1 Peter 1:1-2

We have a baptism today after the service.

So we're gonna clean up in here quickly.

This is one of those days where we're not gonna hang out for very long in the compassion center, and we are gonna go and um do a baptism with the Spanish church in the um in the compassion center.

So if you haven't been to the compassion center before, you're missing out.

It's historic.

That's what I was told when I uh before I actually saw it.

And then I walked into it and I thought, yeah, that's one way to say it.

Um it is historic, as is most building in this um, as are most buildings in this neighborhood.

It is uh 1706 Eastern Avenue and um Lisa is gonna get baptized, and also um Ramon is gonna get baptized.

So one from the English and one from the Spanish church.

Very exciting.

So come on over and support them.

But also um check out the events page on the church website because um we've got the hike, we've got sky zone for the youth next um Sunday after church.

So there's a bunch of fun stuff that's gonna be taking place in the next um couple months.

Um the next round of membership classes will start back up in June.

And uh so yeah, just check that out when you get a chance.

All right.

You guys ready?

Everybody doing good?

I know a lot of people are out on vacation.

Uh Tony, Olivia, um May is usually that it's it's like every city has its own season, you know, it's season.

And uh May has always, ever since I've been here, May is just kind of like the season to go.

And so you guys are all like, wait, you didn't get the memo, right?

Wait till uh Memorial Day.

All right, we're gonna be starting our series in 1 Peter.

So if you want to turn to 1 Peter, you can um you can get ready to do that.

Um before we read the text together though, I want to just kind of we're starting a new book.

We're starting the book of Peter.

And um I I like to at the beginning of our books, uh to just to kind of because we get a cycle of people that come through, just explain how we do the church as Haven City Church and how the sermon um schedule is laid out.

So we have a tradition, part of our um our history is the Calvary Chapel Church tribe.

And what they are famous for as a church tribe that started kind of in the late 60s is just teaching expositionally through books of the Bible.

And so when you see, oh, you know, we left the life of Joseph last week and now we're starting First Peter, one of the reasons why um we are gonna go through a book is really because of tradition, but why do they why do they have that tradition?

Well, a book, studying through a book of the Bible gives us a the unit of thought.

So the individual um verses are found within the context of a book.

I don't know if you've ever gotten like a um a Christian coffee mug or a t-shirt and it's got kind of like a verse on it, and you've thought, you know what, that is a good verse, but it's kind of being taken out of context of it.

Um we want to read those famous verses and those famous ideas within the context of a book, and then recognize that that book fits within a broader context of scripture.

So we're going through books and going through an interpretive process that I'm gonna explain in a second, but really the Bible, when we look at the Bible, you know, I don't when I prepare a sermon, I'm not sitting down trying to come up with what would be a good idea.

Instead, what we're doing is, well, what does God say is a good idea when we look at look at the Bible?

And we believe that the Bible is, there's a bunch of different metaphors that are used.

Um and even Peter uses the metaphor of the sincere milk of the word.

We'll get to that in a few weeks.

Uh, but the Bible is likened to a light to our path.

Um but uh as I was thinking about it this week, I the the metaphor that I just love is that it's nourishment like milk or like uh bread, but it's not just the Bible isn't just bread um like a meal that you eat alone, but the Bible is a shared meal between God and his people.

The Bible is a shared meal between God and his people.

It provides us with nourishment and friendship.

It's not just nourishment, but it's also the basis of our friendship with God.

And so as a church, um, if you're new with us, we we give a uh usually half of our worship service is a time in God's word.

And um, and and I'm not trying to make uh it all that fancy.

I really want to give place for God's word to speak every week.

So when we come into scripture and we go through the text, one of the things that we're doing in the text is we have a simple outline.

And if you've been a part of, if you're bilingual and you speak Spanish, you know on Tuesday nights, um, Adolfo on Tuesday nights is teaching a Spanish Bible study where we're going through this outline of observation, interpretation, and application.

Observing what the text says, interpreting it, determining what is the meaning of the text, and then applying it to our lives.

Um sometimes that inductive Bible study method is called Owica, OI, and then there's a C in there that is correlation, but OIA, observation, interpretation, application.

That's the outline of kind of how we do our sermons.

And that's what I would commend to you as you're reading the Bible every morning in your own devotional time that you would read what's on the page, you'd interpret it, determine the meeting, and then you would apply it to your life.

