(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.

 

Copyright © 2007 Spencer D. Gear. This document last updated at Date: 21 December 2015.

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:

1. We were planned for God’s pleasure, so your first purpose is to offer real worship.
2. We were formed for God’s family, so your second purpose is to enjoy real fellowship.
3. We were created to become like Christ, so your third purpose is to learn real discipleship.
4. We were shaped for serving God, so your fourth purpose is to practice real ministry.
5. 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.