes, “Quotes” and Anecdotes. London: Marshall Pickering, 1963, #933, p. 166-67.

[31] The original said, “men,” but the TNIV translates as “people.”

[32] The original said, “men,” but the TNIV translates as “people.”

[33] Based on Stott, 190.

[34] Ibid., 190.

[35] Thiessen, 362.

[36] Stott, 200.

[37] James Denney (R. V. G. Tasker, Ed.), Death of Christ. London: The Tyndale Press, 1951, 88. I was alerted to this by Stott, 200.

[38] Stott, 200.

[39] Luther, Letters of Spiritual Counsel, 110, in Stott, 200.

[40] Emil Brunner, Mediator, 524, in Stott, 201.

[41] “The sinner must not only be pardoned for his[/her] past sins, but also supplied with a positive righteousness before [he/she] can have fellowship with God. This need is supplied in the imputation of the righteousness of Christ to the believer. To impute is to reckon to one,” Thiessen, 363-64.

[42]As so many passages of the NT prove, we are “justified in Christ” through our legal standing (and personal relationship) with him (Gal. 2:17. Cf. Rom. 8:1; 2 Cor. 5:21; Eph. 1:6), Stott, 191.

[43] Merlin R. Carothers, Prison to Praise. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1970.

[44] “Justification,” in Michael P. Green (Ed.), Illustrations for Biblical Preaching. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1989, #732, p. 209.

[45] Gordon R. Lewis and Bruce A. Demarest, Integrative Theology: Our Primary Need Christ’s Atoning Provisions (Vol. 2). Grand Rapids, Michigan: Academie Books (Zondervan Publishing House), 1990, 408.

[46] The above view of salvation is based on ibid.

[47] Charles H. Spurgeon, in Roy B. Zuck, The Speaker’s Quote Book. Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications 1997, 332.

[48] In James E. Rosscup, “The Priority of Prayer and Expository Preaching” (pp. 63-84) in John MacArthur, Jr. and the Master’s Seminary Faculty, Rediscovering Expository Preaching (Richard L. Mayhue, ed. & Robert L. Thomas, assoc. ed.) Dallas: Word Publishing, 1992, 64.

[49] Spurgeon in Zuck, 333.

1 Peter 1:6-7, Stand firm in the faith! God is turning trash into treasure in your life

(Wikipedia)

By Spencer D Gear

I. I Peter 1:6-7 (NIV):

In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. 7These have come so that your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed .

II. Scripture Introduction

It was about July A.D. 64 and the great fire had broken out in Rome and destroyed much of that great city. The city looked like Cuta, Bali, or the World Trade Centre aftermath. The city was blackened by hundreds of buildings burnt to the ground. It is said that thousands of homes were destroyed, leaving thousands of people homeless.

History says that Emperor Nero lit the fire to destroy the shanties and rebuild marble palaces and other monuments – to establish a name for himself.

Nero looked over the city and enjoyed watching it burning.

The people of Rome were furious and were ready to overthrow him. Nero looked for a scapegoat to blame for the fire and the Christians got the reputation from him. There were rumours that this new sect, called Christians, were cannibals as they met in houses and were supposed to be drinking somebody’s blood and eating his body at their “love feasts” where they greeted one another with a “holy kiss” and it was alleged they engaged in sexual orgies. Christians were under suspicion.

Many people didn’t believe this, but others believed it, about the Christians, but Nero blamed them. Christians were lambasted with the reputation for this terrible crime of burning down Rome.

During this time Christians were tarred and burned as torches to light up Nero’s gardens. They were thrown to the lions, tied up in leather bags and thrown into the water. When the leather bags shrank, the Christians were squeezed to death. Nero was a brute in his torture of Christians in the A.D. 60s.

The Christians scattered to avoid the persecution.

It was during this time in Rome that the Apostle Peter wrote this first letter to “God’s elect” (the Christians) who were “strangers in the world” and “scattered.” Where were they scattered to? In the region that we now know as Turkey – Asia Minor.

First Peter begins:

“. . .To God’s elect, strangers in the world, scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia, who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and sprinkling by his blood” (I Peter 1b-2a NIV)

So we have this magnificent letter known as The First Letter of Peter. It was almost unanimously accepted in the early church as from the Apostle Peter.

At the close of the letter (5:13), Peter says he wrote it from Babylon. There are some who say he meant the literal Babylon on the Euphrates River, but most scholars are of the view that he was using the term that from common among Christians of the first century, and was referring to Rome – the city of sexual promiscuity, idolatry and the evil of Babylon.

Apostle Peter probably wrote this letter from the city of Rome in the mid-60s A.D. He wrote it to mostly Gentile Christians in Asia Minor, known as Turkey today.

Peter wrote to encourage these believers who were facing some incredible difficulties.

If you suffer from difficulties of any kind, including suffering, I urge you to read the book of First Peter.

Are you wondering what God is up to in today’s world of terrorism, tensions and all kinds of pressures – and worse is likely to come – here is a letter that is packed with ways that Christians ought to respond. It was written to people facing the kinds of terror, suffering and disease that we can identify with.[2]

III. Background to these verses

In this message, we will address two primary areas that affect all of us. Don’t chuck it in when the going gets tough in the Christian life. Why?

First, There is a wonderful attitude or disposition about all of life that the Christian is uniquely qualified to have in abundance. What is it and how do you get it? and

Second: God has an incredible way of turning trash into treasure in the life of every Christian.

A. In Reader’s Digest (October 1997)

There was an article called, “The Global War on Christians.” [3] In it we are told of the persecution around that world against Christians. It states that “an estimated 200 million to 250 million Christians are at risk in countries where such incidents occur.” [4]

Countries such as China, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Egypt, the Sudan in Africa, Saudi Arabia, etc. According to this article, the “two most implacable foes of Christianity” and the main causes of persecution are “Muslim militants” [5] and “Communist oppressors.” [6]

I’ll mention just two examples:

“In Pakistan, Munir Khokher was wounded by a gunshot when he tried to stop the destruction of a Christian cemetery by Muslim mobs.” [7]

In Xinjiang Province, China, “police burst in [to a house church] and found 17 worshippers. When five women admitted being the leaders, they were detained, beaten and tortured.” [8]

There is “a vast sea of victims–men, women and children who have been tortured, imprisoned and executed [in 1997]. Their crime? They are Christians.” [9]

But we in the Western church don’t seem to know much about this (unless we receive material from Brother Andrew’s “Open Doors” organisation or Richard Wurmbrand’s ministry, “Voice of the Martyrs.”) We need to know what’s happening to our persecuted brothers and sisters around the world so that we can pray for them and support as the Lord enables.

B. Perhaps you can’t identify with this opposition.

A Christian friend of mine is a Christian counsellor in another city in Qld. and he tells me that the opposition and antagonism to him as a Christian counsellor seems to be increasing. He says there is a new wave of anti-Christian persecution in that city, here in Queensland.

Jesus said, “If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also” (John 15:20). Paul to Timothy said, “Everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2 Tim 3:12).

For you it might be the difficulties you face personally:

life-threatening persecution may still come to Australia;
for you it may be children who rebel;
a spouse who leaves and divorces you;
pain, sickness & death in the family;

[My wife, Desley, (as of 2006) has had 22 years of polycythemia (abnormal growth of red blood cells)—shocking migraines, dull and dizzy head daily, always tired and yet running the family and taking care of her 95-year-old father.]

suffering and trials are part of this life.

TO THE SUFFERING, THE PERSECUTED, PETER WROTE WITH SOME INCREDIBLE INSTRUCTIONS here in the first chapter of First Peter.

C. To the church who were “strangers in the world” and “scattered” through persecution (1:1), Peter writes. Just listen to some of the things these believers were experiencing in Asia Minor. Some Christians around the world are experiencing these things now. These are phrases taken from I Peter (NIV):

· You are “a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God” (2:9) who “are being built into a spiritual house” (2:5) BUT. . .

· “suffering all kinds of trials” (1:6);

· among the pagans “they accuse you of doing wrong” (2:12);

· Slaves are to even submit themselves to masters who are “harsh” (2:18). Peter goes on to teach them that “it is commendable if a man bears up under the pain of unjust suffering” (2:19);

· “suffering for doing good and you endure” (2:20); “Even if you should suffer for what is right, you are blessed” (3:14);

· “Those who suffer according to God’s will” (4:19).

· other Christians throughout the world are undergoing the same kind of suffering (5:9); but this suffering is only for a little while (5:10). [10]

Suffering, trials, persecution, discipline are not God’s way of saying, “I’ve had enough of you and your ways; I’m going to abandon you.” Rather, discipline is God’s loving way of turning trash into treasure in your life.

C.S. Lewisonce said, “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” [11]

Yet, 14 years after making that statement, Lewis said: “Time after time, when [God] seemed most gracious He was really preparing the next torture.” [12]

These were not the words of an atheist or a sceptic trying to cast doubt on the Scriptures and shake somebody’s faith in God. They come from C.S. Lewis, Christian writer and one of the foremost defenders of the Christian faith. He was grieving the loss of his wife from cancer. Lewis did not marry until late in life.

You and I know there have been times when we would not listen to God and God had to do something to get our attention. God does that with trials. He can use even severe discipline to get our attention so that we will listen.

Let’s stop for a moment and apply this to yourself.

Please think of the difficulties in your life right now. Why is God doing it or allowing it? Does he have something against you? Is it punishment? Does God have something better in store for you? Let’s get this very clear. God does not send trials and suffering to your life to play with you like a cat does with a mouse. What could God be up to in your life and mine by the trials we go through?

D. Why is the Book of I Peter in the canon of Scripture?

The positive thinkers would say this is a most negative book. They do not want to hear the message of this book. In their error, they want to speak only positive affirmations.

Yet I Peter 5:12 says: “I have written to you briefly, encouraging you and testifying that this is the true grace of God. Stand fast in it.”

1. They were suffering persecution and trials and he wrote to encourage them.

This is a letter of hope to those who are tempted to chuck it in when the going gets tough. He encourages them to endure, to holiness, to exemplary conduct towards each other and towards the pagans, to direct their minds to their future inheritance “that can never perish, spoil or fade–kept in heaven for you” (1:4).

2. Also, I Peter is written to “testify” of “the true grace of God.”

Perhaps these scatter, suffering believers in Asia Minor were doubting the grace of God because of the severe trials they were going through. Peter testifies that the grace of God for salvation came with trials and suffering.

Remember what Paul said to the Philippians (2:12-13): “continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling.” God was working within the Philippians; God’s work is seen in Peter’s audience of persecuted Christians. And God is working out your salvation and mine–in the midst of trails.

3. A third reason I Peter is in the Bible, according to 5:12, is to encourage us not to chuck it in, but to “stand firm/fast” in God’s grace.

In spite of persecution, personal pain, suffering and trials, the slander of non-Christians–Peter says to them and to us. Don’t chuck it in. Stand firm.

Under the inspiration of the Spirit, Peter, in 5:8 reminds us where some of the trials come from: “Your enemy (adversary) the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.”

The devil prowls around looking for disillusioned sheep who are wandering from the fold, who are vulnerable – because of the suffering they are experiencing.

the devil accuses God to people.

Accusations like: Look at all the trials, suffering and pain you are going through. How crazy you are to serve such a God
who is doing this to you. You must be joking when you say he is a good God! Sigmund Freud was right: the religious have a mental problem.

The devil loves to pull down your view of God.

There is always the danger you will throw in the towel, call it quits and commit apostasy if you listen to the devil’s accusations and not to God’s word.

To counter all these phoney accusations, Peter teaches us to resist the devil, stand your ground, strong in the grace of God–in the midst of trials.

I’ve been having some light-headed experiences of dizziness over the last few months. I’ve been thinking it is stress related to my work and have had CAT scans, brain wave tracings, seen a neurologist, etc. But in a recent e-mail from my son, Paul, he wrote this: “I don’t mean to go over the top, Dad, but I know the devil doesn’t want you to be doing what you are doing. Remember his strategies.” How timely this reminder was for me. I thank the LORD for a godly 30-year-old son. The devil does not make you do everything, but he certainly is a deceptive, accusing person in the life of the Christian. But Jesus is the victor. We need to live in that victory that was obtained at Golgotha.

As long as Jesus allows us to be on earth, trials will be our lot; the devil will be our accuser throughout life.

E. What is God doing in your lives?

I Peter 2:5 says that God is building “you” (plural) into a “spiritual house.” That’s His goal for the church. How does he do it?

In this passage we are considering (vv. 6-7), Peter encourages us, exhorts us, teaches us: READ VV. 6-7.

To all of us, God says through Peter:

IV. DON’T CHUCK IT IN BECAUSE GOD IS TURNING TRASH INTO TREASURE IN YOUR LIFE (vv. 6-7)

If God is going to turn junk into gold, He uses two core principles. By these principles, God takes what is displeasing to Him and makes you what He wants you to be.

The two principles are found in the contrasts of vv. 6-7:

v. 6. “In this you greatly rejoice” BUT you may have “to suffer grief.” The contrast is: Rejoicing in the midst of grief.

v. 6. You will experience “all kinds of trials” BUT

v. 8. You “are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy.” Or as the KJV puts it, “ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory.” The contrast: Trials vs. joy – but this is the Christian life.

CORE PRINCIPLE NO. 1:

CHRISTIANS ARE PEOPLE WHO ARE TO EXPERIENCE UNSPEAKABLE JOY

A. Changing trash into treasure requires a joyous disposition.

Please understand that I did not say, “Turning trash into treasure requires a happy disposition.” There’s a great deal of difference between joy and happiness. These two words, “rejoice” and “joy” come from the same Greek root word, charis.

a. What is joy?

My wife, Desley, uses a detergent to get out stains and deep dirt, called “Bio-Joy.” I understand the idea behind such a name: you will experience joy when dirty clothes become clean–thanks to the miracle working Bio-Joy. But that is not what the Bible means by “joy”. We need to be fundamentally clear on this:

(1) Joy is not an option. You are commanded to rejoice.

Phil 4:4, “Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice.” This is not just an idea that we can think about. It is a practical joy that all Christians are commanded to develop. The imperative is that we are to be joyous people. So it must be possible, even for some like me who are rather serious people.

Perhaps it would be helpful if we briefly looked at what joy is not. [13]

(2) First, joy is not the same as fun and playing games

You can have fun and still not find joy. People around us in droves are pursuing pleasure and fun in sex, illicit drugs, drink, gadgets, entertainment, travelling–especially here in the affluent West, but it is clear they don’t have that deep seated joy.

You can know the joy of the Lord and have lots of fun. Read the book of Philippians and you’ll find Paul was in prison, expecting to die. It was no fun. But he had lots of joy. Philippians is the book of joy.

These Christians Peter was writing to had severe trials, suffering and persecution, yet they had “joy unspeakable and full of glory.”

(3) Second, joy is not the same as being the life of the party.

That’s part of being an extrovert. You can have a bouncy temperament but have no joy. A Christian may have a face that is thin, bony looking and like a drawn-out coffee pot, but he or she can have joy beyond measure.

What then is joy?

On the evening that Jesus was betrayed and arrested, perhaps only 12 hours before his crucifixion–he knew the horrors that were facing him.

According to John 15:11 he says, “I have told you this [that is, that obedience will keep you in my love] so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete.”

Joy was his at that moment, but the circumstances were far from carefree and happy.

Paul could have joy with the threat of being killed.

Here in I Peter 1: 6, Peter commands:

“In this you greatly rejoice.”

Here we have the clue to what joy is and where it comes from. When he says, “in this,” he is referring back to something he has already said. Your joy comes from this:

o Your salvation.

v. 2, you have been chosen by God for eternal life;

v. 3, you have a new birth, a living hope;

v. 4, your inheritance is nothing like what a wealthy person leaves behind for his children. Your inheritance will never perish, spoil or fade. It is kept in heaven for you.

v. 5. This salvation, even though you experience it now with enormous benefits, it will be yours fully when Jesus Christ is revealed when he comes again.

o J.I. Packer defines it well: “Joy covers the entire spectrum of what may be called the rapturous, ranging from the extreme achings of ecstasy to the quiet thrill of contentment… Joy is a condition that is experienced, but it is more than a feeling; it is primarily a state of mind… A state of the whole [person] in which thought and feeling combine to produce total euphoria.” [14] It is a deep contentment when you are in love with Jesus and nothing–not even suffering, trials, persecution or death–can take it away.

It flows from your relationship with Jesus and knowing who you are as a believer. You rejoice in the exhilarating knowledge of being Christ’s child. You possess salvation and eternal life as Christ’s gift. You can’t earn it. You accept it. Joy flows from this source. I can’t put it into words that are adequate enough. It’s the joy of relationship, not circumstances.

“R.A. Torrey was one of the great Bible teachers [at the turn of the 20^th century] and [was] fonder of the Bible Institute of Los Angeles… He and Mrs Torrey went through a time of great heartache when their twelve-year-old daughter was accidentally killed.

“The funeral was held on a gloomy, miserable, rainy day. They stood around the grave and watched as the body of their little girl was put away. As they turned away, Mrs Torrey said, `I’m so glad that Elizabeth is with the Lord, and not in that box.’

“But even knowing this to be true, their hearts were broken. Dr. Torrey said that the next day, as he was walking down the street, the whole thing broke anew–the loneliness of the years ahead without her presence, the heartbreak of an empty house, and all the other implications of her death.

“He was so burdened by this that he looked to the Lord for help. He said, `And just then, this fountain, the Holy Spirit that I had in my heart, broke forth with such power as I think I had never experienced before, and it was the most joyful moment I have ever known in my life!

“Oh how wonderful is the joy of the Holy [Spirit]! It is an unspeakable glorious thing to have your joy not in things about you, not even in your most dearly loved friends, but to have within you a fountain ever springing up, springing up, springing up, always springing up [365] days in every year, springing up under all circumstances unto everlasting life.” [15]

Application

Do you know this kind of joy as the constant reality in your life? If not, there is only one way to receive it: repent, fall on your face before God, and be reconciled with Jesus. Do you want joy? The Scriptures command you to have it. Will you seek and experience this “joy unspeakable and full of glory”?

Then you will discover that while you live in this depraved and fallen world, life will not be a “joy ride,” but it can become a “joy road” through your response to God. [16]

Core Principle No. 1 for changing trash to treasure. You are commanded to have the joy of the Lord. It must be yours.

CORE PRINCIPLE NO. 2 FOR TURNING THE TRASH IN YOUR LIFE INTO TREASURE: GOD SENDS ALL KINDS OF TRIALS YOUR WAY WITH A PURPOSE IN VIEW.

The classic case is Job. At the end of Job we read (42:11-12): “All his brothers and sisters and everyone who had known him before came and ate with him in his house. They comforted and consoled him over [get this] all the trouble the Lord had brought upon him, and each one gave him a piece of silver and a gold ring. The Lord blessed the latter part of Job’s life more than the first.”

We have the benefit that Job didn’t have. We have the Word of God that even tells us in Job chapter 1 that God used Satan to afflict Job. Will he do any more or less with us? Without a doubt, God can send trials our way.

Remember Joseph who was badly treated and sent to Egypt by his brothers? When Joseph finally revealed himself to his brothers in Egypt, he said, “So then, it was not you who sent me here, but God” (Gen. 45:8).

Then at the end of Genesis, Joseph was able to say to his brothers: “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives” (50:19-20).

This is the Romans 8:28 principle, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”

God turned trash into treasure in Joseph’s life, through the trials of sending him into Egypt. Again, God sends trials to you, brother and sister, to turn trash into treasure.

Here in 1 Peter 1:6-7, we are given some fundamental steps in this principle of God using trials to turn junk into gold:

1. Refining gold by fire is used as an illustration of what God does in our lives (v. 7).

To purify gold, you boil it and the impurities rise to the surface to be skimmed off.

Similarly,

2. Your faith is tested, purified by trials.

The Bible is quite the opposite of the health, wealth and prosperity doctrines that are proclaimed in many churches. God makes no promise to make you financially wealthy. A leading Australian pastor has written a book, You Need More Money. This seems to side-track us from core issues of life. The true biblical teaching is:

v. 6 says that you will:

suffer grief through
all kinds of trials

Don’t try to second-guess God as to what trials he sends your way. Every bit of pain, difficulty, trials, suffering, persecution, that God sends to you is to turn trash into treasure in your life.

This testing time that comes to all of us will cause us to “suffer grief.” It will be emotionally and physically painful. The grief and hurt are real. That’s why Paul to the Romans (12:15) says we are “to rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn.” Gal. 6:2, “Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfil the law of Christ.”

However, never forget that, according to 2 Cor. 1:3-4, God is “the God of all comfort who comforts us in our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.”

God comforts us directly. But he expects the body of Christ to come alongside of us and offer comfort during our trials.

Why does God do it?

3. That your faith “may be proved genuine” (v. 7).

There is no room for fakes in the Kingdom of God. God tests the genuineness of your faith by sending you trials.