In other words, we wanted to identify the principles that are coming forward in the text.

So we will be doing that as we go through 1 Peter, looking at what's there, what does it mean, and how does it apply to my life.

Really simple, right?

Let's look at 1 Peter 1, 1 and 2.

I'll have it up here on the screen, just two verses this morning.

It says this Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who are elect exiles of the dispersion in Pontius, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia.

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.

Let's pray together.

God, we just come before your word, and we do.

We want to be nourished by your word in the context of friendship with you.

And God, how desperately we need a friend that will nourish us.

Lord, you know the brokenness in our lives.

You know our stories.

God, you know what we walked in that door with.

God, you know better than we know our own insufficiencies, our strengths, our weaknesses.

God, you even know this week that's coming up.

You knew everything that happened this last week.

You know what's coming up this week.

God, would you speak to us?

Lord, let your word, this time in your word, be just like an intersection.

An intersection on of two streets just coming together.

Lord, intersection between our life and your word.

We just want to have ears to hear what your spirit would say to us from this text.

We pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

You ready to say yes and amen, whatever the Holy Spirit has to say to you this morning.

So I'm gonna, we're gonna look at it, we're gonna get into it, but then it's on you to obey.

It's on, it's on you to say yes to the Lord.

So as we get into this book, I'm I'm praying.

I'm I pray every week for you and for myself that there would be not just a a head knowledge that increases, but there would be an appointment with the Holy Spirit right now as we look at his word.

And boy, do we ever need it, right?

Who's the who's the writer of the letter?

I mean, well, it's named after the writer, Peter.

Peter wrote two letters, um, and yet there was this debate that went on whether it was Peter or somebody else that wrote it, and some of the objections to Peter being the author is that it's too good for Peter.

What do we know about Peter?

Peter's a P is a fisherman, right?

And yet the Greek is so good, it's so rich, it's just so well written, right?

Well, I think when you get to the end of the letter, you see that who actually wrote this for Peter or conjunction with Peter was Sylvanus.

And Sylvanus, um, probably who's also Silas, the companion of Paul, probably the same guy.

Sylvanus probably comes from this background where he was able to take the thoughts and the words of Peter and to compose such a beautiful letter.

So Peter he says right off the bat that he's the apostle of Jesus Christ.

And just I know most of y'all, you know that this Peter was the one who was the brash fisherman that was called by Jesus to be a follower.

He was one of the three close friends of Jesus.

He was in that inner circle.

He saw Jesus transfigured on the mountain.

He was the one that betrayed Jesus.

He was the one that was able to carry that heavy net of a hundred and fifty some odd fish after the resurrection.

And he sat there with Jesus around the fire having the fish and the bread that Jesus caught or cooked that breakfast morning.

Peter was the one who was inquired of, and Jesus said, Peter, do you love me?

And Peter's response was, Lord, you know that I love you.

And then Peter was the one who was told by our Lord Peter, feed my sheep.

Peter's the one who in the book of Acts, for the first ten chapters, he is the one who is the leader of the early church.

He's the one who's preaching these famous evangelistic sermons on the Temple Mount.

He's the one who helps heal this man on the way up to the mount.

He's imprisoned and then miraculously released by an angel and let out.

The story of Peter and his leadership is remarkable.

He comes up in Corinthians.

It would seem that he had some followers that were in Corinth.

And we see actually at the end of 1 Peter that he composes this letter from Babylon, which is a nickname, a kind of a Jewish Christian nickname for Rome.

And so Peter ends up in Rome.

Now, Paul talked about Peter and said that Peter was an apostle to the Jews, and Paul says that his apostleship was to the Gentiles.

And so moving on to kind of the next heading here in my outline, which is the recipients of this letter, who received the letter, the question is, was this a letter written to the Jews?

Because Paul says that Peter was called to the Jews.

I'm called to be an apostle to the Gentiles.

And so there are some who look at even this first verse, verse 1, and they see this word right here, the dispersion, the diaspora, which was historically the Jews, they say, well, this was a letter that was written by the Jews.

It's no longer, that's kind of a minority view now for a number of reasons, but for some reason, Peter actually composes a letter to a majority of Gentiles late in his life.

Now, while Paul identified Peter as the apostle to the Jews, what significant interaction did Peter have with the Gentiles?

