Raging Waves | Whose Sermon is it Anyway?

Simon, we're not getting anywhere.

The winds are too strong.

We should turn back.

We can get there.

Just keep rowing.

Simon, it's the fourth watch of the night

that we've been stuck in the same place for hours!

James, James!

Help James!

He's alright, James.

He'll be okay.

Help him up.

Help me.

We can't take much more water.

We'll bound her.

Better off wet and cold on land than...

drowned and dead out here!

What was that sound?

John, keep rowing!

What are you doing?

Anybody just see that?

Over there!

I don't see anything!

What are we looking for?

Go! Go! Keep the boat!

Go! Go! Let's go!

It can't be...

We have to get out of here!

Everyone move!

Move! Move!

Move! Move!

Let's go!

Nobody move!

I said everybody stop!

Stop! Stop! Stop!

Somebody move!

That's not a ghost!

Are you crazy?

Don't be afraid!

It's me!

Jesus?

Jesus!

How is this the second most incredible thing I've seen today?

This surprises you?

Did you learn nothing from today?

If it is you, command me to come to you underwater.

Simon, no!

Are you out of your mind?

If you are who you say you are, bid me to step out of this boat.

You have the faith to walk on this water?

Absolutely!

You can do whatever you command.

And if you command the world to hold me, I will walk on it.

If I call you to me, you will step out in faith?

Yes!

Then why are you upset?

Why are you chasing after...

There's more to come, Wes, don't worry about it.

So that is from the movie, or the TV series movie, however you want to look at it, The Chosen.

We do have permission to show that clip.

But my family and I watched that clip a week ago, and it was so powerful to me.

I mean, it's a story we've heard so many times about Jesus walking on water.

And a lot of times as believers we just kind of talk about it like it's nothing.

Like, oh yeah, my Lord and Savior walks on water, big deal.

No it is.

And as I was reading some of the final prompts of...

We have one kind of specific section next week that we'll get to.

Where there are some very specific questions about a very specific topic.

And the rest of the prompts had to talk about how blind and how chaotic our culture is.

A lot of questions on what do we do as believers in the culture of this or that.

And as I'm reading through a lot of these, reading some different pastors that I follow,

and pastors that minister to me, there's just a lot of voices.

And I think the storm that the video clip depicted really shows us the chaos of the time that we're in.

I don't think there's any way to put it.

When you have a nation that's divided, when you have countries that are at war,

I don't know about you, but that's all chaos.

There's really no other way to kind of describe it.

Maybe you could, and if you have other ways to describe it, feel free to come tell me after service.

But I look out at the world today, and it's chaos.

I listen to the things that people come into my office and talk to me about,

the thoughts that I have in my own head, the tension that I have in my own heart as I'm continuing to learn,

and all of these things with all of you, it's chaos.

And the reason why I say it's chaos is because I find myself asking, Lord, can you just fix it?

And then I think about, and unbeknownst to me, the sermon series kind of ramped up as some of you said,

this is my favorite and least favorite sermon series because it does a great job of telling me how bad I am.

You're welcome.

But I think that's where we all find ourselves.

We all find ourselves in chaos in some way, shape, or form.

Think about what you would have been if you were one of those disciples.

Some are trained fishermen.

Not at all their first rodeo, if you will, being in a storm, but they were able to do nothing.

The darkness was taking over.

And I asked last week a question about why we're scared of the dark,

and when the darkness and the chaos of the dark takes over, because dark is chaos.

The darkness does kind of define chaos as it's all-encompassing.

It doesn't care.

Wherever darkness is, it wants to win the day, if you will.

There was a congregation member who had a wonderful thought.

Conrad Surley, he said I could use his name.

He told me after the fact, and I told him to write down and send me the thoughts,

because whenever you have conversations with me on Sundays, I usually forget them by Monday morning.

So just be aware.

Shoot me an email.

Shoot me a text.

I'll remember it then.

But here's what he wrote.

My thoughts about being powerless and losing control when it comes to the dark.

The darkness to him, essentially, not being able to see things around you,

or in a reduced sphere of influence, Conrad's much smarter than I am,

means you lose the perceived power over your environment.

I think it's scary for two reasons.

The obvious, visceral, childlike fear of being alone, followed by the realization

that you don't really control anything after all, which is even scarier.

We try to reason with our children by telling them they're safe,

that they are just on the other side of the wall and will keep them safe, but it rarely works.

