Called to Bless

Well, this morning we are continuing on in our series called Kingdom Witness.

So we have been going through this theme of kingdom all year long.

And we've been looking at how different aspects of the kingdom uh can uh connect with our lives and what we're doing.

And now this fall we dove into the letter of 1 Peter and we've begun to look at what does it mean to be a witness for this kingdom?

How do our lives reflect uh what God has called us to?

And so Peter has been teaching Christians how to live faithfully for the Lord, especially when you're in a community or an area where people don't understand your faith.

He has reminded us that we are called to make Jesus visible in our lives.

Uh and then he's called us to be a witness uh when we're under authority in our marriages and in our everyday relationships.

And now Peter's going to bring everyone back to his attention and he's gonna ask, what kind of people will we become when following Jesus brings opposition?

Right?

Because sometimes we find ourselves just in the rhythm of what I kind of call church.

We we just do, right?

It's what we do, it's kind of who we are, and so we find ourselves in these rhythms, and all of a sudden something will happen in our life, an event, a circumstance, something.

And then all of a sudden we're like, so much for that God I worship.

I mean, I thought my life was supposed to get easier when I gave my life to him.

I thought he was the one in control and have full authority.

And all of a sudden we become to question, and and so Peter is asking this question of the church, he's saying, Who are you, especially when life starts getting hard or difficult or people start persecuting you?

And so we're gonna dive into that today in 1 Peter chapter 3.

1 Peter 3 · chapter mention

And so to begin, I just I want to see here has anyone in here uh ever gotten like a message before, a text, an email, uh Facebook post of something that the moment you saw it, there was a kindling fire that erupted inside of you.

Because that post, that comment, that text message was so blatantly wrong and false, and it was an attack on you personally, and so without even thinking, you were just like and you just started writing that email out, and you because when you read it, right, you read, you knew how they were saying it.

So as you're reading it, you're like, I know the tone, the accusatory tone that they're using here, and so you were just like responding in kind, or you have that phone, and you're just like you're like, This is too long, voice the text, and you're just letting it go.

And all of a sudden, you send and you're just like, Yeah, there it is, and then like a second later, you're like, Oh, that gut-wrenching feeling of like, I want that back.

That happens.

Where all of a sudden, when we thought, right, because we felt so attacked that we responded in the same form that they came to us with, and then the second we let it go, there's this moment of like, oh, I probably shouldn't have done that.

Right?

I mean, this is such a real problem in our culture that literally Microsoft and Apple have developed technologies to unsend messages.

They now Microsoft gives you like a 30-second window of like, if you send an email, you can go in and say, unsend.

Because they realize people are so reactionary that we all don't take the time to process and go, whoa, that's really upsetting me.

I need to step away from this for a moment.

I need to really think.

Or sometimes we write it out and then we we don't touch it, and we just say, I'm gonna now let that sit for a while, and then I'm gonna come back to it after I've I've calmed down, right?

I mean, so there's a there's a truth here in our culture where uh we tend to respond to people sometimes a little too quickly, or we respond in a way that they we felt they were talking to us, and it's got us into situations uh that are difficult.

But what we're gonna see today and what Peter is doing, he's writing to Christians who are being insulted, slandered, shamed in their communities, and he tells them, Don't give it back.

He's saying, Instead, I want you to do something that they're not gonna expect.

I want you to give them something that they did not give you.

I want you to give them blessings.

And you're like, come on, Peter.

Isn't this the same Peter who took out a sword and chopped off a guard's ear because they tried to arrest Jesus?

Like, that's the Peter I like, right?

Just all action.

Eye for an eye.

You come at me, I'm gonna chop your ear off.

Like he just didn't hold back.

But that's not what we're seeing here.

We see that Peter, this same Peter, by the way, is highlighting this point that the gospel should produce something in us.

That there should be a transformation in us that is not determined by the way other people treat us.

So to put it another way, we don't return what we receive, we give what we received from Jesus.

Meaning that Peter's telling the church, listen, if you're really going to make the impact that Jesus wants you to make in this world as you are dispersed throughout this entire region, you cannot respond in kind to the people who are going to slander you, persecute you, speak ill of you, and wrongly accuse you of things.

Instead, I want you to give them what you've received, not from them, but from Jesus.

Oh man, now that makes us witnesses.

So if you're able this morning, would you please stand for the reading of God's word?

1 Peter 3, 8 through 22 says, Finally, all of you have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind.

Do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, bless for those uh for to this you were called, that you may obtain a blessing.

