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Elect Exiles and Salvation Inheritance

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God’s Chosen Exiles (vs. 1-2)

Peter addresses this letter to the elect, “eklektós,” the chosen ones. Most translations bump the word “eklektos” to verse two, but it’s the first word after Peter’s introduction, “Peter an apostle of Jesus Christ, to the elect…” The word “elect” was used in the Old Testament to refer to Israel, “For you are a holy people to the LORD your God; the LORD your God has elected you to be a people for Himself, a special treasure above all the peoples on the face of the earth” (Dt. 7:6). Peter echoes this in 1 Peter 2:9. When Peter addresses this letter to the elect, he is not talking about individual persons, but to God’s special people, the new Israel.

But God’s elect––the known, sanctified, blood-sprinkled and obedient people, are pilgrims scattered across the world. The word dispersion means scattering like the scattering of seed and was used in the Old Testament to describe the result for breaking the covenant (Dt. 28:25). Now God’s chosen people are pilgrims who have been scattered in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia––the Roman provinces that make up the region called Asia Minor or modern day Turkey. Peter views this not as a curse but a blessing and cause for rejoicing.

A Psalm of Praise (vs. 3)

Peter starts his letter in worship. He begins with a psalm of praise, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!” There’s not a command to do something, but the acknowledgment and praise for what God has done for you.

The theme for this praise is the salvation inheritance that’s been brought by the abundant mercy of the Father, through the resurrection of Jesus, and revealed by the Holy Spirit. You were dead in your sins and born as children of wrath, but now because of the Father’s mercy, you are born again to a living hope, a hope of life. And Peter specifically says this happens through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Your life as a Christian is dependent on Christ. When Jesus was born again to new life, you were born again. And so salvation is bound up with our unity with Jesus. His story is now your story. His life is your life. His death, your death. His family, your family.

Incorruptible, Undefiled, Unfading Inheritance (vs 4-5)

And what comes in a family? An inheritance from your Father. Salvation is life in Christ. And because we share in Christ’s life, we also share in Christ’s inheritance (Rom. 8:15-17). And no one will mess with Christ’s inheritance which is incorruptible, undefiled, unfading, reserved in heaven for you (vs. 4).

Your inheritance is kept secure in heaven, and you are kept secure in the world by the power of God (vs. 5). The word “kept” means guarded, protected by a military garrison. God is the sentinel in the citadel turrets guarding your life. The Father who knew you before time began, who caused you to be born into his family, who prepares your inheritance, will guard and kept you until you come to Him.

Joyous Salvation (vs. 6-9)

“In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, you have been grieved by various trials.” You greatly rejoice even when you are being grieved. Can these emotions of joy and grief, these reactions occur at the same time? (Jm. 1:2)

One of the reasons you can have joy in the pain is because you know the the trials are from the Father and He has a purpose––“so that the genuineness of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” You don’t throw a lump of gold into a fire because you think it’s worthless. Fire is applied to reveal the gold’s value and make it more valuable. But the process of purification is non-too pleasant for the lump of gold, and so love Jesus, believe in Jesus, rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory. God regards your faith and its fire-tested purity as more valuable than gold, more valuable than an easy, comfortable life. Your faith will gleam to the honor, praise, and glory of Jesus Christ.

The Search for Salvation (vs. 10-12)

In these last verses Peter wants his readers to appreciate how valuable the gift is that they hold. The prophets in the Old Testament “searched carefully and inquired of the grace that would come to you.” They wrote the treasure map and investigated but never found the treasure. Peter says been given the treasure, your salvation. And our salvation is “the suffering of Christ and the glories that would follow.” Can you believe that? The ancient mystery was the grace of Jesus as the Christ who would suffer and die. This is the good news not only for you, but for all those who will share in the inheritance of Jesus.

Peter began this letter with a hymn of praise. And so worship must be our first response to what the Father, Son, and Spirit have done for his chosen people. Believe the gospel that you have been begotten again to a living hope. Rejoice greatly that you are kept by the power of God. Preach by the Spirit the salvation to the inheritance of the nations.

