Review of 1 Peter

We're not going to read because we're going to review 1 Peter and we're not just focusing on a few verses this week, so we'll just dig right in. And one thing to note, this is the 33rd week of 1 Peter. And so we technically finished last week. But this week we're reviewing, which is kind of a code word for the pastor wanted some time off. So if your teacher ever reviews in your class in school or anything, it just means they needed a break.

So that's like what John did to us last week, right? Greek class. Excuse me. And so this is the goal. The goal is to get a review of what we've seen in 1 Peter. Some of you haven't been here the whole time.

And all the sermons are available. So if you're really craving to know what we did with 1 Peter, you can go listen to those. And for some of us, it's going to be a good reminder of what we saw. I do find, you know, review is good, even if it's not just for the reason I gave earlier. and a lot of times it gives us a chance to kind of remember things that maybe we've forgotten you know week to week we hear a new thing and we're focused on our own personal devotions and maybe you're studying something else independently as well and so to be reminded of what Peter's told us will be good my goal is is to actually so I always joke about pulling a double header with the communion.

My goal was to actually make this a shorter sermon and then the communion sermon is actually going to be extended this week. So don't get excited when it ends and think we're going to be out early. Also, after we pray, I'm going to ask, Bert, are you doing the last song again? I'm going to do the song before communion. So after we pray, you can come up just so we know that that's happening.

Just so you're not surprised. All right, well, first Peter. So what we talked about was Peter was the apostle of Jesus Christ. If you look at the very first verse, he introduces himself. Something to remember. I'm not going to go verse by verse through this, I promise.

But something to remember when you read the scripture. And it says something as simple as Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, by the inspired word of God, by the God-breathed spirit of God, writing this out for us through the people who wrote the Bible, is that what will amaze you if you hang around long enough and dispute with people enough about the Scripture is people will contest those very facts first. I remember reading online this week, it was a quote by Paul, and the very first comment on Twitter, that's where Bert and I like to hang out, we're the Twitter-ins in here as far as I know.

The very first comment I saw, though, was Paul didn't write that. people just decide hey if we just say Paul didn't write it then we don't have to listen to it at all I want you to remember when you read the scripture every word is put there for a reason in fact Jesus said not an iota not a dot will fall away from my law until all is accomplished each and everything in the scripture is important There's no small parts or big parts. There's harder parts. There's things that maybe have more impact.

But every jot and tittle is God's. And we're to try to understand it that way. It's one of the reasons why there's a large portion of people here that are taking a Greek class right now, right? Because we actually want to see what it said originally, so we can maybe do some of our own translations and resolve conflicts and things like that. But Peter goes in in verse 2.

I just love it. It just goes right into the doctrine of election. He says, according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in the sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood, may grace and peace be multiplied to you. The apostles were not shy about the doctrines that we have decided are the ones we're a little bit scared to talk about.

Because centuries of church history has shown us that sects of Christianity will break off and believe aberrant doctrines, strange doctrines, sometimes sort of good, kind of similar to good doctrine, but not quite good doctrine. And because of our fear of offending people, because of our desire to remain in good fellowship with people who we think are good Christians still, sometimes we're afraid to talk about some of these doctrines that are really divisive for them. The apostles weren't. and Jesus wasn't either.

And so we shouldn't be. We should actually realize that when we begin a conversation with another Christian, if we want to proclaim the truth of what God has said, then that should actually be sweet to their ears, because his sheep hear his voice. And it's actually through telling people the truth of what the Scripture says that the Holy Spirit uses that word that we've given them to work in their life and possibly to change their mind about something.

So there's an old saying, you know, about unity and truth. And the saying goes, you know, we should have unity, but never at the expense of truth. Because the temptation is when you're talking to somebody that doesn't agree with you about some of these hard truths, the temptation is to say, well, let's look at where we're unified and just focus on those things.

And that's not a terrible thing to do to try to maintain a little bit of friendship and maybe to build something up. But what usually ends up happening is you abandon the truth. We stop talking about the thing that we know is true because well that divisive because that person doesn want to hear it This is the temptation of Planned Parenthood It not with other Christians but when we get there and we with the Catholics and there are a bunch of very dear Catholic people that go to Planned Parenthood when we're there, and they're there more than we are.

