The Journey with Pastor Steve DeWitt

Steve DeWitt Our Calling: Right Thinking and Right Living - Part B Study Guide for Spiritual Exiles, 1 Peter 1:13-16 Scripture Reference: 1 Peter 1:13-16 Visit the series page: Exiles: A study in 1 Peter Donate to Support The Journey Sermon Transcript for Spiritual Exiles, 1 Peter 1:13-16 Sermon Series: Spiritual Exiles Message: Our Calling: Right Thinking and Right Living Airdate: 9/16-9/17/26 Programs: 2358 and 2359 Well, good morning, and good morning to our Cedar Lake campus, our Hobart Portage gang that's gathered, and, here at Crown Point as well. Good morning. I'm gonna begin my, message with a little personal touch. Many of you know that Jennifer and I are pregnant expecting our second child, and we found out what this week, what the gender is. Thought we'd share it with you. So put up on the screen if you would. Now this is our this is our child. If you look really carefully, look really carefully. So Some of you still don't know what that means. Ask somebody later. Yes. We're having a little girl, we found out this week. So that's two girls. It's lost lots of estrogen in the house, isn't it? So it'll just be one more reason to pray for your pastor. Right? We're excited. June, sometime in June is the arrival date, and, we're we're, pretty pretty fired up about that. So let's get into our time in God's word together. And I remember some some years ago, somebody coming up to me and saying, you know, pastor Steve, you spent all that time in your messages on exposition, And then you get to the application. And, honestly, we really prefer the application. Could you just, like, skip forward to the to the application and do less of the of the exposition? And the answer to that is no. I will not. And the reason for that is that, like a a family that says, you know what? The meat, the vegetables, the fruit, it's also unnecessary. Let's skip forward to the dessert and just do dessert all the time. Would be a very unhealthy family. Similarly, when it comes to studying God's word, it's we always wanna move towards application, but it is the the doctrinal, exegetical, the truth, the words of Scripture that form the grounds for the application. And if you just do application and without any doctrine, your applications aren't gonna last very long. They won't be very deep for sure. And we see this happening in the in the letters of the New Testament. Most, if not all of them, begin doctrinally. They begin with truth about God. They begin with truth about the gospel. They begin with truth about, you know, the the nature of salvation, and then they move towards us. So what? This is what it means. This is how we sort of live this out on the street level of life. And Peter is doing that and has done that here in our little study so far. We saw in verses of chapter one in verses one through 12, a wonderfully, like, amazing, rich, fantastic explanation of the gospel, the nature of salvation, what God has done to save us, how Jesus has been key in that in his resurrection, and it's been it's been filled with hope. It's been filled with joy and gladness. And then you get to verse 13, and there is that word therefore. And that word is code for time for some application. Whenever you see that in the Bible, it's probably the the writer drawing now some conclusions for the way that we ought to live. And so we're gonna talk about that kind of application today. And, let's get into the text. I'm I'm studying with you today verses, 13 through 16 of First Peter one. Please listen as I read God's word. “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.” “As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance. But as you who as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct since it is written, you shall be holy for I am holy.” Now if you look at that section of Scripture, you'll see that there really are two kind of, like, commands here, two big things that he's saying, this is what we ought to do. And he says, first of all, set your hope fully on the grace to come. And secondly, that we are to be holy in all of our conduct. So hope fully, be holy. And before you think that doesn't sound very practical to me, there's a lot more here than meets the eye. And I want you to see just first of all that these verses are part of a larger section here beginning in chapter in verse 13 and following that is all about what the gospel ought to do in the lives on the practical level as it's lived out by the Christian. Not just what we have here before us, but the fact that God is holy. We're gonna see in verses 17 following that God is our judge, And then finally, that we were redeemed from this way of, this sinful life by the precious blood of Jesus. And all of those, the holiness of God, the judgment of God, and the blood of Christ are to call the Christian out of a life of sin and living according to the old ways and to call us into the new life. This new life lived to the glory of God, lived free from the bondage of sin. And so there's lots more of this to come. We're just looking at one section here today. Notice, first of all, that he says that we are to focus on future grace. Look look again at verse 13. “Set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” K? Set your hope your hope fully. Now what is hope? Hope is, by definition, future oriented. I don't hope, you know, I I I don't hope about something that has already happened. I don't hope the Seahawks win the Super Bowl. Why? Because it's done already, isn't it? Hope doesn't orient backwards. Hope always orients forwards or towards the future. And we've seen Peter saying this throughout this letter. It's the it's actually the third reference to the return of Christ. He did it in verse five. He did it in verse eight. Now he does it in verse 13. Are you surprised that a letter about suffering would have a lot about the future in it? I'm not. I mean, this is it makes sense, doesn't it? To cast our eyes towards what is yet to come in the midst of our trials, in the midst of our sufferings, to think about the future. And here, he says the grace that is yet to be revealed. Now what is that talking about? Because I think we could look at salvation and say, wait a second, I already got the grace of God. Right? When I when I put my faith in in Jesus, I received from God grace. I was saved by grace. I go to a church that sings amazing grace. How sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I've already got the grace of God. How can I put my hope on some future grace? What might this be talking about? One of my favorite commentators, Wayne Grudem, says the grace that is coming to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ means the further store of undeserved blessings, which God will pour out on them when Christ returns. Whenever we talk about grace or the grace of God, it is always highlighting that God is giving us something that we don't deserve. That's why it's grace. Salvation is by grace through faith. To think about the future and to realize that there is a storehouse of grace, there are blessings that are yet to come to us that we have not realized, that we have not yet fully received. The future is even better than it is right now. Might that be encouraging if you're in a trial of some kind? That maybe the best is yet to come, and that what I have, while wonderful, is not yet the fullness of what God has in store for those who love him, for those who are called according to his purpose. You say, well, that sounds nice. Preach as well. But, like, what are you talking about? Well, here's just a short list I just kind of compiled of future grace yet to come. The ongoing conscious life upon our physical death, the physical presence with God, our resurrected and glorified bodies, seeing and worshiping and savoring the presence of Jesus Christ himself, eternal rewards that God will give to us based on the quality of our service to him while here on earth. How about eternal life, enjoyment, and pleasure that we will have forever in real time on a new earth that has no curse upon it? We're gonna live on that new earth, and it's gonna be a much better version than this one. Eternal fellowship with fellow Christians and loved ones. If you've if you've had a loved one that's died in the faith, I guarantee there's a future grace coming to you. You're gonna meet him or her again and fellowship with them forever. Eternal status and relationship as children of God, which right now we don't totally get and realize what a big deal that is. But to step into eternity and the God of heaven, the God of eternity, we are part of his family. We're not just servants in the house. We are sons and daughters of God. Many other things. Someday you're gonna come to me and say that list was terrible. It was so small. We you could have added so many more things. Indeed. None of them we deserve. All of these things are God's gift to us. We deserve hell. We deserve punishment, and yet God is giving us what we don't deserve. And much of what we're going to receive, we haven't even tasted yet. And so Peter writing to exiles, suffering trials says, put your hope not here and not in the trial or maybe the trial going away. Set your hope fully on grace yet to be received from God. The inverse of this is true. Don't put your hope on anything less than this. Don't put your hope, Scripture says, in your riches. Don't put your hope in your life and in your physical vitality. Don't put your hope in any fellow man or pastor or anybody else. Don't put your hope in who you are and your achievements and your big stuff or whatever it might be. Don't put your hope in things in this world. All of it is passing away. The Bible calls God's people with the same faith that trusts in Jesus in the past dying on our on the cross for our sins, to look to the future with the same kind of expectant hope and to believe the best is yet to come. That helps you endure in them trials, doesn't it? Now that sounds wonderful, but how do we do that? Peter, get practical for us. K? We're tired of these long expositions, Peter. Could we just skip to the dessert? Can we get to the application? And Peter provides two specific means by which our hope is set fully on the future. You might have missed them as I read it. But notice, first of all, he says that we are to prepare our minds for action. Somehow, there's a connection between setting my hope fully and the grace to come and a mind that is prepared for action. What does this mean? Well, it's an intriguing illustration. In fact, if you have a King James Bible possibly with you, you might look at that and say, my Bible says it a little bit different. Indeed, here's how the King James translates it. And if you grew up in the church in the seventies with a good Scofield Bible like I did, this is more what you're familiar with. Right? It says this, gird up the loins of your mind. Ain't that a blessing? Gird up the loins of your mind. And, technically, that is what the text is saying here. The problem is that for most of us, a loin is something to put barbecue on. Right? And so we don't feel like we can apply that very well. What do you mean loins? Well, this is a historical cultural thing. Let's talk about this a little bit. A loin was a robe or the bottom section of a robe. And if you've watched, you know, the Jesus film or some things like this, you've seen the kind of robes and garments that the men would wear as just that was the fashion of the day. And so what would happen is is that these men would wear these long longer kind of flowing gowns, but they had to do what men today have to do. They had to work. They had to go to war. They had different things. And so if you were going to do that, you had to gird up your loins. You had to take those flowing gowns, and you had to get them out of the way if you were to do serious business. Now I happened upon an illustration on a website that I kind of like called the art of manliness. I go there just to see if they're manly enough, in my opinion. But I came across this illustration of how they actually girded up their loins. Now this is gonna be a blessing to each of you. Notice that the the the the gown that the guy has, he would pull it up, bring it cinch it together, pull it through between his legs, and then stick it into his belt. And when he'd done that, now he's ready to go to war. The art of manliness. Okay? I actually thought about demonstrating this myself, but maybe this will suffice for that. Okay? Now here's the point. You girded up the loins of your mind or your your your actual loins, it meant that you're about to get serious about something. You are about to take care of business. And that could be working in the field, or it could be defending your home or defending your honor. I mean, if you saw a guy if if you're, you know, if you're at the local pub and a guy starts girding up his loins, you're like, hey. What's going on around here? Right? Why? Fight's about to break out. This guy's getting serious right here. Calm down, man. Stop the girding. Peter says, with our minds, we are to gird up our loins. What is he referring to there? What Peter is saying is the same thing that Paul says in Ephesians six when he writes, “stand therefore having fastened on the belt of truth.” I believe it's the same word, gird on the belt of truth. So for Paul, he's saying, get that belt of truth solidly in your mind. Peter is saying, get serious about truth with your mind and with your thinking. Why are our minds so important? Here's why. Right thinking leads to right living. When I am thinking rightly, my life is going to be consistent with that right thinking. When I am thinking poorly, when I am not thinking, when I am thinking with distraction, when I am thinking about lesser things, my life is going to reflect that also. Proverbs says, “as a man thinks in his heart, so is he.” If you wanna know who you really are, look at your thought life. Think about the things that you think about. Examine the way that you use your mind, and it will determine largely the shape of our lives, how important our thinking is. He doubles down on this. Peter does. And he says, secondly, be sober minded. Be sober minded. This word here is most commonly used in reference to alcohol and intoxication. He uses it Peter or Paul uses it in First Timothy three describing the qualifications of an elder. He is to be sober, and a godly woman is described as being sober. And it certainly includes not allowing alcohol or any other kind of substance like that to be a controlling influence in your life. But it's used here more broadly, not just alcohol, but a kind of soberness in thinking, not dour, not sad, not like I'm sober. We're Christians. We're very sober. Not like that. We can be we can be joyous, and we can be glad hearted, and we ought to be. But in our thinking, we are serious and sober. We are directing the thoughts of our minds, and it's shaping our whole approach to life. Another commentator. For Peter, the cares of this life and the pressure of persecution can intoxicate the Christian and distract his or her focus just as easily as wine might. The need of the hour is clear judgment and a mind and will prepared to resist anything that would distract them from a hope set on Jesus' appearing. Sober thinking is thinking with focus. It is clarity. It is the refusal to allow anything to distract. Again, it's not sober in personality. It is sober in thinking. It is a mind that says, I am. I refuse to think about life and my trials and my troubles in any other manner than this right here. I will look at life through the gospel. I will look at life through the grid of God's word, which is God's wisdom. I wanna look at my marriage. I wanna look at my parenting. I wanna look at my singleness. I wanna look at my schooling and my job and my hobbies and the dreams and hopes and my money and everything else. I wanna look at it through the wisdom of God's word, and I refuse to allow my mind to think anything else else than that. That is sober thinking. It is the Christian mind whose best and highest thoughts are reserved for kingdom and spiritual matters. So let me ask you. Think about what you think about when you don't have anything that you have to think about. What do you spend your time thinking about? How often in the course of the day do your thoughts turn towards spiritual realities? This is where I think some of the disciplines, Christian disciplines of prayer and Bible study and Scripture memory. These are all things that aid in this. It helps us to tune our hearts to sing his praise as the hymn writer says. It's in the day where my I am vertically oriented, and I'm looking at my life from the perspective that heaven vertically allows for me. How often do you think about God in the day or ministry or the needs spiritual needs of the people around you or Scripture or eternity? Do you intentionally direct your mind to think about what you want it to think about? And you say, I can't do that. My mind has a mind of its own. And now this is psychologically confusing, isn't it? But what I wanna say is we can direct our thoughts. We can, as Paul writes, take captive every or take captive every thought and and subject it to the lordship of Jesus Christ. It is a discipline. It is a way of using and thinking about life intentionally, but it takes habit. I've been thinking about this lately because I feel like in my life right now, I'm struggling in this regard. And I think why is it? Like, I I feel like I I I used to be able to think better than I do right now. And I think one of the reasons this is just one of them. One's just the aging process. But secondly, probably, I I think is that I find myself today often the the the gaps where I used to have time to think are now being filled with checking my email, social media, or passively watching something on a screen. Now maybe it's just me, but I don't think so. I think we are currently and unknowingly awash in a kind of mind muddling cultural habit of perpetual distraction. And I will never be able to say that sentence again. So I hope somebody wrote that down. Don't you think? I mean, now it's just common. We don't we think nothing of it to go to a restaurant and to look in the booth next to us and to see a family of five. They're not talking to each other. They're engrossed in their smartphone. Right? I have come to church and and walked through here before the service starts, and I've seen an entire family all sitting here minutes before the service is about to start. All of them are engrossed in their phone. And I don't think they're preparing for worship by reading the Westminster Catechism. What are they looking at? What are they reading? What are they filling their minds with? What are they directing their thoughts towards? And I say this to myself because I feel like my mind is I'm getting mushy. I don't like that. Distracted. You know, Satan doesn't have to convince us of a heresy. He just has to distract us from thinking about the truth. The one, if I got up and say Jesus isn't God, I hope you'd all rush the stage and beat me to a pulp in love. K? That's the obvious danger. How about the more subtle one where we just don't think about it at all and we're constantly distracted from the higher and holy things of life and eternity. We're awash, I think, in trivial things. Can I just sit on this a little longer? If you want I say, hey. Think about what you think about. If you if you view social media as any indication of the thoughts that people are having, I mean, if they're having the thoughts sufficiently that they think I need to post this, I need to communicate this with everybody that knows me, then this must be, one of their best thoughts. Right? And if you look at a at a news feed on Facebook or some other social media site and to see the kinds of thoughts that people in society and maybe even people in the church, what they're thinking about, what they are viewing, what they are finding humorous. Not all of it. There's lots of cute pictures of babies and gender announcements. And that's totally acceptable. But a lot of it is superficial, silly, banal. And it seems normal to us now. Right? Because it's just all the time going on. It troubles me to see on Facebook people, even in our church, posting, tweeting about, you know, the dresses at the Grammys or Katy Perry's Super Bowl performance. Really? Like, this is this what we're filling our thoughts and minds with? And then here comes the trial and life is devastating. I wonder why. I haven't set my hope fully on the grace to come in years. I've been filling my mind with all of these lesser things. I'm thinking poorly. Now this is not a rant against media or movies or Twitter. Not at all. I think Peter would have had a Twitter account, honestly. But I don't think he would talk about silly things. In fact, can we not look at First Peter as a kind of long Twitter account? What was Peter thinking about? He writes about what he was thinking about. And here we have before us the kinds of thoughts that the apostle Peter had about life. This is the kind of thing that he was dwelling on and thinking about. Does that not tell us something about what it means to be a spiritually mature Christian man or woman and the kinds of thoughts that we think about? And this is a struggle because our culture is so immoral and so materialistic and all the rest. But he was living in the Greco Roman culture, which would give ours a run for its money. And yet, he was thinking this way. I would encourage you to follow the example of the apostle Peter. Now one more thing, and I gotta move on here, because I wanna get particularly practical. How do we engage our mind in sober thinking? How do we make it intentionally oriented towards spiritual truth? Well, I thought I'd just have some fun with this. What's the gender of our baby? Girl. So how about maybe on the week that I announce this, here's my little acronym. K? Four ways to help think more seriously about higher things. Girl, g, get rid of distractions. If your whole life is beeping, humming, buzzing, smartphone, constantly calling your attention to something that somebody has said about this or that, you have no time to think high and holy thoughts. There's no time for prayer. You're distracted all the time. Now I sound like an old fuddy duddy with that, and the young people are going, he is so uncool. But let's see what happens to this generation in thirty years. Time will tell whether wisdom lies in the beeping and the humming and the buzzing or in the older folks who are saying, it didn't used to be like that. We used to talk. I thought maybe some of those old people would amen that point. But get rid of distractions. K? And I don't mean to focus on that one. There's a thousand distractions out there. Secondly, increase truth input. Get rid of the banal and the inane and the silly and the superficial and fill your mind. This is the garbage in garbage out principle. Fill your mind increasingly with truth. Philippians four eight. You know, “what sort of things are pure and lovely, of good report, excellent, and worthy of praise, think on these things.” Spend your time on the beautiful and the truthful and the glorious and the eternally significant. Third, r, recall the grace of God for all the times you don't do that and to seek his forgiveness and ask God to give you daily grace. And finally, love God with your mind. That's a whole another point we could make, but how critical it is that we're we are thinking Christians. And even from the beginning, we're called to love him with our body. I mean, we preach against, you know, sexual sin or, you know, abusing your body with drugs or something like that. But so we we're we're all about loving God with our bodies. But what about loving God with our minds? And to intentionally seek to think deeper and higher thoughts about God and to learn and to grow and to become a mature thinking Christian. Let's do that. K? Let's do that. Now I gotta move on. We got communion coming. Second thing that he is focusing on. First one is setting your, your hope fully on the grace that is to come. The second category is that we are to be holy or what I'm calling, we're to be like our daddy. Again, the text, verse 14. “As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance. But as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct since it is written, you shall be holy for I am holy.” So we see Peter here moving from right thinking to right living. What does holy thoughts in my brain look like in a holy expression in my life? And I want you to see, first of all, that this has a relational tone to this. He he began doesn't just say, be holy. He says, hey. As obedient children. And what is that referring to? It is referring to the relationship that we have with God. Right? The Bible says that when we become Christians, that God actually adopts us into his family. We are members of the family of God. We're brothers and sisters in this family. We're sons and daughters of the most high God. And because God is my Father, that relationship matters. It means something in regards to the way that I look at myself, the way that I want to live my life. God's my Heavenly Father. How should I live now? Well, he says here that we should live morally disciplined lives. And to proof text this, Peter reaches into the Old Testament, goes back to Leviticus, and he quotes from there's five passages in Leviticus that use the same statement. “You shall be holy for I am holy.” K? You shall be holy, not me. I'm I'm saying it like I'm I'm God. Okay? “You shall be holy for I am holy.” K? And so we see in that statement the ethical measure and the eth and the ethical motivation as well. God's character is the measure, and God's character is the motive. Because I am holy, you shall you shall be holy. God's holiness is the absolute moral unity of his entire being. He is completely good. He is morally without fail. He is not the author of evil. He has no inclination towards anything that is less than absolutely morally pure and upright. John writes this in First John one. “In him, God is light, and in him, there is no darkness at all.” There's no shadow. There's no little something hidden. He is absolutely, morally, purely bright and light. Everything he does always is holy. And so Peter says, this is our God. This is our Heavenly Father. This is the way that we are to strive to live our life in a morally disciplined manner where the ethics of life matter to us. We want to please our Heavenly Father. We wanna live consistent with what he is like. Notice in all your conduct. Okay? So it's not just, you know, be holy as I am holy. When you're at church on Sunday, when you are out with the pastor, when somebody is watching that maybe could look down on you, It is not in any sort of category. It is in all categories. Holiness of life impacts, shapes, directs every aspect of my life. Why? Because it shapes and directs every aspect of the very life and character of God himself. Now lest there be any confusion here, I wanna emphasize that we are not naturally holy. We are naturally sinners. And this is why Jesus came, and this is why Jesus died. He didn't die for holy people so that they could go, not go to hell. He died for I said that wrong. He let me just say it this way. He died for sinners. K? He died for sinners, and that's us. K? So without his righteousness, we have no standing with God. We have no adoption with God. But sometimes people confuse our position before God as righteous because of what Jesus has done and the calling that God has upon the practice of our life. You overemphasize the position and say, hey, I'm righteous before God, so who gives a rip? Right? I'm going to heaven anyway. That is an abuse of the grace of God. If I focus on the practice solely, then now I am all the time wondering if I'm good enough, wondering if I'm gonna earn my way to heaven. And that is a misuse of the gospel. The gospel is is that we are declared righteous by God. We are positionally righteous before God. We enter into a relationship with God through the gospel by faith that now shapes my desires where now I want to live like I'm a child of God. K? It is relational. It is not legalism. It's not antinomianism. No law. It is relationship. Grudem says to be holy as God is holy includes a full and pervading holiness that reaches to every aspect of our personalities. It involves not only avoiding outward sin, but also maintaining an instinctive delight in God and his holiness as an undercurrent of heart and mind throughout the day. God is our Father. He's always our Father. Everywhere we go, he's our Father. We're his children. And this is where I think the metaphor is helpful because children, not always, but naturally want to to please their or to be like their dad. I'm enjoying this almost every day. I have a 20 year old daughter. Okay? So here's here's what happens in my day. I find myself you know, I'll I'll be sitting at the couch or something and I'll stretch like this and I look over and there she is. She's looking for my affirmation. Right? I'm I'm I'm doing what you're doing, daddy. Right? I kinda like that. That's kinda fun. I'll say to her, I love you. And she'll say, I love you. Is that manipulation? I don't know. But I love it. I love it. Or the other day I was eating and I wasn't watching my manners very well. And so I'm kind of chomping away on something sort of loudly and all a sudden I look over and she's going, daddy needs to slow down and close his mouth while he chews apparently. Why does she raise her arms and mimic me? Why does she repeat the words that I say? Why does she mimic even some of my less wonderful qualities? Because at this point, at least in her life, she wants to be like me. That's a goal for her even though she couldn't articulate it. And here's where I think verse 13 and verse 15 come together. The goal of what God is doing in each of us is holiness and Christ likeness. That's the big picture. He is forming us into the likeness of Christ. As I muster my spiritual and my mental thoughts and energies towards loving God with my mind, my Heavenly Father, my will increasingly is shaped by that priority And the true thoughts that my now girded up mind, the loins of my mind, are thinking about and focusing on shape the desires that I have in my heart, which right thinking leads to right living. So I fill my thought, my heart, my mind with God's truth. And the more I think about the grace of God to me, both now and in the future, and the love of God to me both now and in the future, the more my life then is shaped around his will and his purposes. So that right thinking about God shapes my desires and produces a more righteous living, a more holiness in my life. And all of it is anticipating a future grace and goodness of God that he will shower upon me and is yet to be experienced. And the anticipation, the more I realize what God has already done for me, it elevates my anticipation of what God has yet to do for me. K? And anticipation is a very powerful motive in our life. I remember when, football season was about to start. I would run, and I would train. I would get ready for it. And when basketball season was gonna start, I would run and train and play and shoot. I would get I would get ready for it. I remember when we had, the Bethel five k here a couple years ago. I'm the pastor of the church. I don't wanna embarrass myself. I ran, and I got ready for it. And I remember, perhaps the best example for me is after forty-four years, I got married. And before my wedding, I'm here to tell you, after forty-four years I was thinking about my wedding, and I was thinking about my honeymoon. I wanted to get ready for it. So I swam, and I ran, and I got a tan, and I was thinking about anticipating being with my girl. And it shaped the way that I lived my life. And when we, as Christians, set our minds on things that matter, things that are spiritually true, the promises of God, gospel, the word of God, when my thoughts are high and holy as God would have them to be, I anticipate increasingly, this is good. The best is yet to come. And that anticipation of what is to come means I'm getting ready for it now. And it changes and it shapes the way that I think and the way that I live and the directions of my life, which increases my likeness to Christ and gets me ready for that day when Jesus returns and when his full grace will be revealed. So friends, set your mind on the grace to come. Be holy as God is holy. Is your mind disciplined? Is your life morally diligent? And is your hope oriented towards the amazing grace of God yet to come? To help us with that today, we are going to be partaking in the Lord's supper. And I'd like to pray, and you could begin to prepare your hearts as I do. Heavenly Father God, I do pray and ask that this very practical message would, lead to very practical results in our lives. Lord, help us to be a church that is disciplined in our thinking, that strives to know and understand the gospel, the God of the gospel, the Jesus of the gospel, that we would be serious about this. And that this might, Lord, grant to us an elevated sense of anticipation of what is yet to come. And as we take this communion now, I pray that the partaking in it, the reminder of the death of Jesus would serve to also prepare us with, holiness and anticipation of no more symbols but actual presence to see him and to be with him forever. All praise be to Jesus, we pray in his name. Amen. * This transcript was generated using AI transcription technology and reviewed for accuracy but may contain errors. Please refer to the original audio for precise wording.

