Outpost
Notes
Transcript
Outpost
Outpost
Introduction
1 Peter 1:3–7 “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he gave us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, that is, into an inheritance imperishable, undefiled, and unfading. It is reserved in heaven for you, who by God’s power are protected through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. This brings you great joy, although you may have to suffer for a short time in various trials. Such trials show the proven character of your faith, which is much more valuable than gold—gold that is tested by fire, even though it is passing away—and will bring praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.”
Has anyone here been up to fort robinson?
My goal this summer is to get up to go see fort robinson, because I’m a big history buff, especially military history.
Illustration of an outpost or an embassy. A place that is technically not within the borders of its home country, it is completely within the borders of a foreign nation or territory. Yet at the same time, It’s 100% Sovreign us territory.
Because you’ll notice in our verse you just heard, the churches that peter is writing to are struggling. They’re suffering trials, and yet in the exact same breath peter says blessed be the god and fatehr of our lord Jesus Christ.
Because the church exists in two separate realities. We exist in the SpirituaL reality, the fact that we are living out the Kingdom of heaven here on earth. We are currently receiving the blessings of the kingdom of heaven right now.
In the Lord’s prayer, Jesus prays your will be done, your kingdom come on earth, just as it is in heaven.
He tells the people ,repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. It’s here.
But yet at the same time, we live in the world. we lived in the world where we face trials and struggles.
And so the question we might ask ourselves is, well which is it. Are we living in the kingdom of heaven, or is it still something that we’re waiting for far off in the future?
It’s a lot like the outpost. Like an embassy. The church exists (and when I say the church, I don’t mean the Local small c church. I don’t mean “alliance christian church” or “first baptist church” When I say the church I mean the collective body of all believers in christ. the bride of Christ, the body of Christ scattered aroundthe world. The universial church.
The church exists as an outpost of heaven here on earth.
It’s like a sliver of heaven, surrounded by the world.
Transition
This is week three in our series on 1 Peter, we’re calling “scattered”
The last few weeks, we looked at the first couple of verses in Peter’s letter to the scattered exiles in pontus, galatia, capadocia, asia, and bitynia.
And the major Idea that we are wrestling with is the fact that the churches that peter wrote to, and in a lot of ways the church today is a “scattered church”
We’re scattered geographically, and spiritually.
Which means we need to take time to think about what exactly that looks like, how does the church in exile, the scattered church not only survive, but thrive in exile.
So if you have your bible’s please turn with me to 1 peter 1.
Roadmap
And the big Idea that I want you to walk away with this morning is that the Church, the big C church, the body of all Christians.
The scattered church, is an outpost of heaven on earth. With the purpose of bringing glory to God in heaven, and hope to the world on earth. (Repeat)
Point
Statement
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he gave us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,
Explanation
This is the Gospel. There are a lot of verses that sum up the gospel
1 Corinthians 15, John 3:16, Romans 5:8 is another one. Acts 2:38.
And this is another one. This verse sums up the core essence of the Gospel message
By God’s great mercy—meaning not because of our efforts or our good behavior, or our ability to do anything to please god—by his great mercy
God gave us new birth
We who are Christian’s have been Born again.
There’s a completely new me, when we put our faith in Christ, when we are Baptized, we are putting our old self to death in the water, and the person who comes out of the water is a completely new person in Christ
And specifically he says we are given new birth into a Living hope. Through the ressurection of Christ.
Illustration
As an outpost, as the scattered church, acting as an outpost in the world
This is a huge difference. We have hope. We have a living hope that is active and alive.
And we are surrounded by a territory that is hopeless.
Think for a moment about West Berlin, back before the Berlin Wall fell
After WW2, Germany ended up being split in 2, west Germany was a republic, where the people had freedom
And east Germany became communist.
And it didn’t take long for people to realize that freedom is better than communism.
But right smack dab in the middle of east Germany was the city of Berlin. And Berlin was also split into east/west
And so what you ended up having was a little Island of freedom right in the middle of communist Germany, surrounded on all sides.
And the people living in communist Germany, the ones in East Berlin could see that things were better under freedom.
They were happier, they were more prosperous, they had more rights, they had more freedoms.
The communists built the Berlin Wall overnight because they were so afraid that people were going to see how good freedom was, that they needed to keep their own people from being able to access that outpost of freedom.
Application
That’s what the church is, it’s an outpost of hope
How are we showing that hope to people?
