Elect Exiles

If you have your Bibles, please open them to 1 Peter.

and as you do that, I would like to welcome the new 6th graders to youth group

What is our aim

How do we get there

1 Peter 1:1–12 ESV

1 Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, To those who are elect exiles of the Dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, 2 according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in the sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood: May grace and peace be multiplied to you. 3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, 5 who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. 6 In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, 7 so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. 8 Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, 9 obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls. 10 Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully, 11 inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories. 12 It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you, in the things that have now been announced to you through those who preached the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look.

I am our study of 1 Peter ‘Elect Exiles.’

Just a quick show of hands, how many of you are familiar with what an oxymoron is?

Oxymoron - a figure of speech where contradicting words appear in conjunction with one another.

Jumbo shrimp

Old news

Only choice

The term elect exile is another oxymoron

Peter opens this letter like this

1 Peter 1:1 ESV

1 Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, To those who are elect exiles of the Dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia,

Notice, who the letter is addressed to those who Peter calls the elect exiles

These two words describe what a Christian is… but these two words also are a kind of contradiction to one another.

Let’s consider what these two words mean each one at a time.

First, Christians are elect… this is they have been chosen by God

Elect - to be picked out by God for salvation

grade school days of plying kickball during recess

To be elect - is to be chosen by God. With this term, comes concepts of blessing and favor from God. Just as we would all want to be chosen and esteemed as valuable to a team at recess, so too to be chosen by God is to be given value and worth. To be chosen, we might say, among those who are favored and fortunate.

And it is true that we all are fortunate to have been elect, and chosen by God.

1 Peter 1:3–4 ESV

3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you,

Peter gives praise to God for his purpose of election because of the great blessing that comes with being elect. Two blessings to consider

We are born again… that is to say we have been given new life

We all know that we are going to die… you might try avoid thinking about death, but I want you to think about your death often. This is because every one of us will die…

But death is not final for those who are elect, for those who have been chosen by God… rather we have a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ

Just as Jesus rose again from the dead, so too will all those who have been chosen. Those who believe in Jesus will not perish, but we will have eternal life.

And as if being resurrected wasn’t already enough, Peter shows us that we aren’t just given life after death, but more than this, we are given a great inheritance.

For those who do not know, an inheritance is a valuable possession that is freely given to you for being a part of a family.

So too, if we are elect, and brought into the family of God, we will receive a great inheritance from God! It is one that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading… that is to say, it’s not like any old inheritance that loses value with age…Sometimes inheritances are not that valuable. But this is not so for the inheritance that we will receive from God. it’s not an inheritance like being given a old beaten up and worn out car that is on it’s last leg… not at all, rather this inheritance is one of infinite value that will never lose its value!

So what do we need to do receive this inheritance? Well we must be elected, and chosen by God… and what must we do to be chosen by God?

Must we demonstrate our value to God somehow? No…

I compared election to being picked out to play on a team… but you see the only reason you get picked to be on the team is if you have something to contribute to the team. But this is not so for being chosen by God.

Peter explains the idea of election further starting in v 2 We are elected by God…

1 Peter 1:2 ESV

2 according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in the sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood: May grace and peace be multiplied to you.

What causes a person to be elect?

Is it our good works?

Is it our strength?

Or is it our wisdom, or our good ideas?

no… rather, we are elected and chosen by God, because of his foreknowledge…

That is, before you did anything, either good or bad, God chose you out of all the people in all the world, past present and future. He chose you to save you.

And how did he do this?

He gave us his Spirit who helps us obey… so even through your good works, you aren’t contributing to your salvation, rather even your obedience is a result of the Spirit of God.

And God forgives us of all of our sins because of Jesus sprinkled blood that cleanses us from all unrighteousness. That is, Jesus took our sins, and died in our place on the cross. He bore the penalty that we deserved, and his blood shed on our behalf means we no longer are guilty of our sins.

We don’t receive this election for salvation because of anything that we have done. Rather, we are elected by God because of God.

This is why Peter says,

1 Peter 1:3 ESV

3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,

Notice, God is the cause of our salvation… we are elected by God because of his great mercy.

And because of him we have this great inheritance that is coming our way…

1 Peter 1:4 ESV

4 to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you,

And just in case you are worried about losing that inheritance, Peter says,

1 Peter 1:5 ESV

5 who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

You didn’t contribute to receiving this inheritance, and you don’t even contribute to maintaining this salvation. Rather, Peter says God’s power will guard your faith for a salvation that will be given to you in the last time… that is at the end of history.

Elect - to be picked out by God for salvation

we didn’t contribute anything to being chosen by God

And there is nothing that we can do to ruin this great salvation

But the Christian isn’t just elect…

the Christian is an elect exile.

