Well, good morning everyone. It is great to see everyone
who's here today want to say a special Happy Mother's Day to
all the the mothers, whether you are a a physical mother or even
a spiritual mother, there are women written about in Scripture
who had a motherly influence on people.
And whatever your role is, thank you because we as men have our
role. But we cannot do what you can do
in in any of the ways that God has designed you to be special
for what you provide. We simply cannot do it as men.
And any attempt to try to do that is going to be pretty
embarrassing and often times not what people really need.
And you guys are the heart and soul of many of our lives.
And so thank you for what you provide to us and for the
church, especially as we are a body here together.
We're going to continue on in first Peter.
We didn't finish chapter one the first time.
So if you'd like to open up with me there, we'll be spending all
of our time here in first Peter one and and getting a little bit
into chapter 2. But please turn there with me if
you'd like to follow along. And we're going to do a quick
run up. I don't want to take more than
just a few seconds to get us some momentum, but I want to
make sure we remember where we left off.
As we just mentioned a second ago, he's writing to the
pilgrims of the dispersion, people who are persecuted,
likely by the Emperor Nero, who is running them out of the the
running them out into the countryside.
And they were spreading off into these greater regions over here,
Bithynia, Cappadocia, all these regions.
And he reminds that they that they are elected by God, that
they have a deep connection with God the Father, the Holy Spirit,
and Jesus Christ and these different ways, letting them
know that the the Godhead has not abandoned you just because
you're suffering, just because you feel like everything is all
turned upside down for their world.
He's letting them know that God has abundant mercy toward them
and has given them a living hope in the face of their adversity.
He doesn't want to them to just sit and dwell on their problems.
He wants them to remind them of the hope they have.
And that hope is because of what our Lord did for us.
Because Jesus Christ died, He himself suffered and was
resurrected by God through his suffering into life.
That now gives us hope. And because of that, they share
in Jesus's sufferings. They rise from sufferings into a
living hope. Just as Jesus rose from the
dead. He talked about how they have an
inheritance that is reserved for them, that they are kept by the
power of God and they right now are being tried in various ways.
And he's acknowledging that. But he reminded them of the
value of their of their faith. He reminded them that it's like
gold that is needs to be refined by the fire and it's made more
pure and precious. And even though they haven't
seen it, they have faith in it. And that is the definition of
faith. It's when you walk by what you
can have faith in, not by what you can see.
And we'll can start to slow down now as we enter what we have not
covered yet. So we finished off talking about
this, he says of the salvation. The prophets have inquired and
searched carefully, searching what or what manner of time the
Spirit of Christ who was in them was indicating when he testified
beforehand. He said the prophets have always
wanted to know what you get to enjoy as Christians today, the
sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow.
Just like these people who are pilgrims to them.
It was revealed that not to themselves, but to us, they were
ministering the things that which have now been reported to
you. He said you guys are the ones
who have been everybody's been waiting for.
You're the ones who get to hear this message and get to have be
served by their thousands of years of of prophetic work that
was leading up to this point through those who have preached
the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit set from heaven.
Things which even angels, not just prophets, angels desire to
look into. He's showing them how they're in
a tough spot, but a special spot.
So here's where we left off. We just barely touched on this
verse, verse 13. He says, therefore gird up the
loins of your mind. And because I just bounced over
this verse, I want to talk a little bit more about here.
We talked about how we need to tie up the excess.
We need to get the things out of our way.
They're going to hold us back in battle.
And we talked about how that could be seen, that could be
distractions that we're aware of.
Maybe it's excess things, but I want to confess to you this
morning you'll go a little bit deeper because I personally
underestimate the control I have over my mind.
I do. And I even underestimate the
impact that my mind has on everything about me.
It's simple. We can't see it.
It's not like you know you. You see it.
It's clear. It happens.
You know you. You pop one thing in the oven,
something comes out. It's not that simple with our
with our minds. Our minds are complicated and I
personally underestimate the influence.