And I pray for them regularly. I love these people so much. And yet I stand next to them and we talk about some of the similar things, And what I have to realize is that they need to know the truth. They need the truth of the gospel. And as important as it is to stand there and interpose on behalf of the babies, and to try to stand there and educate the moms and the dads that are showing up about what's really going on, and to teach them the gospel, we need to also do that with the people that are, in one sense, standing there on our side. and they're in some ways agreeing with us about the abortion issue but we need to stand for truth and so we're going to be criticized for that we have been criticized for it so I'll tell you that but we will continue to be criticized for not standing arm in arm with people that we're in disagreement with about the gospel and about the way the gospel works we'll be criticized for that and the temptation will be well maybe we should join arms with someone like Ben Shapiro because he says a lot of good republican things and a lot of those things align with what we believe from a Judeo-Christian worldview but we have something far better than a Judeo-Christian worldview we have the gospel of Jesus Christ we have the gospel of Jesus Christ that from the beginning of time before the beginning of time, excuse me there, but from all eternity past, God decreed who was going to be saved.

He elected some for himself. And those are the ones that he's going to call and come to him. Jesus said, all that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. And Jesus said later in the same chapter, John chapter 6, that no one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. and so we have this beautiful doctrine of election, this doctrine that teaches us that we are totally depraved in our sin, we are guilty before a holy God, not only because of the things that you've done, and everybody in here has done things, but you're guilty before God because of the sin that you inherited from your father Adam.

Maria's baby whose gender we don't know yet is already a sinner in the eyes of a holy God sounds kind of strict but that's the way it works with covenant theology Adam is the federal head of everybody in this room until they are taken out of the covenant with Adam and put into the one that Jesus Christ inaugurated and the one that Jesus Christ completed the covenant of grace and so we praise God for his election rather than being afraid to talk about it and so Peter goes on though and the point of Peter's letter a lot of people would agree is do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you which is in chapter 4 verse 12 that's really what he's trying to communicate to these people and what he's doing is he's telling the church he's telling people just like you and me He's telling them how to live as sojourners and exiles in a strange land. I believe that we could use the Old Testament exiles of the Jews at times and the instructions there as instructions for us. And we talked about that when we were in verse 1 back in August.

But what Peter tells people to do is to focus on their future hope and not on worldly things. So look at verse 13 of chapter 1. Peter says, therefore, so because of the salvation that was prophesied for you, and because your faith is going to be tested, and because that's going to bring you assurance, he says, therefore, preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

You've already received grace. if you're sitting here today and you've been justified in the eyes of a holy God, you've received grace Peter talked about being foreknown by God elected by God you've been called by God you've been drawn by the Father to believe in Jesus Christ and you've believed the gospel and if you believe the gospel, you've been justified that means that God looks at you as if you have done no sin at all and have done all the righteous deeds that Jesus Christ did. That's what it means to be justified by grace. And that means that you've received more grace than we can describe.

I can't come up with analogies and pictures to try to tell you how much grace it is. If I said, oh, imagine the Grand Canyon and it's filling up and then it keeps filling for a billion years, it doesn't even scratch the surface of the amount of grace that was required to save sinners like you and me. But what you need to understand is there's more grace.

Because right now, each and every one of us, and we talked about this, we're all sitting here, we're still in a flesh. We're still in an unredeemed body. And Peter wants you to understand that while you're in this unredeemed body, while you're struggling to fulfill verse 15, you be holy in all your conduct, because your flesh pulls you to be unholy still, even though your spirit is at war with your flesh your spirit that now loves righteousness Peter says set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ what that grace is is it the grace that says hey I coming back and when I do everybody getting a new body And if you're not looking forward to that, maybe you're not in the battle with your flesh that you should be.

