Faithful Because of Our Identity
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
The word identity is big in our culture today. To define identity, Merriam Webster says, the distinguishing character or personality of an individual, or sameness in all that constitutes the objective reality of a thing.
We all have an identity. There are things that define us, that distinguish us. Some of these things change over time. My son is a high school graduate. That identity is because of his work throughout the last several years, and that identity will be with him throughout the rest of life. We know that high school graduates, on average, do better in life than dropouts.
Other things change. I am a pastor, at least till the next board meeting, in which I will identify as unemployed. Some things, however, don’t change. Our gender is unchangeable, despite the political climate we are in.
When you accept Christ, when you make a decision to follow Christ, you assume a new identity.
But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God,
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.
This is what we want to look at in our sermon today. What does it mean to live a faithful life, especially in light of our new identity? By a faithful life, we mean a life that is lived according to the dictates of God’s laws, in spite of the decadence of our culture. And the reasons we do that, the reasons we live faithfully is because of our salvation, two weeks ago, and because of our calling, last week. Today, we live faithful because of our identity. Let’s talk about what that means.
I. We are to Become in Practice who we Are in Position. v.1-3
I. We are to Become in Practice who we Are in Position. v.1-3
As this chapter opens up, we notice this word, so. Other translations may say, therefore. Just a conjoining phrase, connecting the previous words with what to do next.
So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander.
What we are being told is to take malice, deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander, and remove them from our lives. Rid ourselves, put away, get rid of. This is an intentional effort on your part. Getting rid of these things that threaten to destroy your life. Now when you connect this with the previous chapter, remember what we were told in verse 22.
Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart,
Love is to be the hallmark, the calling card of the Christian, and guess what happens when you live lives of malice, deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander. The sins listed tear at the social fabric of the church, ripping away the threads of love that keep them together. Peter signals thereby that no sin is to be tolerated in the community, that sin is to be rejected comprehensively.
The idea is to love, to love each other wholeheartedly, and when we are full of malice, envy, hatefulness towards each other, we can not love that way.
Now the question becomes, how do I do that? Like I mentioned last week, I can cut myself off from people, and hide in the mountains, but I still won’t rid myself of the sinfulness of our heart. The issues are a heart problem, not a people problem.
Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation—
The answer is to fill our lives with the Word of God. Become, as newborn infants, desirous of the pure spiritual milk of the Word of God. This is how we grow, this is how we change, this is how we become more like Christ.
We do this because of verse 3
if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.
We have tasted, we know that the Lord is good. We know that living in the light of the goodness and presence of God, living in his forgiveness is far better than being consumed with a bitter spirit.
I found this on Psychology Today’s website where it talks about the harmful effects of bitterness on a person.
Lead to long-lasting anxiety and/or depression. Undermine your physical health. The chronic anger that is bitterness can raise your stress baseline, thereby taxing your immune system. Interfere with your cultivating healthy, satisfying relationships, and lead you to doubt, or disparage, your connection to others.
Serving God is much better than living with malice, deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and that so many allow their lives to be consumed by.
So we become in practice who we are in position. And who are we?
II. Our Identity is in Christ. v.4-8
II. Our Identity is in Christ. v.4-8
I mentioned the scripture already, but we are told that if we are in Christ, we are a new creation. Paul also mentions it in
I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
But notice what Peter says here in verse 4.
As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious,
The Message of 1 Peter 1. The Building of the Temple in Christ
As you come to him, the living Stone—rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to him.… As always, Peter begins with the Lord. The status of Christians depends upon the status of Christ, for they are joined to him. How striking it is that Peter names Christ the Stone! Peter’s given name was Simon. It was Jesus who named him Cephas (in Greek, Peter), the ‘rock’. Peter gratefully used the name Jesus gave him as an apostle (1:1). But Peter points us, not to himself, but to Christ as our Rock.
You’re coming to Christ. You give yourself, you allow the Word of God, the Holy Spirit to govern your life, not bound by the works of the flesh, but the fruit of the Spirit, Galatians 5. As you come to Him, you yourself,
you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
God is building in us, in our lives, His Work. He is working on me, to make me what I ought to be. Why? So we can offer spiritual sacrifices to God, as a spiritual house, a holy priesthood. What is that sacrifice?
