Uncertainity is a fact of life. And it’s something that can eat away at us, robbing us of life itself. But God has a plan, He chose us with a plan in mind.

The Reality of Uncertainty

Well I’m excited because this week we’re starting a new series on Christianityworks, a series of four programs, that I’ve called, ‘A Confident Life In Uncertain Times’. Why are we doing that? Because uncertainty takes so many different forms. In affluent societies like the one that I come from here in Australia, we have so much choice. Careers, entertainment, belief systems, take your pick anything goes. It sounds so great to start with but what’s happening?

In affluent societies people are suffering from this centrelessness. Who am I? Where do I fit in all of this? Where’s my life headed? What’s the point of all this? It’s almost like; well sometimes it feels as though we don’t belong, like we’re exiles in a foreign land. I think we’ve all experienced that and then there’s uncertainty that comes from adversity.

I mean so many people in this world are living in poverty amidst political instability. You look at the Pacific nations, you look at some of the African nations and parts of Asia and there are wars and civil wars and there’s hunger and famine, will I have enough to eat tomorrow? How is it all going to turn out for me and my family?

Adversity happens amidst affluence and it happens amidst poverty. Sickness can happen, disease can happen, divorce can happen. And here’s the thing about uncertainty, none of us really likes it very much.

I mean when you’re watching a sporting game if you enjoy sport, I do, there’s a degree of tension and uncertainty. It’s about the excitement of the game. And people who love sport essentially love that feeling of tension, of uncertainty, of the twists and the turns of the game. It’s almost like a muscle that needs exercising in us.

If you’re watching a good movie it’s the same thing; the tension, the excitement, the anticipation, it’s that, that keeps us entertained, it keeps us riveted to the screen, watching right to the end. I mean without that sort of tension and uncertainty and excitement there’s no anticipation. So we don’t mind uncertainty and tension in sport and entertainment but when it comes to our own lives, well that’s an entirely different thing.

In entertainment and sport, uncertainty equals anticipation, it equals excitement. But in our own lives uncertainty equals pressure and tension and so often it involves fear. How is it going to turn out? Even when it’s kind of good tension, I remember when I was courting my now wife, Jacqui, and I’m thinking, “Will she marry me? Is this going to work out?”

Because we have a certain end in mind, we want it to finish a certain way but when we don’t know, when there’s ambiguity, when there’s uncertainty there is a kind of pressure, there is a kind of fear. And it can be something like sickness – cancer; it can be something like retrenchments – am I going to lose my job. And here’s what happens with uncertainty, here’s the anatomy if you like, of uncertainty.

When we don’t know how something is going to end, when it’s outside our control and uncertainty creeps in and we desperately want one outcome but we can imagine all of the other bad outcomes that could happen instead, uncertainty turns to worry and fear and isolation. We feel like an alien, we feel like no-one else understands and we become prisoners in the fears that come from uncertainties.

Let me tell you, ambiguity and uncertainty are a fact of life; it’s just the way it is. Every day of every week of every year is going to have some uncertainty in it but if we let that turn into fear it gnaws away at us, it drains the juices, it drains the life out of us, it’s debilitating. And that’s why we’re going to do a four week series, starting today, called Living a Confident Life in Uncertain Times.

And there’s no better place to start, if you have a Bible I’d like you to grab it, open it up in a place called 1 Peter. It’s the first letter of Peter, it’s pretty much towards the end of the New Testament, we’re just going to look at the first two verses of the first chapter of this letter called 1 Peter, lets’ read it:

Peter an apostle of Jesus Christ to the exiles of the dispersion scattered through Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia, who have been chosen and destined by God the Father and sanctified by the Spirit to be obedient to Jesus Christ and to be sprinkled with His blood. May grace and peace be yours in abundance.

Now this is like the introduction of a lot of these letters or they call them epistles. They’re essentially letters written by people like Peter and John and Paul to Christians in particular circumstances and we’ll look at the circumstances of people whom this was written to in a moment. But this is just a very short introduction.

I don’t know about you but I tend to quickly skip over these introductions to get to the main bit, this is just the ‘Dear John’ part of the letter but actually, just those two short verses have so much to say. We’re going to spend some time today just in this short passage to get our hearts and our minds around what God is saying to us today.

Now Peter, the name Peter in Greek is Petros means rock. Now that’s what Jesus called him. This man’s name initially was Simon which means ‘to be someone who listens’ but once Peter identified Jesus as being the Son of God, this is what Jesus said to him:

I tell you that you are Peter and on this rock I will build my Church and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.

