1 Peter 2

Discussion Questions

1. How does the Kingdom of God manifest itself in your attitude, actions and work ethic?
2. What do you do with your spare time? Where do you spend your resources?
3. Are we talking about the mighty deeds of God?

Transcript

We study through books of the Bible here at The Village Chapel, and we have extra copies. If you didn’t bring one with you and you would like one to follow along, maybe I can get somebody to jump up over here. I think we’ve got somebody in the back coming down. Just raise your hand up if you’d like a copy to follow along. We’re going to look at the second chapter of 1 Peter this morning.

I don’t know if you’ve ever felt like your spiritual life stalled out or you hit a plateau or maybe you felt like you were just kind of wandering in circles. Here at The Village Chapel, we want you to know you’re not alone. Most of us here in this room have felt that way at some point in our spiritual journey as well. John Stott once said that holiness is not a condition into which we drift. So, what is the New Testament understanding of holiness, that kind of growth in the Lord and in God’s salvation? What does that look like? What are the things that prevent us from growing? What are the things that perhaps, maybe more importantly, encourage us in our growth in our faith?

So, we’re going to look at 1 Peter, Chapter 2, and I think we’re going to find some of the answers to those questions there. If you look up on the screen, you’ll see the QR code. You can download some of the notes and quotes if you would like. And then if you’ll turn in your Bibles, like I said, we’ll read the text here in just a moment. I would like to offer a prayer for illumination first:

Lord, for all who are spiritually weary and need rest, for all who mourn and long for comfort, for all who struggle and desire victory, for all who sin and know they need a Savior, for all who feel like strangers and need a community, for all who hunger and thirst after righteousness, and for whomever will come; may this church open wide, both our doors and our arms. And may we, at The Village Chapel, offer the warmest of welcomes in the name of our Lord Jesus. As we approach Your Word today, may You give us a clearer vision of Your truth, a greater faith in Your power and a more confident assurance of Your love for us. In Jesus’ name we pray this. Amen and amen.

Just a reminder as we read through Chapter 2, this is God’s Word, unique in its source, timeless in its truth, broad in its reach and transforming in its power. Let’s open our hearts to hear from God and His word as we look here at Chapter 2. “Therefore, putting aside all malice and all guile and hypocrisy and envy and slander, like newborn babes long for the pure milk of the word that by it you may grow in respect to salvation, if you have tasted the kindness of the Lord. And coming to Him as to a living stone rejected by men, but choice and precious in the sight of God, you also, as living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house for a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For this is contained in Scripture:

“‘Behold I lay in Zion, a choice stone, a precious cornerstone. And he who believes in Him shall not be disappointed.’ This precious value, then, is for you who believe; but for those who disbelieve, ‘The stone which the builders rejected, this became the very corner stone’ and ‘A stone of stumbling and a rock of offense’; for they stumble because they’re disobedient to the word, and to this doom they were also appointed. But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light; for you once were not a people, but now you are the people of God; you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

“Beloved, I urge you, as aliens and strangers, to abstain from fleshly lusts which wage war against the soul. Keep your behavior excellent among the Gentiles, so that in the thing in which they slander you as evildoers, they may on account of your good deeds, as they observe them, glorify God in the day of visitation. Submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake to every human institution, whether to a king as the one in authority, or to governors as sent by Him for the punishment of evildoers and the praise of those who do right. For such is the will of God that by doing right you may silence the ignorance of foolish men. Act as free men, and do not use your freedom as a covering for evil but use it as bondslaves of God. Honor all men, love the brotherhood, fear God, honor the king.

“Servants, be submissive to your masters with all respect, not only to those who are good and gentle, but also to those who are unreasonable. For this finds favor if for the sake of conscience toward God, a man bears up under sorrows when suffering unjustly. For what credit is there if, when you sin and are harshly treated, you endure it with patience? But if when you do what is right and suffer for it you patiently endure it, this finds favor with God. For you’ve been called for this purpose since Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example for you to follow in His steps who committed no sin nor was any deceit found in His mouth; and while being reviled, He [Christ] did not revile in return; while suffering, He uttered no threats, but kept entrusting Himself to Him who judges righteously; and He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness; for by His wounds you were healed. For you were continually straying like sheep, but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Guardian of your souls.” This is the word of the Lord. Praise be to God.