The wheat and the tares (look-alike-wheat) will grow together until harvest time. Christians and fake-Christians will be sorted out when Jesus comes again. But the Lord tells us that some sorting out is done on earth–by testing what kind of stuff your faith is made of by sending you all kinds of trials.

Changing trash to treasure through trials is God’s message throughout the N.T. Read about it in: Romans 5:3-5; James 1:2-4; Hebrews 12:7-11; 2 Cor. 1:3-7.

4. What will be the ultimate result in our lives? What is God doing through the trials He sends you?

I Peter 1:7. Trials may “result in praise, glory and honour when Jesus Christ is revealed (at his second coming).”

For you, the praise will be, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

The glory will be the glory which was Christ’s before the world began and which he gives to the chosen/elect. To all believers Jesus said, “I have given them the glory that you (Father) gave me that they may be one as we are one” (John 17:22).

The honour will be the crown of righteousness given to the faithful who have endured.

V. CONCLUSION

Bishop John Taylor, a well-known bishop in the past in England, as a student, planned to attend the famous Mildmay Conference at the time when it was very influential.

Just before that time, he injured his knee and had to rest up in bed. At that time, he lay in bed and began to read through the Book of Romans. He received such a blessing that he prayed in faith, “Lord, if this be the result of a bruised knee, please give me a broken leg.” [17]

Application:

If you are experiencing difficulties right now, how can God turn trash into treasure for you?

Principle No. 1: You are commanded to have the joy of the Lord. This is the disposition from God that enables you to endure the trials, knowing that they are God-sent or God-allowed.

Principle No. 2: God uses trials to test our faith to see if it is genuine or not.

There’s a country song that Johnny Cash sang years ago. It says, “I’m just an old chunk of coal, but I’ll be a diamond some day.”

Thank God for the trials he sends — and seek joy.

Don’t chuck it in because God is turning trash into treasure in your life.

Closing Hymn: “Because He lives” (252 Wesleyan)

Other suitable hymns/songs for the service:

It is well with my soul (262, Wesleyan)

Leaning on the Everlasting Arms (267, Wesleyan)

He lives (Wesleyan 250)

Rejoice in the Lord always [Scripture in Song, Vol. 1:81]

God is so good (Scripture in Song, Vol. 1:121)

Joy is a flag (Scripture in Song, Vol. 2: 218)

Notes:

2.       Based on the introduction to the message, “The Message of First Peter,” Ray C. Stedman, http://www.pbc.org/dp/stedman/adventure/0261.html [cited 27 November 2002].
3.       Ralph Kinney Bennett ,“The Global War on Christians,” The Readers’ Digest, October, 1997, pp. 104-109.
4.       Ibid., p. 105.
5.       Ibid., p. 106.
6.       Ibid., p. 107.
7.       Ibid., p. 105.
8.       Ibid., p. 108.
9.       Ibid.
10.       Other sufferings/trials emphasised: you are called to suffering because Christ suffered, leaving you an example to follow in His steps (2:21); people speaking maliciously against their good behaviour (3:16); “painful trial you are suffering” and they “participate in the sufferings of Christ” (4:12, 13); insulted because of the name of Christ (4:14); “Cast all your anxiety on him” (5:7).
11.       C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain. New York: Macmillan, 1962, p. 93, in Norman L. Geisler and Ronald M. Brooks, When Skeptics Ask. Wheaton, Illinois: Victor Books, 1990, p. 68.
12.       C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed. New York: Bantam Books, Inc., 1976, p. 35, in Geisler & Brooks, p. 59.
13.       The points about what joy is not, are taken from J.I. Packer, Laid-Back Religion? Leicester, England: Inter-Varsity Press, 1987, p. 98f.
14.       Ibid., pp. 100-101, emphasis added.
15.       In Michael P. Green (Ed.), Illustrations for Biblical Preaching. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1989, #1295, p. 349-50.
16.       Packer, p. 93
17.       Ibid., #17, p. 2

1 Peter 1:3-5, Stand firm in the faith because of the incredible blessings you have received

(North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, who is regarded as a ‘god’ by the North Korean people, greets Korean People’s Army pilots during a visit to the summit of Mt. Paektu on April 18, 2015, in this photo released by North Korea’s Korean Central News Agency. Courtesy Christian Today, 15 August 2015)

By Spencer D Gear

I. Introduction

In the January 2006 newsletter from Open Doors, a ministry to the persecuted church, it focussed on one of the most persecuted groups of Christians in the world. This is what is happening to the church in communist, North Korea:

It’s hard to imagine how a Church can survive in North Korea. Yet right now, some 400,000 Christians are living in this country. . . and they desperately need your prayers and support.

North Korea is the most oppressive nation in the world. There is no freedom of thought, speech, expression, movement or religion. It is the utmost restricting and punishing place on the planet.

Being a Christian in North Korea is extremely dangerous and difficult to conceal. One in three people [is a] government [spy]. If you don’t regularly bow down to a statue of Kim Il Sung, it’s noted.

Some 200,000 prisoners are serving life sentences in labour camps. . . Prisoners work for up to 18 hours a day. Anyone who talks risks 8 days in solitary confinement in a 0.6m x 1.1m cage. . . Torture, executions and experiments occur daily.

Many thousands of prisoners are Christians. “Christians are the most severely abused,” testifies Soon Ok Lee, a former prisoner. “In seven years I saw many believers die, yet they never denied Jesus.”

Among the North Korean refugees to China, many turn to Christ. They are so full of joy that they want to return to their country to evangelise, despise the risk of imprisonment or death.

“I cannot keep the Gospel to myself!” they say. “Our family, friends and all North Koreans must know this! Our end is not in the camp or in starvation, but in eternal life with Him. [2]

What is it that keeps these persecuted North Korean Christians (400,000 of them in a country of 23 million) firm in their faith? It’s the same kind of faith you will need when you are ridiculed for your faith in Australia. It’s the faith that you need when the going has been tough – and it has been for me during the last 12 months.

In I Peter we find why Christians don’t chuck it in when the going gets tough.

We hear so little of what is happening to the small Christian church in Iraq. I read recently “that Christians and churches are being seriously affected by the internal turmoil across the country. Not only are foreigners being hijacked, but indigenous Iraqi Christians are also disappearing. [Open Doors] contacts stress that in most of these cases, the kidnappers are not Islamic extremists, but more often are young people trying to make some easy money.” [3]

We find it difficult to identify with this kind of persecution. However if you are a

committed Christian here in Australia and you speak up for Christ, persecution will come sooner or later. This is from the mouth of Jesus: “Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours” (John 15:20 ESV).

Today we’ll be dealing with I Peter 1:3-5:

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade—kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time (NIV).

A. Why did Peter write this first epistle?

It is a very warm pastoral letter with lots of encouragement for Christians who are scattered and persecuted. I Peter 5:12, ” I have written to you briefly, encouraging you and testifying that this is the true grace of God. Stand fast in it.”

Peter wrote this epistle to believers who were experiencing trials that were severe:

1:6, “In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials.”
2:21, “To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps.”
3:13-14, “Who is going to harm you if you are eager to do good? But even if you should suffer for what is right, you are blessed. “Do not fear what they fear; do not be frightened.”
3:17, “It is better, if it is God’s will, to suffer for doing good than for doing evil.”
4:12-16,” Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed. If you are insulted because of the name of Christ, you are blessed, for the Spirit of glory and of God rests on you. If you suffer, it should not be as a murderer or thief or any other kind of criminal, or even as a meddler. However, if you suffer as a Christian, do not be ashamed, but praise God that you bear that name.”
4:19,” So then, those who suffer according to God’s will should commit themselves to their faithful Creator and continue to do good.”

Peter wrote this epistle so that these early believers would “see their temporary sufferings in the full light of the coming eternal glory. In the midst of all their discouragements, the sovereign Lord will keep them and enable them by faith to have joy.” [4]

This is a very practical and relevant message for Christians who live in China, North Korea, North & South Vietnam, Cambodia, any Muslim country, and here in Bundaberg, Qld. in the 21^st century – where the Christian comes under regular attack for his or her beliefs.

As we look closely at I Peter 1:3-5, we are taught to

II. HOLD FIRM IN YOUR FAITH because of the blessings you have received (vv. 3-5)

These are the blessings that are yours in Christ.

As a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, through God’s “great mercy” you have received blessings beyond anything your boss could offer. Marriage will not give you what God has given. A businessman’s multi-millions of dollars will look like chicken feed when compared with the blessings of the people of God. Nothing bar nothing that you could ever get in this world will compare with the blessings that are yours in Christ.

It’s appropriate that Peter begins v. 3 with an exhortation to “praise.” Richard Lenski says this: “There is too little contemplation of God, too little praise of him in our hearts, especially in our earthly distress.” [5] Would you agree or disagree? Do we praise God enough? Do we know how to praise Him?

The psalmist did.

Psalm 103:1 Praise the LORD, O my soul; all my inmost being, praise his holy name.

2 Praise the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits —

3 who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases,

4 who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion,

5 who satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.

6 The LORD works righteousness and justice for all the oppressed.

There is so much to praise God for. Let’s not be slack about it. Peter calls us to praise: The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Peter is singing the true glory of God when he meditates on God’s great salvation through Jesus Christ. When Peter thinks on the blessings of salvation, He has nothing but praise for God the Father.

Would some of you take a moment to think about how you ought to praise God? Remember, we are talking about God, praising our Almighty God. Anybody prepared to verbalise praise of God?

You may have a family member who is:

Threatening suicide;
Has attempted suicide;
Rebellious kids who pull knives on parents, abuse them in other ways;
Sexually, physically & emotionally abused teens;
Parents who are guilt-ridden because they can’t control their kids, kids on drugs, stealing, vandalising, pumping 100s of dollars through the pokies, etc.
Adultery, broken families, talk of homosexual marriage;
Youth with outrageous anger problems;
How do you survive as a Christian in such circumstances.

You don’t have to be going through such extreme circumstances. You may be persecuted for your Christian convictions. For you, this first epistle of Peter has some exceedingly good news.

Just in case you haven’t remembered what God has done for you through Christ, Peter summarises some of the blessings for us. Surely these are enough to convince you to hold to your faith firmly.

Never forget these blessings:

A. YOU HAVE BEEN CHANGED FROM THE INSIDE OUT.

“He has given us new birth” (“caused us to be born again”). This language is so familiar to many of us that we just gloss over it. Please don’t. What has happened to you, if you are born again, is like going into your mother’s womb again and coming out a totally new person, from the inside out. The image baffled Nicodemus (John 3:3-9). It still puzzles those who have not experienced it. You are born again because the life of God has been implanted in your souls. This is the whole Trinity in you to give you a new life and a new view of the world. Your heart is filled with new powers, new motives, new thoughts, and a new desire. You are not the same.

When we give birth to children whom we love, we shower them with gifts; our kids are our heirs; they receive our inheritance. That’s how it is with God the Father when we are born again. What an incredible blessing it is!

It is ours because of God’s “great mercy.” God saw us in filth, need and rebellion. He was moved with compassion. Eph. 2:4 says He is the God who is “rich in mercy.” Mercy is God’s compassion for the helpless that results in action to bring them relief. “Mercy is a word specially used in the New Testament of God’s kindness in bringing in the outsider and the unworthy, the Gentile and the sinner, to share in His salvation, and in the glories or riches of His Christ” [6] (Read further about it in Rom. 11:30-32; 15:9; Eph. 2:1-7; Titus 3:5). Jesus was moved with compassion when he saw the hungry crowd. But he did more than that. He provided them with the bread and the fish to eat (Matt. 15:32). That’s mercy.

God saw our wretched state, aliens who would rather shake our fist at God than move towards him. We were rebels. In mercy, he offered us new birth through Christ’s death.

It is a new birth that gives us:

1. A living hope (v. 3)

This is a “no hope” world. If we want to put a person down, we call him a “no hoper.” Just think of what has happened to hope during the last century. Two world wars, Hitler’s gas ovens and the deaths of 6 million Jews, the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the atomic age ushered in with the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Vietnam War; the killing fields of Pol Pot’s Cambodia. The slaughter in Rwanda, Zaire, Port Arthur, and now the war in Iraq.

Some of the young people I’ve counselled over the years, who are contemplating suicide, tell me they see no hope in the future.

Dr Brendan Nelson is the federal minister of education. He is the former president of the Australian Medical Association. In a letter he wrote to The Australian newspaper back in 1997, he said this:

“The thematic currency of youth suicide is our failure to transmit a sense of belonging and meaningful purpose to young people. . . We have created a culture in which young people frequently feel they have nothing other than themselves in which to believe. The mesh of values that held Australian society together 30 years ago — God, king and country — has been systematically dismantled. . . leaving only a vacuum. . . The price of our shallowness is being paid by our children.” [7]

The hope that people had in the optimism at the beginning of the 20th century is dead in the ashes of wars, crime and violence, high unemployment, etc. When you glory in what human beings can do and achieve, you will be bitterly disappointed, even shattered.

For the believer we have a “living hope.” The opposite, “a dead hope,” is what we would call hopelessness. For the Christian it is a living hope because it is in what God has done. Verse 3 makes it clear what God has done. It is a living hope ONLY…

2. Through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

What’s the big deal about the resurrection? If there was only Calvary, we would have a dead Jesus, rotting in the grave. It is because of the resurrection that we have a living Saviour and you can become a new person in Christ. It is a hope that will not die because of the one who conquered death.

Because Jesus lives, we shall live also. As the Bill Gaither song puts it so well:

Because He lives, I can face tomorrow.

Because He lives, all fear is gone.

Because I know who holds the future

And live is worth the living just because He lives. [8]

This is the living hope. If Jesus did not rise from the grave, there would be no valid basis for believing in life after death. A person said to me the other day, “I’m going to live it up for all I can get now because I’m going to be dead a long time.” He was dead wrong! You’ll be alive a mighty long time—for eternity—but where you will be, heaven or hell, will be determined by how you respond to the resurrected Jesus in this life.

For what do we hope? What are we looking forward to?

B. AN INHERITANCE (v. 4)

This was familiar language for Jewish readers. They had heard lots about the inheritance that God had for his people. Canaan, the Holy Land, was just for them. They were wanderers in the wilderness after coming out of slavery in Egypt. They looked for the Promised Land. After being brought back from Exile in Babylon, they were looking for their inheritance in the Land God had provided.

But the “land flowing with milk and honey” didn’t fulfil Israel’s hopes. They were soon into idolatry; there was strife between tribes; the land was overrun by invaders. Surely there was something more than this for an inheritance! Was there any lasting hope?

We have seen lots of great things in the Lucky Country of Australia. We have wealth beyond measure. Our natural resources are something to behold. The technology in the land is amazing. The sunburnt country has so much beauty. We have one of the best welfare systems in the world.

But in the midst of this splendour, there is so much ugliness. Surely there is more to yearn for than this!

Australia or Israel is not the inheritance the true Church is expecting. Verse 4 says it is an inheritance that

1. Can never perish

Moths and rats will not eat it up. It will not rust. Thieves will not break in and steal it. No destructive force, natural or man-made, will injure it or take it away. [9] “Unlike any inheritance in this world, it is not exposed to destruction.” [10]

It is an inheritance that

2. Can never spoil

No stain or stink of sin will be there. It is so pure and lofty. Imagine an inheritance that is worth more, much more, than gold. No contamination from anything related to sin. There will be no brothers and sisters fighting over the will to get their share. It will be unspoiled wealth. The believers’ inheritance cannot be “defiled from outside.” [11]

This inheritance

3. Cannot fade

The idea behind this word is that it is

“imperishable, never withering, (never) disappointing, (never) becoming old and worn. The delight of it will never lessen or grow stale. . . Our inheritance will never lose anything through age or sickness on our part or through any damage to itself; it will never be marred by impurity; and it will never lessen in delight because it has been enjoyed for so long.” [12]

Unlike a physical inheritance in this world, it cannot “decay from inside.” [13] But there is more. What makes this inheritance even more remarkable is that the security system is out of this world.

4. It is “kept in heaven for you.” (v. 4)

Literally, you have always been kept and are presently being guarded and will be kept there until you reach glory. God is guarding you. He keeps you safe. What a blessing this is!

Please note that this inheritance is:

5. For you through faith (v. 5)

Faith is not to be thought of as some way for earning your inheritance. Never! However, faith in Christ must surely be our response to God’s mercy and love.

While our inheritance is kept in heaven for us by God, we, as faithful believers, are living on earth, according to v. 5:

6. “Shielded by God’s power” (v. 5).

Did you get what I just said? Your inheritance is “shielded by God’s power.” God has not left the church without protection in this hostile world. God continuously “guards” the church. Yes, even this church. The church is “shielded.” It’s an old military term meaning “to garrison.” [14] A garrison is a military post that is permanently established and stays on guard 24 hours a day.

Extraordinary missionary to India, E. Stanley Jones of the 20th century, “often repeated the prayer of a little girl who was the daughter of missionary friends in India:

“God bless Mama and Papa, my brothers and sisters, and all my friends. And now, God, do take care of Yourself, for if anything should happen to You, we’d all be in the soup.” [15]

The church is guarded by God’s power every moment of every day. There are enemies of the church all around us who want to rob the church of her inheritance. They want you to fail. God says, “You are guarded by my power every moment of every day.” The psalmist reminded Israel: “[The Lord] will not let your foot slip—he, who watches over you will not slumber; indeed, he who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.” (Ps. 121:3-4); Psalm 34:7, “The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him, and he delivers them.”

The power of God guarded Daniel in the lions’ den; Shadrach, Meshach and Abednigo in the fiery furnace; it set boundaries around Job when he was afflicted; it freed Peter from Herod’s prison; it preserved Paul when he was surrounded by dangers, hardships and persecutions. The faith hall of fame in Hebrews 11 tells us that, through faith, God guarded those who “were tortured and refused to be released… Some faced jeers and flogging, while still others were chained and put in prison. They were stoned” (vv.35-37). However, others were guarded until God took them to heaven: “They were sawed in two; they were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated” (v. 37).

What is being guarded for us? v. 5

7. The coming of salvation: ready to be revealed in the last time (v. 5)

We have salvation now that makes a radical personal difference in our lives. But Peter is reminding the church of the final deliverance that will come at the end of the age. There could well be horrible persecution and sorrow in the days ahead for us in Australia from Satan’s final assault — and just prior to the return of Christ.

Revelation ch. 12 speaks of Satan being cast out of heaven and filled with fury “because he knows that his time is short” (Rev. 12:12).

Famous theologian, H. Richard Niebuhr, was on the streets of New York City when he was approached by an evangelist with this question, “Are you saved?” Niebuhr always took people seriously. He paused a moment and gave this thoughtful reply, “I was saved by what Christ did; I am being saved right now; I shall be saved when the kingdom comes.”

We don’t know what the evangelist said. But Neibuhr stated so well what Peter is trying to get across to us: “Salvation spans time. It is grounded in the past; it is experienced in the present; it culminates in the future.” [16]

Without a doubt, we, who believe, have begun to experience a true and great salvation now (Luke 19:9), thanks to Christ’s death on the cross. The joys of salvation come through our daily discipleship (2 Cor. 6:2). However, the absolute wonder and the full dimensions of salvation will not be known until the crowning day of our salvation when Jesus comes again.

When Jesus returns, the church will receive the great deliverance. Salvation will be accomplished then. I pray that “In a little while, the great curtain shall be drawn aside, our entire salvation shall be revealed.” [17]

What a God we have and what a blessing to know that we are guarded by the power of God in this way—in life and through death.

After listening to all this heavenly emphasis, maybe you are tempted to say what Karl Marx said. This is pie-in-the-sky stuff. Religion is the opiate of the people! Isn’t Christianity the religion that is the drug that the ruling classes are using to keep the under-privileged satisfied with their lousy lot? Isn’t this keeping your heads in the clouds so that you don’t have to become involved in solving some of the problems of today’s world?

Of course, this Christian hope can be abused and misunderstood—and it has been. However, it has been the Christians whose hopes have been in heaven who have made a dynamic impact as the “salt of the earth” and the “light of the world.” Where would we be without committed, evangelical Christians such as William Wilberforce who helped to eliminate slavery from the British Empire. It was George M?ller who helped the orphans in England and lived by faith to receive funding for his ministry.

Another John Howard, besides our Prime Minister, influenced by the Wesleyan revival, brought about prison reforms in England. Elizabeth Fry continued his work.

William & Catherine Booth founded the Salvation Army and its ministry to the needy has a continuing international reputation.

David Wilkerson went to New York City to work with the junkies and help them be delivered from their drug habits through Christ and established Teen Challenge. Today, John Smith and his team work on the streets of Melbourne with those we call unlovely. Peter Lane and his colleagues of Liberty International work with individuals and groups of homosexuals leading them to salvation through Christ and to a change in their lifestyle. Where would the welfare of our country be today if the church withdrew its ministry to the hurting people of our society?

Those who have a living hope and know their inheritance is in heaven, never to be spoiled, have most often got their hands dirty in the real world of people and their problems.

