Portrait of an Exile

We are starting a new study today, so open your Bibles to the book of 1 Peter.

It is a short letter in the back of your Bible, so it can be kinda tricky to find. If you are using the pew Bible, it is actually on page 1075, although there isn’t a page number on that page.

As you are flipping over there, let’s talk for a minute about why we are studying this book right now.

One reason is that this is a good follow-up to our study of the Gospel of John.

We were introduced to Peter and saw the beautiful way God restored him to a right relationship with Christ.

Now, we are fast-forwarding 30 years or so to hear directly from Peter about what Jesus had taught him during his years of walking with Christ.

The second reason is the content of the book itself.

The culture around us is making it quite clear that the Bible and the values God espouses through his Word are not as welcome as they once were.

Immediately, we might start thinking about debates we see raging on the national and international stage.

It is true that a careful reading of Scripture and a desire to apply it consistently will call both sides of the political aisle out on various issues.

When we continue to uphold biblical teachings like the sanctity of human life from conception to natural death, or when we hold to God’s design for the gender, marriage, and the home, or to his lasting compassion for the poor, we may find ourselves in a position of to suffer for Christ.

However, I want to try to rein in our thoughts a bit and focus on things closer to home.

Although these national issues have local implications, we are more often faced with the challenge of following Christ in everyday life.

What do we do when our boss asks us to do something that we know is unethical and we refuse? What about when the guys give us a hard time for not laughing at their inappropriate jokes or joining them for beer at the bar after work? What about when your best friend gets angry at you because you won’t go to their daughter’s wedding because she is marrying another woman?

That’s where the rubber meets the road, isn’t it? It’s one thing to share a video on Facebook or even check a box on a ballot; it’s another when it starts costing us friends, jobs, even family.

How are we supposed to respond when it becomes difficult to follow Jesus?

That’s what Peter is going to spend the next five chapters explaining for us, and that’s what we are going to spend the majority of our summer discussing.

Let’s start at the beginning, and let’s see how Peter opens things up.

Read with me 1 Peter 1:1.

Let’s start with the easy stuff.

The letter claims to have been written by the Apostle Peter, and there aren’t any good claims that it wasn’t him.

He calls himself an apostle of Jesus Christ, which means he is one of the few who was sent out originally by Jesus himself before Jesus went to heaven.

He is writing to believers who were scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia. These were all different Roman provinces that are scattered across what is now the country of Turkey.

According to chapter 5, this letter was likely carried by a guy named Silvanus. The order of the provinces seems to indicate the route he would travel as he carried the letter from place to place, making roughly a circle.

From the content of the letter, it doesn’t seem like they were yet facing official Roman persecution. It wasn’t illegal to be a Christian, but being a Christian brought with it discrimination and contempt that would impact every area of life.

The Christians to whom Peter is writing were likely facing sporadic persecution for their faith, suffering because they chose to stand up for Christ.

These Christians were people who found themselves as strangers in their own home town, as if they were foreigners living temporarily in another place.

As people turned against them, it became obvious that they were so dramatically different because of their relationship with Christ that it is like they weren’t even from that place anymore.

Peter makes this clear in verse 1 when he describes his audience as “exiles”.

Keep in mind—there is a difference between a refugee and an exile.

A refugee has to flee their country out of a fear for their own safety. They could go back at any time if they wanted, but they stay where they are because life is better for them in their new country than it was in their homeland.

An exile, though, is someone who has been forced from their home and cannot return.

Peter says that right now, we are living as exiles, whatever country we find ourselves in.

That’s exactly how the writer of Hebrews describes the great men and women of faith:

Hebrews 11:13–14 CSB

These all died in faith, although they had not received the things that were promised. But they saw them from a distance, greeted them, and confessed that they were foreigners and temporary residents on the earth. Now those who say such things make it clear that they are seeking a homeland.

Whether we recognize it or not, we are not from around here. Although I am Christiansburg born and raised, what Christ has done causes me to look at life from a completely different perspective than those around me who don’t know Jesus.

My primary citizenship is in the kingdom of God, and am an exile living in America.

As we go through the remainder of this book, we are going to see that life as an exile may look different than you think at first.

Peter is going to challenge us with this main idea:

We are called to suffer well for Christ who suffered for us.

Over the next few months, we are going to discover what that looks like. Living as an exile means suffering well for Christ.