Steve DeWitt Our Calling: Right Thinking and Right Living - Part A Study Guide for Spiritual Exiles, 1 Peter 1:13-16 Scripture Reference: 1 Peter 1:13-16 Visit the series page: Exiles: A study in 1 Peter Donate to Support The Journey Sermon Transcript for Spiritual Exiles, 1 Peter 1:13-16 Sermon Series: Spiritual Exiles Message: Our Calling: Right Thinking and Right Living Airdate: 9/16-9/17/26 Programs: 2358 and 2359 Well, good morning, and good morning to our Cedar Lake campus, our Hobart Portage gang that's gathered, and, here at Crown Point as well. Good morning. I'm gonna begin my, message with a little personal touch. Many of you know that Jennifer and I are pregnant expecting our second child, and we found out what this week, what the gender is. Thought we'd share it with you. So put up on the screen if you would. Now this is our this is our child. If you look really carefully, look really carefully. So Some of you still don't know what that means. Ask somebody later. Yes. We're having a little girl, we found out this week. So that's two girls. It's lost lots of estrogen in the house, isn't it? So it'll just be one more reason to pray for your pastor. Right? We're excited. June, sometime in June is the arrival date, and, we're we're, pretty pretty fired up about that. So let's get into our time in God's word together. And I remember some some years ago, somebody coming up to me and saying, you know, pastor Steve, you spent all that time in your messages on exposition, And then you get to the application. And, honestly, we really prefer the application. Could you just, like, skip forward to the to the application and do less of the of the exposition? And the answer to that is no. I will not. And the reason for that is that, like a a family that says, you know what? The meat, the vegetables, the fruit, it's also unnecessary. Let's skip forward to the dessert and just do dessert all the time. Would be a very unhealthy family. Similarly, when it comes to studying God's word, it's we always wanna move towards application, but it is the the doctrinal, exegetical, the truth, the words of Scripture that form the grounds for the application. And if you just do application and without any doctrine, your applications aren't gonna last very long. They won't be very deep for sure. And we see this happening in the in the letters of the New Testament. Most, if not all of them, begin doctrinally. They begin with truth about God. They begin with truth about the gospel. They begin with truth about, you know, the the nature of salvation, and then they move towards us. So what? This is what it means. This is how we sort of live this out on the street level of life. And Peter is doing that and has done that here in our little study so far. We saw in verses of chapter one in verses one through 12, a wonderfully, like, amazing, rich, fantastic explanation of the gospel, the nature of salvation, what God has done to save us, how Jesus has been key in that in his resurrection, and it's been it's been filled with hope. It's been filled with joy and gladness. And then you get to verse 13, and there is that word therefore. And that word is code for time for some application. Whenever you see that in the Bible, it's probably the the writer drawing now some conclusions for the way that we ought to live. And so we're gonna talk about that kind of application today. And, let's get into the text. I'm I'm studying with you today verses, 13 through 16 of First Peter one. Please listen as I read God's word. “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.” “As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance. But as you who as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct since it is written, you shall be holy for I am holy.” Now if you look at that section of Scripture, you'll see that there really are two kind of, like, commands here, two big things that he's saying, this is what we ought to do. And he says, first of all, set your hope fully on the grace to come. And secondly, that we are to be holy in all of our conduct. So hope fully, be holy. And before you think that doesn't sound very practical to me, there's a lot more here than meets the eye. And I want you to see just first of all that these verses are part of a larger section here beginning in chapter in verse 13 and following that is all about what the gospel ought to do in the lives on the practical level as it's lived out by the Christian. Not just what we have here before us, but the fact that God is holy. We're gonna see in verses 17 following that God is our judge, And then finally, that we were redeemed from this way of, this sinful life by the precious blood of Jesus. And all of those, the holiness of God, the judgment of God, and the blood of Christ are to call the Christian out of a life of sin and living according to the old ways and to call us into the new life. This new life lived to the glory of God, lived free from the bondage of sin. And so there's lots more of this to come. We're just looking at one section here today. Notice, first of all, that he says that we are to focus on future grace. Look look again at verse 13. “Set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” K? Set your hope your hope fully. Now what is hope? Hope is, by definition, future oriented. I don't hope, you know, I I I don't hope about something that has already happened. I don't hope the Seahawks win the Super Bowl. Why? Because it's done already, isn't it? Hope doesn't orient backwards. Hope always orients forwards or towards the future. And we've seen Peter saying this throughout this letter. It's the it's actually the third reference to the return of Christ. He did it in verse five. He did it in verse eight. Now he does it in verse 13. Are you surprised that a letter about suffering would have a lot about the future in it? I'm not. I mean, this is it makes sense, doesn't it? To cast our eyes towards what is yet to come in the midst of our trials, in the midst of our sufferings, to think about the future. And here, he says the grace that is yet to be revealed. Now what is that talking about? Because I think we could look at salvation and say, wait a second, I already got the grace of God. Right? When I when I put my faith in in Jesus, I received from God grace. I was saved by grace. I go to a church that sings amazing grace. How sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I've already got the grace of God. How can I put my hope on some future grace? What might this be talking about? One of my favorite commentators, Wayne Grudem, says the grace that is coming to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ means the further store of undeserved blessings, which God will pour out on them when Christ returns. Whenever we talk about grace or the grace of God, it is always highlighting that God is giving us something that we don't deserve. That's why it's grace. Salvation is by grace through faith. To think about the future and to realize that there is a storehouse of grace, there are blessings that are yet to come to us that we have not realized, that we have not yet fully received. The future is even better than it is right now. Might that be encouraging if you're in a trial of some kind? That maybe the best is yet to come, and that what I have, while wonderful, is not yet the fullness of what God has in store for those who love him, for those who are called according to his purpose. You say, well, that sounds nice. Preach as well. But, like, what are you talking about? Well, here's just a short list I just kind of compiled of future grace yet to come. The ongoing conscious life upon our physical death, the physical presence with God, our resurrected and glorified bodies, seeing and worshiping and savoring the presence of Jesus Christ himself, eternal rewards that God will give to us based on the quality of our service to him while here on earth. How about eternal life, enjoyment, and pleasure that we will have forever in real time on a new earth that has no curse upon it? We're gonna live on that new earth, and it's gonna be a much better version than this one. Eternal fellowship with fellow Christians and loved ones. If you've if you've had a loved one that's died in the faith, I guarantee there's a future grace coming to you. You're gonna meet him or her again and fellowship with them forever. Eternal status and relationship as children of God, which right now we don't totally get and realize what a big deal that is. But to step into eternity and the God of heaven, the God of eternity, we are part of his family. We're not just servants in the house. We are sons and daughters of God. Many other things. Someday you're gonna come to me and say that list was terrible. It was so small. We you could have added so many more things. Indeed. None of them we deserve. All of these things are God's gift to us. We deserve hell. We deserve punishment, and yet God is giving us what we don't deserve. And much of what we're going to receive, we haven't even tasted yet. And so Peter writing to exiles, suffering trials says, put your hope not here and not in the trial or maybe the trial going away. Set your hope fully on grace yet to be received from God. The inverse of this is true. Don't put your hope on anything less than this. Don't put your hope, Scripture says, in your riches. Don't put your hope in your life and in your physical vitality. Don't put your hope in any fellow man or pastor or anybody else. Don't put your hope in who you are and your achievements and your big stuff or whatever it might be. Don't put your hope in things in this world. All of it is passing away. The Bible calls God's people with the same faith that trusts in Jesus in the past dying on our on the cross for our sins, to look to the future with the same kind of expectant hope and to believe the best is yet to come. That helps you endure in them trials, doesn't it? Now that sounds wonderful, but how do we do that? Peter, get practical for us. K? We're tired of these long expositions, Peter. Could we just skip to the dessert? Can we get to the application? And Peter provides two specific means by which our hope is set fully on the future. You might have missed them as I read it. But notice, first of all, he says that we are to prepare our minds for action. Somehow, there's a connection between setting my hope fully and the grace to come and a mind that is prepared for action. What does this mean? Well, it's an intriguing illustration. In fact, if you have a King James Bible possibly with you, you might look at that and say, my Bible says it a little bit different. Indeed, here's how the King James translates it. And if you grew up in the church in the seventies with a good Scofield Bible like I did, this is more what you're familiar with. Right? It says this, gird up the loins of your mind. Ain't that a blessing? Gird up the loins of your mind. And, technically, that is what the text is saying here. The problem is that for most of us, a loin is something to put barbecue on. Right? And so we don't feel like we can apply that very well. What do you mean loins? Well, this is a historical cultural thing. Let's talk about this a little bit. A loin was a robe or the bottom section of a robe. And if you've watched, you know, the Jesus film or some things like this, you've seen the kind of robes and garments that the men would wear as just that was the fashion of the day. And so what would happen is is that these men would wear these long longer kind of flowing gowns, but they had to do what men today have to do. They had to work. They had to go to war. They had different things. And so if you were going to do that, you had to gird up your loins. You had to take those flowing gowns, and you had to get them out of the way if you were to do serious business. Now I happened upon an illustration on a website that I kind of like called the art of manliness. I go there just to see if they're manly enough, in my opinion. But I came across this illustration of how they actually girded up their loins. Now this is gonna be a blessing to each of you. Notice that the the the the gown that the guy has, he would pull it up, bring it cinch it together, pull it through between his legs, and then stick it into his belt. And when he'd done that, now he's ready to go to war. The art of manliness. Okay? I actually thought about demonstrating this myself, but maybe this will suffice for that. Okay? Now here's the point. You girded up the loins of your mind or your your your actual loins, it meant that you're about to get serious about something. You are about to take care of business. And that could be working in the field, or it could be defending your home or defending your honor. I mean, if you saw a guy if if you're, you know, if you're at the local pub and a guy starts girding up his loins, you're like, hey. What's going on around here? Right? Why? Fight's about to break out. This guy's getting serious right here. Calm down, man. Stop the girding. Peter says, with our minds, we are to gird up our loins. What is he referring to there? What Peter is saying is the same thing that Paul says in Ephesians six when he writes, “stand therefore having fastened on the belt of truth.” I believe it's the same word, gird on the belt of truth. So for Paul, he's saying, get that belt of truth solidly in your mind. Peter is saying, get serious about truth with your mind and with your thinking. Why are our minds so important? Here's why. Right thinking leads to right living. When I am thinking rightly, my life is going to be consistent with that right thinking. When I am thinking poorly, when I am not thinking, when I am thinking with distraction, when I am thinking about lesser things, my life is going to reflect that also. Proverbs says, “as a man thinks in his heart, so is he.” If you wanna know who you really are, look at your thought life. Think about the things that you think about. Examine the way that you use your mind, and it will determine largely the shape of our lives, how important our thinking is. He doubles down on this. Peter does. And he says, secondly, be sober minded. Be sober minded. This word here is most commonly used in reference to alcohol and intoxication. He uses it Peter or Paul uses it in First Timothy three describing the qualifications of an elder. He is to be sober, and a godly woman is described as being sober. And it certainly includes not allowing alcohol or any other kind of substance like that to be a controlling influence in your life. But it's used here more broadly, not just alcohol, but a kind of soberness in thinking, not dour, not sad, not like I'm sober. We're Christians. We're very sober. Not like that. We can be we can be joyous, and we can be glad hearted, and we ought to be. But in our thinking, we are serious and sober. We are directing the thoughts of our minds, and it's shaping our whole approach to life. Another commentator. For Peter, the cares of this life and the pressure of persecution can intoxicate the Christian and distract his or her focus just as easily as wine might. The need of the hour is clear judgment and a mind and will prepared to resist anything that would distract them from a hope set on Jesus' appearing. Sober thinking is thinking with focus. It is clarity. It is the refusal to allow anything to distract. Again, it's not sober in personality. It is sober in thinking. It is a mind that says, I am. I refuse to think about life and my trials and my troubles in any other manner than this right here. I will look at life through the gospel. I will look at life through the grid of God's word, which is God's wisdom. I wanna look at my marriage. I wanna look at my parenting. I wanna look at my singleness. I wanna look at my schooling and my job and my hobbies and the dreams and hopes and my money and everything else. I wanna look at it through the wisdom of God's word, and I refuse to allow my mind to think anything else else than that. That is sober thinking. It is the Christian mind whose best and highest thoughts are reserved for kingdom and spiritual matters. So let me ask you. Think about what you think about when you don't have anything that you have to think about. What do you spend your time thinking about? How often in the course of the day do your thoughts turn towards spiritual realities? This is where I think some of the disciplines, Christian disciplines of prayer and Bible study and Scripture memory. These are all things that aid in this. It helps us to tune our hearts to sing his praise as the hymn writer says. It's in the day where my I am vertically oriented, and I'm looking at my life from the perspective that heaven vertically allows for me. How often do you think about God in the day or ministry or the needs spiritual needs of the people around you or Scripture or eternity? Do you intentionally direct your mind to think about what you want it to think about? And you say, I can't do that. My mind has a mind of its own. And now this is psychologically confusing, isn't it? But what I wanna say is we can direct our thoughts. We can, as Paul writes, take captive every or take captive every thought and and subject it to the lordship of Jesus Christ. It is a discipline. It is a way of using and thinking about life intentionally, but it takes habit. I've been thinking about this lately because I feel like in my life right now, I'm struggling in this regard. And I think why is it? Like, I I feel like I I I used to be able to think better than I do right now. And I think one of the reasons this is just one of them. One's just the aging process. But secondly, probably, I I think is that I find myself today often the the the gaps where I used to have time to think are now being filled with checking my email, social media, or passively watching something on a screen. Now maybe it's just me, but I don't think so. I think we are currently and unknowingly awash in a kind of mind muddling cultural habit of perpetual distraction. And I will never be able to say that sentence again. So I hope somebody wrote that down. Don't you think? I mean, now it's just common. We don't we think nothing of it to go to a restaurant and to look in the booth next to us and to see a family of five. They're not talking to each other. They're engrossed in their smartphone. Right? I have come to church and and walked through here before the service starts, and I've seen an entire family all sitting here minutes before the service is about to start. All of them are engrossed in their phone. And I don't think they're preparing for worship by reading the Westminster Catechism. What are they looking at? What are they reading? What are they filling their minds with? What are they directing their thoughts towards? And I say this to myself because I feel like my mind is I'm getting mushy. I don't like that. Distracted. You know, Satan doesn't have to convince us of a heresy. He just has to distract us from thinking about the truth. The one, if I got up and say Jesus isn't God, I hope you'd all rush the stage and beat me to a pulp in love. K? That's the obvious danger. How about the more subtle one where we just don't think about it at all and we're constantly distracted from the higher and holy things of life and eternity. We're awash, I think, in trivial things. Can I just sit on this a little longer? If you want I say, hey. Think about what you think about. If you if you view social media as any indication of the thoughts that people are having, I mean, if they're having the thoughts sufficiently that they think I need to post this, I need to communicate this with everybody that knows me, then this must be, one of their best thoughts. Right? And if you look at a at a news feed on Facebook or some other social media site and to see the kinds of thoughts that people in society and maybe even people in the church, what they're thinking about, what they are viewing, what they are finding humorous. Not all of it. There's lots of cute pictures of babies and gender announcements. And that's totally acceptable. But a lot of it is superficial, silly, banal. And it seems normal to us now. Right? Because it's just all the time going on. It troubles me to see on Facebook people, even in our church, posting, tweeting about, you know, the dresses at the Grammys or Katy Perry's Super Bowl performance. Really? Like, this is this what we're filling our thoughts and minds with? And then here comes the trial and life is devastating. I wonder why. I haven't set my hope fully on the grace to come in years. I've been filling my mind with all of these lesser things. I'm thinking poorly. Now this is not a rant against media or movies or Twitter. Not at all. I think Peter would have had a Twitter account, honestly. But I don't think he would talk about silly things. In fact, can we not look at First Peter as a kind of long Twitter account? What was Peter thinking about? He writes about what he was thinking about. And here we have before us the kinds of thoughts that the apostle Peter had about life. This is the kind of thing that he was dwelling on and thinking about. Does that not tell us something about what it means to be a spiritually mature Christian man or woman and the kinds of thoughts that we think about? And this is a struggle because our culture is so immoral and so materialistic and all the rest. But he was living in the Greco Roman culture, which would give ours a run for its money. And yet, he was thinking this way. I would encourage you to follow the example of the apostle Peter. Now one more thing, and I gotta move on here, because I wanna get particularly practical. How do we engage our mind in sober thinking? How do we make it intentionally oriented towards spiritual truth? Well, I thought I'd just have some fun with this. What's the gender of our baby? Girl. So how about maybe on the week that I announce this, here's my little acronym. K? Four ways to help think more seriously about higher things. Girl, g, get rid of distractions. If your whole life is beeping, humming, buzzing, smartphone, constantly calling your attention to something that somebody has said about this or that, you have no time to think high and holy thoughts. There's no time for prayer. You're distracted all the time. Now I sound like an old fuddy duddy with that, and the young people are going, he is so uncool. But let's see what happens to this generation in thirty years. Time will tell whether wisdom lies in the beeping and the humming and the buzzing or in the older folks who are saying, it didn't used to be like that. We used to talk. I thought maybe some of those old people would amen that point. But get rid of distractions. K? And I don't mean to focus on that one. There's a thousand distractions out there. Secondly, increase truth input. Get rid of the banal and the inane and the silly and the superficial and fill your mind. This is the garbage in garbage out principle. Fill your mind increasingly with truth. Philippians four eight. You know, “what sort of things are pure and lovely, of good report, excellent, and worthy of praise, think on these things.” Spend your time on the beautiful and the truthful and the glorious and the eternally significant. Third, r, recall the grace of God for all the times you don't do that and to seek his forgiveness and ask God to give you daily grace. And finally, love God with your mind. That's a whole another point we could make, but how critical it is that we're we are thinking Christians. And even from the beginning, we're called to love him with our body. I mean, we preach against, you know, sexual sin or, you know, abusing your body with drugs or something like that. But so we we're we're all about loving God with our bodies. But what about loving God with our minds? And to intentionally seek to think deeper and higher thoughts about God and to learn and to grow and to become a mature thinking Christian. Let's do that. K? Let's do that. Now I gotta move on. We got communion coming. Second thing that he is focusing on. First one is setting your, your hope fully on the grace that is to come. The second category is that we are to be holy or what I'm calling, we're to be like our daddy. Again, the text, verse 14. “As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance. But as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct since it is written, you shall be holy for I am holy.” So we see Peter here moving from right thinking to right living. What does holy thoughts in my brain look like in a holy expression in my life? And I want you to see, first of all, that this has a relational tone to this. He he began doesn't just say, be holy. He says, hey. As obedient children. And what is that referring to? It is referring to the relationship that we have with God. Right? The Bible says that when we become Christians, that God actually adopts us into his family. We are members of the family of God. We're brothers and sisters in this family. We're sons and daughters of the most high God. And because God is my Father, that relationship matters. It means something in regards to the way that I look at myself, the way that I want to live my life. God's my Heavenly Father. How should I live now? Well, he says here that we should live morally disciplined lives. And to proof text this, Peter reaches into the Old Testament, goes back to Leviticus, and he quotes from there's five passages in Leviticus that use the same statement. “You shall be holy for I am holy.” K? You shall be holy, not me. I'm I'm saying it like I'm I'm God. Okay? “You shall be holy for I am holy.” K? And so we see in that statement the ethical measure and the eth and the ethical motivation as well. God's character is the measure, and God's character is the motive. Because I am holy, you shall you shall be holy. God's holiness is the absolute moral unity of his entire being. He is completely good. He is morally without fail. He is not the author of evil. He has no inclination towards anything that is less than absolutely morally pure and upright. John writes this in First John one. “In him, God is light, and in him, there is no darkness at all.” There's no shadow. There's no little something hidden. He is absolutely, morally, purely bright and light. Everything he does always is holy. And so Peter says, this is our God. This is our Heavenly Father. This is the way that we are to strive to live our life in a morally disciplined manner where the ethics of life matter to us. We want to please our Heavenly Father. We wanna live consistent with what he is like. Notice in all your conduct. Okay? So it's not just, you know, be holy as I am holy. When you're at church on Sunday, when you are out with the pastor, when somebody is watching that maybe could look down on you, It is not in any sort of category. It is in all categories. Holiness of life impacts, shapes, directs every aspect of my life. Why? Because it shapes and directs every aspect of the very life and character of God himself. Now lest there be any confusion here, I wanna emphasize that we are not naturally holy. We are naturally sinners. And this is why Jesus came, and this is why Jesus died. He didn't die for holy people so that they could go, not go to hell. He died for I said that wrong. He let me just say it this way. He died for sinners. K? He died for sinners, and that's us. K? So without his righteousness, we have no standing with God. We have no adoption with God. But sometimes people confuse our position before God as righteous because of what Jesus has done and the calling that God has upon the practice of our life. You overemphasize the position and say, hey, I'm righteous before God, so who gives a rip? Right? I'm going to heaven anyway. That is an abuse of the grace of God. If I focus on the practice solely, then now I am all the time wondering if I'm good enough, wondering if I'm gonna earn my way to heaven. And that is a misuse of the gospel. The gospel is is that we are declared righteous by God. We are positionally righteous before God. We enter into a relationship with God through the gospel by faith that now shapes my desires where now I want to live like I'm a child of God. K? It is relational. It is not legalism. It's not antinomianism. No law. It is relationship. Grudem says to be holy as God is holy includes a full and pervading holiness that reaches to every aspect of our personalities. It involves not only avoiding outward sin, but also maintaining an instinctive delight in God and his holiness as an undercurrent of heart and mind throughout the day. God is our Father. He's always our Father. Everywhere we go, he's our Father. We're his children. And this is where I think the metaphor is helpful because children, not always, but naturally want to to please their or to be like their dad. I'm enjoying this almost every day. I have a 20 year old daughter. Okay? So here's here's what happens in my day. I find myself you know, I'll I'll be sitting at the couch or something and I'll stretch like this and I look over and there she is. She's looking for my affirmation. Right? I'm I'm I'm doing what you're doing, daddy. Right? I kinda like that. That's kinda fun. I'll say to her, I love you. And she'll say, I love you. Is that manipulation? I don't know. But I love it. I love it. Or the other day I was eating and I wasn't watching my manners very well. And so I'm kind of chomping away on something sort of loudly and all a sudden I look over and she's going, daddy needs to slow down and close his mouth while he chews apparently. Why does she raise her arms and mimic me? Why does she repeat the words that I say? Why does she mimic even some of my less wonderful qualities? Because at this point, at least in her life, she wants to be like me. That's a goal for her even though she couldn't articulate it. And here's where I think verse 13 and verse 15 come together. The goal of what God is doing in each of us is holiness and Christ likeness. That's the big picture. He is forming us into the likeness of Christ. As I muster my spiritual and my mental thoughts and energies towards loving God with my mind, my Heavenly Father, my will increasingly is shaped by that priority And the true thoughts that my now girded up mind, the loins of my mind, are thinking about and focusing on shape the desires that I have in my heart, which right thinking leads to right living. So I fill my thought, my heart, my mind with God's truth. And the more I think about the grace of God to me, both now and in the future, and the love of God to me both now and in the future, the more my life then is shaped around his will and his purposes. So that right thinking about God shapes my desires and produces a more righteous living, a more holiness in my life. And all of it is anticipating a future grace and goodness of God that he will shower upon me and is yet to be experienced. And the anticipation, the more I realize what God has already done for me, it elevates my anticipation of what God has yet to do for me. K? And anticipation is a very powerful motive in our life. I remember when, football season was about to start. I would run, and I would train. I would get ready for it. And when basketball season was gonna start, I would run and train and play and shoot. I would get I would get ready for it. I remember when we had, the Bethel five k here a couple years ago. I'm the pastor of the church. I don't wanna embarrass myself. I ran, and I got ready for it. And I remember, perhaps the best example for me is after forty-four years, I got married. And before my wedding, I'm here to tell you, after forty-four years I was thinking about my wedding, and I was thinking about my honeymoon. I wanted to get ready for it. So I swam, and I ran, and I got a tan, and I was thinking about anticipating being with my girl. And it shaped the way that I lived my life. And when we, as Christians, set our minds on things that matter, things that are spiritually true, the promises of God, gospel, the word of God, when my thoughts are high and holy as God would have them to be, I anticipate increasingly, this is good. The best is yet to come. And that anticipation of what is to come means I'm getting ready for it now. And it changes and it shapes the way that I think and the way that I live and the directions of my life, which increases my likeness to Christ and gets me ready for that day when Jesus returns and when his full grace will be revealed. So friends, set your mind on the grace to come. Be holy as God is holy. Is your mind disciplined? Is your life morally diligent? And is your hope oriented towards the amazing grace of God yet to come? To help us with that today, we are going to be partaking in the Lord's supper. And I'd like to pray, and you could begin to prepare your hearts as I do. Heavenly Father God, I do pray and ask that this very practical message would, lead to very practical results in our lives. Lord, help us to be a church that is disciplined in our thinking, that strives to know and understand the gospel, the God of the gospel, the Jesus of the gospel, that we would be serious about this. And that this might, Lord, grant to us an elevated sense of anticipation of what is yet to come. And as we take this communion now, I pray that the partaking in it, the reminder of the death of Jesus would serve to also prepare us with, holiness and anticipation of no more symbols but actual presence to see him and to be with him forever. All praise be to Jesus, we pray in his name. Amen. * This transcript was generated using AI transcription technology and reviewed for accuracy but may contain errors. Please refer to the original audio for precise wording.

Steve DeWitt Love for the Unseen Christ - Part B Study Guide for Spiritual Exiles, 1 Peter 1:6-8 Scripture Reference: 1 Peter 1:8-9 Visit the series page: Exiles: A study in 1 Peter Donate to Support The Journey Sermon Transcript for Spiritual Exiles, 1 Peter 1:8-9 Sermon Series: Spiritual Exiles Message: Love for the Unseen Christ Airdate: 9/14-9/15/25 Programs: 2356 & 2357 It's great to see and an encouragement to us. We come now to God's word, and we are back in our series in First Peter today. You know, Peter wrote to exiles in Asia Minor this letter we call First Peter, but he really might as well have written it to us. It'd be easy to read this letter and to just change the personal pronouns, change the names, and insert our own names and our own church family because what he's talking about here is totally appropriate to us as well. He writes to Christians who are experiencing trials. They're experiencing loneliness. They are ostracized in their society. They are struggling to do, you know, Christian lifestyle in a very pagan environment, which, of course, is what we're doing as well. Here today, no doubt, we have people who are dealing with crushing trials, things that even as I say the word trial, boom, it comes to your mind, and you you're thinking about that, and you you brought that discouragement into this service with you, and you're hoping for a word from God to help you. And we live in this world that is increasingly difficult, I think, to live Christianly, especially in America as it continues to slide more secular. It makes you wonder what are the days ahead gonna be like? What's coming around the bend? What are our children, Lord willing, if they embrace the Christian faith, what are they gonna experience in living the Christian life in a, America that's going the direction that it is? I doubt it's gonna be easier for them than it is for us. So how do we prepare ourselves for the trials that lie ahead? And what Peter is going to talk about here, I believe to be the high point of his letter and really is one of the most wonderful passages in all of the New Testament. The word that comes to my mind with this verse is it's magisterial. I mean, it is just, it's a it's a wonderful, wonderful word that God has for us. And for me, it is a privilege to exposit it and to teach it today, and I hope the Lord blesses it truly. So let me read First Peter one verses eight and nine, our text today. “Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.” Now I know it's been a couple weeks. We had snowmageddon in the in between here, but I hope you haven't forgotten what Peter has been already saying to us and teaching us, especially in, the preceding verses where he talks about trials. And he compares trials to, the fiery furnace that gold would go to. So the analogy is our faith is like gold, and our trials are like fiery furnace. And he draws the analogy, and he says, you know, when they would purify gold, they heat up gold in a furnace. And when it it's heated, the impurities rise to the surface, and they're able to skim off those impurities. And the net effect is that the gold is unveiled in a more valuable way, a more wonderful way. Its genuineness is revealed, but it is also purified by the heat of the trial. And this is intended, I think, to get us ready for what is to come. In fact, he says that. He says at the end of verse seven, that “our faith may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” Now that revelation for us personally will either happen when Jesus returns and there is the revelation of Jesus in this world, or personally, it's going to happen when we die. Because when we die, something becomes true in our faith that has never been true before. What is it? All of a sudden in that moment, I will see him. Right? I am going to see the Lord. “To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.” And that moment of death for us will be when our faith becomes sight, as the as the hymn writer writes. So this moment will be a wonderful, wonderful moment. But for now, it highlights the fact that we are believing in somebody, trusting in somebody, talking about somebody, singing songs to somebody, gathering in the name of somebody that none of us have ever seen. Is that weird? I mean, if if just your average person was to they didn't know anything and they walked in here and they were like, hey. What are you guys doing here? You're like, oh, this is a church that we're all about Jesus here. Really? You're all about Jesus? Yeah. We worship him. We sing to him. We try to live our lives to his glory. Really? Really? What's he what's he what's he like? What's he look like? I don't know. Never met him. The guy would probably be like, these people are strange. Right? I mean, what is going on here in living the Christian faith following the ascension of Jesus when Jesus went to heaven? Other than the Apostle Paul in Scripture, we don't know of anybody who's actually seen Jesus. Right? We are all living a kind of faith and a belief in somebody that we have never met, which on the surface looks strange and weird, like we're all nut jobs somehow. Is this kinda like a religious version of marrying a woman you've never met? Is it eHarmony for eternity? Or is there something else going on, something more wonderful that is going on here? And, of course, Peter writes this letter. And Peter, of all people, is himself an eyewitness. Right? I mean, other than Jesus' family, Peter probably had more eye time with Jesus than anybody else. He was part of Jesus' disciples. He lived with him for three years. They ate. They talked. They they, ministered together. He went to the top of the Mount of Transfiguration. He was there in the Garden of Gethsemane. He was part of the inner three. Jesus appeared to Peter after the resurrection more than anybody else. So you could say that Peter, of all people, had eye time with Jesus, and now here he is writing about people who have no eye time with Jesus. You might think that Peter be like, oh, you age of minor people. I've seen him. I know. You have no idea what you're missing. And we, of course, are in the same situation here today, singing “Crown him with many crowns, the Lamb upon his throne.” “Your great name.” These songs, very Christ centered, uplifting songs to somebody we've never seen with our eyes. And Peter writes here so wonderfully about the Christian experience post ascension. And he says here, you have never seen Christ, yet three things are true. We love him, we believe in him, and we rejoice in him. And let's just walk through the text here now, those three things. First of all, unseen, yet we love him. “Though you have not seen him, you love him.” Now for us, love and sight naturally go together. You sometimes hear couples, they'll say, oh, it was love at first sight. Well, now on my side of the marital covenant, I will say to you that only a very superficial understanding of love would make that kind of statement true. What kind of love or is is Peter talking about? That kind of love? Is it a is it a is it a marital love? Is it I mean, it it's not. It's not an erotic love. It's not even a friendship love that is used here. In fact, the Greek word in this text is that Greek word that the New Testament writers pulled and infused with all kinds of redemptive truth and meaning. Agape love. Agape is the is the word there. We've talked about this at length here at Bethel. We've defined it as self giving for the good and joy of another. It is a kind of love, the kind of love that God has. It is a it is a love of a different kind, a love of a deeper quality. It was this love, this agape love that God expressed to us when he sent his Son Jesus into this world. “For God so loved, agape the world, that he gave his only Son,” John three sixteen. It is this agape love that Jesus expressed to us as he hung on the cross. “Greater love is no man than this, than a man lay down his life for his friend.” “But God demonstrated his love toward us, and that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” This giving of myself, geez God expresses it to us through Jesus. Jesus expresses it to us through his cross and his death in our place. So what is our response then as as believers? First John four nineteen. “We love him because he first loved us.” Amen. Right? And so our love for for God is not self generated. It doesn't it doesn't come from us. We would naturally not love God Jesus this way. But it is an act of God's sovereign grace whereby through the gospel, we come to hear and to understand what Jesus has done for us. And that work of God by his spirit, this new birth, this regeneration explodes in our heart. We believe in Jesus, and the response to the love of God to us is that we love him. K? We don't take credit for that love. We would never come up with that love on our own. This is a part of God's good work in us. It is producing agape for God, agape for Jesus. But our agape of Jesus is different because we've never seen him. It is an unseen love or it's an unseen Christ that we are loving. I tried to think of some analogy of of this. And for obvious reasons in my life right now, I think about a parent's love for a child in the womb. Never seen that child yet. Love him or her already. Unseen child, love for the unseen child, love for the unseen Christ. The love that saving faith creates in us is a genuine love, but it is an agape kind of love even though we've never laid eyes on him. Unseen, yet we love him. Secondly, unseen, yet we believe in him. “Though you do not see him now, you believe in him.” Notice the tense change. The first clause was you did not see him, yet you love him, present tense. Here, you do not see him now, presently, yet you presently believe in him. Now I wonder, does this remind you of anybody? Somebody in the story in the gospels who, refused to believe something that he couldn't see. Now maybe this is coming to your mind already if you're with me. I think about the disciple Thomas. Do you know the story? I trust that you do. The story is that Jesus is resurrected from the dead. He makes his first appearance to the disciples in the upper room. Everybody's there except Thomas. And Jesus is there. He says, here I am. Give me food to eat. Believe. I'm alive. And the disciples, of course, are in awe at this, and they just are marvel at Jesus leaves. Well, Thomas comes in, and they're like, he's alive. And Thomas famously says this. “Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails and place my finger into the mark of the nails and place my hand into his side, I will never believe.” Thomas is like the patron saint of the cynic or the skeptic. The kind of person who says, unless I have empirical evidence with my eyes, unless I can put this in a in a test tube and and sort of prove it, I will not believe until the empirical evidence that my own eyes have seen tell me that this is true. These are the people that refuse to believe the testimony of other people regarding Jesus' claims to deity, regarding the miracles that he did in his earthly ministry and his supernatural life, his resurrection, and all the rest. It's not enough for them. They refuse to believe unless they see it with their own eyes. Notice what happens to Thomas. Eight days later, his disciples were inside again, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” Then he said to Thomas imagine this moment, by the way. The disciples are like, we've seen him. We've seen him. We've seen him. Thomas said, I don't I refuse to believe. Now all of a sudden, Jesus is there. What's the look on Thomas' face? I want a picture of that someday in heaven. Jesus says to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands, and put out your hand and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe.” And Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God.” Notice Thomas doesn't say, okay. Well, let me come over there a second and see if I can put my finger in that hole. And how about if I put my side my fist in the side? He doesn't have to do any of that. He sees Jesus standing before him, and now it is enough, and he says, “My Lord and my God.” Notice the next verse though. Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you've seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” Who is Jesus talking about in that verse? He's talking about us, isn't he? Has anybody here seen Jesus? I doubt it very much. And yet, there we have Jesus saying, the real blessing is not the person who is in the upper room and actually sees the resurrected Jesus. The real blessing is the person who doesn't see that and yet has put their faith and trust in him. He's talking about us. He's talking about 99.999% of people who have ever believed. He's talking about Old Testament saints. He's talking about Moses. He's talking about Abraham. He's talking about David. These are all people that they they they had revelation a little bit from God in the Old Testament. They believed in the coming Messiah. They believed in the one that God promised who would come. They never saw him, and yet they believed. The Old Testament states he's talking about every Christian after the ascension of Jesus. Here we are, having never seen him, and yet we believe. And here we are now in a central truth about the kind of faith that saves us. Christian faith, saving faith, has a kind of seeing, a kind of perceiving, a kind of discerning that goes beyond the eyes. Faith has its own eyes, if we could say it that way. Faith sees the unseen. The writer of Hebrews gives the classic definition. “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen.” You know, Christianity, some people wrongly, in my opinion, accuse it of being somehow anti intellectual. It is not anti intellectual. It is a thinking faith. There is enough evidence in the world around us in the testimony of the eyewitnesses, and the story of Scripture that we can think deeply and intellectually about our faith. But here's the thing. There is not enough evidence to simply reason our way to saving faith. There comes a point where I have to see the unseen. I have to believe in something that I can't put in a test tube. I have to trust in the eyewitness account of others who saw these things. And if you're here today and maybe you have not yet believed, I want to encourage you, and my prayer has been before even preaching this message, that God would somehow use it for that person who maybe is high on the kind of the Thomas scale to help you realize that the faith that saves even by the description of Scripture is a kind of seeing that goes beyond the eyes. But it is a kind of seeing all the same. A kind of faith and trusting in the claims of Christianity, in the claims of Jesus being the Son of God, the eyewitness accounts of people who saw him dead and who saw him alive, and the testimony of two thousand years of Christians whose lives have been changed by faith in this Jesus. And maybe God would use this message to draw you into, finally, a faith relationship with Jesus and that you would put your hope and trust in him. That would be a great thing. And join the rest of us who have not seen Christ but who believe in him truly and fully. So unseen, yet we love him. Unseen, yet we believe in him. Thirdly, unseen, yet we rejoice in him. Again, the text. “Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not see him now, you believe in him. And rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory.” And that little phrase right there, in my opinion, is one of the most sublime, one of the most wonderful little clauses in all of Scripture describing the Christian experience. Rejoicing with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory. Here, I think Peter is describing the Christian experience at its highest, at its its most joyous expression. Our faith sees through the gospel. Our faith sees the loveliness, the beauty, the desirability of Jesus. And inside, there is a kind of resting, trusting in who he is and the fact that he did indeed die for my sins. And there is then in this resting and this assurance that I have that Jesus indeed is not just the savior but my savior, there flows then within us a love, a gladness, a a joy. I mean, imagine somebody receiving Jesus as savior, knowing now my sins are forgiven. My guilt is not held against me. I have the righteousness of Jesus by justification. I have eternal life. I'm a child of God. Heaven and the new earth is mine forever. And on the other side of that being like, bummer. Can you imagine that? I mean, that would be so inappropriate. Right? How can you not have all of these things now by faith and truly in your heart believe them to be true and there not be joy from it? Are you with me? Indeed, joy inexpressible. The word here for rejoice in the original means this. Here's the lexicon. To experience a state of great joy and gladness, often involving verbal expression and appropriate body movement. Some of you are getting uncomfortable now. To be extremely joyful, to be overjoyed, to rejoice greatly. And the lexicon adds this. I shout because of my joy. K? So glad that I'm just raw. But then Peter adds, this joy is inexpressible. So Peter takes it to another level then and says that it is beyond words or description. Now we've probably seen a child open a present or have some moment of such joy that they're just they they run-in place. Right? And they they go in circles like this. They're just they're just so excited. Right? They can't hardly contain themselves. There's an overflow of joy because of it. Adults, similarly, although somewhat more subdued, typically, we clap, we shout, we dance. There is a kind of joy that goes beyond verbal expression. That is this joy inexpressible. Now it would be easy for me right now to lay a massive guilt trip on the church and to say, alright, you Christian people. This is what it's supposed to look like all the time. And if you're here right now and you if I gave you the chance that you would run-in circles and dance and shout but not be able to say words, if that's not your experience right now, you're a bad Christian. And what's wrong with you people? And there are probably a few good meaning people here that would even amen something like that. It's about time we get more that way around here. But I suspect if I did that, most of us would leave very depressed. And I would as well because my Christian experience would not match up with joy inexpressible every moment of every day. My Christian experience and having been around this church long enough now, the vast majority of us are struggling to be faithful to the Lord in the ups and the downs of life. And there is a lot of times that I don't feel joy, I feel disappointment. And there are times that I don't feel joy, I feel depressed. There are times when the criticism hits home. There are times when the relationship struggles just cause despair. There are times where, like, following Jesus, it's not running in places like literally grabbing this leg and forcing it, you know, to follow the Lord and saying, I will, but inside, it doesn't feel like it. Can you relate to that? Life is painful. In fact, you could in mass Peter, why would you talk about joy inexpressible in the verse following the verses about fiery furnace trials? Like, how do those go fiery furnace trial, joy inexpressible? Like for me, when I'm in a trial, I'm not happy. And when I'm when I'm happy, I'm probably not in a in a trial at that moment. Right? I can have some joy inexpressible when everything is fantastic. I wanna live on that plane. Life isn't that way, though. And I have wrestled with this passage, and I wanna tell you what I think it's saying. At least at this point in my spiritual walk and my spiritual maturity and my understanding of scripture, maybe in ten years, I'll say, I think something different. But as best I can tell, this is what Peter is doing. Peter is describing here in such emotionally rejoicing language, he is describing the Christian faith as it can be, as it should be, and as it will be. As it can be, as it should be, and as it will be. Let's start with the as it will be because I think all of us are on the same page with this one. Who here wouldn't want to experience joy in Jesus like he's describing here? Well, be encouraged. Our entire eternity will be this. Listen, Christian. Our entire eternity is going to be the experience of perpetual and unending joy inexpressible. What am I talking about? I am talking about the day that is coming for us when we are standing in the presence of the Lord, when we are living on that new earth, when we are in our glorified bodies, when we have received all of the redemptive benefits that God has promised to us, when we are not living in this sin sick world anymore, when we are living in the next one, that experience there is going to be so far beyond this one and so far better than this one, I I wonder how we'll look back on these days. Imagine it. Every moment, joy inexpressible. That's our eternity. To think that our brothers and sisters who've died and have already gone there to think about Pete Erhammer and Merle McCleskey, two members of our church that died recently, both faithful, godly men. If we had, like, a little if we could FaceTime them right now and say, hey, Merle and Pete, how's it going up there? What would they say? I think they would say, it is so much better than I ever imagined. And we'd be like, why do you say that? I believe they would say, we have seen him. We've seen him in all of his glory, in all of his beauty, in all of his majesty. We have seen him. He talked to me. He talked to me. He ministered to me. He's seen me. I see him. You're not gonna believe what it's like. It's fantastic. Why? What's so great about there? There, the faith has become sight. And that sight is not Jesus in his more subdued, stealthy, incarnate human body. It is Jesus in all of the splendor that is his as the Son of God at the right hand of God the Father. And that will be for us since he is our savior, Lord, and friend. That will be for us a source of unending, unexhausting joy inexpressible. And our dear brothers and sisters, they're there right now, and they are experiencing that. And our faith, even right now, has capacity for that. And we have moments of that, but not like it is there. Psalm sixteen eleven, “in thy presence is fullness of joy, and at thy right hand is pleasures evermore.” And so Peter here is giving us a glimpse of what eternity's joy will be like. It'll be perfect joy. It'll be inexpressible joy, and that day is coming for us. But Peter is also here describing Christian faith as it can be and as it should be. And this is what I think he is getting at in context here in the passage is that heaven's joy is part of the present Christian experience. Only here, we have to fight for it. In this world and in this body, I have to fight for heaven's joy to be a part of my experience here. And the reason that it is a fight is because of indwelling sin. It is a fight because there are all of these joy stealers all the time that are wanting me to put my hope, trust, identity, and belief in them, but they are not Jesus. And they ultimately are disappointing. Trials are this. Trials cloud our thinking so easily. You know, in moments when I have spiritual clarity, and maybe you can relate to this, there are there are moments I could tell you some of the high points of my whole Christian experience where maybe it's on the other side of a trial or maybe it's in a particular worship service or there's something going on in my life. All of a sudden, I have clarity. Like I see things truly biblically. I see my life and I see my forgiveness in Jesus and I I don't know. I just have these sometimes these moments of clarity and I have inside of me, I just feel like a yes. There's a there's a genuine joy that I that I I'll have. And I'll bet, Christian, you've had some high points in your walk as well. Somehow, there's just a refreshment in your perspective, and there comes in your soul a kind of gladness in all that you have in Jesus and all that God has done for you and the love of God and just all the promises and the hopes that comes in him. These are wonderful moments in our life. But then we give into a temptation or some opportunity comes and we think there's greater joy in gossip or in porn than in Jesus and a life lived to his glory. There's more joy in having what my neighbor has or wishing he didn't have it. There's more joy in some other kind of sin or some good thing, but a lesser thing. And what happens in that? Where does the joy go? Boo. Out the window. Right? There it goes. Think of David as an example of this. David, King David, the the sweet singer of Israel, the writer of the Psalms, the man who God himself said was “a man after my own heart,” wrote beautiful language about his relationship to God, to the Lord. He says just says, “I love the Lord.” Right? “The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want.” I mean, he he must have had such joy in his heart as he was writing such beautiful language about what God is like. What happened to David? One day David sinned with Bathsheba. And in Psalm 51, he describes the experience of one year of living without repentance. And he says, “my bones groaned within me.” And he writes in Psalm 51, his desire is this, “restore to me the joy of my salvation.” What did David miss in his time away from God? He missed that sense of gladness in God, that everything was right. I'm living for the glory of God. And maybe you're there right now. You remember good old days spiritually. You remember times of gladness in Jesus, but you've been living for something else. Or you've given into some temptation, and your heart longs for the good old days spiritually, so did David. He wanted that joy back, but it had been stolen from him. What is David writing in Psalm 23 or Psalm 51? It's the same thing that Peter's writing in First Peter one eight. What are trials? What is the what is “the valley of the shadow of death”? What do these have what to do with joy? Simply this. Trials magnify like nothing else the joy of knowing Jesus. And the result of that is that we love him more. Is this not true? Think about it in your own life. Think about it from scripture. The writer of Hebrews I'm gonna give you one example. The writer of Hebrews writes to a group of people that had gone through a particular experience. Listen carefully to what how he describes what they went through. This is Hebrews 10. “But recall the former days when after you were enlightened, in other words, after you had come to saving faith, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings, sometimes being publicly be a And You're since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one.” He's talking about Christians who went through horrible experiences, persecutions, plundering of what they have. Imagine a Christian, for example, today living in Syria and seeing ISIS approaching. What would you expect to find in their hearts? Are they they're going, yes. Here they come. On one level, obviously, no. But on another level, all the trials and sufferings that come into our life do something good for us. They refine our thinking about what really matters in life, and they magnify to us the enduring value of knowing Jesus. Because, typically, all these trials involve losing something. They lost their possessions. Imagine, for example, that you're here in church, and we come to find out that even right now, there's a group of people, and they're robbing your house. How many of us are going, love that? We're not happy about that in one respect. But in another respect, if somebody did rob your house or like the family in our church whose house burned down this last year, give the testimony that spiritually, it's been a wonderful experience for them. Why? Because when your house burns down, it helps refine what really matters in life, doesn't it? And this is what trials do. They help us realize that these temporary things that in the matter in the end don't matter, that knowing Christ is the thing that matters. He is the enduring source of joy, and the joy in Jesus is magnified by the loss. Let me illustrate it this way. Let's just imagine that it's last week and you're in Phoenix. And you didn't realize it, but the Super Bowl was going on in Phoenix. And you're like, that's I've always wanted to go to the Super Bowl like you're a lifelong NFL fan. It's been a dream of yours, but they never have the Super Bowl in at Soldier Field, so you never have the opportunity. But you just happen to be in Phoenix, Arizona, and the Super Bowl is going on. You get online, and sure enough, there's a ticket. You buy this ticket. It's extraordinarily expensive, but you're like, I'm going anyway. It's a once in a lifetime chance. And so you go to the Super Bowl and you got your ticket and you you go in there and you're like, okay, where's my seat at? They say it's up there. And the next guy goes, it's up there. And the next guy goes, it's up You're in the last row of the stadium. You're all the way at the top. You're sitting behind a pillar next to a drunk guy. And you're sitting there, I can't believe this is gonna be my Super Bowl experience sitting here. And you're, like, looking around the pillar trying to see the game. When all of a sudden the guy comes up to you and says, he goes, hey. How'd you like to be in the front row? And you're like, really? He goes, here's the thing though. To be in the front row, you gotta give me your back row ticket. Now what would be the natural response to that? No problem. Best day of my entire life. You bet. You can have this ticket right here. You just frame it for all I care. You can have that. I get the front row ticket. And so down you go all the way to the front row, and there you are, best seat in the house, 50 yard line. The game's going on in front of you. And and what do you do in the entire game? You're watching the game, but every once in a while, you're looking back up at the seat that you were supposed to be sitting in. And you're thinking to yourself every time you look at it, what? Yes. Right? Look where I am. Look what I have. Fantastic. How many of us would be in the front row going, oh, the old ticket. Sounds like a country song. Right? The old ticket. Maybe I shouldn't have given that up. We don't think that. Why? Because we realize what we have. And trials are that for us. Suffering is that for us. It is always loss. Trials are it's a loss of my health. It's the loss of my job. It's the loss of my spouse. It's the loss of my financial security. It's it's somehow it involves the losing or the threatening of losing something that I am deeming valuable, but they are always things that are temporary. Even life itself is the loss of something temporary. I don't get to keep any of these things anyway, including my life. But as I go through these trials, they are and I'm losing things or maybe losing things. They are reminding the Christian that there is one thing that is enduring. There is one possession that trumps all of them. It is the front row ticket. And my joy is in this, not in that. Are you with me? And so we have to live our lives. And this is what Peter is saying. You haven't seen him, but you love him. You don't see him now. You believe in him. And the result of my gladness, my hope, my assurance being in Jesus and not in these other things is that I can have a joy that is paired with the pain. I can have a joy in the midst of the sorrow. I can have joy in the midst of the plundering of my possessions. I can have joy in the midst of the cancer treatment. I can have joy in the midst of the marital counseling. I can have joy in the midst of the painful pregnancy. I can have joy in the midst of anything that is temporary because my joy isn't something that is eternal. Right? And this joy, in the words of the old preacher, the world didn't give it, and the world can't take it away. Trials magnify what really matters. When I think about things that I've gone through in my life, I turned 47 two weeks ago. I'm not the oldest in the room, and I am not the youngest anymore. I've been around the block a few times, and I've had a few hard things that I've gone through. When I think about even the worst moments of my life, I look back at them now, and I can appreciate them because God used them in my life to refine my faith, to get my clinging from things and people and affirmation from people and a host of other things. And they have been good for me. Good for me. And I got a long way to go in this. And you catch me on the wrong day, and you're gonna walk away thinking he ain't living out his sermon very well. But neither are you, friend. And that's why heaven will be all of us living the sermon out perfectly. Joy inexpressible, filled with glory, seeing him by sight, being in proximity to him, knowing his love, not by faith, but by the full experience of human sensory knowledge to touch him, to hear him, to see him will be for us as a joy that our hearts can't even imagine now. And that day is coming. So how about you, friend? You're in a trial right now? You got some pain going on? Is your joy in the thought that maybe that trial's gonna go away? Is your joy in the thought that maybe that pain will go away? You got everybody praying that God would take the pain away. Might not the actual solution be pairing the pain with joy in the Lord? “Rejoice in the Lord always. And again, I say rejoice.” And that is how we live the Christian life in the ups and the downs, in the trials and in the blessings, awaiting a day when our faith will be sight and we will see him. That will be a great day. Amen. Would you please join me for a word of prayer? * This transcript was generated using AI transcription technology and reviewed for accuracy but may contain errors. Please refer to the original audio for precise wording.

Steve DeWitt Love for the Unseen Christ - Part A Study Guide for Spiritual Exiles, 1 Peter 1:6-8 Scripture Reference: 1 Peter 1:8-9 Visit the series page: Exiles: A study in 1 Peter Donate to Support The Journey Sermon Transcript for Spiritual Exiles, 1 Peter 1:8-9 Sermon Series: Spiritual Exiles Message: Love for the Unseen Christ Airdate: 9/14-9/15/25 Programs: 2356 & 2357 It's great to see and an encouragement to us. We come now to God's word, and we are back in our series in First Peter today. You know, Peter wrote to exiles in Asia Minor this letter we call First Peter, but he really might as well have written it to us. It'd be easy to read this letter and to just change the personal pronouns, change the names, and insert our own names and our own church family because what he's talking about here is totally appropriate to us as well. He writes to Christians who are experiencing trials. They're experiencing loneliness. They are ostracized in their society. They are struggling to do, you know, Christian lifestyle in a very pagan environment, which, of course, is what we're doing as well. Here today, no doubt, we have people who are dealing with crushing trials, things that even as I say the word trial, boom, it comes to your mind, and you you're thinking about that, and you you brought that discouragement into this service with you, and you're hoping for a word from God to help you. And we live in this world that is increasingly difficult, I think, to live Christianly, especially in America as it continues to slide more secular. It makes you wonder what are the days ahead gonna be like? What's coming around the bend? What are our children, Lord willing, if they embrace the Christian faith, what are they gonna experience in living the Christian life in a, America that's going the direction that it is? I doubt it's gonna be easier for them than it is for us. So how do we prepare ourselves for the trials that lie ahead? And what Peter is going to talk about here, I believe to be the high point of his letter and really is one of the most wonderful passages in all of the New Testament. The word that comes to my mind with this verse is it's magisterial. I mean, it is just, it's a it's a wonderful, wonderful word that God has for us. And for me, it is a privilege to exposit it and to teach it today, and I hope the Lord blesses it truly. So let me read First Peter one verses eight and nine, our text today. “Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.” Now I know it's been a couple weeks. We had snowmageddon in the in between here, but I hope you haven't forgotten what Peter has been already saying to us and teaching us, especially in, the preceding verses where he talks about trials. And he compares trials to, the fiery furnace that gold would go to. So the analogy is our faith is like gold, and our trials are like fiery furnace. And he draws the analogy, and he says, you know, when they would purify gold, they heat up gold in a furnace. And when it it's heated, the impurities rise to the surface, and they're able to skim off those impurities. And the net effect is that the gold is unveiled in a more valuable way, a more wonderful way. Its genuineness is revealed, but it is also purified by the heat of the trial. And this is intended, I think, to get us ready for what is to come. In fact, he says that. He says at the end of verse seven, that “our faith may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” Now that revelation for us personally will either happen when Jesus returns and there is the revelation of Jesus in this world, or personally, it's going to happen when we die. Because when we die, something becomes true in our faith that has never been true before. What is it? All of a sudden in that moment, I will see him. Right? I am going to see the Lord. “To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.” And that moment of death for us will be when our faith becomes sight, as the as the hymn writer writes. So this moment will be a wonderful, wonderful moment. But for now, it highlights the fact that we are believing in somebody, trusting in somebody, talking about somebody, singing songs to somebody, gathering in the name of somebody that none of us have ever seen. Is that weird? I mean, if if just your average person was to they didn't know anything and they walked in here and they were like, hey. What are you guys doing here? You're like, oh, this is a church that we're all about Jesus here. Really? You're all about Jesus? Yeah. We worship him. We sing to him. We try to live our lives to his glory. Really? Really? What's he what's he what's he like? What's he look like? I don't know. Never met him. The guy would probably be like, these people are strange. Right? I mean, what is going on here in living the Christian faith following the ascension of Jesus when Jesus went to heaven? Other than the Apostle Paul in Scripture, we don't know of anybody who's actually seen Jesus. Right? We are all living a kind of faith and a belief in somebody that we have never met, which on the surface looks strange and weird, like we're all nut jobs somehow. Is this kinda like a religious version of marrying a woman you've never met? Is it eHarmony for eternity? Or is there something else going on, something more wonderful that is going on here? And, of course, Peter writes this letter. And Peter, of all people, is himself an eyewitness. Right? I mean, other than Jesus' family, Peter probably had more eye time with Jesus than anybody else. He was part of Jesus' disciples. He lived with him for three years. They ate. They talked. They they, ministered together. He went to the top of the Mount of Transfiguration. He was there in the Garden of Gethsemane. He was part of the inner three. Jesus appeared to Peter after the resurrection more than anybody else. So you could say that Peter, of all people, had eye time with Jesus, and now here he is writing about people who have no eye time with Jesus. You might think that Peter be like, oh, you age of minor people. I've seen him. I know. You have no idea what you're missing. And we, of course, are in the same situation here today, singing “Crown him with many crowns, the Lamb upon his throne.” “Your great name.” These songs, very Christ centered, uplifting songs to somebody we've never seen with our eyes. And Peter writes here so wonderfully about the Christian experience post ascension. And he says here, you have never seen Christ, yet three things are true. We love him, we believe in him, and we rejoice in him. And let's just walk through the text here now, those three things. First of all, unseen, yet we love him. “Though you have not seen him, you love him.” Now for us, love and sight naturally go together. You sometimes hear couples, they'll say, oh, it was love at first sight. Well, now on my side of the marital covenant, I will say to you that only a very superficial understanding of love would make that kind of statement true. What kind of love or is is Peter talking about? That kind of love? Is it a is it a is it a marital love? Is it I mean, it it's not. It's not an erotic love. It's not even a friendship love that is used here. In fact, the Greek word in this text is that Greek word that the New Testament writers pulled and infused with all kinds of redemptive truth and meaning. Agape love. Agape is the is the word there. We've talked about this at length here at Bethel. We've defined it as self giving for the good and joy of another. It is a kind of love, the kind of love that God has. It is a it is a love of a different kind, a love of a deeper quality. It was this love, this agape love that God expressed to us when he sent his Son Jesus into this world. “For God so loved, agape the world, that he gave his only Son,” John three sixteen. It is this agape love that Jesus expressed to us as he hung on the cross. “Greater love is no man than this, than a man lay down his life for his friend.” “But God demonstrated his love toward us, and that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” This giving of myself, geez God expresses it to us through Jesus. Jesus expresses it to us through his cross and his death in our place. So what is our response then as as believers? First John four nineteen. “We love him because he first loved us.” Amen. Right? And so our love for for God is not self generated. It doesn't it doesn't come from us. We would naturally not love God Jesus this way. But it is an act of God's sovereign grace whereby through the gospel, we come to hear and to understand what Jesus has done for us. And that work of God by his spirit, this new birth, this regeneration explodes in our heart. We believe in Jesus, and the response to the love of God to us is that we love him. K? We don't take credit for that love. We would never come up with that love on our own. This is a part of God's good work in us. It is producing agape for God, agape for Jesus. But our agape of Jesus is different because we've never seen him. It is an unseen love or it's an unseen Christ that we are loving. I tried to think of some analogy of of this. And for obvious reasons in my life right now, I think about a parent's love for a child in the womb. Never seen that child yet. Love him or her already. Unseen child, love for the unseen child, love for the unseen Christ. The love that saving faith creates in us is a genuine love, but it is an agape kind of love even though we've never laid eyes on him. Unseen, yet we love him. Secondly, unseen, yet we believe in him. “Though you do not see him now, you believe in him.” Notice the tense change. The first clause was you did not see him, yet you love him, present tense. Here, you do not see him now, presently, yet you presently believe in him. Now I wonder, does this remind you of anybody? Somebody in the story in the gospels who, refused to believe something that he couldn't see. Now maybe this is coming to your mind already if you're with me. I think about the disciple Thomas. Do you know the story? I trust that you do. The story is that Jesus is resurrected from the dead. He makes his first appearance to the disciples in the upper room. Everybody's there except Thomas. And Jesus is there. He says, here I am. Give me food to eat. Believe. I'm alive. And the disciples, of course, are in awe at this, and they just are marvel at Jesus leaves. Well, Thomas comes in, and they're like, he's alive. And Thomas famously says this. “Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails and place my finger into the mark of the nails and place my hand into his side, I will never believe.” Thomas is like the patron saint of the cynic or the skeptic. The kind of person who says, unless I have empirical evidence with my eyes, unless I can put this in a in a test tube and and sort of prove it, I will not believe until the empirical evidence that my own eyes have seen tell me that this is true. These are the people that refuse to believe the testimony of other people regarding Jesus' claims to deity, regarding the miracles that he did in his earthly ministry and his supernatural life, his resurrection, and all the rest. It's not enough for them. They refuse to believe unless they see it with their own eyes. Notice what happens to Thomas. Eight days later, his disciples were inside again, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” Then he said to Thomas imagine this moment, by the way. The disciples are like, we've seen him. We've seen him. We've seen him. Thomas said, I don't I refuse to believe. Now all of a sudden, Jesus is there. What's the look on Thomas' face? I want a picture of that someday in heaven. Jesus says to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands, and put out your hand and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe.” And Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God.” Notice Thomas doesn't say, okay. Well, let me come over there a second and see if I can put my finger in that hole. And how about if I put my side my fist in the side? He doesn't have to do any of that. He sees Jesus standing before him, and now it is enough, and he says, “My Lord and my God.” Notice the next verse though. Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you've seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” Who is Jesus talking about in that verse? He's talking about us, isn't he? Has anybody here seen Jesus? I doubt it very much. And yet, there we have Jesus saying, the real blessing is not the person who is in the upper room and actually sees the resurrected Jesus. The real blessing is the person who doesn't see that and yet has put their faith and trust in him. He's talking about us. He's talking about 99.999% of people who have ever believed. He's talking about Old Testament saints. He's talking about Moses. He's talking about Abraham. He's talking about David. These are all people that they they they had revelation a little bit from God in the Old Testament. They believed in the coming Messiah. They believed in the one that God promised who would come. They never saw him, and yet they believed. The Old Testament states he's talking about every Christian after the ascension of Jesus. Here we are, having never seen him, and yet we believe. And here we are now in a central truth about the kind of faith that saves us. Christian faith, saving faith, has a kind of seeing, a kind of perceiving, a kind of discerning that goes beyond the eyes. Faith has its own eyes, if we could say it that way. Faith sees the unseen. The writer of Hebrews gives the classic definition. “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen.” You know, Christianity, some people wrongly, in my opinion, accuse it of being somehow anti intellectual. It is not anti intellectual. It is a thinking faith. There is enough evidence in the world around us in the testimony of the eyewitnesses, and the story of Scripture that we can think deeply and intellectually about our faith. But here's the thing. There is not enough evidence to simply reason our way to saving faith. There comes a point where I have to see the unseen. I have to believe in something that I can't put in a test tube. I have to trust in the eyewitness account of others who saw these things. And if you're here today and maybe you have not yet believed, I want to encourage you, and my prayer has been before even preaching this message, that God would somehow use it for that person who maybe is high on the kind of the Thomas scale to help you realize that the faith that saves even by the description of Scripture is a kind of seeing that goes beyond the eyes. But it is a kind of seeing all the same. A kind of faith and trusting in the claims of Christianity, in the claims of Jesus being the Son of God, the eyewitness accounts of people who saw him dead and who saw him alive, and the testimony of two thousand years of Christians whose lives have been changed by faith in this Jesus. And maybe God would use this message to draw you into, finally, a faith relationship with Jesus and that you would put your hope and trust in him. That would be a great thing. And join the rest of us who have not seen Christ but who believe in him truly and fully. So unseen, yet we love him. Unseen, yet we believe in him. Thirdly, unseen, yet we rejoice in him. Again, the text. “Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not see him now, you believe in him. And rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory.” And that little phrase right there, in my opinion, is one of the most sublime, one of the most wonderful little clauses in all of Scripture describing the Christian experience. Rejoicing with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory. Here, I think Peter is describing the Christian experience at its highest, at its its most joyous expression. Our faith sees through the gospel. Our faith sees the loveliness, the beauty, the desirability of Jesus. And inside, there is a kind of resting, trusting in who he is and the fact that he did indeed die for my sins. And there is then in this resting and this assurance that I have that Jesus indeed is not just the savior but my savior, there flows then within us a love, a gladness, a a joy. I mean, imagine somebody receiving Jesus as savior, knowing now my sins are forgiven. My guilt is not held against me. I have the righteousness of Jesus by justification. I have eternal life. I'm a child of God. Heaven and the new earth is mine forever. And on the other side of that being like, bummer. Can you imagine that? I mean, that would be so inappropriate. Right? How can you not have all of these things now by faith and truly in your heart believe them to be true and there not be joy from it? Are you with me? Indeed, joy inexpressible. The word here for rejoice in the original means this. Here's the lexicon. To experience a state of great joy and gladness, often involving verbal expression and appropriate body movement. Some of you are getting uncomfortable now. To be extremely joyful, to be overjoyed, to rejoice greatly. And the lexicon adds this. I shout because of my joy. K? So glad that I'm just raw. But then Peter adds, this joy is inexpressible. So Peter takes it to another level then and says that it is beyond words or description. Now we've probably seen a child open a present or have some moment of such joy that they're just they they run-in place. Right? And they they go in circles like this. They're just they're just so excited. Right? They can't hardly contain themselves. There's an overflow of joy because of it. Adults, similarly, although somewhat more subdued, typically, we clap, we shout, we dance. There is a kind of joy that goes beyond verbal expression. That is this joy inexpressible. Now it would be easy for me right now to lay a massive guilt trip on the church and to say, alright, you Christian people. This is what it's supposed to look like all the time. And if you're here right now and you if I gave you the chance that you would run-in circles and dance and shout but not be able to say words, if that's not your experience right now, you're a bad Christian. And what's wrong with you people? And there are probably a few good meaning people here that would even amen something like that. It's about time we get more that way around here. But I suspect if I did that, most of us would leave very depressed. And I would as well because my Christian experience would not match up with joy inexpressible every moment of every day. My Christian experience and having been around this church long enough now, the vast majority of us are struggling to be faithful to the Lord in the ups and the downs of life. And there is a lot of times that I don't feel joy, I feel disappointment. And there are times that I don't feel joy, I feel depressed. There are times when the criticism hits home. There are times when the relationship struggles just cause despair. There are times where, like, following Jesus, it's not running in places like literally grabbing this leg and forcing it, you know, to follow the Lord and saying, I will, but inside, it doesn't feel like it. Can you relate to that? Life is painful. In fact, you could in mass Peter, why would you talk about joy inexpressible in the verse following the verses about fiery furnace trials? Like, how do those go fiery furnace trial, joy inexpressible? Like for me, when I'm in a trial, I'm not happy. And when I'm when I'm happy, I'm probably not in a in a trial at that moment. Right? I can have some joy inexpressible when everything is fantastic. I wanna live on that plane. Life isn't that way, though. And I have wrestled with this passage, and I wanna tell you what I think it's saying. At least at this point in my spiritual walk and my spiritual maturity and my understanding of scripture, maybe in ten years, I'll say, I think something different. But as best I can tell, this is what Peter is doing. Peter is describing here in such emotionally rejoicing language, he is describing the Christian faith as it can be, as it should be, and as it will be. As it can be, as it should be, and as it will be. Let's start with the as it will be because I think all of us are on the same page with this one. Who here wouldn't want to experience joy in Jesus like he's describing here? Well, be encouraged. Our entire eternity will be this. Listen, Christian. Our entire eternity is going to be the experience of perpetual and unending joy inexpressible. What am I talking about? I am talking about the day that is coming for us when we are standing in the presence of the Lord, when we are living on that new earth, when we are in our glorified