You can read that in Matthews’s Gospel, chapter 16 and verse 18. So Peter is a rock, he’s an apostle, he is someone who is sent out by Jesus Christ. So Peter the rock, an apostle, somebody who has been sent out by Jesus Christ himself. Now, who’s he writing to? He’s writing to the exiles of the dispersion. The dispersion began to happen, you can read about it in Acts, chapter 8. There was some persecution, it was fuelled by Saul who later became Paul, who wrote much of the New Testament.

And the Christians in Jerusalem and Judea, not long after Christ rose again and ascended into Heaven, began to be persecuted and so they were dispersed through the known world, through Asia Minor. And so when Peter is writing to these people he is talking to exiles of this persecution, scattered through the known world. And it was terrible persecution, a time of great persecution.

Early on Christians were initially okay under Roman rule because, remember the Romans were the world power, it was the Roman Empire. But later in the 1st Century when Peter’s writing here, there were riots against the Christians in Rome and severe persecution arose I mean to the extent that the emperor, the Roman emperor would tar them and put them on sticks and burn them as torches at his garden parties. I mean it was awful stuff.

And many of these Christians were Jews, they were dispersed by this persecution through Asia Minor. They were fearful, they were living in uncertain times. So Jesus sends out this Peter, this Petros, this rock to declare a message to them, a message of certainty, a powerful message for you and me here and now. So what is God saying?

Exiles in a Foreign Land

Whenever I speak about uncertainty people think I’m going to be talking about taking away the things that cause uncertainty. I mean in a perfect world there’d be no uncertainty, but we don’t live in a perfect world. The list of things that we can worry about is about as long as our arms, from sheer survival to passing exams, from whether our child will make it through this sickness to whether we’ll get a job promotion that we applied for.

And uncertainty can often lead to debilitating fear, doesn’t matter who we are, where we live, it crosses all borders and boundaries in people’s lives and if you think about it, if there was no uncertainty, there’d be no need for faith. We’re looking at what Peter the apostle wrote to the Christians who were dispersed through persecution in the first century; this is what he said:

Peter an apostle of Jesus Christ to the exiles of the dispersion scattered through Pontus, and Galatia and Cappadocia and Asia and Bithynia who have been chosen and destined by God the Father and sanctified by the spirit to be obedient to Jesus Christ and to be sprinkled with His blood. May grace and peace be yours in abundance.

Now who’s he writing to? The exiles of the dispersion scattered to the four winds by persecution. People in fear for their lives scattered to every part of Asia Minor, to Pontus and Galatia and Cappadocia and Asia and Bithynia, all over the place. Now in the first century you had the whole Christmas thing, you had Jesus, you had all the wonderful things He did and said and healed people and He died and He rose again and He ascended into Heaven and then God built this new Church, wow!

God seemed to have a pretty amazing plan and Peter even says that the people he is writing to have been chosen and destined by God, and all of a sudden this persecution comes along, all of a sudden this dispersion comes along. You know something, no persecution, no dispersion.

You know what we’re like we get very comfy, great I’m saved, let’s stay in Jerusalem together and be saved, let’s stay in Judea together and be saved. No! God allowed persecution to come into His new Church and this persecution dispersed the believers throughout the known world spreading the good news of Jesus Christ to everybody.

It wouldn’t have happened without the persecution. The persecution led to a dispersion which scattered Jesus’ disciples like a farmer scattering his seed. New Churches were planted, they grew, more people learned about Jesus, this was God’s plan, it’s there in what Peter writes, lets read it again, “To the exiles of the dispersion scattered through Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia who have been chosen and destined by God the Father.”

So the people who are being persecuted and scattered were the very same people who had been chosen and destined by the Father, God’s chosen people who have been scattered. God foreknew them, what an awesome thing.

It applied to them, then. It applies to you and me now. God foreknew us and He planned out our walk, our path and our journey before the foundations of the universe were even laid. Those very people whom God foreknew are the ones who are exiles in foreign lands just like us, followers of Jesus Christ. Paul the Apostle in Philippians, chapter 3, verse 20, writes that, “Our citizenship is in heaven.”

We are exiles in a foreign land and you know something, it can be a tough gig for exiles; but Jesus said exactly that when He prayed for you and me just before He was crucified, you can read about it in John, chapter 17. He said:

“That we’re not of the world but we’re in the world”. Jesus specifically prayed, ‘Father, I don’t ask you to take them out of the world but that you protect them while they are there.’