To be an exile, means that you do not belong in a certain place

Exile - a stranger who is rejected in a foreign land

To be an exile is not something that we would normally want to be

Let’s go back to the recess analogy to try to understand what it means to be an exile

Hopefully you are beginning to see how the term ‘elect exile’ is something of an oxymoron.

For we are both chosen and precious by God, and yet hated and despised by the world

We are both blessed and reviled

we are valuable and yet rejected

But to be clear, even though these terms might seem like a contradiction, Peter is not trying to be confusing here.

To help us understand what he is saying, let’s consider for a moment when the blessing of the elect will come.

1 Peter 1:3–5 ESV

3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, 5 who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

Living hope… consider what the word hope means. We don’t hope for something that has already happened. Rather we hope for something to happen in the future.

Our inheritance is not yet received, rather it is kept in heaven

And our salvation will be revealed in the last time.

So what about here and now? Well here and now we are exiles, strangers, and aliens in this world. We do not belong here.

Here’s the tension with being an elect exile. We are of all people in the world the most blessed people. But often people misunderstand what this means.

They make that to mean that the blessing of the Christian life will be experienced in this life here and now. And so there are many who come to the Christian faith expecting life to get better once they begin following Jesus. But that’s not how the Christian life works.

Peter says,

1 Peter 1:6–7 ESV

6 In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, 7 so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

Some people who have put their faith in Jesus do so thinking that doing so will make this life better. But that’s not what Peter describes at all. In fact all of the Scriptures tell us the very opposite will happen to us.

Matthew 10:22 (ESV)

22 and you will be hated by all for my name’s sake.

So if you come to Jesus, thinking that life will automatically get better here and now if you follow Jesus, well then you don’t have a good understanding of what it looks like to be a Christian in this world. For being a Christian means that all of the sudden you no longer belong in this world.

This is going to be the overarching theme of this entire letter. Peter will talk about all the various troubles that the elect exiles were facing.

They had troubles with their neighbors and the other people who were not a part of the Christian faith

Such as trouble with their masters… that is the people who they worked for

They had trouble with the governing authorities…

They had trouble even with their spouses…

Peter is going to show us how to suffer well in the world

But for today I want us to identify the reason for all this trouble. The reason we suffer, is because we are strangers and exiles to this world.

Philippians 3:20 ESV

20 But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ,

Yeah we might be Americans… we might be Washingtonians…

You might even bear a family name… So I am a Trosper, meaning that I belong to a certain family.... but more than this, we are a part of God’s family, and his kingdom is not of this world. And if his kingdom is not of this world, then that means that we are not citizens of this world either. Rather we are exiles, strangers, and aliens to this world. We are the outcasts who do not belong here.

And this should be obvious to us especially today

there was once a time Christianity was generally accepted in America. But those times are long gone today. We are living in a time when people do what is right in their own eyes instead of doing that wich is pleasing in the sight of God.

We are exiles in this world, and that means we will face many troubles. But these troubles are not meaningless.

1 Peter 1:6–7 ESV

6 In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, 7 so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

Our faith is valuable remember… we have this glorious inheritance that we will receive that is even more valuable than gold.

But like gold, our faith must be refined and tested.

Have you ever seen gold before it is purified?

Do you know how you purify gold? You burn it. You put it through fire. And when gold passes through fire, the gold is purified. For the gold will melt, but the grit will burn off. The dirt and rocks will remain outside of the gold. And what you will be left with is what precious and pure gold.

So too, we must be put through trials, so that we too might be purified. And when making it through each trial, we the Lord will have demonstrated the genuineness of our faith. And all the more he is honored and glorified when we pass these tests.

So do you feel the tension of what a Christian is?

We are elect exiles

We are of all people most to be blessed, for our faith is more precious than gold.

But we are also exiles who will be tried. Peter doesn’t want the his readers to be surprised when they face their trials. And I don’t want us to be surprised either.

But rather I want us to do what James says

James 1:2–4 ESV

2 Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, 3 for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. 4 And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

How then do we count it as joy? How then do we live in this tension? How do we not lose heart in our trials?

I’ll tell you how.

We must patiently endure through every trial knowing that one day it will all be worth it. And we do so by faith and not by sight. This is how Peter says it

1 Peter 1:8–9 ESV

8 Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, 9 obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

We do not see our reward today. In fact, when the world looks at Christians who endure suffering patiently, it makes no sense. But to those of us who know what is in store for them, we are given grace and strength to endure.

But we do not endure by ourselves.

So let us look to Jesus Christ, the author and finisher of our faith. Let us consider his resurrection and wait eagerly with home for the day when we too will be resurrected with him.

Let’s pray.