But there is a man named Wim Hof that Tina introduced me to the
other day that is really unlocked and showed us the power
of our minds, the power of our habits over our minds and over
our bodies. And that's just a reminder to
me. This is not a lesson on him.
He is not the guru that you and I should be following with our
whole life, but he discovered that he can control his own
bodily automatic functions like his immune system through some
simple steps like meditation and even cold therapy.
There's things that inhabits that he has embedded in his
life, but he can literally control his immune system.
I have. We have a lot more control over
what we what goes on with us then we want to admit.
Why? Because the more control we
admit we have, the more responsibility it takes from us.
And as soon as I admit that I have responsibility over my own
mind and what happens in here and what I take in, as soon as I
admit that, life gets a little bit harder because now
everything you do and everything we do matters.
But here's a reminder for me that I need to be responsible
for my own mind in my hope. Hope's not easy, as we were
talking even about as an extension of this conversation.
Hope, empathy, joy, peace, restfulness, these are not easy
things to achieve. They're not just going to happen
to us. But I'm responsible for how my
mind is in respect to these concepts.
How do I know that's true? From Scripture?
1st Corinthians 10 verse 4 says for the weapons of our warfare
are not carnal but mighty, and God for pulling down
strongholds. Those strongholds can be a lot
of different things. The devil can establish places
on the earth where he has a lot of influence.
He can establish places in our hearts where he has a lot of
influence. He can establish and build up
overtime things that work against the work of God.
Who am I to think that that can't happen inside of me, A
Christian who's doing his, maybe doing his best, you might say.
I might think, but also has areas that the devil is working
on. Our weapons are for casting down
arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the
knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity, to the
obedience of Christ, every thought into captivity.
Do I underestimate the value and the literality of what that
statement is saying that all of my thoughts need to be
surrendered and humbled to God? And I'm not saying the like,
I've, you know, sometimes when people become very interested in
God, it's sometimes it's like they can't talk about you can't
talk about work. It's like all I can talk about
is God. And I'm not saying there's
anything wrong with being consumed with God, but the point
is, do all my thoughts, do my anxious thoughts surrender to
God? Do my trust, my hopes, surrender
to God instead of relying on things in the future or with a
person or with a time or a place that is going to make me where I
need to be? Does every thought, every area
of my heart surrender to God? And is it and is it impacted by
the work of God's will in my life?
And I would submit that I have a lot of work to do in that
regard. We have weapons of our warfare
and we need to be fighting against the things internally
and externally that might be strongholds for the devil.
Now, maybe this is a way to start with your diet if you are
feeling unhealthy or if you are looking or or anything
unhealthy, typically they'll say start with your diet and the
only way to evaluate your diet is to track things.
OK, so you make a list, you write a journal.
Monday I ate eggs and toast. For breakfast.
I had two eggs and one piece of toast.
For snacks, I had a granola bar. For lunch I had a cheeseburger
and fries. For dinner I had pizza and a
salad. And for dessert I had ice cream.
OK, you start to just log information.
You start to see what am I taking in, what are my patterns
that is creating what you see in front of you or what I feel
inside of me for physical health.
OK, the point of making a list is not to say every one of these
things is wrong. Pizza in itself is probably not
that bad, or cheeseburger by itself is not that bad.
But you might look at this and say, OK, I could see where
there's some things that might, you know, give you some some
acid reflux. Or you might before dinner,
probably don't want to eat that ice cream without pizza.
And you're just going to say this is what's going to come out
of this. If you do this, it's not
necessarily a a criticism of somebody, but you start to track
the intake and it results in a product.
What if we do that with our minds?
Have you ever done this with your mind to consider why you
are way the way you are right now with regard to peace or
stress or lack of empathy or empathy?
Have you ever tracked what you're taking in?
Let's say we did this without food, but let's say it's with
our minds food. Let's say for the 1st 30 minutes
of my day, my breakfast so to speak, I spent my day watching
the news where they told me the economy's collapsing, morality
is crumbling, our government is corrupt and three people were
arrested for robbing a locally owned business.
