Sunday 06 • 16 • 19

Good morning, everybody. Happy Father's Day to those of you who are fathers. It's fun to get to do this on this day.

Something that we have been trying out as a congregation, something that Jeff has introduced us to and something that we're going to continue with this morning. As we come to God's word, we as a church have been reading scripture together by doing a three count. Here today, our scripture comes from 1 Peter 2:11-17. Let's read this together. You can either follow along in your worship folders or on the wall behind me. Ready? Three, two, one. Let's go.

Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. 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 visitation. Be subject for the Lord's sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme or to the governors as sent by him to punish those who do evil and praise those who do good. For this is the will of God, that by doing good, you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish people. Live as people who are free, not using your freedom to cover up for evil, but living as servants of God. Honor everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the emperor. — 1 Peter 2:11-17

Great job, everybody. This is the word of the Lord.

Let me pray for us. Lord, we thank you that these are your words and that you are at work in and through them. Help our eyes to see you. Open our ears to hear you. Open our hearts to love you and our hands to serve you.

All flesh is like grass, and all its glory is like the flower of the grass. The grass withers and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord remains forever. — 1 Peter 1:24-25

Amen.

Man, this worship this morning has been awesome. The music has been phenomenal. I love music. I love singing, and I've loved hearing everybody in this room sing. In fact, I want to do it again. Can we sing a song together right now?

You guys remember the John Denver classic "Country Road"? I love that song. Will you join me in singing the chorus? Ready? Just loud and proud. I know you all know it. Don't be shy. Here we go. Let's see if you can be louder than the 9:00 service was.

Country roads take me home to the place I belong, West Virginia, mountain mama, take me home, country roads.

Oh, y'all sound awesome. Give yourselves a hand. That was beautiful.

The reason I did that is it paints a beautiful picture for us. Is there anything that stirs up greater reaction than the concept of home? I mean, the simple idea of coming home evokes in us just a massive range of emotions. Just look at the media—the different outlets of media that all touch on this very big idea of coming home.

In music alone, we've got artists that cover every genre from country to hip hop that have great, beautiful songs about homecoming, about longing, about being on the road and being back home. You've got Lynyrd Skynyrd, Simon and Garfunkel, Bon Jovi, Michael Bublé, Diddy, Philip Phillips, Mötley Crüe, Metallica, Keb' Mo, O.A.R., Old Crow Medicine Show. That's just a few.

In movies, we've got Home for the Holidays, Homeward Bound. There's a DreamWorks movie that's just called Home. Home Alone, Elizabethtown, Garden State, Sweet Home Alabama, Trolls—it's about going home. Even Tangled. The list goes on and on.

It would seem that home is kind of a big deal. Now I know some of us might have some baggage when we think of the word home. That's either because of bad relationships, some instances of loss, of pain, of separation, of suffering that have happened in your life. But even if the conventional description of home doesn't quite fit, I would dare say that every single person has something—some place, some concept, be it a group of friends—that is home to you. A place that you feel safe, a place that you feel protected, a place that you feel loved, a place that you can truly be who you are. Where you can wear your cutoff sweatpants and your ratty old race t-shirt that's got holes in it. You can have your hair messy. Dishes can be in the sink. Nobody cares. It's home. It's a place that oozes safety.

This book that we've been reading, First Peter, it's been poking at some pretty uncomfortable truths for us, I would say.

Now one of those essential things that it's been reminding us of is that if we're followers of Jesus and if we have owned him as our savior and we have been promised a home that is eternal, but it's still coming, that it's already happened, it's already promised, but it's not yet. We are citizens of another kingdom, and yet we feel the tension that when we still live here and we live now. We are living in a world that's still marked by sin and death, pain, struggle loss, with all of its feelings and all of its scars. We know how this feels. We're still looking forward to home.

Now if I'm honest, and I think if we are all honest, we would say, it's kind of hard to be a Christian in this world. Would you agree? I mean, it's kind of confusing. We're bombarded with all these different images and ideas and slogans and mantras. Are we red states? Are we blue states? Are we rich or are we poor? We feel broken race relations and issues of social justice. How are we supposed to engage that as Christians?

We've engaged this world most often by either hiding from it, fighting against it, or accommodating the world and just trying to blend in. The result, I think, is that all too often we've forgotten the Gospel. Now, we as Christians on the whole, we've really screwed up how we engage the world. And when we use the name Christian today, it seems that there's just as many negative reactions, if not more, than there are positive ones. And I think that's a problem. That should bother us, right?

