1 Peter 2: 11-17

How are you and I to live?

We are to live lives of beauty and boldness.

I love how Peter opens up with beloved. He is saying listen I love you. I know what your going through. I’m in this with you. I know the hardships you face.

1 Peter 2:11-12 “Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul.

12. 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.”

The suffering that they are faceing at this time is descrimination and mistreatment and verbal abuse by colleagues and friends

Peter tells them

To abstain form the passions of the flesh. the word abstain suggests to hold back or to walk away from or to avoid

To stay away from thier desires that are motivated out of selfishness. When that person attacts you and says things about you and your fleshly desire is to tell them where they can go.

Peter says don’t do that don’t by into it. he says keep you conduct honorable.

Peter is telling them works over words

We are blessed to live in a country that that values and somewhat protects free speach.

We should value that and protect it best we can as long as we can

Peter here is saying even if you loose it the gospel will still move forward.

The gospel can not be stopped because the beauty of our lives.

When we live our lives according to Gods moral laws. It brings beauty that draws people into the salvation of the Lord.

Peter is say even if you don’t have words you have life and the way that you do life brings beauty when it’s lived out through the moral law of God.

People will be draw to your life. The moral law of God is about his glory and your joy.

God’s law is not about your begrdging submission to missory. how can God be glorified in that if your like this is lamb.

God is after beauty that people can look at and see that there is a God.

Listen to what Psalm 19:7-10 “The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul; the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple; the precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes; the fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever; the rules of the Lord are true, and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold; sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb.”

God is building a frame work in your life that produces beauty in your life. That draws people in when you give him glory regaurdless of lifes circumstances

When life hands us lemons we make lemonade.

I want to ask you do you love Goodness?

Do you love beauty?

For you and I to live out God’s moral law we will have to care deeply abouy goodness and beauty that it produces.

Our hole lives are to be marked by goodness and beauty.

We live this out in our marriages when things are hard. we don’t give up. we look at the long game and not what is happening in the moment we remeber the covenant we made is everlasting like our creator.

In our friend ships do we live lives of beauty reminding each other this is not our home. Helping one another to stir up hope faith and love.

With your money and your time do you live like there is something bigger than you?

Here’s the good news of the gospel if your life is shattered and there is not much beauty at all.

I want to tell you that jesus redeems and can put your life back together in ways that are more beautiful than they ever were to begin with.

The christian message isn’t oh you’ve been deviorsed shame on you we will sow a patch on your shirt.

the message of the gospel is Jesus will step into that mess and put you back together in ways you can’t imagen.

Through some addiction

through some compulsion

through some stupity

You made a mess of your life i’ve got good news for you today

That good news is redemtion

The good news is you haven’t out sinned the grace of God

The good news is God has made a way to put that thing back together that ultimatly when he is done you marvel at it.

How many of you here would say that there was a season of my life

Where because of my own foolishness or some other situation there wasn’t any beauty. it was all brokeness?

I was desprite and in dispair and yet Christ came and put things back togeteher in a way you marvel at it.

How many of you would raise your hand and say i was busted up.

I want you to look around. if your struggling God can put you back together you see the hands that were raised.

When we begin to submit to God’s moral law he brings beauty to our broken lives.

So I want to ask you do you love goodness enough

that when your situation looks hopless will you get help?

When Stephanie and I came to Liberty. We were coming out of addiction.

We had one thing in common we both loved Jesus but we didn’t know how to love each other clean.

I’m on one end of the house and Stephaine and the kids are on the other end.

Liberty started Wednsday night involvre classes. They had a preview night for the classes and we were walking around looking at the classes and they had marriage and parenting.

I’m thinking to myself we messed that up and that would be a good place to start.

we sat in a room with another couple every wed night for a year and a half working on our relationship and they taught us how to love one another .

As I look back at how God has redeemed our lives and our marraige and I marvel at the beauty of God in our lives.

Listen I want you to know that if your hear and you feel like all is lost. God can put you back together don’t you give up.

Lean into what God is trying to do through the brokeness of your life. God wants to use it to make something beautiful that brings him glory.

We are to live lives of beauty and the second thing we are to do is live lives of boldness.

1 Peter 2:13-16 “Be subject for the Lord’s sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme, or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good. For this is the will of God, that by doing good you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish people. Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God.”