As adults, we hear, trust God, but find it difficult to let go of the reins.

Darkness, or dankness as he termed it, is just an unwelcomed reminder of that truth.

And I sat on that for like a day and just thought about the fact that

what darkness really can represent is our control over the light.

And that got me real introspective, first and foremost, with me.

But it got me thinking of Peter.

That Peter, now if you're watching The Chosen, or if you haven't, it is great.

I know there are people with different thoughts about The Chosen, whatever.

But the character of Peter is played so well, and there's a whole B-story in there

that if you want to watch it, do it, it's the end of season three,

is that Peter has the encounter in his life with Jesus, fishermen, those kind of things,

but it also represents some of the darkest hours of the disciples.

As we know in the coming weeks, starting in two weeks we start the season of Lent,

that Peter is known for being the rock of the church, absolutely,

but before that, Peter is known for denying his rabbi.

The ultimate darkness of any student of the rabbi is to disown or is to disavow or deny their rabbi.

They've been taught all these things, they've been following in the rabbi's footsteps,

but they reject their rabbi.

The worst thing a disciple could do is reject their rabbi.

The darkness had taken over Peter's life.

But, Pastor, you said if he had the light, that darkness can't overcome the light.

Wherever there's light, there isn't darkness, and that's the paradox, that's the chaos,

that's the rub, because we have both in us.

If we are believers, if we claim Jesus' authority, you have His holiness,

and we'll get to that in a second, you also have this depravity.

We're going to talk more about that in two weeks.

Oh, great, another sermon about how bad we are.

Well, yeah, it's true, it's kind of what this book is about.

Because in order to understand how bad we are, right, we have to understand how good Jesus is.

That's what Jesus does, that's what Jesus did, that's who Jesus is.

And understanding that, you have to try to make sense of the darkness.

You have to try to make sense of the world around us.

And we've been working through some tough subjects over the course of this sermon series.

But I think after last week priming us on what real sin is, and it takes a real Jesus to defeat real sin,

the sin that is ever present in us and in the world, we almost come to this kind of this climax

of where we've been, knowing that next week is on a completely different topic,

which I am excited to get to.

But it's the sin of us.

It is the active darkness within each and every one of us.

Now, as a pastor, I love seeing the light of Christ in you.

I love seeing the growth in you, and hopefully you see that in me,

that it's reciprocal as a church, that we are shining the light of Jesus.

There are times that in us, people see the darkness overseeing the light.

And it's quite interesting in the prompts that I got that we kind of use this word culture,

or kind of it almost creates an us versus them.

And I want to try to take some of that out, because to say it's us versus them

means we've conquered everything and we no longer fight the battle, and that's not true.

It's us versus us, and then there's Jesus.

So I'm going to use the term mankind, the human race,

and that was kind of the connection of the rest of the prompts.

I was talking about this idea of culture and all the different kinds of culture,

but I'm going to take that word culture out.

I'm going to put mankind in, because it has to do with each and every one of us.

No one is exempt from sin.

No one is exempt from living a life not of Jesus,

because it's in our DNA.

It goes all the way back to chapter three.

We've talked about that.

Some of the prompts use sinful and mankind or a sinful mankind.

Some of you use the words like culture, woke culture, liberals, conservatives, sinners.

That's why after like, I don't know, the first day or two of getting them,

I thought to myself, this has got to be one of the dumbest things I've ever done as a pastor.

But it actually helps me so much not only understand us as a church or you as individuals,

even though most of it was anonymous, and that's fine.

I didn't tell you to put your name on it.

Even though I probably should have, and I wonder, it probably would have been really, never mind.

Okay.

The lens and the nuance that I saw in the rest of these prompts were very, very interesting,

because it talked about a bunch of different types of either lifestyles or sin styles, if you will,

that our culture kind of creates and develops and allows to take place.

And then I thought to myself, that is a really, really nonsensical statement,

because the world doesn't care that it's sinning.

That's not a thing for a world that does not reflect Christ.

If you don't acknowledge Christ in your life, then the idea of sinning doesn't really mean much.

Have you ever thought about that?

People that are not living a life of Christ, living out a certain lifestyle or doing certain things in their life,

and it seems like they don't care, it's because they don't.

And I could do a whole lot of sermons about that camp.

Absolutely I could, but you know the posture that I'd be taking is that I am over that.

I can't have that conversation.

At least Jim can't, because I'm right on that same level.