It was very vogue in today's culture to say things like, "I'm not very religious. I love Jesus." Or, "I'm a pretty spiritual person. I love Jesus and all. But, I don't think I would be comfortable calling myself a Christian. There's just too much baggage." You know, Gandhi has famously said, "I like your Christ, but I don't like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ."

If you are here today and this resonates with you, then I would like to say, as a Christian, as a guy standing up here trying to do my best to follow Jesus, that I'm sorry. And I would really love to invite you to come talk to me, talk to one of the elders of this church, talk to the friend that brought you here today, and we'd love to sit and talk about what it really means to love and follow Jesus.

So what is it that we as a church are supposed to do? How are we supposed to live as exiles here in modern Raleigh? How are we supposed to represent Christ in a place that thinks we're hateful, that we're spiteful, that we're angry, that we're selfish, that we're shallow, that we're bigots?

Our Identity, Actions, and Purpose

This passage that we have before us is so important. It shows us the keys to being ambassadors for Christ in this world here and now. See, here is what I want us to see today. I want us to see that as followers of Jesus Christ, that we have a real identity which requires real actions and serves a real purpose. That's my outline for you today. If you're a person that likes outlines and that helps you out: real identity, real actions, real purpose.

See, we as Christians, we have a real identity. We are God's beloved exiles. Now, that might strike us as a contradiction of terms, but if you look back at verse 11, it opens with this word "beloved."

Now, think with me, if you will. Let's take a little time trip back to first century modern Turkey. Imagine that you are a first century Christian. You've been dispersed. You're living in exile in a new and foreign land. You are part of a misunderstood religion, and you're in an area of the world that's under the control of a tyrant who hates you, he's actively persecuting you, and is about to unleash one of the most brutal persecutions of all time against the Christian church. I mean, the emperor Nero, the Roman emperor Nero, he's gone down in church history as like one of the all time bad guy super villains. Now imagine trying to live out your faith in that context. I don't know about you, but it sounds to me that modern day Raleigh might be a little easier. I mean, I can drive by and did drive by like 20 different churches on the way here this morning.

Now imagine living there and this itinerant preacher, this guy with a letter from Peter, shows up in your world, in your life, and he reads you this beautiful truth. He reads you all these things that we've been reading and that we've been studying together. And I want to highlight just a couple of them. Hear this.

You were born again to a living hope. — 1 Peter 1:3

You have an inheritance that is unfading and that is imperishable. — 1 Peter 1:4

You are more precious than gold. — 1 Peter 1:7

You have a salvation that the angels long to look into. — 1 Peter 1:12

See, chapter two verses nine and ten, that you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people of his own possession, that 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. I mean, can you imagine? Like, when you read all that together, you can almost feel the silence in the room. And for a split second, you're hearing this truth. Right before this, right before our passage, you get like the second to breathe, and it's like you're breathing privileged air. Breathing, really breathing for the first time. You probably haven't felt this way since the moment that you were born again into this faith.

Could there be a better word that sums up this section? CTK, the church of Jesus is beloved. Your identity in Christ is so dear, it is so cherished, it is so loved, it is so preserved, it is so sealed by the God who created all things. Just sit in that for a second. When you come up against conflict, when life feels hard, if you remember one thing from today, remember this: if you are in Jesus Christ, you are beloved.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that those who believe in him should not perish but have eternal life. — John 3:16

It's a classic verse. So many of us may have learned it as kids, or we're teaching it to our kids. This is the way that teaches us this thing—that this is the way that God loves us. That He would give us His only Son to come and die so that those who believe could have eternal life. His love for you goes that deep.

And now, beloved, we've got instructions here. Beloved, Peter says, I urge you as sojourners and exiles. Again, beloved and exile are not a contradiction of terms. The things that we are going through in this world in no way define us in the eyes of the Lord. Our current situation and our place in the world is not apart from the sovereignty of God, but actually, if we remember back to verses one and two, we are elect exiles chosen for a purpose.

The Theme of Exile in Scripture

This theme of being in exile is a huge one in 1 Peter. I mean, we've just cracked into the second chapter of this book, and we've already talked about it three times. Peter's not trying to be mean. He's not trying to be repetitive. He's not trying to rub our noses in the fact that life feels hard sometimes. But by hammering this point, he's reminding the early church the greater truth. It's a huge arc in the entire narrative of the Bible. Like, the whole story of the Bible fits into this.

