Living Hope for You Exiles

Posted: January 15, 2023 | Author: | Filed under: Blood, Exiles, Grace, Jesus, Peace, Sanctification, Scattered, Sermons, Sprinkled, The Holy Spirit | Leave a comment

Did you look to Jesus this past week or was your vision blurred? Were your eyes locked on Jesus in the same way as a dog has an unrelenting stare when you are eating? Or is something blocking your vision of Jesus? Last week, I gave you the “why” we should look to Jesus, but not the “how” to look to Jesus. I do believe that if you look to Jesus the baggage and sins will be easier to lay aside. How many of you thought the cross was going to tip over last week when I put my overcoat on the cross? I did! But the Cross always holds. This is why we look to Jesus. Maybe you added more baggage and sin to your life this week by not fixing your eyes on Jesus? Look to Jesus in order to lay aside your sin and baggage.  If you look to Jesus that you will also be able to run the race God has set before you with endurance and you can suffer with joy. But if you are having a hard time seeing Jesus in the midst of your circumstances, it could be grief. You feel loss. If so, you are in good company. God’s Word even acknowledges that at times it is hard to see God’s work. I think this is one of the great reasons why we can trust God’s Word. It is so real and relevant. David, the famous king of Israel wrote in Psalm 6:7 (NLT) – “My vision is blurred by grief, my eyes are worn out because of all my enemies.” So maybe as you tried to keep your eyes locked on Jesus, either your grief or your enemies are blocking your vision. 

      Today, God wants to give you a living hope by reminding you who you are. In fact, if you at times are struggling to see Jesus through the fog of grief and enemies, then this is actually normal. Not right, but normal as a Christian. Normal because we live in an ever-increasing hostile world. If you feel like an exile, that is because you are one! You are an exile if you follow Jesus. You don’t belong to this world. Canadian pastor Erwin Lutzer has said, “We Christians have lost homefield advantage. The church will not be able to get through the culture unscathed if faithful, but the church doesn’t have the freedom to be unfaithful.” No wonder you feel homeless. Homeless politically because you can’t support any political party. Homeless ideologically because your views are in the slim minority. Homeless culturally as others celebrate what disgusts you while at the same time making you cry. You may live in and own your house, but you are still homeless. If you are a follower of Jesus, then you are also an elect exile. This means you are homeless, but handpicked. You are a spiritual refugee. You are an elect exile. You are homeless, but handpicked by God. This is what we learn from 1 Peter 1:1-2. If you have your Bibles with you, please turn to the book of 1 Peter. 1 Peter is the book we will, Lord willing, be studying from now until May. Studying 1 Peter goes along with our 2023 THEME: IN AN INCREASINGLY HOSTILE CULTURE, KEEPING OUR EYES ON CHRIST WILL KEEP US FAITHFUL! 1 Peter is about having a Living Hope, which is our series title for the next few months. You can have living hope, even living in this hostile world, also known in the heavenlies as Babylon (1 Peter 5:12). The rules and system of this world known in the Bible as Babylon. If you need to understand the background of 1 Peter, you can read about it in your Study Bible. For those who do not have a Study Bible, you can pick up the background to 1 Peter at the Connect Desk. God wants you to have a living hope in the midst of this hostile world where you are an elect exile. This is Peter’s perspective! He most likely wrote this letter just a couple of years before Peter himself as elect exile was martyred by being hung upside down on a cross as tradition tells us. “This is an epistle from the homeless to the homeless.”[1] Let’s read the introduction to 1 Peter 1:1-2. Read 1 Peter 1:1-2!

One of the things that I am convinced of and I sure hope doctors and medical personnel believe this too, “While there’s life, there’s hope.”[2] If a person still has breath, they still can be saved. This is what Peter talks about at a spiritual level in verse 3, “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.” It is this living hope from God that will keep our eyes locked on Jesus as elect exiles. Many of you here today and listening online are immigrants. You know what it feels like to be an outsider. Every one of us who are believers in Jesus Christ are spiritual outsiders on earth. I want to explain how you became an elect exile so you don’t doubt what you think about yourself, but more importantly, you don’t doubt what you think about God. Being an elect exile, you can have lots of doubts. God wants to move you from doubt to devout. He wants your vision of Jesus to get clearer – to have your eyes fixed on Jesus.