Yeah, so much good stuff here. Last week, Pastor Tommy quoted the pithy but powerful saying that Dallas Willard had written, “The most powerful form of spiritual warfare is obedience.” Isn’t that interesting? What commands stand at the center of all Jesus’ teachings? Love God and love one another, right? 1 Peter 1 closed out with the imperative, look at verse 22 in 1 Peter 1, you read it last week, that you’re to love one another from the heart. Now, how many of you, when you were a little kid in the back seat of your car with one of your siblings, your parents turned around when you were misbehaving with your sibling, you’re fighting or whatever, and your parents turned around and said, “Don’t make me stop this car”?

My mom, who was the sweetest, most lovable person on the planet, when we drove across country one time and she would turn around and say, “Say you’re sorry.” And I’d say, “I’m sorry!” And then she’d say, “Now say it like you mean it.” And she knew the difference between what it sounded like. And so here, the Apostle Peter, echoing the words of Jesus over and over again many times, telling His disciples that they are to love one another from the heart. What does that look like? What would that look like in your life with the person that annoys you the most? Would he have to say, “Don’t make me stop this car”? Or are you already so eager, so full of love, so overflowing? Listen, if you are, thank you, you probably need to find another church.

We are struggling here, all of us, with what it means to actually love people who annoy us. We all drive on the highways, the same highways, and find ourselves angry at the way other people drive. We are impatient with people in our own house who can’t seem to get ready on time, especially for church. And we’re upset at people over any number of different things in this world for the way that they do things, the way that they behave. I love that we’re told love one another from the heart.

A fellow pastor here in town, He’s retired now, but Ray Ortlund Jr. once posted this on his blog – I love it – he said, “The beautiful ‘one another commands’ of the New Testament are famous…” This won’t be up on the screen; it’s too long for me to put up there, but he says, “but it’s also striking to notice the one another’s that do not appear in the Bible.” Okay, get ready to be uncomfortable. “For example, sanctify one another, humble one another, scrutinize one another, pressure one another, embarrass one another, corner one another, interrupt one another, defeat one another, sacrifice one another, shame one another, marginalize one another, exclude one another, judge one another, run one another’s lives.” Anybody elbowing you? “Confess one another’s sins.” I once had a dream that I actually did that from this pulpit. Your sins, I confessed them publicly.

Ray closed this out. He said, “The kind of God we believe in is revealed in the way we treat one another.” He’s right. All non-gospels, all other ways of thinking about others and thinking about ourselves in the world, even thinking about God in the world, all other non-gospels put self at the center and eventually lead us to treat one another as the repugnant other or enemies or people that have what we want and so we’re envious or covetous of them.

So contrary to the way that people treat one another in this world, when left to themselves with self at the center, the beautiful gospel of Jesus redirects us to love one another, to speak highly of one another, to serve one another and to treat one another like royalty. It’s pretty beautiful. How refreshingly practical is this? How foreign it sounds in our own day and time overflowing with the river of rancor, cresting the sides of that river. Even as we go into an election year, the acrimony, all of that.

Peter says, “We are to live differently.” Now, Sermon on the Mount, which I’ll begin marinating in for the next six weeks, is much like that as well. You read it and you go, “What? You want me to what?” And further, it’s here as well that there’s some debate about whether that’s an imperative in verse 1 or just an exhortation. In other words, he might be saying, “Live out of everything you’ve read in Chapter 1, live out of that because when you do, since you don’t have malice in your heart, since you aren’t hypocrites any longer, since you aren’t envious of one another, long for the pure milk of the word.” So, it’s not just don’t. It’s, “Go over here and do this.” He’s redirecting us in so many ways.

He’s also saying that your biography as a Christian, now that you’re a Christian, your biography, your story is actually written out of your ontology. That is the kind of being that you are. Ontology is the study of being. The kind of being you have now become in Christ is actually supposed to be writing the story of your life. And so, the indicatives, which are about who you are now in Christ, those begin to turn into imperatives. Here’s what it looks like, or exhortation. Here is what it looks like.

