Sunday School | 1 Peter

Introduction

Okay. So what we're trying to do is just stimulate as a group the habit, the daily habit of being in the scriptures. And one thing in particular that's helpful I've heard QuickSight a million times. It's helpful know the three things that Quig always says is helpful for your Bible reading? What time and place. How does he get it? Say it again. Like a time and a place. And then one more thing. A system or something like that. A time, a place, and a system. Right? And so the time and the place is kind of up to you. Figure out a time and a place. But time and a place and a system, what I'm suggesting is you can read through the New Testament and if you'd make a decision and just commit, I'm going to read five pages a day, full stop. Or I'm going to read 10 pages a day. Right? If you do five pages a day, it will take you fifty days. It's not that long. If you do 10 pages a day, it will take you twenty five days. And I don't know, people probably vary on this, but if I'm going do something, I hate I like to decide once. So if I decide I'm going to read it, you know, like five pages a day, then I don't ask the question on any given day. I just decided, yes, I'm going to do that. So this, I will do that. I think if I had if I had to decide every day if I'm going to do the thing that I mean to do, I'm going to decide not to a lot of the time, and that's going to screw everything up. So just decide once. I guess this is what's going to happen. I'm not going to bed until I've accomplished the thing that I committed to do. Right? So just it's an easier way to live. So make a decision, what it is, five pages a day or 10 pages a day or whatever you want to do, and then just do it.