That means we put our hope in the fact that one day, he is coming back and we will fully enjoy his kingdom and no longer walk as exiles.

In the meantime, we should expect to suffer.

What Peter will challenge us to do is, instead of digging in or hiding or just lobbing metaphorical grenades at those who oppose Christ, he is going to call us to live holy lives and honor Jesus by doing good, by actively living out our faith, and by defending the Gospel at every turn.

Think of it this way: Do any of you have friends who immigrated to America? Have you ever been to their house and enjoyed their hospitality, eaten the food they would fix back home, and gotten a taste of the culture they came from?

That’s a part of what it looks like for us to suffer well for Christ who suffered for us.

As exiles, we want to give people a taste of home, to join God in his mission of rescuing people from their sin.

We want to stand with our other brothers and sisters in Christ around the world and join God in his purpose of redeeming a lost world.

We will see that living as exiles is incredibly challenging, but oh so incredibly rewarding.

Peter knows what he is getting ready to say is difficult. That’s why he is going to take the first 12 verses of this letter to remind us of who we are before he calls us to obey in difficult ways.

In the first two verses, which we will look at together today, Peter points to each member of the Trinity to show that you the sufferings, difficulties, and persecutions we endure have not caught him off guard.

In fact, these verses make it clear that you were chosen for by God to be a part of his kingdom in this place at this time.

As we see in verse 2, God has chosen you ahead of time, set you apart, and covered you with his own blood so that you could obey him.

Peter uses three phrases to teach us about the incredible salvation God has laid out for us.

He introduces these themes here, and he is going to pick them up throughout the letter, so we are going to introduce them here and flesh them out a little more as we go along.

First…

1) The Father chose you ahead of time.

Look back with me at verses 1-2…

The translators have inserted the word “chosen” twice here, even though it only appears once in the text. They added it at the end of the verse because it helps you keep up with the thought since you might lose it as you read through that list of place names.

Peter uses some words here that are heavily loaded theological words in our world today.

We don’t have the time to get into this discussion deeply today, but I want to talk about this a little bit.

While people who love Jesus and love to think deeply about these words might disagree over exactly what it means that the Father chose us according to his foreknowledge, here’s what is clear: God the Father chose you to follow him and be a part of his kingdom and his family before you ever existed.

It is so easy when living as an exile to start thinking, “Wouldn’t it have been great to live in some other time period where things weren’t so divided or so difficult?”

We may even wonder if God saw this coming—did he know I would have to be alive and parenting my kids through this time or trying to figure out what it looks like to honor Jesus in my job in this mess?

Here’s a comforting truth: Before you were born, God determined exactly when you would be born, where you would live, and what the world would be like when God called you to follow him.

Paul pointed this out to the philosophers in Athens:

Acts 17:26 CSB

From one man he has made every nationality to live over the whole earth and has determined their appointed times and the boundaries of where they live.

God determined the when and where you would live. That is ultimately true of every person on the planet.

However, in a unique way, if you have been saved, God chose you to be a part of his kingdom, his people. If you are a Christian, you are a part of the uniquely chosen people of God!

Although there is a lot of debate about how God chooses and what all that means, for today, simply rest in the fact that God chose you to represent him as an exile at this time in this place.

As I say that, some of you might be thinking, “Well, I really wish God had chosen differently for me!”

I can’t help but think of the words written by J.R.R. Tolkien. In the first book of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the character Frodo has been given some incredibly distressing news. He is speaking with an individual named Gandalf, and he says:

““I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo. "So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

[1]

You and I may not always enjoy living life as exiles, but this is what God has chosen for us.

We have an opportunity to honor him in this time, right now, and he chose us for that.

Let that sink in: God chose you. He has something of eternal value he wants to accomplish in you and through you.

As we look at the rest of 1 Peter and we see how challenging it is to live life as an exile, we need to have a firm grasp on the fact that the God of the universe chose us himself and for this.

If God chose you to be saved and to live this life before you were ever born, then you can trust Him to see you through it.

There’s more, though. Not only has the Father chosen you:

2) The Spirit set you apart.

Look at that next phrase in 1 Peter 1:2…

You have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father.

Not only that, but you have been set apart by the Holy Spirit.

Here is that word “sanctify” again, which is one of those critical Bible terms you need to be familiar with.