For whoever desires to love life and see good days, let him keep his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking deceit.

Let him turn away from evil and do good, let him seek peace and pursue it.

For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and his ears are open to their prayer.

But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.

Now, who is there to harm you if you are zealous for what is good?

But even if you should suffer for righteousness' sake, you will be blessed.

Have no fear of them, nor be troubled, but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you.

Yet do it with gentleness and respect, having a good conscience, so that when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame.

For it is better to suffer for doing good if that should be God's will, than for doing evil.

For Christ also suffered once for sins, for righteousness for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, because they formerly did not obey when God's patients waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through the water.

Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for the good conscience through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him.

Amen.

You may be seated.

Fifteen long verses.

Peter is a lengthy writer.

And some people believe, you know, Peter had a scribe uh transcribing.

So he was doing the speak to text long before we were, uh, hence why it's a little lengthy.

But but these verses, the reason I wanted all of them to be read because they're powerful.

This passage is again for all of us, which is why Peter does what he does when he he makes this transition uh and addresses everyone.

So uh before we we dive in, let's begin with this first section.

So we're gonna look at this in three sections, uh, five verses each.

And that first section is this give blessing when you receive hostility.

So 1 Peter 3, 8 through 12 says, Finally, all of you have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind.

Do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, bless.

For this you were called, that you may obtain a blessing.

For whoever desires to love life and see good days, let him keep his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking deceit.

Let him turn away from evil and do good, let him seek peace and pursue it.

For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and his ears are open to their prayer.

But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.

So again, Peter begins this section by addressing the whole church.

He says, Finally, all of you.

So again, he's addressed the government, he's addressed servants and masters, he's addressed husbands and wives, and now everybody is addressed here.

So he's talking to the whole church.

And remember, this letter was read aloud to the whole church.

And he begins not by talking about the enemies that are outside the church, he begins by providing a list of virtues that Christians should be living out together.

So he starts with this: unity, sympathy, brotherly love, tenderheartedness, and humility.

Now imagine if just those five, that's not a complete list, by the way, but imagine if just those five were lived out in every church, every Christian church across the world.

The world would have a lot harder time saying, I like Jesus, but not the church.

Peter gets it.

He understands the importance of the bride of Christ.

Because we live in a high-pressure world with tense circumstances that have a way of turning the people inside the church against each other.

When people feel threatened, they become defensive.

When life gets difficult, compassion can disappear.

And when churches experience pressure from the outside, they can easily begin fighting on the inside.

So Peter says, church, and this is the people, not a building.

He says, look at your lives, and what do you see?

Because Jesus and now the Holy Spirit are building his church.

And here are some of the things that have to be there.

And I love that he starts with this first one unity.

And unity, by the way, doesn't mean we have to have identical opinions to those around us.

And I think we forget that sometimes.

We begin to think that our our opinions, our preferences, are more important.

That means if someone were to come in and we're like, I saw what political sign they posted in their front yard.

I can't believe they're at this church.

This is the wrong place for them.

That is not who we are.

Unity does not mean we all agree on the same things.

It does not mean uniformity.

It means Jesus, his kingdom, and his mission for us are bigger than the secondary things and personal preferences that could potentially divide us.

Oh man, I remember a year ago when I was first starting, and Pastor John was walking me through my onboarding process here, and we got to just hang out that month and really talk and share.

And he shared a story that I thought was hilarious and sad at the same time.

He was like, You hear about the church that uh they decided they were gonna move the hat hooks or coat hooks from the right side of the wall to the left side of the wall, and then half the church split and left because they put them on the wrong side.

It's it's sad.

We allow secondary things, preferences, to become divisions within our body.

And Peter is saying, church, you cannot do that, you have to be united.

And and get it, you can have preferences, you can have opinions, those are good, but don't allow that to create a division here.

You guys need to be unified in your love for Jesus, unified in the mission that he's given you.

And then you should have sympathy for each other, tender-heartedness towards each other, humility.

Imagine that if we treated people with those things.

And after these things, Peter gives a central command to what he's saying.

He says, Do not repay evil with evil and do not repay insult with insult, but instead bless.

That is a hard command.

It's difficult because we live in a world that largely operates on reciprocity, where it's like if you respect me, I'll respect you.

But if you attack me, I'm gonna attack you.

You embarrass me, I get to embarrass you.

It's just how it works.

