Chosen: A Message for All of Us

You can turn to 1 Peter 3 verses 8-12 today

And as you are turning there...

Overseer

The Christian world lost a giant of the faith this past week

Tim Keller lost the battle to pancreatic cancer

He was a pastor, apologist, teacher

He founded The Gospel Coalition—an organization to provide resources and support to pastors to help them communicate the truth of the Gospel effectively and clearly across cultures and generations

“The Christian Gospel is that I am so flawed that Jesus had to die for me, yet I am so loved and valued that Jesus was glad to die for me. This leads to deep humility and deep confidence at the same time. It undermines both swaggering and sniveling. I cannot feel superior to anyone, and yet I have nothing to prove to anyone. I do not think more of myself nor less of myself. Instead, I think of myself less.” - Timothy Keller (1950 - 2023)

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1 Peter 3:8-12 “8 Finally, all of you, have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind. 9 Do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, bless, for to this you were called, that you may obtain a blessing. 10 For “Whoever desires to love life and see good days, let him keep his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking deceit; 11 let him turn away from evil and do good; let him seek peace and pursue it. 12 For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and his ears are open to their prayer. But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.””

Finally, ALL of you—instructions given to all of us

Ah, finally something for everyone

Maybe you aren’t married

Not a husband or a wife

Not a servant

Don’t really have trouble following your government

Well, here is something for you. For all of us

what we discover in the passage today is…well, nothing new.

Peter simply tells us what hopefully we have heard over and over again

How the people of God should live with each other

Sometime stated in these exact words, and sometimes worded differently

And all of these things in our passage today you have heard me say, and I’m sure you heard Perry and Leon and John and those before them say these exact thing

And they sound so simple, so basic, so obvious

Yet, we have trouble living them, don’t we?

Because these things don’t come naturally to us.

We are not naturally unified

We are not naturally sympathetic, fully of love, tenderhearted and humble

We naturally want to pay evil for evil and to mouth back at those who have said something wrong about us

But it’s for this very reason that we are given these instructions.

It’s because what Peter is describing are those whom God has “called out” to be holy and chosen people

Those in whom God’s image is being made ever more bright and clear.

And we need to be reminded of these things often to keep our vision clear, and our hearts fixed on Him

Have unity of mind

And we just have to stop here for a bit, even though we have heard this so often

Unity of mind:

This is SO important.

This is what church is all about. Unity

After all, this was the prayer of Jesus even before He left this earth:

John 17:11…Holy Father, keep them (that is His followers) in your name, which you have given to me, that they may be one, even as we are one

Jesus’ desire for His followers is that they would be ONE. Unified!

The bible gives us two pictures of what a church is like

In Romans 12 and 1 Cor. 12, we have the picture of Church being a body—Christ’s body

In Eph. 2:19 church is called a “household”. It’s like a family.

And in these two pictures, it’s easy to see how important unity is

Body

it’s hard for a body to function if a limb has been broken

Or if there is a terminal disease—cancer taking over the body

It’s hard for that body to be “unified”

Family

If a family member is having serious relationship issues

Maybe spends most of their time in their room and only comes down for a meal and then disappears

Or maybe has left the home in anger and refuses to talk to the other family members

It’s hard to feel like that family is unified, isn’t it

Having unity of mind. This is the make or break point of church—whether or not we have unity of mind

The indication of whether or not a church is healthy and functioning properly

There’s so much that could be said here

It’s so simple. Unity: one simple 5 letter word

Yet we can make it so complex…so confusing

I would assume that all those who meet together regularly as the Church of Jesus and who use the Bible to discover what He wants us to know

I would assume that we have all read these words multiple time: Have unity

But, we still don’t quite have it figured out, do we?

As we look out over the church around the world, we still have different factions, denominations

Arguments, church splits

And here in this community, it’s hard for us as churches to agree on some things and to get behind a common mission or goal

Here at Fairview, how are we doing on this?

Notice, we aren’t commanded here to have

Unity of dress standards

Unity of living standards

Unity of “music standards”

But we are commanded to have unity of mind

And I would ask, “How are we doing with this here at Fairview?” Do we understand what is being commanded here?

It was 6 months ago yesterday that Darren was with us…Nov. 20

He challenged us to a reset

Maybe at the time it was hard for us to understand what we were committing to

But perhaps he was challenging us to this very thing that Peter commands here

It was a challenge to have unity of mind

Maybe the challenge was to figure out what we are going to agree on, rather than focus on what we disagree over

And that can be such a huge challenge for us. Because sometimes the things that we disagree over seem to loom over everything else

they occupy our minds,

They are what we talk about

Think about and agonize over

But how would it be if we understood more clearly what unity of mind looks like?

You know, wouldn’t it be nice if Jesus had created a big sign for us that said, “This is what it means to be unified, or to have unity of mind”

And He had made it super-specific

And He would have said, “IN order for you to be unified, you have to....

Live the same

Dress the same

Speak the same

Worship the same

That way we could read it and say, Yep, doing good here and here and here, need work here, that’s fine there

But that’s not what we find in Scripture

It’s not that those things aren’t important. Rather, it’s not where we find the emphasis placed on when it comes to unity

Rather, in a broad sense, what we have been discovering in 1 Peter is that Unity of mind means understanding what draws us together

Understanding why it is that we call ourselves a church in the first place

Understanding why we meet together to worship and encourage each other

What is unity of mind?