So here is the process that the Apostle Peter describes. But wait! I think I should tell you who Peter is so you can believe his message. Peter was one of the first disciples of Jesus and he stuck with Jesus through Jesus’ whole earthly ministry. Jesus and Peter have their first real convo on the shores of Galilee when Peter the Fishermen lands on shore after fishing all night. Peter and his brother Andrew along with their business partners James and John had been fishing all night and didn’t catch a thing. Jesus tells Peter and his friends to go back out with Him and throw down their nets. Remember this is during the day. Fish were best caught at night when fish couldn’t see the big ropes of the net used in that day unlike the monofilament and braided lines of today. Peter and his friends bring up a huge catch that nearly sinks their boats. Jesus tells Peter to leave their nets behind and follow Him because Jesus will make them fishers of men. Peter does. Peter is impulsive. I try to teach my kids, “Ask before you act.” “Ask before you act!” Peter’s mantra was the opposite of my parenting strategy. Peter’s was “Act, then ask!” Peter is impulsive, though it may not have been the first time Peter had seen Jesus in miraculous action. Peter had brought his mother-in-law who was ill with a high fever and Jesus healed her and according to the Gospel of Luke, this probably happened before the miraculous catch (Luke 4:38-39; 5:1-11). Maybe you can relate to Peter? Peter was the guy who at one moment would tell Jesus, He was the Christ, the Son of the Living God and next moment be filled with a demon by telling Jesus He shouldn’t go to the cross (Matthew 16:13-23). Peter would one moment have great faith to walk on water to Jesus, but then unlock his eyes on Jesus and look around causing Peter to go down (Matthew 14:28-31). Jesus rescued Peter. Peter’s impulsivity wasn’t cured though. He would try to build tents for Jesus when Jesus showed a glimpse of His manifest deity at the Mount of Transfiguration, but Jesus was to remain homeless (Matthew 17:4). Heaven is Jesus’ home; like it is ours. Peter’s impulsivity persisted. On the night Jesus was betrayed, Peter showed great bravery by taking a sword and cutting off the ear of the high priest’s servants. That same night though, Peter lost his sight of Jesus and his courage to the point that he denied knowing Jesus, even to a young servant girl (Mark 14:26-31, 47, 68-72). And yet, after Jesus was crucified, buried and rose from the grave, Jesus met this same denier, and restored Peter (John 21:1-14). Grace and peace was in abundance for Peter. No wonder this is Peter’s prayer in verse 2, “May grace and peace be multiplied to you.” 

So Peter, the Apostle, writes a letter to believers scattered across Asia Minor in the provinces of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia – modern day Turkey and Greece. A place of persecution. A place still of persecution where we are trying to help refugees, our persecuted brothers and sisters in Christ, the elect exiles. Peter as an apostle was “a commissioned agent of Jesus Christ.”[3] Apostle means “sent one.” Elect exiles are sent. They are scattered. Believers are often displaced. My wife Lori is reading a book entitled Women Who Risk by Tom & Joann Boyle. The subtitle is – “Secret Agents for Jesus in the Muslim World.”[4]As these women flee for their lives, they spread the love of Christ. Grace and peace is multiplied. You see, because people say there is no God, then they have no grace and no peace. No God = no grace & no peace.They cancel others or fight with others. It partially explains why there is hostility in the world. These women, like you and I, are called to know God and therefore, know grace and peace. Know God = know grace & know peace. They provide a living hope as elect exiles. 

But you might be wondering how you became an elect exile? Peter tells us in verses 1-2. 