So we are, throughout this book, and really throughout the New Testament, we’re going to find, woven together, several lists of indicatives and imperatives. Clusters of imperatives or let’s call it commands because there’s some debate about whether the verb in Chapter 1 is in the imperative or not. But let’s just say they are commands or exhortations. And the indicatives that are in verses 9 and 10 there, look at that real quick. These are indicatives. “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation of people for God’s own possession.” That’s pretty amazing. Do you think of the person next to you as a part of the royal priesthood of those who go before the Lord and offer sacrifices of praise? Do you think of those that you’re standing in the midst of as a chosen people, a chosen race of people?

I mean the vision of the Christian Gospel, as we look to the end of the Bible in the book of Revelation, is people from every tribe, every tongue, every nation, every people group. If you’re uncomfortable with that, that first couple of weeks in Heaven is going to be kind of strange for you. “What are you doing here? What are you doing here? What are you doing here?” is all you’re going to be thinking. And it’s going to be an amazingly beautiful tapestry of God’s created beings gathered together who responded in repentance and faith, standing together before the Lamb and worshiping the Lamb of God.

Let me give you four urgent exhortations that I see here in this particular passage. I’ll put them all up to the screen in one slide for you. Hunger for the Word, come to Christ, worship Christ and proclaim Christ. Live as aliens and strangers and follow Christ. You want to promote growth in God’s salvation in your own life, if you’re interested in that, if you’re curious about that? I mean, “How come I feel stalled sometimes? How come I feel like it undulates too much and I’m down in the trough right now? How do I get out of that?” And I’m not saying it’s just a push-button, mechanical kind of thing, but I love the instruction that we get from the Apostle Peter, the Apostle Paul, from Jesus. It’s all really practical. It’s all really helpful.

Some of us might be going to say, “Hey, tell me what the rules are to follow” and instead they give us these principles – Jesus does, Paul does, Peter does. Here’s some principles that are really important. When you use your words, don’t use them to tear other people down. And so, because some of us might think differently about what that looks like, he gives us five words that really describe how we might use our words to tear other people down. He says, “Put off malice.” So, I’ll say, “Okay, put off any kind of wicked thoughts you had toward somebody or evil intentions you have towards somebody.” Put off deceit, okay? Guile. You, in some way, want to be deceptive so you can take advantage of them.

Hypocrisy, that’s just merely insincerity. That’s merely when you are playing a part. And some role, it’s like an actor, and you’re attempting to manipulate this situation. You want to either look holy in somebody else’s eyes, more holy than you actually are, or you’re trying to do something to manipulate them in some way. Put off hypocrisy. Envy, which is really the opposite of gratitude, isn’t it? Can you be thankful? I ask you right now. Can you be thankful for the success of another? Or for you, does it just make you so mad they got that or that they have achieved this, or God’s been kind to them in some way and not to you in that same way or whatever? Envy is a very cancerous part of our heart.

Slander. Any speech intended to harm somebody, their status, their reputation. Man, this can happen in a church. It’s really important that we don’t do that. Really important. Peter instructs us to lay aside these things. I love the verb there in verse 1, “putting aside.” It’s “apotithemi” in the Greek. It can be used in a literal sense, like in Acts chapter 7 when everybody was taking off their coats, they were laying them aside at the foot of a guy named Saul as they took up stones to stone, the first Christian martyr, a man named Stephen. And they literally laid aside their coats and Saul, who later becomes Paul, was the one watching over those coats. It could be used literally that this putting aside, it can also be used symbolically like when Jesus, in John, Chapter 13, laid aside His robes, took up a towel and wrapped it around Himself, and then He went around and washed the feet of His disciples, and it was very symbolic that He would lay aside His robe to serve His disciples. And we’re to do that as well as followers of Jesus.

But here it’s used metaphorically. He’s saying, “Lay aside” as if you were just taking off a piece of clothing, a jacket or something like that, “lay aside malice.” It’s going to rise up in your heart at some point because there are, honestly, there really are, the Bible’s pretty honest too, there really are some annoying people on the planet. And I like that about the Christian faith, that it’s honest about that. There really are. And guess what? I’m one of them sometimes, and so are you. Somebody’s thinking of us right now. But we’re to put aside those things that well up inside of us that we want to say something like that and instead, hunger for the Word, he says in verse 2, “Like newborn babes.”