I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.
The point is this. When we choose to live according to Christ and His Word, when we choose to love and live faithful lives before God, we are presenting to Him a sacrifice, a life pleasing to Him. You don’t have to go to a closed country and be martyred to offer your life as a sacrifice. Love your wife. Love your husband. Train your children in the fear and admonition of God. Serve your neighbor. Do justice, love mercy, walk humbly with God.
Verse 6 reminds us.
For it stands in Scripture: “Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious, and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.”
Peter quotes
therefore thus says the Lord God, “Behold, I am the one who has laid as a foundation in Zion, a stone, a tested stone, a precious cornerstone, of a sure foundation: ‘Whoever believes will not be in haste.’
What he is talking about here is the fact the Christ is this cornerstone, He is the foundation of our faith. he is the one on which the church is founded and based upon. And when you believe in Him, you will not be put to shame. You will have a strong foundation to stand upon.
It’s pretty evident that the world is in a place of decay. The foundations of our society are being ruined and ravaged. However, a life built upon Christ, a life based upon the solid rock will stand. This is what Jesus told Peter in Matthew
And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
When society is destroyed. When society has totally lost its way, one thing will be standing. The Church of Jesus Christ. Maybe not the brick of Faith Alive, here on the corner of Lehigh and Mechanic, but the church will survive. And this is why I am not discouraged even though the news is dark. We’re going to be ok. We’re going to be fine. We will overcome by the blood of the Lamb and the word of our testimony.
If you believe that, you’re good.
So the honor is for you who believe, but for those who do not believe, “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone,”
If not, watch out.
and “A stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense.” They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do.
For you who believe in Him, He is precious. He is good. He is the one who will keep you through all the storms and trials of this life. This is who my identity is in.
Our identity is in Christ, and our identity is unique.
III. Our Identity is Unique. v.9-10
III. Our Identity is Unique. v.9-10
The world stumbles, the word falls, because they do not believe the message of Christ, but…
But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.
Peter refers to several Old Testament passages to discuss these phrases denoting who we are in Christ, mainly drawing from Exodus 19 and Isaiah 43. Notice these statements. A Chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession. This is who we are in Christ.
The Message of 1 Peter 2. The Ministry of a Priestly People
We have no status as sons or daughters, for we are no people, enemies of God, unworthy of his love. Yet, as Peter declares, we who were no people are now the people of God, chosen in Christ as an elect race, a holy nation.
But its not just who we are, it’s also what we do. We are called to offer praise, we are called to worship the one who has called us out of darkness into His marvelous light.
The Message of 1 Peter 2. The Ministry of a Priestly People
Peter declares who we are. He declares also what we are to do. The holy priesthood offers up spiritual sacrifices, declaring the praises of him who called us out of the darkness into his wonderful light.
The Message of 1 Peter 2. The Ministry of a Priestly People
Peter had experienced God’s deliverance from dungeon darkness when the Lord sent his angel to deliver the apostle from Herod’s prison. Charles Wesley used Peter’s deliverance as an image of the dawn of faith:
Long my imprisoned spirit lay
Fast bound in sin and nature’s night;
Thine eye diffused a quickening ray—
I woke, the dungeon flamed with light;
My chains fell off, my heart was free,
I rose, went forth, and followed thee.
This is our identity. We are God’s chosen people. We are God’s royal priesthood. We are the ones called out from darkness to light. We are the ones separated from the evil desires of our flesh to the goodness and love and beauty that is in Christ.
If we would only understand who we are. What lengths God went through to make us His own possession. The great price that was paid for our salvation. This much sit down deep in our souls and be allowed to change us and who we are. You must embrace this identity of being a child of God.
There’s a story told about Augustine of Hippo that aptly describes what’s it like to have a new identity in Christ. As the story goes, after being saved by Jesus, Augustine ran into a former mistress on the street. Upon seeing her, Augustine quickly began moving the other direction. The mistress was surprised by this and cried out, “Augustine, it is I!”
Augustine replied, “Yes, but it is not I.”
We are called to live practically what we are positionally, we understand our identity is in Christ, and we understand who our identity is, this leads us to
IV. The Challenge for us today. v.11-12
IV. The Challenge for us today. v.11-12
We circle around back to the first verse.
Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul.
In light of the fact that I am a royal priesthood, a chosen race, this automatically makes me a sojourner, an exile. We’ve seen these words twice in the last chapter. And now in this chapter as well. this is what I have been referring to. We are exiles in this world. We don’t fit in. Our citizenship is in heaven, according to Phil. 3:20.
And as these believers, we must deny our flesh, deny our sinful attitudes and appetites. I’ve quoted or referred to Galatians 5, so look at what Paul says,
And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.
How does this happen? Go back to verse 16
But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.
The result of this
Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.
Sociologist and historian Rodney Stark mounted a powerful argument that one of the principal reasons Christianity grew while Roman paganism waned in the 1st-4th centuries was because of the mercy Christians displayed toward people who physically suffered, and in particular, how Christians showed mercy during two plagues that ravaged the Roman Empire. Below I will include a few paragraphs from Stark’s book, "The Triumph of Christianity." Perhaps we can draw some insight from these historical reflections as we weigh whether to hide out in our houses, or wisely and carefully venture out to care for the weak and suffering.
In the year 165, during the reign of Marcus Aurelius, a devastating epidemic swept through the Roman Empire. Some medical historians suspect this was the first appearance of smallpox in the West. Whatever the actual disease, it was lethal—as many contagious diseases are when they strike a previously unexposed population. During the fifteen-year duration of the epidemic, a quarter to a third of the population probably died of it. At the height of the epidemic, mortality was so great in many cities that the emperor Marcus Aurelius (who subsequently died of the disease) wrote of caravans of carts and wagons hauling out the dead. Then, a century later came another great plague. Once again the Greco-Roman world trembled as, on all sides, family, friends, and neighbors died horribly. No one knew how to treat the stricken. Nor did most people try. During the first plague, the famous classical physician Galen fled Rome for his country estate where he stayed until the danger subsided. But for those who could not flee, the typical response was to try to avoid any contact with the afflicted, since it was understood that the disease was contagious. Hence, when their first symptom appeared, victims often were thrown into the streets, where the dead and dying lay in piles. In a pastoral letter written during the second epidemic (ca. 251), Bishop Dionysius described events in Alexandria: “At the first onset of the disease, they [pagans] pushed the sufferers away and fled from their dearest, throwing them into the roads before they were dead and treated unburied corpses as dirt, hoping thereby to avert the spread and contagion of the fatal disease; but do what they might, they found it difficult to escape”….
As for action, Christians met the obligation to care for the sick rather than desert them, and thereby saved enormous numbers of lives! As William H. McNeill pointed out in his celebrated Plagues and Peoples, under the circumstances prevailing in this era, even “quite elementary nursing will greatly reduce mortality. Simple provision of food and water, for instance, will allow persons who are temporarily too weak to cope for themselves to recover instead of perishing miserably.” It is entirely plausible that Christian nursing would have reduced mortality by as much as two-thirds! The fact that most stricken Christians survived did not go unnoticed, lending immense credibility to Christian "miracle working." Indeed, the miracles often included pagan neighbors and relatives. This surely must have produced some conversions, especially by those who were nursed back to health. In addition, while Christians did nurse some pagans, being so outnumbered, obviously they could not have cared for most of them, while all, or nearly all, Christians would have been nursed. Hence Christians as a group would have enjoyed a far superior survival rate, and, on these grounds alone, the percentage of Christians in the population would have increased substantially as a result of both plagues.
What went on during the epidemics was only an intensification of what went on every day among Christians… Indeed, the impact of Christian mercy was so evident that in the fourth century when the emperor Julian attempted to restore paganism, he exhorted the pagan priesthood to compete with the Christian charities. In a letter to the high priest of Galatia, Julian urged the distribution of grain and wine to the poor, noting that “the impious Galileans [Christians], in addition to their own, support ours, [and] it is shameful that our poor should be wanting our aid.” But there was little or no response to Julian’s proposals because there were no doctrines and no traditional practices for the pagan priest to build upon…. Christians believed in life everlasting. At most, pagans believed in an unattractive existence in the underworld. Thus, for Galen to have remained in Rome to treat the afflicted during the first great plague would have required far greater bravery than was needed by Christian deacons and presbyters to do so. Faith mattered.[1]