bodies, when we have received all of the redemptive benefits that God has promised to us, when we are not living in this sin sick world anymore, when we are living in the next one, that experience there is going to be so far beyond this one and so far better than this one, I I wonder how we'll look back on these days. Imagine it. Every moment, joy inexpressible. That's our eternity. To think that our brothers and sisters who've died and have already gone there to think about Pete Erhammer and Merle McCleskey, two members of our church that died recently, both faithful, godly men. If we had, like, a little if we could FaceTime them right now and say, hey, Merle and Pete, how's it going up there? What would they say? I think they would say, it is so much better than I ever imagined. And we'd be like, why do you say that? I believe they would say, we have seen him. We've seen him in all of his glory, in all of his beauty, in all of his majesty. We have seen him. He talked to me. He talked to me. He ministered to me. He's seen me. I see him. You're not gonna believe what it's like. It's fantastic. Why? What's so great about there? There, the faith has become sight. And that sight is not Jesus in his more subdued, stealthy, incarnate human body. It is Jesus in all of the splendor that is his as the Son of God at the right hand of God the Father. And that will be for us since he is our savior, Lord, and friend. That will be for us a source of unending, unexhausting joy inexpressible. And our dear brothers and sisters, they're there right now, and they are experiencing that. And our faith, even right now, has capacity for that. And we have moments of that, but not like it is there. Psalm sixteen eleven, “in thy presence is fullness of joy, and at thy right hand is pleasures evermore.” And so Peter here is giving us a glimpse of what eternity's joy will be like. It'll be perfect joy. It'll be inexpressible joy, and that day is coming for us. But Peter is also here describing Christian faith as it can be and as it should be. And this is what I think he is getting at in context here in the passage is that heaven's joy is part of the present Christian experience. Only here, we have to fight for it. In this world and in this body, I have to fight for heaven's joy to be a part of my experience here. And the reason that it is a fight is because of indwelling sin. It is a fight because there are all of these joy stealers all the time that are wanting me to put my hope, trust, identity, and belief in them, but they are not Jesus. And they ultimately are disappointing. Trials are this. Trials cloud our thinking so easily. You know, in moments when I have spiritual clarity, and maybe you can relate to this, there are there are moments I could tell you some of the high points of my whole Christian experience where maybe it's on the other side of a trial or maybe it's in a particular worship service or there's something going on in my life. All of a sudden, I have clarity. Like I see things truly biblically. I see my life and I see my forgiveness in Jesus and I I don't know. I just have these sometimes these moments of clarity and I have inside of me, I just feel like a yes. There's a there's a genuine joy that I that I I'll have. And I'll bet, Christian, you've had some high points in your walk as well. Somehow, there's just a refreshment in your perspective, and there comes in your soul a kind of gladness in all that you have in Jesus and all that God has done for you and the love of God and just all the promises and the hopes that comes in him. These are wonderful moments in our life. But then we give into a temptation or some opportunity comes and we think there's greater joy in gossip or in porn than in Jesus and a life lived to his glory. There's more joy in having what my neighbor has or wishing he didn't have it. There's more joy in some other kind of sin or some good thing, but a lesser thing. And what happens in that? Where does the joy go? Boo. Out the window. Right? There it goes. Think of David as an example of this. David, King David, the the sweet singer of Israel, the writer of the Psalms, the man who God himself said was “a man after my own heart,” wrote beautiful language about his relationship to God, to the Lord. He says just says, “I love the Lord.” Right? “The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want.” I mean, he he must have had such joy in his heart as he was writing such beautiful language about what God is like. What happened to David? One day David sinned with Bathsheba. And in Psalm 51, he describes the experience of one year of living without repentance. And he says, “my bones groaned within me.” And he writes in Psalm 51, his desire is this, “restore to me the joy of my salvation.” What did David miss in his time away from God? He missed that sense of gladness in God, that everything was right. I'm living for the glory of God. And maybe you're there right now. You remember good old days spiritually. You remember times of gladness in Jesus, but you've been living for something else. Or you've given into some temptation, and your heart longs for the good old days spiritually, so did David. He wanted that joy back, but it had been stolen from him. What is David writing in Psalm 23 or Psalm 51? It's the same thing that Peter's writing in First Peter one eight. What are trials? What is the what is “the valley of the shadow of death”? What do these have what to do with joy? Simply this. Trials magnify like nothing else the joy of knowing Jesus. And the result of that is that we love him more. Is this not true? Think about it in your own life. Think about it from scripture. The writer of Hebrews I'm gonna give you one example. The writer of Hebrews writes to a group of people that had gone through a particular experience. Listen carefully to what how he describes what they went through. This is Hebrews 10. “But recall the former days when after you were enlightened, in other words, after you had come to saving faith, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings, sometimes being publicly be a And You're since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one.” He's talking about Christians who went through horrible experiences, persecutions, plundering of what they have. Imagine a Christian, for example, today living in Syria and seeing ISIS approaching. What would you expect to find in their hearts? Are they they're going, yes. Here they come. On one level, obviously, no. But on another level, all the trials and sufferings that come into our life do something good for us. They refine our thinking about what really matters in life, and they magnify to us the enduring value of knowing Jesus. Because, typically, all these trials involve losing something. They lost their possessions. Imagine, for example, that you're here in church, and we come to find out that even right now, there's a group of people, and they're robbing your house. How many of us are going, love that? We're not happy about that in one respect. But in another respect, if somebody did rob your house or like the family in our church whose house burned down this last year, give the testimony that spiritually, it's been a wonderful experience for them. Why? Because when your house burns down, it helps refine what really matters in life, doesn't it? And this is what trials do. They help us realize that these temporary things that in the matter in the end don't matter, that knowing Christ is the thing that matters. He is the enduring source of joy, and the joy in Jesus is magnified by the loss. Let me illustrate it this way. Let's just imagine that it's last week and you're in Phoenix. And you didn't realize it, but the Super Bowl was going on in Phoenix. And you're like, that's I've always wanted to go to the Super Bowl like you're a lifelong NFL fan. It's been a dream of yours, but they never have the Super Bowl in at Soldier Field, so you never have the opportunity. But you just happen to be in Phoenix, Arizona, and the Super Bowl is going on. You get online, and sure enough, there's a ticket. You buy this ticket. It's extraordinarily expensive, but you're like, I'm going anyway. It's a once in a lifetime chance. And so you go to the Super Bowl and you got your ticket and you you go in there and you're like, okay, where's my seat at? They say it's up there. And the next guy goes, it's up there. And the next guy goes, it's up You're in the last row of the stadium. You're all the way at the top. You're sitting behind a pillar next to a drunk guy. And you're sitting there, I can't believe this is gonna be my Super Bowl experience sitting here. And you're, like, looking around the pillar trying to see the game. When all of a sudden the guy comes up to you and says, he goes, hey. How'd you like to be in the front row? And you're like, really? He goes, here's the thing though. To be in the front row, you gotta give me your back row ticket. Now what would be the natural response to that? No problem. Best day of my entire life. You bet. You can have this ticket right here. You just frame it for all I care. You can have that. I get the front row ticket. And so down you go all the way to the front row, and there you are, best seat in the house, 50 yard line. The game's going on in front of you. And and what do you do in the entire game? You're watching the game, but every once in a while, you're looking back up at the seat that you were supposed to be sitting in. And you're thinking to yourself every time you look at it, what? Yes. Right? Look where I am. Look what I have. Fantastic. How many of us would be in the front row going, oh, the old ticket. Sounds like a country song. Right? The old ticket. Maybe I shouldn't have given that up. We don't think that. Why? Because we realize what we have. And trials are that for us. Suffering is that for us. It is always loss. Trials are it's a loss of my health. It's the loss of my job. It's the loss of my spouse. It's the loss of my financial security. It's it's somehow it involves the losing or the threatening of losing something that I am deeming valuable, but they are always things that are temporary. Even life itself is the loss of something temporary. I don't get to keep any of these things anyway, including my life. But as I go through these trials, they are and I'm losing things or maybe losing things. They are reminding the Christian that there is one thing that is enduring. There is one possession that trumps all of them. It is the front row ticket. And my joy is in this, not in that. Are you with me? And so we have to live our lives. And this is what Peter is saying. You haven't seen him, but you love him. You don't see him now. You believe in him. And the result of my gladness, my hope, my assurance being in Jesus and not in these other things is that I can have a joy that is paired with the pain. I can have a joy in the midst of the sorrow. I can have joy in the midst of the plundering of my possessions. I can have joy in the midst of the cancer treatment. I can have joy in the midst of the marital counseling. I can have joy in the midst of the painful pregnancy. I can have joy in the midst of anything that is temporary because my joy isn't something that is eternal. Right? And this joy, in the words of the old preacher, the world didn't give it, and the world can't take it away. Trials magnify what really matters. When I think about things that I've gone through in my life, I turned 47 two weeks ago. I'm not the oldest in the room, and I am not the youngest anymore. I've been around the block a few times, and I've had a few hard things that I've gone through. When I think about even the worst moments of my life, I look back at them now, and I can appreciate them because God used them in my life to refine my faith, to get my clinging from things and people and affirmation from people and a host of other things. And they have been good for me. Good for me. And I got a long way to go in this. And you catch me on the wrong day, and you're gonna walk away thinking he ain't living out his sermon very well. But neither are you, friend. And that's why heaven will be all of us living the sermon out perfectly. Joy inexpressible, filled with glory, seeing him by sight, being in proximity to him, knowing his love, not by faith, but by the full experience of human sensory knowledge to touch him, to hear him, to see him will be for us as a joy that our hearts can't even imagine now. And that day is coming. So how about you, friend? You're in a trial right now? You got some pain going on? Is your joy in the thought that maybe that trial's gonna go away? Is your joy in the thought that maybe that pain will go away? You got everybody praying that God would take the pain away. Might not the actual solution be pairing the pain with joy in the Lord? “Rejoice in the Lord always. And again, I say rejoice.” And that is how we live the Christian life in the ups and the downs, in the trials and in the blessings, awaiting a day when our faith will be sight and we will see him. That will be a great day. Amen. Would you please join me for a word of prayer? * This transcript was generated using AI transcription technology and reviewed for accuracy but may contain errors. Please refer to the original audio for precise wording.

Steve DeWitt Indestructibly Saved Study Guide for Spiritual Exiles, 1 Peter 1:3-5 Scripture Reference: 1 Peter 1:3-5 Visit the series page: Exiles: A study in 1 Peter Donate to Support The Journey Sermon Transcript for Spiritual Exiles, 1 Peter 1:3-5 Sermon Series: Spiritual Exiles Message: Indestructibly Saved Airdate: 9/8 & 9/9/26 Programs 2352 & 2353 Good morning, Crown Point Campus. And let's go to the Lord in prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the opportunity to be here today. And we pray simply this, that your spirit would come, that he would minister to your people by your word for your glory and for our good. God, we pray that this would be a day truly where your name would be lifted higher. And we want to be a part of that. So we thank you. We pray it in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, last week we began our new series in 1 Peter entitled Exiles. And the title was taken from the first verse of the book, which says this, “Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who are elect exiles of the dispersion.” And we saw that Peter was writing to Christians who had been part of this colonization, this dispersion, Christians living in Rome or that region sent now to Asia Minor, and they are there living as foreigners, essentially living as exiles, geopolitical exiles. And what Peter does is he draws from their geopolitical situation spiritual truth and application as they dealt with the feelings of alienation. and ostracization from people that saw them as part of the conquering army, people that weren't from there. And so much that we're going to see in this letter. Last week was our introduction, and we saw that... exiles want more than anything is they want a change of location. They think to themselves, what really needs to happen is I need to be somewhere else. And if I was somewhere else, then I would be happy. Then I would feel like I belong. And we see that what Peter is wanting them to realize is that we want to change our location. God wants to change who we are. And that is inward. And that's the work of the spirit. That's the work of the gospel. That's a part of changing us. Now, what might exiles need to know? Think about this with me for a moment. What do they need to know? There they are living in a land of uncertainty, living in a place where they don't, you know, you think of what people experience when they move into a new area. They need a new doctor. They need a new, where do I get my groceries? How do I find my way around? All the things that are sort of new and different and uncertain. That is compounded in the experience of moving in the first century to a whole new region. And there they are, and everything is uncertain. Nothing feels normal. Everything's sort of weird. What do they need to know spiritually? Well, they need to know that there is a day coming when they will not be exiles anymore and where they will feel welcomed and they will feel like they belong. And that's what Peter now moves to in pastoring this group of people. He wants them to realize that they will not always be exiles. It will not always be like it is. There's coming a day when it will be very much different. And our text in our sermon today is 1 Peter 1, verses 3 through 5. And today is a day where I get to preach at Crown Point and at Cedar Lake. And we do this with the use of technology. And hopefully a fast commute. That's where we're going today. That's where I'm going today. But our text today is verses 3 through 5. So please listen as I read from God's word. “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.” 1 Peter, if you ask most people what 1 Peter is about, it's about remaining faithful in suffering and in persecution. And I just want to note to you that a letter that begins, a letter that is about suffering, begins with, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now that seems out of place, except for when you view your suffering from a Christian perspective. It sounds to me like Job, the famous book on suffering. Job, who endured all of these things in chapter 1. He loses everything, and what is his response to that? The Lord gives, the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name. There is within Christianity a kind of faith and a kind of confidence in the goodness of God that allows Christians to suffer loss and to remain doxological, to remain praising, to remain giving thanks to God. And we see that modeled here with Peter. He begins with praise and thanksgiving to the Lord. These verses, verses 3 through 5, they are, it's, This is a jewel, okay? This is a jewel passage in all of the Bible, and there are lots of jewel passages, but this is certainly one of them, because what Peter does here is he lays out the gospel. He goes from praising God, and he says, now, why? Why do we praise the Lord? What is there about what God has done for us that allows us to give praise to God even in the midst of persecution and suffering? And we see him now talking about salvation in this passage from the perspective of the past, what God has done, the present, what God is doing, and the future, what God is yet to do. And I want to hasten to say this. These truths that I'm talking about here, that Peter talks about, only apply to genuine Christians. This is not just a general truth for all of humanity. Let's all feel good about it. This is a truth that applies to people who have genuinely trusted in the Lord Jesus. And the promises that God has made to those that are his children apply then to us and are enumerated here. by Peter. So if you're here and you have not trusted in Jesus as your Savior, what I hope happens today as we talk about the blessings that come to those that are under the grace of God, that it might woo you, that it might draw you to put your hope and your faith in the Lord Jesus and for these promises then to become real and true for you. And that can happen in this service here today. Now, if you're an exile far from home, You are having to accept certain realities about life now. It's almost like a college student who goes away from home for the first time. And suddenly, the reality of being responsible for yourself, doing your own laundry, and managing your own money, and all of the rest comes crashing down on the freshmen. And some of them flunk out as a result of that, right? They're in a faraway land. Everything's sort of strange. And indeed, to be one of these people that he's writing to, in a faraway land where everything feels creepy and people look at you as creepy because you're different created a whole set of problems and difficulties your homeland that where you used to be it felt safe it felt normal it felt secure you had friends that made you feel like you were cared for you had possessions that you had had for a long time They felt normal to you. You had maybe a home. You had a network. You had all of these things that felt cozy and made you feel cared for. To be a person in exile is to live without these things, to live away from all of those identities and all of those securities. In fact, I don't know if you've noticed our series graphic, but just to put that up if we have it a second. I really like this because what is it? It's a guy sitting on a pile of rubble and he's looking to a faraway place, right? And there's sort of this sense of, I wish I was there instead of where I am here. This feels like rubble where I'm at. I wish I was back where I came from. And that is a picture, not a bad one, of what it's like to be in exile. And what Peter wants them, and through this letter and through the Holy Spirit, wants us to realize here today is that what we have in Christ, even as an exile, is far greater and far better than anything we had prior to coming to faith in Christ. I said that very clumsily. And clumsily is a clumsy word itself. Let me try that again. What Peter is wanting to say is that what we have presently as Christians, even as exiles, even on the pile of rubble, is far greater and far better than anything we had back when everything felt cozy, back prior to our faith in Christ. And he lays that out again in terms of past, present, future. So let's begin by looking at the past. And notice what he says here. Wonderful verse. about being born again to a living hope. According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Now we saw in verse 1 that their exile was by God's choice. We see here in verse 3 that their new birth is by the mercy of God. Born again. Born of what? What are you talking about? That sounds crazy. And that is exactly what Nicodemus said to Jesus when Jesus brought this up to him as well. In John chapter 3, you may know the story. Nicodemus, he's sort of a bigwig spiritual leader in Israel. He comes to Jesus in the night, and he asks him about spiritual, he has spiritual questions for him. And he says, no one except they're born from God could do what you do. And Jesus says to him, you must be born again. You have to be born again. Nicodemus says, what? How can I be born again? I was born of my mother once, I gotta be born of her twice? What are you talking about? And you see that Nicodemus is only looking at things materially. He is not seeing things spiritually, which is what Jesus wants him to see, is there's a whole thing going on here spiritually. You have to be born again. What was Jesus talking about? The New Testament calls it new birth, calls it regeneration. All of these are biblical descriptions of what God does in the heart of the sinner who turns in faith and believes in Jesus as their Lord and Savior. There is a miracle, a powerful supernatural work that God does inwardly in the life of the sinner where like being born again, he makes the sinner alive spiritually. Regeneration is also the word there. The Bible says that we are dead in our sins, that spiritually we are corpses. What has to happen for a corpse to live again? It has to be regenerated. In a sense, it has to be resurrected. And what God does inwardly in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, when we believe, is he births life in us again. Almost like Jesus saying to Lazarus, come forth. There is a summoning and a giving of life that God does within us where all of a sudden now our eyes are opened, our ears are opened, and we become attuned to spiritual realities and spiritual things. And notice that it's God that does this. He has caused us to be born again. Regeneration is something that God does. We can't manufacture it. We can't create it. We can't do enough things to make us think that now spiritually I'm alive. We are dead. Burns Funeral Homes across the street, you can go to every corpse there and try to manufacture life. It's not going to happen. Only God can manufacture life. And God does that within us. We are born again. We are passive in this. You ever hear a baby come out being born and go, wow, look what I did. I'm amazing. No, that mother birthed that child. Amen, mothers? You ain't going to ever forget that, are you? Babies don't take credit for being born, and Christians don't take credit for being born again. This is something God does. We are made spiritually alive, but the change affects our entire being. 2 Corinthians says it this way. If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old is gone, the new has come. It is a miracle of life that permeates our entire being. Suddenly, it's like the switch is turned on. We become aware of spiritual truth. What? I never realized that before. We become aware of the presence of God. We become aware of the presence of sin in our life. All of a sudden we realize, that we indeed are sinners. We become aware of forgiveness. We all of a sudden have an interest in Scripture, which prior to this we would have thought is silly. No, what does it say, actually? I'm kind of interested in that. We become interested in prayer and a host of other things. All of them kind of just, it's like springtime. Here come the leaves, here come the flowers. All of a sudden there is life. God does that. God does that. A few examples of how this is God's work and the change that it brings. I recently heard the story of Rosaria Butterfield, and maybe you've seen this online possibly, but she was a professor. She's very upfront about her sexuality. She was a lesbian. She was a professor at Syracuse University. She was just totally into kind of that whole worldview. And it's a great story because there was just a normal local church that began to kind of care for her and love her. And she, in her own words, writes this about her conversion. “The church had been praying for me for years was there. The church that had been praying for me for years was there. Jesus triumphed, and I was a broken mess. Conversion was a train wreck. I did not want to lose everything that I loved, but the voice of God sang a sanguine love song in the rubble of my world. I weakly believed that if Jesus could conquer death, he could make right my world. I drank tentatively at first, then passionately of the solace of the Holy Spirit.” And now she's married to a Presbyterian minister. So come to Jesus and you get to marry a Presbyterian minister. I would keep most people away. Listen to the words of C.S. Lewis. We've talked at length about him and how God drew him to faith. He writes this about his conversion. “You must picture me alone in that room at Magdalen College. Night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet.” Who's causing this regeneration? Hear it in these words. “That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me in the Trinity term of 1929. I gave in and admitted that God was God and knelt and prayed, perhaps that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.” Christian, think about your own life story. Think about the change that has taken place in your life. Is there a natural explanation? for the interest that you have in spiritual things and the course and trajectory of your life. The fact that you're sitting here right now listening to some guy talk about what the Bible has to say. All of these things are things if we knew our natural selves, we would say, I would never do that. And that sounds crazy and that sounds stupid. Just like the people in Asia Minor looked at these Christians and said, what planet are you from? Why are you interested in that stuff? And maybe you have people in your family and friends that similarly look at you and go, you're living your life according to what? What planet are you from? We share the same mother, but you're an alien. I don't know you. How have you come to care about the things that you care about and to love God in the way that you love him and to desire to obey and please and live to his glory in the way that you do? Where did all of that come from? It didn't come from you. That can only come from God. He has birthed life in us, and we are changed. Born again to a living hope, the text says, through the resurrection from the dead. Now, why do you suppose he calls it a living hope? It is because our hope is in a living Savior. Do you see the parallel there? One writer says it this way, Christian hope is ever living because Christ, the ground of that hope, is ever living. So Peter looks back. He says, exiles, look back in your story and realize that this change has not come from you. God has given you life, and he has given you hope. And that hope is a living hope because your Savior is a living Savior. And there we are looking at the passage. Well, that's pretty fantastic, isn't it? Don't you think exiles might be a little encouraged by that? And maybe even Christians living here today might be a little bit encouraged to look back and to see the grace of God in our life. As the hymn writer wrote, “oh God, our help in ages past, our hope for years to come.” We look to the past and we see God's grace to us. And it gives us, man, God is for me. God is with me. He has done this change in my life. The past, a living hope, a new birth. It is not simply a past, it is a present. And even right there is an interesting thought, which I don't have time to explore right now, but how important it is for us to realize that what God is doing is not just stuff in the past. You ever talk to people like that? Tell me about your spiritual life. Well, back in the past, and all they've got is like old stuff. And to realize that our faith, this thing that we're living, this Christian life, is a today thing. There is something that God is doing today. It doesn't matter how long you've been a Christian. There is a work that God is doing right now for you in your life. And Peter highlights it here. What are we saved to? “An inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who, by God's power, are being guarded through faith.” Now, there's a lot there, okay? There's a lot there, but let's just walk through it. You're going to get this, and you're going to love it. We've been born again to an inheritance, okay? So most of us are probably familiar with the concept of an inheritance. What is an inheritance? An inheritance is something that you receive normally based on a relationship, typically a family relationship, right? So when a person dies, there is a reading of the will. And if your name is in the will, it means that whether you knew it or not, you were an heir to the inheritance. So if you're in the will, you have an inheritance. Most people view that as good news, right? Okay. Now what is true about an inheritance? Inheritances are very, very slippery. Very slippery. Your name can be on the will, but guess what? It can be removed from the will. You were an heir, but now you're not anymore. So you better be careful what you say at the family gathering about grandma. And inheritance can shrink in value. Did you know that? You could be an heir to something that is incredibly valuable, but by the time you get it, it's not so valuable. So that your name is in the will, and they read the will, and your sister gets grandma's diamonds, and you get the cabbage patch collection. And you're like, my sister gets... and I get dolls and you know grandma puts in the notes when I bought these they were really valuable. You're like these aren't worth anything. This is like soft firewood. They can diminish in value. People can steal inheritances. There's a story or two in my own family tree of stolen inheritance and maybe you got a few of those in your family tree. It's amazing what family gets like when money is on the table. Inheritance can be stolen did you know that there are unscrupulous lawyers out there who now there's really godly and fair-minded ones as well but there are unscrupulous lawyers out there who can sometimes get their fingers in the pot and diminish an inheritance. Did you know that there are thieves — there are thieves — and that has no connection whatsoever with Steve. There are thieves who can steal inheritances. They can steal grandma's jewelry instead of the dolls. Did you know that massive inheritances can be squandered? Some time ago, I got watching on the History Channel, had this series called The Men Who Build America. Maybe some of you saw it, but we got into it for whatever reason. Tell the story of these icons of industry in the past. I got a little interested in the Vanderbilt family some years ago. I got a tour of the Biltmore, which is one of the descendants of, he built that with just an inheritance that he got. If you've ever seen that place, it's incredible. But I got interested in the Vanderbilt family. And just to give you an idea very quickly about the Vanderbilt fortune, they at one time, at the height of their power and value, they were worth over $300 billion in today's money. Now, $300 billion, to give you an idea, Bill Gates, who's currently the richest man in the world, is somewhere around $70 billion. They had $300 billion. The world has hardly ever, if ever, seen, other than Rockefeller, a fortune like the Vanderbilt family fortune. In 1973, this is just 75 years from the height of their power and wealth, There was a gathering of 120 direct descendants of Cornelius Vanderbilt, and there wasn't one millionaire amongst them. 75 years, 300 billion to, you know, not so wealthy. How does that happen? Inheritances can be squandered. They can just simply disappear. And I say all of that because that connects with the world that we're in, right? Everything is kind of diminishing. Everything that once was cool is kind of getting old now. And that's the world that we live in, right? Our money isn't worth today what it was worth yesterday. There's inflation. There's the stock market. Everything's up and down and all around. But what about spiritually? The inheritance, the Bible describes the inheritance that we have. We are heirs. What is our inheritance like? And he uses some very powerful words to emphasize that our inheritance is not subject to all of the insecurities that everything in this world has. And he uses these words, notice them, imperishable. Okay? To perish is to die. Everything in this world... dies right it's alive it dies the the flowers of the field the grass in the in the in the in the field all of it there and it dies and it withers and we're all withering right look around there's withering people all around you but this is an imperishable inheritance that he wants us to realize that we have undefiled and this speaks to the moral quality of our inheritance It is pure. It is good. Our inheritance doesn't come from unseemly business practices. There's nothing about it to make us feel sort of dirty in taking it or that there's something evil about it. It is holy. It is good. It is beautiful. It is pure, and it will be eternally beautiful and pure. Unfading. This is very similar to the perishing and the withering. It's, again, the human beauty and fame and everything that seems to be cool now. It's all going downhill. And young people don't realize that, but it is, right? It's all going down. Everything fades. And each one of these words is, it's perishable, defiled, and fading, only it has the negating ah in front of each one of those. It is not imperishable. I'm sorry, it's not perishable. It's not defiling. It is not fading. Our inheritance, you say, well, what is it then exactly? Number one, our inheritance is God himself. The number one thing that we look forward to in going to heaven is not seeing grandma, not seeing, you know, whoever. Number one is God. We go to heaven and we get God and we see God and we have him forever. We are his children. He lavishes blessings on us for all of eternity, eternal life, heaven, new earth, rewards that Jesus will give to us for the quality of our service while here on earth, bliss, beauty, and most importantly, and I include this in the God category, is the seeing and the savoring of Jesus himself, our blessed Lord and Savior, who is our inheritance. Christians talk about, oh, my mansion in heaven and all of that. Forget the mansion. Our mansion truly is Christ. And one day when we see him and we sense from him what eternal, pure, sacrificial, agape love is like, and he looks at us and we feel the love of the divine for us, the thought of a house or something else will just sort of fade away. This will be our greatest moment. It is that beatific vision that theologians talk about. and then to feel and to receive from him the lavishing of his grace and his love in material ways, even in the new earth, in the experience of what all of that is going to be like, and to realize that all of it is according to his mercy, that none of it we deserve, maybe with a vision of hell, and to realize that's what I deserve right there. And I'm getting this, how and why it is the mercy of God and his love for us. This is the inheritance, and Peter says it never goes away. It never diminishes. It never somehow dies. It remains secure in the character and the promises of God, and it's going to be great. And you, my friend, if you are a Christian, you are an heir, an heir to the most wonderful fortune, the fortune of God, the spiritual blessing of being a child of God forever. The verse goes on, kept in heaven for you who by God's power are being guarded through faith. This inheritance that we have is located in heaven. Jesus describes it as a place where moth and rust do not decay and thieves don't break in and steal. That's a pretty good bank vault, isn't it? Anybody's bank here make that kind of guarantee? Probably not. Now notice there's a little shift here in the text because he's describing our inheritance. That is kept in heaven. That's our inheritance. The next word, though, is who. See that? Who. So he moves from our inheritance to us. He moves from keeping our inheritance to God keeping us. So the inheritance is kept in heaven, but we are kept in earth. We are kept in faith on our time on earth. By God's power, our being guarded through faith. And the word there, the Greek word for the word guarded there, it's the word garrisoned, okay? So military people, this is like a word for you. This is the protection. This is the, in the ancient days, they would protect the city gates, the armament of the city gates. We are guarding the city walls, the walls of our faith. It also can refer to keeping us from escaping, okay? So it's both. It is both the attacks from without, and it is me fleeing from within. God is working in our faith, keeping us from both of those dangers. And here we have, and we can do a whole message on this, the doctrine of preservation. The doctrine of preservation, which says that God is the one who keeps us saved. We are preserved in our faith by the power of God. So notice the flow in the text. We are exiles by the choice of God. We are born again by the mercy of God. We are kept in our salvation by the power of God. Our faith is being guarded. And the tense of the verb there is ongoingly, continuously being guarded. It's as if each one of us has a 24-hour, seven days a week security detail. Now, the closest thing that I can think of to illustrate this would be What the President of the United States has, of course, which is the famous Secret Service. And all of us probably are familiar with the Secret Service and what they do 24 hours a day, seven days a week to keep the President alive, to protect him. That is their job. And so for whatever reason, they've decided wearing dark suits and sunglasses helps with that. And so wherever the president is, there's these guys walking around near him and they've got dark suits on and they've got sunglasses. All of them look like they've lifted weights their entire life. You know, they're big, they're bad, they're tough. There's little bulges around in their suit. You know what's in there, right? They can call upon what they need in a moment's notice to take care of business. And so they're there and they're talking into their hands and they got the little wires out of their ears. And you know that there's satellites and there's, you know, who knows all the things that they've got going on wherever the president goes. 24 hours a day, seven days a week, always keeping him safe. But as history shows, they can't even guarantee that, can they? Even the best of the best in the world today can't perfectly protect the life of the president. Notice what Peter says here about us, okay? Kept by the infinite power of God. It's almost like By the power of God, we each have our own spiritual secret service detachment. Everywhere we go, all the time, we are protected spiritually by the power of God. I got thinking about what this might be like. She's about to speak to Miss Gossip. Move in right now. He's leaving on a business trip with Mr. Skeptic and Mrs. Temptation, all units code red. He's in church right now. He's not listening. Taze him. Did anybody just feel something, by the way? No? God's power is always at work protecting our faith, keeping us from running away from our commitment to Christ, keeping us from the wolves, keeping us from doctrine and beliefs and temptations that would ultimately undermine our faith commitment to Christ. And that doesn't mean that we don't sin. It doesn't mean that we don't have seasons and all of that. But it does mean that even through those dark times, God is by his power protecting a faith that he has promised that he will carry on to completion, Philippians 1. And my dear Christian, that is true for you. Think of it just for a moment. Think of it. Right now, God's power is focused upon you and your faith and is ensuring that you are going to make it. That faith will not die. It's the power of God. It's like being born, right? We don't take credit for that. And I don't take credit for my faith continually because naturally I am a sinner and I am human and I am wishy -washy. None of us would make it through this week left to ourselves. But we are not left to ourselves, not by God who loves us. We are kept in this faith. Past, we were born again in the present. We're being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. And the future aspect of this is when our inheritance changes into a possession, okay? An heir is no longer an heir when the inheritance now is something that they own. Think of Prince Charles, like all these years waiting to become king. He's heir to the throne. There's probably a day coming when he will no longer be an heir. When? When he's actually king. And Buckingham Palace and the crown jewels and all the things, all of it is his then. No longer an heir, but a possessor. And our salvation is like that. We are already saved. We are already children of God. But the full experience of our salvation is yet to come. Someday, and the text here says, in the last time, referring to that future consummation of history. Someday, when Jesus returns and final judgment takes place, our ultimate inheritance will be ours. And our ultimate inheritance is Christ himself. And from that point on, we will see and know and worship him. From that point on, we will serve him. fully and faithfully. From that point on, we will be in awe that the Holy Son of God that we see with our own eyes died for us, gave his life for us, and now showers his love upon us for all of eternity. And we will never get over that he did that. We will never get over the mercy of God to us. So that we can say that the Vanderbilts had their fortune by family right, and Prince Charles has his inheritance by birthright. We will have our inheritance forever by new birth and the mercy and the power of God. And so we get to that truth, and what can we say? How about we say what he says in verse 3? “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Amen. Would you pray with me, please? Heavenly Father God, we thank you. This transcript was generated using AI transcription technology and reviewed for accuracy but may contain errors. Please refer to the original audio for precise wording.