And this isn’t about Peter writing to young Christians. This is more about using the babe’s hunger. They let you know when they’re ready to eat, don’t they? We hear from them. They’re pretty good at that. And we’re supposed to be that eager and that passionate for the Word of God, hungry for the Word of God. That’s why we study through books of the Bible here at The Village Chapel. We want to respond to God in this same way. Be hungry for His Word.

Secondly, come to Christ, worship Christ, proclaim Christ. Look at verses 4 through 10 again, if you will. “Come to Him as to a living stone.” He’s the living stone. “Rejected by men, but choice and precious.” And that’s precious not in the sense of fragile, but in the sense of valuable. Okay? “So come to Him. And He’s precious in that.” That’s beautiful. “He was rejected by men, but He’s precious in the sight of God. You also then are as living stones.” In other words, here’s Jesus. He’s the living stone. Now you, be little living stones. He’s the cornerstone. You be a living stone that’s part of this same holy temple that the Lord is building. I love the way he uses these architectural images here. And he says, this is contained in Scripture, throughout the Old Testament there’s about 51 references to Scripture. And this is always a reference to the Old Testament for Jesus, for His disciples. They would’ve grown up knowing their Old Testament really, really well.

He quotes from Isaiah 28 here and Psalm 118, and He talks about this stone that became the cornerstone, that the builders rejected it, but it became the very cornerstone. Some people stumble over it. Some people see it as a rock of offense from Isaiah 8. So, there’s all of that there, and I appreciate that. And then he goes right into these indicatives that you are a chosen race, that you are a royal priesthood, that you are a people for God’s own possession, that you may proclaim, out of those in indicatives, that you may proclaim the excellencies of Christ.

So come to Christ, worship Christ, proclaim Christ. Are we doing that? We want to grow spiritually, right? Are we then doing that? Are we hungry for the Word? Are we coming to Christ? Do we still go to Christ? I’m glad you come to The Village Chapel, but I really hope you’re coming to Christ and over and over and over again and bowing before Him. When you catch a glimpse of His majesty and His beauty, you keep going back. But if you just think He’s a statue or just a concept or just an idea or a philosophy or something like that, that’s not in any way going to capture your heart. You need to go to Him. He’s the Lord. He’s our king. We need to see Him that way and worship Him and then go out and proclaim Him.

And then as regards our relationship with the world in which we live, verses 11 through 20, we’re to live as aliens and strangers, pilgrims and exiles. There’s several different ways this is interpreted in your English translation. Some of us, though, live as if we’re natives of this world, meaning this world system, the way it thinks, the things that it values, the things that it finds exciting. Some of us think this is our place, our world, our kingdom, and Peter’s trying to remind us, “No, with all of those indicatives, you have been completely remade.” You’ve been born again, Jesus would say. The Apostle Paul would say, “You’re a new creation.” It’s not just a tune up. You’re a new creation in Christ and therefore your entire identity is different. It’s completely different. It won’t be found in money or sex or power or any variations of those three themes which this world worships and puts at the center of all of who they are. Now those things have their proper place in God’s scheme, but it’s not first. They’re not first.

When Christ is preeminent, then we get all of those other things in their proper place. And then we also feel like we’re a little bit aliens and strangers. Why? Well, because we value things differently than the world around us does. We look at the world differently. We even look at other people differently. And for us, because we’re Jesus’ followers, and Jesus came for the most vile sinner on the planet, even the ones that put nails in His hands, even the ones that manipulated the whole thing, Jesus came and died for all of them. So, if anybody would have a claim to be able to see others as repugnant others, it would be Jesus. And yet He died for them, and He served them, and He even washed their feet and He healed many of them. And I’m one and you’re one as well.

So now for us, because we belong to Jesus and He’s changed us completely, He turned us inside out, we now are set free from malice and envy. We’re set free from that because Christ is living in me. When malice rises up, I can say, “Nah, no home here. Take that somewhere else.” And that’s what Peter is asking us to do, to lay that aside, to not allow that to rise up. How does the kingdom of God manifest itself in your attitudes, your actions? How about your work ethic? Are you just making sure nobody sees that you’re doing what you’re doing at work? Or are you making sure that people might have an inflated sense of what you’re doing at work? We all do these kinds of things, but I think it’s good to ask ourselves about these things.

