Sermon Tone Analysis

ALIENS AND STRANGERS

 

I guess it was a moment few of us will easily forget.

The South African helicopter was winching a woman from the roof  of her home in Mozambique.

The flood waters had claimed almost everything she needed for her life.

But there were a  few things she managed to salvage from the disaster, and they were wrapped up in a sheet or a bag.

As she was  winched up into the terrific down draft of the helicopter she lost her grip on the bag and it fell into the murky waters  below.

It was a wretched moment of loss.

One evening she went to bed with her life intact, the next morning it was all  washed away, and she was taken from home to a place where she would be a refugee from disaster.

I suppose human life’s always been the same, but I can’t help but feel that the years since the second world war have  been years of refugees.

Because we live in an age of total war, of terrible weapons, then people flee from the danger  of warfare in their thousands.

I remember little Polish families knocking on the door of our house in Manchester asking  if we could take them in because they were homeless.

I was just a little boy.

I felt sorry for them, but we lived in a two  up two down terraced house, and my mother had to turn them away.

It must be a wretched thing to be a refugee.

I can  understand them wanting to settle in a safe place.

And we’re facing some of the significant problems this brings to a  host nation.

The big question to be faced by a refugee is this - */Where DO I belong?/*

The powerful teaching of the NT is this - */every single Christian in this room now IS a refugee/*.

That’s what Peter  says in his letter written to a group of churches that were predominantly made up of non-Jewish Christians.

See *1  Peter 1:1, 17; 2:11*.

It’s particularly important for him to give these Christian people perspective because one of the  great issues of their day was *citizenship*.

They lived in the Roman Empire.

To become */persona non grata/* in the  state was extremely serious.

To be accorded the status of “citizen of Rome” was a huge privilege.

The state had the  power of life and death.

A furious wave of persecution was just being unleashed by this massive world power on the  Christian church.

Thousands of ordinary Christian men and women were about to die at the hands of the state.

And  Peter’s writing to give them the perspective of God.

And you are living in a society which has become infested from  top to bottom with secular humanism and which treats evangelical Christianity with casual contempt.

So, it’s important that Christians have a firm grip on the answer to the question - */where do I belong ... what’s my  status?/*

 

1.

you’re a refugee in this world

 

The moment you become a Christian is the moment you become a refugee.

Peter uses three words:- *scattered*, *strangers*, and *foreigners*.

You’ll see scattered and strangers in *1:1*, strangers in *1:17*, and strangers and foreigners  in *2:11*.

Scattered is from the Greek word */diaspora/*; strangers is from a word which means */a resident foreigner/*; and  foreigner is from a word that means someone who’s moved in alongside you, a resident alien.

That’s what Christians  are by nature in this world, resident aliens dispersed in a foreign country.

That’s one of the concepts that defines you.

In the travelling I’ve done, I always relish the moment when I arrive back at Heathrow and join the queue of those who  have a British passport and walk freely and without restriction into the land of my fathers.

When we arrived in Nepal in  January we realised what we were - foreigners and aliens.

We had to fill in detailed forms; we had to lose 25% of our  available cash to buy a temporary residents visa; we had to produce two passport photographs to be attached to  these forms; we had to give evidence that we were leaving when we said we were leaving.

The message was this -  you can come in, but you don’t belong here, you belong somewhere else.

So, when you open that British passport at  the desk in terminal three, and walk into the fatherland with a relieved grin on your face, it’s coming home.

Here I have  status.

There I had hardly any.

Now, for Peter to make these statements about Christians in this world, and therefore, about himself was nothing  short of amazing.

He came from the Jewish people.

The founder of their faith, Abraham, had lived for 120 years in  tents as an alien and stranger.

Their history was marked by a 400 year period in which they were aliens and strangers  in the land of Egypt to which Jacob had gone as a refugee.

While in Egypt they came to be treated as foreigners to be  hated, crushed and abused.

They left Egypt by the outstretched hand of a mighty God.

They were scattered as  strangers in the desert for 40 years.

Then at last they entered a promised land, and were given a place of their own.

They had an inheritance of a land flowing with milk and honey.

It was theirs.

It was home.

But because of their covenant breaking God allowed them to be invaded by foreign armies.

Thousands of them were  taken off to Babylon, they were scattered as resident aliens throughout the Babylonian and Persian empires.

They  hung their harps on the willow trees by the waters of babylon complaining that they couldn’t sing the Lord’s song in a  strange land.

They were the Diaspora, the scattered ones.

But many of them came back and re-settled themselves in  the land of their fathers.

They were back home.

And that was Peter’s identity.

He belonged to THAT people.

Israel was  his home.

Jerusalem was his city.

To his Jewish mind being an alien and a stranger was NOT what life should be  about.

Egypt was a place to be left behind, Babylon a place to be left behind.

Israel was the inheritance of the Jews  and the place which was their spiritual home.

But here’s the extraordinary thing - */he’s become an alien and a stranger, a scattered one, again/*.

Israel is no longer  his state, and Jerusalem is no longer his city.

Because Peter’s now a Christian, and he’s a refugee in this present  world.

You’ll see in *1:3-4* - that the promised land for Peter is no longer Israel, it’s that */inheritance reserved in heaven for  the people of God, an inheritance they won’t properly occupy until the last day when Jesus comes/*.

You’ll see  in *2:6* that the Jerusalem or *ZION* to which Peter belongs is no longer the earthly Jerusalem but the heavenly one, and  the *temple* which God is building now has Jesus as the cornerstone, born again Christians as the bricks, and  Christian worship and service as the sacrifices.

That’s my home now, says Peter.

And here in this present world I’m a scattered alien resident.

And that’s exactly what  you’ve become if you’re a Christian.

You live here but you don’t belong here.

a. its customs are alien to you

*4:1-3*.

It’s the description of a society which is being led along by appetite and desire.

The words refer to unrestrained  behaviour, heavy drinking, partying.

It’s a society that says “if it itches scratch it, if you want it have it, if you’ve got an  urge satisfy it.

Don’t worry about consequences, don’t fret about self-control, let it all hand out”.

I know of respectable  middle class business people who reserve Saturday evenings for getting drunk.

That’s the night they’ve set aside for  over-indulgence.

We’ve created a society where we print money, borrow money, use money so that we can have  what we want as soon as we want it.

Gambling is a huge nationally institutionalised industry.

We’ll bet on anything  that moves.

We’ve created a vast medical machinery for getting rid of babies that aren’t wanted.

We must have our  sexual appetite satisfied and if a human being is conceived as a result and the coming of that human being is  inconvenient then there’s a big machine that will pull it out and throw it away.

If you think about our society’s attitude to drink, food, money, sex, pleasure, leisure, possessions, drugs.

You’ll know,  you’ll know not least in reference to student life - that the one thing you shouldn’t have to do is put a restraint on your  appetites.

Such a society is essentially *idolatrous*.

It’s made a god of this and that created thing.

The true God has been buried  out of sight, and we live for what’s false.

My needs, my appetites, my desires are king; they’re my only reference point,  they’re the touchstone of reality.

I shop, therefore I am.

I want therefore I shall have.

Well, says Peter, you used to live in that world; but it’s customs have become alien to you.

And so you’ve become an  alien to it.

b.