Look at them again, “To those who are elect exiles of the dispersion of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia, according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in the sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with His blood.” You became elect because of God’s foreknowledge. You may be homeless on earth, but you were handpicked to have a home in heaven. Doesn’t this bring you living hope as an elect exile? To know that you will not be eternally exiled and homeless. Instead, you have an eternal home with Jesus. 

What does God’s foreknowledge mean though? “In the Bible, to foreknow means to ‘set one’s love on a person or possess in a personal way.”[5] You were loved by God way before you loved Him back. On a smaller scale, this is like how Lori loved me before I loved her. Lori finally admitted this to me this past week, it was love at first sight for her. I was too dumb to see it. She saw me on a beach in Chicago and brushed sand off my shoulder to get my attention. It wasn’t the brush off she was signalling, it was the brush in. She loved me first. This is the idea behind the foreknowledge of God. He loved us first. You may understand this by the word “know.” When we say somebody “knows a person in the Bible sense of the word” we mean that they have a profoundly, intimate knowledge of them, often, but not limited to sexually. God knows us way beyond that as our Maker and Creator. He knows all the atoms in your body. He knows what you have done good and bad every second of your life. He knows you better than you will ever know yourself. God foreknew you means He foreloved you. But “our election is not based on anything we had done, because we were not even on the scene. Nor was it based on anything God saw that we would be or do. God’s election was based wholly on His grace and love for His glory. We cannot explain it, but we can rejoice in it.”[6]

My friends who struggle with this doctrine of foreknowledge and election, maybe because it 

has been abused to not pray or share the gospel? Could I speak with all the love in my heart for you and tell you how this doctrine changed my life and how it helps me to take comfort in being an elect exile. How it motivates me for being on mission with Jesus? How it brings living hope for us elect exiles and to the world? Our election is not about us. It is God and His glory. It is about His mission and kingdom. Nobody deserves to be selected by God, but if no one was, then we would all be doomed. Jesus was sent by God, just as Peter was sent and you are sent. Elect exiles had to be called out from the world into order to go back into the world so that grace and peace would be multiplied. “We have the honour of being specially chosen by God. But there is also challenge and responsibility. God always chooses us for service.”[7] We are selected for obedience. We are elect exiles so that grace would come to others and God would ultimately receive the glory. We are selected by God to be sprinkled, sanctified, sent and scattered so grace and peace is multiplied. This is the living hope you have as elect exiles: selected by God to be sprinkled, sanctified, sent and scattered so grace and peace is multiplied. Knowing you are selected by God to be sprinkled, sanctified, sent and scattered so grace and peace is multiplied will comfort you when you feel homeless. Knowing you are selected by God to be sprinkled, sanctified, sent and scattered may just save others. It is Peter’s introduction and our identity. It is Peter’s prayer and our purpose as elect exiles, selected by God to be sprinkled, sanctified, sent and scattered so grace and peace is multiplied. “Once it had been said, ‘God created the Gentiles to be fuel for the fires of hell.’ Once it had been said that, just as the best of snakes must be crushed, so even the best of the Gentiles must be destroyed.”[8] Now we Gentiles embody a living hope in Christ to multiply grace and peace. The living hope you and I have as elect exiles: you are selected by God to be sprinkled, sanctified, sentand scattered so grace and peace is multiplied.

Let me explain further! We already covered the selected part, but to reiterate the point Richard Lenski explains, “Peter exalts his readers far above the natives among whom they live: they are God’s chosen people while the people among whom they are scattered are nothing of the kind.”[9] Selected! Now let’s focus on sprinkled. Sprinkled with the blood of Christ. This goes back to Jesus being the ultimate sacrifice as the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world (John 1:29). “Sprinkling with blood was a symbol of cleansing.”[10] Nowadays, sprinkling of blood means uncleanness. At one time, the ultimate in sports was to have blood on your jersey. It showed you were in the game and a warrior. Now when there is blood-shed, we stop the game! Today, blood is a hazardous waste, not heavenly washing! “Living in obedience and constantly being cleaned with Christ’s blood, we are what God intends to be: total strangers to the world of men around us, wherever we may live.”[11] “These who were once not a people had become nothing less than the people of God because of Christ’s blood.”[12] In this sense, cleanliness is really next to godliness. Not personal hygiene as much as Jesus’ own purity being transferred to you and me. Elect exiles, you are selected by God to be sprinkled!