It's that living in exile is the opposite of being at home. That living at home feels right. At home, we have stability and we feel safety. That exile is the exact opposite of this. And in exile, everything feels wrong. And we see this storyline all over scripture.

It begins right in the beginning in Genesis three. In the beginning, God creates paradise. He creates the Garden of Eden and He places Adam and Eve in this beautiful, perfect place. And they live there until they willfully fall into sin. And after their sin, they're made to leave the Garden. And they begin a life of exile, to live as a stranger in a strange land, to work where it's hard, and the only promise in this life is death and taxes. Their story sets us up, and it helps us to understand the story of Israel.

You know, as James reminded us a few weeks ago, exile has a deep connection to the experience of God's people. See, the people of Israel would walk through many patterns of exile. From Abraham living as a sojourner in the land, waiting for the Promised Land, the freed Israelite slaves who would wander for forty years in the wilderness waiting to go home. We get when they get to the Promised Land, it's full of warring nations who are huge and oppressive and apart from the provision of God, would have been crushed. Then around May, the nation of Israel, living according to its own wisdom, its own standards, and its own passions for the world, would fall into the hands of Babylonian captivity, and they would live there as exiles. And even upon returning home, the end of their exile to Babylon, returning to Jerusalem, when Jerusalem would fall under the control of the Romans, even at home, they're in exile. They're living as strangers in a strange land.

See, by calling a people to Himself, God has been using exile as a means to show the world His glory. In the Old Testament, He uses this fledgling, insignificant nation of Israel, and he drops them smack dab in the middle of the cultural crossroads that is the ancient Near East. And he does this to bear witness to his own glory. See, there's no way that this people could have survived apart from him. And in the New Testament, he fills up his people with his power, the power of his Holy Spirit to go out into the world and live in exile among the nations. Why? Again, to proclaim His glory. The story of exile, it's not exclusive to ancient Israel, but this has become our story too.

It's become an image of something more universal, that in a fallen world, no matter where we live, we'll always feel a longing for more, a longing for home. That even if we live in a great house, that we're married and we've got 2.5 kids and a couple cars and a dog, that beautiful picture of the average American life is still sitting in a broken neighborhood. And bad things still happen to good people.

We have a great hope here, though. Even though we live in an exile of our own making, that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, He went into exile alongside His people, and He suffered every injustice and humiliation that we will bear, and he did it to show us the way home. See, Jesus tells us what our true home is and how to get there. See this in John 14. Jesus teaching His disciples and He's telling them that He's soon going to leave. And He's going to go home to His Father's house where there's many rooms where He will go to prepare a place for them.

His disciples are a little confused by this, and I think we would all be. They say, "We don't know how to get there." He says:

I am the way, the truth, and the life. — John 14

See, Jesus is our way out of exile. And through Jesus, we are born again into a new way of being human, and we're given a new hope. See, if Jesus is your savior and if he's your king, you are no longer defined by your past. You are no longer defined by your actions, by your failures, or your successes. You are not your job. You are not your car. You are not your family of origin. You are not your sickness. You are not your health. You are beloved. This is your true identity in Jesus.

Three Callings for the Beloved Exile

And so what's a beloved exile to do? I mean, Peter tells us that we have real actions. There's a real job for us. In this passage, we are called to do three things. We're called to abstain, to keep, and submit.

So back in verse 11, Peter writes:

I urge you, strong admonition, abstain from the passions of the flesh which wage war against your soul. Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable or beautiful so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation. — 1 Peter 2:11-12

Now if you are the Lord's beloved, his cherished possession, saved by faith in Jesus, then this world has nothing to offer you that is not found more fully in Jesus Christ. In short, you are not here or you are not from here. You do not live here. This place is not yours, and all the things that are shiny and glittery and gold and call for your affections and tug at the heartstrings for you to love, those are the very things that are waging war against you. I mean, welcome to not home.

Abstaining from the Passions of the Flesh

See, one of the primary ways that we are called to show Jesus in this world is to abstain from the passions, the lust of the flesh. Now to abstain, it means to be removed from, to keep away, to be distanced from. This isn't a call to merely stop sinning or knock it off, quit it, like we just caught you red handed. No. This is something different. This is saying this isn't natural to you anymore. This is saying that this used to be a part of who you are, but it's not anymore.