Believers, what sets you apart? What sets you apart? How does your kingdom of God manifest itself in your attitudes, actions, work ethic, the way you manage your relationships? How about that? I mean, there are some people that think they’re really loving someone when what they’re really doing is using them. And the other person finds some solace in being used because they think they’re being needed, and they don’t want to be alone. And loneliness is an epidemic in our world. But they’re not really experiencing love. They’re being consumed, not communed with. We need to see love as not as what we get out of something, but how we can give ourselves away to another person for their good, not for our good, not how we can use them. Do you understand the difference? I hope that you do. And then in all things of course, we’re a follower of Christ, verses 21-25, He is a supreme example of faithfulness.

Look at that. Even in the midst, and through this chapter as he talks about suffering, he talks about it’d be one thing if you did what was wrong and you paid some price, you had some penalty, you suffered for it in some way for doing what’s wrong – that’s one thing. But He’s calling us like Jesus to do the right things. And even if we suffer for them not to get all crazy and riled up and yelling and screaming at somebody else, demanding this or that, but rather be like Jesus, follow in His footsteps. What does it look like to suffer following in Jesus’ footsteps? I encourage you to read the Gospels and to see what happened there.

It’s pretty amazing. He endured social ridicule, political injustice and horrific physical suffering. When I look at Him and when I read about His suffering, we came to the end of our study of Matthew’s Gospel, and then I taught through Mark’s Gospel on timeless truth, and it got to the end again and I just kept thinking about the passion week. And we’ve just come through that on this calendar year, no matter what time of year somebody may be watching this. That’s what we’ve gone through. We’ve read through the suffering, the passion of the Christ, His suffering. And it was unbelievably horrific. How did He do it? I don’t understand how He did that.

And even on the cross for Him to say, “Father, forgive them.” Oh wow. Do I think that way when somebody offends? Do we think that way? Really important for us to consider these things. Hunger for the Word, come to Christ, worship Christ, proclaim Christ. Live as aliens and strangers. Look, if it feels weird to you when you’re following Jesus, it ought to. If it doesn’t ever feel weird to you, I ask myself the question, “If it doesn’t ever feel weird to me, am I really following Jesus?” Maybe I’m not. Maybe I am really comfortable in the milieu of this world and the way it thinks and acts. We need to find ourselves as aliens and strangers from time to time and then following Jesus in all things. I put it in contemporary language for you.

Would you read all five of these with me? Five practices to help you grow in God’s salvation? Let’s read it out loud:  Refocus your aim. Renew your intention to loving obedience. Redirect your affections. Reorder your priorities. Rely on the Holy Spirit.

There you go. Refocus your aim. The bullseye is no longer self or expressive individualism. The bullseye is now Jesus. Our aim is Jesus, to be like Him, to love Him, to serve Him, to worship Him, to proclaim Him, to glorify Him, to delight in God’s wisdom, God’s will, God’s ways as we study God’s word. That’s the new bullseye. That’s why we refocus our aim. We renew our commitment to loving obedience.

Am I ready to proactively and intentionally obey God even when it becomes costly and inconvenient and runs against my “desires”? I’ll just tell you; I’ve been on the planet long enough to know this is true. The heart will always make a convert of the head. You might in your head believe XYZ, but when your wanter wants something, you’ll find all kinds of ways to justify going after it. And if that makes you uncomfortable, I’m glad. It makes me uncomfortable too. We must stir ourselves up a little bit to see the reality of our proclivity towards sin and to flirt with temptation. It’s very important for us. Peter doesn’t mind reminding us over and over and over again of the things we need to be reminded of.

You can go to a lot of churches who are just going to tell you, “You are the most shiny, happy people in the world, and you dress up really nice and you’re beautiful. Ain’t God good? Let’s go get your best life right now.” There’s tons of that out there. I don’t know about you. I just got tired of all that. It just feels like false flattery because I know how I can make a mess of my own life by focusing on me all the time. And I know that when I turn to Jesus and He’s my aim and glorifying Him is what’s important to me, all of a sudden, I become a more tolerable pastor, a more tolerable husband, a more tolerable son and neighbor because the Gospel transforms us.