Reading Plan and Approach

And then the way that I think is helpful to read the New Testament is roughly in this order. I would read Luke, Acts, Romans as your foundation. Luke gives you one of the gospels, the stories of Jesus' life. Acts is the history of the church, and then Romans is kind of the most meaty theological foundation. So Luke, Acts, Romans. We're having a harder time I'm having a harder time with you being noisy. So you need to have a harder time with you being noisy and then make less noise. Okay? So much better. Luke, Acts, Romans. And then anything you want. Just read a bunch of letters. I don't care whatever you do. We've done one and two Corinthians and James and Philippians. Anything else? I forget. Is that what we've done so far? Maybe something else. Right? And then when you've done a bunch and you've done a batch of letters, then read another gospel. And then do a batch of letters, read another gospel, read a batch of letters, and save Hebrews and Revelation to the end because they're just so complicated. Do those at the very end. So what we're gonna do today is first Peter, and then we're gonna consider that the first block. And next week, we're gonna do Matthew. So we'll be back to like another gospel, Matthew, and then a bunch of letters. And then we'll do either Luke or or I mean, or John and a bunch of letters. And the order is kinda doesn't really matter. But Luke, Acts, Romans, bunch of letters, then a gospel, bunch of letters, gospel, end with Hebrews and Revelation. And the way that I just keep track of it is just really simple. I just have a pencil and I put a check mark in my table of contents on the Bible. And I do though I almost always use this. I use an iPad with a bible software called Accordance which I love for a million different reasons. When I'm doing like a through the bible kind of thing, that's harder to do here. I use a paper Bible for that. It's so much more natural to have a bookmark. Just put the ribbon in there and then I know where I am. I would suggest you get a paper Bible, write on the table of contents, bookmark the thing five or 10 pages a day and bang through it. I think you'd be amazed at how much you can lay down and the richness that that will bring into your life, especially layer by layer by layer, the fifth time through, the twelfth time through, the thirtieth time through. It's amazing what God will do in your life over years. Okay? So this week we're gonna look at first Peter. And as we often do, I'd love to hear what you guys already know about first Peter. Peter wrote two letters—well, first of all, anything you know about who Peter is, about his letters, Nicholas. Anything you want. What do you guys know? First Peter. Anything if you were had to stand up and talk about first Peter, what would you say? A fisherman. Who is it? What? What? Okay. So Peter himself was a fisherman. Okay. Yes? Fisher of men. He's a fisherman and a fisherman of men. Okay. Let me pick on the fisherman comment first though. Sometimes so there's sometimes people will approach the scriptures and then with either faith or with doubt, with skepticism. And sometimes people have questioned whether or not Peter wrote this letter and whether or not Peter wrote the other letter that bears his name, second Peter. Are you familiar with that? Sometimes people say Peter wrote it, but I don't know that he really did. Somebody thinks that Paul wrote this, but I don't know that he really did. Are you familiar with that accusation? This is definitely a thing. Take a look. I'll show you this. Look at first Peter chapter five verse 12. Sometimes people will do this analysis of the vocabulary, and you know. Right? And it's almost embarrassing, but you know that certain people well, every person has, like, idiosyncratic vocabulary. You know what I mean? Like, there's certain phrases that you always heard your dad use. Certain things or the ways that your mom would tend to frame things. Right? And so people do the analysis on that, and there's sometimes a question, is Peter, who was just a fisherman, he's this uneducated guy, is he likely to have written this letter? And the answer is yes. However, look at first Peter five twelve. It says this, with the help of Silas, whom I regard as a faithful brother, I have written to you briefly encouraging you and testifying that this is the true grace of God. Stand fast in it. What that means is just kind of like we saw that first Corinthians was written by Paul and somebody else. Do you remember who else? Who wrote first Corinthians? It was the guy that showed up in Acts 18. He had a funny name. The dude from the synagogue. His name was Sosthenes. Sosthenes was a coauthor of first Corinthians. Silas, what what what he's saying here is, with the help of Silas, I've written you briefly. So Silas is a coauthor. So when we find things that you might that people have said, well, maybe Peter didn't really write this. Maybe it seemed like it bears somebody else's fingerprints. My answer to that is no, Peter did write it, but he wouldn't write it alone. And so it's probably that Silas' vocabulary or Silas' personality is sneaking into this letter as well, which helps us understand why some of the criticisms aren't all that founded. Okay? But so, yeah, a common fisherman who became a fisher of men wrote this letter. Okay. Bob? Yeah. They punch above their weight. Number one, because of the time they spent with Jesus. And then number two, though the the pastor doesn't say that, yes. Because the the spirit of God is alive in them. So it is really true that you are we are getting more than might be expected here. But that is not an argument for the inauthenticity of it, but rather for the supernatural origin behind it. Really Peter's personality, really Peter's insights, and some of Silas' empowered