Because as though we like to kind of podiumize sin,

oh you got first place sin, second place sin, third place sin, sorry, fourth place, no!

That's crazy.

And if sin is ever evident in our lives, we are all there.

We are all sinners saved by grace.

While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Though I think for a lot of us we'd like to think we're the exception.

Oh well, while they're still sinners, Christ died for us.

No.

While we were still sinners, us, collective we, Christ died for us.

So how do we work through that?

How do we work through that when we know the church has this kind of frozen, chosen mentality that,

oh we're saved so we're exempt from all of this?

If that's your understanding this morning, then you have a really bad understanding

of what it means to be a believer.

That we battle with sin every day.

Martin Luther said that his mercies are new every morning, right?

And I'm not suggesting we do this, but Martin Luther had a baptismal right by his bed.

And every morning he kind of rebaptized himself.

I know reform language, we don't do that.

But it symbolized that he needs that grace every day.

And Martin Luther is a theologian that we hold up very high.

But I think he recognized that there's a wicked side to us all day, every day.

So what do we do with this?

What do we do when we can easily look over here to this culture, to this group of people,

to this ideology, to all of this over there and just say, man, they're terrible and they're going to hell.

Understand, so are we.

For the wages of sin is death.

So any sin that we commit, we should have death as the reward.

But there's a way believers are called to live that out.

That believers are called out to be different to God, to focus on Christ, the author and perfecter of our faith.

And what I find fascinating is we're going to be in 1 Peter today.

So the same guy, right, that was called out onto the water, which we'll see sooner or later, he wrote these words.

So we're going to start in 1 Peter 2, verses 9 through 12.

1 Peter 2:9–12

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession,

that you may proclaim the excellences of him who called you out of darkness into the marvelous light.

Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people.

Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

Beloved, I urge you as sojourners in exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh,

which wage war against your souls.

Keep your conduct among 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.

Or that they will be saved on the day that Jesus comes back.

Can you put that last, Hannah, can you put that last slide up?

Nope. There you go.

He's pretty much talking to us.

He's talking to a bunch of Israelites that are now mixed in with Gentiles, right,

because Jesus came to save everybody in that realm.

Jew, Gentile, that's another sermon, another sermon series for another time.

But understand that we have a responsibility.

We have a duty to live a life that is different.

And here we see one of the first things.

We are called to abstain.

That is a very interesting word.

Now again, I'm going to keep this PG.

And so I think when I say abstain, and as we get older, abstaining from different things

probably take on different lights and different conversations,

depending on how old we're getting.

Some of you know what I'm talking about.

Some of you are asleep, and that's fine.

But for me, I'm going to speak from my point of view,

growing up as a hormonal teenager,

this understanding of abstaining really came to one, possibly two things in life.

Ninety percent of you know what I'm talking about, but it was the fear of my mother.

It wasn't of God, right, even though I do believe at times she was speaking for him,

but it was the fear of my mother that brought me to abstain in certain areas of my life.

If you would like to know more than that, come and ask.

We'll talk about it.

But a lot of you understand what it is.

And she pretty much threatened me that abstaining is the best way to go,

because if you don't, I will kill you.

Okay, it's pretty easy, right, pretty easy understanding.

Mom, gotcha, 10-4, okay, do not pass code, do not collect $200 if I don't abstain.

Now, I think if you were to talk to her today, she probably didn't want to come off that heavy-handed,

but I'm proud to say it worked, because I have a healthy fear of my mother.

And when you have a single parent for a while in your life where they have to play both mother and father,

it is a very different type of upbringing at times.

But whatever the abstaining was for you, whatever threats your parents or your pastor or your elders or whoever made,

I'm sorry it came out that way, but sometimes that works,

because we are actually called to abstain from certain things.

And what I'm going to put on there today, we are to abstain from identifying anything that the world wants to identify you as.

And I don't know what that means for you, I don't know where you're going to take that,

but understand that your definition, first and foremost, is in Jesus Christ.

And we're going to double down on that in a second, that understanding any kind of worldly ideologies,

whether it has to do with your sexuality, whether it has to do with your understanding and profession,

whether it means you're a Cubs fan, all that matter, and that is a very worldly ideology,

that we have to understand that we are defined by Christ first. Why?

Because we are called to abstain from the world, abstain from the worldly passions,

understanding that the worldly passions had a very different and a very skewed understanding of sexuality,

of marriage, of all of those things, and friends, 2024, US culture, not the first people to deal with this.