Whatever's done to me, I'm allowed to do to you.

And Peter tells the followers of Jesus do not simply mirror whatever behavior or action is done to you.

We don't return what we receive from them, rather, we give to them what we've received from Jesus.

Now, blessing does not mean pretending or treating evil as good.

It doesn't mean we have to be like, oh, they did something horror to me.

Okay, it's okay, I'm just gonna be happy.

That's not what Peter's saying.

He's saying you don't pretend that evil is not evil, and you don't pretend that what they're doing is good.

But what it means is that we refuse to let anyone else's sin or their actions toward us determine our character.

It is a hard, hard temptation to not respond in kind.

It's it's difficult for us to not want to give back what they give us, right?

Because I mean, like many of you, I was raised on entertainment and action movies that was like justice, you get it any means necessary.

I mean, they created movies like Taken, where you're like, yes, 90 minutes of a father killing everyone to get his daughter back.

And you're just like, all the bad guys died.

He literally took them all out.

And it's like, what a great movie.

It's something in us where our natural response is to give what we've received from them.

And yet Peter's like, you want to be a great witness in this world, you want to really make the impact that God is calling us to, then you're gonna do something that the world doesn't do.

Instead of giving back what they've given you, give them what Jesus has given you.

Because none of you are perfect, none of you are good in your own right.

You've all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

Justice says the wrong needs to stop.

Revenge says, You hurt me, so now I get to hurt you.

Those are two very different things.

And Peter is telling the church not to become what has hurt them.

Jesus says in Matthew 5, 44, but I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.

Paul says in Romans 12.14, bless those who persecute you and bless and do not curse them.

Why?

Oh, why did you have to give us those verses?

Because that is what Jesus does for us.

We sometimes read passages like this and we think, but what about the people who don't deserve my blessing?

Of course they don't deserve it.

That is what makes these kinds of blessings a grace.

People didn't earn blessing from you.

But you gave it to them anyway, because none of us deserved the grace that Jesus gave us.

But Romans tells us that while we were still sinners, we were reconciled to God through the death of his son.

We were not the good people whom Jesus rescued from all the bad people.

The gospel says we were sinners whom Jesus loved.

So Peter says here, you have received mercy, now become merciful.

You have received grace, so now be gracious.

You have received blessing, now become a blessing.

Then Peter goes on, he quotes Psalm 34, highlighting these characteristics.

He says, Guard your tongue, turn from evil, do good, seek peace, and pursue it.

Again, a list that seems really easy, but when you think about it, it's very hard.

Guard your tongue?

I don't know.

Sometimes I feel like it's got a brain of its own.

Like before I could think the thought, the words are out.

It's called foot and mouse syndrome, and many of us have it.

But Peter's saying, listen, there's a reason that that the psalmist wrote these words, there's a reason that the authors of scripture have shared this, there's a reason that God divinely has instructed his church.

Watch what you say, because your words matter and they are powerful.

And so he says, here's this, follow this.

And notice the reason that Peter gives for doing this.

He says, because God sees, God hears, God remains the judge.

When we have God in his right place and we trust that place as authority and judge over the world, then that allows us to take that posture to offer things to him.

That means when you were wronged and justice was missed, God sees.

If nobody else knows the truth about your situation, God knows.

You don't uh you don't become judge, jury, or executioner because God is the final judge.

So here is an uncomfortable question for us to wrestle with this morning.

Who are you tempted to give back what they gave you?

Who's that person in your life right now that you're just like, mmm, even just thinking about them?

I'm just like, mm-mm.

I don't like them.

I don't ever want to see them come through these doors.

They don't deserve love.

They don't deserve, they deserve everything that they are gonna get.

Who do you secretly want to lose?

Who do you hope gets embarrassed?

Who do you want to finally get what's coming to them?

But now what if instead of those responses we decided that we were gonna be a people that prayed like this?

God, stop what is wrong.

Bring truth, bring justice, and somehow, Lord, bring your grace, repentance, and love into that person's life.

That is the harder way.

That is the Christian way, that is the kingdom witness.

This brings us to our second section this morning.

Give hope when you receive fear.

So Peter goes on verses 13 through 17, and he says, Now who is there to harm you if you are zealous for what is good?

But even if you should suffer for righteousness' sake, you will be blessed.

Have no fear of them, nor be troubled.

But in your hearts honor Christ the Lord is holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason, for the hope that is in you.

Yet do it with gentleness and respect, having a good conscience, so that when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame.