Steve DeWitt God, Why Am I Hurting? - Part B Study Guide for Spiritual Exiles, 1 Peter 1:6-8 Scripture Reference: 1 Peter 1:6-8 Visit the series page: Exiles: A study in 1 Peter Donate to Support The Journey Sermon Transcript for Spiritual Exiles, 1 Peter 1:6-8 Sermon Series: Spiritual Exiles Message: God Why Am I Hurting? Airdate: 9/10-9/11/26 Programs: 2354 2355 2014, what a year around this place. I mean, it was something else. And just on the surface to go from two campuses to four campuses all in one year, a remarkable, remarkable, thing that God has done. We give him glory for it, and, we want 2015 to be another year of, faithful ministry here, and thank you for your part in that. I really mean that. This is our weekend of the annual meeting, and that's partly why we made this video. It's a it's a year or it's a a weekend where our members, we have our annual meeting, and so it's kind of a year to look back, a time to look back on the on the past year. It also means that, because our meeting is between this service and the next, I know this is gonna be disappointing. The sermon's a little shorter. Little shorter. So appropriate, that I'm speaking on trials in this sermon. And I'm gonna get right into it because our time is fleeting. First Peter one verses six through seven, I've entitled this message, God, why am I hurting? That resonate resonate here today? Are you in a time in your life maybe where you are hurting, where there is a trial maybe that is a pain in your life right now, you might say, no. Not really. Just wait. K? Just wait. It's coming. Life in a broken world brings sorrows to us in all kinds of directions and in ways that we cannot anticipate. That day is most certainly coming. And Peter is writing this letter to a group of geographical exiles in the first century sent from Rome, living in Asia Minor, but they are they are spiritual exiles as well. They are suffering in a community that looks at their Christian faith, looks at their rejection of the immorality around them. They look down at them, and they are feeling alienated. They are feeling ostracized, and they are suffering in many different ways. And so Peter writes this letter to them to encourage them, and it is perhaps more than the only one maybe competing with the book would be the book of Job of, delivering to us, giving to us a theology of Christian suffering. How do I handle it? How should I look at it when God sovereignly brings pain into my life? First Peter is a very honest letter. It looks pain in the face and gives an answer. Did you know Christianity has an answer to suffering that the other religions of the world, the other philosophies struggle to provide in ways that we'll get into? So maybe you're here today and you're in pain, and you're thinking this is the sermon for me. Maybe you're here today and you're not in pain, but that day is coming. I want to prepare all of us to suffer so that when we are the ones experiencing that pain, we have a kind of grid. We have a kind of understanding that is ready to embrace the trials that come. I also wanna note that Christianity is based on suffering. I mean, our entire faith is built upon the suffering savior who came into this world, God steps into our pain in the person of Jesus, incarnates into this world, lives amongst us, experiences all of the weaknesses, all of the sufferings that we experience, and then suffered himself dying on the cross bearing the guilt and shame for all of our sins. Our savior was a suffering savior. We can say it that Christianity is is built on suffering. Now that doesn't sound so good. It doesn't look great on a billboard. You know, we're not gonna put up a billboard that says, Bethel Church, come suffer with us. Right? Because many people, they don't wanna hear that, and they want a faith that doesn't include any suffering, and yet it inevitably comes. Are we ready for that? Are you ready for that in your life? So our text is verses, six and seven, First Peter one. Please listen as I read. “In this, you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials so that the tested genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” This passage is Peter's first salvo of teaching on suffering. It's gonna continue through the letter. So this isn't everything that he has to say about it. There's much more to come. Notice that he begins with the the little phrase there, in this, you rejoice. You wouldn't expect a passage on suffering to have a and to begin with a word of joy, and he's referring there to what he's just talked about regarding our living hope. Our hope is living because our hope is in a living savior. And so because of that, we are we rejoice in this salvation, this new birth that God has given to us. Notice that joy and pain can coexist. We typically think, you know, when I am in pain, then I'm not joyous. Right? Or when I'm in joyous, I don't have any pain. And yet these two come together, indeed, they have to come together in a Christian theology of suffering because there is going to be ongoing problems and pain in life. There are gonna be ups and downs, and yet our Christian joy is not based upon our circumstances. It is grounded and based upon something that is enduring. Even Jesus himself, Hebrews, “who for the joy set before him endured the cross and despised its shame.” So don't see the these as enemies. These actually can be friends, joy, and pain. We'll get into more of that later. But in this passage, Peter gives four certainties in the midst of suffering. Four certainties that a Christian can hold on to, trust, and believe in even when life is hurting. So let's get into these now. Notice the first one is that our trials as Christians are temporary. They are temporary. The text now, “though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials.” Peter's first point here is chronological. He is pointing something out that is obviously true. Now it doesn't seem that way to us when we are in the midst of pain. When we are hurting, what do we often think about the pain that we're feeling? We say things like this. This is never going to change. This is never gonna be fixed. I will always feel this way. This pain will never go away. That's how it seems to us. Right? Peter says, yes. It will. Yes. It will. Chronologically speaking, our sufferings and our trials and our pains are very small in duration when compared to the future that the Christian confidently expects, this eternal life that we have. Our lives are fleeting. Our days are numbered. They're short. Eternity is long. Peter points that out. He says, you know what now? For a little while, it's just a little while. It's temporary. You're not always going to feel this way. It's not always going to be this way. A day of change is coming. Chapter five verse 10, he writes, and after you have suffered a little while, there he says it again, “the God of all grace who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.” Peter's wanting us to realize that that this trial that I am in is finite. Eternity is unending. My trial is temporary. Eternity is forever. And when I look at things from that grand perspective, it helps me put it into proper perspective. When I obsess about my trials, I think it's always going to be this way. Do you ever get sort of melodramatic about things? Right? Oh, it's never gonna be better. My life is over. You know, teenage girl says that when who knows what happened to her. Right? And she's, oh, you know. And we look at her and we say that is so immature. Peter says when we look at our trials like it's always going to be that way, we're looking immaturely. We're not seeing things from the grand perspective. Our trials are temporary. Someday, the present pain of our life will be over. Someday, Jesus himself is going to confirm, establish, comfort, minister. Someday, we are going to look back at our trials, and we are going to agree with God regarding them. Can you believe that? Now you might be in a trial right now going, I will never say that this was okay. I will never agree with this. Someday, God, I believe, is going to give us understanding regarding why this happened and why that happened and why that happened. I talked with a man after first service today. He's losing his job. He has thirty days. He was talking to somebody about this and that person said to him, I haven't been to church since Vietnam. But in light of the way you're responding to this, I might give it another chance. He always had tears in his eyes after first service to this point that I'm making. He goes, oh, these three years have been so hard, but maybe I see why God's doing it. Don't Don't you think heaven is going to be that kind of an experience where God goes, see when that happened right there? I did this with that with that person's life, and then this was the fruit of it. And we're gonna be going, I had no idea. And when we see it in the big picture, don't you think we will go, you know, God, you are infinitely wise. I now agree with that. And if I was you, I would have brought that into my life. Praise be to God. Okay? Heaven will be that I think. For a Christian, realize friends, for a Christian, this life that we're in right now, this is as bad as it gets. Our lives right now are the worst experience that we are ever going to have. Why? Because eternity is going to be bliss, heaven, and joy. So this is as bad as it gets for the Christian. For the unbeliever, it's the opposite. This is as good as it gets. Life in this broken world with all of its pain and all of its uncertainty is far better than what lies ahead for the unbeliever. But for us, this is as bad as it gets. This is temporary pain. That helps, doesn't it? Indeed, it does. Secondly, Peter points out that trials are painful. Trials are painful. Though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials. That's a pretty good word to describe what pain feels like. Right? It's grievous to us. And do I really need a lot of proof text on this one? Just to prove to you that trials are painful, that we feel within us when we are in a trial. And by trial here, I it's it's all of it, the various trials that he talks about. It can be physical. It can be emotional. It can be relational. It can be marital. It can be financial. It can be political. It can be injustice. It can be emotional worry, fear, misery, depression, and I mean, the things that the things that can create pain in us are incredibly varied, aren't they? All of them, we feel very personally when we experience them. I also find over time in my life that not only are the trials varied, but my ability to handle them is varied. There are things that when I was younger wouldn't have bothered me, now they bother me, like birthdays. There are things that when I was young bothered me, but now from a perspective of maturity doesn't bother me anymore. Right? It's so varied. It's so changing. But over all of that, we certainly can say the trials are painful. We would rather not be in them. Amen? Okay. That'd be my preference. A trouble free life. No more trials. I mean, that'd be like heaven, wouldn't it? Oh, wait. It is heaven. Are you with me? Okay. Alright. Third, reality and certainty with trials. And this now gets into kind of the nub of what Peter is wanting us to see is that trials are revealing and trials are refining. Again, the text, “so that the tested genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” What is one of the biggest things that we wanna know when we are in the midst of a trial? We search for why. Right? Why is this happening? Why am I feeling this? Why am I sorrowing like I am? Why am I so depressed about this? And atheism comes along and gives what answer? Nothing. Secular humanism comes along and gives what answer? Nothing. Agnosticism comes along and gives what answer? E. Evolutionary theory comes along and gives what answer to our pain? Nothing. Christianity comes along, and it's got a purpose statement. Right there, you see it. So that. Why do I go through the troubles that I do? Why do I go through these things? Is there some reason behind it? And indeed, there is. In fact, you see, previously, he says, if necessary about our trials. If necessary what do you mean if necessary? That seems to indicate somebody is determining whether I ought to go through this or not. Is there a sovereign somebody that is sovereignly guiding and directing in the details of my life and determining whether this is good or not, necessary or not. Indeed, that is Christianity, that there is a sovereign God who doesn't simply, like the agnostics teach, live out there in the extended world and hope the best for us, but rather he is sovereignly over every single detail of our life. There's nothing that will ever happen to the Christian that we that that God did not sovereignly bring to us. Now by that, it doesn't mean that God endorses evil. And someday, we will never endorse evil either. We'll never look at the Holocaust and say, yeah. Great. But God uses evil, and God uses these things to accomplish his purposes. That's what Joseph said in Genesis, right, to his brothers. “You intended it for evil. God intended it for good.” That's the the the wonder of the mystery of God that he can, in the complexities of the universe, use even evil for his divine good and sovereign purposes. And so we see then that in Christian in a Christian theology of suffering, there is a purpose to it. And I think that alone is one of the great certainties that we have to cling to, that this is not random. This is not chaos. This is not Satan winning. Rather, this is something that God is sovereignly guiding and directing. There is a purpose behind it. Sometimes that doesn't make sense to us when the kind and godly young man dies or when the righteous suffer and the unrighteous prosper. Do you ever feel that way? Maybe you feel about that way about yourself. I'm I'm busting my butt. I'm trying to be a good employee, student, wife, husband, parent, whatever. And here I am. I'm dying on the vine, and you look at your neighbor who they're immoral, they profane God's name, and they just smile all the time. And you're like, that doesn't seem fair to me. As the hymn says, it is our God who does each day what he deems best. We trust that pain has a purpose and that God is behind it. The same faith that can believe in Jesus and trust my entire eternity to the truthfulness that Jesus did bear my guilt as he died on the cross is the same faith that now as a Christian in the midst of my suffering appropriates the promises of God and believes that this trial is as well under the sovereign hand of God and that he is doing something with it. We say, well, what is that something? Pastor Steve, could you please help? Notice what Peter says. What purpose do they serve? “So that the tested genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire.” What Peter does here is he anticipates maybe people sort of getting lost in his theology, and he gives a very clear illustration that they could all understand and we can all understand here as well. He brings up gold. Now ancient people were interested in gold. Why? It was the most precious commodity that they had. I mean, today, if you listen to the radio and different things, you see these advertisements. The stock market's uncertain. Buy gold. Right? And they show gold bars and people smiling because they have gold bars, and they encourage you to buy gold. It's the only lasting value in the world. That's the way that they viewed it in the first century. It was their most precious commodity. It was the most long lasting thing that they had, gold. So if you've ever seen, King Tut's tomb or pictures of the jewelry and the gold at King Tut's tomb, then you know that the ancient world, they were really good with gold. I mean, they had figured out how to take gold out of the mountain and turn it into something very beautiful, incredibly beautiful, and intricate. So how do they do it? Well, like today, what they would do is they would mine the gold, and then they would heat it. Right? They would heat up that gold with fires in a furnace. They would heat it up and heat it up and heat it up. And gold reaches a point where it melts. And as it gets hotter, the hotter it gets, the more the impurities of the gold rise to the surface. And so the ancients would heat up that gold and they would heat up that gold and the impurities. In other words, everything that was not gold would rise to the top, and then they would just skim off the top. And by doing that, the gold then, the karat of the gold, and by that, I mean k a r a t. Not to confuse some of you that are thinking about lunch right now. Carat, the the purity of the gold, and the value then would would increase. Okay? And they all got how that worked, and I hope that maybe, you get how that works as well. Because Peter is drawing an analogy here. Do you see it? The analogy is that fire reveals the gold and fire refines the gold. It reveals what is actually gold and separates the impurities and by doing that it refines it. And what he's saying here is that our faith is like gold and our trials are like fire. Fire reveals the genuine gold, and trials reveal the genuine faith. Should I say that again? Fire reveals the genuine gold. Trials reveal the genuine faith within us. Now you don't have to be around the church very long to see this in action. If you're around a church, some family or some individual is gonna suddenly find themselves in a trial, a fiery trial, as Peter calls it elsewhere. And you can watch how this works. And sometimes it's beautiful. Right? Because here you have sort of generic family a, and you didn't know them that well. You didn't know that much about them, but you hear about the trial. And out of that trial, you see a family that is turning to God in ways that you had never seen before. They're wanting the church to be in prayer for them. They're seeking spiritual, counsel and help. They're turning to God in the midst of their trial. They're trusting in things that they they don't know how it's gonna work out, but our trust is in God. And please, won't you pray for us? And you see in that trial a faith that you had never seen before. And it's a beautiful thing to see that. The genuineness of their faith is being revealed by the trial. In a sense, they didn't know what was in them. They didn't realize what they had, that saving faith in them, now showing its true color, its true karat in the midst of a fiery trial. At the same time, you don't have to be around the church very long to have generic family b in the church who comes under a similar trial. And they are unprepared for it. Their faith is has no, bandwidth for it. In that trial, all of a sudden, they are overwhelmed. Or they feel like, wait. This is not what I signed up for. They're like kinda like bandwagon Christians. They sort of join the church. They get on the Christianity bandwagon, and then paint then life hurts. And they're like, I need a different bandwagon. And off they go in a 100 different directions forsaking what they profess to be true in their life. What has the trial done for them? The trial has revealed that their faith was not genuine. The heat of the trial has done that. It is our response to trials that says so much. And by the way, this doesn't mean that we're like super Christians. And like from now on here at Bethel Church, if you ever have a trial, you must be like, my faith is being revealed and I love it. You know, it's not like that at all. There is room in this for normal human concern and worry and fear and the battling of fear and faith and all of that. So it's not like we're all walking around on some great spiritual plane somehow. But in the essence of it, there is an endurance that faith, genuine faith has that comes through the trial different, better, refined, revealed in ways that previously had been unknown. Trials are also great purifiers. Great purifiers. I read a little bit this week in preparation for this that modern gold refining, they heat up the gold to 3,000 degrees. That's hot, isn't it? And I got thinking to myself, what if you could interview the gold while it's being heated up, while it's coming under this kind of temperature? What might the gold be saying as it's getting hot? I see statements like this: “This is hot! This hurts! This stinks! Get me out of here! Why is this happening? Why do I get this and silver gets off easy? Please stop this right now. The guy in charge of this doesn't love me.” But what does the goldsmith know? The goldsmith knows that the only way for that gold to be purified is by heat. Now I stand before you a man who wished that wasn't true. I mean, wouldn't it be great if if the way that our faith could be built and we could grow spiritually would be for God to lavish us with every desire of our hearts? And for there never to be a single problem the rest of our life that we would just be rich and happy and fat and, you know, healthy and eat what we want and have all these. I mean, wouldn't it be great if that was the way that our faith was built? Amen. You're not sure if you want to amen that or not. I think that would be fantastic. That's not the way that it works, is it? In fact, what happens to people who get everything they want? What do we call children like that? Brats. That's what we call them. The surest way to raise a brat is to give that kid everything he wants all the time. And spiritually, there's a lot of immature Christians running around wanting that same kind of an experience. That's immaturity. How do we grow friends? It's through pain. And you'd better be ready for it. And again, this doesn't look great on the church billboards. Come to Bethel Church and suffer along with us. But that's the Bible. And that's the experience of Jesus who, by the way, we're told to do what? Take up our cross and follow him. Is there room in your understanding of your Christian faith that when trials come into your life, it doesn't mean that God doesn't love you? Now that's easy to say when you're not in a trial. But Thursday of this week, you might be. Are you ready to embrace that trial? Does your faith in God have a bandwidth that can bear that? Peter says your faith is more valuable than gold. Gold was the most valuable thing that they had in that day. Peter says your faith trumps it. Why? Because gold perishes. Gold perishes. But our faith will last forever. Not because of us, but because of that persevering, preserving work of God in our life. When the heat is turned up on us, we wanna say stop. God's answer is this. You may not realize it, but your faith is far more valuable than your comfort. I am going to reveal it and refine it. This will be a short term pain, but it will be a long term gain. Are you ready? You know, as a pastor, our elders, our pastors, we often are called into those moments of pain. I did two funerals yesterday morning. Two very wonderful godly men in our church, Peter Hammer and Merle McCluskey, both families suffering loss. Dear, dear brothers in the Lord, these kinds of things happen. They heard me preach sermons like this all the time, and now they're dead. They their sojourn is over. Are you ready? Are you ready, or are just hoping it doesn't happen or that Jesus comes back before it happens? Now with that said, I don't think we should intentionally bring trouble to ourselves. So don't leave the service today and be like, you know what? Trials refine my faith. I want trials in my life and run your car into a guardrail or a light pole or something like that. K? There's enough pain in this world we don't need to add to it. It also doesn't mean that we should be trying to refine our other people's faith and say, you know what? He needs to grow. Especially you married couples. I don't want you thinking that way. Life has enough fiery trials all by itself. So what should we be thinking when we're in a trial? I've got some questions. When the heat is up, when the heat in life is coming up, what should I ask? Here's a few. Am I looking at this from a temporal or eternal perspective? Obsess over the problem, and it will be overwhelming. Pull back from it and see it from the grand perspective of the gospel and the story of God, now I have it in perspective. Do I do I realize that trials are necessary at times and are for my good? This is one of the things that I, in my difficult times in my life, I try to bring to bear the thought in my heart, this is good for me. And that's hard at times. Right? Because I got this other part of me going, no, it isn't. And then I've got my faith part going, yes. It is. No. It isn't. Yes. It is. No. It is. Yes. You lay in bed at night. You can't sleep because this is going on. Right? But faith refuses to give up the belief that there is a sovereign God and that these light and momentary trials are achieving for us a glory that far outweighs them all. Romans eight. I'm sorry. Second Corinthians four. Is my perspective shaped by confidence in God's sovereign and good plan for my life? Do you think God loves you or only when things are good and going the way you want? Do you believe he loves you? Friend, he does. He sent Jesus. Right? That is Romans eight. “If God didn't spare his own son but gave him up for us all, how will we not also along with him graciously give us all things?” How can we doubt the love of God for us? He sent his son for us. Do I want to grow spiritually more than I want to live comfortably? How many people could honestly say, yes, I want to grow spiritually more than to have a comfortable life? Is faith refinement a personal goal? Do I aspire to a high karat content? I think those are all very helpful, and maybe we'll get those up on the web in case you would like those. They come right from the text. Now look at the end result here, and we have our fourth certainty in the text. Let me read it again. “So that the tested genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” The fourth certainty is that purified faith has a goal in mind. If my goal is to grow spiritually, I have another goal in that, and it's an eternal perspective where I believe that this trial that I am going through is going to bring honor to God and also is going to bring commendation and honor to me. And this was my aha moment in my studies here because whenever you see it may result in praise and glory and honor, you just assume that this is talking about God. Right? Because there's so many passages in the Bible that say that. Philippians two, for example, “every knee shall bow, every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.” And so you can look at that and say, well, who is the honor going to? It must be going to God. And indeed, in the end, all honor does go to God. But the text doesn't say that the honor here goes to God. It just says when it comes. It comes when Jesus is revealed. It comes at the end of time. And I think what Peter is doing here is he is including both. There is in my trouble and in my pain. Why do I want to respond in a God honoring way? Because I want God to be honored in this trial. And that is a very good motive for the Christian enduring suffering that Jesus may be honored in my life. I want him to be glorified in all things. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen? Alright. So that we got down, especially at a church that is an all about him church. We got that down. But notice also that there is this reward that is also taught in Scripture that I receive. This commentation that I receive from Jesus in honor as he commends, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant.” Or a cup of cold water extended my name shall not be forgotten. And a host of other passages that teach us that as we honor the Lord in the ups and the downs of life, that we are putting our treasure in heaven as another example and that Jesus will reward us. Can that be motivating? I think so. I think so. In fact, to illustrate this, I'd like to return to the illustration that Peter is using, how both honors can happen, God and us. Let's go back to gold a second and to talk about gold used in in artwork. You know, back in the first century, they were doing what man has done for centuries, millennia, and that is use gold in art. Beautiful gold in, for example, jewelry. If you've, been to the museums in Chicago, there are displays there of ancient gold jewelry. And to this day, people pay to have tickets, and they go and they stand in front of the display, and they marvel at the intricate, jewelry and the and the craftsmanship of that those beautiful pieces of art. They stand there, and they're like, wow. And the wife's like, you ought to get me one of those. And, you know, these you just kinda stand there, and you admire the craftsmanship. You admire the artistic ability. You you admire the the art and the worth of that. Wow. That is just so absolutely beautiful. And so gold has itself a kind of I'm sorry. Art has its own kind of praise as we admire the art itself. But there is this other kind of honor that art produces, and that is honor for the maker of the art. So that it's not just the Messiah, it is Handel's Messiah. And it's just not the Fifth, it is Beethoven's fifth. And with great pieces of art, the art is valued and treasured, but then the real honor is for the amazing ability of the person who crafted it in the first place. And so how does that apply to what God is doing in the midst of my pain and my sorrow? As I realize that everything that comes into my life is from the sovereign hand of God, as I appropriate that faith, the same faith that trusted in Jesus for my eternity, I now trust him for this trial that I'm experiencing. And I remain faithful to the Lord. I try with the the strength that God provides to obey or to be steadfast or whatever I need to do in that trial. As I do that, God is shaping and forming in me in the story of my life a kind of artistic beauty. And the people around you see that, and they admire it. And they're like, isn't it beautiful and wonderful what that family is doing in response to that trial in their life? Isn't it great and wonderful what that man is doing as he prepares to lose his job by faith in Jesus, believing God is sovereign over it? And a host of other things as we admire and see that we are we're like the gallery of God. Our lives are a kind of masterpiece, a kind of artistic expression of the amazing power of God, but for our own honor as well. We hang in the gallery of God and people and angels and God himself admiring the beauty of what our lives live by faith in times of trouble, what that is, so that we as the art and God is the maker of the art, both receive honor and praise. And one motivating factor when I am in a time of trouble is I don't want to lose that reward. I don't want to lose that commendation from God. “Well done, good and faithful servant.” I don't wanna lose the opportunity to bring honor to him. By the way, I live by faith even when life hurts. So that at the end then of all of our troubles and all of our pains, there is God and there is us. His artwork, his masterpieces, honored and honored. Little h honor to us, big h honor to God. Paintings and painters, symphonies and composers, sinners and savior may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Much more on suffering in First Peter. We're just getting going. I'm gonna ask you, just to join me for a word of prayer. Would you stand with me, please, as we conclude our service together? * This transcript was generated using AI transcription technology and reviewed for accuracy but may contain errors. Please refer to the original audio for precise wording.