This was going on in the church in Ephesus, where this letter was being written to,

this was going on in the first century, Mediterranean Sea, the Greeks, the Romans, all of those people,

that there was a skewed understanding that I'm going to identify with what I want to first, and then I will be a believer.

Eh, doesn't work that way, because, and it has nothing to do with you,

it's because God says I am a jealous God, very first commandment.

Why is he a jealous God? Because he bought you with a price, so he gets to claim who you are.

That is so uncomfortable, I get it. But I'm my own person, in the United States,

I get to march by the beat of my own drum, I get to do all of this my way. No!

Both Frank Sinatra and, in my opinion, Usher did it best, they sang about my way, uh-uh, it's always God's way.

Half of you are like, Usher did that song? Yes, look it up, thank me later.

It's not your way, and guess what, it's not my way. I have eight, ten elders that will say it's not their way.

I have eight deacons, sometimes they say it's their, no, just kidding, they say it's not their way either.

They can't, none of us can. It can't be Munster Church's way. It can't be the CRC's way.

Why? Because all of that is flawed.

And why would you want to attach yourself to a flawed system? That's just foolish.

Hey, I know this doesn't work, I know that all, you know, all the wages of sin and death and all this kind of stuff,

I'm gonna be a part of that. Why? That's not being a good steward of your soul.

Exactly, you have to be, you have to do baby talk in order to make that work.

It doesn't make sense. And so if we're going to abstain, if we're gonna be called to repentance,

if we're gonna have this relationship with Jesus where he is going to be your solo definition of who you are,

of course you're gonna be in a rage. Of course the culture's gonna rage around you.

Of course it's going to hate what you are trying to be.

And you gotta remember, the book of Colossians has a very interesting saying.

It has an interesting verse. Now I don't have it up there because it's just kind of hitting me now as it hit me this week.

That in Christ there is no Jew or Gentile. There is no male or female. There is no free or slave.

There is no barbarian or skivvian. That if you are a believer, that is your definition always.

Well what do we do after that? Well, let's dive in.

1 Peter 1, 13-16, Therefore, preparing your minds for action and being sober-minded,

and set your hope fully on the grace that we brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ,

as obedient children do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance.

Wow. But as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in your conduct,

since it is written, you shall be holy as I am holy.

Hannah, you can leave that up.

As obedient children do not be conformed to the passion of your former ignorance.

Wow. Why is that so, why is that impacting? Because we are all ignorant and we love our ignorance.

We love the fact that there is a part of us that thinks we can get away with it.

That's because part of us love sin and we love too sin.

Understanding that that is the battle every day.

But as we were just saying 20 minutes ago, he has already won.

He already knows what to define you as. He defines you as his children.

He defines you as heirs to the kingdom. He defines you as sons and daughters of the king.

So your definitions of your life need to be rooted in Christ first, always.

Because if you are going to define as a culture, if you are going to have the culture define who you are,

then you are being ignorant. And Peter is saying, be obedient.

You may not like it. There may be friction in that.

You may be struggling with that, but abstain and don't be ignorant.

Now if I asked you, do you guys have a list of people that you know aren't doing that and are ignorant to things,

my guess is you would say yes. My guess is you could make me a list.

I will never ask because I know that your name should be first on it.

Just like if I am making a list, my name should be first on it.

Because there are days I struggle with this. There are days that I love to be ignorant.

There are days that I want to just sit in ignorance because then the sin comes easy

and I am not thinking about the conviction.

Last week we found out that if we are going to do that, then we are actually calling God a liar.

And that is not a good place to be.

Orin Worsby, one of my favorite, he was a mentor of mine for many, many years.

He passed away a couple years ago and he taught at Moody.

He wrote this about the holiness of God.

The argument here is logical and simple.

Children inherit the nature of their parents. God is holy.

Therefore as children we should live holy lives.

But we are partakers of divine nature and ought to reveal that nature in godly living.

Peter reminded his followers of what they were before they trusted Christ.

They had been children of disobedience.

So us, right?

But now they were to be obedient children.

True salvation always results in obedience.

Thanks, Warren.

They had also been imitators of the world,

fashioning themselves after standards and pleasures of the world.

Romans 12.2 translates the same word as conformed to the world.

Unsaved people tell us that they want to be free and different,

yet they all imitate one another.

The cause of all of this ignorance that leads to indulgence.

Unsaved people lack spiritual intelligence and this causes them to give themselves

to all kinds of fleshly and worldly indulgences.