This word is the idea of “setting apart”.

Most of the time, “sanctification” is used to talk about the process of growing to act more like Jesus as we grow closer to him - we are setting ourselves apart from living life our old way and setting ourselves apart to live a new way.

However, sometimes, like here, it means that initial setting apart that happens at conversion, or when God saves us.

When God drew you to himself and you were saved by his foreknowledge, at the same time, the Holy Spirit was setting you apart.

He was taking you out of your old way of life, looking at life without Christ, obeying your desires and doing things your way, and he set you apart to be clean and holy and pure.

Keeping with the picture of the foreigners or exiles, this is when your nationality changed. As we have talked about some on Wednesday nights, Colossians 1:13 teaches us that when we are saved, God rescues us from the kingdom of darkness and places us in the kingdom of his Son.

Here, Peter says that is a work of the Holy Spirit.

Peter is going to flesh this out more in chapter 2 when he talks about the fact that we are now a part of God’s covenant community, called his people.

As one commentator put it,

“As the Gospel is proclaimed, the Spirit sanctifies some by bringing them to faith, by bringing them into the realm of the holy.”[2]

If you are saved today, you have been set apart into the realm of the holy.

By the way, this doesn’t mean you are better than anyone or that you were somehow more special than others.

The Father called you out and the Spirit set you apart because of his grace, not because of you.

This truth should humble you, not make you proud and arrogant.

That old saying of, “but for the grace of God, there go I” is true. If it wasn’t for the grace of God, you wouldn’t be saved.

Yet, because we serve a gracious God, he calls us to himself, setting us apart for his purposes and his glory.

Why does that help with suffering, persecution, and living life as exiles? Because God set you apart for this and is working to help you live it out.

You may wish he hadn’t, but he knew you would bring him glory at this time in this place with all that is going on around you, and he set you apart for it.

There’s more, though.

God the Father chose you, the Spirit sanctified you, and finally:

3) The Son sealed our covenant.

Peter uses a powerful picture here from Exodus 24:3-8.

We don’t have time to dig deeply into the passage, but here is what happened.

God gave his law to Moses as we read in Exodus 20-23.

In chapter 24, Moses came down and told the people all that God had said and what the law would be for Israel, who were God’s special people.

After the people heard what Moses said, they promised to obey everything God asked of them.

The next day, they set up an altar and made several sacrifices.

Moses took part of the blood from those sacrifices and sprinkled it on the altar.

After the people again agreed to keep the Law, he sprinkled the rest of the blood on the people, saying

Exodus 24:8 CSB

Moses took the blood, splattered it on the people, and said, “This is the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you concerning all these words.”

That’s the picture Peter is drawing from in this phrase in verse 2.

When Moses was putting that blood on the altar, he was giving us a picture of what Jesus, God the Son, would do on our behalf as he shed his blood to bring forgiveness for our sins.

When the people said they would obey, they entered into the covenant, which is more powerful than a simple promise, that they would obey.

The blood that was sprinkled on them was a symbol to them that they made a covenant with God of obedience.

Peter says that this is what Jesus has done. When the Father chose us and the Spirit set us apart, the Son shed his blood so we could be forgiven and so that we would obey God.

His blood was sprinkled on the altar to forgive our sins, and it was sprinkled on us to seal our covenant with God.

Don’t miss this: The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit have all been intimately involved in you getting saved and continuing to grow to honor Him.

If God would go through such great lengths to save you, do you think he’s going to forget you now?

If he would choose you by his grace, then he won’t forget you.

If he would set you apart, then he will not cast you aside.

If he would shed his blood for you, then he will carry you and give you the strength to obey.

That’s why Peter could say to these suffering, hated, discriminated against Christians, “May grace and peace be multiplied to you.”

The God who chose you according to his foreknowledge, who sets you apart, and who shed his own blood to seal the covenant can certainly give you grace and peace.

He already has! He has given you grace and brought you into peace with Himself.

He certainly will! He will continue to give you grace and can bring peace into the most difficult days.

It is with this understanding of salvation that Peter starts his letter, and here is where we must end for today.

[1] J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring, Mariner Books, 73. [2]Schreiner, Thomas R. 1, 2 Peter, Jude. The New American Commentary Series, Vol. 37. Nashville: Broadman & Holman (2003), p. 54.