Sermon Tone Analysis

Turn with me in your Bibles to 1 Peter 2.

Intro: As the elections draw near, many people have a great deal of anxiety and fear concerning the outcome.

In the past decade or so, our nation has become increasingly polarized and divided, and many Christians are also divided amongst themselves on political and social issues.

While in times past you could count on news agencies to try to present the facts in an unbiased way—or at very least, to try to hide their biases—nowadays, the curtain has been pulled back and news agencies openly flout their bias.

For many people, Christians included, this political turmoil and tension causes a lot of anxiety.

They don’t know who to believe, who to trust, or how to integrate their faith politics.

It seems like Christianity grows increasingly marginalized year by year as our culture grows to resemble Romans 1 more and more.

Some react in panic.

“What will we do if (the other candidate) wins this election?!?!” Others react in anger and frustration, spewing hate and disrespect all over social media with hashtags like #notmypresident, #fakenews, and so on.

Still others see conspiracies under every rock and think it their duty to expose the conspiracies and hold corrupt leaders accountable.

But, political tension, divisions, conspiracies, marginalization of Christianity, and the downward spiral of humanity are nothing new.

In fact, the period of time when the NT was written was perhaps one of the most unstable, dangerous, and immoral times in history.

In fact, Peter’s first letter was probably written just shortly before an outburst of Christian persecution in the Roman Empire.

Many scholars think that he wrote 1 Peter just a year or two before Nero’s intense persecution of Christians in Rome in the year AD64.

Already, Peter and other Christians could see the signs of a more severe persecution on the horizons.

Perhaps Carpenters and other tradesmen were struggling to find business because they refused to participate in emperor worship.

Caligula, who had reigned as emperor in AD 37-41 had demanded to be worshipped as a god (he even tried to have an image of himself installed in the temple in Jerusalem) and Nero followed suit as well in AD 54-68.

Inscriptional evidence demonstrates that the emperors Augustus and Caligula were considered gods.

The use of the term theos (“god”), although rare, attests to the fact that worshippers esteemed emperors by elevating them to a status far above that of regular mortals.

Often emperors were so closely associated with patron deities that the worshippers made no distinction between them.

The cult employed all the trappings and paraphernalia of rituals common to any religious practice.

Images of the emperor or his family members greeted worshippers in the form of massive statues.146

Some of these images included mechanisms to mimic lightning and thunder, reinforcing the emperor’s identification with the god Jupiter.

Adherents offered prayers to these statues and sometimes carried smaller pocket-sized versions of imperial figures.148

Christians who refused to participate in such idolatry were marginalized.

They were excluded from business opportunities, they were spoken ill of, accused falsely, taken advantage of in courts, and so on.

Many, like Peter and Paul, had been imprisoned or beaten for their faith.

Some had been martyred, but it would only get worse.

Sometime shortly after Peter wrote this letter, a fire broke out in Rome.

Many people suspected that Nero had set the blaze to make room for a more elaborate palace structure.

So Nero needed a scapegoat, and he found it in the Christians in Rome.

A brutal persecution broke out in Rome and Nero reportedly used Christians as human torches to provide light for his party guests.

In this context, with the threat of persecution breathing down their necks, with friends, loved ones, and fellow Christians already suffering financially and physically for their faith, Peter writes these words.

Prayer for illumination

When we look in 1 Peter, we see a situation which is familiar, even if it’s not exactly the same as our situation today.

We see Christians struggling to live out their faith in a culture that revels in idolatry and debauchery, that marginalizes and mocks Christianity; a culture whose government always seems one step shy of being completely given over to immorality.

And we don’t even have time for me to talk about the rampant homosexuality, cult prostitution, drunkenness, and so on that plagued Roman society.

How is a Christian supposed to live out their faith in such a context?

And, more specifically, how should a Christian relate to a government which is teetering on the edge of outright persecution of Christians?

Peter, probably writing this letter from Rome, the capital city of the Empire, gives us two main ways that we can demonstrate our faith to an unbelieving world.

Keep yourself free from sin.

Why?