by the Holy Spirit as these men walked with Jesus. Okay? Good. First Peter, anything else you want to throw in as we come out of the gate? What it's about, Chris? Suffering for the dead. Huge. Huge, huge, huge, huge, huge. Suffering is a massive theme. In fact, we'll go ahead and just do that. So if you flip over your page, I listed for you as many places as I could find. Just listen to some of these. This permeates the letter. Okay? It says in this I'll just give you a you could just skim through it. In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials, live such good lives among the pagans as though they accuse you of doing wrong. Like, being accused is a particularly exquisite form of suffering. I hate being accused, falsely accused. I don't like being accused when I'm guilty either. Though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God. Right? If you can read through this, loads and loads and loads of language about suffering. You just I mean, look at chapter one, chapter two, chapter two, three, four, four, five. I mean, the whole letter is marked by suffering. Right? And so we might we might come back and look a little bit more at that. And we need to understand why is suffering such a theme to the letter. We'll see that when we get a little bit more insight. So excellent. First Peter, you got anything? Bob? Oh, the anchors of yes, yeah, the anchor of hope. Okay. So what Bob is talking about there is generally speaking, we have in life two I'll often kind of picture it like a if you've a telephone pole and it's got these two wires that come down to keep it tight, whatever you call those, guy wires or guide wires, whatever those are called. Like, so if you are if you are the telephone pole, then what you need in your life, you hopefully have in your life is one anchor let's see. From your perspective, this is the past. You have one anchor into the past that we call gratitude and then one anchor into the future that we call hope. Okay? So as you stand here, you are looking backward, grateful for the good things that God has done, and you are looking forward anticipating the good things that God will do. And you absolutely need both of these things in your life, but the stronger of the two by a factor of a thousand is hope. In fact, the chief value of gratitude is that our gratitude, our appreciation, our experience of God's goodness in the past is what slings us forward in giving us courage to hope that he might be good to me tomorrow or in a hundred years or in a million years. Right? And so Peter is deeply interested in hope. This letter has hope. We'll we'll see this as we get into it a little bit. Hope is a major theme, which which pairs nicely with suffering. Right? When you are and so you're for the past, you're hopeful for the future, but right now in the present moment, everything's terrible. Right? That that's kind of the theme of this letter. Right now, you are suffering. But don't forget, the God who has been good to you will be good to you yet. And so this so you wanna have that in a sense. And I'm not sometimes the present moment is quite lovely. Okay? But Peter is writing to a people whose present moment is marked by suffering. He's helping them look forward in hope to what a good God will do again and do in greater abundance. Okay? Major kind of art if if you read through Peter, you will see all of that that that philosophy being played out. So excellent. Okay? Anything else before on Peter before I can kind of give you my lowdown on it? You guys want to play? No. No. No. Okay. Do you remember we did teach we did a whole thing on this letter. I don't know. When did we do that? A year ago? Was it longer ago? A couple of years ago? Time all blurs. Right? But we did it first Peter. Does anybody remember what is the central verse of this book? The whole everything before it is leading up to this. Everything after is an explanation of it. What's the central passage in first Peter? Say it louder. You're aliens. You are freaks. That's it. You're aliens. You're strangers. It's the one I put in the center of that box where it says this. Dear friends, I urge you as aliens and strangers in the world to abstain from sinful desires which war against your soul. Live such good lives among the pagans that though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us. That is what first Peter is about. The whole book. Everything else is gonna kind of is gonna be outgrowth from that. What is that, two verses. Okay. So what does it mean when he says you are aliens and strangers? Do you remember this part? What do we mean by that? What are the words behind those words? The concept of citizenship, like we belong to kingdom of God. Yes. And that under his kingdom, we live lives illicitly in the world around us. We're being faster as a kid. That's great. So Okay, Nick, in case you couldn't hear Nick in the back, he's using this concept of citizenship, that we really are ultimately citizens of a different kingdom, that Jesus is our king but we live right here. And though Jesus is king right here, he said all authority in heaven and earth, which includes Roanoke, been given to me, includes The United States, has been given to me. Nevertheless, there are other competing kingdoms and we dwell among them. And if we are to understand our role as aliens, foreigners, strangers, this world is not my home, that kind of a framework, Then we got to think, well, what do you do when you move to a foreign country? Well, you are the word you used was we're ambassadors. Right? We're not we're not just here to like throw sand in the gears. We're here to bring a blessing to this world. But we are not it should be it shouldn't be surprising if we find it uncomfortable. Right? Because their habits are not our habits. Their mode of being is not our mode