For it is better to suffer for doing good, if that should be God's will, than for doing evil.

So Peter moves from hostility to fear, and he's addressing this fear that we can have as Christians.

And so he knows that generally speaking, if Christians become known for doing good, people will have less of a legitimate reason to oppose them.

But Peter's also realistic and he understands that even if you suffer for doing what is right, that there may be times that you choose the high road, you choose to do what is right, and then you still suffer.

You're still slandered, you're still outcast.

And Peter says that's a blessing.

It's a blessing because God sees you.

Peter never promises that faithfulness will make everybody like us.

Jesus was perfectly faithful and they crucified him.

So the assumption that God's blessing always means comfortable circumstances does not align with what we see in the New Testament.

And that's where Peter taps into Isaiah 8 here, where God's people were facing this frightening political circumstance.

And Isaiah tells them, Don't fear.

Don't fear what everyone else is fearing.

Instead, he says, honor the Lord as holy.

And Peter takes that same language and he says, Honor Christ the Lord as holy in your heart.

What an enormous statement about Jesus.

He does not tell frightened Christians, don't worry, guys, just trust in yourselves and you'll be okay.

Just just put on your firm face and you'll be okay.

He tells them, Remember who is Lord.

Remember who's Lord.

The answer to misplaced fear is rightly placed allegiance.

When Jesus occupies the highest place in your heart, the things around you still might be frightening, but they know.

Longer have ultimate control over you because again, you're saying, God, you sit in the throne, you are above it all.

So even though this circumstance is it brings up fear and anxiety in my life because I don't know how I'm gonna get through it, God, I trust that you do.

And we get to put our hope in Him.

And then Peter says, always being prepared to make a defense.

Now, the Greek word translated defense here is apologia, which means a reason, defense, or explanation.

It's where we get a word for apologetics, uh, which is a defense of the Christian faith.

Uh, and it could be used when someone has to give an account or answer for themselves.

Now, this verse right here is probably super intimidating for most people because they're thinking, like, listen, I love Jesus.

I love him, he's changed my life.

But do not ask me to go out there and stand up for my faith with words in front of other people.

That seems really hard.

I don't know enough.

I don't know enough.

I'm not smart enough.

I wasn't educated.

Pastor, I didn't get to go to Bible school, okay?

I had to go to business school, all right?

I had to do this, or I had to go this route.

I don't have all that fancy knowledge that you have, and so I don't really think so.

Or we just say, I I've seen, I've seen clips, I've been on YouTube.

People are really smart these days, and I feel like there's trap questions everywhere, and so I don't want to get stuck in one of those and ruin the whole kingdom of God for everyone, like we ever could.

So I get it.

It is an intimidating thing to think that you might have to stand up for your faith someday, that you might have to give a reasoned account for why you believe what you believe.

But to give you some hope, we live in a the most resourced time than ever.

There's websites like gotquestions.org that has answered over a million questions for people who have questions about faith.

It's a Christian site that gives a biblical approach.

Now they don't have all the answers, and they'll acknowledge that, but they'll point you to the word of God again and again to show you where you can find it in scripture and how you can apply it to your lives.

It's an incredible resource.

There was an author that wrote a book called Tactics, and his goal was to help Christians understand how to have a conversation with someone about your faith.

All the things that seem intimidating to us, he actually addressed it.

And what's great is we have that book in our church library.

And so if you want, you could go after service and I don't know how many you got.

Heather Graham, how many two?

So the first two.

But that's there for you.

Like I said, you are resourced, so you can go out and begin to prepare yourself to have confidence when those times come.

But what Peter is saying here is Christians, you should know why you believe what you believe.

We should know who Jesus is, we should know why he died, why the resurrection matters, why we trust him, and what our hope actually is.

Christian faith does not mean I believe, therefore I don't need reasons.

He says, give an explanation for the hope that is in you.

That means Peter is not primarily imagining an academic debate.

He is imagining someone watching these Christians and wondering why do they still have hope?

Why aren't they consumed with anger?

Why don't they retaliate?

How can they still trust God after this just happened to them?

The world is watching the church, and we get to give them a visible sign of how we follow Jesus.

And Peter is instructing the church to do just that.

So when they ask, Peter says, tell them about Jesus.

How incredible that when the world is consumed with fear and hopelessness, someone's gonna look at your life and they're gonna go, uh, how come you're not doing what everyone else is doing?

Hey, what's your secret?