Steve DeWitt God, Why Am I Hurting? - Part A Study Guide for Spiritual Exiles, 1 Peter 1:6-8 Scripture Reference: 1 Peter 1:6-8 Visit the series page: Exiles: A study in 1 Peter Donate to Support The Journey Sermon Transcript for Spiritual Exiles, 1 Peter 1:6-8 Sermon Series: Spiritual Exiles Message: God Why Am I Hurting? Airdate: 9/10-9/11/26 Programs: 2354 2355 2014, what a year around this place. I mean, it was something else. And just on the surface to go from two campuses to four campuses all in one year, a remarkable, remarkable, thing that God has done. We give him glory for it, and, we want 2015 to be another year of, faithful ministry here, and thank you for your part in that. I really mean that. This is our weekend of the annual meeting, and that's partly why we made this video. It's a it's a year or it's a a weekend where our members, we have our annual meeting, and so it's kind of a year to look back, a time to look back on the on the past year. It also means that, because our meeting is between this service and the next, I know this is gonna be disappointing. The sermon's a little shorter. Little shorter. So appropriate, that I'm speaking on trials in this sermon. And I'm gonna get right into it because our time is fleeting. First Peter one verses six through seven, I've entitled this message, God, why am I hurting? That resonate resonate here today? Are you in a time in your life maybe where you are hurting, where there is a trial maybe that is a pain in your life right now, you might say, no. Not really. Just wait. K? Just wait. It's coming. Life in a broken world brings sorrows to us in all kinds of directions and in ways that we cannot anticipate. That day is most certainly coming. And Peter is writing this letter to a group of geographical exiles in the first century sent from Rome, living in Asia Minor, but they are they are spiritual exiles as well. They are suffering in a community that looks at their Christian faith, looks at their rejection of the immorality around them. They look down at them, and they are feeling alienated. They are feeling ostracized, and they are suffering in many different ways. And so Peter writes this letter to them to encourage them, and it is perhaps more than the only one maybe competing with the book would be the book of Job of, delivering to us, giving to us a theology of Christian suffering. How do I handle it? How should I look at it when God sovereignly brings pain into my life? First Peter is a very honest letter. It looks pain in the face and gives an answer. Did you know Christianity has an answer to suffering that the other religions of the world, the other philosophies struggle to provide in ways that we'll get into? So maybe you're here today and you're in pain, and you're thinking this is the sermon for me. Maybe you're here today and you're not in pain, but that day is coming. I want to prepare all of us to suffer so that when we are the ones experiencing that pain, we have a kind of grid. We have a kind of understanding that is ready to embrace the trials that come. I also wanna note that Christianity is based on suffering. I mean, our entire faith is built upon the suffering savior who came into this world, God steps into our pain in the person of Jesus, incarnates into this world, lives amongst us, experiences all of the weaknesses, all of the sufferings that we experience, and then suffered himself dying on the cross bearing the guilt and shame for all of our sins. Our savior was a suffering savior. We can say it that Christianity is is built on suffering. Now that doesn't sound so good. It doesn't look great on a billboard. You know, we're not gonna put up a billboard that says, Bethel Church, come suffer with us. Right? Because many people, they don't wanna hear that, and they want a faith that doesn't include any suffering, and yet it inevitably comes. Are we ready for that? Are you ready for that in your life? So our text is verses, six and seven, First Peter one. Please listen as I read. “In this, you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials so that the tested genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” This passage is Peter's first salvo of teaching on suffering. It's gonna continue through the letter. So this isn't everything that he has to say about it. There's much more to come. Notice that he begins with the the little phrase there, in this, you rejoice. You wouldn't expect a passage on suffering to have a and to begin with a word of joy, and he's referring there to what he's just talked about regarding our living hope. Our hope is living because our hope is in a living savior. And so because of that, we are we rejoice in this salvation, this new birth that God has given to us. Notice that joy and pain can coexist. We typically think, you know, when I am in pain, then I'm not joyous. Right? Or when I'm in joyous, I don't have any pain. And yet these two come together, indeed, they have to come together in a Christian theology of suffering because there is going to be ongoing problems and pain in life. There are gonna be ups and downs, and yet our Christian joy is not based upon our circumstances. It is grounded and based upon something that is enduring. Even Jesus himself, Hebrews, “who for the joy set before him endured the cross and despised its shame.” So don't see the these as enemies. These actually can be friends, joy, and pain. We'll get into more of that later. But in this passage, Peter gives four certainties in the midst of suffering. Four certainties that a Christian can hold on to, trust, and believe in even when life is hurting. So let's get into these now. Notice the first one is that our trials as Christians are temporary. They are temporary. The text now, “though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials.” Peter's first point here is chronological. He is pointing something out that is obviously true. Now it doesn't seem that way to us when we are in the midst of pain. When we are hurting, what do we often think about the pain that we're feeling? We say things like this. This is never going to change. This is never gonna be fixed. I will always feel this way. This pain will never go away. That's how it seems to us. Right? Peter says, yes. It will. Yes. It will. Chronologically speaking, our sufferings and our trials and our pains are very small in duration when compared to the future that the Christian confidently expects, this eternal life that we have. Our lives are fleeting. Our days are numbered. They're short. Eternity is long. Peter points that out. He says, you know what now? For a little while, it's just a little while. It's temporary. You're not always going to feel this way. It's not always going to be this way. A day of change is coming. Chapter five verse 10, he writes, and after you have suffered a little while, there he says it again, “the God of all grace who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.” Peter's wanting us to realize that that this trial that I am in is finite. Eternity is unending. My trial is temporary. Eternity is forever. And when I look at things from that grand perspective, it helps me put it into proper perspective. When I obsess about my trials, I think it's always going to be this way. Do you ever get sort of melodramatic about things? Right? Oh, it's never gonna be better. My life is over. You know, teenage girl says that when who knows what happened to her. Right? And she's, oh, you know. And we look at her and we say that is so immature. Peter says when we look at our trials like it's always going to be that way, we're looking immaturely. We're not seeing things from the grand perspective. Our trials are temporary. Someday, the present pain of our life will be over. Someday, Jesus himself is going to confirm, establish, comfort, minister. Someday, we are going to look back at our trials, and we are going to agree with God regarding them. Can you believe that? Now you might be in a trial right now going, I will never say that this was okay. I will never agree with this. Someday, God, I believe, is going to give us understanding regarding why this happened and why that happened and why that happened. I talked with a man after first service today. He's losing his job. He has thirty days. He was talking to somebody about this and that person said to him, I haven't been to church since Vietnam. But in light of the way you're responding to this, I might give it another chance. He always had tears in his eyes after first service to this point that I'm making. He goes, oh, these three years have been so hard, but maybe I see why God's doing it. Don't Don't you think heaven is going to be that kind of an experience where God goes, see when that happened right there? I did this with that with that person's life, and then this was the fruit of it. And we're gonna be going, I had no idea. And when we see it in the big picture, don't you think we will go, you know, God, you are infinitely wise. I now agree with that. And if I was you, I would have brought that into my life. Praise be to God. Okay? Heaven will be that I think. For a Christian, realize friends, for a Christian, this life that we're in right now, this is as bad as it gets. Our lives right now are the worst experience that we are ever going to have. Why? Because eternity is going to be bliss, heaven, and joy. So this is as bad as it gets for the Christian. For the unbeliever, it's the opposite. This is as good as it gets. Life in this broken world with all of its pain and all of its uncertainty is far better than what lies ahead for the unbeliever. But for us, this is as bad as it gets. This is temporary pain. That helps, doesn't it? Indeed, it does. Secondly, Peter points out that trials are painful. Trials are painful. Though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials. That's a pretty good word to describe what pain feels like. Right? It's grievous to us. And do I really need a lot of proof text on this one? Just to prove to you that trials are painful, that we feel within us when we are in a trial. And by trial here, I it's it's all of it, the various trials that he talks about. It can be physical. It can be emotional. It can be relational. It can be marital. It can be financial. It can be political. It can be injustice. It can be emotional worry, fear, misery, depression, and I mean, the things that the things that can create pain in us are incredibly varied, aren't they? All of them, we feel very personally when we experience them. I also find over time in my life that not only are the trials varied, but my ability to handle them is varied. There are things that when I was younger wouldn't have bothered me, now they bother me, like birthdays. There are things that when I was young bothered me, but now from a perspective of maturity doesn't bother me anymore. Right? It's so varied. It's so changing. But over all of that, we certainly can say the trials are painful. We would rather not be in them. Amen? Okay. That'd be my preference. A trouble free life. No more trials. I mean, that'd be like heaven, wouldn't it? Oh, wait. It is heaven. Are you with me? Okay. Alright. Third, reality and certainty with trials. And this now gets into kind of the nub of what Peter is wanting us to see is that trials are revealing and trials are refining. Again, the text, “so that the tested genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” What is one of the biggest things that we wanna know when we are in the midst of a trial? We search for why. Right? Why is this happening? Why am I feeling this? Why am I sorrowing like I am? Why am I so depressed about this? And atheism comes along and gives what answer? Nothing. Secular humanism comes along and gives what answer? Nothing. Agnosticism comes along and gives what answer? E. Evolutionary theory comes along and gives what answer to our pain? Nothing. Christianity comes along, and it's got a purpose statement. Right there, you see it. So that. Why do I go through the troubles that I do? Why do I go through these things? Is there some reason behind it? And indeed, there is. In fact, you see, previously, he says, if necessary about our trials. If necessary what do you mean if necessary? That seems to indicate somebody is determining whether I ought to go through this or not. Is there a sovereign somebody that is sovereignly guiding and directing in the details of my life and determining whether this is good or not, necessary or not. Indeed, that is Christianity, that there is a sovereign God who doesn't simply, like the agnostics teach, live out there in the extended world and hope the best for us, but rather he is sovereignly over every single detail of our life. There's nothing that will ever happen to the Christian that we that that God did not sovereignly bring to us. Now by that, it doesn't mean that God endorses evil. And someday, we will never endorse evil either. We'll never look at the Holocaust and say, yeah. Great. But God uses evil, and God uses these things to accomplish his purposes. That's what Joseph said in Genesis, right, to his brothers. “You intended it for evil. God intended it for good.” That's the the the wonder of the mystery of God that he can, in the complexities of the universe, use even evil for his divine good and sovereign purposes. And so we see then that in Christian in a Christian theology of suffering, there is a purpose to it. And I think that alone is one of the great certainties that we have to cling to, that this is not random. This is not chaos. This is not Satan winning. Rather, this is something that God is sovereignly guiding and directing. There is a purpose behind it. Sometimes that doesn't make sense to us when the kind and godly young man dies or when the righteous suffer and the unrighteous prosper. Do you ever feel that way? Maybe you feel about that way about yourself. I'm I'm busting my butt. I'm trying to be a good employee, student, wife, husband, parent, whatever. And here I am. I'm dying on the vine, and you look at your neighbor who they're immoral, they profane God's name, and they just smile all the time. And you're like, that doesn't seem fair to me. As the hymn says, it is our God who does each day what he deems best. We trust that pain has a purpose and that God is behind it. The same faith that can believe in Jesus and trust my entire eternity to the truthfulness that Jesus did bear my guilt as he died on the cross is the same faith that now as a Christian in the midst of my suffering appropriates the promises of God and believes that this trial is as well under the sovereign hand of God and that he is doing something with it. We say, well, what is that something? Pastor Steve, could you please help? Notice what Peter says. What purpose do they serve? “So that the tested genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire.” What Peter does here is he anticipates maybe people sort of getting lost in his theology, and he gives a very clear illustration that they could all understand and we can all understand here as well. He brings up gold. Now ancient people were interested in gold. Why? It was the most precious commodity that they had. I mean, today, if you listen to the radio and different things, you see these advertisements. The stock market's uncertain. Buy gold. Right? And they show gold bars and people smiling because they have gold bars, and they encourage you to buy gold. It's the only lasting value in the world. That's the way that they viewed it in the first century. It was their most precious commodity. It was the most long lasting thing that they had, gold. So if you've ever seen, King Tut's tomb or pictures of the jewelry and the gold at King Tut's tomb, then you know that the ancient world, they were really good with gold. I mean, they had figured out how to take gold out of the mountain and turn it into something very beautiful, incredibly beautiful, and intricate. So how do they do it? Well, like today, what they would do is they would mine the gold, and then they would heat it. Right? They would heat up that gold with fires in a furnace. They would heat it up and heat it up and heat it up. And gold reaches a point where it melts. And as it gets hotter, the hotter it gets, the more the impurities of the gold rise to the surface. And so the ancients would heat up that gold and they would heat up that gold and the impurities. In other words, everything that was not gold would rise to the top, and then they would just skim off the top. And by doing that, the gold then, the karat of the gold, and by that, I mean k a r a t. Not to confuse some of you that are thinking about lunch right now. Carat, the the purity of the gold, and the value then would would increase. Okay? And they all got how that worked, and I hope that maybe, you get how that works as well. Because Peter is drawing an analogy here. Do you see it? The analogy is that fire reveals the gold and fire refines the gold. It reveals what is actually gold and separates the impurities and by doing that it refines it. And what he's saying here is that our faith is like gold and our trials are like fire. Fire reveals the genuine gold, and trials reveal the genuine faith. Should I say that again? Fire reveals the genuine gold. Trials reveal the genuine faith within us. Now you don't have to be around the church very long to see this in action. If you're around a church, some family or some individual is gonna suddenly find themselves in a trial, a fiery trial, as Peter calls it elsewhere. And you can watch how this works. And sometimes it's beautiful. Right? Because here you have sort of generic family a, and you didn't know them that well. You didn't know that much about them, but you hear about the trial. And out of that trial, you see a family that is turning to God in ways that you had never seen before. They're wanting the church to be in prayer for them. They're seeking spiritual, counsel and help. They're turning to God in the midst of their trial. They're trusting in things that they they don't know how it's gonna work out, but our trust is in God. And please, won't you pray for us? And you see in that trial a faith that you had never seen before. And it's a beautiful thing to see that. The genuineness of their faith is being revealed by the trial. In a sense, they didn't know what was in them. They didn't realize what they had, that saving faith in them, now showing its true color, its true karat in the midst of a fiery trial. At the same time, you don't have to be around the church very long to have generic family b in the church who comes under a similar trial. And they are unprepared for it. Their faith is has no, bandwidth for it. In that trial, all of a sudden, they are overwhelmed. Or they feel like, wait. This is not what I signed up for. They're like kinda like bandwagon Christians. They sort of join the church. They get on the Christianity bandwagon, and then paint then life hurts. And they're like, I need a different bandwagon. And off they go in a 100 different directions forsaking what they profess to be true in their life. What has the trial done for them? The trial has revealed that their faith was not genuine. The heat of the trial has done that. It is our response to trials that says so much. And by the way, this doesn't mean that we're like super Christians. And like from now on here at Bethel Church, if you ever have a trial, you must be like, my faith is being revealed and I love it. You know, it's not like that at all. There is room in this for normal human concern and worry and fear and the battling of fear and faith and all of that. So it's not like we're all walking around on some great spiritual plane somehow. But in the essence of it, there is an endurance that faith, genuine faith has that comes through the trial different, better, refined, revealed in ways that previously had been unknown. Trials are also great purifiers. Great purifiers. I read a little bit this week in preparation for this that modern gold refining, they heat up the gold to 3,000 degrees. That's hot, isn't it? And I got thinking to myself, what if you could interview the gold while it's being heated up, while it's coming under this kind of temperature? What might the gold be saying as it's getting hot? I see statements like this: “This is hot! This hurts! This stinks! Get me out of here! Why is this happening? Why do I get this and silver gets off easy? Please stop this right now. The guy in charge of this doesn't love me.” But what does the goldsmith know? The goldsmith knows that the only way for that gold to be purified is by heat. Now I stand before you a man who wished that wasn't true. I mean, wouldn't it be great if if the way that our faith could be built and we could grow spiritually would be for God to lavish us with every desire of our hearts? And for there never to be a single problem the rest of our life that we would just be rich and happy and fat and, you know, healthy and eat what we want and have all these. I mean, wouldn't it be great if that was the way that our faith was built? Amen. You're not sure if you want to amen that or not. I think that would be fantastic. That's not the way that it works, is it? In fact, what happens to people who get everything they want? What do we call children like that? Brats. That's what we call them. The surest way to raise a brat is to give that kid everything he wants all the time. And spiritually, there's a lot of immature Christians running around wanting that same kind of an experience. That's immaturity. How do we grow friends? It's through pain. And you'd better be ready for it. And again, this doesn't look great on the church billboards. Come to Bethel Church and suffer along with us. But that's the Bible. And that's the experience of Jesus who, by the way, we're told to do what? Take up our cross and follow him. Is there room in your understanding of your Christian faith that when trials come into your life, it doesn't mean that God doesn't love you? Now that's easy to say when you're not in a trial. But Thursday of this week, you might be. Are you ready to embrace that trial? Does your faith in God have a bandwidth that can bear that? Peter says your faith is more valuable than gold. Gold was the most valuable thing that they had in that day. Peter says your faith trumps it. Why? Because gold perishes. Gold perishes. But our faith will last forever. Not because of us, but because of that persevering, preserving work of God in our life. When the heat is turned up on us, we wanna say stop. God's answer is this. You may not realize it, but your faith is far more valuable than your comfort. I am going to reveal it and refine it. This will be a short term pain, but it will be a long term gain. Are you ready? You know, as a pastor, our elders, our pastors, we often are called into those moments of pain. I did two funerals yesterday morning. Two very wonderful godly men in our church, Peter Hammer and Merle McCluskey, both families suffering loss. Dear, dear brothers in the Lord, these kinds of things happen. They heard me preach sermons like this all the time, and now they're dead. They their sojourn is over. Are you ready? Are you ready, or are just hoping it doesn't happen or that Jesus comes back before it happens? Now with that said, I don't think we should intentionally bring trouble to ourselves. So don't leave the service today and be like, you know what? Trials refine my faith. I want trials in my life and run your car into a guardrail or a light pole or something like that. K? There's enough pain in this world we don't need to add to it. It also doesn't mean that we should be trying to refine our other people's faith and say, you know what? He needs to grow. Especially you married couples. I don't want you thinking that way. Life has enough fiery trials all by itself. So what should we be thinking when we're in a trial? I've got some questions. When the heat is up, when the heat in life is coming up, what should I ask? Here's a few. Am I looking at this from a temporal or eternal perspective? Obsess over the problem, and it will be overwhelming. Pull back from it and see it from the grand perspective of the gospel and the story of God, now I have it in perspective. Do I do I realize that trials are necessary at times and are for my good? This is one of the things that I, in my difficult times in my life, I try to bring to bear the thought in my heart, this is good for me. And that's hard at times. Right? Because I got this other part of me going, no, it isn't. And then I've got my faith part going, yes. It is. No. It isn't. Yes. It is. No. It is. Yes. You lay in bed at night. You can't sleep because this is going on. Right? But faith refuses to give up the belief that there is a sovereign God and that these light and momentary trials are achieving for us a glory that far outweighs them all. Romans eight. I'm sorry. Second Corinthians four. Is my perspective shaped by confidence in God's sovereign and good plan for my life? Do you think God loves you or only when things are good and going the way you want? Do you believe he loves you? Friend, he does. He sent Jesus. Right? That is Romans eight. “If God didn't spare his own son but gave him up for us all, how will we not also along with him graciously give us all things?” How can we doubt the love of God for us? He sent his son for us. Do I want to grow spiritually more than I want to live comfortably? How many people could honestly say, yes, I want to grow spiritually more than to have a comfortable life? Is faith refinement a personal goal? Do I aspire to a high karat content? I think those are all very helpful, and maybe we'll get those up on the web in case you would like those. They come right from the text. Now look at the end result here, and we have our fourth certainty in the text. Let me read it again. “So that the tested genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” The fourth certainty is that purified faith has a goal in mind. If my goal is to grow spiritually, I have another goal in that, and it's an eternal perspective where I believe that this trial that I am going through is going to bring honor to God and also is going to bring commendation and honor to me. And this was my aha moment in my studies here because whenever you see it may result in praise and glory and honor, you just assume that this is talking about God. Right? Because there's so many passages in the Bible that say that. Philippians two, for example, “every knee shall bow, every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.” And so you can look at that and say, well, who is the honor going to? It must be going to God. And indeed, in the end, all honor does go to God. But the text doesn't say that the honor here goes to God. It just says when it comes. It comes when Jesus is revealed. It comes at the end of time. And I think what Peter is doing here is he is including both. There is in my trouble and in my pain. Why do I want to respond in a God honoring way? Because I want God to be honored in this trial. And that is a very good motive for the Christian enduring suffering that Jesus may be honored in my life. I want him to be glorified in all things. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen? Alright. So that we got down, especially at a church that is an all about him church. We got that down. But notice also that there is this reward that is also taught in Scripture that I receive. This commentation that I receive from Jesus in honor as he commends, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant.” Or a cup of cold water extended my name shall not be forgotten. And a host of other passages that teach us that as we honor the Lord in the ups and the downs of life, that we are putting our treasure in heaven as another example and that Jesus will reward us. Can that be motivating? I think so. I think so. In fact, to illustrate this, I'd like to return to the illustration that Peter is using, how both honors can happen, God and us. Let's go back to gold a second and to talk about gold used in in artwork. You know, back in the first century, they were doing what man has done for centuries, millennia, and that is use gold in art. Beautiful gold in, for example, jewelry. If you've, been to the museums in Chicago, there are displays there of ancient gold jewelry. And to this day, people pay to have tickets, and they go and they stand in front of the display, and they marvel at the intricate, jewelry and the and the craftsmanship of that those beautiful pieces of art. They stand there, and they're like, wow. And the wife's like, you ought to get me one of those. And, you know, these you just kinda stand there, and you admire the craftsmanship. You admire the artistic ability. You you admire the the art and the worth of that. Wow. That is just so absolutely beautiful. And so gold has itself a kind of I'm sorry. Art has its own kind of praise as we admire the art itself. But there is this other kind of honor that art produces, and that is honor for the maker of the art. So that it's not just the Messiah, it is Handel's Messiah. And it's just not the Fifth, it is Beethoven's fifth. And with great pieces of art, the art is valued and treasured, but then the real honor is for the amazing ability of the person who crafted it in the first place. And so how does that apply to what God is doing in the midst of my pain and my sorrow? As I realize that everything that comes into my life is from the sovereign hand of God, as I appropriate that faith, the same faith that trusted in Jesus for my eternity, I now trust him for this trial that I'm experiencing. And I remain faithful to the Lord. I try with the the strength that God provides to obey or to be steadfast or whatever I need to do in that trial. As I do that, God is shaping and forming in me in the story of my life a kind of artistic beauty. And the people around you see that, and they admire it. And they're like, isn't it beautiful and wonderful what that family is doing in response to that trial in their life? Isn't it great and wonderful what that man is doing as he prepares to lose his job by faith in Jesus, believing God is sovereign over it? And a host of other things as we admire and see that we are we're like the gallery of God. Our lives are a kind of masterpiece, a kind of artistic expression of the amazing power of God, but for our own honor as well. We hang in the gallery of God and people and angels and God himself admiring the beauty of what our lives live by faith in times of trouble, what that is, so that we as the art and God is the maker of the art, both receive honor and praise. And one motivating factor when I am in a time of trouble is I don't want to lose that reward. I don't want to lose that commendation from God. “Well done, good and faithful servant.” I don't wanna lose the opportunity to bring honor to him. By the way, I live by faith even when life hurts. So that at the end then of all of our troubles and all of our pains, there is God and there is us. His artwork, his masterpieces, honored and honored. Little h honor to us, big h honor to God. Paintings and painters, symphonies and composers, sinners and savior may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Much more on suffering in First Peter. We're just getting going. I'm gonna ask you, just to join me for a word of prayer. Would you stand with me, please, as we conclude our service together? * This transcript was generated using AI transcription technology and reviewed for accuracy but may contain errors. Please refer to the original audio for precise wording.

Steve DeWitt Indestructibly Saved - Part B Study Guide for Spiritual Exiles, 1 Peter 1:3-5 Scripture Reference: 1 Peter 1:3-5 Visit the series page: Exiles: A study in 1 Peter Donate to Support The Journey Sermon Transcript for Spiritual Exiles, 1 Peter 1:3-5 Sermon Series: Spiritual Exiles Message: Indestructibly Saved Airdate: 9/8 & 9/9/26 Programs 2352 & 2353 Good morning, Crown Point Campus. And let's go to the Lord in prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the opportunity to be here today. And we pray simply this, that your spirit would come, that he would minister to your people by your word for your glory and for our good. God, we pray that this would be a day truly where your name would be lifted higher. And we want to be a part of that. So we thank you. We pray it in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, last week we began our new series in 1 Peter entitled Exiles. And the title was taken from the first verse of the book, which says this, “Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who are elect exiles of the dispersion.” And we saw that Peter was writing to Christians who had been part of this colonization, this dispersion, Christians living in Rome or that region sent now to Asia Minor, and they are there living as foreigners, essentially living as exiles, geopolitical exiles. And what Peter does is he draws from their geopolitical situation spiritual truth and application as they dealt with the feelings of alienation. and ostracization from people that saw them as part of the conquering army, people that weren't from there. And so much that we're going to see in this letter. Last week was our introduction, and we saw that... exiles want more than anything is they want a change of location. They think to themselves, what really needs to happen is I need to be somewhere else. And if I was somewhere else, then I would be happy. Then I would feel like I belong. And we see that what Peter is wanting them to realize is that we want to change our location. God wants to change who we are. And that is inward. And that's the work of the spirit. That's the work of the gospel. That's a part of changing us. Now, what might exiles need to know? Think about this with me for a moment. What do they need to know? There they are living in a land of uncertainty, living in a place where they don't, you know, you think of what people experience when they move into a new area. They need a new doctor. They need a new, where do I get my groceries? How do I find my way around? All the things that are sort of new and different and uncertain. That is compounded in the experience of moving in the first century to a whole new region. And there they are, and everything is uncertain. Nothing feels normal. Everything's sort of weird. What do they need to know spiritually? Well, they need to know that there is a day coming when they will not be exiles anymore and where they will feel welcomed and they will feel like they belong. And that's what Peter now moves to in pastoring this group of people. He wants them to realize that they will not always be exiles. It will not always be like it is. There's coming a day when it will be very much different. And our text in our sermon today is 1 Peter 1, verses 3 through 5. And today is a day where I get to preach at Crown Point and at Cedar Lake. And we do this with the use of technology. And hopefully a fast commute. That's where we're going today. That's where I'm going today. But our text today is verses 3 through 5. So please listen as I read from God's word. “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.” 1 Peter, if you ask most people what 1 Peter is about, it's about remaining faithful in suffering and in persecution. And I just want to note to you that a letter that begins, a letter that is about suffering, begins with, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now that seems out of place, except for when you view your suffering from a Christian perspective. It sounds to me like Job, the famous book on suffering. Job, who endured all of these things in chapter 1. He loses everything, and what is his response to that? The Lord gives, the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name. There is within Christianity a kind of faith and a kind of confidence in the goodness of God that allows Christians to suffer loss and to remain doxological, to remain praising, to remain giving thanks to God. And we see that modeled here with Peter. He begins with praise and thanksgiving to the Lord. These verses, verses 3 through 5, they are, it's, This is a jewel, okay? This is a jewel passage in all of the Bible, and there are lots of jewel passages, but this is certainly one of them, because what Peter does here is he lays out the gospel. He goes from praising God, and he says, now, why? Why do we praise the Lord? What is there about what God has done for us that allows us to give praise to God even in the midst of persecution and suffering? And we see him now talking about salvation in this passage from the perspective of the past, what God has done, the present, what God is doing, and the future, what God is yet to do. And I want to hasten to say this. These truths that I'm talking about here, that Peter talks about, only apply to genuine Christians. This is not just a general truth for all of humanity. Let's all feel good about it. This is a truth that applies to people who have genuinely trusted in the Lord Jesus. And the promises that God has made to those that are his children apply then to us and are enumerated here. by Peter. So if you're here and you have not trusted in Jesus as your Savior, what I hope happens today as we talk about the blessings that come to those that are under the grace of God, that it might woo you, that it might draw you to put your hope and your faith in the Lord Jesus and for these promises then to become real and true for you. And that can happen in this service here today. Now, if you're an exile far from home, You are having to accept certain realities about life now. It's almost like a college student who goes away from home for the first time. And suddenly, the reality of being responsible for yourself, doing your own laundry, and managing your own money, and all of the rest comes crashing down on the freshmen. And some of them flunk out as a result of that, right? They're in a faraway land. Everything's sort of strange. And indeed, to be one of these people that he's writing to, in a faraway land where everything feels creepy and people look at you as creepy because you're different created a whole set of problems and difficulties your homeland that where you used to be it felt safe it felt normal it felt secure you had friends that made you feel like you were cared for you had possessions that you had had for a long time They felt normal to you. You had maybe a home. You had a network. You had all of these things that felt cozy and made you feel cared for. To be a person in exile is to live without these things, to live away from all of those identities and all of those securities. In fact, I don't know if you've noticed our series graphic, but just to put that up if we have it a second. I really like this because what is it? It's a guy sitting on a pile of rubble and he's looking to a faraway place, right? And there's sort of this sense of, I wish I was there instead of where I am here. This feels like rubble where I'm at. I wish I was back where I came from. And that is a picture, not a bad one, of what it's like to be in exile. And what Peter wants them, and through this letter and through the Holy Spirit, wants us to realize here today is that what we have in Christ, even as an exile, is far greater and far better than anything we had prior to coming to faith in Christ. I said that very clumsily. And clumsily is a clumsy word itself. Let me try that again. What Peter is wanting to say is that what we have presently as Christians, even as exiles, even on the pile of rubble, is far greater and far better than anything we had back when everything felt cozy, back prior to our faith in Christ. And he lays that out again in terms of past, present, future. So let's begin by looking at the past. And notice what he says here. Wonderful verse. about being born again to a living hope. According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Now we saw in verse 1 that their exile was by God's choice. We see here in verse 3 that their new birth is by the mercy of God. Born again. Born of what? What are you talking about? That sounds crazy. And that is exactly what Nicodemus said to Jesus when Jesus brought this up to him as well. In John chapter 3, you may know the story. Nicodemus, he's sort of a bigwig spiritual leader in Israel. He comes to Jesus in the night, and he asks him about spiritual, he has spiritual questions for him. And he says, no one except they're born from God could do what you do. And Jesus says to him, you must be born again. You have to be born again. Nicodemus says, what? How can I be born again? I was born of my mother once, I gotta be born of her twice? What are you talking about? And you see that Nicodemus is only looking at things materially. He is not seeing things spiritually, which is what Jesus wants him to see, is there's a whole thing going on here spiritually. You have to be born again. What was Jesus talking about? The New Testament calls it new birth, calls it regeneration. All of these are biblical descriptions of what God does in the heart of the sinner who turns in faith and believes in Jesus as their Lord and Savior. There is a miracle, a powerful supernatural work that God does inwardly in the life of the sinner where like being born again, he makes the sinner alive spiritually. Regeneration is also the word there. The Bible says that we are dead in our sins, that spiritually we are corpses. What has to happen for a corpse to live again? It has to be regenerated. In a sense, it has to be resurrected. And what God does inwardly in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, when we believe, is he births life in us again. Almost like Jesus saying to Lazarus, come forth. There is a summoning and a giving of life that God does within us where all of a sudden now our eyes are opened, our ears are opened, and we become attuned to spiritual realities and spiritual things. And notice that it's God that does this. He has caused us to be born again. Regeneration is something that God does. We can't manufacture it. We can't create it. We can't do enough things to make us think that now spiritually I'm alive. We are dead. Burns Funeral Homes across the street, you can go to every corpse there and try to manufacture life. It's not going to happen. Only God can manufacture life. And God does that within us. We are born again. We are passive in this. You ever hear a baby come out being born and go, wow, look what I did. I'm amazing. No, that mother birthed that child. Amen, mothers? You ain't going to ever forget that, are you? Babies don't take credit for being born, and Christians don't take credit for being born again. This is something God does. We are made spiritually alive, but the change affects our entire being. 