of being. And we look weird to them even as they look weird to us. Right? That is what this letter is about. And the reason that we taught it here a year or two, whenever it was ago, is because I think first Peter is increasingly the most relevant letter in the New Testament for us right now. Right? Because you feel it. Right? We're weirder than we were five even if we don't move, if we change a bit, you are stranger than you were five years ago. And you are stranger than you were twenty five years ago. And a decade hence, you all are going be the biggest bunch of freaks. Right? Do you know this? Do you feel this? Okay. This is a letter written to a so, you know, reading this reading this letter at different times in history would have felt strange for different reasons. If you were a Christian living in The United States in 1950 and you believed what God believes about racial relationships, you would have been a freak. Because American culture and American Christianity how about go back one hundred years, 1850, and you're a Christian living in that world, and you were just faithful to the Biblical view of race relations, you would have been a freak. Problem is, a lot of times Christians just trim our sails to the culture. We don't seem that way. We just go along. It's just easier to go along. Right? At one point in time in American history, was much easier to be a Christian who agreed with racial segregation or with the infliction of slavery because that's what everybody is doing. It's fine. Don't make a big deal about it. As long as you're white anyway. To be a Biblically authentic Christian in that moment regarding those issues would have been excruciatingly difficult, and so many would not have done it. Today, same thing, it's just a different issue. Right? There are different questions, different issues, less about slavery, more about sexuality, that it's just easy. Just go along. Just shut up say what they want you to say, do what they want you to do. In that era and this era, we experience that if we are going to be authentically Christian, we're going to look stranger and stranger and stranger. That is what this whole letter is about. While we are experiencing it right now because culture change is so rapid, it's happening so quickly, and if you don't go with the river, you're going to be such a strange person. We remember when we had more cultural power and we didn't have to be weird, we could call the shots. This letter is written to the people in this room that are like, wow. Everything is changing so fast. And I don't think I like some of these changes or some of these maybe some things that are good because there are some things that are good. Nothing gets all worse. Things get better and worse at the same time, but a lot of the worst is really worse and really weird. This letter is for you to say you're going to suffer because it's not that fun to be weird. However, here's the thing. The irony is if you're a Christian, it's not that weird to be weird. Christians are weird. Just suck it up. Like, that was the deal when you joined the club. Like, we Jesus was thought to be strange. They're gonna think you're strange. Don't freak out about it. That's what this letter is largely about. Make sense? And then what he does with that, once he makes his case, hey, you're aliens, you're strangers, then he just kind of specifies it. Hey, you're going to be strange husbands. You're going to be really weird wives. You're going to be very uncommon employees. You're going be citizens that don't make sense to a lot of people. And in fact, he's got this great line in here. Look at this. He says look at the below this line here I've got. It says, they think it strange that you do not plunge with them into the same flood of dissipation and they heap abuse on you. Right? That's what it means to be strange. It's not just that you feel strange, but that they think you're strange. And they say, just get just do what you're supposed to do. Just follow the rules. And you're experiencing this. I have a friend who works someplace here in Roanoke. I will not name her place of work, but the culture of her employment, culture of where she works is very far down kind of the sexual transformation that we've seen in the last fifteen or twenty years in this country. Right? Very, very high percentage of her coworkers just believe things that are in violation of the Christian sexual ethic that I would say are in violation of the nature of reality. And she works there, and she's trying to make it work. God bless her. Right? She wants to be there. She wants to love her coworkers. She wants to be gracious and kind. She understands the gospel. She knows what to take. And she's doing her best to try to just be a faithful Christian in this place. And maybe she'll be able to do it. But I would say the day is coming when they're just not going to put up with her anymore. Right? Because it's just hard. And they think it's they already think it's strange that she will not, and I quote, plunge with them into the same flood of dissipation. And they they have not yet, and maybe they won't, but I fear the day is coming when they will heap abuse on her, and it's gonna become really, really difficult. Right? Some of you perhaps work in a place where you know that exact phenomena. This is the centrality of the book of first Peter. Okay? Comments on that? Questions about any of that so far? I have more, but I want to give you guys a chance to jump in if you want. Yes, yes, yes? Okay. Take a look here along that bottom row where I have that think of strange. Look at what he says. Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial that you are suffering as if something strange were happening to you. In 1 Peter 3:15 he says, always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.