Since we were born with a fallen nature, it was natural for us to live sinful lives.

Nature determines appetites and actions.

A dog and a cat behave differently because they have different natures.

He's talking about all of us, even if you've grown up in the church.

But my hope and my prayer is that when we become believers,

when that faith is regenerated into our hearts,

that we are on a track of learning.

And what is the best way to learn?

Well, if you're trying to get out of credit card debt,

and every time your paycheck hits, let's say you pay $1,000 off on your credit card,

and you go, well, I still want to get out of credit card debt,

but you still use the credit card, that's not going to work,

unless you're going to make a giant payment to pay it off.

But then if you continue to lose it, or continue to use it,

Andrew, what are you going to gain if you continue to use credit cards?

Well, you're going to gain money, you're going to lose your credit card debt.

So if we're trying to say we're going to abstain from these passions,

if we're going to live and try to be as holy as possible,

but then we're going to jump into sin where the holiness goes kaput,

then we're at five steps back.

Our account's going to be overdrawn.

And then people are going to look at you and go, wait, you're supposed to be a believer.

You post so you go to church all the time.

You're part of a committee, you're an elder, you're a deacon,

you teach Sunday school, you whatever.

But you don't look any different.

You see how the world then looks at believers and goes,

nah, why in the world would I want to have the conscience of Christ

when I could have freedom in everything?

Because that's not where life is found.

Life is not found in freedom to everything,

because when you have freedom to everything, you'll do whatever you want,

and that has never been the call.

Do we have freedom? Absolutely.

And some of our, I would say, kind of more the Christian nationalist understanding

takes that freedom to a very ugly place,

to a place where I kind of even reject it,

because all of that is I have freedom to stand over people,

and I'm going to remind them of their sin,

and I'm going to just do this like they're some kind of cigarette butt,

and that is not at all the church of Jesus.

That doesn't mean Jesus doesn't correct.

That doesn't mean he says to the woman caught in the act of adultery,

your sins are forgiven. Have a nice day.

No. What does he say?

Your sins are forgiven. Go and sin no more.

The one that was about to die for those sins is not only rebuking,

is teaching, is saying you are not defined this way,

so why continue to do it?

Be holy as I am holy.

Ignorance of Christ becomes indulgence in darkness.

That's what I got from Warren.

Ignorance in Christ becomes indulgence of darkness.

And if we're going to go, if we're going to all be Conradian in our theology,

which is amazing, it's scary because we think we can control it,

and we can't.

So why in the world would you want to be indulgent into something

that's going to demand ultimate control?

It's like the gambling, the one addicted to gambling going,

it's just one pull of the slot, how bad can it be?

Or I'm only going to go to the Hard Rock because they have a great buffet.

Why set ourselves up?

Why dance with the devil when we know he's going to want to win?

We do it all the time, church.

I do it all the time.

I'm only going to go this far.

I'm going to do a pinky toe because it feels good,

and I want to indulge in the dark, but I'm a pastor,

so I can't do the whole foot.

Well, what did we learn last week?

You can't do that.

If you do that, then you are not part of the light,

and the light doesn't know you.

Do we want that?

Do we want Jesus who says, I am your definition,

always to say, never mind, I don't know you.

No.

So what do we do with this culture?

How do we engage it?

When we look at each other, we need to see them with the eyes of Christ first.

When we engage with one another, we need to have Christ shown.

Have Your Way in Me is a song that we love to sing.

It's a powerful prayer, but when you actually do it,

you're going to look at people differently.

Though you're going to want to see the sin, the definition of the world,

and place all of that on there, and guess what?

That might be going on, and that is a problem,

and that is something that needs to be corrected.

That needs to be in line with Jesus.

But to take a stance over them, to say, I'm not going to engage.

They're too sinful is not a stance I think as believers we can have.

This is where I struggle, have that conversation,

because how are we going to do this?

If we're paying attention, how are we going to be able to engage the darkness

with the light?

How do we live as sinners, saved by grace in all mankind,

the human race that is depraved to its core?

You understand the struggle you have, the struggle I have?

We have a world that says, get in the tub, the water's great,

you don't have to worry about anything.

Why the world's in a hot tub, I have no idea.

But that's, come and do you.

You do you.

No, we, I'm not going to say it that way because that's weird.

We reflect Christ because it's not about me.

I get to meet with a student after her service today,

and she's going to talk to me about her faith in Jesus.