Then I rushed to get ready for work and the 15 minutes I had
left before I had to leave. I looked in the mirror, unhappy
with my appearance, my age, my fitness, maybe my lack of sleep,
beauty care, and then I told God thank you for my food and I was
out the door. OK, as we think about our diet,
what is this diet going to result in?
I drove to work anxious about being late and frustrated with
myself because I did not wake up early enough.
I was annoyed by all the people in Bakersfield.
We have some of the worst driving rates and statistics in
the country, so it's maybe a valid annoyance for all the
people in Bakersfield who don't know how to drive.
Then when I got to work, a Co worker talked to me about how
much they were tired of this job and the frustrations that come
with it. At lunch I spent 30 minutes
scrolling on my phone. Random people that either made
me laugh about ridiculous things or made me annoyed that some
people can be so dumb before I moved on to look at somebody
else doing the same thing. And those extremes left me
internally numb to low stimulation activities that I
was going to be engaged with it with at work ahead of me.
I went back to work dreading the last three hours of the day.
I'm not saying this is me. I'm not saying this is any of
you. I'm just saying here's a sample
of what might happen in our minds that we might be feeding
on. So then at dinner, I got home so
tired after work, I just wanted to relax.
So I turned on the TV and watched insert any whether it's
sport, whether it's reality TV show, whether it's movie for 90
minutes where I caught up emotion.
When I got caught up emotionally in the plot of something that
has nothing to do with me or has no bearing on my life.
I got a prayer request. I got an e-mail from GAIL that
says and someone needs an our prayers.
And so I said a three second prayer for them and I moved on.
I got up, I looked at the house, I saw 13 things that needed to
be done and I felt overwhelmed. Before bed, my bedtime snack.
Mentally you might say. I read my Bible for 10 minutes,
but I was very sleepy and not interested in what I was
reading. I said a prayer and mentioned a
family member who was sick. I went to sleep worried about
them. I blew through that to try to
give us some idea of what we might be feeding on.
Is this what we're feeding our minds and non judge mentally,
completely, objectively? What am I going to get out of a
mind that feeds like this? Let's try to identify whatever
fruits might come off of or products might come from this.
Is this going to create peace, anxiety, closeness with God,
selflessness, hopefulness about the future, empathy, hunger for
righteousness? Is it going to create hunger for
entertainment? Is it going to give me a restful
mind? Is it going to give me joy or is
it going to give me stress as we evaluate what we're feeding on,
You know what social media, they call it your feed.
It's what we feed on mentally. Is this going to give us what we
need to fight the spiritual warfare that we're fighting?
I ask you this from a place of lowness on this scale as well.
If you feel that way. Let's let's evaluate.
I'm going to try to blow through because I don't want to spend a
bunch of time with with these hypotheticals, but let's say
just a completely different mental diet.
Again, this is not the perfect thing.
This is just a let's just throw this out there.
Let's say I woke up to the first minute of my day.
One minute I spent was on my knees.
I thanked God forgive me. Whatever rest I did get.
I remember the stresses ahead of me.
So I asked the father to walk with me and whatever was to
come. I took a deep breath and thought
about the fact that he really just heard my prayer.
I ate breakfast and read 3 verses on a daily schedule.
I'm on one phrase in first Peter.
One reminded me to love my brethren with a pure heart.
That made me think about my brother who is in need.
I said a prayer for them and sent them a text message.
I drove to work and had to remind myself to be peaceful on
the road and to give preference to others even here.
I sing praises to God in the privacy of my car that made me
think about His greatness and His loving qualities.
I picked a parking spot that was further away from the building
so that others could get to a closer spot in case they needed
it. I took the first two minutes of
my lunch break to be alone, to breathe deep, and to thank God
in prayer for both my job and for the rest I get with a quick
break. I spent 10 minutes of my break
reading and meditating on scripture.
