1Peter, Blueprint for Blessings and Burdens

The mystery ingredient…

(suffering)

I heard a story about a young man who went to his girlfriends grandparents home to celebrate thanksgiving. After they prayed, the grandmother announced that she had added a secret mystery ingredient to the peanut butter dessert and would give $5.00 to the first person who could identify the secret ingredient. After several minutes the young man announced, “ know what the secret ingredient is… Its Captain Crunch cereal… she was delighted that someone figured it out, but asked how did you know, He replied I got the prize toy in the 2nd bite.

there is a mystery ingredient in living the christian life. It’s suffering, or adversity. The Bible also calls it trials.

Today we are beginning a new series of teaching through a book of the Bible that addresses the topic of Adversity in the Christian Life. The Book of 1st Peter. If you have your Bible turn to the Book of 1st Peter. find James and turn Right and you’ll bee in the right neighborhood.

Peter wrote this letter sometime between AD 62 and AD 64. He wrote it from Rome which was the Superpower of the world at that time. See if this sounds familiar. Rome had the strongest economy, the most powerful military, and it was in the process of “self-destructing” The Roman empire, was geographically spread out and covered a very large land area. As the roman empire expanded and gained territory, they absorbed many different cultures, languages, religions, and all of these ideas and philosophies and religious beliefs were in competition with each other

When Rome conquered a nation, for the most part it allowed the people to maintain their heritage, local customs and traditions, also their religious practices as long as it did not come into direct conflict with Roman law. For example at this time, Nero was Caesar, Caesar was considered as god on earth and that was the law they said you could believe whatever you want to believe, worship any way you want to worship, live however you want to live as long as you make room at the top for Caesar. He must come first caesar was the primary cause, It was Roman Law to regard Caesar as Lord of Lords, God over all other Gods. any religious belief became subject to the Roman law that Caesar was the highest authority and all other religious beliefs were subject to Him. Rome did not mind if all the other religious practices, ideas, cultures competed for 2nd place under Caesar, and they did compete and this competition crept its was into the church.

1 Peter 5:12

1 Peter 5:12 NLT

I have written and sent this short letter to you with the help of Silas, whom I commend to you as a faithful brother. My purpose in writing is to encourage you and assure you that what you are experiencing is truly part of God’s grace for you. Stand firm in this grace.