Because you are a foreigner in a strange country carefree living can destroy you(v.

11-12)

Peter is writing to the “elect exiles”

Expatriate, exile, sojourner—all refer to people who are temporarily living in a place that is not their home country.

Expatriates have to be careful how they act--they stick out and people are watching them more carefully

They can’t walk around acting like they own the place; they live with an ever present consciousness that they are on someone else’s turf.

When expats act like they are in their home country, they usually end up in trouble.

Take this story about a young British woman named Asa Hutchinson (not the governor of Arkansas!) who got herself into trouble in Dubai:

A young British expat faces prison after witnessing a fight in a Dubai hotel lobby, a campaign group says.

Asa Hutchinson's friends got involved in a row with a drunk Swedish man who had fallen asleep on a sofa.

Detained in Dubai said the man reported it to police but as her friends had left the United Arab Emirates, the 21-year-old was being "victimised" because she lives there.

The Foreign Office said it had assisted Miss Hutchinson following the incident.

It added it was "ready to provide further help if requested".

Miss Hutchinson, originally from Chelmsford, Essex, faces charges of assault, theft and fraud following the incident which happened in 2016.

She said she "could not cope" with going to jail.

Detained in Dubai, which is representing Miss Hutchison, said the argument started after her friends took selfies with the man, aged in 50s, while he was asleep and he woke up.

He started punching them but they fled.

The man called the police and the young men were taken to Bur Dubai police station.

Detained in Dubai said Miss Hutchinson's friends managed to get their passports back and have flown home.

When the man found out that Miss Hutchinson lives in the UAE and is still there, he transferred the charges to her, the organisation said.

Miss Hutchinson, an account manager for a global transportation company, has been bailed and a court date is yet to be fixed.

Radha Stirling, chief executive of Detained in Dubai, said: "In Dubai, if two parties are in dispute or arguing, the first person to speak to the police is usually the one who is believed.

Often it is a race to get to the police first."

She added: "It is clear in this case that Asa was a bystander, not involved with the fight and is only being victimised because the alleged culprits have left the country."

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-essex-42170203

We can sympathize with poor Asa.

She didn’t do anything deserving of prison time.

In fact, the drunk man seems to have done much more wrong than she.

But, she failed to recognize that she was in a strange place.

She did what she would have done in New York.

But she wasn’t in New York, she was in Dubai.

Many American Christians today live and act like they own America.

They tout their rights, their religious freedoms, demand that everyone in America submit to God’s law.

They say “America is a Christian nation, it was founded on biblical principles.”

Well, perhaps it was.

But look around you! Does it feel like a Christian nation today?

We are NOT the majority anymore.

We are exiles.

Our true citizenship is in heaven.

That doesn’t mean you can’t be involved in trying to bring about change.

But it does mean we need to change our attitudes and how we bring about that change.

Pride and anger are not effective means of displaying the gospel, in fact, they display the opposite!

When I’m in a village in Papua New Guinea and a tribal fight breaks out, I don’t just throw my hands up and say, “Well, that’s just how they do it here.

It’s not my problem to intervene in tribal fights, that’s their business.”

No, I do try to make change.

But I have to do it humbly.

I recognize that I’m out of my element.

I’m outnumbered.

I have no power to force change—even Jesus himself didn’t do that!--so

I have to quietly model what a Christian response looks like, teach and disciple those who will listen, and be patient for God to bring about the change in their lives.

Change in America will not come about by forcing the pagans around us to submit to our moral code, but only through “keeping our conduct honorable among the Gentiles”

Because our lives either serve to reinforce what we say we believe, or detract from it.

(v.

12)

The way we live should give no excuse for criticism from unbelievers.

People will always spread rumors about people they don’t know well

Many pagans thought that Christians engaged in cannibalism during their communion services, because they were held in private and there was a misunderstanding of Jesus’ “eat my flesh” command

But, through their consistent testimony and lives that were honorable, these lies were eventually exposed.

When you go out to eat, do you treat your server well?

Do you flip people off on the highway on the way to/from church with a Jesus fish on your bumper?