Even in this letter of First Peter, Peter has some urgent things to say about life in the present. In chapter 2 he deals with how we are to relate to government and our bosses. Marriage and family come into focus in chapter 3. Chapters 3 & 4 deal with how we should respond to suffering if we suffer for doing good. This is very down-to-earth stuff for those who are chosen people and a holy nation.

It has often been said that many Christians are so heavenly minded they are no earthly good. That’s not biblical Christianity. Here in I Peter, those who are sure of their inheritance in heaven and have a living hope that longs for their eternal reward, are most actively involved in this present world — through evangelism and practical ministry. You might ask, “Should we focus on this world or the next?” I think the question is wrong. Rather, it should be, “Does your future belong to a human being’s pride and resources or to God’s grace?” Since our future belongs to God’s grace, our lives ought to demonstrate “Christianity with its sleeves rolled up” to the needy – wherever and whenever.

III. Conclusion

Let us draw some practical applications from this encouraging passage of God’s Word:

1. Notice the overall thrust of this passage for those who are experiencing severe persecution. It is just as relevant to those who have difficulties on the job or at home. These verses, and the entire book of I Peter, do not focus on the extremely difficult circumstances. They focus on God:

“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!” What should we praise God for?
His great mercy;
Given us new birth;
A living hope (for a hope-less world);
We have an inheritance that is out of this world – “can never perish, spoil or fade”;
Your inheritance is not in a Kerry Packer lifestyle of billions of bucks. “It is kept in heaven for you.”
We praise our wonderful God because we, “through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time.”
When we have to deal with difficulties in our lives, we come to this wonderful Lord. The last 18 months have been rugged for me, but if I focused on the bad things that have happened to me, I would not be preaching this morning. I am so grateful for the lessons I have learned from I Peter. Be God-centred; exalt Him; make Him the centre of my desires. We have an inheritance that “can never perish, spoil or fade” – thanks to our wonderful Lord.

When the difficulties come, and they will, run to Him, not just for a few moments on your knees, but to meet all your needs. Remember God’s mercy, salvation, our future in heaven – an inheritance that is out of this world.

2. Another application: It is so easy to take for granted the new birth that you have received. Are you living in the reality of this “living hope” in a hopeless world? What is your attitude towards those who live next door, your school mates, your friends concerning this “living hope” that you know and experience every day? Do you share Christ with these people who have an attitude of hopelessness? If terrorism comes to your suburb, if Sept. 11 comes in another form to Bundaberg, how will y our life be a demonstration of the “living hope” that Christ gives. You need to live that life now. Evangelism and discipleship should be a normal part of our lives. It is not for the specialists. We will never get the job of reaching people done unless all of us who know Christ live a life of “living hope” in our daily lives.

A North Korean Christian said that “through the Gospel, North Korean society will change from within.” [18] This is in a land that has 400,000 Christians in a population of about 23 million. [19]

3. Third, over the last fortnight we have been faced with plenty of media coverage of the death of one of Australia’s richest men (Kerry Packer). The Sydney Morning Herald of 28th December 2005, published this statement.

THE LAST time Kerry Packer died [or had a near-death experience], 15 years ago, he quickly took the opportunity to pooh-pooh the existence of an afterlife. “I’ve been on the other side and let me tell you, son, there’s f—ing nothing there,” he was fond of saying. [20]

I say: He will know for certain now. How much went with him? You may be as poor as a church mouse, but you have an inheritance that is out of this world. First Peter says that it is “an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade.” Where is this inheritance kept? In the National Bank of Australia?

“Kept in heaven for you.” Life is worth the living because, in Christ, your inheritance is gained in heaven. We believers need to be forever heavenly minded so that we will be of earthly good. But also we are heavenly minded because that is where our lasting treasure is “that can never perish, spoil or fade.”

We must never get our view of life after death from any person’s views, and certainly not from a person’s near-death experiences. God alone knows what lies beyond death and it is to Him in His Word, the Bible, that we go for accurate information of what lies beyond the grave. God’s views are radically different from those of Kerry Packer.

4. Finally, based on this message of I Peter 1:3-5, when we come to worship, don’t you think that we should come to praise and worship our wonderful Lord? How do we know about how we ought to worship? Through the Scriptures.

Psalm 96 tells us how we ought to sing to the Lord. This is how God tells us we ought to worship Him in our singing:

Sing to the LORD a new song;
sing to the LORD, all the earth.

² Sing to the LORD, praise his name;
proclaim his salvation day after day.

³ Declare his glory among the nations,
his marvelous deeds among all peoples.

⁴ For great is the LORD and most worthy of praise;
he is to be feared above all gods.

⁵ For all the gods of the nations are idols,
but the LORD made the heavens.

⁶ Splendor and majesty are before him;
strength and glory are in his sanctuary.

⁷ Ascribe to the LORD, O families of nations,
ascribe to the LORD glory and strength.

⁸ Ascribe to the LORD the glory due his name;
bring an offering and come into his courts.

⁹ Worship the LORD in the splendor of his holiness;
tremble before him, all the earth.

¹⁰ Say among the nations, “The LORD reigns.”
The world is firmly established, it cannot be moved;
he will judge the peoples with equity.

¹¹ Let the heavens rejoice, let the earth be glad;
let the sea resound, and all that is in it;

¹² let the fields be jubilant, and everything in them.
Then all the trees of the forest will sing for joy;

¹³ they will sing before the LORD, for he comes,
he comes to judge the earth.
He will judge the world in righteousness
and the peoples in his truth (NIV)

Compare the psalmist’s exhortation to praise our God with how we come with a me-centred approach like:

Just let me say how much I love You
Let me speak of Your mercy and grace
Just let me live in the shadow of Your beauty
Let me see You face to face . . . [21]

That may be OK in our private devotions and praise to God, but when we meet together to worship, is it too much to ask that our focus by on the Triune God alone?

What do you think inspired Isaac Watts, the hymn writer, to write our

IV. Concluding hymn: Blest Be the Everlasting God (tune of Amazing Grace)

Blest be the everlasting God,
the Father of our Lord
be his abounding mercy praised,
his majesty adored.
When from the dead he raised his Son
to dwell with him on high,
he gave our souls a certain hope
that they should never die.
There’s an inheritance divine
reserved against that day,
It’s uncorrupted, undefiled,
and cannot waste away.
Saints by the power of God are kept
till the salvation come;
we walk by faith as strangers here,
till Christ shall call us home. (Words: Isaac Watts (1674-1748) [22]

Notes:

2. Open Doors, Australia, “The most punishing place on the planet – North Korea,” letter, January 2006. Available from PO Box 53, Seaforth NSW 2092; www.opendoors.org.au; email: [email protected]

3. The Door Openers Club, Frontline, June 2004, Open Doors Australia, P.O. Box 53 Seaforth NSW 2092. Website: www.opendoors.org.au

4. Edwin A. Blum, 1 Peter, in Frank E. Gaebelein (gen. ed.), The Expositor’s Bible Commentary (vol. 12). Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1981, p. 213.

5. R. C. H. Lenski, The Interpretation of the Epistles of St. Peter, St. John and St. Jude. Minneapolis, Minnesota: Augsburg publishing House, 1966.30.

6. A.M. Stibbs, The First Epistle General of Peter (The Tyndale New Testament Commentaries). London: The Tyndale Press, 1959, 75.

7. The Weekend Australian, January 11-12, 1997, 20.

9. Lenski, 33-34.

10. A.M. Stibbs, The First Epistle General of Peter (The Tyndale New Testament Commentaries). London: The Tyndale Press, 1959, 75.

11. Stibbs, 75.

12. Lenski, 34.

13. Stibbs, 75.

14. A.T. Robertson, Word Studies in the New Testament, Volume VI (The General Epistles and the Revelation of John). Nashville, Tennessee: Broadman Press, 1933, 83.

15. In Ruth A. Tucker 1994, The Family Album: Portraits of Family Life through the Centuries, Victor Books, Wheaton, Illinois, p. 206; taken from E. Stanley Jones 1968, A Song of Accents: A Spiritual Autobiography, Nashville, Abingdon, pp. 346-347.

16. Lyman Coleman and Richard Peace 1988, Study Guide for the Book of 1 Peter (Mastering the Basics). Littleton, Colorado: Serendipity USA, 22.

17. Lenski, 3

18. Open Doors Australia newsletter, January 2006, available from PO Box 53 Deaforth NSW 2092, Australia. Internet address: www.opendoors.org.au ; email: [email protected] [8 January 2006].

19. Infoplease: North Korea, available from: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0107686.html [6 May 2007].

20. Available from the Sydney Morning Herald [Online], 28 December 2005, “Media colossus pushed the boundaries of family empire,” with John Huxley, at: http://www.smh.com.au/news/obituaries/media-colossus-pushed-boundaries-of–empire/2005/12/27/1135445573138.html [8 January 2006], Or HERE

21. “Just Let Me Say,” Word and Music by Geoff Bullock, Hillsong Australia, available from: Praise Universe at: http://praiseuniverse.com/pages/sg200448 [7 January 2006].

22. Words available from: http://www.oremus.org/hymnal/b/b148.html [7 January 2006].

1 Peter 2:4-8, The road to Christian maturity

CCO Public Domain

By Spencer D Gear

What would happen if you did not water and fertilise plant sugar cane? It would die or be badly stunted in its growth.

What happens if you don’t give a new-born baby the correct food? He or she will become malnourished and may even die?

What do you think will happen if you don’t provide baby Christians with the correct spiritual food? A deformed, immature or malnourished believer will result. It’s the same for all of us who believe and need to mature in Christ.

Peter (if I say Paul instead of Peter, you’ll know I mean Peter, won’t you?) began chapter 2 with an appeal: “Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, now that you have tasted that the Lord is good” (2:2-3).

To these persecuted believers, Peter wants them to grow up in their faith. To mature in the faith, he teaches all new-born believers 4 things in vv. 4-8:

1. Come to the living stone (v. 4);

2. Know how you, as living stones mature (v. 5);

3. You will never grow up in the faith unless your foundation is solid (vv. 6-7);

4. Unbelievers stumble at this very point of the foundation (v. 8).

Throughout this passage the “you” to whom Peter speaks is not to “you” as individual single believers but to “you” (plural, collectively) as the people of God. This is important because we Westerners are so individualistic and we must get rid of such thinking if we are to mature as believers. You and I need one another – the body of believers.

We think that we can survive on our own. That is not Christian thinking. We need each other and we will never grow up at the people of God without the loving discipleship and care of the whole body of believers.

It’s a big ask to move us in our thinking and actions from individuals to the whole people of God. It would happen very quickly if we were in a persecuted society like China, North Korea, the Muslim world (Christianity is entirely forbidden in Saudi Arabia), Burma, the Sudan, you would quickly learn that you will never ever survive in your faith if you think that Simon & Garfunkel sang the truth: “I am a rock, I am an island” (Simon & Garfunkel n.d.)

Peter uses some down-to-earth images to describe life for the believer:

Newborn babies craving milk (2:2);
Stones to build a house (2:5);
A capstone rejected by builders (2:7).

These are not literal statements; they are figurative images. They refer to everyday things but point to some spiritual message, just like this first expression.

A. If you are to grow up in your faith, you need to come to the living stone (v. 4)

This is obviously speaking of the Lord Jesus Christ but it is a paradox to speak of Him as a living stone. Stones are dead objects. What’s the point of this kind of language? It’s figurative. We see this elsewhere in the Bible:

When Jesus told the parable of the landowner, the vineyard and the tenants, he referred back to Psalm 118:22-23, as we see also in this passage: “The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone.”

This same verse from Ps. 118 is quoted in Acts 4:11 when Peter spoke to the Sanhedrin rulers, elders and teachers of the law, including Annas the high priest, in Jerusalem.

What is Peter trying to get across? To grow in your faith, you must have your foundation correct. That is,

1. Christ, the living stone (2:4)

Peter’s name, petros, means “rock” but Christ is “the stone” in this verse, but he is the stone and the rock in v. 8. As we will learn soon, not just any old pebble, but the cornerstone, the foundation stone.

If you want a solid foundation for life and its many challenges, you don’t want shifting sand for your foundation. I saw a photo on the Internet of a 4-wheel vehicle that had been left on the sand on a Fraser Island beach? The owner returned to this newish vehicle and it was on its side with the salty water flowing in and around it, and half covered in sand.

To grow up in the faith, you need Christ, the stone, for your foundation. No ordinary sand or soil will do. Obviously I’m speaking figuratively about Christ, the stone.

But Christ, the stone, has an adjective of qualification. He is “living.” The stone is alive. The NT refers to him as “living water (John 4:10-11) and “living bread” (John 6:51). Here he is the living stone because of His resurrection from the dead. He’s the foundation of our lives but he’s no dead Saviour. He’s alive, through his resurrection from the dead.

However, this living stone, the foundation of new life for believers

2. Rejected by people

This is utterly tragic. The one who is to be the foundation of all of life and especially of the Christian life is utterly rejected by the unbelieving world. There is unbelievable hatred towards Jesus among Aussies. If you don’t believe me, try raising the subject of Jesus as the only way to salvation and heaven among your secular friends and see what you get. Some not only reject Him, but also abusively treat Jesus with some of the most blasphemous words and acts.

BUT, in spite of the way they humiliate Jesus and you, this living stone is

3. God’s chosen one & precious

Peter repeats the wonderful Christian teaching of election (being chosen by God). Do you remember what these believers were called in I Peter 1:1? God’s elect! God’s chosen people! Here, Jesus, the crucified and risen Lord, was not killed by some plan of Judas Iscariot and Pontius Pilate. Oh yes, they were involved.

But Jesus, the living foundation, was a member of the Godhead from eternity, but he went to death for our sins and was raised for our justification, not by some plan of the Roman Empire or the Jewish authorities, but Jesus was chosen by God to take the royal road to death and resurrection – for our sake.

And that is precious!

4. Let’s tease out some applications of this point:

a. Since Christ is the living stone and He lives in every believer (“Christ in you, the hope of glory”, Col. 1:27), how can you relate to the living Stone? How can you get to know Him better?

There are at least 3 ways:

(1) Through prayer. Do you spend time in prayer with the living Stone daily?

(2) Heb. 4:12: “For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.” If you want to know the living stone, you must spend time with God in reading and listening to God through the Bible. Do you have a regular plan of spending time in God’s Word and listening to Him – really listening?

(3) Remember Elijah on Horeb, the mountain of God, when the Lord appeared to him (I Kings 19:11-12):

The LORD said, “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the LORD, for the LORD is about to pass by”.

Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake. 12 After the earthquake came a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. (NIV).

Have you heard the “gentle whisper”, the still small voice of God? God speaks this way when we are in prayer; sometimes when reading the Word, sometimes when we are open to God’s direction. Listen for the still, small voice of God.

b. One other application here: When you share the Gospel with unbelievers, there will be some who respond in faith, but do not be surprised when many reject. The living Stone, Jesus, chosen by God, is rejected by people.

If you are to grow in the Christian life, this passage teaches us a second way:

B. If you are to grow up in your faith, you are to be like living stones being built into a spiritual house (v. 5)

Peter is still talking about stone, but the imagery has changed. He has moved from Christ, the solid foundation to believers who are

1. Living stones

Will you please come back to the English class room for a moment? Dare I invite you to come into the English grammar class with my English teacher, Johnny Baird, at Bundaberg State High School? He would tell you that you need to clearly know the difference between the active voice and the passive voice of a verb.

For example, if I were to say that “I built the house” that’s a verb in the active voice. I am the one doing the building. But if I say, “I am being built into a house” it is the passive voice of the verb “to build.” With the passive voice, something is being done to you by something/someone else.

This is important here because 2:5 says you, as new Christians, are having something done to you by someone. You, the living stones, have God as the agent and He is building the spiritual house with God working on you (Kistemaker 1987, p. 86). This has led to the New English Bible translation, “Come, and let yourselves be built, as living stones.” NRSV, “Let yourselves be built into a spiritual house”(similarly in the RSV, ESV, GNB, Phillips).

The life-giving principle in believers comes of Jesus who is alive and well and living in and among all Christians. “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Col. 1:27).

Did you get a hold of that? You are living stones because of Christ being in you. Is your hope eternal glory? I hope so!

Peter describes believes not just as living stones but also as

2. A holy priesthood

I’ve heard some unfortunate comments from evangelical friends of mine towards the Roman Catholic, Anglican and Eastern Orthodox churches who call their clergy, priests. Is it correct or not to speak of a pastor as a priest. Are these other churches biblical or not in calling preachers and pastors, priests? We’ll get there in a moment.

In the church, we use the phrase, “the priesthood of all believers.” Some call it “every member ministry.” Ministry is not limited to pastors and Bible teachers. By this we mean that “every true Christian is a priest in the household of God” and is thus able to minister in the gifts that he or she has received from God.

John Calvin wrote this: “It is a singular honor, that God should not only consecrate us as a temple to himself, in which he dwells and is worshipped, but that he should also make us priests” (Calvin n.d.).

Every person who is truly a Christian believer is a member of this “holy priesthood.” Thus, it is wrong to say that only the clergy of certain denominations are priests. All true Christians are priests and members of “a holy priesthood.”

Why holy? All priests are “dedicated to God and separated from the world” (Kistemaker 1987, p. 87).

What is this “spiritual house” of the holy priesthood? Again it’s a metaphor where Peter speaks not of physical stones “but the individual members form the household of God (Eph. 2:19-22; I Tim. 3:15; Heb. 3:6; 10:21). This metaphor conveys the idea of a community of believers who as a holy priesthood present living sacrifices” (Kistemaker 1987, p. 86).

What is the ministry of this holy priesthood? See v. 5.

3. To offer spiritual sacrifices

Acceptable to God
Through Jesus Christ

What does that mean? Think of the OT priest of Israel. The NT believer (the holy priesthood)

has no need to offer sacrifices to remove sin and guilt, for ‘Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people’ (Heb. 9:28). A member of the priesthood of all believers, then, offers sacrifices of gratitude to God for the redemptive work of Christ. That is, he [or she] presents to God “a sacrifice of praise—the fruit of lips that confess his name” (Heb. 13:15) [Kistemaker 1987, p. 87].

What else does a priest do? Live a life of holiness that reflects what Paul said to the Romans, to offer their bodies as a living sacrifice, offering thankful service to God (Rom. 12:1). Such sacrifices to God are only possible through Christ because we need to be righteous in Christ because all of our own good works as like filthy rags (Isa. 64:6).

4. Let’s apply this to us!

Please pause with me a moment: What spiritual sacrifices did you make last week? I am not talking about refusing to go to the pub, the pokies, drinking alcohol or visiting the movies. That’s the farthest thing from my mind.

What thankful service have you given to God? In praise of Him? In ministry to somebody in need?
How have you denied yourself this last week? What have you denied so that you can worship and minister to the Lord?
Where have you been able to minister in Jesus’ Name last week?

There is only one kind of Christian who will stand against the opposition and persecution of a secular society. They are the “living stones” who are built on the foundation of The Living Stone, Jesus Christ Himself.

Do you love Him? Are you embarrassed to own Him in public? Will He know you when you meet Him at death or the Rapture as one who is a “living stone” who offered Him spiritual sacrifices throughout your Christian lives? Will these “living stones” in this church gathering be known for how they offer “spiritual sacrifices”?

Firstly, this passage teaches that if you are to grow up in your faith, you are to be like living stones being built into a spiritual house (v. 5)

Secondly,

C. You will grow up in your faith if you stand firmly on what the Scriptures teach (vv. 6-7)

Peter, as an inspired writer of Scripture, could have written this Scripture, based on the fundamental authority that God told him through a divine revelation, and Peter wrote Scripture that was “breathed out” by God, according to 2 Tim. 3:15-16.

But that’s not what Peter did. God directed him to tell us exactly why Peter gave us these instructions. In vv. 6-8, Peter lays out the scriptural foundation for what he has just given us.

Note the words: “For in Scripture it says . . .” (NIV). “It is contained in the scripture” (KJV). Peter quotes from Isa. 28:16:

For in Scripture it says:
“See, I lay a stone in Zion,
a chosen and precious cornerstone,
and the one who trusts in him
will never be put to shame.”

It should go without saying that when we want accurate information about life and salvation we should go to the Scriptures. Many don’t. They think there is more value in secular psychology.

There’s a definite trend against knowing and living according to the Scripture in the liberal church (we’d expect that). But I’m deeply concerned about the entertainment level in some flourishing evangelical churches that is drawing people and preachers away from preaching the Word.

It’s so important what Peter did. To lay the foundation for Christian growth he went to the Scripture. For him, it was the OT and he would not have been able the carry a nicely bound KJV or NIV under his arms. Imagine what it would have been like to have to read and carry papyrus (a dried mat made from a reed) and velum, made from animal skins!