At the end of my break, when I was tired, I asked God for
strength to continue on and to have a good attitude and work
ethic through the weakness I felt.
I went home and just rested after my work day in a
comfortable chair for 30 minutes, no stimulation, no
shows, no nothing. And I went for a 15 minute walk
and admired the things around me.
I admired the trees, the birds, the natural beauty that is here
even in Bakersfield, the low stimulation, peaceful things.
My mind was unoccupied. I had space to think about my
friend and something I can help them do.
I sent them a message offering my help a few days from now.
For my bedtime snack, I read the Bible for 10 minutes, praying to
God about the things I read. I said a prayer and mentioned a
family member who was sick, and I went to sleep comforted that
God can watch over them in ways I cannot.
I hope I didn't take too much time in your perspective going
through this. But the point is, what do we
think the results of a day like this might yield?
If I'm feeding on this kind of mental food, what do we think
it'll create? Do we?
Do we think it'll create restful mind, A hunger for
righteousness, or a hunger for entertainment, anxiety or peace?
Sometimes we want the results without the resolve.
Sometimes we want to have the shortcut to a mind that is
strong and peaceful without the mental diet that it takes to
achieve that. And maybe there's things where
you felt peace without doing some of these really hard habits
that you felt younger in life that now where you're at in
life, you don't have peace anymore.
What's funny is we say that about our diets.
I used to be able to eat that and I can't eat that anymore.
It leaves me feeling bad. And so I have to change my diet
physically now that I'm older. For whatever reason, it's just
where I'm at in life. Maybe spiritually you're there.
Maybe you're thinking I used to be at peace.
Life used to be good, and I wasn't doing all this stuff to
be a better Christian or to change my mind or to develop
peace. Maybe the answer is I Maybe it
was a grace of God that allowed me to find peace even without
all these habits. And maybe now we need to find a
healthy diet intellectually by girding up the loins of our mind
and resting our hope fully upon the grace that is to be brought
to us at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
I hope you and I will both consider what we are feeding
ourselves mentally so that we can really gird up our loins for
the Lord's work. Let's continue on verse 14 as
obedient children, not conforming yourselves to the
former lusts as in your ignorance.
Obedience will change our mind as we talk about all the ways to
change your mind and fill with better.
Obedience will do that. And there's a tendency for our
minds to be conformed like an old extension cord to a shape
that it's been in before, and it wants to go back to that old
shape. He says don't be conformed to
that. Don't go back to that in the
former lusts as in your ignorance before you knew, but
as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your
conduct because it is written the holy for I am holy.
You know what makes it worth it to fight your way out of that,
that shape that the extension cord used to be in, how to fight
your way out of that place in your mind.
What makes it worth it is the one who's calling you is holy.
He makes it worth it to come out of that.
He says verse 17. And if you call on the Father,
who with art without partiality judges according to each one's
work, conduct yourselves throughout the time of your stay
here in fear. What he's telling Wade Branch is
if I want to call on the Father, if I want to address him as
Father, I need to walk the walk. I need to conduct myself in
fear. Now that fear is an active
awareness of the presence and greatness of God.
He even tells me there that God judges without partiality.
He's not going to favour one person because of who they came
from or their background or any other thing.
And maybe they need to hear that because maybe when you're
suffering, you can give yourself excuses.
Maybe when we're going through a hard time, it's like, you know
what, the least I can do is indulge in this.
But he says there's no partiality.
That's a good thing and sometimes a challenging thing
that God judges without partiality.
According to our work. Throughout the time of your stay
here in fear, it's just like this is a a visit at this this
hotel of life. He says knowing that you were
not redeemed with corruptible things like silver or gold from
your aimless conduct received by tradition from your Father's,
but with the precious blood of Christ as of a lamb without
blemish and without spot. Did you know you don't own
yourself? Our culture wants to say the
exact opposite. That is almost the ideal we can
achieve is you are your own person, you do whatever you want
to do. And in a sense that's great.
