1 Peter Lesson 2 | Wade Branch

Well, good morning everyone. It is great to see everyone

who's here today want to say a special Happy Mother's Day to

all the the mothers, whether you are a a physical mother or even

a spiritual mother, there are women written about in Scripture

who had a motherly influence on people.

And whatever your role is, thank you because we as men have our

role. But we cannot do what you can do

in in any of the ways that God has designed you to be special

for what you provide. We simply cannot do it as men.

And any attempt to try to do that is going to be pretty

embarrassing and often times not what people really need.

And you guys are the heart and soul of many of our lives.

And so thank you for what you provide to us and for the

church, especially as we are a body here together.

We're going to continue on in first Peter.

We didn't finish chapter one the first time.

So if you'd like to open up with me there, we'll be spending all

of our time here in first Peter one and and getting a little bit

into chapter 2. But please turn there with me if

you'd like to follow along. And we're going to do a quick

run up. I don't want to take more than

just a few seconds to get us some momentum, but I want to

make sure we remember where we left off.

As we just mentioned a second ago, he's writing to the

pilgrims of the dispersion, people who are persecuted,

likely by the Emperor Nero, who is running them out of the the

running them out into the countryside.

And they were spreading off into these greater regions over here,

Bithynia, Cappadocia, all these regions.

And he reminds that they that they are elected by God, that

they have a deep connection with God the Father, the Holy Spirit,

and Jesus Christ and these different ways, letting them

know that the the Godhead has not abandoned you just because

you're suffering, just because you feel like everything is all

turned upside down for their world.

He's letting them know that God has abundant mercy toward them

and has given them a living hope in the face of their adversity.

He doesn't want to them to just sit and dwell on their problems.

He wants them to remind them of the hope they have.

And that hope is because of what our Lord did for us.

Because Jesus Christ died, He himself suffered and was

resurrected by God through his suffering into life.

That now gives us hope. And because of that, they share

in Jesus's sufferings. They rise from sufferings into a

living hope. Just as Jesus rose from the

dead. He talked about how they have an

inheritance that is reserved for them, that they are kept by the

power of God and they right now are being tried in various ways.

And he's acknowledging that. But he reminded them of the

value of their of their faith. He reminded them that it's like

gold that is needs to be refined by the fire and it's made more

pure and precious. And even though they haven't

seen it, they have faith in it. And that is the definition of

faith. It's when you walk by what you

can have faith in, not by what you can see.

And we'll can start to slow down now as we enter what we have not

covered yet. So we finished off talking about

this, he says of the salvation. The prophets have inquired and

searched carefully, searching what or what manner of time the

Spirit of Christ who was in them was indicating when he testified

beforehand. He said the prophets have always

wanted to know what you get to enjoy as Christians today, the

sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow.

Just like these people who are pilgrims to them.

It was revealed that not to themselves, but to us, they were

ministering the things that which have now been reported to

you. He said you guys are the ones

who have been everybody's been waiting for.

You're the ones who get to hear this message and get to have be

served by their thousands of years of of prophetic work that

was leading up to this point through those who have preached

the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit set from heaven.

Things which even angels, not just prophets, angels desire to

look into. He's showing them how they're in

a tough spot, but a special spot.

So here's where we left off. We just barely touched on this

verse, verse 13. He says, therefore gird up the

loins of your mind. And because I just bounced over

this verse, I want to talk a little bit more about here.

We talked about how we need to tie up the excess.

We need to get the things out of our way.

They're going to hold us back in battle.

And we talked about how that could be seen, that could be

distractions that we're aware of.

Maybe it's excess things, but I want to confess to you this

morning you'll go a little bit deeper because I personally

underestimate the control I have over my mind.

I do. And I even underestimate the

impact that my mind has on everything about me.

It's simple. We can't see it.

It's not like you know you. You see it.

It's clear. It happens.

You know you. You pop one thing in the oven,

something comes out. It's not that simple with our

with our minds. Our minds are complicated and I

personally underestimate the influence.