When Peter turned to the Scriptures for an example from Isaiah 40:6-8, he found a figure to emphasise that “Christ is precious [there’s that word again] and tested cornerstone” (Clowney 1988, p. 84). Edmund Clowney explains:

In the building technique from which the figure is drawn, the cornerstone of the foundation would be the first stone to be put in place. Since both the angle of the walls and the level of the stone courses would be extended from it, the cornerstone must be square and true. Large and precious stones were cut for the foundation of Solomon’s temple (Clowney 1988, p. 84)

In the OT Scripture, it states that God

1. Lay a stone in Zion (2:6 here)

We have learned that the “stone” is Jesus Christ, so Isaiah 28:16 was a Messianic prophecy, predicting the coming of Jesus. This stone, Jesus, was laid in Zion. What does that mean? What is Zion?

Since the day of Christ, Zion (or Sion in KJV) could represent:

“the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem” as in Heb. 12:22;
It can refer to the people of Israel in quotations from the OT (Rom. 9:33; I Peter 2:6);
The physical city of Jerusalem (Matt. 21:5; John 12:15); or
The literal mountain on which Christ and his followers will stand when Christ returns (Rev. 14:1) and Christ will go forth from this mountain to rule forever (Rom. 11:26; cf. Ps. 132:13-14).

Christ was born in the Jewish race, so Zion in I Peter 2:6 probably refers to the people of Israel. Christ will be a stone amongst this people. What kind of stone? V. 6 says in the NIV that he will be a

2. Cornerstone

Chosen

Precious

Jesus, the foundation cornerstone, from whom we gain the direction for life, impacts believers differently from unbelievers.

3. For believers who continue to trust in Christ

Note 2 things for them in vv. 6-7:

Firstly, they will never ever be put to shame. Do you mean to say that there could be the possibility of shame when people face Jesus one day? There most certainly will be for unbelievers who will be shamed, but for those who continue to trust in him they “will never be put to shame.”

The ultimate shame would be to face God when a person dies and be shamed by being send to hell forever and ever. There is so little preaching on hell these days. Please note what Jesus said when he spoke about separating the sheep from the goats at the end of the age. Matt. 24: 46, “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.” Eternal punishment, hell, for the damned is as long as eternal life for the righteous believers. Eternal! Forever and ever.

Believers who continue to trust Christ alone for salvation will never be put to shame by being sent to hell.

Secondly, to believers, Jesus, the stone is precious.

Please note something very important here at the beginning of v. 7 in the NIV. It’s a simple statement: “Now to you who believe.” The KJV reads, “Unto you therefore which believe.”

Sounds ho hum to us, but in the Greek language it means: “You, you who continue believing” (Kistemaker 1987, p. 89). Or to put it in Aussie colloquial language: “Hey you! Listen I’m talking to you! This is not for those who make a once off decision and then forget about God. This is only for those who continue to live the Christian life until God takes them to glory. Do you get it?”

To those who continue to believe throughout their lives, the stone is precious. How come? Precious means “respect” or “honor.” (Arndt & Gingrich 1957, p. 825). If you don’t respect Jesus, if you don’t honour Him, if you don’t consider Christ’s life, death and resurrection are not precious for the believer, something is wrong with your Christian life.

This is why I cringe inside me whenever Jesus Name is blasphemed or profaned. When people use His name in vain and treat him as a commoner who can be used as abused, something inside of me rears up against such degradation of my Saviour. Why? He is precious to me – because of my relationship with Him and because of what he has done in saving, justifying, propitiating, redeeming, this wretched sinner. Do you love Him? Do you honour and respect this Jesus Christ? Is He precious to you?

If he’s precious to you, you’ll want to tell others about him, proclaim His gospel and defend the cause of biblical truth.

There’s a flip side to what I have just been preaching.

4. For unbelievers who reject Christ, the stone

The Christ becomes a capstone of rejection (v. 7), AND
The stone of stumbling offence

On 8th July, it was the 265th anniversary of the preaching of one
of the most famous sermons of all time.  God used this sermon to
start the New England Great Awakening in the USA.  It was in 1741
at Enfield, CT, and was preached by the colonial American 
theologian Jonathan Edwards.  The sermon was titled: 'Sinners in
the Hands of an Angry God.' In it he preached: "It is nothing but
[God's] mere pleasure that keeps you from being this moment
swallowed up in everlasting destruction. However unconvinced you
may now be of the truth of what you hear, by and by you will be
fully convinced of it" (Edwards 1741).

     Firstly, the Christ becomes a capstone of rejection for
unbelievers.  V. 7 is a quote from Psalm 118:22.  The NIV
translates as "capstone"; the KJV "head of the corner." 
The KJV is the literal translation.  Christ is the chief
cornerstone of the foundation of the building but when
unbelievers reject him, what happens?  See v. 8
     For unbelievers Christ becomes a means of stumbling
and a rock that makes them fall.  This is unusual language
but the message is straightforward:

Peter is Peter Drucker who was a secular, Jewish management guru. This led the Editor of the Northern Landmark Missionary Baptist magazine (August 2006) to comment, “In other words, the purpose of Warren’s visit was to help Jewish Rabbis to learn how to build membership in their religion which rejects Christ as Saviour. Is this an appropriate role for any Christian minister of the Gospel ?” [3] saying “that we either put our faith in Jesus, the foundation stone, or we dash our foot against it” (Kistemaker 1987, p. 90).

Why do they stumble and fall? Simple. They disobey the message. What message? The Gospel! Simon Kistemaker puts it beautifully:

The reason for their stumbling is that they have chosen to disobey
the Word of God.  Their disobedience arises from a heart that is
filled with unbelief. 
     In other words, the sequence which Peter delineates is unbelief,
disobedience, and downfall which eventually lead to ruin. 
Unbelievers, then, meet God in Christ as their enemy because they
have chosen to be a friend of the world (James 4:4) [1987, p. 90].

Please note the concluding phrase of v. 8: "Which is also what they
were destined to do."  Note the sequence Peter gives here in vv. 7-8:

In v. 7, Peter contrasts the differences between believers and unbelievers;

Then, he states that unbelievers reject Christ, the stone;

From a human perspective, this verse stated that unbelievers disobey Christ’s message, but finally . . .

From God's perspective, these unbelievers were destined to treat Christ this way.

5. How can you put this into practice this week?

a. What is your view of the Bible? Is this a largish book that is important to some people in the church, but it’s just another piece of literature? Is it just 1,653 pages to wade through (length of my NIV)? Or do you know, believe and live by what the Scriptures say? Is this your commitment to the Word: “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 1so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:16-17)?

b. Is Jesus Christ the true cornerstone of your life – the foundation stone by which all other constructs are judged? Do you know what this means? When it comes to understand the violence in our world, you go to Jesus Christ for the only diagnosis and solution. What about social evils like abortion and euthanasia? Are you going to the civil libertarians or feminists for your understanding, or do you depend wholly on what God says? What about how we treat one another in marriage? Marriage? Aren’t defacto relationships better? Who are you serving? You will grow in your faith only when you stand firmly on what the Scriptures say. How do you treat the elderly in your family, in our community? What’s God’s view?

c. Continue to proclaim Jesus as the only way to eternal life, remembering all along that there will be many unbelievers who find the living Stone, Jesus, a stumbling stone. Expect rejection of the Gospel in evangelism, but don’t give up witnessing. How long is it since this church ran a deliberate evangelism outreach to this town and community? I’m thinking of something like Christianity Explained [2]; Two Ways to Live [3]; Introducing God [4]; or Evangelism Explosion [5]. Does reaching people for Jesus really matter to this church?

d. What do you plan to do to help people grow in their faith? How will you disciple new Christians? What’s your plan? I see too much of “anything goes” in the church, when it comes to the need for discipleship and how people grow.

e. We face another problem. Too many of us are in a rut and comfortable with our Christianity. Imagine what would happen if the financially and socially disadvantaged started coming to our church. It just might lull us out of our lethargy as we helped them meet their financial, social and living needs. What would happen if a couple of outspoken homosexuals came here? Would we reject them or love them into the kingdom, making sure that they understood the gospel and the need to grow in faith? Are women who have had abortions welcome here? If families come with unruly children, what will you do?

D. Conclusion

So, how are Christians to mature, to grow-up in Jesus?

1. Come to the living stone, Jesus, rejected by people but He’s precious to God. He’s precious because there is no other way of salvation that God has provided. Acts. 4:12, “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.” Why is this? Your sins condemn you to hell and you need a blood sacrifice of eternal worth to God to provide forgiveness for your sins.

Muhammed won’t do it; neither will the Mormon Joseph Smith; nor Charles Taze Russell of Jehovah’s witnesses; nor any other religious leader. Only one person shed his blood for our redemption and was raised again for our justification. He was the one and only Jesus Christ.

2. You will mature when you as a group of believers live as living stones, offering spiritual sacrifice to God. You offer sacrifices of praise and gratitude to God in thankfulness for the once-for-all sacrifice for sins by Jesus.

3. You will mature as believers when you stand firmly on the authoritative, inerrant Word of God which proclaims that Christ is the foundation cornerstone. He is precious to you.

4. For believers, the Christ who is precious to them is a stone of stumbling to damnation for those who refuse to believer the Gospel and are destined to damnation.

Next time, we’ll consider what that means, from 2:9-10:

But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy (NIV).

Notes

[2] Available from: http://www.christianityexplained.com/ [9 July 2006].

[3] Available from: http://www.matthiasmedia.com.au/2wtl/ [9 July 2006].

[4] Available from: http://www.introducinggod.org/ [9 July 2006].

[5] Available from: http://www.eeinternational.org/ [9 July 2006].

References

Arndt, W. F. & Gingrich, F. W. 1957 (transl. & adapt. W. Bauer), A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago (limited ed., Zondervan Publishing House).

Calvin, J. n.d., transl. & ed. J. Owen, Commentaries on the Catholic Epistles, Christian Classics Ethereal Library, Grand Rapids, MI, Available from: http://www.ccel.org/c/calvin/comment3/comm_vol45/htm/iv.iii.htm [cited 8 July 2006].

Clowney, E. P. 1988, The Message of 1 Peter: The Way of the Cross, Inter-Varsity Press, Leicester, England/Downers Grove, Illinois, USA.

Edwards, J. 1741, ‘Sinners in the hands of an angry God’, July 8, Available from: http://www.ccel.org/e/edwards/sermons/sinners.html (Accessed 8 July 2006).

Kistemaker, S. J. 1987, New Testament Commentary: Exposition of the Epistles of Peter and of the Epistle of Jude, Evangelical Press, Welwyn, Hertfordshire.

Rosemond, J. 2001, John’s Weekly Column, December 2, ‘Unearned praise leads to Mediocrity’, Available from: http://www.rosemond.com/ [cited 8 December 2001].

Simon and Garfunkel n.d., “I am a rock,” LyricsFreak “S”, Available from: http://www.lyricsfreak.com/s/simon+and+garfunkel/i+am+a+rock_20124809.html [cited 8 July 2006].

1 Peter 1:10-12, The whole of the Bible points to Christ

Bible

(public domain)

By Spencer D Gear

We who live in the 21st century are at an incredible advantage when it comes to knowing Christ. How come? If an all-knowing God exists who knows everything, he knows the future – all of the future. If this God exists, it is possible for him to make predictive prophecy about the future.

In fact, one of the strongest pieces of evidence that the Bible is inspired by God is its prophecy about the future. The Bible is like no other book. It “offers a multitude of specific predictions – some hundreds of years in advance – that have been literally fulfilled or else point to a definite future time when they will come true” (Geisler 1999, p. 609).

Bible teacher, the late J. Barton Payne listed “1817 predictions in the Bible, 1239 in the Old Testament and 578 in the New” (Geisler 1999, p. 609).

A young converted Jewess, daughter of a New York rabbi, tells this story:

My father taught me to read the Bible in Hebrew when a young child. We began at Genesis. When we came to Isaiah he skipped the fifty-third chapter. I asked him why. He said it was not necessary for Jews to read that chapter. I became more curious. I asked him who it was for, and he said Christians. I asked him what the Christian Bible was doing in our Bible. He became very angry and told me to keep quiet. He said again it was not necessary to read it.

I wondered why God would put unnecessary things in the Bible. I copied the fifty-third chapter on paper and carried it in my stocking for two years until I came to America—the free country. I looked at it at night and every chance I could without being seen. I took better care of that paper than people do of money.

Through reading this wonderful chapter I was led to accept Christ as my Saviour. I was walking in New York one day and heard a lady reading this chapter. She explained that it referred to Jesus Christ. It satisfied me completely (Sunday School Times, n.d.).

What’s so special about Isaiah 53? Here are verses 4-6 from that chapter:

Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

I want to link a passage like Isa. 53:4-6 to I Peter 1:10-12 because Peter states that this wonderful salvation that we experience today was predicted long ago by Old Testament prophets and was fulfilled in Christ’s death.
What is “this salvation”? We have read about it, using many different terms in the first 9 verses of 1 Peter. Peter speaks of:

God’s elect, chosen (vv. 1-2);
Sprinking by his blood (v. 2);
New birth (v. 3); Living hope (v. 3);
Inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade (v. 4);
Salvation ready to be revealed in the last time (v. 5);
Your faith – of greater worth than gold (v. 7);
You believe in Christ “and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy” (v. 8);
“You are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls” (v. 9).

What does this passage say about the OT prophets and their predictions about “this salvation”?

I. First, the prophets of the OT spoke of the grace to come (v. 10).

This passage doesn’t tell us which prophets spoke about this grace to come. We’ll look at those prophets in a moment. Still in v. 10:

II. Second, these prophets of the OT searched intently.

The NIV translates that they “searched intently and with the greatest care.”

The KJV: ” have enquired and searched diligently.”

The ESV translates: “searched and inquired carefully”

Literally:

“Earnestly sought” (generally);
“Earnestly searched” (specifically) [Lenski 1966, p. 44].

These OT prophets not only spoke to the people of their day, but they spoke of the time when the Messiah would come. In predicting the future, they did not clearly understand exactly what they were predicting. Daniel 8:27 explains: “I, Daniel, was exhausted and lay ill for several days. Then I got up and went about the king’s business. I was appalled by the vision; it was beyond understanding.”
Daniel 12:8: “I heard, but I did not understand. So I asked, ‘My lord, what will the outcome of all this be?’”

Remember what Jesus said to his disciples in Luke 10:23-24: “‘Blessed are the eyes that see what you see. For I tell you that many prophets and kings wanted to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.’”
The prophets of the OT longed to see what we have experienced. The disciples saw it and upon us this mighty prophesied salvation has been outpoured.

III. Third, the prophets of the OT tried to find the time of Christ’s sufferings and glories (v. 11).

The NT used two Greek works for time: chronos and kairos. Chronos refers to chronology – day after day, month after month. Peter was NOT saying that the prophets were wanting to find the exact date of Christ’s first coming 2,000 years ago.

Here Peter refers to kairos time: “What kind of period the Spirit in them was indicating” (Lenski 1966, p. 11). The prophets were pointing to an era, a dispensation. “With the life and especially the suffering and death of Jesus, the old age has passed away and with the . . . present time of true divine righteousness (Rom. 3:26) a new epoch, the fulfillment of the times, has dawned” (Hahn 1978, p. 837). It was this “period of time characterized by some feature . . . a ‘time charged with opportunity’ . . . the salvation of the Messianic age” (Selwyn 1947/1981, p. 135).

There are “29 prophecies from the Old Testament, which speak of the betrayal, trial, death, and burial of our Lord Jesus Christ, [which] were spoken at various times by many different voices during the five centuries from 1000-500 B.C., and yet all of them were literally fulfilled in Jesus in one twenty-four-hour period of time” (McDowell 1972, p. 58).

While the OT prophets are not mentioned by name here in I Peter, we are told that these prophets “predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow” (v. 11). To what prophecies could Peter be referring?

A. Those that predicted Christ’s sufferings:

Let’s look at a few examples of Christ’s sufferings that were prophesied:

1. Psalm 41:9, “Even my close friend, whom I trusted,he who shared my bread, has lifted up his heel against me” (Ps. 41:9). This was fulfilled in Jesus’ betrayal by Judas (Matt. 26:49-50);

2. Isa. 53:7, ” He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth. He did not open his mouth before his accusers” (fulfilled in Matt. 27:12-19);

3. Isa 53:5, ” But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.” Zech. 13:6 states, “If someone asks him, ‘What are these wounds on your body?’ he will answer, ‘The wounds I was given at the house of my friends.’” Fulfilled in Matt. 27:26.

4. Isa. 50:6, ” I offered my back to those who beat me, my cheeks to those who pulled out my beard; I did not hide my face from mocking and spitting.” (also in Micah 5:1; fulfilled in Matt. 26:67)

5. Ps. 22:7, ” All who see me mock me; they hurl insults, shaking their heads” (filfilled in Matt. 27:39-43).

What about the prophecies that indicated the glories of Christ?

B. Those that predicted Christ’s “glories.”

What could that be referring to? Please note that this is not the singular, “glory,” but the plural “glories” of Christ. On the Road to Emmaus, after Christ’s resurrection, Luke 24:26 records this: “Did not the Christ have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?”

What are these glories that were prophesied? These are referring to the glory of Christ’s resurrection, the glory of the ascension, the glory of Christ’s second coming (Kistemaker 1987, p. 42).

Where do we have OT examples of

1. The Resurrection of Christ

Ps. 16:10, “because you will not abandon me to the grave, nor will you let your Holy One see decay” (Paul discusses the fulfillment of this verse in Christ’s resurrection in Acts 2:27).
Another prediction about Christ’s resurrected glory is in Ps. 30:3: ” O LORD , you brought me up from the grave; you spared me from going down into the pit.”

Where do we have OT predictions of

2. The Ascension of Christ

Ps. 110:1 states, ” The LORD says to my Lord: ‘Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.’” This is acknowledged as a fulfillment of Christ’s ascension in Acts 2:34.

What about the glory of Christ’s Second Coming? Was that predicted by the OT prophets?

3. Christ’s Second Coming

Yes it was. Take a look at verses such as these:

Daniel 7:13-14: “In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all peoples, nations and men of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.”

Zechariah 14:4-5, 9: “On that day his feet will stand on the Mount of Olives, east of Jerusalem, and the Mount of Olives will be split in two from east to west, forming a great valley, with half of the mountain moving north and half moving south. . . Then the LORD my God will come, and all the holy ones with him. . . The LORD will be king over the whole earth. On that day there will be one LORD , and his name the only name.”

This is referring to Christ’s Second Coming. Peter goes on to tell us that

IV. Fourth, the prophets of the OT discovered this: They were not serving themselves but us (v. 12)

Isn’t this amazing? It ties the OT and NT together. These OT prophets did not fully understand the circumstances and the era to which they were referring, but this they knew: “We are not serving ourselves.” They knew they were writing for another generation. They were servants of us.
One of the things that has really struck me this week is the profound unity of the Bible. Both OT and NT are tied together by a wonderful prophetic bond. It has also provoked me to do more preaching on the OT. In my preaching ministry I have concentrated on preaching the NT. But OT and NT are a unity. If I don’t preach adequately from the OT, two-thirds of the Bible is neglected.

The Jesus who came to die on the cross, rise again, and ascend into heaven, is coming again to reign in righteousness over the whole earth. It is an everlasting kingdom and King Jesus will be King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

I also want us to note that . . .

V. Fifth, these things have now been preached in the gospel.

“through the Holy Spirit sent from heaven” (v. 12). See the sacred thread!

The OT prophets spoke

to their own generations,
but they prophesied about a future era when
the Messiah would come to earth,
die a criminal’s death for our sin,
rise again,
ascend into heaven, and then
with the promise he is coming again.

There’s one other fascinating point in these 3 verses:

VI. Sixth, of these things, even the angels are ignorant (v. 12)

“Even angels long to look into these things.” What could this possibly mean?

Let’s state something very clearly. The Bible is clear about the existence of good angels. What’s an angel look like? As a general rule, you won’t be able to see them. Bible teacher, Wayne Grudem, gives this basic definition that I think is consistent with what the Bible says: an angel is “a created spiritual being with moral judgment and high intelligence but without a physical body” (Grudem 1999, p. 479).

Briefly, what’s the place of angels in the purposes of God? [2] The ministry of angels falls into some well defined areas.

A. They ministered to Christ.

During the lifetime of Jesus, there was extra angelic activity. For example, they

1. Predicted Christ’s birth (Luke 1:26-33);

2. They announced His birth (Luke 2:13);

3. They protected him as a baby. When the Magi had left, Matt. 1:13 tells us that “an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream” telling Joseph, Mary & Jesus to flee to Egypt;

4. Angels strengthened Jesus after his temptation (Matt. 4:11);

5. When Jesus was arrested just prior to the crucifixion, he stated that his heavenly father could “at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels” (Matt. 26:53), but he did not use them;

6. They strengthened him in Gethsemane (Lk. 22:43), and

7. They rolled away the stone from the tomb and announced His resurrection (Matt. 28:2, 6).

B. What’s the ministry of angels to believers?

1. Angels serve us, according to Heb. 1:14, “Are not all angels ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation?” They are engaged “in their ordinary activities of guarding and protecting us (Ps. 34:7; 91:11; Heb. 1:14)” (Grudem 1994, p. 397). Ps. 34:7 states: “The angel of the LORD encamps around those who fear him, and he delivers them.” It’s an unseen, but profound, ministry of angels to those of us who are believers. You won’t see them doing this ministry, but we can be assured that angels are ministering to us who believe.