Because if you're a Christian, and you're somehow comfortable in your flesh, you've gotten more control over your flesh than the apostle Paul did who said woe is me who's going to deliver me from this body of sin in Romans 7 the end of the chapter about verse 24 okay and I was even texting with somebody here about this this week this battle we're in this hatred of how of how you act and Peter says set your hope on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ your hope isn't in your ability to overcome your sin in this life. You will be granted continual assurance as you're continually sanctified, and that is promised. Sanctification is as much a promise of the gospel as your glorification.

And so we don't ignore the progressive growth in Christ, the progressive sanctification. But we don't pretend that any of us will be perfect. We also don't pretend that our bodies don't matter. that was the Gnostic heresy or that our bodies were simply evil and there was nothing good about them Jesus Christ had a body his body wasn't evil but he gave it up for us so we're told to be holy as he is holy and we're also told we're going to suffer and so we look forward to when Jesus returns if you look in chapter 2 then of 1 Peter it starts out chapter 2 I actually may have started it with verse 22 if I was making chapters but whatever, of chapter 1 but Peter says put away malice, deceit, hypocrisy envy and all slander it's implied when he tells you to put it away that it's there and for some of us we have to come to terms with the fact that some of these sins that are listed in the scripture are not the big bad ones that are so easy to point out in other people.

They're not even the big bad ones that for us were the most obvious and easy to overcome. The general Christian experience is this. You are justified by faith by believing in Christ. Your outward sins are so heinous, obvious, and disgusting to you immediately. And even though it takes time sometimes. I'm not trying to tell you it's overnight.

But your outward sins are so filthy and disgusting to you, you put them away pretty quickly. Relatively speaking. I know some things take people a long time to deal with. But the inward sins, those are the ones that you don't even realize were there. You have sin in you that is so deep that you don't even understand that it's there because you're still enjoying the outward ones.

And when you start to put those away, that's when you start to struggle with some of these other ones. That's when deceit pops up. And you think, well, I'm not a liar. Maybe you don't lie outwardly. Maybe you don't go to work and tell lies. But maybe you lie to yourself.

Maybe you're not honest with yourself about your sin. maybe you're not honest with God in your prayers maybe you're not honest deep down inside malice maybe you don't murder people but malice goes to the heart how many of us in this room on the wrong day if a weapon was right near you or something bad could have happened to somebody that you say you love. A lot of murders and stuff are just crimes of passion. People just lost control once.

But some of us learn how to control that stuff, but it bubbles beneath the surface. So we want to look at these things from the perspective of Christ is coming back. We hate our flesh. So we put away malice, deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and all slander. We long for the pure spiritual milk that will grow up into salvation. And Peter uses this analogy of a building.

Christ, the Holy Spirit, God is building a building with stones. And we're stones that are being built on top of the cornerstone, Jesus Christ. And he's creating, metaphorically, a spiritual house. And we will be priests of God who will be able to give acceptable sacrifices to God. So if you read through the Bible, we're reading through Genesis right now. and I feel bad for whoever's got next week's because I know what comes in that chapter.

But you read through the Bible and what you see is you see a nonstop stream of people whose worship was unacceptable to God. Okay? You want to figure out what the Bible's about. You say it's about Jesus Christ. It's about salvation. It's about all these different things.

One of the main things of the Bible is that you have no ability to worship Christ. You have no ability to worship God. everything that you do is worshipping something else until you know Jesus Christ because your worship is unacceptable to him because you're filthy and until you're washed clean by Jesus Christ he won't accept your worship so it's actually a miracle that God says that he accepts our worship it's a miracle that he says we're a royal priesthood in verse 9 and that's something this church needs to understand the priesthood of all believers practicing the priesthood of all believers is going to have a few practical effects the first of which is going to be you are going to relieve whoever are your elders of a lot of headaches And because right now you have a bivocational elder who is all by himself, people being able to practice the priesthood of all believers with each other is really helpful. But no matter how many elders you end up with and no matter how qualified they are and how good they are at what they're expected to do, you're still called to be a priesthood of all believers.

And what do priests do? There's a few catchy ways to remember these things. Prophets speak to men about God. A prophet speaks to men about God. A priest speaks to God on behalf of men. So let me rephrase that.