Hopefully we’re doing everything we can to let people who are living in darkness know that there is a living hope,
And that all they need to do is come join us in the outpost.
Transition
We have been given new birth into a living hope
Point
Statement
that is, into an inheritance imperishable, undefiled, and unfading. It is reserved in heaven for you,
Explanation
Again, contrast that with what the world we operate in has. To offer.
Our inheritance, our living hope is
imperishable
It doesn’t die, it doesn’t spoil
It lasts forever
It’s Undefiled.
It’s pure, it’s clean, it’s good
It’s not stained with all of the yuck and sin that everything else in the world is stained with.
It’s unfading
It doesn’t become less potent, it doesn’t become less reliable
The good news of Jesus Christ is just as powerful in the year 2025 AD as it was in the year 25 AD.
And it will remain just as powerful in the year 3035, or until Jesus comes back, whichever comes first.
Argumentation
Everything else that the world has to offer is the exact opposite of those things
The world offers an inheritance that spoils, that fades, that perishes
Illustration
It’s like, OK, who has one of these?
Compare a mag lite flashlight with a cheap plastic flashlight.
At some point we decided that we would rather have this than this.
And it’s the same thing spiritually
Somewhere along the way we decided that we would rather have cheap alternatives to faith
The world is full of cheap disposable alternatives to the gospel
Our young people, especially with technology and social media
They are being bombarded with cheap disposable gospels
Gospels that say your self worth is determined by how many people like your post online
Advertisers telling you that if you just buy their product, or take out their credit card, or visit their website you’ll be happy.
That’s the cheap disposable gospel that hte world we are surrounded by
Application
And as an outpost of hope in the world, our job is to convince people that hey, these things may make you feel better for a minute, but they don’t last
They perish, they spoil, they fade
What Jesus Christ offers last until eternity .
Transition
We have been given new birth into an inheritance
And it’s reserved in heaven for you
Point
Statement
who by God’s power are protected through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.
Explanation
And see this is partially what I mean by being an outpost
In one sense, We are saved, we are citizens of heaven,
The kingdom of heaven has been established, and we get to experience the forgiveness of sins, the fullness of God, the in dwelling of the Holy Spirit, communion with Jesus.
We are fully within the realm of sovreign heaven territory
But in another sense, we aren’t on the mainland
We are still an outpost, surrounded by the world, and so Peter says our inheritance is being kept in heaven for us, and we are being protected by God’s power
Through our faith.
Application
Which means the world around us can’t touch us
It can’t hurt us, at least not permanently
Because everything that happens in this world, even death, for the christian, is temporary
Even death is just a minor inconvenience for the Christians
because we have an inheritance reserved for us in heaven
And we are being protected by God’s power, through our faith.
Which means as long as we’re maintaining our Faith in him, there’s nothing that the world can do to us.
Transition
And he says in. This…
This brings you great joy, although you may have to suffer for a short time in various trials.
Explanation
Because here’s the thing.
Heaven, and the world we are surrounded by as an outpost
They’re two nations at war.
East Germany will do anything it takes to keep people from getting into West Berlin, even if it means imprisoning an entire city.
Satan will do anything to keep people from getting to Christ
He’ll make sure Christians suffer trials and temptations
He’ll make sure non-Christian’s suffer too, just to keep them from getting a spark of hope.
And peter says, because of the fact that we, the scattered church, have such a great inheritance reserved for us, that
We have “great Joy” in spite of our sufferings.
It literally says “you greatly rejoice”
I want you to understand, this is in the present tense
Peter doesn’t says “you will someday rejoice”
He doesn’t say “you ought to rejoice”
He doesn’t say “there are times you have rejoiced in the past.
Present tense he says this brings you great joy. In this you currently rejoice.
For the scattered church, joy in the midst of suffering is a present reality.
Such trials show the proven character of your faith, which is much more valuable than gold—gold that is tested by fire, even though it is passing away—and will bring praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.
Now there is another very similar verse in the book of James chapter 1, where james says
My brothers and sisters, consider it nothing but joy when you fall into all sorts of trials, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance.
And in both of these verses, they use the exact same Greek word for testing, Testing, or Proving. In the Greek it’s the same word
Our trials test our faith, they prove our faith.
And one of the things that we miss in our English translation, is that this word was used to describe the process by which Gold was tested in the ancient world.