Renew your commitment to loving obedience. Redirect your affections. Long for the pure milk of the Word. The Word will stir faith as it informs, inspires and encourages you. What other things are vying for attention and affection? What people, places and props are impeding your spiritual growth and might need to go? I can’t answer for you. I can only answer for me. This [cell phone] device in and of itself… We got this Biblical Thinking thing coming up. I’m really excited about it. This device in and of itself is not evil, but what I do with it could lead me astray, could block my growth, impede my spiritual growth. So, I’m so glad we’re going to have that conversation, I encourage you to come to that, especially if you, like me, have found yourself scrolling and then all of a sudden you wake up and half an hour is gone, and you’ve been on this device. It’s just drawn you in like a magnet, like a siren song.

We need to redirect our affections. We need to reorder our priorities. What are your priorities in life? What’s the most important thing to you? How can you tell what’s the most important thing? Well, there’s a couple of tests, I think. What do you do with your spare time or any chance you have a moment to think for yourself and do whatever you want to do? What do you do? Where do you spend your resources mostly? What is really at the top of your list of things? Like if you’ve got resources, what do you spend those resources on? That kind of starts to tell you what your priorities are, right? And remember, priorities is plural. I get that. But there has to be something that is preeminent that helps govern and lead and guide you in your choice of priorities and your setting of priorities. What is that? Who is that I should ask? Because for some of us, it’s going to be yourself. You’re going to think that that’s what the way the world shapes and forms us, so think that way. Put you at the center.

It’s like the most important people in the world are me, myself and I. That’s just not the way it is with biblical thinking at all. Jesus first makes Jim a better Jim and a better husband and a better neighbor and a better pastor. Priorities. So important. Rely on the Holy Spirit and all of these things will be added. I’ve got to say this. What Peter and what the new Testament is calling us to do is all founded and grounded on what Christ has already done. That’s why the indicatives come and then the imperatives. That’s why they’re woven together. Because this isn’t just a list of rules to unfold and you start checking the box, “Oh, beatitude one, beatitude two, beatitude three, whatever.” No. No, this is something Christ has already done. These aren’t the requirements of salvation. These are the results of salvation. You get it? You see the difference, right? This is what God wants to work in my life and into your life as well.

A few quotes for you, and I’ll let you go. “We must actively cultivate a Christian life. Holiness is not a condition into which we drift.” I quoted that earlier, but I just want to be able to give that to you in writing as well.

“Holiness is always the saved sinner’s response of gratitude for grace received.”
J.I. Packer, Rediscovering Holiness

Yeah. We study through books of the Bible, but not just for information and not even just for inspiration. We really are seeking transformation. So, when Peter says, “Hunger like newborn babes for the Word,” it’s because you’re desiring God to take the power of the Word by the power of the Holy Spirit and work it into your life. Everything we’re commanded to do here, like I say, is grounded in what God has already done for us in the person and work of Christ.

Holiness is ultimately about living. It’s not about living up to a moral standard; it’s about living in Christ and living out of our real vital union with Jesus. And in regard to the community of faith, I think this is so important in our day and age. I love hearing this church sing. I have the privilege of sitting right in the front row and it just comes this way. When the choir is up here, it’s like boom, I’m like the middle of a sandwich. The singing comes this way, the singing comes this way. It’s an amazing place to sit right in the middle of all of that. So, it’s the church doing what the church ought to do, worshiping the Lord. Living that out then in relationships so that we are a city on a hill, a light that cannot be hidden.

An example of an antidote to the watching world, to all of the acrimony and chaos and rancor that’s out there, look at those people. And they don’t all vote the same way. They’re not all the same age. They’re not all from the same socioeconomic background. They’re not all from the same country. They’re not at all. So, when you look at that and you see it at work, it’s the Gospel at work transforming lives because of our union with Christ. He has united us to each other as well. And as Ed Clowney said,

“The holiness of the church means that life, as well as truth, marks Christ’s church; the behavior of Christians in the world must be remarkable enough to cause grudging, admiration, astonished curiosity or threatening hostility.”
Edmund P. Clowney, The Church

You got to lean into that for just a minute.