And you're like, there's no secret.

Let me tell you about Jesus.

Let me tell you about where my hope lies.

You can acknowledge fear, but man, let's make our hope visible before it ever becomes explainable.

This is such an important uh point to our witness.

The goal is not simply to know enough about God to win a debate, the goal is to live in such a way that somebody would become curious about who this Jesus is because of the kind of hope he's produced in our life.

Then Peter gives this qualifier to our apologia, and it's an important one because this is the one I think that gets missed.

Do it with gentleness and respect.

This is not an optional packaging around the truth.

This is a key part of our witness.

You can win an argument and poorly misrepresent Jesus.

You can defend Christianity and sound nothing like Jesus.

So maybe one of the questions we need to ask ourselves today is this does the way I defend Jesus actually sound like Jesus?

Our world does not lack arguments, so the Christian witness should be different.

We should have clear conviction, real courage, but also a gentleness and respect that comes with our hope.

Truth without gentleness may win the argument, but it could lose the witness.

So our last section this morning is give Jesus the outcome.

So 1 Peter 3, uh, 18 through 22, uh, he says, For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteousness for the unrighteous, uh, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, because they formerly did not obey when God's patients waited in the days of Noah while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through the water.

Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for good conscience through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him.

Now, these verses right here.

We're I could do a whole sermon on just these.

And rightfully so, because there's a lot there.

This has people have taken these single verses and created theologies that don't match up with all of Scripture, but uh they are important for us to address this morning.

Uh, this section contains, again, difficult material to understand from our modern perspective spirits in prison, Noah, the flood, baptism.

Uh, but we need to resist the temptation to be absorbed in the difficult details uh and miss the very clear movement that Peter has for this whole section.

So it begins with Christ also suffered.

So Jesus is the ultimate example of everything Peter has been teaching us.

He suffered while doing good, he was rejected, he was mistreated, and he was killed.

But Peter immediately moves beyond Jesus merely being our example to Jesus is our savior.

Peter says, the righteous suffered for the unrighteous.

Jesus is the unrighteous is the righteous and we are the unrighteous.

And why did he suffer?

Why did Jesus have to even do that?

Because, and Peter gives it this beautiful description of salvation, he says, that he might bring us to God.

That is the goal of the gospel.

To bring all of God's creation back home to him.

Do you know that God loves us so much, so deeply?

He knows you better than you know yourself.

He knitted each one of you together in your mother's womb.

He knows every hair on your head or the hairs that were on your head.

He knows everything.

I know because it's going.

He knows you so intimately and desires for you to be known by him.

That's our God.

He has an unending love for you.

I used to think of him as a mean old man who's sitting up, looking down, punishing me because I'm a bad person.

And yet, what the Word of God says is that there is a God who is so passionately and desperately in love for you, that his love is so great that he gave himself so that you would be made whole, so that you would be restored into right relationship with him.

Amen to that.

And so there's all these different uh interpretations of what uh this context can mean about spirits and Jesus going into it.

And it's been debated over the years about uh what that represents, but ultimately what Peter is getting at here is that Jesus wins.

That's what he's saying is that there's no forces that can oppose Jesus, there's no person that can oppose Jesus.

He has victory.

So if Peter is referring to rebellious spiritual powers, uh Jesus is not giving them another chance.

He's what he's saying is he's announcing his victory.

Jesus is saying, I have won, I've defeated the cross, I'm alive.

The powers that oppose God have lost.

Then Peter brings up Noah and he says, only eight people.

And imagine the encouragement to this community: a small house church in Asia Minor that is experiencing suffering.

They look around and everything they see is evil, debauchery, people just living for themselves, pride, all that stuff, and they're just discouraged.

Like, how are we going to make it as a church?

And Peter reminds them of the eight people on the ark.

Imagine those eight people, while they're working on this ark, the whole world is living in sin, not them.

Peter says, you don't have to be the majority to be a representation of God and his goodness.

So eight people might seem insignificant, you might seem surrounded, you might seem understood, but guess what?

God held them close.

God used them.

And then finally, he points everything to the resurrection of Jesus.

And he says, Because of what Jesus has done, he's now at the right hand.

All of our authority, all of our power, everything is in him.

Jesus is the ruler of the universe.

Church, I want us to end with this this morning.

We desire to be in control, we desire to take things into our own hands.

And there'll be times when maybe you have to, and there's so many gray areas and illustrations.

