Sermons

Our Bulwark Against the World

January 24, 2021 Speaker: Reid Strahan Series: Miscellaneous

Topic: Gospel Living Passage: 1 Peter 2:9–11

The believers Peter wrote to may have looked like a group of scattered refugees, nobodies, outcasts from the world, but to God they were his royal priests!  They were God’s own people! And so are you! They needed to know that!  And you need to know that too!! 

“But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his 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 and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul.” 1 Peter 2:9-11

Just before this verse Peter said Jesus is the chief cornerstone, chosen and precious in the sight of God!  Whoever believes in him will not be put to shame, but will receive honor from God! But to those who do not believe, Jesus will be a stone of stumbling. The Jews rejected him at his coming, and the unbelieving world down to this day has rejected and stumbled over Jesus.  Verse 8, Peter said “they stumble because they disobey the message, which is what they were destined for”.

BUT you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, you are God’s special possession!  The contrast is stunning!  This is the world, this is you.  They are one thing, you are another!  You are radically different, from the rest of the world! True honor, glory and status are NOT found in the world but you have it, in God!  Like Jesus, you MAY be rejected and marginalized by the world, but you are precious and chosen by God!   

Those whom Peter wrote to were suffering as Christians.  Perhaps their property was confiscated. Some may have been beaten.  We know they were verbally abused. They were spoken of as evil doers.  They were pushed to the outskirts of society. But Peter reminded them of their status with God, because who we are in God, fortifies us against the opposition and hostility of the world.  

Peter urged them to continue to be different from the world!  Live as strangers and exiles in the world!  Don’t conform to the world, don’t compromise with the world.  You ARE GOD’S SPECIAL PEOPLE!  You have been called out of the darkness of the world into God’s marvelous light!

*For believers, the world is a threat or danger that must be overcome. I see two main ways the world is a threat to us. And Peter helps us with both of these.  First: The world can wear us down by it’s opposition, and the way it stigmatizes us and marginalizes us.  Jesus prepared us for that!  He said, “If the world hates you, remember that it hated me first”.  Many Christians are insecure and depressed because they are still looking to the world for acceptance and significance.  Or we are angry because we feel we don’t have a voice.  But Remember! The world rejected Christ. Don’t long to be a part of that world which rejected Jesus..  Do not seek to win their acceptance. You will never please them enough!   How much better to learn deeply, who you are, in God!  

So the world is that collective hostility towards God’s people.  It is all that stands against the church. But the world is also that attraction or pull away from God that appeals to our human pride and passions, which wage war against our souls. 

I want to look more deeply as this aspect of the world. The world is a very subtle enemy because it makes inroad into our lives, and into the church without our knowing it.  It is like the Trojan horse in Greek mythology; it looks like this great gift to our lives but in the end becomes the means of our destruction.  CS Lewis warned that prosperity can knit our hearts to the world without us hardly knowing it.  He said, “While we think we are making our place in the world the world is making it’s home in us.”  

The world is the territory or tool that Satan uses to seduce believers away from simple, and pure devotion to Christ. Two of the strongest warnings to Christians in the NT are warnings about the world.  James wrote, “You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.”

John said, “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world. 1 John 2:15,16 

****

The NLT calls these 3 elements of the world, “a craving for physical pleasure, (which would include sexual pleasures that are outside the bounds of God’s plan for sex between a married man and woman), a craving for everything we see, and pride in our achievements and possessions.  The world is that value system that says life is all about personal pleasure and possessions and personal achievement!

The world is the values and beliefs of our culture that are opposed to God.  Paul warned believers to beware of “the wisdom of the world” or “the wisdom of this age” (2 Corinthians 2:19, 3:6)  The wisdom of this age is the dominant way of thinking of the world around us.  How easily we are conformed to the thinking of the world!  It breaks my heart to see good Christian kids go off to college or out into the world and be seduced by the wisdom of the age.  Paul said, “Do not be conformed to the world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind”.  

The wisdom of the world comes at us from all directions. A religious editor pointed out that “More theology is conveyed in, and probably retained from one hour of popular television, than from all the sermons that are also delivered on any given weekend in America’s... churches..”  We can watch a sitcom or movie, without even being aware of how anti-God,  and anti-Bible it is!!   

Whose assessment of things do you really trust? Scripture or culture?  What influences your priorities, your thoughts about morality and money, family and church?  God, or the wisdom of the present age?!

The one persistent sin of God’s people throughout the ages has been adultery with the world. Israel wanted a golden calf to worship because the people of the world had idols like that. They wanted to have a king because the other nations had kings, and they were not satisfied to have God alone as their king. They adopted the horrific practice of sacrificing their  children to the god of Molech because that is what the nations around them did.  

Throughout history the world’s ideas have always infiltrated individual believers, but also the church.  The world has distorted our understanding of what church is, and what our message is, and what kind of people we are to be.  Today, the church can start to look like a business, or an entertainment center, or simply an organization like any other organization.

Dick Staub said, “At one time churches sought out thoughtful biblical teachers to serve as pastors, but now they recruit entrepreneurs and magnetic personalities…” (and I would add entertainers and comedians)  He said, “We need fewer entrepreneurs and more pastors who actually know God deeply.”  

*Francis Schaeffer said, “Tell me what the world is saying today, and I'll tell you what the church will be saying in seven years.” 

Our memory text from 2 Corinthians 6 asks, “What agreement has the temple of God with idols?” The Corinthians were cozying up to the world and compromising with the world.  Paul said, “What are you doing!! You are the temple of the living God!!”  Your very lives are a sacred space!  A dwelling place of the living God.  Therefore “go out” from the world. Do not touch the uncleanness of it!   You are God’s sons and daughters!  