The Hope in Suffering

What I want you to see here, normally I put everything in order, you know, two, three, four, five. I reverse the order here of those last two because there's something going on in 3:15 that I think is really important for us to grapple with and is not broadly known. Is 3:15 a familiar verse to you guys? You've heard this? Okay. What's what's the problem with this verse?

He says, always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give a reason for the hope that you have.

What's what's the problem with that? Yeah. You want to take a stab? You don't always have an answer. Okay. You don't always have an answer. You're maybe not ready to answer that question. And so maybe we've got to think ahead of time and be like, okay, what would I say if somebody asked me that question? Okay. And that's an excellent we want to be ready to answer that question. Very good. Eric? It also suggests that we should wait and not necessarily go out the last answer.

Oh. Yeah. So it rolls a sense of it may have a sense of passivity to you, that you're not you're waiting for them to come to you.

Yes, Kelly? Wish more people would ask. That's what I'm thinking right there. I wish more people would ask. Okay? And this kind of dovetails to all three of your answers here. Like, when it says always be ready when people come up to you and say, explain to me the reason for the hope that you have, how many of you have ever in your entire life had someone come up to you and say, excuse me, I'm sorry to interrupt you, but could you please explain to me the reason for the hope that you have?

Now, that feels so it's like if somebody asked me that, I would like to be ready. I would like to have a ready answer. But I don't want to just wait for that because it may be a long time, and I don't want to be passive forever. Could wait forty five years and have nobody say, Steven, dude, come on, Explain this to me. What gives?

Here's the thing. Peter thinks that his audience is not going to have to wait that long because there's something happening in their lives. Here's the deal. This idea that people come to you and say, what gives? Explain it to me. What's going on? Necessarily presumes that you, as a Christian, are gonna live in a cauldron of difficulty. But while you are in that cauldron of difficulty, while people think it's strange that you don't plunge with them into the same flood of dissipation, while people are heaping abuse on you—number one, it's happening, which presumes that you're not just going with the flow. The world is all going all crazy in whatever category, whatever decade, whatever century, there's always something going off the rails. And whichever one you find yourself in, you are going to say, I'm going to be authentically Christian here. When the world's going insane about sexuality, I'm going to not. When the world is going insane about racism, I'm going to not. When the world is going insane in economic categories, I'm going to not. Whatever it is, you are just doing it right, which is going to look wrong to the world around you. Okay? That is step one.