But the more as a church we learn to trust Jesus with that control, to trust Jesus with our lives, to become the witnesses he's calling us to be, to point people to him through the way we act, then we have a chance for people to become curious about this Jesus that we follow.

He doesn't just become a namesake, he doesn't become this grand idea.

He becomes a visible example of what his transforming love can do right here today in our lives.

So because of that, we don't return what we received from them, we give them what we have received from Jesus.

So this morning, I just want to give an invitation.

Because maybe you were invited here, maybe you came here today, and you've heard me talk about Jesus, and you're like, I've heard that name before.

Uh he seems like a good Christian guy.

Let me tell you, he's more than just a person who lived in the first century.

He claimed to be the Son of God.

That was his claim, that he and the Father were one.

And then he made the bold claim that says, No one can come to the Father except through him.

And then he said, I'm gonna do something to prove that everything I've taught, everything I've said, is true.

He said, I'm going to give my life up.

I'm gonna lay it down as a ransom, I'm gonna let them crucify me, but I'm not gonna stay dead, I'm gonna conquer death, I'm gonna become the atonement for sin for all time, for all people.

And that's exactly what he did.

He died and he rose again.

And so if you're here today, I want you to know God loves you.

He is desperate for you to be in right relationship with him.

And that happens not by you leaving here today going, okay, I feel really convicted now.

I'm gonna get my life in order.

I'm gonna start check, read the Bible, pray, check, be in church, check, okay, I'm gonna be a good Christian.

That's not what he's saying.

He's saying, you are a sinner, you've already been separated from God.

There's nothing you could ever do to make that right.

He says, but here's the free gift.

I'm gonna do it for you.

I love you so much, I'm gonna do what you never could.

And all you have to do to receive that gift is believe in me to say yes to me.

So if you're here today and you've never accepted Jesus as your Lord and Savior, right where you're at, you can do that.

You can say yes to Jesus.

You can accept him.

And here's what the Bible says you believe in your heart and conf and confess that Jesus is Lord and you are saved.

There's no greater thing than you could do than that.

And here's the thing: some of you think, oh, well, that don't it's only you're only allowed to do that when you're a kid.

Once you become an adult, it becomes weird and awkward because then people know you weren't a believer.

As you are, it doesn't matter what your age is, if you've never surrendered your life to Jesus, you can do it right now.

And it's not about a magic prayer, it's not about giving the right words, it's about you believing in your heart and confessing and accepting him as Lord and Savior.

And I hope you do.

And if you make that decision today, here's my last request tell someone.

Don't just be like, okay, I did it, and then hide and sneak out of the church.

No, then the journey begins.

That's when the believers, the brothers and sisters get to come together and walk this journey with you and help you grow and mature in your faith.

Church, for the rest of us who have that relationship with Jesus, man, let's live it out.

Let's be the witness that Peter is calling us to be because there is a whole treasure valley around us filled with people who do not have the hope that we have, that don't have the eternity that we have, and we get to be a light through our words, through our actions, through our lives.

We get to model Christ for them in a way that makes them curious.

And again, it's not about filling this room, by the way.

That is not the goal of the church.

The goal of the church is to equip the saints to go out and reap the harvest.

Meaning that Sundays are for us to be filled so we can go out the rest of the week and share the good news with everyone that's around us.

And when necessary, we will speak the words that will help point them to Jesus.

So, church, let's let's live the commission we've been given.

Let's disciple those God's entrusted to us, and let's be the church He's called us to be.

Let us pray.

Oh Jesus, Lord, uh, thank you for your word.

Thank you for your spirit.

Lord, I pray for anyone who feels convicted today, Lord, that that conviction would lead to action, God, not because of anything I've said, but Lord, because of what your word has called us to.

Father, may we never be comfortable or content with how things are, but may we always strive to fulfill the mission you've given us, Lord, until every person knows your name, Lord, and has submitted uh to your authority and accepted you as Lord.

God, we are not done.

And so, Father, may we never stop striving to fulfill that.

But God, may we do it with love and gentleness and respect and in such a way that when people see us, they're curious about who we're following because we look so different from the ways of this world.

God, you are incredible.

You are beyond my understanding, you are beyond anything I can know or imagine, and yet you are near to us.

You reveal yourself, and you've given us your word to help instruct our lives.

So, Lord, today, may we be encouraged, may we be filled with your spirit, and may we carry the love and grace of your son everywhere we go.

And we pray this in your mighty name, Jesus.

Amen.