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Alternative City Walls (State of the Church 2018 #2)

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Introduction

The need of the hour is for the church to help establish a defined counterculture. This requires much more than defined denominational boundaries, or sectarian carve outs. There needs to be a defined center (worship) and a defined mission field (the world). In order to accomplish this, we need brick and mortar to build the alternative city walls. We have been doing this for some decades now, and we know how we mix that mortar. Now one of the key ingredients in that mortar is unrelenting antipathy to the ways of the world. Our danger is that any success in this (what people call our community) will attract people who love the walls but do not like how we lay the bricks. They love the fruit but do not care for the orchard. They like how the church works because they are actually assuming the world (at its best) should be able to work that way.

The Text

“Woe unto you, when all men shall speak well of you! for so did their fathers to the false prophets. But I say unto you which hear, Love your enemies, do good to them which hate you, Bless them that curse you, and pray for them which despitefully use you” (Luke 6:26–28).

Summary of the Text

Jesus teaches that when we finally have that “good testimony” we have been striving for, we ought to see a red danger light blinking on the dashboard. Something has gone terribly wrong.

But objections come immediately to mind. We note that some people know how to get everybody to hate them simply by being jerks. Pagans certainly hate one another (Tit. 3:3), and that doesn’t make the other despised pagan godly. Peter says that we should rejoice when we are persecuted for the sake of Christ (1 Pet. 4:14, 16), but goes on to add that we must be certain that it really is for the sake of Christ and not because we are a being pseudo-Christians.

So how can we tell if we are guilty of this false credit that takes as a badge of honor a sign that we are actually being disobedient? The answer is found in our text. Those who can take legitimate comfort from the fact that they are slandered are those who can love their enemies, do good to their haters, bless those who curse them, and pray for those who are malicious in their mistreatment. They come into your shop to buy something while sneering at it, and so you must give back scriptural change. If you pay them back in their own coin, then this encouragement does not apply. It only applies to those who can do a little jig when they are reviled (Luke 6:23).

Not an Obscure Teaching

“And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel” (Gen. 3:15). This enmity between the “two seeds” cannot be erased, and attempts to erase it are actually attempts to go over to the other side. “Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God” (James 4:4). If you want to be God’s adversary, then simply make friends with the world. “Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution” (2 Tim. 3:12). This means that you cannot strive for Christ-likeness in this dark world without bringing down on your head something of what came down on Christ’s head. “If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you” (John 15:18). Stop acting surprised at things that the Bible talks about all over the place. “Marvel not, my brethren, if the world hate you” (1 John 3:13).

“. . . And ye shall be hated of all men for my name’s sake: but he that endureth to the end shall be saved . . .” (Matt. 10:21–26).

Tombs of the Prophets

Jesus pointed out that after prophets are dead and gone, their reputations start to improve. And if enough time passes, the ungodly build memorials to the godly, lined with marble (Matt. 23:29). But whenever a living Christian leader comes back from a hot engagement at the front, with a couple of arrows through his hat, the careful men are quite willing to offer their critiques. It reminds me of Ambrose Bierce’s magnificent definition: “REAR, n. In American military matters, that exposed part of the army that is nearest to Congress.”

Why, the critics want to know, can’t you be more like the saintly men of old, whose marbled tombs grace the avenues of the city that people (not like us at all) built?

Like Spurgeon, who was vilified throughout the course of his ministry? Like Augustine, who wrote his famous Confessions because he was answering a smear campaign that was hindering his ministerial effectiveness? Or like Athanasius who stood contra mundum, that world being the Christian world, the world of accommodating bishops? Examples could be multiplied to the point of being pretty tedious.

The principles don’t change. The names do. This makes unprincipled people think that everything is different now.