Let me bring this to life for you, because the scattered churches in Pontus, Galatia, Asia, cappadocia and bithynia would have picked up on this right away.
at the time that this letter was written, the emperor of Rome, emperor Nero, was in the process of de-valuing the currency.
Because Nero wanted to build a whole bunch of projects, and statues, and ampetheaters and a whole bunch of other stuff, But he didn’t have enough gold in the treasury to do it.
And you can only tax the people so much before they start to revolt, and the people of the Roman Empire, at least outside of the actual city of Rome, were already taxed to that point.
And so what he did, is instead of minting coins out of pure silver and gold, he started mixing in a little bit of lead.
And a little bit more lead
And a little bit more lead.
Now all of the sudden, you had enough gold to make 1 million coins, you start mixing more and more lead into the coinage, now you can make 2 million coins.
It’s not unlike what happens in our modern economy.
What happens when you do that? The currency goes down. The price of gold and silver goes up.
And so now, there becomes this huge incentive for people to test the purity of their coins, and their gold and silver
And the way you do that, is you weigh the coins, and then you take a sample and you melt it down at a very specific temperature
And a chemical reaction at that temperature causes the lead to boil out, basically, and then you let it cool, and weigh the product after it’s done, and that will tell you what percentage of the coin is pure gold or silver.
Such trials show the proven character of your faith, which is much more valuable than gold—gold that is tested by fire, even though it is passing away—and will bring praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.
And what I want you to notice, here, is that peter is NOT saying, that these trials are going to produce faith.
He’s not saying that the trials are going to build faith.
James makes that point, kind of, because the verse in james say that the trials are going to produce endurance.
But peter is saying something totally different.
He’s saying that the trials are going to show the faith you already have.
And for the scattered churches he’s writing to, he’s commending them for already having a faith that is more valuable, more pure, more precious than gold or silver.
In a world full of counterfeit faith. Watered down faith.
Faith that is mixed with lead, and copper, and whatever other junk the world can find to mix in with it,
The scattered church is an outpost of people who have a pure faith. 24 karat faith.
And the trials we face, the opposition we face by being an outpost in the world is just going to prove the genuineness of it.
Application
On judgement day, when Christ comes back to reclaim his church, and gather in the faithful, and God establishes a new heaven and a new earth, My hope is that God looks at each and every one of you and says your faith is pure.
It’s genuine.
You didn’t just say Lord Lord, with your mouth, but you knew Christ.
And that he’ll say well done, good and faithful servant.
And when we face struggles, when we face trials in this world, the world that we are sent here to show the love and light of christ, the world that is surrounding our little outpost of heaven on earth.
When we face those, I need us to remember that the character of our faith is being tested, and examined for it’s purity.
The scattered church exists as an outpost of heaven on earth for the purpose of bringing hope to the world, and Glory to God in heaven.
Conclusion
Verse 7 says that the whole point of all of it. The outpost, the church of christ here on earth, the whole point of all of it is to bring glory and prAISE.
When we come together, as the church, and give glory and praise to God.
I’m reminded of the scene from Revelation 5.
By the way, the book of revelation wasn’t meant to “predict the future” at least not in the way that we traditionally think about what it means to predict the future.
Revelation is a book designed to “reveal” the spiritual realities that exist behind the physical ones.
When we give god glory and praise and honor here on earth, that’s physical reality, that’s something that is happening here in the outpost, but in our home nation. In heaven, here’s what the spiritual reality looks like.
John is seeing a vision from heaven, and he’s seeing all sorts of amazing fantastic creatures, and elders, and everyone circled around the throne room of God, around Jesus, who is represented as a slain lamb.
Then I looked and heard the voice of many angels in a circle around the throne, as well as the living creatures and the elders. Their number was ten thousand times ten thousand—thousands times thousands—
all of whom were singing in a loud voice: “Worthy is the lamb who was killed to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and praise!”
Then I heard every creature—in heaven, on earth, under the earth, in the sea, and all that is in them—singing: “To the one seated on the throne and to the Lamb be praise, honor, glory, and ruling power forever and ever!”
And the four living creatures were saying “Amen,” and the elders threw themselves to the ground and worshiped.
That’s what it means to be an outpost. We are representing the spiritual realities of heaven here on earth.
And we know that we might have to suffer while we serve here in the outpost, for a while, but we do it with joy because we know that we are bringing hope to a dark world, we know that our faith is being shown to be pure.
And that ultimately, what we are doing is giving praise and glory to God.