We have free will. We are blessed with that.
And we live in a country that is free, but we don't own
ourselves. We were bought.
The price has already been paid. And it's funny, he was talking
about gold in the in the past sense, like gold was the ideal
that you refined by fire. But he's saying in this context,
gold is worthless, gold is corruptible, it's trash, it's
going to be burned up in the final day.
But we were purchased with the precious blood of Christ.
That is beyond the value of any earthly thing because it's
spiritual in nature. And not only is it spiritual in
nature, it is the highest quality of blood that the
spiritual realm had the offer. It wasn't angelic blood.
It was the blood of the divine as of a lamb without blemish and
without spot. In the Old Testament, they had
to make a sacrifice of a land that was perfect.
It couldn't be that the land they wanted to throw away
anyway, that was going to get shipped out to pasture anyway.
It was the lamb that had nothing wrong with it, that was not
going to be wasted, but it was the top of their crop.
This is Jesus, He is the tip of the top.
He is the only sacrifice that could buy us and He bought us
from our aimless conduct received from our fathers.
We are thankful for our ancestors because they brought
our family line to this point. But many times we look back and
there was aimlessness there. Doesn't mean that they weren't
good people, but maybe that there wasn't a a point, there
was an aim. There wasn't a focus of life
that led to the point where I'm going to heaven.
That's my aim and I'm going to glorify God with my life.
He says you had that and you were purchased out of that.
It was a system that you were going to be stuck in just like
your Father's and you were purchased out of that.
And this Lamb who that was without blemish and without spot
was foreordained. Verse 20 He would He indeed was
foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was
manifest in these last times for you there was a plan ahead of
time before their sufferings for them who through him believe in
God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory.
So that your faith and hope are in God since you have purified
your souls and obeying the truth through the Spirit in sincere
love of the brethren, love one another fervently with a pure
heart. So this is part of the reason we
know he's writing to Christians. He's saying you have purified
yourselves. He's not writing to random
people. He's writing to people who have
purified themselves in obeying the truth through the Spirit.
We get the truth from the Spirit of God and the and the Spirit
works in US and sincere love of the brethren.
He says because of this, he's commanding them to love one
another fervently. Now he's saying you already have
a sincere love. What is this command to love
fervently? As I understand this word,
fervent was often used to describe a stretching or a
straining. And specifically in the in the
ancient days, it would describe a horse running across the
battlefield going full speed to attack the enemy.
It's a stretching and a straining.
As you see, this horse is is just a full gallop launching
itself. That's the verb he uses to
describe the way he wants us to love each other.
Do we love like that? Do I love my brethren like that?
Do I just exist as part of the church now?
I don't at all want you to feel like you're existing in the
state that you're in right now is a problem.
You are sitting in your seats showing respect and reverence to
the Word of God and a care for the Word of God.
It's not the sitting right now that's under consideration.
It's what is our life like outside of these seats, outside
of this room? Do we love each other?
Do I love you all with the kind of love that I would describe as
a stretching or a straining? You might even give a visual of
somebody lifting weights with with a strain.
Do I love like that? Do you love like that?
Do you Would you describe your work for the people in this room
as a stretch and a strain? Because in order to participate
in the glorious honours of this message, to truly be Christians,
this is the kind of love he commands of us.
Just like we're commanded to worship God on the first day of
the week in the commune, we are commanded to love with a fervent
and a almost an aggression that we are going to serve.
Now we can't just do it with with it with reckless abandoned,
but he says to do with a pure heart that we would have pure
intentions, pure motives, not trying to be better not than
other people and and make ourselves somehow lifted up
because we are loving others better.
This has to do with the pure heart having been born again,
not a corruptible see, but incorruptible.
He says you, you, you guys are are have a new life and it's not
just a new life like the one you got when you came into this
world through your through through your mother.