Who knows how many times you have been protected from dangers and even death by God’s angels who surround you!

2. Angels are involved in answering prayer (Acts 12:7). This was Peter’s miraculous escape from prison: “Suddenly an angel of the Lord appeared and a light shone in the cell. He struck Peter on the side and woke him up. ‘Quick, get up!’ he said, and the chains fell off Peter’s wrists.”

3. Angels give encouragement in times of danger. When Paul was threatened from a severe storm at sea on his way to Rome, Acts 27:23-24 records: “Last night an angel of the God whose I am and whom I serve stood beside me and said, ‘Do not be afraid, Paul. You must stand trial before Caesar; and God has graciously given you the lives of all who sail with you.’”

4. Angels care for believers at death. Remember the rich man and Lazarus in Luke 16:22, “The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham’s side.” See also Jude 9.

C. Angels have a ministry to the nations of the world.

In Revelation, chs 8-10, angels are involved in judging the nations.

D. There’s a ministry of angels to unbelievers.

1. In Acts 12:23 angels are involved in judgment. It states: “Immediately, because Herod did not give praise to God, an angel of the Lord struck him down, and he was eaten by worms and died.”

2. In Matt. 13:39-41, in the parable of the weeds (wheat & tares), it states: “and the enemy who sows them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age, and the harvesters are angels. As the weeds are pulled up and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil.”

So, what does it mean here in 1 Peter 1:12, “even angels long to look into these things”? The verb, “long to look” means “to stoop over to look. It implies willingness to exert or inconvenience oneself to obtain a better perspective” (Blum 1981, p. 222).
Angels are continuously giving this salvation a close examination.
Let’s apply this to ourselves today.

VII. Applications

All right, God predicted the life, death, burial, resurrection and ascension of Jesus, hundreds of years before they happened. So what?

1. First, J. Barton Payne, in his Encyclopedia of Biblical Prophecy

stated that “it has been calculated that 27 percent of the entire Bible contains predictive prophecy. This is true of no other book in the world. And it is a sure sign of its divine origin” (cited in Geisler 1999, p. 617). God’s prophecies about Jesus and everything else demonstrates his omniscience (his knowledge).

“The Old Testament written over a 1,500 year period contains several hundred references to the coming Messiah. All of these were fulfilled in Christ and they establish a solid confirmation of His credentials as Messiah” (McDowell 1972, p. 147).

Peter Stoner considered the fulfillment of “48 prophecies” concerning Christ and looked at the probability of those being fulfilled in ONE person. He concluded: “We find the chance that any one man fulfilled all 48 prophecies to be 1 in 10¹⁵⁷“. That’s a chance of 1 in 1 followed by 157 zeros.

This shows that God is a God of truth – absolutely. You can depend on his accuracy. Use this fact when you are witnessing to others.

2. Second, if God knows what will happen hundreds, even thousands, of years before it happens, what does that mean about what God knows about you – to the minutest detail?

After 27 years of youth and family counselling, this I know: I am staggered at the length children and their parents will go to keep facts from others – to lie about the details in their lives.

But there is absolutely nothing you can hide from God. When you face him one day as Saviour or Judge, you will get a 100% accurate assessment of who you are and what you have done with Jesus and with your life.
I urge you to be open and honest with your children, parents and spouses. God hates lies. Live in the light of eternity.

You can hide nothing from God. What are you trying to hide from him today? Where are you in your relationship with him?

3. Third, Peter says that the prophets, gospel preachers, and the angels, are all concerned about “this salvation.” Are you?

Michael Green, British evangelist, states that

whenever Christianity has been at its most healthy, evangelism has stemmed from the local church, and has had a noticeable impact on the surrounding area. I do not believe that the re-Christianisation of the West can take place without the renewal of local churches in this whole area of evangelism. We need a thoughtful, sustained, relevant presentation of the Christian faith, in word and in action, embodied in a warm, prayerful, lively local church which has a real concern for its community at all levels (Green 1990, p. ix).

For evangelism to be real, it needs to come from this local church. Evangelism is proclaiming Christ AND your presence in this community as a born-again community.

That great Baptist preacher and evangelist of the 19th-century, C. H. Spurgeon, maintained that evangelism “is one beggar telling another beggar where to get bread” (in Green 1990, p. 8). I like that definition because it places the emphases on the needs of the people living in this region (they are deprived spiritual beggars) and it places an emphasis on the generosity of you and me, the givers. We have spiritual bread to give and this community desperately needs it.

What will this church do, from this local church, to change the spiritual and moral climate of the Kolan Shire? You know that this church will die if you don’t evangelise. But even worse is that this community will be in spiritual darkness, the moral climate will decline, crime and violence will only worsen – if you don’t evangelise.

Have you experienced the good news? How dare you keep it to yourselves?

VIII. Conclusion

I was reading my local newspaper, Bundaberg NewsMail, on Feb. 5, 2005, in which there was an article about a “psychics true words” that swayed a “major sceptic” of a journalist (that’s how he described his views) into being a psychic believer of sorts.

What did the psychic do? She told him things about his family life, his height, his wife’s height, and the colour of his wife’s hair. She even told him the number of children (male and female), and even told him which child was the “really stubborn one.”

But why did this journalist go to interview the psychic? She “has helped search for missing Sunshine Coast boy, Daniel Morcombe.” That’s a tragic situation for Daniel’s family. I pray that Daniel will be found or his parents know what happened to him.

Have a guess what? This psychic might have been able to tell the journalist cute things about his family, BUT she was an utter failure when she came to finding the whereabouts of Daniel Morcombe. When push came to shove, her psychic abilities did not locate Daniel. Daniel is still missing.

That’s not how it is with God Almighty. He predicted the life, death, burial, resurrection and ascension of Christ, hundreds of years before they happened. Have a guess what? They all came true, right down to the minutest detail.

God has also predicted Christ’s second coming and it will happen just as he has stated – right down to the details he has prophesied. God keeps his promises – accurately. He is not like a hit and miss psychic. He is the living God who tells the truth, all the time, and in prophecy.

That’s why leading Bible teacher and theologian, Norman Geisler, has stated that “one of the strongest evidences that the Bible is inspired by God . . . is its predictive prophecy” (Geisler 1999, p. 609). God predicts with 100% accuracy.

Works consulted

Blum, E. A. 1981, ’1,2 Peter’, in F. E. Gaebelein (gen. ed.), The Expositor’s Bible Commentary(vol. 12), Zondervan Publishing House, Grand Rapids, MI.

Geisler, N. L. 1999, ‘Prophecy, as Proof of the Bible’, in N. L. Geisler, Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics, Baker Books, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Green, M. 1990, Evangelism through the Local Church, Hodder & Stoughton, London.

Grudem, W. 1994, Systematic Theology, Inter-Varsity Press, Leicester, England/Zondervan Publishing House, Grand Rapids, MI.

Grudem, W. 1999 (ed. J Purswell), Bible Doctrine, Inter-Varsity Press, Leicester, England.

Hahn, H. C. 1978, ‘Time’, in C. Brown (ed.), The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology (vol. 3), Zondervan Publishing House, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Kistemaker, S. J. 1987, New Testament Commentary: Exposition of the Epistles of Peter and of the Epistle of Jude, Evangelical Press, Welwyn, Hertfordshire.

Lenski, R. C. H. 1966, The Interpretation of The Epistles of St. Peter, St. John, and St. Jude (Commentary on the New Testament), Hendrickson Publishers, Peabody, MASS.

McDowell, J. 1972, Evidence That Demands a Verdict, Campus Crusade for Christ Inc., Arrowhead Springs, San Bernardino, CA.

Ryrie, C. C. 1972, A Survey of Bible Doctrine, Moody Press, Chicago.

Selwyn, E. G. 1947, 1981, The First Epistle of St. Peter (Thornapple Commentaries), Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Sunday School Times (date unknown), available from “Illustrations,” at: http://elbourne.org/sermons/index.mv?illustration+4252 [10 March 2005].

Notes:

2. The following is based on Ryrie 1972, p. 90f.

I Peter 1:8-9, You live by a law that baffles the world

(clker.com)

By Spencer D Gear

I was at a church recently where a man about my age (in his 60s) said to me: “I find it very difficult to believe in Someone I can’t see.” He was speaking of God.

In October 1997, I drove past Bundaberg Toyota (Qld., Australia) and on the front window was this advertising slogan: “New Camry is here: seeing is believing.” [2] This was the theme of that Toyota advertising campaign for the Camry: “Seeing is believing.”

If you go to the intersection of Maryborough and Bourbong Streets, Bundaberg, you’ll see a sign on the front of a real estate agent’s business: “Seeing is believing.”

Do you have to see to believe? Or do you need to believe to see?

When I turn to the Bible, I read

I Peter 1:8-9

Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, 9for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls (NIV).

These two verses are dynamic in teaching us that all true Christians MUST LIVE BY A LAW THAT BAFFLES THE WORLD. The world says: seeing is believing. God says: “And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who diligently seek him” (Heb. 11:6).

So is seeing believing? It maybe so for the new Camry or when buying real estate, but in God’s economy, believing is seeing.

Let me tell you where I am going in this sermon. I Peter 1:8-9 teaches us that:

1. Believing what you do not see is something you do all the time. We do it in many practical things every day.

2. This is a very reasonable and necessary position. If you had to see before you believed many things in life, you’d be up the creek.

3. Believing is seeing is the law of faith. You must live by it to be a Christian.

4. These verses and others in the N.T. teach us that even though you can’t see Jesus physically, it’s better that you can’t see him. You have proof of his existence:

a. From the Bible; and

b. The Holy Spirit lives in you and it’s His job to reveal Jesus to you.

5. You have faith in Jesus;

6. You love Him;

7. And you have a joy that you can’t express in words, because of

8. The salvation you are presently receiving–not just the salvation you will receive when you meet Jesus at death or at his second coming. You are receiving that salvation NOW.

Let’s get involved with this magnificent text.

Do you believe in anything you cannot see? Please tell me some of the things you believe in that you can’t see.

! Can you see the wind? You can see what it does. It blows the trees. I was sitting in a fishing boat at the mouth of Oyster Creek when dust settled down on the river. A car travelling along a nearby road made the dust and the wind blew it, but I could not see the wind. I only saw the dust. You believe in something you cannot see—the wind.

! Every boy and girl, Mum and Dad, that I see in this building today is alive. How do I know that you are alive? You are breathing, moving, talking.

What makes you alive? Your heart? Well, that is the physical thing that beats to keep you alive, but what kick started your heart to get it going? You have a principle of life within you that keeps you alive and you can’t see it. The Bible calls it your soul or your spirit. You can’t see it.

! What about your conscience that tells you that you have done wrong. Can you see it? But it’s real. You feel guilty.

! Let’s think about God. Can you see Him? No! Because He is Spirit. How

do you know there is an almighty God? The evidence is all around us.

Look at the magnificent gum tree! What a beautiful design! I find it impossible to believe in a gum tree without knowing that God, the great designer, designed it that way.

How can you take one passionfruit seed, plant it in the dirty ground with some mucky cow manure, give it some water and a plant grows that bears fruit. Each passionfruit has dozens of seeds inside it that are so sweet to eat. And when I eat all of those seeds, not one of those seeds grows inside me. God, the great designer, made it that way.

Take a brand-new baby. Just think of how babies are made. What an incredible way God has planned for it to take a sperm to unite with an ovum.

Have you stopped to think of how all the cells of your body link with the brain, the central nervous system, the stomach, the bowels, urinary tract, heart and lungs, what it takes for an eye to see, a tongue to talk, feet to walk on, and arms to do lots of things. No wonder the Psalmist in Psalm 139:13-14 could say of God: “for you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.”

Some birds are able to navigate by the stars. Even if they are hatched and raised in a building without windows; if they are shown an artificial sky, they immediately are able to orient themselves to the proper place and migrate to it.

The archer fish is able to fire drops of water with amazing force and accuracy, knocking insects out of the air.

The bombardier beetle produces two different chemicals. When these chemicals are released and combined, they explode in the face of an enemy. Yet the explosion never happens too early and never harms the beetle itself. No wonder Psalm 62:11 says, “You, O Lord, are strong” (in Macarthur Jr. 1991, p. 79).

But what about this monstrous world that we live in?

I can see what God does all around us. Yet I cannot see God. But I know what He is like. He is mighty powerful. In fact, the Book of Romans 1:20 reads:

For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities–his eternal power and divine nature–have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that [people] are without excuse.

Using the old measurements (non-metric),

The earth is 25,000 miles in circumference, weighs 6 septillion [1 followed by 24 zeros], 588 sextillion [1 followed by 21 zeros] tons, and hangs unsupported in space. It spins at 1,000 miles per hour with absolute precision and careens through space around the sun at the speed of 1,000 miles a minute in an orbit 580 million miles long. . .

To travel at the speed of light (ca. 186,281 miles per second) across the Milky Way, the galaxy in which our solar system is located, would take 125,000 years. And our galaxy is but one of millions” (MacArthur 1991, pp. 80-81).

So, do you have to see to believe? Or do you need to have faith (believe) to see.

If you call yourself a Christian,

A. YOU LIVE BY A LAW THAT BAFFLES THIS WORLD

This is the law of faith. God says: believing is seeing.

1. “Though you have not seen him” (v. 8)

This is Peter speaking. The one who was a disciple of Jesus. ! He walked and talked with him.
Jesus took Peter, James and John to the mountain of Transfiguration where Jesus’ face shone like the sun, his clothes became white as light. Moses and Elijah appeared before them, speaking with Jesus. And then there was the voice of God from the cloud saying, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!” (Matt. 17:5).

Yet, when Jesus was arrested before His crucifixion, Peter didn’t want to have anything to do with Jesus. Peter denied he knew Jesus three times (Matt. 26:69f).

He was there for Jesus’ death and resurrection.

After the resurrection, Jesus asked Simon Peter, “Do you truly love me?” (John 21:15f). He asked him three times.

Jesus gave Peter and “the apostles… many convincing proofs that he was alive” (Acts 1:3).

Then they (Peter included) saw Jesus taken up into heaven before their eyes (Acts 1:2).

It is this Peter who says to the early Christians scattered throughout the world and experiencing terrible persecution and trials:

“Though you have not seen him” (in the past)–v. 8;

“Even though you do not see him now”–v.9.

What do you do?

“You love him” (v. 8). Agape is the kind of love that comes from your heart because of “the preciousness of the person loved” (Wuest 1942, p. 28); and
“You believe in him” (v.9); and
You “are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy” (v. 8). The old KJV translation said it beautifully: “Ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory.”

This is crazy thinking by the world’s standard. You can’t see Jesus, but you have

“a deep unconditional agape love for him;
you have faith in him;
and you don’t have ha-ha happiness, but a joy in the Lord that is impossible to express.

Peter must have had in mind what Jesus said in John 20:29: “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

How can this possibly make sense?

2. “You love him” (v.8) even though you can’t see him.

I love my wife deeply and celebrated 38 years of marriage in 2006. But I can see her and put my arms around her. You may love your children, your husband or wife, your parents and other people, but you can see them.

How is it possible to love somebody you can’t see?

a. First, He has written us a BIG love letter, called the Bible, that tells us what he is like. In fact, Jesus said, “Anyone who has seen me, has seen the Father” (John 14:9).

I loved my wife more and more, the more she wrote me love letters. This showed me her deep love for me.

If you want to know what God the Father is like, take a look at Jesus as he reveals himself in the Bible.

In this BIG love letter to us, God tells us that Jesus had compassion on people and fed them, healed them, cast out demons that were tormenting them;
Do you know the reputation of Jesus?

“The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, `Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and `sinners’” (Matt. 11:19). Jesus associated with the scum of the earth–the worst possible sinners–and they were changed by him.

Jesus put it this way, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance” (Luke 5:31).

Of course, Jesus cared for the rich and the religious.

He told Nicodemus, a Pharisee and a member of the Jewish ruling council, that he needed to be born again (John 3).

In this BIG love letter, Jesus tells us how to live forever. Atheist philosopher, Bertrand Russell, said, “When you die you rot.” Not so, according to the big love letter. Death is not the end.

Where will you be one minute after you die? My last birthday gift from my mother—three weeks before she died in 1997—was this book, One Minute After You Die: A Preview of Your Final Destination (Lutzer 1997).

When you die physically, you continue to live–either in heaven or hell. If it is to be heaven, this is what Jesus said in the BIG love letter: “Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent” (John 17:3).

I have read about a cemetery in Kirbyville, East Texas, USA, that has an old tombstone with this message on it:

Pause, stranger, when you pass me by
As you are now, so once was I
As I am now, so you will be
So prepare for death and follow me (Seniors-Cite.com, 1996-1997).

An unknown person who went past that tomb, read the words and underneath scratched this reply:

To follow you, I’m not content
Until I know which way you went (Lutzer 1997, p. 11, but Lutzer cited it in Indiana).

In this BIG love letter, Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die” (John 11:25).

Erwin Lutzer, the author of One Minute After You Die, puts it this way, and in line with what Jesus said: “One minute after you slip behind the parted curtain, you will either be enjoying a personal welcome from Christ or catching your first glimpse of gloom as you have never known it. Either way, your future will be irrevocably fixed and eternally unchangeable” (Lutzer 1997, p. 9).

Do you realise that the people you work with, joke around with, marry, reject, are not ordinary people. They are people who will live forever and they are what C.S. Lewis described as “immortal horrors or everlasting splendors” (cited in Lutzer 1997, p. 9). [3]

I picked up the Bundaberg News-Mail on Friday, 15 May 1998, and read the death notices. I learned that my Mum’s first cousin, Harold Lobegeier, had died. Harold was secretary of Bundaberg Baptist Church when I attended there many years ago as a teenager. I know from Harold’s relationship with Jesus and God’s love letter to us that Harold has gone to where my mother is–in heaven. It’s guaranteed because Harold trusted Christ as His Lord and Saviour many years ago and served him faithfully.

How is this possible? In this BIG love letter, we are told why Jesus was put to death by that excruciating form of capital punishment–crucifixion.

In 1 Peter 2:24, “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness.” You deserve to die for your own sin (“the wages of sin is death”), but Jesus took your place and died for your. He was your substitute for sin.

You ask me why I love Jesus, whom I have never seen physically?

First, He has written us a BIG love letter, called the Bible, that tells us what he is like.

There’s a second reason you can love somebody you can’t see.

b. There is not one Jesus physically on the earth, but Jesus has sent His representative to live in you personally and among the people of God, to make Jesus known to you. Christ lives in every person who believes in Jesus, by the Holy Spirit, and lives in every group of Christians (the church) by His Spirit.

It would be impossible for all people in all of history to have seen the physical Jesus while he was on earth. So this is what Jesus has done for us and it’s far better than his being on earth physically.

John 14:15-16:

“If you love me [Jesus is speaking to the group of disciples], you will obey what I command. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever” (NIV).

[This is another of the same kind as Jesus and the Father, i.e. The Holy Spirit/Counselor is God. The word for Counselor–parakletos–is one called alongside to help, but in the sense of a legal friend, an Advocate, a solicitor for the defence. Comforter or Counselor is not a really good word to describe the parakletos. The NRSV’s use of “Advocate” is closer to the real meaning. He’s a legal friend who is] (Morris 1971, pp. 649, 662), John 14 says:

the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you” (vv. 15-18 NIV) [the “you” right through these verses is plural. He’s speaking to the disciples and to us, the church].

This was Jesus speaking before he was crucified. Jesus is telling his disciples that when He leaves this earth, He is not going to leave us as orphans without a father and mother. The Holy Spirit will come to you and will be live in you.

Now, Jesus again, from the BIG love letter, in John 15:26, “When the Counselor comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father, he will testify about me.”

Let’s get this very clear so that even boys and girls can understand. It is absolutely unnecessary for the physical Jesus to be on earth. Why?

1. Jesus is sending the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, from the Father and where will this legal friend live? Inside every Christian and among the community of believers.

2. When did this Holy Spirit Lawyer become available to Christians? Jesus said, “I will not leave you as orphans.” So the Holy Spirit came when Jesus went away physically from this earth.

3. What kind of Spirit is he? These verses say He is the Spirit of Truth. The Holy Spirit who lives in you personally and among the church, will never ever tell you a lie or misrepresent you. He can’t. He must always tell the truth. That’s his nature.

4. The Holy Spirit solicitor lives in you. What do these verses say about what his job is. Jesus said in John 15:26: “He will testify about me.” So the Spirit’s job, when he lives in you, is to tell you about and represent Jesus.

John 16:7-11:

“Jesus says, “But I tell you the truth: It is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Counselor will not come to you. When he comes, he will convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment: in regard to sin, because men do not believe in me; in regard to righteousness, because I am going to the Father, where you can see me no longer; and in regard to judgment, because the prince of this world now stands condemned.”