We are all exiles in a foreign land, Gods plan. But while we’re here God has some good plans for us. Look at the Israelites when they were desperately exiled centuries before in Babylon. Jerusalem had been destroyed, the Temple had been destroyed, they didn’t know what had happened to their God and this is what God says to them in Jeremiah, chapter 29:

“This is what the Lord almighty, the God of Israel says to all those I carried into exile.” Notice His words, “From Jerusalem to Babylon.” “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens, eat what they produce, marry, have sons and daughters, find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number, don’t decrease. Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it because if it prospers, you too will prosper.

This is what the Lord says, “When 70 years are completed for Babylon I will come to you and fulfil my gracious promise to bring you back to Jerusalem. For I know the plans I have for you”, declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you, not to harm you. Plans to give you hope and a future, then you will call upon Me, then you will come and pray to me and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.”

In other words, God’s saying, “this whole exile thing, this whole life that is full of joys and difficulties and uncertainties, it’s my plan. Get on, live your life, prosper where you are, marry, have kids, increase, I am with you because before the foundations of the earth I had a plan for your life. A plan to prosper you, a certain plan, a good plan but there’s a bigger plan, an eternal plan.”

When we focus on that plan then a million uncertainties evaporate, they just don’t matter anymore because He has a plan for here and now and a plan for eternity.

Abundant Peace

We’re talking today, on the program, about leading a confident life in uncertain times, just focusing on this one short passage, 1 Peter, chapter 1, verses 1 and 2. It says this:

Peter an apostle of Jesus Christ to the exiles of the dispersion scattered through Pontus and Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia, who have been chosen and destined by God the Father and sanctified by the spirit to be obedient to Jesus Christ and to be sprinkled with His blood. May grace and peace be yours in abundance.

Peter’s a rock, Peter is someone solid sent out by Jesus Christ himself with a message, a message of confidence and certainty amidst the terrible persecution that these dispersed Christians were suffering. Despite their suffering, despite all that was going on, He says to them, “May grace and peace be yours in abundance.” That’s what God’s saying here. We want God to take away the things that are causing the uncertainty and the fear and the difficulties in our lives.

You know something, sometimes He does and sometime He don’t! God does what God will do. But in the middle of whatever we’re traveling through, in the middle of the uncertainty, in the middle of the fear, Peter is saying, “May grace and peace be yours in abundance.” And he gives them three reasons for that in just this short introduction, he says, ‘Sure, you have been scattered to the four winds through persecution but have a look at this:

You’ve been chosen and destined by God,
you’ve been sanctified by the spirit and
you’ve been sprinkled with the blood of Christ.

Peter’s saying something really profound here. Those three things are kind of the three pillars of which that abundant grace and peace rest. That’s an awesome thing, when we look at the circumstances of the people he is writing to and then we take a look at Gods eternal purposes for just a minute. We’ve been chosen and destined to be with Him for all eternity.

You know when stuffs blowing up all around you and when there is confusion and there’s fear and there’s uncertainty and you don’t know where life is going, this is like one of those passages of, “Be still and know that I am God.” Even though the nations are raging around us, God is saying, “I chose you, you are destined to be with Me.” That alone brings such an incredible peace, everything you and I are going through He knew before, everything that you and I don’t understand, that we’re uncertain about; He knows and those things are in His hands.

We have been chosen and destined by God the Father and then, secondly, sanctified by the spirit, day by day, scrubbed clean by God’s Spirit Himself, like a special vessel set aside for God’s service here in the world. A living God, not some distant God, not some idol, not some figment of anyone’s imagination but by the living God active in our lives. All this uncertainty, things we can’t control in the world, God uses each one of them to scrub us clean.

Okay, some days it feels a bit like steel wool and sand paper doesn’t it? When He’s scrubbing us clean, some days it’s not a lot of fun but other days He uses them as a polishing cloth and what happens, is that as He does that day after day, through each experience, through each uncertainty as we trust in Him, this gentleness and this peace and this joy emerges, that’s what happens when we trust in Him through those trials and tribulations in exile.

And thirdly He says, “We’re sprinkled with the blood of the lamb.” Now what does that mean? There are only a few instances where blood was sprinkled in the Old Testament. It was part of the sacrificial system, and principally the blood of this unblemished animal was sprinkled in the Holy of Holies, inside the sanctuary in the temple on one day a year. It was Yom kipper, the Day of Atonement, the day when the people’s sins were forgiven.