It's a life that is different in the sense that this time the
seed that you are part of we read in the Corinthian letter is
going to not be corrupted. It's going to be incorruptible
through the word of God, which lives and abides forever.
The second time we were born. It is so much different round
two. We are a whole different seed
verse 24, because all flesh is as grass and all the glory of
man has the flower of grass. The grass wizard Withers and
it's flower falls away. I've got weeds right now in my
in my garden that were so bright and green and just a couple days
later now they're completely brown already.
We see that in this state. We know what that looks like, he
says, but the word of the Lord endures forever.
We will go away so fast. It's like grass, but the word of
the Lord endures forever. The word endures in integrity.
People try to speak against the word of the Lord like it's been
polluted. It has never been polluted.
Jesus says heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will by
no means pass away. It is.
It endures forever in importance.
The Word of God still has the importance it has.
It had thousands of years ago today and the impact it has on
people's life, as we have been seeing recently, it still has
the impact and it endures forever.
I think of it almost like the Sequoia standing above all the
other pesky things that come and go.
The word of the Lord endures forever.
Now this is the word by the gospel, which by the gospel was
preached to you going on in chapter 2.
He says Therefore, laying aside all malice, all deceit, all
hypocrisy, envy and all evil speaking, this is kind of a kind
of a, you might say some other instructions as to how to gird
up your minds. Malice, what is that?
Malice is evil intention. It's not having the best
interest for somebody else, but having contrary intentions, all
deceit that my words and my intentions would not be
completely true and straightforward and honest with
people. He says get rid of that.
All hypocrisy, the tendency to want to portray yourself like
you're something different that you're not.
He says get rid of that. Be straightforward, he says,
laying aside all envy. So sometimes the roots of this
is you want what someone else has.
You long for somebody else's things, Get rid of that.
And all evil speaking, Sometimes this is the roots of these other
things, the way we talk about people, the way we speak of
people, he says. Lay all that aside, get that out
of here. And as newborn babes desire the
pure milk of the word that you may grow thereby, if indeed you
have tasted that the Lord is gracious.
This phrase reminds me that he's writing to people who have
tasted it. He's saying you have seen this
before. Now go back to the word.
Go back to the pure milk of the word.
And especially I believe he's saying in times of trial,
sometimes we need to go back to the basics.
When we're in times of trial, we don't always need to go to the
to the depths of meat. I know of people in my life who
they were going through something very difficult, but
all they wanted to study was the end times of revelation and the
the rapture. They wanted to study these all
these concepts that are not milk.
But when people are struggling, he says, go back to the milk you
need to grow right now. And as babies grow from the from
the milk of the word, from the milk, he says, so you may grow
thereby from the milk of the word.
It is natural for a baby to crave milk, Taylor tells me.
Sometimes she has been nursing for two hours straight.
It's constant. It's just ridiculous.
I've fed her 17 times a day, she said.
And we need to desire the milk of the word because that's why a
baby grows. If you were a baby spiritually,
would you survive on the milk of the word that you are taking in?
Would you survive if you were a literal baby based on what
you're taking in from Scripture? We grow from it.
If you want to grow, it always starts there.
He says verse 4, coming to him as to a living stone, rejected
indeed by men, but chosen by God and precious.
You remember who's writing this? It's Peter.
Remember what Peter's name is? It's a Little Rock, a fragment
of a rock compared to Jesus Christ.
You were going to see in a minute is the is the bedrock of
our foundation. He's saying you also are living
stone. It's not just me, Peter.
You are living stones. You're you're not just aimlessly
thrown into the regions of Galatia and Cappadocia and
Bithynia. You are part of a building.
You are a rock that is being rejected by men, but you are a
stone that is alive. You're part of the building.
You're a living stone, but chosen by God and precious.
We're going to come back to this first chosen.
If you've noticed he's used chosen elect and appointed
several times. We'll come back to this in just
a minute. He says you're being built up a
spiritual house. You also as living stones are
being built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood to
OfferUp spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus
Christ. We together or a spiritual
house, a dwelling place for God, not a literal temple, but a
spiritual one. Therefore it is also contained
in the Scripture. Behold, I lay in Zion.