But there is a man named Wim Hof that Tina introduced me to the

other day that is really unlocked and showed us the power

of our minds, the power of our habits over our minds and over

our bodies. And that's just a reminder to

me. This is not a lesson on him.

He is not the guru that you and I should be following with our

whole life, but he discovered that he can control his own

bodily automatic functions like his immune system through some

simple steps like meditation and even cold therapy.

There's things that inhabits that he has embedded in his

life, but he can literally control his immune system.

I have. We have a lot more control over

what we what goes on with us then we want to admit.

Why? Because the more control we

admit we have, the more responsibility it takes from us.

And as soon as I admit that I have responsibility over my own

mind and what happens in here and what I take in, as soon as I

admit that, life gets a little bit harder because now

everything you do and everything we do matters.

But here's a reminder for me that I need to be responsible

for my own mind in my hope. Hope's not easy, as we were

talking even about as an extension of this conversation.

Hope, empathy, joy, peace, restfulness, these are not easy

things to achieve. They're not just going to happen

to us. But I'm responsible for how my

mind is in respect to these concepts.

How do I know that's true? From Scripture?

1st Corinthians 10 verse 4 says for the weapons of our warfare

are not carnal but mighty, and God for pulling down

strongholds. Those strongholds can be a lot

of different things. The devil can establish places

on the earth where he has a lot of influence.

He can establish places in our hearts where he has a lot of

influence. He can establish and build up

overtime things that work against the work of God.

Who am I to think that that can't happen inside of me, A

Christian who's doing his, maybe doing his best, you might say.

I might think, but also has areas that the devil is working

on. Our weapons are for casting down

arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the

knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity, to the

obedience of Christ, every thought into captivity.

Do I underestimate the value and the literality of what that

statement is saying that all of my thoughts need to be

surrendered and humbled to God? And I'm not saying the like,

I've, you know, sometimes when people become very interested in

God, it's sometimes it's like they can't talk about you can't

talk about work. It's like all I can talk about

is God. And I'm not saying there's

anything wrong with being consumed with God, but the point

is, do all my thoughts, do my anxious thoughts surrender to

God? Do my trust, my hopes, surrender

to God instead of relying on things in the future or with a

person or with a time or a place that is going to make me where I

need to be? Does every thought, every area

of my heart surrender to God? And is it and is it impacted by

the work of God's will in my life?

And I would submit that I have a lot of work to do in that

regard. We have weapons of our warfare

and we need to be fighting against the things internally

and externally that might be strongholds for the devil.

Now, maybe this is a way to start with your diet if you are

feeling unhealthy or if you are looking or or anything

unhealthy, typically they'll say start with your diet and the

only way to evaluate your diet is to track things.

OK, so you make a list, you write a journal.

Monday I ate eggs and toast. For breakfast.

I had two eggs and one piece of toast.

For snacks, I had a granola bar. For lunch I had a cheeseburger

and fries. For dinner I had pizza and a

salad. And for dessert I had ice cream.

OK, you start to just log information.

You start to see what am I taking in, what are my patterns

that is creating what you see in front of you or what I feel

inside of me for physical health.

OK, the point of making a list is not to say every one of these

things is wrong. Pizza in itself is probably not

that bad, or cheeseburger by itself is not that bad.

But you might look at this and say, OK, I could see where

there's some things that might, you know, give you some some

acid reflux. Or you might before dinner,

probably don't want to eat that ice cream without pizza.

And you're just going to say this is what's going to come out

of this. If you do this, it's not

necessarily a a criticism of somebody, but you start to track

the intake and it results in a product.

What if we do that with our minds?

Have you ever done this with your mind to consider why you

are way the way you are right now with regard to peace or

stress or lack of empathy or empathy?

Have you ever tracked what you're taking in?