2 Corinthians says it this way. If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old is gone, the new has come. It is a miracle of life that permeates our entire being. Suddenly, it's like the switch is turned on. We become aware of spiritual truth. What? I never realized that before. We become aware of the presence of God. We become aware of the presence of sin in our life. All of a sudden we realize, that we indeed are sinners. We become aware of forgiveness. We all of a sudden have an interest in Scripture, which prior to this we would have thought is silly. No, what does it say, actually? I'm kind of interested in that. We become interested in prayer and a host of other things. All of them kind of just, it's like springtime. Here come the leaves, here come the flowers. All of a sudden there is life. God does that. God does that. A few examples of how this is God's work and the change that it brings. I recently heard the story of Rosaria Butterfield, and maybe you've seen this online possibly, but she was a professor. She's very upfront about her sexuality. She was a lesbian. She was a professor at Syracuse University. She was just totally into kind of that whole worldview. And it's a great story because there was just a normal local church that began to kind of care for her and love her. And she, in her own words, writes this about her conversion. “The church had been praying for me for years was there. The church that had been praying for me for years was there. Jesus triumphed, and I was a broken mess. Conversion was a train wreck. I did not want to lose everything that I loved, but the voice of God sang a sanguine love song in the rubble of my world. I weakly believed that if Jesus could conquer death, he could make right my world. I drank tentatively at first, then passionately of the solace of the Holy Spirit.” And now she's married to a Presbyterian minister. So come to Jesus and you get to marry a Presbyterian minister. I would keep most people away. Listen to the words of C.S. Lewis. We've talked at length about him and how God drew him to faith. He writes this about his conversion. “You must picture me alone in that room at Magdalen College. Night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet.” Who's causing this regeneration? Hear it in these words. “That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me in the Trinity term of 1929. I gave in and admitted that God was God and knelt and prayed, perhaps that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.” Christian, think about your own life story. Think about the change that has taken place in your life. Is there a natural explanation? for the interest that you have in spiritual things and the course and trajectory of your life. The fact that you're sitting here right now listening to some guy talk about what the Bible has to say. All of these things are things if we knew our natural selves, we would say, I would never do that. And that sounds crazy and that sounds stupid. Just like the people in Asia Minor looked at these Christians and said, what planet are you from? Why are you interested in that stuff? And maybe you have people in your family and friends that similarly look at you and go, you're living your life according to what? What planet are you from? We share the same mother, but you're an alien. I don't know you. How have you come to care about the things that you care about and to love God in the way that you love him and to desire to obey and please and live to his glory in the way that you do? Where did all of that come from? It didn't come from you. That can only come from God. He has birthed life in us, and we are changed. Born again to a living hope, the text says, through the resurrection from the dead. Now, why do you suppose he calls it a living hope? It is because our hope is in a living Savior. Do you see the parallel there? One writer says it this way, Christian hope is ever living because Christ, the ground of that hope, is ever living. So Peter looks back. He says, exiles, look back in your story and realize that this change has not come from you. God has given you life, and he has given you hope. And that hope is a living hope because your Savior is a living Savior. And there we are looking at the passage. Well, that's pretty fantastic, isn't it? Don't you think exiles might be a little encouraged by that? And maybe even Christians living here today might be a little bit encouraged to look back and to see the grace of God in our life. As the hymn writer wrote, “oh God, our help in ages past, our hope for years to come.” We look to the past and we see God's grace to us. And it gives us, man, God is for me. God is with me. He has done this change in my life. The past, a living hope, a new birth. It is not simply a past, it is a present. And even right there is an interesting thought, which I don't have time to explore right now, but how important it is for us to realize that what God is doing is not just stuff in the past. You ever talk to people like that? Tell me about your spiritual life. Well, back in the past, and all they've got is like old stuff. And to realize that our faith, this thing that we're living, this Christian life, is a today thing. There is something that God is doing today. It doesn't matter how long you've been a Christian. There is a work that God is doing right now for you in your life. And Peter highlights it here. What are we saved to? “An inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who, by God's power, are being guarded through faith.” Now, there's a lot there, okay? There's a lot there, but let's just walk through it. You're going to get this, and you're going to love it. We've been born again to an inheritance, okay? So most of us are probably familiar with the concept of an inheritance. What is an inheritance? An inheritance is something that you receive normally based on a relationship, typically a family relationship, right? So when a person dies, there is a reading of the will. And if your name is in the will, it means that whether you knew it or not, you were an heir to the inheritance. So if you're in the will, you have an inheritance. Most people view that as good news, right? Okay. Now what is true about an inheritance? Inheritances are very, very slippery. Very slippery. Your name can be on the will, but guess what? It can be removed from the will. You were an heir, but now you're not anymore. So you better be careful what you say at the family gathering about grandma. And inheritance can shrink in value. Did you know that? You could be an heir to something that is incredibly valuable, but by the time you get it, it's not so valuable. So that your name is in the will, and they read the will, and your sister gets grandma's diamonds, and you get the cabbage patch collection. And you're like, my sister gets... and I get dolls and you know grandma puts in the notes when I bought these they were really valuable. You're like these aren't worth anything. This is like soft firewood. They can diminish in value. People can steal inheritances. There's a story or two in my own family tree of stolen inheritance and maybe you got a few of those in your family tree. It's amazing what family gets like when money is on the table. Inheritance can be stolen did you know that there are unscrupulous lawyers out there who now there's really godly and fair-minded ones as well but there are unscrupulous lawyers out there who can sometimes get their fingers in the pot and diminish an inheritance. Did you know that there are thieves — there are thieves — and that has no connection whatsoever with Steve. There are thieves who can steal inheritances. They can steal grandma's jewelry instead of the dolls. Did you know that massive inheritances can be squandered? Some time ago, I got watching on the History Channel, had this series called The Men Who Build America. Maybe some of you saw it, but we got into it for whatever reason. Tell the story of these icons of industry in the past. I got a little interested in the Vanderbilt family some years ago. I got a tour of the Biltmore, which is one of the descendants of, he built that with just an inheritance that he got. If you've ever seen that place, it's incredible. But I got interested in the Vanderbilt family. And just to give you an idea very quickly about the Vanderbilt fortune, they at one time, at the height of their power and value, they were worth over $300 billion in today's money. Now, $300 billion, to give you an idea, Bill Gates, who's currently the richest man in the world, is somewhere around $70 billion. They had $300 billion. The world has hardly ever, if ever, seen, other than Rockefeller, a fortune like the Vanderbilt family fortune. In 1973, this is just 75 years from the height of their power and wealth, There was a gathering of 120 direct descendants of Cornelius Vanderbilt, and there wasn't one millionaire amongst them. 75 years, 300 billion to, you know, not so wealthy. How does that happen? Inheritances can be squandered. They can just simply disappear. And I say all of that because that connects with the world that we're in, right? Everything is kind of diminishing. Everything that once was cool is kind of getting old now. And that's the world that we live in, right? Our money isn't worth today what it was worth yesterday. There's inflation. There's the stock market. Everything's up and down and all around. But what about spiritually? The inheritance, the Bible describes the inheritance that we have. We are heirs. What is our inheritance like? And he uses some very powerful words to emphasize that our inheritance is not subject to all of the insecurities that everything in this world has. And he uses these words, notice them, imperishable. Okay? To perish is to die. Everything in this world... dies right it's alive it dies the the flowers of the field the grass in the in the in the in the field all of it there and it dies and it withers and we're all withering right look around there's withering people all around you but this is an imperishable inheritance that he wants us to realize that we have undefiled and this speaks to the moral quality of our inheritance It is pure. It is good. Our inheritance doesn't come from unseemly business practices. There's nothing about it to make us feel sort of dirty in taking it or that there's something evil about it. It is holy. It is good. It is beautiful. It is pure, and it will be eternally beautiful and pure. Unfading. This is very similar to the perishing and the withering. It's, again, the human beauty and fame and everything that seems to be cool now. It's all going downhill. And young people don't realize that, but it is, right? It's all going down. Everything fades. And each one of these words is, it's perishable, defiled, and fading, only it has the negating ah in front of each one of those. It is not imperishable. I'm sorry, it's not perishable. It's not defiling. It is not fading. Our inheritance, you say, well, what is it then exactly? Number one, our inheritance is God himself. The number one thing that we look forward to in going to heaven is not seeing grandma, not seeing, you know, whoever. Number one is God. We go to heaven and we get God and we see God and we have him forever. We are his children. He lavishes blessings on us for all of eternity, eternal life, heaven, new earth, rewards that Jesus will give to us for the quality of our service while here on earth, bliss, beauty, and most importantly, and I include this in the God category, is the seeing and the savoring of Jesus himself, our blessed Lord and Savior, who is our inheritance. Christians talk about, oh, my mansion in heaven and all of that. Forget the mansion. Our mansion truly is Christ. And one day when we see him and we sense from him what eternal, pure, sacrificial, agape love is like, and he looks at us and we feel the love of the divine for us, the thought of a house or something else will just sort of fade away. This will be our greatest moment. It is that beatific vision that theologians talk about. and then to feel and to receive from him the lavishing of his grace and his love in material ways, even in the new earth, in the experience of what all of that is going to be like, and to realize that all of it is according to his mercy, that none of it we deserve, maybe with a vision of hell, and to realize that's what I deserve right there. And I'm getting this, how and why it is the mercy of God and his love for us. This is the inheritance, and Peter says it never goes away. It never diminishes. It never somehow dies. It remains secure in the character and the promises of God, and it's going to be great. And you, my friend, if you are a Christian, you are an heir, an heir to the most wonderful fortune, the fortune of God, the spiritual blessing of being a child of God forever. The verse goes on, kept in heaven for you who by God's power are being guarded through faith. This inheritance that we have is located in heaven. Jesus describes it as a place where moth and rust do not decay and thieves don't break in and steal. That's a pretty good bank vault, isn't it? Anybody's bank here make that kind of guarantee? Probably not. Now notice there's a little shift here in the text because he's describing our inheritance. That is kept in heaven. That's our inheritance. The next word, though, is who. See that? Who. So he moves from our inheritance to us. He moves from keeping our inheritance to God keeping us. So the inheritance is kept in heaven, but we are kept in earth. We are kept in faith on our time on earth. By God's power, our being guarded through faith. And the word there, the Greek word for the word guarded there, it's the word garrisoned, okay? So military people, this is like a word for you. This is the protection. This is the, in the ancient days, they would protect the city gates, the armament of the city gates. We are guarding the city walls, the walls of our faith. It also can refer to keeping us from escaping, okay? So it's both. It is both the attacks from without, and it is me fleeing from within. God is working in our faith, keeping us from both of those dangers. And here we have, and we can do a whole message on this, the doctrine of preservation. The doctrine of preservation, which says that God is the one who keeps us saved. We are preserved in our faith by the power of God. So notice the flow in the text. We are exiles by the choice of God. We are born again by the mercy of God. We are kept in our salvation by the power of God. Our faith is being guarded. And the tense of the verb there is ongoingly, continuously being guarded. It's as if each one of us has a 24-hour, seven days a week security detail. Now, the closest thing that I can think of to illustrate this would be What the President of the United States has, of course, which is the famous Secret Service. And all of us probably are familiar with the Secret Service and what they do 24 hours a day, seven days a week to keep the President alive, to protect him. That is their job. And so for whatever reason, they've decided wearing dark suits and sunglasses helps with that. And so wherever the president is, there's these guys walking around near him and they've got dark suits on and they've got sunglasses. All of them look like they've lifted weights their entire life. You know, they're big, they're bad, they're tough. There's little bulges around in their suit. You know what's in there, right? They can call upon what they need in a moment's notice to take care of business. And so they're there and they're talking into their hands and they got the little wires out of their ears. And you know that there's satellites and there's, you know, who knows all the things that they've got going on wherever the president goes. 24 hours a day, seven days a week, always keeping him safe. But as history shows, they can't even guarantee that, can they? Even the best of the best in the world today can't perfectly protect the life of the president. Notice what Peter says here about us, okay? Kept by the infinite power of God. It's almost like By the power of God, we each have our own spiritual secret service detachment. Everywhere we go, all the time, we are protected spiritually by the power of God. I got thinking about what this might be like. She's about to speak to Miss Gossip. Move in right now. He's leaving on a business trip with Mr. Skeptic and Mrs. Temptation, all units code red. He's in church right now. He's not listening. Taze him. Did anybody just feel something, by the way? No? God's power is always at work protecting our faith, keeping us from running away from our commitment to Christ, keeping us from the wolves, keeping us from doctrine and beliefs and temptations that would ultimately undermine our faith commitment to Christ. And that doesn't mean that we don't sin. It doesn't mean that we don't have seasons and all of that. But it does mean that even through those dark times, God is by his power protecting a faith that he has promised that he will carry on to completion, Philippians 1. And my dear Christian, that is true for you. Think of it just for a moment. Think of it. Right now, God's power is focused upon you and your faith and is ensuring that you are going to make it. That faith will not die. It's the power of God. It's like being born, right? We don't take credit for that. And I don't take credit for my faith continually because naturally I am a sinner and I am human and I am wishy -washy. None of us would make it through this week left to ourselves. But we are not left to ourselves, not by God who loves us. We are kept in this faith. Past, we were born again in the present. We're being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. And the future aspect of this is when our inheritance changes into a possession, okay? An heir is no longer an heir when the inheritance now is something that they own. Think of Prince Charles, like all these years waiting to become king. He's heir to the throne. There's probably a day coming when he will no longer be an heir. When? When he's actually king. And Buckingham Palace and the crown jewels and all the things, all of it is his then. No longer an heir, but a possessor. And our salvation is like that. We are already saved. We are already children of God. But the full experience of our salvation is yet to come. Someday, and the text here says, in the last time, referring to that future consummation of history. Someday, when Jesus returns and final judgment takes place, our ultimate inheritance will be ours. And our ultimate inheritance is Christ himself. And from that point on, we will see and know and worship him. From that point on, we will serve him. fully and faithfully. From that point on, we will be in awe that the Holy Son of God that we see with our own eyes died for us, gave his life for us, and now showers his love upon us for all of eternity. And we will never get over that he did that. We will never get over the mercy of God to us. So that we can say that the Vanderbilts had their fortune by family right, and Prince Charles has his inheritance by birthright. We will have our inheritance forever by new birth and the mercy and the power of God. And so we get to that truth, and what can we say? How about we say what he says in verse 3? “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Amen. Would you pray with me, please? Heavenly Father God, we thank you. This transcript was generated using AI transcription technology and reviewed for accuracy but may contain errors. Please refer to the original audio for precise wording.

Steve DeWitt Indestructibly Saved - Part A Study Guide for Spiritual Exiles, 1 Peter 1:3-5 Scripture Reference: 1 Peter 1:3-5 Visit the series page: Exiles: A study in 1 Peter Donate to Support The Journey Sermon Transcript for Spiritual Exiles, 1 Peter 1:3-5 Sermon Series: Spiritual Exiles Message: Indestructibly Saved Airdate: 9/8 & 9/9/26 Programs 2352 & 2353 Good morning, Crown Point Campus. And let's go to the Lord in prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the opportunity to be here today. And we pray simply this, that your spirit would come, that he would minister to your people by your word for your glory and for our good. God, we pray that this would be a day truly where your name would be lifted higher. And we want to be a part of that. So we thank you. We pray it in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, last week we began our new series in 1 Peter entitled Exiles. And the title was taken from the first verse of the book, which says this, “Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who are elect exiles of the dispersion.” And we saw that Peter was writing to Christians who had been part of this colonization, this dispersion, Christians living in Rome or that region sent now to Asia Minor, and they are there living as foreigners, essentially living as exiles, geopolitical exiles. And what Peter does is he draws from their geopolitical situation spiritual truth and application as they dealt with the feelings of alienation. and ostracization from people that saw them as part of the conquering army, people that weren't from there. And so much that we're going to see in this letter. Last week was our introduction, and we saw that... exiles want more than anything is they want a change of location. They think to themselves, what really needs to happen is I need to be somewhere else. And if I was somewhere else, then I would be happy. Then I would feel like I belong. And we see that what Peter is wanting them to realize is that we want to change our location. God wants to change who we are. And that is inward. And that's the work of the spirit. That's the work of the gospel. That's a part of changing us. Now, what might exiles need to know? Think about this with me for a moment. What do they need to know? There they are living in a land of uncertainty, living in a place where they don't, you know, you think of what people experience when they move into a new area. They need a new doctor. They need a new, where do I get my groceries? How do I find my way around? All the things that are sort of new and different and uncertain. That is compounded in the experience of moving in the first century to a whole new region. And there they are, and everything is uncertain. Nothing feels normal. Everything's sort of weird. What do they need to know spiritually? Well, they need to know that there is a day coming when they will not be exiles anymore and where they will feel welcomed and they will feel like they belong. And that's what Peter now moves to in pastoring this group of people. He wants them to realize that they will not always be exiles. It will not always be like it is. There's coming a day when it will be very much different. And our text in our sermon today is 1 Peter 1, verses 3 through 5. And today is a day where I get to preach at Crown Point and at Cedar Lake. And we do this with the use of technology. And hopefully a fast commute. That's where we're going today. That's where I'm going today. But our text today is verses 3 through 5. So please listen as I read from God's word. “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.” 1 Peter, if you ask most people what 1 Peter is about, it's about remaining faithful in suffering and in persecution. And I just want to note to you that a letter that begins, a letter that is about suffering, begins with, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now that seems out of place, except for when you view your suffering from a Christian perspective. It sounds to me like Job, the famous book on suffering. Job, who endured all of these things in chapter 1. He loses everything, and what is his response to that? The Lord gives, the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name. There is within Christianity a kind of faith and a kind of confidence in the goodness of God that allows Christians to suffer loss and to remain doxological, to remain praising, to remain giving thanks to God. And we see that modeled here with Peter. He begins with praise and thanksgiving to the Lord. These verses, verses 3 through 5, they are, it's, This is a jewel, okay? This is a jewel passage in all of the Bible, and there are lots of jewel passages, but this is certainly one of them, because what Peter does here is he lays out the gospel. He goes from praising God, and he says, now, why? Why do we praise the Lord? What is there about what God has done for us that allows us to give praise to God even in the midst of persecution and suffering? And we see him now talking about salvation in this passage from the perspective of the past, what God has done, the present, what God is doing, and the future, what God is yet to do. And I want to hasten to say this. These truths that I'm talking about here, that Peter talks about, only apply to genuine Christians. This is not just a general truth for all of humanity. Let's all feel good about it. This is a truth that applies to people who have genuinely trusted in the Lord Jesus. And the promises that God has made to those that are his children apply then to us and are enumerated here. by Peter. So if you're here and you have not trusted in Jesus as your Savior, what I hope happens today as we talk about the blessings that come to those that are under the grace of God, that it might woo you, that it might draw you to put your hope and your faith in the Lord Jesus and for these promises then to become real and true for you. And that can happen in this service here today. Now, if you're an exile far from home, You are having to accept certain realities about life now. It's almost like a college student who goes away from home for the first time. And suddenly, the reality of being responsible for yourself, doing your own laundry, and managing your own money, and all of the rest comes crashing down on the freshmen. And some of them flunk out as a result of that, right? They're in a faraway land. Everything's sort of strange. And indeed, to be one of these people that he's writing to, in a faraway land where everything feels creepy and people look at you as creepy because you're different created a whole set of problems and difficulties your homeland that where you used to be it felt safe it felt normal it felt secure you had friends that made you feel like you were cared for you had possessions that you had had for a long time They felt normal to you. You had maybe a home. You had a network. You had all of these things that felt cozy and made you feel cared for. To be a person in exile is to live without these things, to live away from all of those identities and all of those securities. In fact, I don't know if you've noticed our series graphic, but just to put that up if we have it a second. I really like this because what is it? It's a guy sitting on a pile of rubble and he's looking to a faraway place, right? And there's sort of this sense of, I wish I was there instead of where I am here. This feels like rubble where I'm at. I wish I was back where I came from. And that is a picture, not a bad one, of what it's like to be in exile. And what Peter wants them, and through this letter and through the Holy Spirit, wants us to realize here today is that what we have in Christ, even as an exile, is far greater and far better than anything we had prior to coming to faith in Christ. I said that very clumsily. And clumsily is a clumsy word itself. Let me try that again. What Peter is wanting to say is that what we have presently as Christians, even as exiles, even on the pile of rubble, is far greater and far better than anything we had back when everything felt cozy, back prior to our faith in Christ. And he lays that out again in terms of past, present, future. So let's begin by looking at the past. And notice what he says here. Wonderful verse. about being born again to a living hope. According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Now we saw in verse 1 that their exile was by God's choice. We see here in verse 3 that their new birth is by the mercy of God. Born again. Born of what? What are you talking about? That sounds crazy. And that is exactly what Nicodemus said to Jesus when Jesus brought this up to him as well. In John chapter 3, you may know the story. Nicodemus, he's sort of a bigwig spiritual leader in Israel. He comes to Jesus in the night, and he asks him about spiritual, he has spiritual questions for him. And he says, no one except they're born from God could do what you do. And Jesus says to him, you must be born again. You have to be born again. Nicodemus says, what? How can I be born again? I was born of my mother once, I gotta be born of her twice? What are you talking about? And you see that Nicodemus is only looking at things materially. He is not seeing things spiritually, which is what Jesus wants him to see, is there's a whole thing going on here spiritually. You have to be born again. What was Jesus talking about? The New Testament calls it new birth, calls it regeneration. All of these are biblical descriptions of what God does in the heart of the sinner who turns in faith and believes in Jesus as their Lord and Savior. There is a miracle, a powerful supernatural work that God does inwardly in the life of the sinner where like being born again, he makes the sinner alive spiritually. Regeneration is also the word there. The Bible says that we are dead in our sins, that spiritually we are corpses. What has to happen for a corpse to live again? It has to be regenerated. In a sense, it has to be resurrected. And what God does inwardly in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, when we believe, is he births life in us again. Almost like Jesus saying to Lazarus, come forth. There is a summoning and a giving of life that God does within us where all of a sudden now our eyes are opened, our ears are opened, and we become attuned to spiritual realities and spiritual things. And notice that it's God that does this. He has caused us to be born again. Regeneration is something that God does. We can't manufacture it. We can't create it. We can't do enough things to make us think that now spiritually I'm alive. We are dead. Burns Funeral Homes across the street, you can go to every corpse there and try to manufacture life. It's not going to happen. Only God can manufacture life. And God does that within us. We are born again. We are passive in this. You ever hear a baby come out being born and go, wow, look what I did. I'm amazing. No, that mother birthed that child. Amen, mothers? You ain't going to ever forget that, are you? Babies don't take credit for being born, and Christians don't take credit for being born again. This is something God does. We are made spiritually alive, but the change affects our entire being. 2 Corinthians says it this way. If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old is gone, the new has come. It is a miracle of life that permeates our entire being. Suddenly, it's like the switch is turned on. We become aware of spiritual truth. What? I never realized that before. We become aware of the presence of God. We become aware of the presence of sin in our life. All of a sudden we realize, that we indeed are sinners. We become aware of forgiveness. We all of a sudden have an interest in Scripture, which prior to this we would have thought is silly. No, what does it say, actually? I'm kind of interested in that. We become interested in prayer and a host of other things. All of them kind of just, it's like springtime. Here come the leaves, here come the flowers. All of a sudden there is life. God does that. God does that. A few examples of how this is God's work and the change that it brings. I recently heard the story of Rosaria Butterfield, and maybe you've seen this online possibly, but she was a professor. She's very upfront about her sexuality. She was a lesbian. She was a professor at Syracuse University. She was just totally into kind of that whole worldview. And it's a great story because there was just a normal local church that began to kind of care for her and love her. And she, in her own words, writes this about her conversion. “The church had been praying for me for years was there. The church that had been praying for me for years was there. Jesus triumphed, and I was a broken mess. Conversion was a train wreck. I did not want to lose everything that I loved, but the voice of God sang a sanguine love song in the rubble of my world. I weakly believed that if Jesus could conquer death, he could make right my world. I drank tentatively at first, then passionately of the solace of the Holy Spirit.” And now she's married to a Presbyterian minister. So come to Jesus and you get to marry a Presbyterian minister. I would keep most people away. Listen to the words of C.S. Lewis. We've talked at length about him and how God drew him to faith. He writes this about his conversion. “You must picture me alone in that room at Magdalen College. Night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet.” Who's causing this regeneration? Hear it in these words. “That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me in the Trinity term of 1929. I gave in and admitted that God was God and knelt and prayed, perhaps that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.” Christian, think about your own life story. Think about the change that has taken place in your life. Is there a natural explanation? for the interest that you have in spiritual things and the course and trajectory of your life. The fact that you're sitting here right now listening to some guy talk about what the Bible has to say. All of these things are things if we knew our natural selves, we would say, I would never do that. And that sounds crazy and that sounds stupid. Just like the people in Asia Minor looked at these Christians and said, what planet are you from? Why are you interested in that stuff? And maybe you have people in your family and friends that similarly look at you and go, you're living your life according to what? What planet are you from? We share the same mother, but you're an alien. I don't know you. How have you come to care about the things that you care about and to love God in the way that you love him and to desire to obey and please and live to his glory in the way that you do? Where did all of that come from? It didn't come from you. That can only come from God. He has birthed life in us, and we are changed. Born again to a living hope, the text says, through the resurrection from the dead. Now, why do you suppose he calls it a living hope? It is because our hope is in a living Savior. Do you see the parallel there? One writer says it this way, Christian hope is ever living because Christ, the ground of that hope, is ever living. So Peter looks back. He says, exiles, look back in your story and realize that this change has not come from you. God has given you life, and he has given you hope. And that hope is a living hope because your Savior is a living Savior. And there we are looking at the passage. Well, that's pretty fantastic, isn't it? Don't you think exiles might be a little encouraged by that? And maybe even Christians living here today might be a little bit encouraged to look back and to see the grace of God in our life. As the hymn writer wrote, “oh God, our help in ages past, our hope for years to come.” We look to the past and we see God's grace to us. And it gives us, man, God is for me. God is with me. He has done this change in my life. The past, a living hope, a new birth. It is not simply a past, it is a present. And even right there is an interesting thought, which I don't have time to explore right now, but how important it is for us to realize that what God is doing is not just stuff in the past. You ever talk to people like that? Tell me about your spiritual life. Well, back in the past, and all they've got is like old stuff. And to realize that our faith, this thing that we're living, this Christian life, is a today thing. There is something that God is doing today. It doesn't matter how long you've been a Christian. There is a work that God is doing right now for you in your life. And Peter highlights it here. What are we saved to? “An inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who, by God's power, are being guarded through faith.” Now, there's a lot there, okay? There's a lot there, but let's just walk through it. You're going to get this, and you're going to love it. We've been born again to an inheritance, okay? So most of us are probably familiar with the concept of an inheritance. What is an inheritance? An inheritance is something that you receive normally based on a relationship, typically a family relationship, right? So when a person dies, there is a reading of the will. And if your name is in the will, it means that whether you knew it or not, you were an heir to the inheritance. So if you're in the will, you have an inheritance. Most people view that as good news, right? Okay. Now what is true about an inheritance? Inheritances are very, very slippery. Very slippery. Your name can be on the will, but guess what? It can be removed from the will. You were an heir, but now you're not anymore. So you better be careful what you say at the family gathering about grandma. And inheritance can shrink in value. Did you know that? You could be an heir to something that is incredibly valuable, but by the time you get it, it's not so valuable. So that your name is in the will, and they read the will, and your sister gets grandma's diamonds, and you get the cabbage patch collection. And you're like, my sister gets... and I get dolls and you know grandma puts in the notes when I bought these they were really valuable. You're like these aren't worth anything. This is like soft firewood. They can diminish in value. People can steal inheritances. There's a story or two in my own family tree of stolen inheritance and maybe you got a few of those in your family tree. It's amazing what family gets like when money is on the table. Inheritance can be stolen did you know that there are unscrupulous lawyers out there who now there's really godly and fair-minded ones as well but there are unscrupulous lawyers out there who can sometimes get their fingers in the pot and diminish an inheritance. Did you know that there are thieves — there are thieves — and that has no connection whatsoever with Steve. There are thieves who can steal inheritances. They can steal grandma's jewelry instead of the dolls. Did you know that massive inheritances can be squandered? Some time ago, I got watching on the History Channel, had this series called The Men Who Build America. Maybe some of you saw it, but we got into it for whatever reason. Tell the story of these icons of industry in the past. I got a little interested in the Vanderbilt family some years ago. I got a tour of the Biltmore, which is one of the descendants of, he built that with just an inheritance that he got. If you've ever seen that place, it's incredible. But I got interested in the Vanderbilt family. And just to give you an idea very quickly about the Vanderbilt fortune, they at one time, at the height of their power and value, they were worth over $300 billion in today's money. Now, $300 billion, to give you an idea, Bill Gates, who's currently the richest man in the world, is somewhere around $70 billion. They had $300 billion. The world has hardly ever, if ever, seen, other than Rockefeller, a fortune like the Vanderbilt family fortune. In 1973, this is just 75 years from the height of their power and wealth, There was a gathering of 120 direct descendants of Cornelius Vanderbilt, and there wasn't one millionaire amongst them. 75 years, 300 billion to, you know, not so wealthy. How does that happen? Inheritances can be squandered. They can just simply disappear. And I say all of that because that connects with the world that we're in, right? Everything is kind of diminishing. Everything that once was cool is kind of getting old now. And that's the world that we live in, right? Our money isn't worth today what it was worth yesterday. There's inflation. There's the stock market. Everything's up and down and all around. But what about spiritually? The inheritance, the Bible describes the inheritance that we have. We are heirs. What is our inheritance like? And he uses some very powerful words to emphasize that our inheritance is not subject to all of the insecurities that everything in this world has. And he uses these words, notice them, imperishable. Okay? To perish is to die. Everything in this world... dies right it's alive it dies the the flowers of the field the grass in the in the in the in the field all of it there and it dies and it withers and we're all withering right look around there's withering people all around you but this is an imperishable inheritance that he wants us to realize that we have undefiled and this speaks to the moral quality of our inheritance It is pure. It is good. Our inheritance doesn't come from unseemly business practices. There's nothing about it to make us feel sort of dirty in taking it or that there's something evil about it. It is holy. It is good. It is beautiful. It is pure, and it will be eternally beautiful and pure. Unfading. This is very similar to the perishing and the withering. It's, again, the human beauty and fame and everything that seems to be cool now. It's all going downhill. And young people don't realize that, but it is, right? It's all going down. Everything fades. And each one of these words is, it's perishable, defiled, and fading, only it has the negating ah in front of each one of those. It is not imperishable. I'm sorry, it's not perishable. It's not defiling. It is not fading. Our inheritance, you say, well, what is it then exactly? Number one, our inheritance is God himself. The number one thing that we look forward to in going to heaven is not seeing grandma, not seeing, you know, whoever. Number one is God. We go to heaven and we get God and we see God and we have him forever. We are his children. He lavishes blessings on us for all of eternity, eternal life, heaven, new earth, rewards that Jesus will give to us for the quality of our service while here on earth, bliss, beauty, and most importantly, and I include this in the God category, is the seeing and the savoring of Jesus himself, our blessed Lord and Savior, who is our inheritance. Christians talk about, oh, my mansion in heaven and all of that. Forget the mansion. Our mansion truly is Christ. And one day when we see him and we sense from him what eternal, pure, sacrificial, agape love is like, and he looks at us and we feel the love of the divine for us, the thought of a house or something else will just sort of fade away. This will be our greatest moment. It is that beatific vision that theologians talk about. and then to feel and to receive from him the lavishing of his grace and his love in material ways, even in the new earth, in the experience of what all of that is going to be like, and to realize that all of it is according to his mercy, that none of it we deserve, maybe with a vision of hell, and to realize that's what I deserve right there. And I'm getting this, how and why it is the mercy of God and his love for us. This is the inheritance, and Peter says it never goes away. It never diminishes. It never somehow dies. It remains secure in the character and the promises of God, and it's going to be great. And you, my friend, if you are a Christian, you are an heir, an heir to the most wonderful fortune, the fortune of God, the spiritual blessing of being a child of God forever. The verse goes on, kept in heaven for you who by God's power are being guarded through faith. This inheritance that we have is located in heaven. Jesus describes it as a place where moth and rust do not decay and thieves don't break in and steal. That's a pretty good bank vault, isn't it? Anybody's bank here make that kind of guarantee? Probably not. Now notice there's a little shift here in the text because he's describing our inheritance. That is kept in heaven. That's our inheritance. The next word, though, is who. See that? Who. So he moves from our inheritance to us. He moves from keeping our inheritance to God keeping us. So the inheritance is kept in heaven, but we are kept in earth. We are kept in faith on our time on earth. By God's power, our being guarded through faith. And the word there, the Greek word for the word guarded there, it's the word garrisoned, okay? So military people, this is like a word for you. This is the protection. This is the, in the ancient days, they would protect the city gates, the armament of the city gates. We are guarding the city walls, the walls of our faith. It also can refer to keeping us from escaping, okay? So it's both. It is both the attacks from without, and it is me fleeing from within. God is working in our faith, keeping us from both of those dangers. And here we have, and we can do a whole message on this, the doctrine of preservation. The doctrine of preservation, which says that God is the one who keeps us saved. We are preserved in our faith by the power of God. So notice the flow in the text. We are exiles by the choice of God. We are born again by the mercy of God. We are kept in our salvation by the power of God. Our faith is being guarded. And the tense of the verb there is ongoingly, continuously being guarded. It's as if each one of us has a 24-hour, seven days a week security detail. Now, the closest thing that I can think of to illustrate this would be What the President of the United States has, of course, which is the famous Secret Service. And all of us probably are familiar with the Secret Service and what they do 24 hours a day, seven days a week to keep the President alive, to protect him. That is their job. And so for whatever reason, they've decided wearing dark suits and sunglasses helps with that. And so wherever the president is, there's these guys walking around near him and they've got dark suits on and they've got sunglasses. All of them look like they've lifted weights their entire life. You know, they're big, they're bad, they're tough. There's little bulges around in their suit. You know what's in there, right? They can call upon what they need in a moment's notice to take care of business. And so they're there and they're talking into their hands and they got the little wires out of their ears. And you know that there's satellites and there's, you know, who knows all the things that they've got going on wherever the president goes. 24 hours a day, seven days a week, always keeping him safe. But as history shows, they can't even guarantee that, can they? Even the best of the best in the world today can't perfectly protect the life of the president. Notice what Peter says here about us, okay? Kept by the infinite power of God. It's almost like By the power of God, we each have our own spiritual secret service detachment. Everywhere we go, all the time, we are protected spiritually by the power of God. I got thinking about what this might be like. She's about to speak to Miss Gossip. Move in right now. He's leaving on a business trip with Mr. Skeptic and Mrs. Temptation, all units code red. He's in church right now. He's not listening. Taze him. Did anybody just feel something, by the way? No? God's power is always at work protecting our faith, keeping us from running away from our commitment to Christ, keeping us from the wolves, keeping us from doctrine and beliefs and temptations that would ultimately undermine our faith commitment to Christ. And that doesn't mean that we don't sin. It doesn't mean that we don't have seasons and all of that. But it does mean that even through those dark times, God is by his power protecting a faith that he has promised that he will carry on to completion, Philippians 1. And my dear Christian, that is true for you. Think of it just for a moment. Think of it. Right now, God's power is focused upon you and your faith and is ensuring that you are going to make it. That faith will not die. It's the power of God. It's like being born, right? We don't take credit for that. And I don't take credit for my faith continually because naturally I am a sinner and I am human and I am wishy -washy. None of us would make it through this week left to ourselves. But we are not left to ourselves, not by God who loves us. We are kept in this faith. Past, we were born again in the present. We're being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. And the future aspect of this is when our inheritance changes into a possession, okay? An heir is no longer an heir when the inheritance now is something that they own. Think of Prince Charles, like all these years waiting to become king. He's heir to the throne. There's probably a day coming when he will no longer be an heir. When? When he's actually king. And Buckingham Palace and the crown jewels and all the things, all of it is his then. No longer an heir, but a possessor. And our salvation is like that. We are already saved. We are already children of God. But the full experience of our salvation is yet to come. Someday, and the text here says, in the last time, referring to that future consummation of history. Someday, when Jesus returns and final judgment takes place, our ultimate inheritance will be ours. And our ultimate inheritance is Christ himself. And from that point on, we will see and know and worship him. From that point on, we will serve him. fully and faithfully. From that point on, we will be in awe that the Holy Son of God that we see with our own eyes died for us, gave his life for us, and now showers his love upon us for all of eternity. And we will never get over that he did that. We will never get over the mercy of God to us. So that we can say that the Vanderbilts had their fortune by family right, and Prince Charles has his inheritance by birthright. We will have our inheritance forever by new birth and the mercy and the power of God. And so we get to that truth, and what can we say? How about we say what he says in verse 3? “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Amen. Would you pray with me, please? Heavenly Father God, we thank you. This transcript was generated using AI transcription technology and reviewed for accuracy but may contain errors. Please refer to the original audio for precise wording.