Zion is is a is the mountain of the Lord.
It's the place where you go to the Lord.
It's the place where his power and strength comes from.
He says, behold, I lay in this mountain where the Lord comes
from, a chief cornerstone, elect and precious.
He's Speaking of Jesus, and he who believes on him will by no
means be put to shame. He's he's showing them the part
of this house that Jesus is also part of their value and their
role in the Kingdom. And he who believes on him will
by no means be put to shame on earth.
Yes, there's shame for Christians.
They're treated shamefully, but the shame that actually matters
is the final shame where the Lord either confirms or denies
us, and He says that will happen.
You won't be put to shame in the end.
Verse 7. Therefore, to you who believe He
is precious, but to those who are disobedient, the stone which
the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone and a
stone of stumbling and a rock of offense.
They threw him away. They buried him, but on the
place where he was buried, a spiritual house was erected.
A spiritual house was then built piece after piece on the place
where they thought he was going to be buried in the lay.
That spiritual house grew, and it still grows today, and they
were part of it. And he wanted them to know
they're being treated the same way.
And you may be treated the same way, insignificant and rejected,
but you're part of that same house.
And if you're unfamiliar with cornerstones in building,
basically you have to have something to ground to.
Back in those days, they can't necessarily make their own
stones. Today we can make our own stones
with concrete footings and we can anchor to those.
But to them it became a rock, a rock of stumbling, an offence.
It says they stumble being disobedient to the word to which
they also were appointed. OK, so we've talked about being
chosen, elected, and even other people are appointed.
What's going on? This phrase he says verse 9.
But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy
nation, his own special people. OK, let's consider this chosen
and elected. I brought this up slightly in
our last lesson. I told you we're going to talk
about it more. We've already talked about in
the book of Galatians and several other places, how
understanding the election of God, how God chooses us there.
There's a lot to it and it's, it's beyond us to be honest with
you. But we talked about how, you
know, there's the difference between conditional election and
unconditional election, meaning God chooses me if I'm willing to
serve him or God chooses me regardless of anything I do.
We talked about general election being God chooses a group of
people, Christians who will serve him that he's going to
save versus choosing individual people that he's going to save.
These are concepts we've already addressed, but I think there's
an issue here to address that we are jumping to a discussion of
salvation. That election we always end up
talking about like you're like you're saved.
And I want to challenge that a little bit by discussing what
the role of election and chosen the Bible is as a whole.
First of all, let's look at the promise to Abraham in Genesis
12, verse one. Now the Lord said to Abram, get
out of your country from your family and from your father's
house to a land that I will show you.
I will make you a great nation. I will bless you and I will make
your name great and you shall be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you and I will curse those who curse
you, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.
This is super important. The God chooses people to use
throughout the Old Testament. This is one of many examples,
but it never is in the context from my studies of I'm saving
you. It's not.
It's not not even what he's saying.
He's saying I'm choosing you for a role and actually I'm choosing
you so that you shall bless other people.
The role, I believe of election and choosing the Bible is God's
giving people a purpose in his master plan.
Now being saved is often part of that.
Obviously if you're going to be part of God's plan, you want to
be saved. And so that's the goal of is
saving but. He goes on to say in Genesis 17
verse 9, and God said to Abraham, As for you, you shall
keep my covenant, you and your descendants after you throughout
their generations. So he had a he had a purpose
tied to it. Part of the reason I think
that's important to note is he just said Jesus was elect.
My slide got out of order, so let me go back.
He says the stone which the builders rejected has become the
chief cornerstone, that being Jesus.
He says the chief cornerstone was elect.
My point I'm making is election I don't believe is a synonym for
saved. We wouldn't say Jesus was a
chief cornerstone. He was saved.
Jesus wasn't saved. Jesus was perfect, he was God.