Do you remember the house of Cornelius?

Remember how Peter is up on the roof praying and he has this vision of the pigs in a blanket, right?

He's hungry, and all of a sudden these unclean animals come down in a sheet, and Jesus says to him, Peter, get up and eat.

And he says, No, Lord, I haven't, I have never taken anything unclean.

And God uses Peter to bridge the gap.

It's kind of like when I lived in Southern California and there would be these wildfires, and they would try to create these fire gaps so that the fire would go up to that line, that line, that kind of a tractor would plow out, and it would stop there.

Well, the gospel didn't stop at the fire line, it broke over the fire line into the Gentiles.

And the house of Cornelius is saved, and the sign that God gives to the house of Cornelius is the sign of speaking in tongues.

The Holy Spirit literally comes upon his house just like the day of Pentecost and the other Jews that are there with Peter's go, wow! This promise of the Holy Spirit wasn't just for the Jews, it was also for the Gentiles.

And so while Paul may consider Peter significantly called to the Gentiles, Peter was used in a foundational way to bring the gospel and to signify to the Jewish community that the gospel, the full gospel promise, the new covenant, was not just for the Jews, but it was also for the Gentiles.

And so Peter writes this letter to Gentiles that are specifically in this region of Pontius, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia.

This is really Asia Minor almost entirely, 300,000 square miles that this letter is addressed to.

These are different regions, but even today, commentators are not exactly sure why or how he designates these different regions, because some of them are smaller, like states, and some of them are more like how we would say, you know, right now we live in the mid-Atlantic region, which is broader than a single state.

So some of these are kind of like states and some of these are regions, but we know this that the letter was intended to be cyclical, that the person carrying the letter would take it from church to church to church and would read it in a setting like this.

Thank God we don't have to just consume this all in just one morning.

We'll get to spend time chewing on this and digesting it.

But Peter, it's amazing as we go through this because Peter is actually writing to Gentiles, but the themes of this book are rich with uh Judaism.

Peter is assuming that these Gentiles really understand Old Testament stories.

And it's just a um, it's incredible to me that the early church of these Gentiles, you just imagine like no internet, no phones, no, you know, CDs, cassettes, records.

I mean, you have like Gentiles who have really no context necessarily for Judaism, who become Christians and then somehow in their catechesis process or their educational process early in their walk with God, they're being educated on the Old Testament, so much so that Peter can write a letter that just liberally borrows from the Old Testament pictures that a Jew would be familiar with, specifically Genesis 12 through the end of Deuteronomy, really focused on Moses' letters.

And so, for those of you that know the Bible, you've been around the Bible a lot, think into the letter to the book of the Romans.

Paul writes to the Romans, and in 9, 10, and 11, Paul talks about the place of the Jew within the church age.

And he talks about how the Gentile has been grafted in.

He uses that agricultural picture of taking an outside branch and grafting it into a tree.

And he says, You Gentiles, you've been grafted into the tree of Judaism.

And I feel like when you look at 1 Peter, it's literally Peter doing the grafting work.

He's like, let me show you how you are, your life is intimately entwined into the story of the Jews.

Literally, you're taking on, you can take on to yourself the pictures of the Jews.

You can apply the motifs of Judaism to your own life.

So it's written to Gentiles primarily, but what is the occasion?

It's not just to Gentiles that have become Christians, apprentices of Jesus.

It's written to Gentiles that are going through deep suffering.

This is referred to a few times through the book.

I picked out three verses just to highlight this.

Jump over to chapter 2, 1 Peter 2.12.

It says, 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 your visitation.

Peter's just assuming that the community that these Gentiles were living in were speaking evil, speaking against these Christians.

So it's probable that the suffering that's referred to here is like mid-60s, maybe 64, 65 AD, because Christian Gentiles didn't face too much suffering until Nero's reign.

Nero wanted to burn down Rome so that he could rebuild it and glorify himself.

And so in 64 A.D., Nero began a kind of a campaign against Christians.

And they were easily targeted for a number of accusations.

One of the ways that they were spoken against was because these crazy Christians would have this meal where they would take a cup of wine and they would share a cup of wine and they would share this bread together.

But when they spoke about this ceremonial meal, we call it the Lord's Supper, it was eating and drinking the body of this guy who died on a cross.

And so the Christians, early Christians, were accused of cannibalism.