Let's say we did this without food, but let's say it's with

our minds food. Let's say for the 1st 30 minutes

of my day, my breakfast so to speak, I spent my day watching

the news where they told me the economy's collapsing, morality

is crumbling, our government is corrupt and three people were

arrested for robbing a locally owned business.

Then I rushed to get ready for work and the 15 minutes I had

left before I had to leave. I looked in the mirror, unhappy

with my appearance, my age, my fitness, maybe my lack of sleep,

beauty care, and then I told God thank you for my food and I was

out the door. OK, as we think about our diet,

what is this diet going to result in?

I drove to work anxious about being late and frustrated with

myself because I did not wake up early enough.

I was annoyed by all the people in Bakersfield.

We have some of the worst driving rates and statistics in

the country, so it's maybe a valid annoyance for all the

people in Bakersfield who don't know how to drive.

Then when I got to work, a Co worker talked to me about how

much they were tired of this job and the frustrations that come

with it. At lunch I spent 30 minutes

scrolling on my phone. Random people that either made

me laugh about ridiculous things or made me annoyed that some

people can be so dumb before I moved on to look at somebody

else doing the same thing. And those extremes left me

internally numb to low stimulation activities that I

was going to be engaged with it with at work ahead of me.

I went back to work dreading the last three hours of the day.

I'm not saying this is me. I'm not saying this is any of

you. I'm just saying here's a sample

of what might happen in our minds that we might be feeding

on. So then at dinner, I got home so

tired after work, I just wanted to relax.

So I turned on the TV and watched insert any whether it's

sport, whether it's reality TV show, whether it's movie for 90

minutes where I caught up emotion.

When I got caught up emotionally in the plot of something that

has nothing to do with me or has no bearing on my life.

I got a prayer request. I got an e-mail from GAIL that

says and someone needs an our prayers.

And so I said a three second prayer for them and I moved on.

I got up, I looked at the house, I saw 13 things that needed to

be done and I felt overwhelmed. Before bed, my bedtime snack.

Mentally you might say. I read my Bible for 10 minutes,

but I was very sleepy and not interested in what I was

reading. I said a prayer and mentioned a

family member who was sick. I went to sleep worried about

them. I blew through that to try to

give us some idea of what we might be feeding on.

Is this what we're feeding our minds and non judge mentally,

completely, objectively? What am I going to get out of a

mind that feeds like this? Let's try to identify whatever

fruits might come off of or products might come from this.

Is this going to create peace, anxiety, closeness with God,

selflessness, hopefulness about the future, empathy, hunger for

righteousness? Is it going to create hunger for

entertainment? Is it going to give me a restful

mind? Is it going to give me joy or is

it going to give me stress as we evaluate what we're feeding on,

You know what social media, they call it your feed.

It's what we feed on mentally. Is this going to give us what we

need to fight the spiritual warfare that we're fighting?

I ask you this from a place of lowness on this scale as well.

If you feel that way. Let's let's evaluate.

I'm going to try to blow through because I don't want to spend a

bunch of time with with these hypotheticals, but let's say

just a completely different mental diet.

Again, this is not the perfect thing.

This is just a let's just throw this out there.

Let's say I woke up to the first minute of my day.

One minute I spent was on my knees.

I thanked God forgive me. Whatever rest I did get.

I remember the stresses ahead of me.

So I asked the father to walk with me and whatever was to

come. I took a deep breath and thought

about the fact that he really just heard my prayer.

I ate breakfast and read 3 verses on a daily schedule.

I'm on one phrase in first Peter.

One reminded me to love my brethren with a pure heart.

That made me think about my brother who is in need.

I said a prayer for them and sent them a text message.

I drove to work and had to remind myself to be peaceful on

the road and to give preference to others even here.

I sing praises to God in the privacy of my car that made me

think about His greatness and His loving qualities.

I picked a parking spot that was further away from the building

so that others could get to a closer spot in case they needed

it. I took the first two minutes of

my lunch break to be alone, to breathe deep, and to thank God

in prayer for both my job and for the rest I get with a quick

break. I spent 10 minutes of my break

reading and meditating on scripture.