Election and saved are not synonyms.
The point is, God has chosen Jesus for a work and Jesus has
agreed and surrendered to that work just in the same way that
God has chosen us for a work. Sorry, I bounced around a lot.
That we are the living stones chosen by God for a work so that
we are the only ones who saved. No, so that we will then in turn
hope to save others and bring them into God's family.
I believe that's the biblical picture of election and that's
why these people who are appointed, I don't believe it's
saying these people were chosen by God to be damned, that
they're chosen to go to hell. I don't believe that's what it's
saying. I believe what it's saying is
they were drawn in to God's planet.
That's the side they're going to be on.
He is going to put them into a use.
Now, why is that important? I believe it illustrates that
God is going to be deeply involved in everybody's life,
whether you or I choose to serve God or not.
He's like, I'm going to appoint you for a purpose.
I'm going to use you in my master plan.
If you're going to serve me, I will use you for my glory and
for your eventual glory. The point is, God has a purpose
and a role for everybody, and He is going to be deeply involved
in our lives, whether we wonder or not, whether it's for a good
thing or for a bad thing. So may we be those chosen that
surrender to Him and appointed for good things because they
probably didn't feel like a chosen generation?
You go back to maybe why he was even he was even writing this.
These people were probably feel like the lost generation, the
scattered generation into the into the regions of Cappadocia,
Asia and Bithynia. But he says, no, you're a chosen
generation. You're a royal priesthood in the
Old Testament. They had these people who are
all performing their orderly work in the temple, and that
probably felt so empowering to be part of that system, he says
you are also a royal priesthood, scattered into the regions and
dispersed like pilgrims. You are still a royal priesthood
because the priesthood wasn't about the robes or the temple.
The priesthood was about faithfulness and service to God.
And these people he's writing to are doing that, He says.
You are a holy nation. They probably felt like they had
no nation, that they were pilgrims and dispersed,
persecuted. But he says you have a you are a
holy nation still. At least the Jewish people had a
nation. He says you are still a nation,
his own special people. They probably felt like a
forgotten people because of their current persecution.
But he says, You are a special people closing up here, that you
may proclaim the praises of him who called you out of darkness
and into his marvelous light. What a picture who are once not
a people, but are now the people of God, who had not obtained the
mercy, but now have obtained the mercy.
Beloved, I beg you as sojourners and pilgrims that you are, He
says Abstain from from fleshly lusts which war against the
soul. We've talked about that a lot
today. Let's stay away from the things.
Don't make our fight harder than it needs to be.
If we're going to fight this fight, don't make it harder than
it needs to be on ourselves. Having your conduct honourable
among the Gentiles, that when they speak against you as evil
doers, as rejected stones, they may by your good works which
they observe, glorify God in the day of visitation.
We want people to come to God, We want people to be saved.
And if you can't muster the strength to care about people
enough to want that, at least do it for God, because God deserves
their glory. May we act in a way that will
lead them to God so that God gets the glory that He has
always deserved. In the day of visitation, He's
going to visit us again. He'll be back.
We want God to get the glory from every person possible.
Have you started this walk? Romans 10/17 says faith comes by
hearing and hearing by the word of God.
We're told to believe and that's where that that belief comes
from is hearing the word of God. Mark 16 and 16 tells us that and
and we're told to repent according to Luke 13 and 3.
We're told to confess called according to Romans 10 verse 9
and 10. And if we confess the Jesus
Christ and the Son of God, we can be baptized for the
remission of our sins, have our sins washed away.
And if you've done that, it's time to live faithfully.
It doesn't end there. That's the point at which you
enter and contact the blood of Christ and have sins washed
away. But it's not the end, it's the
beginning. And if you have started this
walk, well, if you have not started this walk, you can be
advertised today, as we saw last week, it can be very fast.
We can take care of that today. Or if you have started, you need
to get back on the right track. You need the prayers of the
Saints. Please come while we stand and
see.