Elect exiles you are selected by God to be sprinkled and sanctified. If being sprinkled by Christ’s blood is the heavenly washing, then sanctification is the clothing that makes us look like Christ. This is the special work of the Holy Spirit as we read about in verse 2. The Holy Spirit sanctifies us. He makes us holy. The Apostle Paul unpacks this in Titus 3:4-7, “But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Saviour appeared, He saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to His own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Saviour, so that being justified by His grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.” Who sanctifies you? The Holy Spirit! What does sanctification result in? Becoming more like Jesus. The more you look to Jesus, the more you will look like Him. As Jerry Gillies has said, “Jesus will not be a means to an end. He is the destination. He is the end!” Elect exiles you are selected by God to be sprinkled and sanctified. 

But this is not just for our own benefit, but for the world that hates us. God selected us to be sprinkled and sanctified so we could also be sent and scattered. We are sent just like Peter was sent. We are on mission with Jesus. We are sent by God, which takes the form of being scattered like the recipients of Peter’s letter who were dispersed throughout Asia Minor. We are not randomly scattered, but specifically sent. And what do we do when we are sent and scattered? Why are we elect exiles? To obey Jesus Christ and to multiply grace and truth. One of the great movements of God that is happening in the world today is the disciple-making movement that is driven by people far from God engaging in Discovery Bible Study where they read a text and ask: what does this say about human nature? What does this say about God? What does this say about me and how can I obey it? Who can I tell about this? I would encourage you to follow this model as you read and study God’s Word this year. 

However, if you don’t, there is still grace and peace. There is literally a plethora of grace and peace from God. Our mission is to look to Jesus so we can obey His Word and walk cleanly before Him. Sometimes we fail and are disobedient. The good news is that grace and peace is not going to run out. Peter understood the grace and peace being multiplied. He was constantly messing up. This doesn’t mean we should try to sin. Pastor Jason once said, “Grace gives us permission to fail, but absolutely no license to sin.” I have been trying to learn Spanish and Portuguese on Duolingo because I hear those languages more in our community and church. At the end of each lesson on Duolingo because I’m too cheap to pay for the premium version, I have to listen to, “Upgrade now and there is no limit to the mistakes you can make.” My friends, you can’t buy your way out of your mistakes before God, but God’s grace is greater than our sin. “Jesus is better at saving than we are at sinning.”[13] Better than Duolingo, upgrade to Jesus and you will won’t want to make mistakes. You will want to obey. The ACTION POINT this week is that Jesus is calling us to obey. This means that we embrace being God’s exile. We embrace being God’s exile. This requires repentance. When we obey and walk cleanly before God we get to see Jesus. And we get to experience His grace and peace and share it with others.

[1] J. Ramsey Michaels, 1 Peter – Word Bible Commentary (Nashville: Thomas Publishers, Nashville, 1988), 9.

[2] Warren Wiersbe, The Bible Exposition Commentary – Volume 2 (Wheaton: Victor Books, 1989), 388.

[3] Craig S. Keener, 1 Peter – A Commentary (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2021), 43.

[4] Tom and Joann Boyle, Women Who Risk (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishing, 2021).

[5] Wiersbe, 391.

[6] Wiersbe, 391.

[7] Barclay, 167.

[8] William Barclay, The Daily Study Bible (Toronto: G.R. Welch Co. Ltd., 1976), 165.

[9] R.C.H. Lenski, The Interpretation of the Epistles of St. Peter, St. John and St. John (Columbus: Wartburg Press, 1945), 21.

[10] Barclay, 170.

[11] Lenski, 27.

[12] Barclay, 167.

[13] Sam Alberry, “Fellowship National Conference 2022,” (November 16, 2022).