What’s the Holy Spirit’s job in you as believers? John’s gospel (esp. chapters 14-16) tell us:

(He is with Christians continually and is in them (14:16f);

(John 14:26 says He is our teacher and reminds us of all that Jesus has said.

(He testifies about Christ (15:26);

(What’s his work in unbelievers (the world)? To convict of sin, righteousness and judgment (16:8).

(The Spirit can only come when Jesus goes away (16:7). This obviously means that the work of the Spirit in the believer is totally related to the saving work of Christ on the cross (based on Morris 1971, p. 663)

Will you note something with me that’s very special. In John’s Gospel, the functions assigned to the Spirit are given to Jesus.

Read John 14:20; 15:4-5 (Jesus is in the disciples).
John 7:14; 13:13 (Jesus is the teacher).
John 8:14 (Jesus testifies on his own behalf).

But we have already noted that this is the ministry of the Holy Spirit. No wonder John 14:16 calls the Holy Spirit Counsellor another Counsellor (another of the same kind). This is all tied up in the mystery of the Trinity. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit–one God, but three Persons–and sometimes with overlapping function.

This has all been to help us understand our text in 1 Peter 1:8-9.

! We haven’t seen Jesus.

! We don’t need to because we know Jesus through the massive love letter that He has written to us–the Bible.

! We know Him through the Holy Spirit who lives inside every believer, and among the gathering of believers.

! And as a result, we love Jesus with an unconditional agape love.

Not only do you love him, but v. 9 says:

3. “You believe in him.”

You have faith in him. Not a leap of faith into the dark, but faith in the one who has revealed himself carefully and accurately in the Bible and through the Holy Spirit who lives in you.

The Bible is under a lot of attack today. This is not a book of fables that credulous Christians believe like a magicians trick.

I want to give just one example of the accuracy of the Bible. You can absolutely depend on the authenticity and credibility of this book.

Sir William Ramsay was regarded as one of the greatest archaeologists of all time. He was so influenced by the theological liberals [of the German historical and critical school] that he did not believe the Book of Acts was written in the first century. Instead, he originally claimed, it was written in the mid-second century after Christ. So, the Book of Acts was not a trustworthy document of the facts of A.D. 50. How could it be when it was written by somebody 100 years later by somebody who did not live at the time of the incidents described in the Book of Acts?

In his archaeological research on the history of Asia Minor (Turkey), Ramsay paid little attention to the N.T. However, being an honest archaeologist, his investigation “eventually compelled him to consider the writings of Luke [the human writer of Luke’s gospel and the Book of Acts].” What did he find? This is what Ramsay (1915, p. 222) concluded:

The meticulous accuracy of the historical details, and gradually his attitude towards the Book of Acts began to change. He was forced to conclude that `Luke is a historian of the first rank… This author should be placed along with the very greatest of historians’ (cited in McDowell 1977, p. 43).

Because of the accuracy of the most minute detail, Ramsay finally conceded that Acts could “not be a second-century document but was rather a mid-first-century account” (cited in McDowell 1977, p. 43).

Take this Bible in one hand and look at the world around you and you have a perfect picture of what’s going on in this world. But it’s historically accurate because the God who gave it to us is the God of truth. Not just truthfulness, but the God whose truth matches reality.

I work in a white hot world where I am trying to help parents whose youth are raging out of control, with hatred that seethes. I’m working with youth whose parents couldn’t give a hoot about them, abuse them, marriages bust apart and people are emotionally splattered in the process.

Sexual abuse, drug abuse, youth suicide, poor parenting skills, youth rebellion. If I didn’t have God’s BIG love letter to us, I would be blaming poor families, selfish and destructive youth. I’d go looking for some medical problem, a dysfunctional family or bad background that makes these people victims. VICTIMS! VICTIMS!

But when I turn to the BIG love letter, I read in Matt. 15:18-19,

“But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and these make a man `unclean.’ For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what make a man unclean” (Matt. 15:18-19).

Christian: You are living by a law that baffles the world. Seeing is not believing, but believing God is seeing what is happening in your life and telling you what will happen to this world. Saddam Hussein will not end history. Neither will the new President of Indonesia, or the Indian bomb, or Bill Clinton, or John Howard.

This world is not going around in cycles of capitalism, socialism, mystical New Age karma and reincarnation. This world is heading towards God’s grand conclusion with the second coming of Jesus Christ, new heavens and a new earth. How do we know? Believing God is seeing.

What does all this do for the believer?

4. You “are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy” (v.9).

You don’t just have some joy. You are filled with it and it boils over so that you find it impossible to express.

This beats the best psychiatric institute in Australia. No matter what trials you go through (and you could be there right now), the Holy Spirit will never leave you or forsake you. Even if your husband or wife leaves you (and that hurts badly); even if your children rebel and cause you heart-break; even if nuclear bombs explode in your back yard–you can have a joy that overflows in your life to the point where you will not be able to express it.

This is real Christianity. Heb. 6:5 says we “have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age.”

Why is it happening?

5. V. 9: You are “receiving the goal of your faith.” What is that? “The salvation of your souls.”

Not that you will receive the goal of your faith only when Jesus comes again. You are receiving some of that goal right now. What is it? The salvation of your souls. This is not the soul as opposed to the body,

as though the soul is finally saved; the word [“soul”] designates the person, the real being that is saved, and not merely a part of it. When the soul is saved, the body, too, is saved and will in due time join the soul (Lenski 1966, pp. 43-44).

This is the Bible’s way of saying that your whole personality is being saved.

I John 5:9 says, “We accept man’s testimony, but God’s testimony is greater…”

We trust other human beings even though people can be untrustworthy. We trust human beings every day of our lives.

When we drive across a bridge, we trust that the bridge will hold us up. We trust the engineer who designed it, the people who built it, and the inspectors who guarantee its safety–even though we may never have met them. We have faith.
I trust that the bus driver will take me from Bundaberg to Brisbane–that’s what the sign on the front says. I trust that the driver is an employee of, say, McCafferty’s; I have faith.
I buy a ticket to the state of origin match, having faith that the players will show up and the match will be held as advertised, and that the ticket will gain me admission.

We have faith in all these other human beings who are often untrustworthy.

When God calls us to believe in Christ [whom we have never seen], he is calling us to do the most sensible thing we can ever do. He is asking us to believe the word of the only being in the universe who is entirely reliable (Boice 1986, p. 410).

I John 5:9 states “that if we can do this with other human beings who are often untrustworthy, we can do it with God. Indeed, we must. For God commands faith, and the salvation of our souls must express itself through responses to his offer” (Boice 1986, p. 411).

This is what God wants to teach us: 2 Cor. 4:16-18;

2 Cor. 5:7, “We live by faith, not by sight.”

Believing is seeing. Robert Jastrow has extraordinary credentials as an astronomer. He is the former director of NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies in the USA and wrote a book, God and the Astronomers. He is talking about the Genesis and Science question, but he is addressing this issue of faith that baffles the world. He said:

The details differ, but the essential elements in the astronomical and biblical accounts of Genesis are the same…

This is an exceedingly strange development, unexpected by all but the theologians. They have always believed the word of God. But we scientists did not expect to find evidence for an abrupt beginning because we have had, until recently, such extraordinary success in tracing the chain of cause and effect backward in time…

At this moment it seems as though science will never be able to raise the curtain on the mystery of creation. For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries (Jastrow 1978, p. 105, cited in Zacharias 1990, p. 133, emphasis added).

Christian: You live by the law of faith. It makes absolute sense in the everyday world. It will take you to heaven. But it baffles the world.

Notes

2. I saw it on 18 October, 1997.

3. The full quote is: “There are no ordinary people. . . It is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendors” (Lewis, 1980, pp. 18-19, cited in Lutzer 1997, p. 9).

References

Boice, J. M. 1986. The Foundations of the Christian Faith, InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, Illinois.

Jastrow, R. 1978, God and the Astronomers, Warner Books, New York.

Lenski, R. C. H., The Interpretation of The Epistles of St. Peter, St. John and St. Jude, Augsburg Publishing House, Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Lewis, C. S. 1980 (rev. and exp. ed.), The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses, Macmillan, New York.

Lutzer, E. W. 1997, One Minute After You Die: A Preview of Your Final Destination, Moody Press, Chicago.

MacArthur Jr., J. 1991, Romans 1-8 (The John MacArthur New Testament Commentary), Moody Press, Chicago.

McDowell, J. 1977, More Than a Carpenter, Kingsway Publications, Eastbourne.

Morris, L. 1971, The Gospel According to John (The New International Commentary on the New Testament), Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Ramsay, W. 1915, The Bearing of Recent Discovery on the Trustworthiness of the New Testament, Hodder and Stoughton, London.

Seniors-Site.com 1996-1997, ‘Tombstone epitaphs,” Available from: http://seniors-site.com/funstuff/epitaphs.html [9 July 2006].

Wuest, K. S. 1942, First Peter (in the Greek New Testament–Wuest’s Word Studies),Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Zacharias, R. 1990, A Shattered Visage: The Real Face of Atheism, Wolgemuth & Hyatt, Publishers, Inc., Brentwood, Tennessee.

I Peter 2:9-12: Christian Conduct with Influence

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ChristArt

By Spencer D Gear

Do you believe that Christians ought to be different in their attitude and behaviour to that of unbelievers? Does God want Christians to show by their lives that Jesus really does make a difference in how we treat one another in the family, at home, in the church gathering, on the job, and whatever we do and wherever we go? Do you believe that Jesus does cause people to change in the way they treat one another?

These Christians that Peter was writing to, were going through the toughest of times. 1:1 says they were “strangers in the world.” 1:6, for a little while they may have to suffer grief through various trials. 4:12, “Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you” (ESV).

For all believers, including those being persecuted for their faith, Peter, in this passage of the infallible word of God, tells us that our behaviour is based on three things:

Who we are as believers (v. 9);
Our purpose while on earth (vv. 9-10);
And then he gets to the specifics of how we are to behave (vv. 11-12).

What kind of person you are, will always determine your actions in life. So your overall and specific behaviours paint a true picture of your inner being. Remember Jesus’ words to the Pharisees:

“You brood of vipers, how can you who are evil say anything good? For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks. 35The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in him.” (Matt. 12:34-35 NIV)

Firstly,

A. Christians, your behaviour will be based on who you are as believers (v. 9)

This is language that is drawn from the OT: Exodus 19:5ff; Isaiah 43:20ff. All Christians are a . . .

1. Chosen people/race

This language comes from Isaiah’s prophecy in Isa. 43:20-21, which reads: “The wild animals honor me, the jackals and the owls, because I provide water in the desert and streams in the wasteland, to give drink to my people, my chosen, the people I formed for myself that they may proclaim my praise.”

In the OT, who were God’s chosen people? Israel! But in the NT, Israel’s titles are “taken over by the Christian church: for the Church is the new Israel, the true heir and successor of the old” (Cranfield 1950, p. 48). Because the Messiah has come and sacrificed His life for the New Israel, the Christian church is “the chosen people.”

It is important to note that “there is but one people of God from the days of Abraham, a people with one continuous life, one history, for the saints of the Old ‘Testament also lived by faith in the Christ to come, in expectation of Him and in the strength of God’s promises.

“As Israel was God’s ‘elect’ (or chosen) race’, so is the Church, heirs[s] alike of the privileges and the obligations of God’s chosen people” (Cranfield 1950, pp. 48-49).

Another description of who believers are, is

2. A royal priesthood

This means you are “a priesthood belonging to the King, to Christ” (Cranfield 1950, p. 49). Please note that this emphasis is on you, plural; the entire church is “a royal priesthood.” This is not talking about clergy being called priests. In fact the NT word for church leaders is presbuteros, elders.

“There is no priestly caste to fulfil the Church’s priestly functions; the whole Church, not a part of it, was to be a priesthood. The priestly service of the Church was something in which every member was to share. That is the scriptural meaning of the phrase ‘the priesthood of all believers'” (Cranfield 1950, p. 49).

So all Christians are priests, members of “a royal priesthood.” We are all ministering to God, the body of Christ, and to our community with the gifts God has given. This is the function of “a royal priesthood.”

Believers also are a

3. Holy nation

This is the language of Exodus 19:6, “you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ These are the words you are to speak to the Israelites.”

Remember back to I Peter 1:15-16 “But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: ‘Be holy, because I am holy.'”

To be holy is not to be sinlessly perfect. If you are to be without sin as a holy nation, not one of us would be eligible. To be “holy” is to be “set apart for the service of God” (Kistemaker 1987, p. 92). However, remember back to 1:15, “be holy in all you do.” So, to be “holy” means to be separated to serve God, but it also means a holiness in the way we live.

This is who we are as believers, “a holy nation,” but as 2:9 states, we are also

4. A People Belonging to God

Or, “a people for [God’s] possession.” This is another marvellous statement about who we are in Christ. It parallels what Paul wrote in Titus 2:14: “[Jesus Christ] who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good.”

Yes, we are God’s special people, possessed by and belonging to God. Praise the Lord!

Put these 4 descriptions together and this is who Christians are:

A chosen people;
A royal priesthood;
A holy nation;
A people belonging to God.

But this is never a reason to exalt ourselves or pat our spiritual chests and say, “What good Christians we are to be regarded like this by God.” That would be the height of arrogance. Commentator R. C. H. Lenski put it well: “It would be a mistake to suppose that we can be all that Peter states and at the same time sit down quietly and contemplate our honor and our excellence” (1960, p. 102).

Instead, God moves from who we are to the purpose he has set in place for the people of God – all Christians, not as individuals, but as a group of God’s people (the church). Because this is who you are.

B. Christian, your behaviour is based on your purpose for being on earth (vv. 9-10)

What are we here for? I want to pause for a moment to briefly examine a trend in the church that is sweeping the evangelical world.

What’s our purpose for being on earth as believers? There has been a lot of talk these days about the Rick Warren programmes, The Purpose Driven Church, The Purpose Driven Life, 40 Days of Purpose. Rick Warren believes that “God’s five purposes for each of us” are:

We were planned for God’s pleasure, so your first purpose is to offer real worship.

We were formed for God’s family, so your second purpose is to enjoy real fellowship.

We were created to become like Christ, so your third purpose is to learn real discipleship.

We were shaped for serving God, so your fourth purpose is to practice real ministry.

We were made for a mission, so your fifth purpose is to live out real evangelism” (Warren 2002-2005).

This purpose driven model of Rick Warren sounds good and godly when outlined like this, but some of what comes with the teaching is far from sound doctrine. For example, in The Purpose Driven Life (Warren 2002), he states that:”Gideon’s weakness was low self-esteem and deep insecurities” (p. 275).

Let’s get a wee-bit controversial. Please fill in this blank for me: “The best style of worship is ———.” Rick Warren states that “the best style of worship is the one that most authentically represents your love for God, based on the background and personality God gave you” (p. 102). Really? My biblical understanding of “the best style of worship” is one that brings glory to God, not based on my personality, but based on who God is.

As the Psalmist put it, “Come, let us bow down in worship, let us kneel before the LORD our Maker; for he is our God and we are the people of his pasture, the flock under his care” (Ps. 95:6-7).

Or Psalm 96:7-9,

“Ascribe to the LORD, O families of nations,
ascribe to the LORD glory and strength.
Ascribe to the LORD the glory due his name;
bring an offering and come into his courts.
Worship the LORD in the splendor of his holiness;
tremble before him, all the earth.”

Our worship is based on who God is and exalting His worth. It has nothing to do with our personality and background. He is the Lord, our Maker, our God, the Holy One; we tremble before Him because of who He is.

According to The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, 23 June 2006, the editor-in-chief, Rob Eshman, wrote of Rick Warren:

As I sat listening to him speak at Sinai Temple’s Friday Night Live Shabbat services last week, I thought of the only other person I’d met with Warren’s eloquence, charisma, and passion — but Bill Clinton carries a certain amount of baggage that Warren doesn’t.

Warren spoke at Sinai as part of the Synagogue 3000 program, which aims to revitalize Jewish worship. . . .
There are two aspects to [Rick] Warren’s success, and both were on display Friday night. First, he is an organizational genius. His mentor was management guru Peter Drucker.
“I spoke with him constantly,” Warren said, right up until Drucker died last year [2005] at age 95. [2]

It is Drucker’s theory of “management by objectives” that Warren replicates in every endeavor — translating long-term objectives into more immediate goals. Here let’s pause to consider that Jews are learning to reorganize their faith from a Christian who was mentored by a Jew (Eshman 2006).

Peter Drucker was a secular, Jewish management guru. This led the Editor of the Northern Landmark Missionary Baptist magazine magazine (August 2006) to comment, “In other words, the purpose of Warren’s visit was to help Jewish Rabbis to learn how to build membership in their religion which rejects Christ as Saviour. Is this an appropriate role for any Christian minister of the Gospel ?” [3]

Why have I used this example? Because this section of I Peter is about God’s purpose for you, and I want to urge you to be discerning with teaching that uses Christian language but there might be core aspects of it that are not driven by biblical Christianity.

Just two more quotes to give you some idea of the theology of Rick Warren & his purpose-driven model. In The Purpose Driven Life, he wrote: “[God] uses circumstances to develop our character. In fact, he depends more on circumstances to make us like Jesus than he depends on our reading the Bible” (2002, p. 193).

When Rick Warren spoke at the Jewish synagogue in Los Angeles, this is another part of the report from The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles:

“He’s built a giant church that attracts people of all ages,” said Sinai Temple’s Rabbi David Wolpe. “There is something in his message that touches the contemporary spirit — and perhaps he can help us learn how to do that” (Klein 2006).

Do you understand the paradox here? Today’s Jews reject Jesus, the Messiah, the Saviour. Yet, this Jewish Rabbi believes that because Rick Warren’s “message . . . touches the contemporary spirit. . . Perhaps he can help us learn how to do that.” How can an evangelical Christian leader teach Jews who reject the Saviour how to bring a message that “touches the contemporary spirit.” We do get a clue from another article in The Jewish Journal of the Greater Los Angeles:

The other secret to [Rick Warren’s] success is his passion for God and Jesus. Warren managed to speak for the entire evening without once mentioning Jesus — a testament to his savvy message-tailoring. But make no mistake, the driving purpose of an evangelical church is to evangelize, and it is Warren’s devotion to spreading the words of the Christian Bible that drive his ministry.

Good for him and his flock — and not so bad for us either. His teachings apply to 95 percent of all people, regardless of religious belief. As he put it to a group of rabbis at a conference last year — using a metaphor that might be described as a Paulian slip: “Eat the fish and throw away the bones” (Eshman 2006).

Rick Warren told Wolfson his interest was in helping all houses of worship, not in converting Jews. He said there are more than enough Christian souls to deal with for starters.

I hope that you’ll see from what I preach today from I Peter 2:9-12, that God uses His Word, the Bible, “to make us like Jesus.” We need God’s Word in our heart and mind to enable us then to live according to God’s ways. Circumstances will not tell you God’s standards for living.

There is no denying that God uses circumstances to mature us, but the content of Christian living is not found in circumstances, but in the living and abiding Word of God. What does the Bible say in Ps. 119:11? “I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you” (NIV)? Hebrews 4:12: “For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.”

To make us more like Jesus and not sin against God, one of the primary ways is to hide or “store up” (ESV) God’s Word in your heart. It is God’s “living and active” Word that “judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart” so that we will be more like Jesus in our thinking and living.
Notice the wording in I Peter 2:9. The NIV reads, “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare . . . ” The KJV: “But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth.”
Here is a conjunction (I’m using a term of English grammar), a conjunction, that begin a purpose clause and it is critical that we understand our biblical purpose for living. It is the word, “that,” meaning “in order that,” or “with the purpose that.” This word introduces part of the purpose for our existence on earth. Why are we here? Briefly, your purposes for being on earth are:

To “declare his praises” (v. 9). Elsewhere, the Scriptures give this primary purpose for the believer is “in order that we, who were the first to hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory” (Eph. 1:12). Rev. 4:11, “You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they were created and have their being.”

According to I Peter, some of what that means is that He is the one who has ….

Called you out of darkness. You are to praise the one who calls all true Christians to leave their lifestyle of darkness. What a God, who can change your dark lifestyle. Change it into what?

You are brought into his marvellous light. What a God we serve!

He can turn the thief into a person of integrity. He takes a swearing, cursing farmer and makes him into a person whose language demonstrates clean and holy words. He takes the people who are into civil religion and makes them totally committed to the King of Kings. You are to praise the one who turns the darkness of human beings into His kind of light. What a God who changes rebels into saints!

Also, you once you were not a people of God, but NOW you are God’s people (v. 10). Those who lived for themselves are now members of God’s people. This is our purpose in life to proclaim what God’s people are all about. I’m going to give a personal example. I have been promoted in my employment and we are selling up in one city and moving to another However, until we sell our house, I had to find accommodation at the new city of my employment. I was given the name of a Christian man and his wife whom I had only met briefly many, many years ago. When I spoke to this brother on the phone and told him my circumstances (he knew my sister and brother-in-law), he offered for me to board with them until we sell up.