**What does this have to do with 1 Peter 2:9,10? Everything!

*Because our Bulwark against the world is knowing AND enjoying our status in God!  (Being satisfied with that, and enthusiastic about that and thrilled with that!) “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation. You are God’s own special possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.”

We get seduced by the world because we want to “be somebody”.  The world plays to our desires to find a purpose, to have status, to be significant, to belong to a group.  God has given us those things through Jesus!!!  We ARE somebody!  We DO belong to a group!  We ARE the people of God!  We MATTER to God.  We BELONG to God. 

We don’t NEED the world to tell us we are important.  We don’t need the world to make us feel special, or significant, or accepted!  The status, blessings and privileges we have in Jesus are far better than anything the world offers.  Gerhard Tersteegen said, “All the glories of earthly kings and princes are only vain shadows and child’s play compared to the glory of a heart filled with the Spirit of Christ.  Do you believe that!

                        ***********

Peter said, *You are a chosen people.  He chose you because he loved you! Deuteronomy 7:7The LORD did not set His heart on you, or choose you because you were more in number than any of the peoples... but because the LORD loved you.”  He chose you for the same reason.  We are not loved because you are special.  But we are special because we are loved by God!!!

*You are a royal priesthood!  We are part of God’s royal family!  We are priests to God!  Spurgeon, quoting Revelation 1:5 said,  “Jesus “loved us, and released us from our sins in his own blood, and made us kings and priests unto God and his Father”. “This seems to be an honor which is far too high for us. It appears to bring us almost too near our Lord, yet it is not so, for Peter wrote, under divine inspiration, “Ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood”. 

Whether a janitor, a corporate officer, a missionary, a stay at home mom, or retired, single or married, rich or poor, young or old, we all have the same high honor of royal priests.  We are all directly connected to God through the work of Jesus and the indwelling Holy Spirit, no matter WHO we are, or WHAT we are in this world.  We have a uniquely intimate relationship with God that the world does not have.  We can live life with God. We can walk and talk with God.

*You are a holy nation.  You belong to God who is holy!  He washed us from our sins in his own blood, and declared us holy!  We are God’s’ holy nation to reveal God’s holy presence in this world.

*You are God’s own special possession. This is where the KJV calls us “a peculiar people”. That word has come to mean odd or weird!  That’s not what Peter meant!  The word means specially chosen or a costly possession. The NKJV correctly say, “his own special people”. Deuteronomy 14:2 ESV says, “For you are a people holy to the Lord your God, and the Lord has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth.”  At Christmas Olivia sang, “No one ever cared for me like Jesus”.  He cares for you because you are his treasure!  You will NOT get that kind of care out in the world!

Verse 10 “You were not a people, but now you are God’s people!”  This makes it sound like you once were a nobody or you once had no special identity. That’s true, but we were actually worse off than that.  This is taken from Hosea 2:23 which says, “I will show my love to the one I called 'Not my loved one.' I will say to those called 'Not my people,' 'You are my people'; and they will say, 'You are my God.'"  Peter is saying we were once outside the circle of God’s loved ones.  Once we did not belong to God. NOW God says, “You are mine! And I love you!”

*“You once had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy”  We once stood condemned for our sins...yet now God’s mercy is ours, in abundance, forever! Webster’s New World Dictionary defines mercy as “a refraining from harming or punishing offenders”.  Mercy is a “kindness in excess of what may be expected or demanded by fairness”.    

*Peter said you have these privileges so “that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light”.  So we are eager to talk about God’s goodness, and mercy to us.  We were in darkness, now we are in God’s marvelous light!! We are NOT feeling sorry for ourselves or thinking how good the world has it! Not at all! We carry a sense of blessing and want others to know that!  This is our mind-set!  We are blessed, honored and privileged!  And that’s how we talk!

*Then with our privileges and blessing in full view, Peter says, “Don’t defile yourself with worldly passions that would damage your soul”. Verse 11“Dear friends, I urge you, as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from sinful desires, which wage war against your soul.”  Many things the world says are normal and acceptable, will damage your soul.  Anger is not good for your soul; sexual immorality is not good for your soul. The world says promote yourself, do whatever you want to do!  That’s not good for your soul!  

But notice he says abstain, AS foreigners and exiles!  We consider ourselves foreigners to this world because we belong to God!  It is our favor and status with God that makes us aliens and strangers here!  We aren’t strangers here because we are worse off than the world, but because we are better off!  The world might pity us, but we do not pity ourselves!    We are citizens of a better place with better pleasures!  Moses considered it better to identify with God’s people than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin!  He regarded disgrace for Christ greater wealth than all the treasures of Egypt!

When our hearts are saturated the glory of our wealth and status in Jesus, we don’t wander off into the world.  It’s when we lose this sense of blessing that we become vulnerable to the pull of the world. 

Our identity is a big issue for most of us.  We try to understand who we are by what our family says, or the world says, or what our job or possessions say about us.  The world can give us a false sense of security and pride or it can make us feel insignificant and useless. But we can only find our true and lasting, secure identity in God! AND IF you know who you are in God, that will protect you against the rejection of the world, and the world’s attempts to diminish you!  It will protect you against the pressure of the world to conform to it’s wisdom and its values and its ways. And it will protect you from the sinful passions in the world!

Who are we???  We are God’s own special people!! A royal priesthood, a holy nation!  That has to become the way we think about ourselves.  We have to satisfied with that, enthusiastic about that, thrilled with that!  That mind-set is a bulwark of protection against the world!  

More in Miscellaneous

February 25, 2024

Fearing God Cures The Fear of Man

February 11, 2024

Walking In The Fear Of The Lord

November 26, 2023

Give Thanks Always and For Everything

Join us Sunday at 

9:30am