A prophet speaks to men on behalf of God. A priest speaks to God on behalf of men. So we think of Jesus as our prophet, priest, and king, and he fulfilled all those things. Prophets were the people who God told them what to say, and then they came and told men what God said. Priests go to God and intercede for others. And you're to intercede for one another to God.

You're to pray for one another. I'm looking forward to when we have a roster of not only members but even there's like a category of regular visitors who aren't members or aren't members yet and I'm looking forward to when we have like a printed roster of those things because to me that's like a made for use prayer list right there you just wake up every day and just pray the list of people that go to your church intercede on their behalf to God just what Jesus did for you additionally as priests you want to intercede for people you want to admonish them you want to address things that are going on in people's lives you want to help them and the only way you're probably going to be effective at that is if you pray for them as well so we're a priesthood our sacrifices are acceptable to God through Jesus Christ remember that it's only through Jesus Christ and then the second chapter and the third chapter goes through some practical ways to actually obey this living holy command we're reminded that we're to be subject to kings and emperors and governors to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good we're to be subject to all sorts of authorities you're to be subject to unjust employers if you're a slave you're subject to your master Jesus Christ being your example wives submit to your husbands husbands love your wives dwell with them, live with them in an understanding way and then in chapter 3 verse 8 there's a verse that I didn't expand as much as I actually wanted to Peter tells them finally this is closing the section about being holy here. He says, finally, all of you have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart and a humble mind.

He lists five qualities that he wants the Christians to exhibit. Unity of mind. He wants unity around the truth. OK, to some extent, the gay community or people who love abortion have some unity of mind. Alright? Having unity of mind around evil isn't what Peter's at all promoting.

Peter is saying we should all be striving so much to understand what God has said through his scripture by being spirit led and letting him illuminate the text to you and studying it to show yourself an approved workman who needs not be ashamed that we're all going to start to actually be conformed to Christ's image and we're going to have the same mind because we all have the mind of Christ. And the only time we ever disagree in this world when we're talking about theology is when we're actually somehow in our own sin and in our own selves. Because when we all get to heaven, the Presbyterians or us, one of us is going to say, yeah, sorry, we were wrong that whole time about the baptism thing, right?

And all the little squabbles and all the little things that we've disagreed on, we're not going to have perfect knowledge. I don't believe perfect knowledge comes instantly. Certainly not comprehensible knowledge of God. But when we get there, we're going to have a lot of our theology cleared up. And the only excuse for it is our own sin and our own selves.

Our own blindness. Because God desires unity of mind. And because His Spirit indwells all His people, it is at least theoretically possible. We should strive for it. Sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind. These are ways we're going to treat one another.

Ways we're going to love one another. and what I would challenge you to do if you wanted to have a fun study, look up those types of words, unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, tender heart, and humble mind, and just go study the life of Jesus Christ. And notice how He exhibits those things. And I'll tell you what, He exhibits them perfectly. Totally perfectly.

And so He is always our example. just a reminder as we look in 1 Peter 3 verse 10 to 12 there Peter quotes the Old Testament a lot Peter does not think it's valuable to unhitch the Old Testament from the New Testament Peter finds the Old Testament to be extremely valuable to understanding the New and I believe Peter helps us understand the Old so we had some discussions about how to do hermeneutics that's how do you interpret scripture hermeneutics is the theological word we use and one of the ways we interpret scripture is by interpreting scripture with scripture. If the Apostle Peter commented on Psalm 34, I'm not a gambler, but you can bet his interpretation of it is better than anything you would have come up with. When Peter, when Paul, when Jude, James, Jesus, John, Luke, Mark, when these guys reference the Old Testament and they're writing, God breathed scripture themselves, the interpretation is perfect.

And it should correct our faulty interpretations. So now the last section of chapter 3 and chapter 4, Peter really gets into some of the gritty details of suffering. These were very hard passages actually to preach through. and it was hard to say some of the things because I'd rather be one of the bearers of good news. I guess I'd rather be a preacher in heaven.