Please understand that I was not standing face to face with this person. It was a phone conversation. I had provided no references of my honesty and integrity. He knew I was a Christian believer. I knew he was a person “belonging to God.” He and his wife accepted me on that basis. I don’t know of any other group in the world that would so readily accept a person with that kind of telephone contact.

Peter reminds us why this is so. Part of our purpose is to show that “you are the people of God.” What difference is there between this group of Christians, who are the people of God, and the local football club? The Rotary Club; girl guides, the CWA, etc.?

There’s something else that causes you to have the purpose of declaring his praises:

“Once you had not received mercy.”

“Now you have received mercy.”

We need to know the difference between God’s justice and God’s mercy. As rebel sinners, before we committed our lives to Christ, we deserved God’s justice. That’s called hell, and it will be the eternal destination of all who do not repent and seek God’s forgiveness through Christ.

However, mercy is one of the key attributes of God Himself. “God’s mercy means God’s goodness toward those in misery and distress” (Grudem 1994, p. 200). In Exodus 34:6, God revealed His name to Moses: “The LORD passed before him and proclaimed, ‘The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness” (ESV). According to 2 Sam. 24:14, “Then David said to Gad, ‘I am in great distress. Let us fall into the hand of the LORD, for his mercy is great; but let me not fall into the hand of man.'”

Once we believers were in “misery and distress” because of our sin. But then God showed his goodness to us, miserable and distressed sinners, by extending his grace to us through Christ’s death and resurrection, and making salvation available to the unlovely. Jesus, who came through the Jewish race, extended his mercy to us – Gentile sinners.

In our praises of God, our purpose includes showing how once there was no mercy for us, but now we have received mercy in Christ. Praise His Name!
Does God’s mercy ever grip your heart to praise Him?
In vv. 9-10, Peter uses the word, “people,” four times: “A chosen people”; “a people belonging to God”; “not a people”; and “the people of God.” Peter is reflecting what God has stated elsewhere in both OT and NT. Take Lev. 26:12, “I will walk among you and be your God, and you will be my people” (NIV). Rev. 21:3, “And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.” [4]

When God’s people really live as a special kind of people, the world will notice the difference.

(1) Yes, Christians are a special people; they are “a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God” (v.9).
(2) They have a special purpose; they are to “declare the praises of him [God]” (v. 9)
(3) But they must demonstrate a special performance. How, then, shall we live?

C. The special performance is through behaviour that glorifies God (vv. 11-12)

The NIV introduces v. 11 with, “Dear friends.” That is much too weak. It is literally, “beloved,” which is based on the verb, “to love.” This implies that these persecuted believers are loved by God, loved by the writer, Peter, and what these believers must do: love one another and love their enemies.
Note that these are not only the “beloved,” but v. 11 calls them “aliens and strangers in the world.” These two words, aliens and strangers, are very close in meaning. Lenski translates them as “outsiders and foreigners” (1966, p. 105).

As “aliens,” these are people “who live in a foreign country but who keep their own citizenship. . . They do not possess the same privileges and rights as the citizens of the country in which they live” (Kistemaker 1987, p. 95). You do not belong or feel at home as citizens of this world. Why? You are aliens to this worldly system because your new relationship with God has made you an outsider.

More than that, Christians are “‘strangers’ in a world that is foreign to them; they live on this earth for only a brief period; they know that their citizenship is in heaven” (Kistemaker 1987, p. 95), as Phil. 3:20 tells us. We would put it this way: “We are in the world, but not of it; children of light for the time being, living as strangers in the darkness” (Cranfield 1950, p. 53).

From v. 11 onwards, we are introduced “to a whole group of sections which deal with the Christian’s obedience in various relationships” (Cranfield 1950, p. 52).

How are Christians to live in an ungodly world. Remember four words that describe the way you are to live:

Abstain;
Conduct;
Accuse;
Glorify. [5]

1. Firstly, abstain from passions of the flesh (v. 11)

If you are to be Christian in an ungodly world, you will need “to abstain from sinful desires.” What are sinful desires? Back in 1:14, they are called “evil desires.” Help! From what must believers abstain?
Note something about these “evil desires” in 2:11. The NIV, KJV and ESV state that they “war against your soul.” The soul is sometimes used in this sense of the inner being — the person. “Evil desires” play havoc with your inner person. They mount a warlike campaign to capture your desires, to enslave you, and even destroy you.

It is not wrong to have desires, but it is wrong for Christians to have “sinful/evil desires.” But what are these sinful desires that wreak havoc on your soul? In 2:1 we have already been introduced to some of these: “Rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind.” “Hypocrisy” is one of these evil actions, that come from evil desires. One of the things that gets up the noses of non-Christians is hypocritical Christians. These are people who say one thing and do another. Get rid of all hypocrisy among you. I Peter 4:3 in the ESV gives more examples of evil desires: “living in sensuality, passions, drunkenness, orgies, drinking parties, and lawless idolatry.” If we want a longer list, we have it in Gal. 5:19-21:

Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God (ESV).

Do you get the picture? All of these activities will make war on your inner being. You must abstain from them if you know and love Jesus. And if any one of you sins against another person in this way, Matt. 18:15ff tells us what to do about it and we are not to remain silent about it. Matt. 18:15-18 states:

If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault, just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over. But if he will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, treat him as you would a pagan or a tax collector” (NIV).

I had a very convicting experience at this point of preparation of my message. I will not give you the specific details except to say that a few other Christians and I were about to engage in a church-related project. The Lord so convicted my heart that what I was doing would cause strife, dissension and division that I withdrew from the project. If I had engaged in that project, I would have been doing things that would pamper my “evil desires” and make “war against my soul.” I quit such thinking and action.
Brothers and sisters, do not even start them; abstain from all “evil desires.” Now there’s a positive side to your behaviour.

2. Secondly, keep your conduct honourable (v. 12)

Or, “live such good lives among the pagans” (NIV). Or, as the ESV puts it: “Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honourable.” How can you live good, honourable lives? Your conduct among non-Christians must be kal?, “morally excellent, noble, the adjective conveying the thought that it is even admirable in the eyes of those pagans who have any moral sense left” (Lenski 1966, p. 107).

In spite of your living godly, good, and honourable lives . . .

3. Thirdly, they will accuse you of doing wrong (v. 12)

Remember what Jesus said, as recorded in John 15:20, “Remember the words I spoke to you: ‘No servant is greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. If they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also.” Also Matt. 5:16: “Let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.”

Throughout the history of the church, Christians have had to suffer slanders from unbelievers. Dr. Cranfield puts it so well:

False accusation is always a favourite weapon of the Church’s persecutors, and there is a long story of the slanders made against Christians, from charges of cannibalism and incest in the earliest days down to those of misusing the pulpit for political purposes, being unpatriotic, committing currency offences and espionage. But there are also the less spectacular charges that are made by those who are hostile, but can hardly be called persecutors, charges of hypocrisy, of being kill-joys, and narrow-minded. Many are the prejudices and misunderstandings, which help to keep men away from the Church (1950, p. 55).

How are we to overcome such false accusations of doing wrong? “They may see your good deeds” and what may happen? Your Christian life before them is to be of such a godly nature that something amazing will happen.

4. Fourthly, they may glorify God because of your good conduct (v. 12)

This is such an important call in the age in which we live, because Christian living is being assaulted so that the Christian’s life often looks little different from the non-Christian person’s.

The call is urgent:

Abstain from living according to sinful desires;
Live good, honourable lives;
So that even if they accuse you falsely, they will scrutinise your behaviour and be so convicted by your lifestyle that they will glorify God. What does it mean to “glorify God”?

To give God the glory, means to honour and acclaim God; to give him vocal reverence as the creature for the Creator and Judge (Rev. 14:7). If you give God glory, you honour his majesty and perfection (Rom. 1:23; 3:23). To glorify God is to bow before Him and acknowledge Him for all that he is.

When will these non-believers give God the glory because of the Christians’ conduct? V. 12 says: “On the day he visits us” (NIV), or “in the day of visitation’ (KJV, NASB, ESV) – the latter is the literal meaning of the Greek. But what does it refer to? It is

denoting a time when God intervenes directly in human affairs, either for blessing (Luke 1:68, 78; 7:16; 19:44) or for judgment (Isa 10:3; Jer 6:15). This phrase may be a quotation from Isa 10:3, in which case judgment is in view here. But blessing seems to be the point, since part of the motive for good behavior is winning the non-Christian over to the faith (as in 3:1; also apparently in 3:15; cf. Matt 5:16) [NET Bible 1996-2005, n33 for I Peter 2:12].

Here most probably “the visitation takes place when God looks upon a person with grace and mercy (v. 10b)” [Lenski 1966, p. 109] and the non-Christian accepts the offer of Christ’s salvation and in thankfulness glorifies God. This harmonises well with Matt. 5:16, “Let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.”

D. Application

It is a travesty to the Christian witness that our lives too often give a very different message from Peter’s exhortation. You and I may have known of people attending the same church who do not one another, or they deal angrily towards each other.

There is too often a competition among Christian denominations. What about church business dealings? Some are doubtful and questionable. This should not be.

All Christians are called upon to live exemplary lives of godly goodness, that so impact a secular world that they will want to serve and glorify your God.
What is your attitude towards Christians in this congregation? Are some of you at odds with one another? What should you do? Go speak with the other person. Make sure that it can be said of us, “Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us” (v. 12).

References

Cranfield, C. E. B. 1950, The First Epistle of Peter, SCM Press Ltd., London.

Eshman, R. (Editor-in-Chief) 2006, ‘Jesus’ Man Has a Plan,’ The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles [Online], Available from: http://www.jewishjournal.com/home/searchview.php?id=16029 [10 August 2006].

Grudem, W. 1994, Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine, Inter- Varsity Press, Leicester, England/Zondervan Publishing House, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Kistemaker, S. J. 1987, New Testament Commentary: Exposition of the Epistles of Peter and of the Epistle of Jude, Evangelical Press, Welwyn, Hertfordshire.

Klein, A. 2006, ‘Acts of Faith’, The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles [Online], 16 June, Available from:
http://www.jewishjournal.com/home/preview.php?id=16012 [12 August 2006].

Lenski, R. C. H. 1966, Commentary on the New Testament: The Interpretation of the Epistles of St. Peter, St. John, and St. Jude, Hendrickson Publishers, Peabody, Mass.

Morrison, M. 2005, ‘Peter Drucker’s Monumental Legacy’, November 14, BusinessWeekOnline, Available from:
http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/nov2005/nf20051114_2199_db042.htm [11 August, 2006].

NET Bible 1996-2005, Biblical Studies Press [Online], Available from: http://www.bible.org/netbible/ [12 August 2006].

Warren, R. 2002, The Purpose Driven Life, Zondervan Publishing House, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Warren, R. 2002-2005, ‘The Book’, Available from: http://www.purposedrivenlife.com/thebook.aspx [10 August 2006]..

Notes:

[2] BusinessWeekOnline reported:

Peter Drucker’s death on Friday, Nov. 11 [2005] ended a remarkable 70-year career as thinker, visionary, author, consultant, and professor. Drucker defined many of the modern management principles taken for granted in today’s corporations. Decades ago he was pushing the concepts of customer-focus, employee empowerment, and innovation that are bullet points in every CEO’s playbook today” (Morrison 2005).

[3] Northern Landmark Missionary Baptist magazine (August 2006).

[4] This emphasis was suggested by Kistemaker (1987, p. 94).

[5] Outline from Kistemaker (1987, pp. 95-96).
Copyright (c) 2007, Spencer D. Gear. This document last updated at: 14 October 2015.

I was conned by Christian counselling [1]

(image courtesy of ChristArt.com)

By Spencer D Gear

Those of you who are observant and have read articles on my home page, Truth Challenge, should notice there is a contradiction between the content of these two articles:

Pornography: “One day you’ll beat it” and

I was conned by Christian counselling [1]

In the first article I was counselling with a person who would not understand biblical counselling. Most of my professional life as a counsellor was working with secular clients who did not operate from a Christian world view, so I had to use secular models – that were effective.

In the second article, I’m critiquing the way secular therapies have crept into Christian counsellor training, all in the name of “Christian counselling.” I entered such a program for my MA and thought it was going to be Christian counselling. It wasn’t. It was an integration of secular psychology/counselling. I voluntarily allowed myself to be conned.

What is causing me to use such a provocative title. To be ‘conned’ is a serious allegation. Let’s examine what has happened to others and me as we have worked in Christian counselling.

THE INFECTION

I am deeply concerned about something that is contaminating the Christian church. It is already causing deep problems and promises to be destructive — it could tear the heart out of our gospel.

These are quotes from a leading Christian author:

1. Please complete this author’s statement: “The basic personal need of each personal being is _____________. [3]

2. “When we raise our voices in favor of a radical commitment to biblical sufficiency, there is danger of losing depth in our understanding.” [4]

3. “A commitment to biblical sufficiency has sometimes resulted in shallow explanations of complex disorders. And shallow explanations promote the unchallenged acceptance of superficial solutions… The result is a shallow understanding of problems and solutions that sounds biblical but helps very few.” [5]

4. “Reminders of God’s love and exhortations to meditate on Jesus’ care sometimes provide about as much help as handing out recipes to people waiting in a food line.” [6]

5. “Unless we understand sin as rooted in unconscious beliefs and motives and figure out how to expose and deal with these deep forces within the personality, the church will continue to promote superficial adjustment while psychotherapists, with or without biblical foundations, will do a better job than the church of restoring troubled people to more effective functioning. And that is a pitiful tragedy.” [7]

6. “Although the Scriptures provide the only authoritative information on counseling, psychology and its specialized discipline of psychotherapy offer some valid insights about human behavior which in no way contradict Scripture.” [8]

All of the above quotes are from leading Christian psychologist, Dr. Lawrence J. Crabb Jr. They are a symptom of what is happening in the evangelical, charismatic, Pentecostal and liberal churches today. We expect the liberal church to take that line because it has rejected the infallible Word of God. However, something is desperately wrong when it has invaded the churches that accept the Bible as authoritative and proclaim the gospel.

The tragedy is underlined by Lawrence Crabb’s proclamation: When dealing with sin, “the church will continue to promote superficial adjustment while psychotherapists, with or without biblical foundations, will do a better job than the church of restoring troubled people to more effective functioning.” [9]

A. WHAT IS HAPPENING? THE WOLF AT WORK

1. Based on Psalm 1, those who try this amalgamation are walking in the “counsel of the wicked”.

2. Matthew 16:6: “`Be careful,’ Jesus said to them. `Be on your guard against the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees’.”

3. I Cor. 5:6: “Don’t you know that a little yeast works through the whole batch of dough?”

Yeast/leaven has crept into the church and it is sweeping through the church–and most of us don’t know it is happening. It is so subtle.

3. Colossians 2:8: “See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ.”

I believe deceptive, human philosophies are infiltrating the church and we are being taken captive.

4. Read 2 Corinthians 6:14-18. We are unequally yoked together with unbelievers. The end result will be as devastating as if you are yoked with an unbeliever in marriage, or business, etc.

5. Isaiah 6:20-21: “Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness; who substitute bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, And clever in their own sight.” [10] I believe we are calling evil good and darkness light in this invasion in the church.

It may well be a heresy that is unleashed in the church. If it were an attack on:

the substitutionary atonement, we would recognise it immediately;
the deity of Christ, it would stand out like a sore thumb;
the authority of the Scripture, it would be self-evident and we would oppose it.

But here we have an attack on the sufficiency of Christ and the Scriptures to meet your needs as a believer and there seem to be few objectors.

Evangelist, conference speaker and author, Leonard Ravenhill, wrote: “This psychoheresy is a menace and threatening to become a plague in the pulpit. Your trumpet is needed against what is nothing less than heresy.” [11]

In Christian Psychology’s War on God’s Word, Jim Owen writes: “If the church will not take a hard look at ‘Christian’ psychology, then it is well on its way to becoming enmeshed in a modern day heresy.” [12]

It is one thing to buy cars manufactured by unregenerate Shintoists (Japanese) or pharmaceuticals manufactured by some secular humanist, but it is quite another thing to turn to unbelievers to discover:

the nature of human beings,
the diagnosis of problems of living,
the cure of problems of living.

For the first 1900 years of the church’s existence, the “cure of souls” ministry (helping people with their personal problems) was given to the churches. Since the time of psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, about 100 years ago, the “cure of souls” has become the “cure of minds” as we have handed people’s problems over to the psychotherapists, psychiatrists, social workers, counsellors, and other mental health professionals.

When we integrate psychology and the Bible, we are implying that God gave commands and instructions for living without providing all the necessary means of obedience until the coming of psychology.

When I speak of the danger of psychology, I am referring to the secular theories and techniques which “depend on human tradition”. They are human-made ideas which offer substitutes for salvation and sanctification.

I am “not referring to the entire field of psychological study”. But I am “referring to that part of psychology which deals with the nature of [human beings], how [they] should live, and how [they] can change. It involves values, attitudes and behavior.” [13]

B. WHAT IS HAPPENING?

1. The psychological society is leading to the psychological church.

The church is being seduced by departing from the fundamental truth of the gospel and what leads to Christian growth. It is using unproven and unscientific psychological opinions of secular people, in place of absolute confidence in the biblical truth of God. Theories of psychological counselling are becoming poison to the soul.

The church has bought into these myths:

a. Psychology is science rather than religion.

b. The best kind of counselling combines psychology and the Bible.

c. People who are experiencing mental-emotional-behavioural problems are mentally ill. They are supposedly psychologically sick. We take the line that a medical doctor treats the body, a psychologist treats the mind and emotions, and a Christian minister deals with strictly spiritual things.

d. Another myth: Psychotherapy has a high record of success. [14]

Christian psychologist, William Kirk Kilpatrick, concludes that, “True Christianity does not mix well with psychology. When you try to mix them, you often end up with a watered-down Christianity instead of a Christianized psychology. But the process is subtle and is rarely noticed.” [15]

2. We are becoming the psychologised church by integrating psychology with the Bible.

We see this in:

Psychologised sermons with pastors quoting psychologists as the experts and using psychological concepts in their sermons;
Church counselling has become psychologised–the Bible is supposedly not enough.
Those who want to help people in the church get psychological training.
When people have problems of living and go to the pastor for help, he quickly refers them to the psychological professionals.

A pastor friend of mine, who pastors in one of our capital cities, said that he doesn’t have time for counselling so he does one interview and then refers his parishioners to psychological professionals. Even conservative churches are now hiring people with psychological training to pursue church based counselling ministries.

Christian schools and Bible colleges are partially or entirely teaching psychological rather than biblical solutions to problems.

It is almost compulsory that marriage and family counsellors or psychologists be speakers at conferences, camps, or guests on radio shows.

Psychology has invaded the church and it is not a good thing, as we shall see.

There is an international organisation, based in the United States, called the Christian Association for Psychological Studies (CAPS), an organisation composed of practising therapists. Martin & Deidre Bobgan surveyed them to discover which psychotherapeutic approaches most influenced their private practices of psychology/counselling. They listed 10 approaches. The results were:

Client-Centred Therapy (Carl Rogers) and Reality Therapy (William Glasser) were the top two choices.
Freud’s psychoanalysis and Albert Ellis’s Rational Emotive Therapy followed closely behind.
The only biblical approach, Jay Adams’ Nouthetic Counselling, tied for last place.

Many of the psychotherapists were eclectic–using a variety of approaches. There are over 250 competing and often contradictory therapies using over 10,000 techniques that are not always compatible. [16]

What I find so alarming is that the number one method used by Christian psychotherapists is Carl Rogers’ method of counselling. Christians often find his active listening, client-centred, non-judgmental approach very attractive. I know of one Bible College in Australia whose counselling department is dominated by Rogerian counselling.

However, never let us forget that Rogers’ basic premise is that human beings are good and can solve their own problems. That’s why he believes in active listening and unconditional positive regard of the client. No matter how much prayer and Bible reading you have in counselling, if you are acting from Rogers’ premise it can’t be biblical. Rogers also said that the crowning discovery of his lifetime of counselling was love. For him it means “love between persons.” [17] Freud said the basic problem was your psychosexual urges in the unconscious.

Albert Ellis says your problem is with irrational self talk that needs to be changed. He is an atheist who would drive any religion that believes in absolutes out of any counsellee. Yet this is what is being used in the name of Christian psychology by Christian therapists. Several Christian counsellors have developed a Christianised version of Ellis’s Rational Emotive Therapy, calling it Rational Christian Thinking: Renewing the Mind. [18]

Secular psychological theories are built on the secular psychologist’s view of human nature and his/her personality. Secular therapist Dr. Linda Riebel acknowledges this. She says: “Theories of human nature reflect the theorist’s personality as he or she externalizes it or projects it onto humanity at large… The theory of human nature is a self-portrait of the theorist . . . emphasizing what the theorist needs.” [19]

In the book, Makers of Psychology: The Personal Factor, Dr. Harvey Mindess states it clearly: “The leaders of the field portray humanity in their own image. . . Each one’s theories and techniques are a means of validating his own identity.” [20]

They portray “humanity in their own image” and yet that is what Christian psychologists want to integrate with biblical Christianity. From this premise, you can expect psychologised religion that drifts away from the Bible.