Any Harry Potter fans in here? Yeah. Okay. We got a couple of Harry Potter fans. Do you remember in the fourth book, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, when Harry has to face the challenge of retrieving something dear to him in the lake? Now Harry spends weeks fretting about how he is going to spend an hour underwater looking for what he's dear to him. I mean, Harry's a human. He may be a wizard, but he can't breathe underwater.

You remember what happens? He learns about gillyweed. Gillyweed is this plant that when you eat it, it gives you gills. And you can swim underwater and you can breathe like a fish. And so he eats the plant. He dives into the lake. He's searching for what's lost, can't find it, goes through all these trials, and he finally does. His time's almost up, and he finds his two best friends, Ron and Hermione, are both tethered and unconscious underwater. He goes, he saves his best friend, Ron, but then he goes for Hermione too. And but she is not his to save.

As he goes to save what's not his, the effects of the gillyweed begin to wear off and he turns back into his former self. He's no longer able to breathe. He's deep underwater and the sea monsters and things are like grabbing at his legs and trying to pull him under and keep him there to die. And he's faced with a choice. See, in this moment, he's faced with this choice to claim what's mine and flee, or take what doesn't belong to me and die.

See, this is a lot like our choice. We cannot breathe in the water. We have been promised an inheritance that can never pass away, and we still find ourselves clinging to the very things that will kill us. See, these things are the lusts that are from our former and ignorant self. They were our former loves.

And our problem is that we are too focused on the gifts of God that we forget to look at the gift giver. We forget to look at God Himself. C. S. Lewis says:

It would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us. Like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

The call to abstain from sin, it's not a punishment. It's a chance to see that Jesus offers us so much more than the world can offer us. That with God, boundaries are not a bad thing.

Several years ago, a psychology experiment was performed in which a group of children were taken to a playground. This playground didn't have a fence around it. And what the researchers observed was really interesting: the children largely stayed close to the teacher and played in and around the defined play structure. Then a similar group of children was taken to a similar playground. The only real difference was that this one had a fence. And what they saw was that the children felt safe to roam and explore and learn and play in ways that the play structure didn't define.

See, God gives us boundaries in Scripture to allow us freedom to feel safe so we can engage and explore the goodness of his creation. He gives us boundaries because he loves us.

Now, I'm a parent. Many of us in this room are parents, and pretend with me, if you're not, that you are a parent. You see your child, and he's running toward a busy road. Now what are you going to do? Split second decision. What's more loving? Is it loving to just let them run right out into traffic? Because they're a free and independent person? Or is it more loving to shout, Stop! And to jump up and tackle your kid?

As a parent, I know my choice. But the child who didn't see the danger and just got tackled, that feels oppressive. Like, thanks, dad. You just knocked my head off. Why did you do that? Why did you hit me? Why are you being so mean? It seems like a little much to them. It seems unfair. It seems restrictive.

See, the sin and the temptation that you face every single day is as lethal as that car. It wants you to run into the road. Remember way back, like, to last Sunday, Jeff introduced us to his new favorite translation of the Bible, the ESV—the English Standard Version of the Bible. Remember how he said that all y'all are a royal priesthood and that all y'all are a royal nation?

Think about this: fighting sin in our lives is a real deal, and this passage speaks about it like it's a war. And the passions of this world, they want to steal your affections and attempt to separate you from your Lord. But if you're a part of a community, we have a sovereign duty to fight for one another, to be in community with one another, to be transparent with one another, to be confessing sin to one another. We're seeking to root out inch by inch and kill the sin in each other's lives. This is one of the reasons that I think community groups are such a big deal in this church. It's important to be in community. It's important to be with people you like and to find friends and to be accepted. Those are all things that are great. But what we need is brothers and sisters in Christ who are going to be with us in the foxhole, who are going to be with us to fight.

The Positive Call to Good Works

See, the Christian life is not only about abstaining. We don't only give glory to God by focusing on the things that we don't do, but we're given a whole host of things that we get to embrace. In verse 12, we're taught, keep our conduct honorable—or it can be translated beautiful or praiseworthy—so that those who would speak evil against you will see your deeds and give glory to God.

See, Peter here isn't just calling out the opposite of abstaining from sinfulness. Rather, he's teaching us one of the central lessons that he learned and witnessed from Jesus. The command to show your good works didn't just pop into his head like, you know what? We need a good moralism lesson here. Let's do some good works because that's right. No. This taps into what Jesus taught him in what we call the Sermon on the Mount. In Matthew 5:14-16, Jesus says:

You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden, nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. — Matthew 5:14-16

In the same way, let your light shine before others so that when they see your good works and give glory to the father who is in heaven. You hear that? Let your light shine. Live honorably before men so that those who will speak against you may see your good works and give glory not to you, but to God.