If anybody is going to ask you to give a reason for the hope you have, first thing, you've got to be a weirdo. You're different. You're not just flowing down the river with everybody else. Second thing, though, and this is crazy, is while you're doing that and they heap abuse on you, you're super sweet about it. You're not fighting back. You're not mean. People get we feel like, why are you so mean to people when they're mean to you? Nobody asks that question because everybody knows why you're mean to people that are mean to you. There's nothing weird about that.

But if you will, number one, stand still when the world is going insane, you're going to do what the scriptures call you to do, you're to live your life in light of reality, you're going to be a truthful person. And then when they heap abuse on you for it, and you don't just start punching people back, but you are gracious, you are kind, you remember Stephen, who as he was being stoned to death, quoted Jesus who said, do not hold this against them before the last rock smashed in his temple. If you will be like Stephen who was like Jesus, if you will be like Peter, if you will be like Paul who are all like Jesus, then somebody is gonna say, alright, what? Like, explain you to me. Like, what do you know that I watch the way that people in this office treat you and they just heap abuse on you? And then I watch you day after day do your job with excellence, respond to people with kindness. You never capitulate to the demands of the crowd. And that used to drive me insane because I think you're wrong. But now I've come to wonder, what do you know that I don't know? Explain to me the reason for the hope that you have. That is what Peter is talking about. So number one, we don't go down the road of falseness that we swim in right now. One of those things right now today is about language. Right? It's about pronouns. It's about making assertions. We are compelled to make false speech. To be like Peter, you say, I'm just not going to do that. I'm just not going to ever say false things. But when you hate me for it, I'm going to be the most kind, the most patient, the hardest working, the best member of the team until you finally ask me, what gives? Okay? That is what Peter is about. In our culture, in our moment, largely sexuality. Maybe in the subculture that you're in, it's about economics. Maybe in the subculture that you're in, there's some other thing that authentic Christianity is at odds with prevailing culture. Stay at odds with prevailing culture, but be really, really nice about it. We are to be a people of truth and a people of grace. That is what Peter is advocating for, and that is the thing that nobody gets. That is the thing that will spawn the question that Peter is trying to get us to provoke. Stuart? Under-currents of this whole thing is the fact that you're still there. Right? The other temptation to be treated to your own echo chain. Yes. Let's just hang around with just these people. Think there's a whole lot of that now that's making the levels go higher and higher. We're treating it to our level of support. Yes. We're not doing what this young lady is that you've to stay in the culture to the point where you can they can act. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. And of course we retreat to I mean, like, under a normal circumstance, you would just retreat to a place of safety. That's a very reasonable thing to do. And there are seasons that's why we come to here. You come here and say, oh, catch your breath. Be restored. Be healed. Be among the people that love you and there's safety and well-being. But then let's go back outside and let's engage with people. But let's be bewilderingly gracious and incomprehensibly truthful at the same time until they just don't know what to do with us. Right? You can't do that if you're not engaging with with people. For sure. For sure. Okay? That, you guys, if you read through Peter, what you're going to find is that concept just permeates the whole book. That's what he's writing about. And he said, what about what if your husband is a loser? Same thing. That's he's going to say. And Peter, I just watched some of the wives' eyes glance toward their husbands. I don't know what that means. I just saw, like, the darting of the eyes. That's weird. Okay? Right? So we want to be people that are just like weird husbands and weird wives and weird colleagues and weird coworkers. You're aliens. You're strangers. Don't be surprised. This is not it's not weird to be weird if you're in this particular community. Okay? So far so good? Yes, please. What do you say, I've personally not been told this, but other people, other Christians I know have, you're just being judgmental. Yeah. Well When you don't agree with how somebody's living or you won't do what they're doing. Yeah. So there's a there's a couple of possibilities. The first possibility is, of course, that we are being judgmental. Right? In a bad way. Right? So we are Christians are not immune from the ability to look down our noses at people that are different than us. Right? And so sometimes when they accuse us of doing wrong, it's because we're doing wrong. And we need to be humble. We need to be apologetic. We need to recognize that we are there's no there's no sense in which, like, I am, like, above the fray in all these things. Right? I'm I'm just as snooty and self pleased as anybody. So we've got to correct for that and be mindful of that. And maybe we make an apology. But sometimes there is a place where we are supposed to be discerning, we're supposed to know right from wrong. The question becomes, when I know right from wrong, does it mean that you have to live your life the way that I want you to live my life? Right? And I think the answer to that is no. Like, I might not choose to do heroin. Right? And while I think intellectually that you probably shouldn't either, it doesn't fall off the net that I have the authority to tell you what you can do and knock things out of your hands. Right? And if I see you failing in some way, you're doing something that I'm like, that's destructive and that's dumb and that's going to lead to a negative end for you and for others, that may all be true. But it doesn't necessarily follow that it's my job to walk around telling you that any more than I would appreciate you noticing my failures and just nailing me every time I do something stupid. Right? So I think part of it, part of the problem with when we're accused of being judgmental is that we are. Man, we just got to own that and apologize and be humble. Part of the problem is a boundary thing. I need to know where I stop and where you begin. Right? And so when I, you know, I when I do allude to pronouns, of course, that's an allusion to the whole transgender movement. And the reality is that if if you yourself, you appear, by all evidence available to me, to be a woman. Alright? So we're just gonna go with that assumption. Okay? If you were to tell me that you are male, it would not be my obligation to correct you and to tell you that you're wrong. If you want to pretend to be male, live your life, knock yourself out, what's that to me? I think we should have an orientation towards people that are doing things that we disagree with. I don't need to correct everything I see in the whole world around me that's constantly wrong. Where I have a problem with that is when you then compel me to acknowledge that you are male, that's where I was like, now everything has changed because now you're compelling me to do something. So nobody in the world is ever gonna be successful in compelling me to say false things. I'm just not doing it. You can do whatever else you want, but I'm not going to do that. But it doesn't mean that I have to say every true thing that comes into my mind at every time. You feel the difference? So I think Jesus was remark he had this brilliant capacity to be neither condemning nor condoning. And that's a very narrow little peak of a mountaintop. And we tend to fall into, I. I must condemn it because I have a biblical obligation to call sin sin every time I see it. Like, I'm not sure that you do. Or I must condone it and enter into the falsehood. Jesus had some magical capacity to stay right at that peak. I think we would do better to try to be like, it's fine. People live their lives and they're not accountable to me. If you ask me a question, now you own the answer because I'm going to tell you what I think. But I don't need to I don't need to walk around judging everything like I'm better than everybody else. It would be embarrassing to me if somebody walked around with a highlight reel of all my own failings. I'm grateful that so far that has not yet made the Internet. So I'd say can you find that spot where you're neither condemning nor condoning, that you don't say false things, but you don't have to say every single true thing that ever occurs to you. Does that make sense? That might give you a little bit of category on that, but it's going to be a difficult thing. They will think it's strange when we don't plunge with them at the same flood of dissipation.