Look at that. That’s pretty amazing. Grudging admiration. “Yeah, I know what they like. I know that. I know that’s working. I know.” There’s a lot of curmudgeons in the world. And if they see people learning to love one another well… And I love that about James Bearden who was up here doing our introduction. I love that about our 50s Plus Class. You guys in the 50s+ class, you love each other really, really well. There you go. Yeah, that’s right. We got a few. And you also lead the way in Amening. I like that. That’s good too.

And we have the same thing going on in some other groups. I’m not leaving those groups out. It’s just that when James was up here, he made me think about how well you all love each other. That’s visible. That’s living out the word of God. And I think it’s so important for us to be encouraged in that with each other.

“My confidence today that God will accept me if I die now is not based upon my experience of the Spirit’s unfinished work within my life but is based upon the completed work of Christ upon the cross.”
Alistair Begg

You see that? So, it’s allowing the Christ life to well up inside of us. And so, Peter tells us what that looks like. It looks like laying aside all of these things. It looks like allowing yourself to see others around you who are believers as part of this royal priesthood, this holy nation, this group of people who are strangers and aliens in a world that’s a little bit counter to the way we live and the things that we value.

So, I would close our study today with these three admonitions. Let’s grow in God’s salvation. That’s in verse 3. He says, “Long for the pure milk of the word,” and here’s the purpose, “that by it, you may grow in respect to salvation.” I mean, I know some people who have been Christians for years and years and years and they’ve made no progress almost. I hope that’s not you. I hope you look back and you go, “Yeah.” And the more you grow, by the way, you don’t get haughty about growing. As a matter of fact, if anything, you get humble. You look back and go, “I can’t believe God was patient with me through all of that foolishness that I exhibited or that I embraced.” And as you grow, you get more like Jesus, meaning more humble, more willing to lay down your life. So, 50s Plus should be the humblest group in the entire church.

But I’ll go with Warren Wiersbe and say this, just because we got a number of years on our body doesn’t mean we’ve matured. I don’t care how old you are, whether you’re in your teens or your 20s or whatever, it doesn’t matter. If you think you’ve got humility, you don’t. If you don’t think you have a problem with pride, you probably do. That’s the irony. That’s the paradox of the kind of work that Jesus wants to do in us. But let’s grow in God’s salvation. Let’s taste the kindness of the Lord. I love that phrase right there. In the Greek it’s chrēstos hoi kurois. I’m going to make a great T-shirt, by the way. Chrēstos hoi kurois, the kindness of the Lord. Let’s grow in that. This world is unkind. Civility is going out the window. Let’s show what it looks like to be a group of people that might even differ and disagree on some things but learn to love each other because of Jesus. You want to do that? I want to do that.

And let’s return over and over again, the last of the three admonitions, to the Guardian and Shepherd of ourselves. We keep doing that, we keep touching base, we keep returning to Jesus. Just like in Acts, Chapter 3, after this overwhelming evangelistic response, all these people come to Christ, they’re converted. And then there’s this amazing event that happens at Pentecost where these people are speaking in tongues. People are hearing them say things in their own languages. Languages that these people speaking had not studied or grown up speaking. They were hearing them speak in their own languages. What they were hearing was they were talking about verse 11, I think it says, “The mighty deeds of God.” It wasn’t just ecstatic speech. It was way more than that. It was speaking of the mighty deeds of God. Are we talking about those? We should be talking about the mighty deeds of God: We, the people who have been transformed. We, the people who have been born, again. We, the people who are now new creations in Christ.

Let’s pray: Father, may the good seed of Your Word find fertile soil in our hearts and minds today. May the Holy Spirit use our study of your Word to grow us up in your salvation. Reveal to us our need of You, Lord Jesus. Draw us to Yourself. Show us how open wide Your arms are, how gentle and lowly You are for sinners such as we are. And may Your Word take root and bear fruit in our lives for the glory of King Jesus, in whose name we pray. Amen and amen.