This is not a call for us to follow a prescribed moralism. This is a radical refocusing of our priorities. See, we as a church, we are called to live as exiles, set apart by our citizenship in heaven, to shine the good news of the gospel into the hard places that we walk every single day. We have been called into exile for a real purpose, and this is what our salvation is actually for. This is what our exile is actually for, that in the midst of hardship, misunderstanding, lostness, confusion, fear, we're reminded that God is in control, and he is using us to be the ambassadors of his glory.

God has called you, and he has placed you into a specific context, to a specific time, to a specific place, and he's called you to live in it. I mean, really live in it. See, in this passage, we've talked a good amount about ourselves, and that's easy. We like talking about ourselves. Who doesn't like that? But I'm reminded that the context of this passage, to exiles in a new culture, that we are called to live this out publicly. This isn't just a private heart check. This is how we're supposed to live out publicly in the world.

So you remember what it said in First Peter two nine?

We're a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people of his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light. — 1 Peter 2:9

We proclaim Him when we live as people who have been claimed by Him. That we proclaim Him when we seek the welfare of the city. That Peter instructs us that the way that we do this in our culture is through submission.

Submission and Surrender

Now, submission, it feels like the four letter word of our culture. Of our freedom obsessed, individuality obsessed culture. And yet, submission is the dominant verb of Christian life. Now, I have this button on, and it says, I'm the boss. And my daughter, Alice, gave this to me this morning for Father's Day. And it came with a caveat that I get to wear this all day long today, but tomorrow I have to give it back to mom. But we love the I'm the boss sticker, right? Like, I'm the boss of me. But in the Christian life, we're called to take off the button and pin it on Jesus.

Because submission for us conjures all sorts of ideas of surrender and giving up, but that is just not true. Jesus Christ, in His death and resurrection, He has paid the wages of our sin, He's paid the wages of our death, and that the war is over. He has won it. So when you surrender to Christ, you are acknowledging that He is indeed the victor. He is indeed the king of all things.

See, to submit really means that what we're giving up is control and that we surrender to a higher authority. All exiles, strangers in a strange land, when we surrender to Christ, when we place ourselves under His authority, we're home. He becomes our home. He becomes our place of safety, our place of comfort, our place of joy. We are no longer left wandering lost in the wilderness. We're home.

We've been looking today briefly at the what of submission, like what is that? And over the next two chapters of First Peter, Peter really unpacks the how of submission for the Christian life. And over the next weeks, we're gonna study that in three main areas. But for today, I want you to hear this, that when we submit to the institutions of this world for the sake of our Lord, we are submitting to Jesus. We are trusting that His authority is over all things, and that He is choosing us, a people of His own possession, to go into the places where it is still dark and to proclaim his glorious light.

That as exiles, we have the glorious light of Christ that no darkness can snuff out. CTK, do the humble work of being a lighthouse. Shine the light of Christ into the dark and broken and hard and painful places where you walk every day. Broadcast the gospel by your words and your actions, proclaiming the glory and excellencies of him who has called you out of darkness.

Why? Because this is exactly what Jesus did for you. That the Son of God, the King of Glory, the Prince of Peace, Jesus Christ, would submit himself. He would go into exile and live as a stranger in a strange land. He would abstain from the passions of the world and love doing good in the name of the Father. He would submit not only to human law, but even to his own law. He wouldn't silence his oppressors, but in his submission, he would go willingly to a cross.

And in a total act of love, he would die in our place. He would pay the price for our sins. And yet, this same Jesus, who the world rejected, would be raised from the dead and exalted by God the Father to His glory.

By faith in Jesus, we have been grafted into his family of faith, and we have been granted the gift of eternal life. Through Jesus, we're home. This call on our lives in exile is nothing more than a reminder that we serve God's purposes best when we serve like Jesus.

And see, this is the hope for the world: that through living like Jesus, those in the world who would judge us and condemn us, who don't understand us, would turn away, turn around, and say, "I love you Christians. You're so like your Christ." And we would be able to say, "Welcome home."

Let me pray for us.

Father, would we be people who lay down our lives for our neighbors? Help us to love you with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and help us to love our neighbors as ourselves. May you alone get the glory. In the name of your son, Jesus. Amen.