At the end of my break, when I was tired, I asked God for

strength to continue on and to have a good attitude and work

ethic through the weakness I felt.

I went home and just rested after my work day in a

comfortable chair for 30 minutes, no stimulation, no

shows, no nothing. And I went for a 15 minute walk

and admired the things around me.

I admired the trees, the birds, the natural beauty that is here

even in Bakersfield, the low stimulation, peaceful things.

My mind was unoccupied. I had space to think about my

friend and something I can help them do.

I sent them a message offering my help a few days from now.

For my bedtime snack, I read the Bible for 10 minutes, praying to

God about the things I read. I said a prayer and mentioned a

family member who was sick, and I went to sleep comforted that

God can watch over them in ways I cannot.

I hope I didn't take too much time in your perspective going

through this. But the point is, what do we

think the results of a day like this might yield?

If I'm feeding on this kind of mental food, what do we think

it'll create? Do we?

Do we think it'll create restful mind, A hunger for

righteousness, or a hunger for entertainment, anxiety or peace?

Sometimes we want the results without the resolve.

Sometimes we want to have the shortcut to a mind that is

strong and peaceful without the mental diet that it takes to

achieve that. And maybe there's things where

you felt peace without doing some of these really hard habits

that you felt younger in life that now where you're at in

life, you don't have peace anymore.

What's funny is we say that about our diets.

I used to be able to eat that and I can't eat that anymore.

It leaves me feeling bad. And so I have to change my diet

physically now that I'm older. For whatever reason, it's just

where I'm at in life. Maybe spiritually you're there.

Maybe you're thinking I used to be at peace.

Life used to be good, and I wasn't doing all this stuff to

be a better Christian or to change my mind or to develop

peace. Maybe the answer is I Maybe it

was a grace of God that allowed me to find peace even without

all these habits. And maybe now we need to find a

healthy diet intellectually by girding up the loins of our mind

and resting our hope fully upon the grace that is to be brought

to us at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

I hope you and I will both consider what we are feeding

ourselves mentally so that we can really gird up our loins for

the Lord's work. Let's continue on verse 14 as

obedient children, not conforming yourselves to the

former lusts as in your ignorance.

Obedience will change our mind as we talk about all the ways to

change your mind and fill with better.

Obedience will do that. And there's a tendency for our

minds to be conformed like an old extension cord to a shape

that it's been in before, and it wants to go back to that old

shape. He says don't be conformed to

that. Don't go back to that in the

former lusts as in your ignorance before you knew, but

as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your

conduct because it is written the holy for I am holy.

You know what makes it worth it to fight your way out of that,

that shape that the extension cord used to be in, how to fight

your way out of that place in your mind.

What makes it worth it is the one who's calling you is holy.

He makes it worth it to come out of that.

He says verse 17. And if you call on the Father,

who with art without partiality judges according to each one's

work, conduct yourselves throughout the time of your stay

here in fear. What he's telling Wade Branch is

if I want to call on the Father, if I want to address him as

Father, I need to walk the walk. I need to conduct myself in

fear. Now that fear is an active

awareness of the presence and greatness of God.

He even tells me there that God judges without partiality.

He's not going to favour one person because of who they came

from or their background or any other thing.

And maybe they need to hear that because maybe when you're

suffering, you can give yourself excuses.

Maybe when we're going through a hard time, it's like, you know

what, the least I can do is indulge in this.

But he says there's no partiality.

That's a good thing and sometimes a challenging thing

that God judges without partiality.

According to our work. Throughout the time of your stay

here in fear, it's just like this is a a visit at this this

hotel of life. He says knowing that you were

not redeemed with corruptible things like silver or gold from

your aimless conduct received by tradition from your Father's,

but with the precious blood of Christ as of a lamb without

blemish and without spot. Did you know you don't own

yourself? Our culture wants to say the

exact opposite. That is almost the ideal we can

achieve is you are your own person, you do whatever you want

to do. And in a sense that's great.