Conclusion

Okay. So when you read through first Peter, watch the aliens and strangers, watch how it plays out in everything that's going on. There's other things that he does there, but that's the absolute central line that runs through the letter. Good enough? Okay. Couple other things. Yes, please. How come we have war? Oh, because we don't because people don't obey that. Right? Now, okay. That's a that's a secondary question too. So what Peter is telling us we ought to do is not the same thing as what people actually do. Not only do the non-Christians not prescribe to what Peter has laid out for, not don't obey what Peter has laid out, but Christians don't obey what Peter has laid out. Right? So there's that. But when you jump to the war category, I think maybe it's just worth making a quick note that war is not an act of private individuals. That's an action of a state. And nations when I say state, I mean nations. Countries function under different rules than individuals do. God has instituted a church comprised of people who must follow his rules, and he's instituted states. He has given nations the authority to restrict evil through the use of force. So when a country goes to war, they are living possibly. There's all kinds of wicked, evil, unjust wars. But God has granted to nations an ability to defend their borders, protect themselves from enemies. I wouldn't say that a government has to follow the rules of one Peter because it's written to individuals, not to countries. That's a whole bigger conversation. That's a short, tight answer to that. But we don't need to go to war to have people sin. We can be selfish. We can go to war within our office in ways that are grossly in violation of one Peter and that we're culpable of. So he's writing to correct that. Okay. Let's keep going. So Peter's calling us, you're weird. Don't be weird. And then he anchors this. Okay? When we talk about the hope, a major theme of Peter's letter is the return of Christ. And I think I've I think I've told you this story once before, maybe at some point. But there's a there's a subset of Christians who are called Preterists. And Preterists, basically, among other things, they think that Jesus' return has either already happened or is really not gonna not be that big of a deal. That for the most part, all the good stuff of return has already happened. And it's completely insane and it's not true. But for about thirty six hours I was reading their stuff and thinking, what if that were true? And I fell into this morbid depression. Because, you guys, what Peter is doing here is he's writing to people that are suffering. He's calling them, just take the hit. Be weird. It's going to be hard. And then he's offering them hope, what he calls earlier this living hope. And the do you know what the living hope is? Like, is the good stuff? What is this line that runs down from the top of your telephone pole down to the line? Do you know what that hope is? It is the return of Christ. I've said this before. It's the three R's. What are the three R's of this future hope? Remember them? Return. The return of Christ, Harrison. Our Our resurrection from the dead. And the resurrection. And the restoration of all things. Okay. And it is all but of the three, the big one is Jesus' return. And so Peter, when he's writing to people that are suffering and he's trying to console them, he's trying to keep them in the game, take the hit, be weird, don't give up, and don't be nasty when you stay in the game, what's going to enable you to do that is fix your eyes on the return of Christ. He's coming back. I promise you he's coming back. So he says it over and over again. Look at what he says. There's an inheritance. And as I was reading this yesterday, I missed a couple. And I was gonna come into the office and print these, but I didn't. So sorry. But there's even more. You'll find it. It's a game actually. So add these when you read through it. But there's an inheritance that can never perish, spoil, or fade, kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God's power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. That's his language. He goes on about being revealed. That's why, like, the book Revelation is about a revealing. Finally, it's uncovered. Finally, that which was hidden is seen. These have come so that your faith of greater worth and gold which perishes even though refined by fire may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory, and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Prepare your minds for actions. Be self controlled. Set your hope fully on the grace to be given to you when Jesus Christ is revealed. Listen to that phrase. Set your hope fully on the grace to be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed. The reason that you are setting your hope fully on the grace given you when Christ is revealed is because this present moment is painful. It's no fun when they heap abuse on you. It's no fun to be thought a stranger. It's no fun to lose your job because you refuse to enter into the compulsory false speech. It's no fun to lose friends because they think that you are fill in the blank. And in those moments, Peter says, yeah, I know. That's gonna be rough. So set your hope fully on the grace to be given you when Jesus is revealed. He's gonna say, rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ. Like, why? So that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed. He talks again about the glory to be revealed when the chief shepherd appears. And I think that one of the things that just adds so much health and vitality to the Christian life is a deep awareness. A moment by moment anticipation of a longing for the day that he is revealed. He is coming. Maybe this year. Maybe this month. I don't know when, but he's coming. And if our hope is there, then we can endure whatever this particular moment brings us. Chad? The three R's again. Yeah. The return of Christ, which is like the center of it all. The resurrection from the dead, by which I mean your resurrection, and the restoration of all things. Next week so if you guys were already in church this morning, you heard Sloop Sloop had the first half of first Corinthians 15. Next week, I will have the second half of first Corinthians 15, which is about not Jesus' resurrection, but about your resurrection. So we'll explore that a little bit more. Our great hope is that we will be, this body will be raised from the dead when he returns and restores all things. Cool? Okay. So there's a couple more, and I forget exactly where they are, but when you read through it, just look for those. Okay? Return shows up everywhere. How much time do I have? Oh gosh. Okay. Go to the back. Okay. Suffering. Chris hit suffering. There's lots of good stuff on suffering. One thing I'll mention quickly about suffering is that first Peter is where we hit one of our chair passages. I just want to highlight it for you on atonement theory. So atonement theory, when Jesus died on the cross, we're trying to make sense. What happened there? Right? And there's a whole bunch of things that are happening there. We've talked about other things in Romans that the central claim of the cross, of what he was doing, is what we call penal substitutionary atonement. Penal substitutionary atonement. That happened. Right? But there's other things going on. He was also defeating Satan. Colossians is probably your best place to go. Colossians one maybe would be Colossians two. Colossians one or two is probably your central claim to see the defeat of Satan, what he was doing on the cross was crushing the serpent's head. But there's a third point to that triangle that I think we want to add in, and this is what Peter does. The one that I underlined in that first column right here. Okay? Peter says this. Let's skip down to the middle of the paragraph. But if you suffer for doing good and you endure it, this is commendable before God. To this you are called because Christ suffered for you, that's the cross, check it out, leaving you an example that you should follow in his steps. One of the things Jesus was doing was being punished in your place so that you wouldn't have to be. Another of the things that he was doing was he was destroying the works of the devil. He was crushing the serpent's head. He made a he triumphed over him, making a public spectacle of him, triumphed over the cross, right, through the cross. But the third thing that what Peter was pointing out, what he was doing is he was showing you, live your life like I did. The cross is an example of everything we've been describing. That we go to the lowest place, the V shaped Gospel once again, we go to the lowest place from which God will exalt us to the highest place. The exaltation is God's job. The going down is our job. And he's saying the cross is not just how you were redeemed, it is to be henceforth the pattern of your life. Jesus' willingness to suffer unjustly gives you guys resources to suffer unjustly, which isn't any fun, but it is what you are called to. It says, to this you were called suffering because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example that you should follow in his steps. That's a really important passage for that whole concept. Okay?