But then they would also talk about having these corporate koinonia feasts, these fellowship feasts, and it was like these private get-togethers, and so Christians were accused of early day orgies, basically.

They were called love feasts, and the outside Gentiles looking at this was like, well, what goes on in these feasts, you know?

There was Christ the Christians were accused of by the Roman government of being for their fact in being monotheistic, the fact that they only accepted one God was uh bizarre to the Romans.

And so they were spoken evil against.

Over in chapter 3, Peter says, having a good conscience so that when you're slandered, those who revile you your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame.

So again, here's Christians living out their faith and they're being slandered.

And then 1 Peter 4, 16, yet if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in that name.

We're going to see almost every week as we go through this letter some reference to the suffering that this church was going through.

Do you remember in 1 Peter?

Yeah, I'm pointing out you, my daughter.

Do you remember in 1 Peter 4 how it says that the Gentiles carry on in unrestrained behavior?

And then he goes through a list of their unrestrained behavior.

And then what does it say?

They're surprised, right?

They're surprised that you don't join them in the same flood of wild living and they slander you, right?

So these early Christians, these we've been memorizing first 1 Peter 4, uh, me and the kids, and so I think that's verse 5 or 6.

Um this letter refers to a people that are being just facing the onslaught, the full-on opposition of their culture.

So that is the occasion for the letter.

How does Peter write this?

Peter uses a typical letter format like we would see with Paul.

I've already mentioned this, but he's using so many pictures from the Old Testament.

So many pictures.

We'll see this this morning as he calls them chosen exiles.

And I'll just say this.

So Gentiles, not Jews, are being told, look back to the Old Testament and draw life lessons from them.

And so I just want to encourage you all, most of us in here, we are uh mostly Gentiles, and we have the Old Testament.

And so there's an example for us in our own walk with God to go and be well versed in the Old Testament and to be comfortable with drawing application from God's story with Israel.

Sometimes you read the story of the Hebrews being delivered from Pharaoh, and you're like, I want deliverance in my life in this way or that way.

I want God to take care of me while I'm going through my wilderness.

I want God to be my defense from my enemies.

And I think that as we look at 1 Peter and how Peter writes to these Gentiles that are ethnically and geographically far from Israel, he's giving us a basis for applying the Old Testament to our life.

Just a quick outline, and we'll spend, we will spend a significant number of weeks.

I don't I haven't mapped out the full schedule yet for this sermon series, but this is the entire book's outline.

First two verses is the salutation, and then 1, 3 through 210 is all about identity, the greatness of your salvation.

211 through 411 is suffering as a witness to Jesus.

A lot of content about ethics.

So we go, you could kind of say you have identity and theology, then you have ethics, then 412 through 59 is a is suffering in light of a future hope, and then 510 through 14 is a closing.

So let's just look really quickly at these two verses.

An opening, it's a salutation here in verses 1 and 10 1 and 2, again, similar to how Paul would write a salutation, but Peter doesn't simply identify himself and the recipients.

What we see is that he reframes their identity.

He reframes their identity right off the bat.

I love that.

And I love the fact that we're going to spend the next few weeks talking about identity because that is a major cultural theme.

Identity and how you identify yourself, how you tell your story, is significant.

When a new social media platform launches, in the early days, what do they ask you to do when you set up a new profile?

Put your picture up there and put up your profile, or sometimes they call it your bio.

And you've got to decide in 160 characters, 240 characters, how are you going to identify yourself?

Who are you?

And Peter, right off the bat, in this letter, he says, here's who you are.

Here's who you are.

So he says that he's he himself, he identifies himself as an apostle, right?

Not just using the Greek term as a sent one, but one of the 12 apostles, capital A, meaning given the authority that Jesus entrusted to them as the pillars of the early church.

Then he says that he's writing this letter, depending on your version, he says it's written to elect or chosen exiles.

Maybe your version uses the term sojourners.

And then they're dispersed, or the diaspora, Gentiles that are dispersed, right?

And they may say, well, no, I'm living in my home, I'm living where I grew up, I'm living where I received the gospel, but Peter says, no, you're dispersed by God in Pontius, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia Minor, Bithynia.

And then he uses three prepositional phrases in verse 2 that are connected with the idea of being elect exiles.

Three prepositional phrases.