You're probably just always preaching something people enjoy. You remember the prophets back in the times of the kings of Israel? What did the wicked prophets do? Does anybody remember what they did? Go ahead and say it. There's always good news, right? the king wanted to hear what the prophets had to say and they always had good news for him things are going to go well for you king and then they get some kind of treat they were like dogs getting a bone and then a prophet of God would come in and what did the king say you always bring me bad news he was like mad at the guy well Peter brings bad news you're going to suffer And we're not just talking about suffering, dealing with your own sin.

That's enough to hate this world. The fact that you have any desire left to sin should be enough to drive you to your knees, begging God to take you out of here. That should overwhelm you with hatred and loathsomeness for your own life and a desire for Christ to just return. But you're also going to suffer at the hands of evildoers. there's going to be people who are there to harm you if you're zealous for what is good.

There's going to be people who will kill the body but can't kill your soul. There's going to be people who betray you. So it's easy when I say, yeah, you might suffer. It's easy to think, oh, yeah, maybe someone at Planned Parenthood will do something to us. or maybe one of these police officers that isn't one of the good ones. It's easy to think that way.

But who betrayed Jesus? It was he who dipped his bread in the dish with them, right? It was Judas who traveled with them for years. It's a little extra biblical opinion here, but I reckon Judas was a pretty good guy outwardly. I've always imagined he probably preached and said things. He probably worked miracles or something I mean if there was 11 guys preaching really good having these great theological discussions worshiping Christ together doing miracles and then the one guy was just always in the corner just like playing with his phone or whatever, I think people would start to think, well, he's not like us.

I think Judas looked just like him. Guys pilfering money from the treasury bag the whole time, and they don't even understand it. On the night that Jesus said, someone's going to betray me, the best apostles are sitting there like well is it me? John thinks maybe it's me Peter of course kind of puts his foot in his mouth but that's for our benefit so don't be too hard on Peter because we'd do the same thing sheep scattered somebody asked me once they said well what would you have done if you were there you probably would have scattered too and I had to be honest I said no I'd have been one of the people yelling crucify them so we all have our sin to deal with we all have our sin that was forgiven and some of us were maybe a little more righteous in our flesh and we have to fight that level of the self-righteousness and then some of us were just so wicked that there was no semblance of even hypocrisy possible because we didn't have any goodness to even brag about.

But Christ is going to suffer, or Christ suffered once for sins, Peter says in 3.18, important doctrine there, one time. so Peter warns us in 4.12 do not be surprised at the fiery trial rejoice if you share Christ's suffering so there it is you've been elected unto salvation you've been predestined, you've been called you've been justified, you're being sanctified you're looking forward to your glorification and so thus rejoice now rejoice now as if you already have attained the thing that you haven't attained yet because it's such a solid promise, there's no way it can go away. Because one of the things Peter wanted to help people understand was that there was no suffering in this world that was going to take away their eternal promise. Their inheritance is secure, kept in heaven for them.

And that was one of the things Peter wanted to protect these people from is from the prosperity gospel that says as soon as something bad happens to you, you need to look back on your life and blame yourself and decide that you must have been unfaithful. well, God obviously doesn't love you, and it's probably something you did. That's not how God works. God loves you in Christ, and in fact, He'll never love you anymore, and He'll never love you any less.

It's odd to understand once you realize God's love is unchangeable, but it's strangely comforting once you understand it. You can't do anything to make God love you more. And you can't do anything to make it diminish. It's perfect love. Peter exhorts the elders we just went over that one recently I wanted to talk about kissing again just so I could get a reaction from some of the kids but I didn't get to talk about kissing as much as I wanted last week so I want you to turn to 2 Samuel 20 so we're told to greet one another with a holy kiss and we talked about what that means we talked about that this is not sexual or lustful this is about holiness this is about a greeting this is about doing things properly in the eyes of the Lord But I want to reference two kisses that we can see in Scripture and you can probably figure out what the second one going to be But the first one I want to talk about is this one here in 2 Samuel 20, verse, well, let's start in verse 8.

And I'm not going to get you all the context. There's going to be a guy named Joab and a guy named Amasa, and I'm not going to give you all the context. You can go figure it out yourself if you want. But when they were at the great stone that is in Gibeon, Amasa came to meet them. Now Joab was wearing a soldier's garment, and over it was a belt with a sword in its sheath fastened on its thigh.