Alternative City Walls

Remember that in our generation, feeeelllings are the queen of the land. People don’t want to know if a Christian apologist has actually wronged someone in the course of his ministry. They just want to know if the other guy felt wronged. And of course it took about ten minutes for the unbelievers to figure out that you could get most Christians to back off just by saying ow ow ow ow!

As for the infidels, our central offense is not the presence of what I call the “satiric bite.” It is not even an offense at all. Are you serious? They don’t care about that. The offense is where the jabs are aimed. These are the people who laugh at the taunting of late night comedians, who host banquet “roasts” that are filled with vile insults, and who otherwise sit in the seat of mockers. But as the old blues song puts it, “it ain’t no fun when the rabbit’s got the gun.”

When David went out to face Goliath, he was not looking for a dialogue partner.

“This day will the Lord deliver thee into mine hand; and I will smite thee, and take thine head from thee; and I will give the carcases of the host of the Philistines this day unto the fowls of the air, and to the wild beasts of the earth; that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel” (1 Sam. 17:46).

And when Nehemiah established a great wall that separated the people of God from the unbelievers, the unbelievers did not take it well.

“And I sent messengers unto them, saying, I am doing a great work, so that I cannot come down: why should the work cease, whilst I leave it, and come down to you? Yet they sent unto me four times after this sort; and I answered them after the same manner. Then sent Sanballat his servant unto me in like manner the fifth time with an open letter in his hand; Wherein was written, It is reported among the heathen, and Gashmu saith it, that thou and the Jews think to rebel: for which cause thou buildest the wall, that thou mayest be their king, according to these words” (Neh. 6:3–6).

You really should give up preaching. And blogging. And publishing. And declaring. And why? Gashmu saith it.

You Can’t Preach Jesus

The answer is, of course, to preach Christ. But it needs to be observed that it is not possible for a man to preach Christ while simultaneously ignoring the words of Christ. Preaching Christ means preaching both His words and His wounds. You cannot preach the cross, which is a scandal, without scandal. There is no such thing as sanitized gospel faithfulness. It doesn’t exist, and never has.

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Spiritual Child Rearing 5: God as Our Father

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God’s Revelation to His Children

Like Jesus, we too can praise the Father, who is the Lord of heaven and earth.  We can praise Him first because He is Lord.  He is in control.  He is not disturbed at what has happened or is happening nor is He wondering what is next to come.  He is Lord.

Second, we can praise the Father because we are included in the moniker of “little children” if we too are recognizing God as our Father, not like the “wise” of this world, this age, who are both mocking God and those who call Jesus Christ their King, but also recklessly and many time ruthlessly seeking to control the world through political or material means.  Thankfully, they are blind and we see because this is what the Father is pleased to do.

God’s Living Example

As little children, let me remind you of the theme of these messages of God as our Father, with His character revealed through the dynamics of family relationships, looking one last time to Matthew 7:11:

“If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!”

So we come now to my 5th and final message carrying this theme of examining God as our Father.  And, if you’ve been keeping track, you will know that I’ve taken snapshots of the fathering that happens at different ages as a means of highlighting characteristics of God’s character in ‘growing’ us.

In the last message we looked at the question of submission of the will as the true test of teenagers and how God has given us as parents the responsibility to help them learn submission both by our example and by our rule in the home.  Today, I’m moving on to what we could call the age of adulthood, which we may associate with our children moving out of their teen years.  The key distinction of being an adult is understanding that responsible work is what separates them from their carefree teenage years.   As Jeremiah records in Lamentations 3:27, “It is good for a man to bear the yoke while he is young.”

God’s Invitation

If you are honest about your sin — even those of you having been raised in godly Christian homes, then you can assure your hearts with Jesus’ promise.  “I will give you rest.”  I will give you rest.  I will cleanse you.  I will give you a new heart.  And then I will give you a call to action.

And here in Jesus’ command to us to come, he adds “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me.”  In mentioning my text to Ty, he remarked that it was common for an inexperienced or young ox to be yoked with a more mature and stronger ox to train the younger ox.  But before we explore the nature and purpose of the yoke, we must remember that Biblically, we don’t have an option about a yoke, only which yoke based on Romans 6:16-18.