Steve DeWitt Spiritual Exiles - Part B Study Guide for Spiritual Exiles, I Peter 1:1-2 Scripture Reference: 1 Peter 1:1-2 Visit the series page: Exiles: A study in 1 Peter Donate to Support The Journey Sermon Transcript for Spiritual Exiles, I Peter 1:1-2 Message: Spiritual Exiles Airdate: 9/4 & 9/7/26, Programs 2350 & 2351 Studying through books of the Bible has been, has really been the bread and butter of our church over the years. And, today, we begin a new series as you've seen on the screen in the, the book or the letter of First Peter. And you might ask, well, why First Peter? I mean, because from one perspective, we really could open the Bible anywhere and have things that would be profitable to us. That's what, Scripture says about itself, that all Scripture is God breathed, that is profitable. So we really could go. We could go to Leviticus. We could go to Psalms. We could go to Revelation, and there would be a quality word that God would have for us. But why First Peter? Well, I've chosen First Peter because it is so wonderfully relevant to, life as we are living it increasingly here in our culture and our society where we find ourselves as Christians and particularly as evangelical Christians increasingly on the margins of society. More and more it seems that to actually believe in Jesus is a, you know, small s scandalous sort of thing. And by that, I mean, not nominal Christianity. Nominal Christianity will fit in anywhere. Nominal Christians are accepted. But if you actually believe it, like you're one of those crazy people that actually believe the gospel, and you really believe in, the resurrection, and you really believe in that the world was created and things like that, more and more, people are looking down their nose at that and pushing us to the fringe of the culture. And First Peter is written for the church in exile. First Peter is written for a church on the margins. It is written for the persecuted church. It's written, for the ostracized church. It is written for the hated church. I read somebody that basically said, the more irrelevant Christianity becomes, the more relevant First Peter becomes because it's written for that church that is in exile in its culture. The title of the series comes from the first words in, Peter's letter where he addresses it and says, to those who are elect exiles. Exiles where and exiles why we're going to, get into. And I dare say that by the time we're done with this series, I'll bet First Peter might be in the running for your favorite book in all the Bible. Luther himself said about First Peter that it is, quote, “one of the noblest books in the New Testament,” and he put it on par with Romans and the Gospel of John, which is saying something, isn't it? So, it's a wonderful letter, and I think it's gonna be a real blessing to all of us. We're going to work through it in a style of teaching, known as expository preaching. And what that means is that week in and week out, we're going to look at the text as Peter, inspired by the Holy Spirit, wrote it. We're gonna ask the question, what did Peter and the Holy Spirit mean when they wrote that particular text? And then we are going to draw out of that meaning as it was originally intended and apply it to our lives today. What does that mean for us today? I wanna encourage you to come each week, every week with expository preaching is a fresh text, which means that it is a fresh word from God for us. And I think that it will be, it will be a blessing. So with that, let me just pray and ask God's blessing on this entire teaching series. Father, we ask that you would please, as you have done down through the centuries, that you would take your holy word, that you would enlighten it to our understanding, and that you would powerfully apply it to our lives and to our church and through us to the culture around us. We pray that this series would be just uniquely blessed by you, and all the good that can be done from it has little to do with, me or any of our teachers and pastors, but it depends on your Holy Spirit's blessing, and we seek that and we ask for it. Bless even now in in in in this day as we begin in in our study. We pray that this would be a great launch, and we pray it in Jesus' name. Amen. Now as we always do when we begin a a book study, we spend time talking about the background to the letter. Now you might say, well, why is that so important? Can't we just get going in this? Here's why it's important. It's important for the same reason that if you were walking along the street and the wind blew a letter into your to your path and you picked it up and you read it, on one level, you could understand the letter, couldn't you? Because you can read English, you can read the words, etcetera. But to know who wrote it, who they wrote it to, and why they wrote it would fill in all of those things that you can read with all kinds of meaning, wouldn't it? And so that's why we spend time figuring out who wrote this thing and why he wrote it and who he was writing it to. So let's begin by asking that question. Who wrote this letter? And you might say, well, that's simple. The top of my page, it says it says Peter wrote this letter. Right? And indeed, the first verse says, “Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ.” So you could say, well, it must be it must be Peter. But realize that just because it says that Peter wrote it is not undeniable proof that Peter wrote it. This could have been written by somebody else who claimed to have been Peter. And, there are always scholars that wanna argue against these people actually being the authors of these letters, whether that be Paul or John or or here Peter. And so there are some scholars that try to stir up controversy, but to me, it's really, difficult seeing it not be Peter because later in the letter, he's going to say that he was an eyewitness to the sufferings of Christ. Well, how many Peters are there that were eyewitnesses to the sufferings of Christ? And the early church fathers, and by that, I mean, the leaders of the church in the post apostolic age. So after John and Peter and others had died, you have certain church leaders, and they all attribute this letter to being written by the Peter of the gospels, the disciple, the apostle Peter. So I think that there is little reason to doubt that Peter actually wrote this letter. And this Peter is the Peter of the gospels. This is the Peter who had a brother named Andrew who brought him to Jesus, and Jesus met him and changed his name. Do you remember? His name had been Simon. And he said, from this point on, your name is Peter or which is the Greek word, by the way, for rock, which is like a cruel joke, I think, on Peter if you read the story because perhaps he should have been named Feather because he sees the blows in the wind. But what happens in the story of Peter is that he becomes the rock at the end of the story as he assumes leadership of the disciples after Jesus' resurrection as he is a leader in the early church, and history tells us that he was crucified upside down in Rome and and refused to be crucified upright like his savior Jesus. He didn't feel he was worthy to die the same way that Jesus died. Part of the importance of First Peter and Second Peter is that given the prominence of Peter in the church, we have very little that he wrote, actually, as compared to, like, Luke, John, or Paul. Luke wrote Luke and Acts. John wrote the Gospel of John, First, Second, Third John, and Revelation. And Paul obviously wrote a bunch of letters in the New Testament. So we got lots from those guys. But Peter, in his stature, we have very little. We have First Peter and Second Peter. And so it's like the smallness of what we have actually makes it more valuable as we can see the the teaching and the emphases of this key leader in the early church. Now to who did Paul Peter write this and why did he write? And just look at verse one with me a moment. It says, “Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who are elect exiles of the dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia.” Now I'll bet that in your private devotional reading, you get to a verse like that and you sort of skip ahead, don't you? You're like, there's gotta be some more applicable thing here than ancient geography. Right? I didn't get up this morning to read my Bible, to read ancient geography. Isn't there something a little bit more helpful to me than that? And so we easily skip over those things and uniquely, I think in First Peter, probably true of all of them, but this is actually one of the keys to understanding the entire letter. Is that verse right there? Who are these people? What is it talking about? Again, those who are elect exiles of the dispersion. Now what is that all about? Alright. Quick history lesson. Hang with me. Some of you hated it your sophomore year. This will be short. Okay? But a very quick history lesson. We go back to the Roman Empire, and most of us probably heard of the Roman Empire, one of the great human empires in in history, ruled the known world for, like, five hundred years. And they were able to pull that off because they were really smart. They had policies and things that they did that allowed them to remain in power for, like, five centuries. And one of the things that they did is actually what Peter is referring to here, and and that is what is called colonization. K? Colonization. Here's the way that it worked. The Romans had the great armies. Maybe you've seen movies that portray the Roman armies and the eagle and all of that. They would go into an area that they wanted to conquer. And largely, they would conquer. They were really good at warfare. And after they had conquered this region, they would move on to go, you know, do battle in other places. But they needed to maintain power in that region that their army had already conquered. So the strategy for them was that they would colonize that area by sending, people from Rome or who at least were Roman into that community where they would establish their lives. They would establish business. They would establish some of the things that Roman culture was known for, like the theater or the auditorium or whatever. And by doing that, essentially, they would integrate into the cult actually, the culture, the indigenous culture, would integrate into the Roman culture. And by doing that, they were able to exert Roman influence and thought and power into those, particular areas. K? So these were known as dispersions. K? Sometimes these were, political friends who wanted if it was a nice area, like if suddenly we conquered Hawaii and said, wants to go live? Well, I think I'd like to so all the friends, you know, the friends of the people in charge, they would go and they would colonize Hawaii. Sometimes these were political enemies that they wanted out of Rome. Alright. Take that family and those people and get them over in Galatia. We don't wanna see them ever again. And so off they would go. And and sometimes it was just people that were like, you know what? We think we can have a better life there. Like, you can think about even the story of The United States and the colonies on the East Coast and how people came across on the boats because they wanted a better life in the new the new world. So Rome would do that. And by doing that, they essentially would, retain a kind of control over that area by repopulating and integrating. It was essentially colonization by deportation for the purpose of domination. And that's how you retain control for five hundred years. So these people that would leave Rome or a Roman, community to go into some of these new areas, they essentially lived as exiles there. They were foreigners there. They were Romans there. And, the people that were from there knew that they were these people that had come. And this was not always a comfortable thing. Realize the Roman armies would come and conquer. They would wipe out, you know, how how many people's husbands and fathers in in, in winning the war. And now you've got representatives from there coming and living amongst us. The people from that land did not look favorably necessarily on them, especially initially. They were always from somewhere else. Right? It's kind of like living up here in the North when we hear somebody with a thick southern accent. What do you do? You look at them and you think to yourself or maybe you even say it, you're not from here are you? Right? And they're like, no I'm not. I'm from Georgia or Mississippi. Right? And you're like, what are you doing up here? Why don't you go home where you belong? Explain some people we have on staff even. But as awkward as that might be for Southerners to live up here amongst the Yankees, It was much more uncomfortable back in this day. And so they lived in a kind of ostracized way, and there was social awkwardness representing the ideology of the conquering army. So Peter here is writing then to colonists who were also Christians, who for political, social, who knows what reason had gone into Asia Minor and are now living there as representatives of the Roman Empire. Now to give you an idea of where we're talking, here's a map. And it's essentially modern day Turkey. And some of you maybe are not up on your you know, Turkey to you is a, November celebration. But it's actually a country as well. And so you see some of you see the Black Sea, and you see these communities that are being referred to, Bithynia, Galatia, Cappadocia, these would have been well known in that time and would have been places of influence, cultural influence. Essentially, what Peter does in the letter is he takes these Christians' social political situation and he draws spiritual meaning from it. He says, yes, you're exiles politically and geographically, but I wanna talk to you about what it means to be a spiritual exile. What does it mean to live in an area where you it's not your homeland. What does it mean to live in an area where people look at you a little cross eyed and they say to themselves, that person isn't they're not really of us. Their values are not our values. Their priorities are not our part. They're like those Christian people. They're those marginalized people. What is it like, and how do we live when we are the ones that are in exile, when we are the weird ones? So Peter writes to these political exiles, but he wants them to see that they are really spiritual exiles and to learn what it means to live amongst people that are very, very different. K? Very different. And so what he's gonna say in this letter is he's gonna encourage them to stand strong, to remain faithful, to live obedient to Jesus in spite of the immoral culture around them, to remain faithful even though people look at them like we look at Amish people. Kinda like, man, what's your problem? What's get with the program here. Right? Why aren't you kind of along with what we're doing? That's how they felt. And here's where I think First Peter is so helpful to us is is and I don't know if you feel this or not. I certainly do. If you talk to some of the old timers around here who remember what it was like to be a Christian, like in the nineteen forties or the nineteen fifties and maybe the early nineteen sixties, it's a much different feel back then to be a Christian in America than it is in 2015. Right? Where even to pronounce Christian faith in public media in some way is to be scorned or to have the plug pulled. Right? Get him off of there immediately. We don't want any of that kind of stuff going across the airwaves. What do we do? How do we live? What are we supposed to be like? And again, I'm talking about real Christians, nominal Christians, fit in just fine. K? I'm talking about the people that actually believe this stuff and try to live it out. How do we do it? These are the exiles that Peter is writing to. Now let's ask why are we exiles, and what is the purpose for all of this? So let's get into the text now and and begin to kind of do our little exposition here. I begin again in verse one. “To those who are elect exiles of the dispersion in Pontius, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bethenia Church.” Do you kinda get what that means now? K. “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. Now a quick read here, and again, that morning devotional, moment where I'm trying to find something for my day, we could easily miss how important what Peter is saying here is. Because essentially what Peter is doing here is he's tipping his hand to the entire letter. It's kind of like in a symphony or something where in the prelude, you hear a little piece of the of the melody, and you're like, you pick up on it. Or that little Star Wars theme, if you're watching a Star Wars movie, you sort of hear that, it's either Vader or it's Skywalker. You know? And you're like you pick you pick up on it. Even in the in the in the opening scene of the movie, you kinda get a sense of what's coming. That's what this is. He's he's basically it's it's First Peter in microcosm. Peter, what are you gonna say? What is your big point to these people that are living in spiritual exile? And he begins in verse two with a series of purpose statements. The why question. Now my wife Jennifer and I, we have a 19 year old daughter. And what's wonderful at this point is that she has not discovered the word why. It's just not there yet. Did I say something wrong? Did I say year old? Peter's got something to say about that too. 19 month old daughter. Yes. So and see, we're getting that kind of Gary feel going on here. Like that. Keep it up. Keep it up. 19 month old daughter. So she's learning words at an amazing clip right now. We're thankful she's not yet learned the word why. She is unaware at this point that in life, there is all of this sort of philosophical stuff that underlies why we do what we do. So at this point, we just say, don't throw your food. She's never said, well, why is that not allowed? Right? She's unaware of purpose behind things. Peter wants to make sure that we understand that there is purpose behind things, even exile. Even the experience of spiritual exile, there's a purpose behind it. There is a why behind it, and we see that from the get go. Notice what kind of exiles are they? And can I say the question, what kind of exiles are we? What is the descriptive word for exiles? It is what? You have Bibles. Look. What is the word before exiles? We are what exiles? We're elect exiles. Elect exiles. What? I am experiencing what I'm experiencing because there's somebody that chose to put me here, chose to give me this experience? Because that's what the word elect means. It just it means chose, chosen. We are chosen exiles. You know, most exiles don't think that they are chosen exiles. You can think about the Jews in World War two, for example, in in Poland and the ghetto there, if you've seen that or studied that, they were victims of circumstance. They were victims of sociopolitical things that were beyond their control, and they suffered greatly in, in that experience. Or the Syrian refugees in our contemporary world, who there's all these, you know, there's big sort of, sociopolitical things that are at play that are creating the circumstances that they find themselves in. You could go to a Syrian refugee and say, you know, how did this happen? And he would say, well, my the president of this company country and this is going on and all of that. They would never have the thought in their mind that they were chosen to be Syrian refugees. Why? Because it's circumstantial. But here, Peter doesn't say, I'm so sorry that you are having this experience living as Christians in that land. He says, you are having that experience by divine choice. There is a God behind all of this. You are not just exiles randomly. You are exiles divinely. You have been chosen for this experience. And what a difference it makes when I realize that there is a purpose behind the pain. There is an answer to the question of why. And behind all of that is a God who is sovereignly working out everything according to the purpose of his will, Ephesians one eleven. Think about the Israelites as another sort of exile example. If you know the story of Israel, descendants of Abraham. Right? They were all time living in tents, never having a land of their own. God takes them down to Egypt. Four hundred years, they live largely under oppression there in Egypt. They're living as exiles. They're not in their the land that they're not in the promised land. They're not in the land where they're supposed to be. But there they are, and they have horrible, terrible experiences. Well, God leads them out into the hand of Moses, and they go through the Red Sea. It's not that far of a walk from Egypt to the promised land. Right? As the crow flies, where does God take them? Forty years wandering around in the wilderness. Are they like, God, is your GPS messed up? Because we could just it's just right there. We just gotta go right there. Why you guys going all over here and wandering around like this? What is the purpose behind our wanderings? What is the purpose behind our exile? Why are we experiencing all of these difficulties living a million people in a desert? Why are you doing this, God? And from the words of Moses himself, God says, “you shall remember the whole way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not. And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” In other words, God was using their physical experience, their geographical experience for spiritual purposes. And all of the difficulties and all of the uncomfortableness and all of the challenges of living in a desert for forty years was not about living in a desert for forty years, but what God wanted that desert to do in them and to teach them. There was a purpose behind it. There was a why behind it. Do you see? So that the sorrows, what Peter is saying here, the sorrows of Christianity on the margins is comforted by the confident knowledge that we have that I am where God wants me to be, and the challenges are from the hand of God as well. I am an elect exile. I am not a political exile. I am I am not a chaotic exile. I am where I am by the sovereign choice of God, which then brings meaning in the midst of the pain and the sorrows and the issues. What do people ask when they're going through a trial? What do we hear even in our church when somebody gets the cancer call? Why? God, why are you doing this? Why am I the one of all the people having to suffer this? And what do you say pastorally to people that hear that kind of news? Wow. That's really chaotic. Maybe there isn't a God. No. We say that there is a God, and that circumstance in your life is not chance. And you can trust him. He is a good God. He loves you. He sent Jesus. Right? And now the Christian begins to derive meaning from even the pain of the exile and to see that God is doing something good in it. Would this not have been wonderfully comforting? I mean, about these Christians. They're living there in Asia Minor. Would this not have been, comforting for a businessman living in Pontus who is suffering financially because he's a Christian? They know he's a Christian. They don't wanna do business with him. He's suffering because of it. Or how about the wife of a pagan husband? You want to talk about personally uncomfortable? How about the wife of a Christian wife of a pagan husband? You want to talk about issues. How about a husband who's living according to the values of the immoral Greco Roman world around him, and yet you're married to him? How do you derive any kind of hope or comfort in the midst of that? You read chapter three, and you see what Peter has to say to wives who are married to pagan husbands. And you see, whatever pick your category. All of them. The Christian sees through the physical, political, social issue a good God who is providentially behind that and is actually using that for some good in our life that maybe we can't see and maybe you can't see right now. I mean, my wife had trouble finding parking today. We have a lot of people sitting right here in front of me. Is it possible maybe one person here is in a time of trouble or has a circumstance they wish was different? What does the word of God have to say to you? You are an elect exile. There is a God who is sovereignly doing the choosing, and it is painful, and it's awkward, and it's difficult, but there is a God behind it. And we believe that by faith. Amen? Amen. Amen. So I'm not in Cappadocia by accident after all. I'm here because God wants me to be in Cappadocia. Nothing is random. Now the second thing that we have here besides being chosen by God to be in this exile is that Peter wants us to he he lifts our eyes to God himself, and he wants us to see what the triune God is doing here. And you see in the text here a very clear Trinitarian statement. “According to the foreknowledge of God the Father in the sanctification of the Spirit for the obedience to Jesus Christ who is the Son.” It's one of the clearest Trinitarian statements in all of Scripture. Father, Son, and Spirit, each of them with a slightly different role in, as being described here. The foreknowledge, first of all, of the Father. Okay? Foreknowledge basically means to to know in advance. Right? To know in advance. Their exile was sovereignly known by God. God was not surprised. What are those Christians doing over there in Bithynia? I had no idea that they were gonna end up in Cappadocia. What are they up to in Galatia? God is never surprised by anything, which is itself a incredible thought, isn't it? If you're God, there are no surprise parties for God. He already knows everything. Right? He has known all of it and purposed it in eternity past, which means that when I find myself in Bithynia, God knew in eternity past that this was part of the plan. In fact, that word there is used in later in the chapter to say that Christ himself was foreknown. In eternity past, the Father knew the Son. In eternity past, the Father knew that you would be living and doing what you're doing here today. All of it, a sovereign God. There is no there are no surprises with God. There is nothing that is random with God. There is nothing that is chaotic with God. He is the sovereign God. No surprises. The sanctifying work of the Spirit. K? Sanctification is this word in the New Testament to talk about the process of God working in our lives to shape and mold us into the likeness of Jesus, the holy Son of God. And so sanctification is this kind of progressive growth and development. When I become a Christian, I to use this text, I I enter into the realm of sanctification. I am now in a process that the Holy Spirit is working in my life. Verse one says that they are in Asia, but verse two says they're actually in sanctification. So they may wanna define themselves geographically. Right? We're for the Bithynia bulldogs. Bulldogs. K. I am who I am. Some of you may be cheering sports teams today somehow related to a geography that used to have a Packer fan or I'm a Cowboys fan or whatever. Like, I'm born in Dallas or something. So you wanna define yourself geographically. When your teams aren't doing well, you don't wanna define yourself geographically. So most of us will be cheering for the Big Ten tomorrow. Sad. But Peter wants them to realize that they're not defined by their locale. They are defined their locale geographically, but by their locale spiritually. You're in the Holy Spirit now. You're in a process. You're in a world, not a pagan land. The life changing work of Jesus in us is the last thing “for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood.” And we see in this that that the electing work of God, the choosing work of God is never without its effect. That not only did God sovereignly choose to put them in Bithynia or Galatia, but he chose through that experience to change them, to transform them for the obedience, a life of obedience to Jesus Christ. That's what God is working in all of us. If you're a Christian here today, what's God doing in my life? Well, he's doing a lot of things. But one of the things he's doing is that he is shaping and molding your heart and value mine as well so that I increasingly want to obey the will of God. I wanna be obedient to my savior Jesus. The obedience to Jesus is part of what we're doing here. And for sprinkling with his blood, and I gotta tell you, I don't know what that means. Just being honest. Commentators are all over the place. I'm not sure what that means. I think it refers somehow to the atoning work of Jesus for us, but I'm not exactly sure. Is that okay to say that? Okay. I don't know. But broadly, what this is saying is this, the Father foreknew us, the Spirit sanctifies us, the Son atoned for us and frees us from a life of sin to now this new life in Christ where I am living to the will of God, and I am pleasing God with my life, and all of it is by God and for God. He foreknew it. He purposed it. He's working in it right now. He is the sovereign hand, the loving hand behind all of it. So that these people might have thought to themselves if they were political exiles, they might have thought to themselves, I am in Galatia by the choice of man. And Peter writes this letter and says, you are in Galatia by the choice of God. He is the one that is behind all that is happening here. Alright. With the time remaining, I have one application point. And this is just the salutation of the letter. Okay? But one application point that I'd like to talk with you about, and it's this. When we are in exile, we wanna change where we are. God wants to change who we are. When we are in exile, God wants or we wanna change where we are. God wants to change who we are. If you talk to an exile and you say, hey. What is the solution to your problem? They are generally going to say, the answer to my problem is to change where I am. Like, I'm not in my homeland. I'm not where I'm supposed to be. And if I was to get where I'm supposed to be, in other words, if I was to change my geography, then everything would be great. Like, take a week like this as an example. This week, I feel like a climate exile. I experienced a week like we've had around here, and I think to myself, I do not live where I'm supposed to live. I am supposed to live in a warmer climate than this. Friday night, Jennifer and I were we spent some time with some friends, and we came back to the church here to pick up my car. I forget how cold it was Friday night, but it was like, you know, zero or minus or something. And we get there, and I get in my car. No. So we spent, I don't know, forty five minutes trying to jump my car off of our van. And it was one of those experiences where there's cold and then there's that cold. Right? I was so cold trying to get that thing started. It took us like forty five minutes, and I was just absolutely frozen. This was a terrible week around here. Right? Horrible week. We're all climate exiles. What do we need? We need to change our geography. We need to live somewhere different. We need a different climate than the one that we've been experiencing. They would have amen in Gary on that. So if you talk to the climate exile, they're going to say, I need a change of geography, right? There's some other place that they would rather be. Do we have any marriage exiles? What's a marriage exile? You've come to the conclusion that the person that you're married to is not the person that you're supposed to be married to, and the solution for you would be to be either not married or married to somebody different. Do we have any vocational exiles here? The solution to happiness in your life would be a different job. You feel like you're being persecuted on the job or you feel like you have an unfair boss, you got some other thing going on. So what's the solution? I need a different job. Do we have any health exiles here? You've got some ailment, you've got some problem, you've got the cancer call in your mind, what's the solution? I need a different body, right? If had a different body, then everything would be fine or pick your category. Generally speaking, our solution to our problems is to change where we are. And then we read this verse here. Elect exiles. Elect exiles. Do you mean that the exile that I am experiencing, that trial that I am going through, that experience that I wish was different and in my mind I can think of three different ways to get out of it? That that is something that God has brought into my life by his sovereign hand and good. Yes. And Peter goes on here to say that good is something not about changing where you are, but changing the person that you are. In other words, my heart, my mind, my my my my spiritual depth and quality, God is in the process of changing that. And you know what? He oftentimes puts us in Cappadocia to do it. We wanna get back to Rome. In fact, what's striking here is he doesn't say to exiles of the dispersion, get out of Bithynia now. Get back to Rome. The streets are clean, and the coffee's good, and the sun is shining. Get out of there. He doesn't say that one place in the whole letter. Why not? Because Peter realized something, that they were elect exiles, that their experience of all of this discomfort was something that God wanted in their life. Well, why would God want that in our life? Because he uses Bithynia, Cappadocia, and the people and the experiences of our life to produce change that would never happen in Rome. And so here you are today, and spiritually speaking or, you know, in your life, you feel like you're in exile, and you want change. I wonder if you can hear the word of God today saying to you. Here's the word. The change that I want is within you. And as Christians, for us to embrace trials, and this is not easy. I think about trials that I've gone through in my life, and in the midst of it, you're like, I want out now. But to pray to God, heavenly Father, I'm not sure what you're doing in this, but I sense in my heart that you are breaking me. You're breaking my pride. You're breaking my self dependence. You're helping me to live by faith. And I just want to say that I surrender to your purpose in Cappadocia. Don't you think I have a loving heavenly Father would answer that prayer? Don't you think that he delights? In fact, is it possible that he put you there to get you to that point of surrender in the first place? And now from that point, God's purpose can be lived out because that aspect of me, pride, whatever is taken away in a way now that I can live in obedience to the will of Jesus Christ according to the foreknowledge of the of of the Father in the sanctification of the Spirit as I made more and more into likeness of Christ. Oh, by the way, what does that sound like? That whole, I'm not where I'm supposed to be. I'm not where I'm from. I'm experiencing pain and yet I want your will in my life. Who does that sound? Does that sound familiar to me? Is that not Christ himself who left his Father's throne above, left his experience of heaven, came into this broken world with all of its pain and all of its sin and all of its brokenness. You you wanna talk about somebody who didn't fit in. How about the Son of God on earth with us? Right? How often people looked at him and thought you must not be from here because you are not buying into the way that we do things at all. And for him to go through that entire experience and to suffer. I think of the old song, he could have called 10,000 angels to destroy the world and set him free in a moment. Gone. You can't afford the plane ticket. That was not an issue with Jesus. And yet he remained. And the night before he was crucified, prayed. “Father, if there's any way for this cup to pass from me, I ask that it would be so.” There's an honest prayer. We've all prayed that. Right? Take this cup from me, please. “Yet not my will, but your will be done.” There is the bottom line. When we are in an experience that we deem undesirable, a long term trial, I think we can be honest with God. I don't wanna live in Bithynia. I'm tired of Cappadocia. But my bottom line, God, is that I want what you want in my life. I believe that your plan is better than mine, and I embrace the change that you are working within me. This is the example of Jesus himself. And I hope that his example would help us realize that even if you're about to be crucified, you can know that there is a sovereign God who is doing good through it. And indeed he did, through that crucifixion, a savior for the world. And that's just the prelude. That's First Peter. So much more good stuff to come. I hope God blesses and uses it. Let's stand together for prayer. * This transcript was generated using AI transcription technology and reviewed for accuracy but may contain errors. Please refer to the original audio for precise wording.