The first one is according to the knowledge of God, in the sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus, and for sprinkling with his blood.

So again, the three prepositional phrases are according to the knowledge, foreknowledge of God, in the sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus, and for sprinkling with his blood.

And then it closes out with this blessing, grace and peace multiplied to you.

So that's what's there.

Let's go through kind of the interpretive process quickly.

Elect exiles.

This term elect exiles.

Do you see it there?

You Christians are elect exiles.

You are.

Not just those who are in Asia Minor, but this morning, Peter would look at you if he was preaching this sermon to you, he would say to you, you are elect.

You're chosen by God as an exile.

Tom Schreiner, as he in his commentary, he says, that's a two-word sermon.

It's a two-word sermon.

The idea that you're chosen by God and that you are in exile has so much weight if you know the Bible's history with those two ideas.

Over and over again, God is choosing people, right?

He chose Abraham and He says, I want to make a nation out of you to bring a blessing to the world.

And then he calls Abraham out to be a sojourner.

He says, I want you to leave your land of Ur of the Chaldees, and I want you to go to a promised land.

So we have in Abraham both one who is chosen and who is in exile, away from his homeland.

Then you get to the children of Israel, that generation that leaves Egypt.

They're chosen by God, right?

And they are sojourning.

Their story is one of sojourning as exiles out of Egypt.

And then when you get into verse 2, Peter says, look, this idea of being elect exiles, it's first of all, it's according to the foreknowledge of God.

Why did God choose you?

Well, he chose you because he knows the future.

God knows what will happen in the future.

And the second propositional phrase is this idea of sanctification in the Spirit.

As Christians, we know of, we most often use the term sanctification to refer to that process of putting off sin and being shaped into the image of Jesus.

But here it has more of an idea of conversion.

Peter's talking about the idea that you've been consecrated or set apart by the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is active in the consecration process to make you an elect exile as a follower of Jesus.

And then that third concept there, the obedience and sprinkling, you're an elect exile for obedience.

You've been chosen by God, sent on a journey for obedience.

I think again, Peter is referring to some Old Testament pictures here.

If we go to Exodus, Exodus 24, 1 through 8, I'm going to show you.

Here's verse 1, and we're jump over to verse 6.

Then he said to Moses, this is God, God says to Moses, come up to the Lord, you and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seven of the elders of Israel, and worship from afar.

Then verse 5, he sent young men of the people of Israel who offered burnt offerings and sacrificed peace offerings of oxen to the Lord.

This is what Moses is doing.

Verse 6, and Moses took half the blood and he put it in a basin, and half the blood he threw against the altar.

So God is giving the Ten Commandments and the covenant, the old covenant law, to the nation of Israel.

And they are consecrating themselves with this sacrifice.

Half, you see, the half the blood is being sprinkled on the altar and the instruments of sacrifice.

But then look at verse 7.

Then he took the book of the covenant and he read it in the hearing of the people, and they said, All that the Lord has spoken, we will do, we will be obedient.

We will be obedient.

So you have the sprinkling, and then you have obedience.

And Moses took the blood and threw it on the people, not just on the not just on the instruments, not just on the altar, but he sprinkles the people with the blood.

And he says, Behold, the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words.

And you know, if you've been studying the Bible for any length of time, that these things that were Moses was doing were foreshadowing the new covenant, and Jesus' blood sprinkles us, and we're called to obedience.

And so here's what William Barclay says, as a token of this relationship of obedience between the people and God, Moses took half the blood of the sacrifice and he sprinkled it on the people.

Sprinkling was for obedience.

Jesus has sprinkled us with his blood, and we respond in obedience.

Tom Schreiner says this two different sides of conversion are contemplated.

What Peter said here is important.

Conversion is not merely an intellectual acceptance of the gospel, nor is faith a blank slate.

Conversion involves obedience and submission to the gospel, what Paul called the obedience of the faith in Romans 1:5.

Romans 1:5

So Peter's not being legalistic here.

He's not saying that you obey to be saved.

He says, no, you're sprinkled, and our response to Jesus is that we're obedient, we're an obedient people.

So let me just kind of summarize the idea here in this.

These Gentiles are ethnically and geographically far from Israel.

They have been chosen by God to live, not lives, it should say live on a different path.

They are actively on a journey, right?

That's the idea of on exile or in exile.