Nature of the Yoke

“Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

As parents raising our children, we reach a glorious horizon when our children, the fruit of our labors, are ready and willing to take up a yoke with us — a yoke of purpose to serve side by side in our Father’s kingdom.

“Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, The fruit of the womb is a reward.

Like arrows in the hand of a warrior,  So are the children of one’s youth.  Happy is the man who has his quiver full of them;  They shall not be ashamed, But shall speak with their enemies in the gate. Psalm 127:3-5″

So, what is the purpose?  What is our yoke hooked to? In John 3, Jesus tells us plainly that He came not to condemn the world but that the world through Him might be saved.  And, we know that this salvation of the world was more than just a rinse and dry cycle.  Jesus describes the process in terms of growing degrees:  a small seed growing into a tree, yeast pervading through three measures of dough, a kingdom that grows but not always visibly or according to “worldly” measures of power and prestige.

And this kingdom is not about territory but about people.  Paul tells us that every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord.  Knees and tongues are the property of people.  Peter tells us that this kingdom is made up of stones, living stones, people, all being built up into a holy temple.

Just as the stones on the temple mount were hewn and sawn for fit, we as living stones are to undergo the same process by learning from Jesus.  His saving the world involves the fashioning of us into perfect stones that are conformed to His image.  Doing what He is doing just as He does just what the Father is saying and doing.  This is God’s purpose for us such that when we are like Jesus we will in fact be a perfect temple calling attention to God’s goodness, grace and glory for the all the world to see.

Slowing Down the Oxen

In closing, let’s just review one thing to avoid.  From Deuteronomy 22:10, we read, “Do not plow with an ox and a donkey yoked together” and its parallel verse in 1 Corinthians 6:14

We have only Christ’ yoke to take on.  And when we take this on, we are rejecting all other yokes.  Those yokes are by nature, corrupt and of the darkness.  Christ’ yoke is that of holiness, light and truth.  All other yokes must be rejected.  True wisdom “hates” wickedness.  Don’t be deceived.  When we try and hang onto things of the world, things that our consciences reject but which we still cling are choking our progress.  They are tangling the lines of the harness and tripping up our feet.  The extra weight is heavy and makes us like dead weight to the Lord Jesus as He not only pulls the cart but drags us (sometimes unwillingly) along.

Conclusion

Our children transition into adults when they take up the responsibility of working for themselves and their families. Jesus invites us to take up His yoke and learn from Him instead of shouldering this burden under the yoke of slavery to sin.  He teaches us that His yoke is easy and light as we are learning the will of His Father who sets before us salvation and true joy. Together with the Lord Jesus we are learning to be God’s children tasked with calling all of His children to join with us in this yoke.

And finally, God warns us to cast away every sin that clings and tangles looking to the Lord Jesus for your direction with every thought and move anticipating His joy at the the completion of the task.

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Incarnational Love

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Introduction

As we all know, Christmas is a celebration of the Incarnation of the Son of God. Not only was this Incarnation a great expression of love, if we are thinking scripturally we will come to see it as the very definition of love. And notice that this definition, in order to be a true definition, must be an incarnate definition. It must be a definition in 3-D.

The Text

“And now I beseech thee, lady, not as though I wrote a new commandment unto thee, but that which we had from the beginning, that we love one another. And this is love, that we walk after his commandments. This is the commandment, That, as ye have heard from the beginning, ye should walk in it. For many deceivers are entered into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an antichrist” (2 John 5–7).

Summary of the Text

Incarnational love is the way in which we must walk. John beseeches the unknown lady to whom he writes in this way. He pleads with her, not as though there were some new commandment. Rather, he pleads with her that we all continue to love one another. This is the same commandment that we have had from the beginning (v. 5). This is the commandment; this is the law of Christ. This is what love foundationally is—walking in the commandment. And what is the commandment? That we walk in love (v. 6). This is to be done with a basic wariness about deceivers. There are many deceivers out and about, many deceivers have entered the world. How are they to be identified? They are the ones who refuse to confess something—they refuse to confess that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. Such a one is a liar, a deceiver, a false teacher, an antichrist (v. 7).