The Relationship Between Israel and the Church

Last thing, I want you to see this. This is a little bit this is a little bit off the main argument, but look at that very bottom of that page. Peter is doing something here that's really helpful and important if you want to understand the relationship between Israel as a nation and the church as a community. Namely this, all the promises made to Israel are now available to you who don't have a drop of Jewish blood in you. This is crazy. It is not to say that we have replaced Israel, but rather we have joined Israel. You have been grafted in. And we could make a we could spend a lot of time unpacking this. I'm just giving you a couple of Peter's examples. What he keeps doing, and it's really pretty stunning, is he takes promises that were made without any question or ambiguity to the nation of Israel, and then he says to a mixture of Jews and Gentiles, it's all for you. You have been. If you are in Christ, you are what what Paul would say in Romans is that you are a you are grafted so Israel is pictured as an olive tree, and some of the branches have been broken off through unbelief. And then you, Scandinavian, African, Australians, get, like, grafted onto the tree. And now you share in the nourishing sap. You are part of it. So what he's saying here, things like this I'll just pick one. This is maybe I'll just pick one for the second time. You can look them all up if you want. Exodus 19. What would Exodus 19 be? Can you place that in the Old Testament? Yes. Where is that? Exodus 19. Chapter before the 10. Before the 10 Commandments. Exodus 20 is the 10 Commandments. Exodus 19 is like 10 Commandments Eve. Okay? It's like right before the 10 Commandments. And in Exodus 19 it says, now if you obey me fully keep my covenant, then out of all nations, you will be my treasured possession. Although the holier is mine, you will be for me, a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words you ought to speak to the Israelites. The condition is, if you obey me fully, Israel, then you will be these three things. Peter has the audacity to say to a bunch of Gentiles, you are no condition is mentioned you are a chosen nation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God. What he is saying is that thing that was a conditional promise made to Israel is now a conditioned met offer to you Gentiles. The obedience is not mentioned here because the obedience has been accomplished by Christ. And if you are in Christ, his obedience is your obedience, and you are what Israel was offered to be, but of course was unable to be. If you obey me fully, you'll be these three things, he says to Israel. He says to the church, you are these three things. Okay? This phenomenon shows up repeatedly in Peter. He's very interested in pointing out to a Gentile mixture of Jews and Gentiles, probably majority Gentile to this community, it's all for you. All of the promises made to Israel were accomplished by Christ and given to you as a gift received by faith. Right? So to you weirdos, you freaks living in the midst of suffering, grateful for all that he's done, hopeful for what he will do, the call is just stay in it. Be endlessly truthful, endlessly gracious. Remain in the suffering. Set your hope fully on the grace to be revealed when Christ comes back, and it's all gonna be fine. But right now, it's gonna be hard, but you have all the resources you need to be this unique, strange freaks in this broken world. That's that's first Peter. Good enough? Okay. All for now. We'll do Matthew next week.