They're sojourners.

Because of the foreknowledge of God the Father, the consecration, consecrating work of the Holy Spirit, and their obedience to Jesus and his sprinkling.

And then there's that final word there from Peter, may you find grace and peace along the way.

So it's a picture.

I mean, I don't know about you.

I'm a big, like one of my favorite hobbies is backpacking.

I love backpacking.

You know, you go in my basement, I've got all the tools and the doodads and lightweight backpacking.

You know, get out there on the trail and get on the path, go on a journey, carrying everything in your pack.

Peter's got this idea of these sojourners, these people that are they're um on a journey out from the place where they're at, heading in a direction.

Now, just before we get into the application here, just really quickly, you gotta notice just the Trinity, right, is in play here.

God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit.

The Father has foreknowledge, the Spirit's consecrating, Jesus is sprinkling.

And so again, we have the Trinitarian theology here coming through Peter's writing.

Let's make some application.

First of all, chosen sojourners, chosen sojourners, a destination change means a route change.

If you get onto your phone and you pull up Google Maps, and you decide on Google Maps that you want to get from here to you know, someplace over on Rysters Town Road, right?

If you're heading in that direction, um, but then all of a sudden you find out, oh, I need to, I actually need to run this errand over to Home Depot up in Timonia, then their destination changes, right?

And in your Google Maps, your route, all of a sudden that little blue line is gonna go somewhere else.

It's gonna take you in a different place.

And so if you and I are an apprentice of Jesus, we have to recognize that we have been given a new destination and we have been called to a new telos.

Telos, the idea of a new ultimate, the destination, when we come into a relationship with Christ, the destination changes, and so there is a route change.

You just think of the children of Israel, in order to receive a promised land, and who doesn't want a promised land?

Right?

Who doesn't, I mean, if I say to you, look, I'm gonna give you a land, you're gonna inherit a land, a promised land, a good land.

Who wouldn't want that?

But if that's your destination, you're gonna have to leave Egypt and you're gonna have to trust God to lead you through the wilderness.

You notice that in the story of those Hebrews, God allows them to become agitated in Egypt, where they're crying out to God for a new destination.

They're enslaved, they're the workforce of Egypt, they're in pain, and God uses that to make them ready to follow Him.

I think that maps onto our life.

Sometimes we settle, we settle for where we're at, and yet God has and He wants us to know, you are a chosen sojourner.

I've got a different destination for you, and you need to be ready to go on my path, to take my route for the ultimate telos.

Let me define for you where you're going to end up.

Those Hebrews they're prepared through their suffering, and then God used Moses to be giving them a new route.

God in his foreknowledge, he has chosen you, and his spirit has consecrated you and I for a new destination.

Look at Hebrews 13, 14.

Hebrews 13, 14 says this for here we have no lasting city, but we seek a city that is to come.

The reality of the Christian life is that we're heading for an eternal city.

That is our hope.

And so we cannot take, we cannot take the world's route to get to God's destination.

You just have to understand that.

You cannot, you cannot take the world's route to get to God's destination.

Here's the second thing, second principle I just want to pull out of just the entire book, really borrowing from this idea of elect exiles.

The route is going to be rough.

The route is going to be rough.

Suffering is normative for anyone who takes God's route.

So if you have grown up around a Christianity that says, come to Jesus and all your problems will go away, you have grown up or been shaped by a Christianity that doesn't come from the Bible.

The Bible says that God has a better destination for you, but the path to get there is a path of suffering.

Why?

Why is there a path of suffering?

Well, I'm going to give you four reasons.

First of all, Satan hates you.

As you live on this earth, you have an archenemy who wants to destroy your life, who wants to keep you from flourishing in your design, your God-given identity.

God does not want you to be fruitful and multiply as God told the original humans in the garden.

He doesn't want you to live out the mission of God that Jesus entrusted you.

Satan hates you, and he is allowed to buffet you.

Jesus was attacked by Satan, and you can expect whatever happened to Jesus will also map on to your life.

Satan will cause suffering in your life.

The second is this: the world doesn't understand or appreciate your path.

They will happily let you know their disapproval.

The world is not going to understand the path that you're on.

They'll reject it.

The third reason why this path or suffering is normative is because God wants to reshape you as you go.

As you go.

So suffering is a part of this path because suffering is an activating agent in our personal growth.