This is all done in the name of integrating psychology with theology. Martin & Deidre Bobgan call it “amalgamania” [21].

Why is it done? All in the belief that:

3. All Truth is God’s Truth

They pick up this mish-mash of psychological opinion, try to glean some facts from it, and proclaim “All truth is God’s truth”. I don’t believe they are sure what God’s truth is. Is God’s truth what Freud says about obsessive neurosis? Or Carl Rogers’ ideas on human love? Or B.F. Skinner’s behaviourism that wants to manipulate your environment?

Similarities do not make psychology and Christianity compatible. Christianity and other world religions have similarities, but that does not make them compatible.

To say that the discoveries of unredeemed people like Freud, Rogers, Jung, etc. are God’s truth is to undermine the very basis of the Word of God. They are confusing facts with truth. [22]

There is a great deal of difference between taking your car to an unbelieving motor mechanic and seeking answers to life’s problems from an unregenerate psychologist.

What else is happening?

4. Secular values are invading the church

Even secular psychologists admit this. Dr. Hans Strupp says: “There can be no doubt that the therapist’s moral and ethical values are always `in the picture.’” [23]

Psychiatrist, Dr. Perry London, agrees: “Every aspect of psychotherapy presupposes some implicit moral doctrine… Moral considerations may dictate, in large part, how the therapist defines his client’s needs, how he operates in the therapeutic situation, how he defines `treatment,’ and `cure,’ and even `reality.’” [24]

Yet Christian psychologists want to take this secular morality and integrate it with Christianity. It will make a poisonous mixture.

What is really happening?

5. It is subverting the Christian faith

The antagonism of psychology towards Christianity gradually seeps into the church. We use psychological ideas to explain why we are the way we are, how we should live, what we need, and how we change. The claims of Christ are compromised.

Instead of denying the validity of the Word of God, we simply tell pastors and gifted Christians that they are not qualified to minister to the deep levels of human need — and we refer them to psychologists.

Pastors and Christians: You are ministers of the Word. Everything, including counselling, must be guided by the Word. Psychologists want to see the counsellee restored to what society considers normal. Our goal is to have the counsellee restored to right relationship with God. That is not the goal of secular counselling. How dare we allow such heresy to invade the church.

Carl Rogers confessed: “Yes, it is true, psychotherapy is subversive. . . Therapy, theories and techniques promote a new model of man contrary to that which has been traditionally accepted.” [25]

Bernie Zilbergeld, in his book, The Shrinking of America writes:

Psychology has become something of a substitute for old belief systems. Different schools of therapy offer visions of the good life and how to live it, and those whose ancestors took comfort from the words of God and worshipped at the altars of Christ and Yahweh now take solace from and worship at the altars of Freud, Jung, Carl Rogers, Albert Ellis, Werner Erhard, and a host of similar authorities. While in the past the common reference point was the Bible and its commentaries and commentators, the common reference today is a therapeutic language and the success stories of mostly secular people changers. [26]Psychology is undermining the church.

C. WHAT IS IT DOING TO THE CHURCH? THE SHEEP ARE SCATTERED

I’ll have to be brief here because each one of these areas is a sermon in itself:

1. The Self

Psychology is self-centred. Listen to the terms: self-fulfilment, self-love, and self-actualisation. Self denial and dying to self are out!

Observe Christian book titles: Love Yourself; the Art of Learning to Love Yourself; Loving Yourselves; Celebrate Yourself; You’re Someone Special; Self-Esteem: You’re Better than You Think; Self Esteem: The New Reformation. [27]

Something else is happening to the church and Christians:

2. Self-esteem

Most secular and Christian psychologists accept the premise that low self-esteem is the cause of most human behavioural problems. The good news of the psychologised gospel is that

People who realize their self-worth don’t have any need to do ugly or unkind things. And this is the point, please note, where Christianity and psychology part company. People will continue to behave badly, says the Christian, because human nature is twisted, and liking yourself doesn’t remove the twist. But psychological theory doesn’t take account of the Fall; it takes the position that there are no bad natural inclinations. [28]We don’t need a pat on the back or a regular positive affirmation. We need radical surgery. Humanity’s problem is not poor self-esteem.

“G.K. Chesterton once observed that the doctrine of fallen man is the only Christian belief for which there is overwhelming empirical evidence.” [29]

Another invasion in the church:

3. Recovery groups

Christians have bought into the “disease” model of Alcoholics Anonymous and so we have “New Hope” groups for those from dysfunctional families, recovery groups for children of alcoholic families. Based on the A-A model, they are 12-step programs that say your problem is sickness, not sin. You will always be an alcoholic. It’s a disease. The Bible calls drunkenness sin. The disease approach denies the spiritual dimensions of the problem.

An advertisement for a “Christians in Recovery” conference said that 90% of Americans come from

Dysfunctional homes–that is, homes that are not just damaged by, say, alcoholism or drugs, but also by such disorders” as workaholism, perfectionism, depression, compulsive behavior, intimacy problems, etc. These problems, we are informed, affect the family as much as does alcoholism.The advertisement continued:

For years millions of Americans have had to struggle alone with these kinds of dysfunctions. But times are changing and many of these individuals, including Christians, are tearing down the ‘walls of denials’ and opening doors of opportunity for emotional and spiritual healing. [30]How? Through “Recovery Groups” which call sin disease.

Closely related to this is:

4. Codependency

This is the psychological “disease of those with a `caretaker’ mentality, who are over committed and over involved in the lives of needy individuals… They have a high need for keeping people dependent on them.” 31]

Codependency is an extremely subjective definition and runs counter to the biblical view of self-denial. If you blame some addictive behaviour of another person for your problem, you are not taking personal responsibility.

Another example of how psychology has invaded the church is:

5. Healing of the Memories

This uses the occult technique of visualisation. The positive confession heresy uses a similar technique. I cannot and must not use such pagan procedures.

6. Victimisation

This is sanctification by victimisation therapy. You are a victim of your past, your environment, somebody else’s behaviour. This threatens to destroy biblical teaching on progressive sanctification.

Here’s a paraphrase of Luke 9:59-61 (our Lord’s call to obedience): The Lord said to one man, “Follow me.”

But the man replied: “Lord, first let me go back and analyze my childhood. Bad and harmful things were done to me then. My family failed to affirm me properly. Let me go back and again feel deeply the hurts and disappointments I experienced. Only then can I forgive those who inflicted them upon me. Only then can I overcome my dysfunctional behavior. Only then will I be able to develop an appropriate self-esteem. Only then can I truly ask your forgiveness. Only then, Lord, will I be free to follow you.”Jesus replied: “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God. No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” [32]

We see psychology in the church in the doctrine of rejection being preached and counselled in some quarters.

7. Rejection

My wife was adopted into a loving, caring family when she was a baby just three weeks’ old. She read recently: “Every person who has been adopted suffers from a spirit of rejection.” This is psychological confusion, not biblical Christianity. In addition, that is NOT what my wife experiences.

Christian counsellor, Charles Solomon says: “Research has also substantiated a cause-and-effect relationship between a mother’s rejection of the unborn child and the psychological difficulties of the child later in life.” [33]

That’s an interesting psychological idea, but research has not substantiated it. Just phone any medical school with faculty in child development and you’ll find there is no such evidence. How could that be quantified?

8. The four temperaments & personality testing

Space doesn’t permit us to go into these, except to say that the four temperaments are based on an occult model. For a detailed assessment, see Martin & Deidre Bobgan, Four Temperaments, Astrology & Personality Testing. [33a]

9. New language

disease for sin nature and bondage to lust,
addiction — people don’t lust any more, they have an addiction,
dysfunctional is a substitute for sin,
self-actualisation is equated with sanctification,
reprogramming in place of what the Bible terms “renewing the mind”

We are uneasy with sinners, salvation and sanctification so we say people hurt, have diseases, are traumatised, are addicted and dysfunctional. In a victimised world, these words sound better than sinner, rebel and wicked.

Christian psychology is writing a different gospel. The Bible points me to the cross and says, “Stand there, or be lost.” [34]

10. Whatever became of sin?

A Gallup poll of evangelical college students in the USA asked if they disapproved of premarital sex. Forty-eight percent answered “No”. I am disturbed by the deliberate avoidance of “sin” and “sinners” by evangelicals. This is a foreign gospel. [35]

D. I WAS CONNED BY CHRISTIAN COUNSELLING: I WENT ASTRAY

What I write is not theory. I have learned from bitter experience what happens when you mix secular psychology with the Bible. I wasted 10 years of my life pursuing the psychological integration model. I came out of a fine evangelical seminary in the USA with a master’s degree in pastoral psychology and counseling (counselling is the Aussie spelling).

I was convinced that the teachings of Albert Ellis (Rational Emotive Therapy) and his changing your irrational self-talk to his definition of rational self-talk, was the equivalent of “renewing the mind.” I was deluded. When a Christian came to me for counselling, say, for depression, anger, anxiety, marriage breakdown, etc., I never began with what the Bible says. I began with Albert Ellis. I counselled according to his model for over 10 years.

This is what a Rational Emotive Therapy text says:

What is ethical, then, is specific to each situation; there are no absolute rights and wrongs… The ethics that RET advocates are not based upon rigid dogmatism. In fact, RET holds that rigidity, authoritarianism, dogmatism, and absolutism are among the worst features of any philosophic system and are the very styles of thinking that lead to neurosis and disturbance (Walen et al 1980:9; details at note [36]).In humanism, the reasoning individual is the source of wisdom, not the almighty God. The existence of God is questioned or even denied entirely, since God is not needed to explain the creation of things (that is the job of science), nor is He needed to create an ethical code (for that can be done by clear thinking). . .

While Ellis is an unabashed hedonist, humanist, and atheist, one can retain a form of religion and practice RET. Many Christian and Jewish clergy do just that, although they do not share Ellis’ atheism. . .

A rational belief is not absolutistic…. An irrational belief is a command. [36]

Conclusion: For the above promoters of Rational Emotive Therapy, God’s absolutes are an irrational belief, but you can retain a form of religion and still practice RET. I concluded that the RET model is riddled with Ellis’s castigation of absolutes and his promotion of humanistic ethics. I forsook it in 1990.

It took a friendly debate with international author, Dave Hunt, at the church I pastored in Canberra, ACT, Australia in 1990 and encouragement by my wife, Desley, to investigate the sufficiency of the Bible for counselling.

I went to a secular university pursuing a Ph.D. in counselling psychology. But even my confrontation with this secular mentality in 1982-84, did not cause me to turn around. But my debate with Dave Hunt did.

Since then, I have sought to counsel according to the sufficiency of Scripture as a biblical counsellor (and it has not been an easy job in` putting off’ the psychology that I had imbibed into my counselling). Naive, you might say. Not when I read, 2 Peter 1:3-4:

His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires. [37]I studied under Christian psychologist and ordained minister, Dr Richard Dobbins. When I pastored a church in Ohio, I showed his film series, “The Believer and His Self Concept.” In that film he leads the viewers through a series of steps and ends up reciting together: “I am a lovable person. I am a valuable person. I am a forgivable person.” [38]

Here’s the confusion. The biblical fact is that God loves and forgives us. But it is a humanistic psychological lie that we are intrinsically lovable, valuable and forgivable.

The hymn writer puts its in much better theology: “Nothing in my hand I bring. Simply to Thy cross I cling.” I bring nothing. The biblical truth is: “I am not a lovable person. I am not a valuable person. I am not a forgivable person. But, Christ died for me!” That’s the grace of God. How dare we confuse psychology with Bible. We do so to our own downfall and the church’s seduction. Our focus must be Christ — he’s the lovable person, the valuable person and the forgiving person. [39]

The psychological message sounded so convincing to me. But I was conned by Christian counselling.

E. WHAT CAN WE DO ABOUT IT? PROTECTING THE SHEEP FOLD

1. I encourage all Christian counsellors to practise biblical counselling.

God’s word says: “His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.” [40]

Everything you need for life and godliness through your knowledge of him. That includes every counselling problem. On the basis of the Word of God, does psychological counselling and its theories have something better to offer the Christian than ministry through the Word of God, the Holy Spirit, prayer and the church?

As you move closer to God through His love and the ministry of truth and mercy expressed through His Word, the Holy Spirit and caring Christians, you will change in areas of thoughts, emotions and actions.

2. You don’t need professional psychological training.

Pastors and church members seem to have bought into the confusion that they need to have professional psychological training to be successful.

Truax and Mitchell state that, “There is no evidence that the usual traditional graduate training program has any positive value in producing therapists who are more helpful than nonprofessionals.” [41]

Psychologist Robert Carkhuff conducted a careful survey of all the research that had studied the effectiveness of what he called “lay helpers.” The findings are startling: “When lay counselors, with or without training, were compared with professionals it was discovered that ‘the patients of lay counselors do as well as or better than the patients of professional counselors.’” [42]

Say “No” to professional psychological training. It may hinder your practice as a counsellor.

3. Say “YES” to the Holy Spirit and the Word

The primary training for biblical counsellors is:

learning how to live in obedient relationship with God;
so you reflect God’s character and do his will in daily challenges;
know the Word.

In nearly every church fellowship there are mature believers who have been prepared and trained by the Lord for this ministry of teaching, caring and encouragement– called counselling. In most congregations you can identify those who:

know the Word,
have responded to the work of the Holy Spirit,
and are gifted in this way.

If there is a need for counselling in the local church, these are the people who are prepared to do this in mercy and truth.

I believe Martin & Deidre Bobgan hit the mark when they state:

There is some justification to conclude that for all problems of living the best way out is by individual effort; the next best help is the informal support group; then the formal support group; and finally least effective is individual therapy. [43]This is why, in addition to biblical counselling, I recommend that counsellees attend the regular services of the church and are involved in the loving environment of a small home group. However, I urge you to practise your Christian counselling in subjection to the leaders of your local church and their “equipping” ministry (see Eph. 4:11-12]. I urge you neverto be a lone ranger Christian counsellor. There is always safety in being subject to the supervision of God’s leaders in the church.

4. The cure of souls’ ministry belongs in the church

“For Christians, problems that can be treated by psychological counselling can be better ministered to by biblical counsel within the Body of Christ.” [44]

The psychological way provides man-made solutions. The spiritual way provides biblical solutions.

F. “CHOOSE YOU THIS DAY WHOM YOU WILL SERVE”

The choice is God’s way or the human way;
The flesh or the Spirit;
Self effort or faith in God;
Are you a victim or a sinner?
Will it be psychological referral or repentance and restoration?

Psychiatrist Thomas Szasz, who is not a Christian, “recommends that mental health care be taken away from professionals, such as psychiatrists and psychologists, and given back to the church.” [45]

These have been the cherished friends of believers down through the centuries:

love of the Scriptures,
the wonder and power of prayer,
fellowship with other believers in the Spirit,
the obedience of self-denial,
the longing to see our Lord,
and joy unspeakable and full or glory, no matter what the circumstances.

What has happened to these friends who have helped us to grow in grace, say no to sin and bear fruit in Jesus’ Name? The grace of the Lord has been replaced by the worldly wisdom of psychology. It is another gospel, a hybrid, that is overtaking the church and I am angry that we are letting it happen.

I call you back to the all-sufficient Christ and the sufficiency of His Word. When we emphasise people as victims instead of sinners, we radically challenge the biblical teachings on a person’s guilt and need of the cross, the supremacy of the Holy Spirit in the believer’s sanctification, and most importantly, the sufficiency and authority of the Scripture for the believer. [46]

I am firmly convinced that Christian psychology represents one of the most dangerous challenges to the sufficiency of Christ and the authority of Scripture that the church has confronted this century. If this poison is allowed to continue, it will destroy the heart of Christianity. Christian psychology is, I believe, a modern day heresy. I was conned by Christian counselling. Will you join me in renouncing this heresy and getting back to biblical counselling?

Endnotes:

1. When I say that I was `conned’ by Christian counselling, I in no way suggest that I was a victim of some subversive activity. I voluntarily subjected myself to the integration of psychology with the Bible, thanks to the influential professors who taught counselling psychology in the evangelical seminary that I attended in the USA. It was my own lack of discernment that resulted in my accepting the unbiblical doctrines promoted in this program. Perhaps a better title would be, “How I allowed myself to be conned by the secular messages integrated into Christian counselling.” But that kind of title is too long — but accurate.

3. Answer: “To regard himself as a worthwhile human being. Nothing is sinful about the need to be worthwhile. . . To accept oneself as a worthwhile creature is absolutely necessary for effective, spiritual, joyful living.” (Lawrence J. Crabb Jr., Basic Principles of Biblical Counseling. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1975, 53).

4. Lawrence J. Crabb, Jr., Understanding People. Melbourne, Australia: Interbac (S. John Bacon), 1987, 55.

5. Ibid., 57-58.

6. Dr. Larry Crabb, Inside Out. Colorado Springs, Colorado: NavPress, 1988, 194.

7. Crabb, Understanding People, 129.

8. Lawrence J. Crabb Jr., Effective Biblical Counseling. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1977, 15.

9. Crabb, Understanding People, 129.

10. New American Standard Bible (NASB).

11. In Martin & Deidre Bobgan, Psychoheresy. Santa Barbara, CA: EastGate Publishers, 1989, in the “about this book” section, at beginning of this publication, emphasis added — no page number given.

12. Jim Owen, Christian Psychology’s War on God’s Word. Santa Barbara, CA: Eastgate Publishers, 1993, 21.

13. Bobgan, Psychoheresy, 4.

14. From ibid., 8.

15. William Kirk Kilpatrick, Psychological Seduction. Nashville (USA): Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1983, 23.

16. Martin & Deidre Bobgan, How to Counsel from Scripture. Chicago: Moody Press, 1985, 40; Martin Bobgan & Deidre Bobgan, Prophets of Psychoheresy I. Santa Barbara, CA: EastGate Publishers, 1989, 50.

17. In Bobgan, Prophets of Psychoheresy I, 51, Carl Rogers, “Some Personal Learnings about Interpersonal Relationships,” 16mm film developed by Dr. Charles K. Ferguson. University of California Extension Media Center, Berkeley, CA, film #6785.

18. Alice Petersen, Gary R. Sweeten, & Dorothy Faye Geverdt, Rational Christian Thinking. Cincinnati, Ohio: Christian Information Committee, 1987. This manual is available from the publishers, Box 24080, Cincinnati, Ohio, 45224, USA.

19. “Theory as Self-Portrait and the Ideal of Objectivity,” Journal of Humanistic Psychology, Spring 1982, pp. 91-92.

20. p. 15. This and the previous quote are from Bobgan, Prophets of Psychoheresy I, 53.

21. Bobgan, Psychoheresy, chapter 5.

22. Ibid., 31.

23. “Some Observations on the Fallacy of Value-free Therapy and the Empty Organism,” in Steven Morse and Robert Watson (Eds), Psychotherapies: A Comparative Casebook. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1977, 313.

24. The Modes and Morals of Psychotherapy. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1964, 6, 5). [Quotes from Bobgan, Prophets of Psychoheresy I, 41.

25. In Bobgan, Psychoheresy, 20, quoted by Allen Bergin, “Psychotherapy and Religious Values,” Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, Vol 48, p. 101, emphasis added.

26. In Bobgan, Psychoheresy, 20, The Shrinking of America, 5.

27. In Bobgan, Psychoheresy, 58.

28. Kilpatrick, Psychological Seduction, 37.

29. Ibid., 40.

30. In Owen, 190.

31. Ibid., 153.

32. Ibid, 121.

33. The Rejection Syndrome, Tyndale, 21, in Bobgan, Psychoheresy, 96.

33a. Santa Barbara, CA: EastGate Publishers, 1992.

34. Based on Owen, 13, 109.

35. In Owen, 29. “Religious Belief vs. Behavior,” The Church Around the World, September 1989.

36. Susan R. Walen, Raymond DiGiuseppe, Richard L. Wessler, A Practitioner’s Guide to Rational-Emotive Therapy. Oxford University Press, 1980, pp. 8-11,72, 74).

37. New International Version of the Bible (NIV).

38. In the brochure advertising the film, 6.

39. Based on Bobgan, Psychoheresy, 67-68.

40. 2 Peter 1:3, NIV.

41. In Bobgan, How to Counsel from Scripture, 87, quoted by Sol Garfield, “Psychotherapy Training and Outcome in Psychotherapy,” BMA audio cassette #T-305. New York: Guilford, 1979.

42. In Gary Collins, How To Be a People Helper. Santa Ana, California: Vision House Publishers, 1976, 58; R.R. Carkhuff, “Differential Functioning of Lay and Professional Helpers,” in Journal of Counseling Psychology, vol. 15, 1968, 117.

43. Bobgan, How to Counsel from Scripture, 43.

44. Ibid., 7.

45. In Bobgan, Prophets of Psychoheresy I, 101.

46. Based on Owen, p. 18.

I call you back to the all-sufficient Christ and the sufficiency of His Word in Christian counselling.