Unity of mind starts with understanding our foundation

What our foundation is

WHO our foundation is

That is, the Rock, the Chief Cornerstone, Jesus Christ

chapter 2 calls Jesus the Chief Cornerstone, and we are being built up as a spiritual house

Individual stones, yet all part of the same house, the same construction

It means understanding and agreeing together that all of us, together, have been called out, by our LORD, that is Jesus Christ, the Head and Chief Shepherd of the Church

Called out to be holy, set apart. Unique

We are united together in the name of Jesus, just as He prayed for us to be

Unity of mind means understanding what it means to be citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven

And that is why we drafted and read those statements together

That is why we renewed our commitment to

Hear and obey the commands of Jesus

To guard our words

To reconcile quickly

to carry the light of Jesus to our neighbors

We drafted those statements to remind us of the kind of things that we agree on. At least should agree on

And I’m wondering, how are we doing on that? How’s that reset going for us?

Unity of mind means that we have sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind

These are all are an active part of a church body that is committed to unity of mind

We are told to

Be Sympathetic toward each other

That is, strive to feel what others are feeling

Rejoice with them in their joys and victories..in the things that make them happy

Sorrow with them in their hardships

Why is this so important when it comes to unity?

Because when we are striving to be sympathetic, we are forced to look below the surface of another person

We are forced to look beyond the things that irritate us, or the things that have caused us to have an issue with that person

Instead, we identify with that person on a heart level

You identify with that person as having some of the same hopes for the Body of Christ, the same desires as you do

And you begin to realize that maybe you have more in common than you had thought

Love each other—have a brotherly love toward each other

Not news to us, right?

We know our Bibles well.

Love is the most important thing when it comes to our relationship with God and with each other

But he says have brotherly love toward each other.

The kind of love where you may have some disagreements, and misunderstandings

Things might get rough between you

You might be like a Jacob and Esau.

a huge sense of betrayal and bitterness

But regardless of what happens, you heart is toward your brother

Do you know what I mean by that?

It means that when things aren’t right between you and someone else, you are really bothered by that!

Has someone done somethign that is hurtful? or has offended you?

Brotherly love is the kind of love that makes you take steps toward that person, not away

You work at tearing walls down that are between you, not retreating from your brother and putting up more walls

Have a tender heart

very similar to the word “sympathy”

Have a heart that is easily moved

You easily overlook the faults of others

You readily forgive when your brother comes and asks you to

This verse is very similar to Ephesians 4:32 “32 Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.”

so forgiveness and tenderheartedness go hand in hand

have a humble mind

Humility is so important when it comes to unity

Because God has created us all unique, with different ideas and points of view, and different ways of understanding and doing things

And a lot of our arguments and disagreements come from us not being able to see the other person’s point of view and not accepting that point of view because we don’t understand it

And it takes humility, a humble mind, to say, “I don’t understand it, but that’s OK.

You know what? I’m going to take the passage in Phil 2 to heart

In humility, I’m going to count that person as being more significant than me

I’m going to consider the interests of others, not just my own or (my small group’s interest)

That really takes humility! It goes against our wills

Don’t repay evil for evil

Be careful that no matter how badly you have been treated, you don’t treat others in the same way

Be careful that no matter how badly people speak about you or what you hear they have said about you, don’t you do the same

The word “Reviling” in vs. 9 means to mock or to slander, to insult someone or to call someone’s character into question

Whether it’s an individual or your church body

It’s a reminder to guard against our tendency to dwell on the negative when we talk about people

So I would ask again,

“How are we doing at this, Fairview? Are these things that we are learning together?”

You know, as I’ve said before, I came to you all with a pretty different background and history than some of you

I came with different ideas about church structure, leadership,

Different ideas about some practical outworkings of our faith

But I hope that’s OK

I still love you

I still try to be sympathetic toward you

And have a tender heart

I want to be humble—listen to you, even when it’s tough

(I would ask that you speak to me in kindness)

I don’t want to retaliate when I feel that I’ve been treated wrongly

Becuase here’s the thing

We are called to this kind of unity (vs. 9)

earlier, we were reminded that we are called to suffer just as Christ experienced suffering

But we are also called to this unity of mind.

And the reason is, that there is a blessing for this

Peter quotes from Psalm 34 verses 12-16”

English Standard Version Chapter 3

10 For

“Whoever desires to love life

and see good days,

let him keep his tongue from evil

and his lips from speaking deceit;

11  let him turn away from evil and do good;

let him seek peace and pursue it.

12  For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous,

and his ears are open to their prayer.

But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.”

There is great blessing in having unity of mind, isn’t there?

Do you desire to love life? Do you desire to see good days?

Then let’s have this unity of mind

Let’s watch what we say

Let’s pursue peace…chase after it

Because it’s in this sort of mindset, that the Lord blesses His people

This is what the Lord LOVES!

His eyes are on the righteous. He hears them when they pray

But for the wicked, He turns His face away. Their prayers are hindered

So, how are we doing, Fairview?

I just want to encourage us all

I believe that this is something we are growing in

I know that growth can sometimes be hard to see

But I believe that We are growing in our “unity of mind”

I’ve seen the way that you all act with each other

And I think, “Wow. This is a church that takes this seriously!”

I believe taht we are growing in our honesty toward each other and our

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