It's a part of our path because God wants to motivate us.

He wants to strip away the junk in our life.

And the fourth reason is this God wants to make the person of Jesus known through your weakness.

Sometimes you're going to go through suffering simply because God wants to demonstrate the fact that you're weak, but he's strong.

Paul, the epicenter of this, the theological teaching around this is 2 Corinthians chapters 1, 2, 3, and 4, where Paul says, I went through suffering that was intended by God so that the so that I would bear the dying of Jesus in my flesh so that the life of Jesus would be made manifest.

2 Corinthians 1 · chapter mention

When I grew up in New Jersey, there was a lot of Revolutionary War history in my area, and there were people that would reenact the Revolutionary War.

They'd get dressed up as like the red coats and the, you know, the whole thing.

They would get dressed up and they reenact different battle scenes.

God has appointed us for suffering in seasons because we're reenacting the death and the resurrection of Christ.

And he wants to put on display his grace to a world that is also suffering, but can't find a reason for that suffering.

They can't derive meaning very well from their suffering.

And so God allows you and I to suffer, and then he puts on display his resurrection power in our life.

So that you can be a light to the gospel of the gospel message to a dying world.

So your suffering gives a gospel map to your neighbors that are suffering.

And you have this internal hope that flourishes, not because you put on a happy face, but because literally the Holy Spirit comes into you and energizes you.

Gives you this alien comfort, as we talked about at Easter time, and we'll look at those verses again next week.

It gives you this alien comfort so that you can be a map to your lost friends, relatives, co-workers.

And so again, suffering is normative for the Christian in the Christian life.

And then finally, just the last principle is the is the benediction there, grace and peace.

Grace and peace, he says, when we read the word grace, as Jew or Gentile, here in the New Testament, our mind should go to the new covenant.

When Jesus holds up the bread and the cup and says, This is the covenant in my blood, the the covenant that Jeremiah foretold, it is a covenant of God's grace.

Grace is God acting on our behalf and around us.

He does that because the new covenant that Jesus inaugurated on the cross.

You see, Israel, the Peter that Peter points back to, they're a covenant people.

Israel was God's covenant people, but their covenant was a system of legalism and works.

Whereas we're a covenant people of grace, a system of grace where we get unmerited favor, where we walk in faith and humility, and we are the recipients of the grace of the new covenant.

The new covenant that Jesus' followers have is so radical that we actually embrace and appreciate suffering.

And that's what I want to close with.

The grace and peace of God that Peter here is praying over these churches is so radical that the Christian can embrace and appreciate their suffering.

And just to kind of prove this, Philippians 3.10, Peter says this, that I may know him.

This is a purpose statement of Paul, rather.

This is a purpose statement of Paul, that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and that I may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death.

This is a telos for Paul.

This is a goal for Paul to be suffering with Jesus, to share, to have the fellowship of the sufferings, because Paul knew that where the sufferings of Christ are is the resurrection of Christ.

And so Peter here, right off the bat, he says, May the grace, the caris and the shalom, right?

Both the classic kind of Roman greeting of Caris and the Hebrew greeting of shalom.

Man, we just embody that as new covenant believers.

And we need it as we face this path of suffering, just like this early church.

So let's uh let's pray together.

Let's ask the Lord just to do this work in our life.

God, we thank you for your word and thank you for the um path that we have ahead of us as we go through 1 Peter.

God, we ask that you would teach us, teach us through Peter afresh.

2,000 years later, Lord, teach us through this letter.

God, we thank you for just the radical redemption that you give us in the face of suffering.

God, each of us have different things that we suffer from.

Maybe it's a physical ailment, maybe it's a relationship that's broken, maybe it's a conflict that we're in.

Lord, we have different ways in which we suffer.

God, we pray that your resurrection power would be manifested in our life in the midst of that suffering this week.

Lord, put on display the resurrection through our life.

God, we understand that part of being in this covenantal relationship with you is that you place your power in a clay pot, in an earthen vessel that gets knocked around and is sometimes perplexed.

And, you know, it's just there's brokenness, Lord, that we experience.

And yet you promise that the excellency of power would emanate and shine out of us as your vessels.

Lord, I pray for each person here that that would be the spiritual reality this week over the next seven days until we're again together, Lord, that your grace would just flow out of our lives.

We pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

Let's stand and worship.