Imperatives Flow from the Indicative

Let us begin with a brief grammar lesson. An indicative statement is a statement of fact. The door is open. This is simply a fact. We do not know who opened it, only that they did. When an indicative statement is made, the only thing you can do with it is believe it, or not. You either believe or refuse to believe it. The only thing you can do is confess it, or refuse to confess it. And the one thing you cannot do is obey an indicative statement. You cannot, in response to the door is open, spring up and say that you will open it right away. At least not without a great category confusion. You will only confuse yourself, and you will do nothing to the door.

This is not to say that there is no relationship between indicatives and imperatives. If someone were to tell you the door is open, and then command you to acknowledge that the door was open, this would be a command—an imperative—that presupposes knowledge of the facts, knowledge of the indicative.

Now according to our text Jesus Christ is God come in the flesh. This is a staggering fact, but still a fact for all that. Believe that He is come in the flesh is the imperative. Apostles and ministers, evangelists and church planters, not to mention all Christians, are all commissioned to go out into the world with a simple two-part message. 1. Declare the grand indicative; 2. Command all men everywhere to believe and confess the truth of what was just declared.

Love and Lies

From the day that sin entered our world, love has always been understood in contrast to its opposite. When God cursed the serpent, He established the antithesis between the seed of the serpent and the seed off the woman (Gen. 3:15). As long as God has a people that He is calling from this fallen world, the antithesis must be understood by all who would be faithful to Him.

In the Incarnation, God’s Son entered the world. It is striking that the same expression is used of the deceivers. They too have “entered the world,” many of them. Many deceivers come, and they come not confessing.

This means that there is no confession of the truth, no love of the truth, where there is not a rejection of the lie—a rejection of those who will not confess that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. “The fear of the Lord is hatred of evil. Pride and arrogance and the way of evil and perverted speech I hate” (Prov. 8:13, ESV).

You cannot love the wheat without hating the tares. You cannot love the patient without hating the cancer. You cannot love the sheep without hating the wolves. You cannot love the truth without hating the lie.

Confessing, Walking, Obeying, Loving

See how all these things are bound together. Those who do not obey the commandment are those who do not walk in love. Those who do not walk in love are those who will not confess the reality concerning of Jesus.

Before walking in love, walk around it first. Take it in. What I mean is this. Look at what it means to walk in love. It means to confess that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. This confession of the stupendous indicative cannot be made without finding yourselves immediately in the midst of loving your brothers and sisters.

What did walking in love mean for Jesus Christ? For Him, walking in love meant being God come in the flesh. For us, walking in love means confessing that this is who He is.

The love of God is the mirrored side of the law of God. James tells us that the law of God is like a plate glass window, and not like a series of French panes. If you break the law anywhere you have broken the whole thing (Jas. 2:10). But the glory of the new covenant is this—if you keep the gospel at any point, you have kept all of it.

No one is saved by a partial Jesus, and no one ever had a partial Christ. If you have Jesus at all, you have all of Him. And if you confess Him, you love Him. If you love Him, you are walking in Him. If you have the commandment at all, you have had it from the beginning. Salvation is a grand mystery, but one thing we can say about it is this—it is never parceled out. It is not distributed with a tea spoon.

The most miserable Christian who ever lived, provided he is a Christian, has no less of Jesus than the saintliest Christian ever. And this is because Christ was born in a stable, and He was given for us. All of Him was given for us. And so it is that we are saved to the uttermost.

“Wherefore he is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them” (Heb. 7:25).