We have free will. We are blessed with that.

And we live in a country that is free, but we don't own

ourselves. We were bought.

The price has already been paid. And it's funny, he was talking

about gold in the in the past sense, like gold was the ideal

that you refined by fire. But he's saying in this context,

gold is worthless, gold is corruptible, it's trash, it's

going to be burned up in the final day.

But we were purchased with the precious blood of Christ.

That is beyond the value of any earthly thing because it's

spiritual in nature. And not only is it spiritual in

nature, it is the highest quality of blood that the

spiritual realm had the offer. It wasn't angelic blood.

It was the blood of the divine as of a lamb without blemish and

without spot. In the Old Testament, they had

to make a sacrifice of a land that was perfect.

It couldn't be that the land they wanted to throw away

anyway, that was going to get shipped out to pasture anyway.

It was the lamb that had nothing wrong with it, that was not

going to be wasted, but it was the top of their crop.

This is Jesus, He is the tip of the top.

He is the only sacrifice that could buy us and He bought us

from our aimless conduct received from our fathers.

We are thankful for our ancestors because they brought

our family line to this point. But many times we look back and

there was aimlessness there. Doesn't mean that they weren't

good people, but maybe that there wasn't a a point, there

was an aim. There wasn't a focus of life

that led to the point where I'm going to heaven.

That's my aim and I'm going to glorify God with my life.

He says you had that and you were purchased out of that.

It was a system that you were going to be stuck in just like

your Father's and you were purchased out of that.

And this Lamb who that was without blemish and without spot

was foreordained. Verse 20 He would He indeed was

foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was

manifest in these last times for you there was a plan ahead of

time before their sufferings for them who through him believe in

God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory.

So that your faith and hope are in God since you have purified

your souls and obeying the truth through the Spirit in sincere

love of the brethren, love one another fervently with a pure

heart. So this is part of the reason we

know he's writing to Christians. He's saying you have purified

yourselves. He's not writing to random

people. He's writing to people who have

purified themselves in obeying the truth through the Spirit.

We get the truth from the Spirit of God and the and the Spirit

works in US and sincere love of the brethren.

He says because of this, he's commanding them to love one

another fervently. Now he's saying you already have

a sincere love. What is this command to love

fervently? As I understand this word,

fervent was often used to describe a stretching or a

straining. And specifically in the in the

ancient days, it would describe a horse running across the

battlefield going full speed to attack the enemy.

It's a stretching and a straining.

As you see, this horse is is just a full gallop launching

itself. That's the verb he uses to

describe the way he wants us to love each other.

Do we love like that? Do I love my brethren like that?

Do I just exist as part of the church now?

I don't at all want you to feel like you're existing in the

state that you're in right now is a problem.

You are sitting in your seats showing respect and reverence to

the Word of God and a care for the Word of God.

It's not the sitting right now that's under consideration.

It's what is our life like outside of these seats, outside

of this room? Do we love each other?

Do I love you all with the kind of love that I would describe as

a stretching or a straining? You might even give a visual of

somebody lifting weights with with a strain.

Do I love like that? Do you love like that?

Do you Would you describe your work for the people in this room

as a stretch and a strain? Because in order to participate

in the glorious honours of this message, to truly be Christians,

this is the kind of love he commands of us.

Just like we're commanded to worship God on the first day of

the week in the commune, we are commanded to love with a fervent

and a almost an aggression that we are going to serve.

Now we can't just do it with with it with reckless abandoned,

but he says to do with a pure heart that we would have pure

intentions, pure motives, not trying to be better not than

other people and and make ourselves somehow lifted up

because we are loving others better.

This has to do with the pure heart having been born again,

not a corruptible see, but incorruptible.

He says you, you, you guys are are have a new life and it's not

just a new life like the one you got when you came into this

world through your through through your mother.