So this guy's carrying a sword in his sheath. And as he went forward, it fell out. And Joab said to Amasa, Is it well with you, my brother? he's being real friendly right and Joab took Amasa by the beard with his right hand to kiss him well this is all friendly he's going to kiss him this is just a greeting so forget the kiss part for a moment if that grosses you out he's just trying to be nice to him it's like shaking hands with your right hand in 2020 the hand you use to do battle the hand that's your weapon hand you're extending it and you're putting it on his beard to give the guy a kiss your sword just fell out so you have an excuse to have picked it up and have it in your other hand it doesn't even look funny that you're holding a sword right now getting close to someone because you created the situation yourself so the thing would fall off I'll tell you what, soldiers' swords don't fall out unless they build it that way I see Matt laughing, he was a soldier are you still a soldier? yeah to me they're all the same but you know what I mean your weapons don't fall out unless you want them to right that doesn't happen by accident and he grabs the guy's beard and this unsuspecting Amasa guy what happens he says it is well is it well with you and Joab took him by the beard to kiss him but Amasa did not observe the sword that was in his hand and Joab struck him with it in the stomach and spilled his entrails to the ground without striking a second blow and he died under the guise of a friendly greeting and a kiss, he gutted the guy in one blow.

Killed him. You think of you, I mean, how cowardly. There's a whole commentary on this. I don't want to get into that. So turn to Matthew 26. Here's an even worse, here's an even worse betrayal.

Matthew 26, 47. I'm going to have to preach through 2 Samuel so I can do this Amos of Joab thing someday. But he says, while he was still speaking, Judas came, one of the twelve. So Jesus was speaking. Judas shows up. And with him a great crowd with swords and clubs from the chief priests and the elders of the people.

Now the betrayer had given them a sign saying, the one I will kiss is the man. Seize him. And he came up to Jesus at once and said greetings Rabbi and kissed him And Jesus said to him friend do what you came to do In another passage he says Would you betray me with a kiss Do you think any of these people didn't know who Jesus was anyway? This guy's standing there teaching in the garden.

He's been teaching for three years in the open thing. Judas had no reason that he needed to betray him with a kiss other than to just make it a little bit more poignant to us to understand how deadly it can be that we can betray people under the guise of thinking we're pretending to be their friend. Proverbs 27 verse 6 says, Profuse are the kisses of an enemy, but faithful are the wounds of a friend.

So the final lesson for you might be you should be far more rejoicing and trusting of somebody who's willing to come to you and maybe even hurt you a little by trying to honestly tell you something rather than the person who always flatters you. The person who really loves you and cares about you may actually, metaphorically speaking, perform some kind of surgery on you and cut you a little bit. A coward who hates you is actually going to lure you in with a kiss.

He's going to use it to make himself feel better about having shown some kind of care for you. So Peter wants you to be holy because the Holy Spirit wants you to be holy because God is holy. Peter gave us a lot of practical instructions for holiness. I'm big on the imperative, indicative, law, gospel distinction. you cannot be holy if you do not believe in Jesus Christ as your only righteousness.

You will simply keep failing to keep God's law perfectly, which is what is required of you. If you're a Christian and you have been filled with the Holy Spirit and you believe the gospel, you are holy because of Christ and you're called to try to live a life that shows that you believe that and you will fail at times. So if anybody walks out of here and you're a sinless perfectionist in your mind, you didn't listen.

You didn't listen to any of the 33 sermons then. But you can enjoy the rejoicing that comes even from the repentance for your own sin. And you can daily, by God's grace, grow in your progressive sanctification. Let me pray. Father, thank you for your word. Thank you for Peter and all of his love for you and for your gospel and for Peter's willingness even to be used by the Holy Spirit to pen these letters.

And we know if there was a man in the history of the world other than our Lord Jesus who is qualified to teach about how to live through suffering, it is the Apostle Peter. We thank you for the example we have in him. we pray Lord that you would help us to live lives that honor what he has written for us and that we may in our hearts sanctify Christ as Lord always being prepared to have an answer for those who ask us for the hope that is in us. Amen.