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Wise Men and Worship

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Introduction

As we consider this familiar passage, I’d like us to view this as the story of kings and their worship. I’m not referring to the “We three kings of Orient are…” rather, just to the two kings––King Herod and King Jesus. The magi appear with the announcement that the King of the Jews has been born, and they have come in order to worship him. So who is the king and who gets the worship? We observe three responses to this worship for the king by the wise men, the Jewish religious leaders, and King Herod.

Ironic King of the Jews (vs. 1-3)

Mathew draws our attention to Herod being the king so we need to know what kind of king he was. By the time Jesus is born Herod has been ruling in Judea for around 40 years. He first came to power when Marc Antony (of the Cleopatra fame) made him the tetrach of the region and was then appointed “the King of the Jews” by the Roman Senate. The chronology of Herod’s life reads like the biography of a mob boss with regular hit jobs for rivals mingled with lavish checks to the neighborhood charities. So when Herod, the King of the Jews, hears the report of a new born “King of the Jews,” all his well sharpened survival instincts kick in.

The Magi and the Star (vs. 2)

Who are these men that cause a ruckus for Herod and Jerusalem? Matthew describes them as wise men or magi from the East. Before they became associated with the nativity scene, magi would have been associated with kings and the ruling class. “Magi” was the Babylonian or Persian title given to priests, astrologers physicians, sorcerers who various kings in the ancient world consulted for their skill in interpreting omens, signs, and the stars.

Once the magi arrive in Jerusalem they start asking around, “Where is he who has been born King of the Jews? For we have seen His star in the East…” Perhaps the star is a reference to Balaam’s prophecy in Numbers 24:17, “I see Him, but not now: I behold him, but not near; A Star shall come out of Jacob; A scepter shall rise out of Israel, and bater the brow of Moab, and destroy all the sons of tumult.” And so these pagan magi from foreign nations follow the star in order to worship the King of the Jews.

Indifferent Priests and Scribes (vs. 4-6)

Herod the King is trouble and so assembles all the chief priests and scribes together and asks, “Where the Christ was to be born?” Did you get that? Not just the King of the Jews, but the Christ. They respond, “Bethlehem” while pointing to Micah’s prophecy (Micah 5:2). The Christ, the long expected Messiah, the promised deliver will be born about six miles down the road from Jerusalem. The Magi have travelled for hundreds, if not thousands of miles, and Jewish religious leaders can’t be bothered to go less than ten miles to find their Christ.

Do we not find ourselves following the easy option of the scribes and the priests? We too know the Bible answers about the Christmas story. We’ve heard it, read it, sung it hundreds of times. But are we hesitant to worship? Perhaps we think it’s all too inconvenient. Perhaps we fear being reported by the palace’s holiday tolerance division. And so we remain comfortable and safe in our religious shelters.

Magi’s Worship

The magi follow the directions and the miraculous star leads them to Jesus. “When they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceedingly great joy” (vs. 10).  This the biblical language for jumping up in the air with high fives, fist pumps, sobbing tears and laughter. The magi bow down and worship the Christ child, the greatest gift God could give and has given. And from this worship they become like God and give their treasures. Here Jesus and Magi at the beginning picture what will happen at the end––all nations will come and bow down before Jesus Christ the King.

Christmas Reveals your Worship

Christmas reveals your worship. The question is not whether you will worship, but who will you worship? The options in this story were King Herod or King Jesus. But this new story presents itself as the Kingdom of Jesus continues to increase.

So here are the days we live in––Jesus has been born as the King of the Jews and the Messiah for the World. How ought you to respond? Don’t be like the scribes and chief priests. Don’t be content knowing all the facts about Christmas but indifferent to Jesus Christ. Don’t be like Herod who attempted to destroy King Jesus and his increasing kingdom. Those like Herod still actively seek to make Christmas Christ-less. Be like the wise men and worship. Celebrate your discovery that you have found the King. Bow before him and delight in the gift of the Son. Imitate the Father and offer him the treasures of your life. Splurge. Celebrate Christmas in such a way that makes Christ-less kings worry. Let your battle cry ring of “Merry Christmas.”

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