It's a life that is different in the sense that this time the

seed that you are part of we read in the Corinthian letter is

going to not be corrupted. It's going to be incorruptible

through the word of God, which lives and abides forever.

The second time we were born. It is so much different round

two. We are a whole different seed

verse 24, because all flesh is as grass and all the glory of

man has the flower of grass. The grass wizard Withers and

it's flower falls away. I've got weeds right now in my

in my garden that were so bright and green and just a couple days

later now they're completely brown already.

We see that in this state. We know what that looks like, he

says, but the word of the Lord endures forever.

We will go away so fast. It's like grass, but the word of

the Lord endures forever. The word endures in integrity.

People try to speak against the word of the Lord like it's been

polluted. It has never been polluted.

Jesus says heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will by

no means pass away. It is.

It endures forever in importance.

The Word of God still has the importance it has.

It had thousands of years ago today and the impact it has on

people's life, as we have been seeing recently, it still has

the impact and it endures forever.

I think of it almost like the Sequoia standing above all the

other pesky things that come and go.

The word of the Lord endures forever.

Now this is the word by the gospel, which by the gospel was

preached to you going on in chapter 2.

He says Therefore, laying aside all malice, all deceit, all

hypocrisy, envy and all evil speaking, this is kind of a kind

of a, you might say some other instructions as to how to gird

up your minds. Malice, what is that?

Malice is evil intention. It's not having the best

interest for somebody else, but having contrary intentions, all

deceit that my words and my intentions would not be

completely true and straightforward and honest with

people. He says get rid of that.

All hypocrisy, the tendency to want to portray yourself like

you're something different that you're not.

He says get rid of that. Be straightforward, he says,

laying aside all envy. So sometimes the roots of this

is you want what someone else has.

You long for somebody else's things, Get rid of that.

And all evil speaking, Sometimes this is the roots of these other

things, the way we talk about people, the way we speak of

people, he says. Lay all that aside, get that out

of here. And as newborn babes desire the

pure milk of the word that you may grow thereby, if indeed you

have tasted that the Lord is gracious.

This phrase reminds me that he's writing to people who have

tasted it. He's saying you have seen this

before. Now go back to the word.

Go back to the pure milk of the word.

And especially I believe he's saying in times of trial,

sometimes we need to go back to the basics.

When we're in times of trial, we don't always need to go to the

to the depths of meat. I know of people in my life who

they were going through something very difficult, but

all they wanted to study was the end times of revelation and the

the rapture. They wanted to study these all

these concepts that are not milk.

But when people are struggling, he says, go back to the milk you

need to grow right now. And as babies grow from the from

the milk of the word, from the milk, he says, so you may grow

thereby from the milk of the word.

It is natural for a baby to crave milk, Taylor tells me.

Sometimes she has been nursing for two hours straight.

It's constant. It's just ridiculous.

I've fed her 17 times a day, she said.

And we need to desire the milk of the word because that's why a

baby grows. If you were a baby spiritually,

would you survive on the milk of the word that you are taking in?

Would you survive if you were a literal baby based on what

you're taking in from Scripture? We grow from it.

If you want to grow, it always starts there.

He says verse 4, coming to him as to a living stone, rejected

indeed by men, but chosen by God and precious.

You remember who's writing this? It's Peter.

Remember what Peter's name is? It's a Little Rock, a fragment

of a rock compared to Jesus Christ.

You were going to see in a minute is the is the bedrock of

our foundation. He's saying you also are living

stone. It's not just me, Peter.

You are living stones. You're you're not just aimlessly

thrown into the regions of Galatia and Cappadocia and

Bithynia. You are part of a building.

You are a rock that is being rejected by men, but you are a

stone that is alive. You're part of the building.

You're a living stone, but chosen by God and precious.

We're going to come back to this first chosen.

If you've noticed he's used chosen elect and appointed

several times. We'll come back to this in just

a minute. He says you're being built up a

spiritual house. You also as living stones are

being built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood to

OfferUp spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus

Christ. We together or a spiritual

house, a dwelling place for God, not a literal temple, but a

spiritual one. Therefore it is also contained

in the Scripture. Behold, I lay in Zion.