I’m about to say something that is going to clash with modern culture.

You want to be bold be submissive. What

You want to stick it to the man be submisive.

The kingdom economics work different.

Jesus came preaching the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

Then he kicks off what the people of God would look like in the bee atitudes.

Jesus didn’t show up looking for these people but to create those type of people.

What does he say kingdom people will look like?

He says blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted

Blessed are the meek. what

blessed are you when you are persecuted hu

This is a upside down reality if you want to wage war you have to take yourself out of using the weapons of warfare and live lives of beauty and submission in a way that underminds the hole system.

Now i’m not talking about powerlessness or weakness or being blind.

Jesus ant haven that. Jesus preached bodly, he healed, he called people to repentance. he was not afraid to speak truth to power.

I love John capter 19 Where Pilot say tto Jesus

John 19:10-11 “So Pilate said to him, “You will not speak to me? Do you not know that I have authority to release you and authority to crucify you?” Jesus answered him, “You would have no authority over me at all unless it had been given you from above. Therefore he who delivered me over to you has the greater sin.””

Jesus is like please you wouldn’t be able to do any of this unless my father let you.

I could end this in a second you better be glad i’m submitted to the father.

That’s meekness it’s power undercontrol.

It’s a life submited to the father knowing he is in control.

were not door mats when I talk about submission i’m not talking about being door mats.

Listen submission is the right responce of people to the commands of God.

It being willing to set aside your desires and needs to honor the desires or needs of another.

To be a christian is to die to yourself for the for the good of another.

Lets talk about the government

You and I are to be the best citizens we can possibly be.

That doesn’t mean that we do whatever the government says is good and right.

Especially if that government sets it’s self up against the God of the universe.

There are many through out history that have protested there government and raised there voice in peacfull protests when it’s govenment has acted in ways that are aginst God’s moral law.

In one hand Peter says submit the best you can as long as you can. But there will come a day when you can’t.

And if that day comes you need to be ready to live lives of beauty and boldness.

To stand up and say this is out of step and to live our lives in ways that shows Gods way is beautiful and true when compaired to the sinful ways of men.

Peter says we are to be the best citizens we can be until the laws of the land and the empire can no longer be followed.

That day may or may not come for us.

But the word of God is clear for you and I. Your battle plan is to be the best citizen possible and to live liives of beauty in a broken world.

So that when people speak evil of you that they be put to shame by the beauty of your life .

The day is coming when they will be like i don’t like them. why? I don’t know.

Because there not like us

They don’t throw there children in the trash.

They don’t share their marriage bed.

They give to the poor and challenge power that’s corrupted.

We don’t go along with there plan and we are seen as odd and like a problem to be solved.

The way we live our lives in beauty will either repel people or it will draw people to salvation.

People are watching how our brokeness is being brought to beauty through the grace of God and God will use it to draw others to him.

In japan there is a traditional tea ceramony they take a bowl and they mix up the motcha in it and it becomes a family airlum that is handed down from generation to generation.

When that bowl breaks it’s a big deal so they would take the bowl and repair it.

There became these artist that would put the bowls back together a certain way and it’s called kensugi

Kensugi is where they take the broken pieces of the bowl and they will put the pieces back togther with laquer and the artists started filling in the cracks with gold , platnum and silver.

And the bowl becomes more valuble and desirable than it ever was before it was broken.

This is a picture of you and I.

When I’m talking about a life of beauty and a life of submision. This is what I’m talking about.

You being put back together in your submission to Christ. He’s filling in the cracks and the broken pieces of your life making something that’s beautiful.

Listen Jesus said come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden and i will give you rest.

Jesus is giving you a invitation to come.

Do you feel like your life is shattered to pieces?

I got Good news for you Jesus can put it back together.

Don’t be defind by that fall off the shelf.

Don’t be defined by someone elses slippery hands that dropped you.

Jesus wants to be the thing that defines you. But you got to bring him your broken pieces.

Is there not much beauty in your life?

I’m here to tell you that you have not out sinned the grace of God.

You feel like your life is crudy that’s God’s grace to you.

You feel like you’ve gone to fare that’s Gods grace to you.

That feeling is the holy spirit drawing you to him.