And she had a conversation with Daniel last week,

and he just came back all smiles and is like, she gets it.

And you know what she gets?

That she is not her own.

But she belongs to Christ.

We started with it, we're going to end with it.

If you want to have control over who you are,

I think you're making it real hard for yourself

because Christ has already done the work.

So then how do we do this?

We can teach, we can rebuke, we can point out error,

we can make signs, we can write Facebook posts,

we can yell in the bull horns that they're going to burn.

We can do that to culture.

We can have an adverse relationship with culture and say,

you're all sinners and you're going to go to hell.

But remember, you are one of them.

So that's kind of a paradox.

Or can we sit and have conversations?

Can we be humble and sit down and have loving conversations?

Maybe even with discord, you may not ultimately agree.

And for some of us, we struggle with that

because we love being right.

And we love to say, no, no, no, no, no,

you need to come and think about it my way.

No.

Coming together and looking at it and go,

how are we defined by Christ in this moment?

What does Christ speak to us is the best way to handle it.

But here's the thing, you may walk away and nothing changes.

Thank God you don't get the final say.

Thank God I don't get the final say.

Because I'd find all of you all guilty along with me.

You see how it works?

But if we take that stance, it's only going to get harder.

But there are things going on in this culture that are raging.

There are things that are going on in the world today

that we're going, Lord, just take control.

Yet there are part of us that says, just wipe them out.

That's not how Jesus engages.

Jesus chooses to engage in a different way.

And I think he starts with Peter.

Hannah, you can show the clip.

Do you still have faith?

Faith hasn't been my problem.

I gave up everything to follow you.

But you're healing those strangers.

Why do you think I allowed trials?

I don't know.

They prove the genuineness of your faith.

They strengthen you.

This is strengthening you.

And Eden.

Keep your eyes on me.

Oh, come, Ritza.

In our grief.

In our grief.

I'm shaking.

Lord, I'm shaking.

Simon!

Simon!

Simon!

Help me, please!

Don't let me go.

I got you.

I got you.

Don't let me go.

I got you.

Please.

Oh, you are little faith.

Why did you doubt?

Don't let me go.

I have much planned for you, Simon.

Including hard things.

Just keep your eyes on me.

I promise.

I'm sorry.

Come on.

Help me.

Please.

Sit, sit.

Please.

Don't let me go, please.

I'm sorry.

Don't let me go, please.

I'm sorry.

Please don't let me go.

Please, be still.

Don't let me go.

I'm here.

I'm always here.

I let people go hungry.

But I feed them.

I let people go hungry.

I let people have trials.

I let people have identity chaos.

I let people sit in the culture.

I let people, let the world's waves try to take you out.

I let the rage of the waves.

Sometimes I let the waves beat you down.

I let you have a hard season just a little bit longer than

maybe you want it.

But I will always feed them.

I will never leave you or forsake you in this life or the

next.

So if that's all of us, that should teach us how to engage

the world.

The world should see us clinging to Christ in all things

because the waves are raging always and forever.

In this world, the waves are going to rage.

In this world, you're going to have trouble.

But if you identify in Christ always, Jesus says, take heart.

I've overcome the world.

But understand, friends, you may be raging until your

dying day.

Well, that's just not fair.

Why can't I just get peace?

This person has peace.

No, they're raging too, just maybe in a different way.

One of the things that I love about the prompts that you all

gave is that they're all solved with identifying in Christ

first.

A lot of you want to focus on the rage and what the rage is

doing.

What happened when Peter focused on the rage?

He sank.

And I find it comical that you have disciples going, Jesus,

save him.

What do they think Jesus is going to do?

No, I'm going to let him drown.

Jesus would be going against his own word.

We need to remember that as we engage the culture.

We need to remember that as we identify.

We need to remember that as we follow the word the best we

can in this life.

And why?

Because we'll close with this.

Chapter 1 verses 3 through 9.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born

again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus

Christ from the dead to the inheritance of the imperishable,

undefiable, and unfading kept in heaven for you.

But I want it on the earth.

It's in heaven for you.

By who God's power has been guarded through faith for a

salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if

necessary, you have been grieved by various trials so

that the tested genuineness of your faith, more precious than

gold, that perishes though it is tested by fire, may be found

to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of

Jesus Christ.

Though you have not seen him, you love him.

Though you do not know, though you do not now see him, you

believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and

filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the

salvation of your souls.