Zion is is a is the mountain of the Lord.

It's the place where you go to the Lord.

It's the place where his power and strength comes from.

He says, behold, I lay in this mountain where the Lord comes

from, a chief cornerstone, elect and precious.

He's Speaking of Jesus, and he who believes on him will by no

means be put to shame. He's he's showing them the part

of this house that Jesus is also part of their value and their

role in the Kingdom. And he who believes on him will

by no means be put to shame on earth.

Yes, there's shame for Christians.

They're treated shamefully, but the shame that actually matters

is the final shame where the Lord either confirms or denies

us, and He says that will happen.

You won't be put to shame in the end.

Verse 7. Therefore, to you who believe He

is precious, but to those who are disobedient, the stone which

the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone and a

stone of stumbling and a rock of offense.

They threw him away. They buried him, but on the

place where he was buried, a spiritual house was erected.

A spiritual house was then built piece after piece on the place

where they thought he was going to be buried in the lay.

That spiritual house grew, and it still grows today, and they

were part of it. And he wanted them to know

they're being treated the same way.

And you may be treated the same way, insignificant and rejected,

but you're part of that same house.

And if you're unfamiliar with cornerstones in building,

basically you have to have something to ground to.

Back in those days, they can't necessarily make their own

stones. Today we can make our own stones

with concrete footings and we can anchor to those.

But to them it became a rock, a rock of stumbling, an offence.

It says they stumble being disobedient to the word to which

they also were appointed. OK, so we've talked about being

chosen, elected, and even other people are appointed.

What's going on? This phrase he says verse 9.

But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy

nation, his own special people. OK, let's consider this chosen

and elected. I brought this up slightly in

our last lesson. I told you we're going to talk

about it more. We've already talked about in

the book of Galatians and several other places, how

understanding the election of God, how God chooses us there.

There's a lot to it and it's, it's beyond us to be honest with

you. But we talked about how, you

know, there's the difference between conditional election and

unconditional election, meaning God chooses me if I'm willing to

serve him or God chooses me regardless of anything I do.

We talked about general election being God chooses a group of

people, Christians who will serve him that he's going to

save versus choosing individual people that he's going to save.

These are concepts we've already addressed, but I think there's

an issue here to address that we are jumping to a discussion of

salvation. That election we always end up

talking about like you're like you're saved.

And I want to challenge that a little bit by discussing what

the role of election and chosen the Bible is as a whole.

First of all, let's look at the promise to Abraham in Genesis

12, verse one. Now the Lord said to Abram, get

out of your country from your family and from your father's

house to a land that I will show you.

I will make you a great nation. I will bless you and I will make

your name great and you shall be a blessing.

I will bless those who bless you and I will curse those who curse

you, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

This is super important. The God chooses people to use

throughout the Old Testament. This is one of many examples,

but it never is in the context from my studies of I'm saving

you. It's not.

It's not not even what he's saying.

He's saying I'm choosing you for a role and actually I'm choosing

you so that you shall bless other people.

The role, I believe of election and choosing the Bible is God's

giving people a purpose in his master plan.

Now being saved is often part of that.

Obviously if you're going to be part of God's plan, you want to

be saved. And so that's the goal of is

saving but. He goes on to say in Genesis 17

Genesis 17:9

verse 9, and God said to Abraham, As for you, you shall

keep my covenant, you and your descendants after you throughout

their generations. So he had a he had a purpose

tied to it. Part of the reason I think

that's important to note is he just said Jesus was elect.

My slide got out of order, so let me go back.

He says the stone which the builders rejected has become the

chief cornerstone, that being Jesus.

He says the chief cornerstone was elect.

My point I'm making is election I don't believe is a synonym for

saved. We wouldn't say Jesus was a

chief cornerstone. He was saved.

Jesus wasn't saved. Jesus was perfect, he was God.

Election and saved are not synonyms.

The point is, God has chosen Jesus for a work and Jesus has

agreed and surrendered to that work just in the same way that

God has chosen us for a work. Sorry, I bounced around a lot.

That we are the living stones chosen by God for a work so that

we are the only ones who saved. No, so that we will then in turn

hope to save others and bring them into God's family.

I believe that's the biblical picture of election and that's

why these people who are appointed, I don't believe it's

saying these people were chosen by God to be damned, that

they're chosen to go to hell. I don't believe that's what it's

saying. I believe what it's saying is

they were drawn in to God's planet.

That's the side they're going to be on.

He is going to put them into a use.

Now, why is that important? I believe it illustrates that

God is going to be deeply involved in everybody's life,

whether you or I choose to serve God or not.

He's like, I'm going to appoint you for a purpose.

I'm going to use you in my master plan.

If you're going to serve me, I will use you for my glory and

for your eventual glory. The point is, God has a purpose

and a role for everybody, and He is going to be deeply involved

in our lives, whether we wonder or not, whether it's for a good

thing or for a bad thing. So may we be those chosen that

surrender to Him and appointed for good things because they

probably didn't feel like a chosen generation?

You go back to maybe why he was even he was even writing this.

These people were probably feel like the lost generation, the

scattered generation into the into the regions of Cappadocia,

Asia and Bithynia. But he says, no, you're a chosen

generation. You're a royal priesthood in the

Old Testament. They had these people who are

all performing their orderly work in the temple, and that

probably felt so empowering to be part of that system, he says

you are also a royal priesthood, scattered into the regions and

dispersed like pilgrims. You are still a royal priesthood

because the priesthood wasn't about the robes or the temple.

The priesthood was about faithfulness and service to God.

And these people he's writing to are doing that, He says.

You are a holy nation. They probably felt like they had

no nation, that they were pilgrims and dispersed,

persecuted. But he says you have a you are a

holy nation still. At least the Jewish people had a

nation. He says you are still a nation,

his own special people. They probably felt like a

forgotten people because of their current persecution.

But he says, You are a special people closing up here, that you

may proclaim the praises of him who called you out of darkness

and into his marvelous light. What a picture who are once not

a people, but are now the people of God, who had not obtained the

mercy, but now have obtained the mercy.

Beloved, I beg you as sojourners and pilgrims that you are, He

says Abstain from from fleshly lusts which war against the

soul. We've talked about that a lot

today. Let's stay away from the things.

Don't make our fight harder than it needs to be.

If we're going to fight this fight, don't make it harder than

it needs to be on ourselves. Having your conduct honourable

among the Gentiles, that when they speak against you as evil

doers, as rejected stones, they may by your good works which

they observe, glorify God in the day of visitation.

We want people to come to God, We want people to be saved.

And if you can't muster the strength to care about people

enough to want that, at least do it for God, because God deserves

their glory. May we act in a way that will

lead them to God so that God gets the glory that He has

always deserved. In the day of visitation, He's

going to visit us again. He'll be back.

We want God to get the glory from every person possible.

Have you started this walk? Romans 10/17 says faith comes by

hearing and hearing by the word of God.

We're told to believe and that's where that that belief comes

from is hearing the word of God. Mark 16 and 16 tells us that and

and we're told to repent according to Luke 13 and 3.

We're told to confess called according to Romans 10 verse 9

Romans 10:9

and 10. And if we confess the Jesus

Christ and the Son of God, we can be baptized for the

remission of our sins, have our sins washed away.

And if you've done that, it's time to live faithfully.

It doesn't end there. That's the point at which you

enter and contact the blood of Christ and have sins washed

away. But it's not the end, it's the

beginning. And if you have started this

walk, well, if you have not started this walk, you can be

advertised today, as we saw last week, it can be very fast.

We can take care of that today. Or if you have started, you need

to get back on the right track. You need the prayers of the

Saints. Please come while we stand and

see.