Now, that’s the picture here, that we have been sprinkled with the blood of the lamb. In other words every day when we make mistakes, (do you? I do), day by day we have been, are being and will be forgiven through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. I don’t know about you but I do make mistakes every day and if God didn’t forgive me through the sacrifice of Jesus every day then I would drift further and further from Him because He is a good God, He is a holy God and the only way that you and I can come before Him is because we believe that Jesus Christ’s blood was shed to pay for our sins.

We need never be afraid of God’s anger and His wrath and His judgment and His punishment; we’ve been chosen and destined by God. Every day we’re being sanctified by the spirit, scrubbed clean and set apart to be obedient to Jesus and we’re sprinkled with His blood, we’re forgiven day by day by day and they’re like the three pillars on which the last statement of this passage rests, “May grace and peace be yours in abundance.”

Now if we just think on those three things. I’ve been chosen and predestined by God. I am being sanctified, made clean by the spirit. I am forgiven every day for my failures. If we just rest in those, let them flood our senses into our very being, do you know what you get? Grace and peace in abundance, overflowing so we can’t contain it.

Peter, a man sent out by Jesus Christ himself to the exiles of the dispersion, in Australia, in New Zealand, in South Africa, in Cameroon, in Ghana, in Denmark, in Singapore and China and Rwanda and wherever you are at this very moment. You have been chosen and destined by God the Father, scrubbed clean, made holy, set apart for God’s purposes by the Holy Spirit to be obedient to Jesus Christ and to be sprinkled with His blood. May God’s grace and God’s peace be yours in abundance right in the middle of your exile, here and now. That, my friend, is what God is saying to us today.

A life without hope, is well … a pretty miserable life. But God has a plan to fill us full of vibrant living hope, that grows in us – a fruit of indescribable and glorious joy.

Life Without Hope

It is just great to be with you again today. We’re on the second program in a series that I’ve called, ‘A Confident Life in Uncertain Times’. As we live life day to day we need to have confidence in our lives, not a cockiness, not an arrogance, that’s not what I’m talking about. Just a quiet, gentle confidence that we can expect good things to happen in our lives, that we can know that we’re in the right place, walking in God’s will and we can rest in that and we can have a blessed and peaceful life.

Last week we had the first message in the series where we saw, as we went through 1 Peter chapter 1, verses 1-3, that we were chosen with a purpose and that gives you confidence. When we know that God has chosen us with a purpose that’s an awesome thing. And this letter in the New Testament, 1 Peter, is written by Peter to a bunch of Christians who are suffering terrible persecution. And this week we’re going to move on a little bit from there and look at hope because hope is such an important element of confidence.

So many people these days live their life like a candle in the wind, as the song goes. Instead of that quiet confidence and assurance, real sense of optimism and hope for the future, they’re like a cork you know bobbing around in an ocean in a storm and that’s a terrible way to live. This nagging uncertainty about life today and the future, so many people feel that their circumstances, the big picture things and the little picture things, are out of control.

You look around the world today, the big picture, we’ve got terrorism, we’ve got the war on terror, we’ve got global warming, we’ve got terrible poverty, we’ve got all of those things happening, things that you and I as little people, have absolutely no influence in. People say well, “Sponsor a child.” And I’ve heard people say, “Okay, so I sponsor a child but 25,000 other kids die every day from starvation so what’s the point?”
You see that reflects that sense that the big picture of the world is so out of control so we retreat to the little picture, the local picture, the ‘me’ picture. And I talk to a lot of people, people who are living unsatisfying lives, in the grind and we try and shop our way out of it. People have a sense that there must be something more. And you know, this is true of people no matter what their circumstances, no matter what their socio-economic situation or their culture or their faith.

Our lives can be dry like a drought. Around where I live we’ve been going through one of the worst droughts on record, farmers have been selling down their livestock, so of them have even sold their farms that have been in their families for generations, suicide rates are up, it must be so incredibly tough for them. Every day the same thing, bright clear skies, not a rain cloud in sight, standing in the dust bowl thinking and yearning in their hearts, “I hope it rains soon”. A funny thing hope, “I hope it rains” but what does that exactly mean?

I mean what is hope? Hope is like a joyful and confident expectation that something good is going to happen and you know, when we lose hope, when we stop believing that good things in fact are going to happen in our lives, it becomes a bleak dark place. Job, if you know the story of Job in the Old Testament, you have a look at chapter 7, verse 6.

Job was a good man, you know he honoured God and the devil came against him and ended up taking almost everything away from him. Job went through such a difficult time and in Job, chapter 7, verse 6 he says this, “My days are swifter than the weaver’s shuttle, and they come to an end without hope.” That’s about as low as you can get. The days are slipping by, day after day after day and there’s no hope, there’s no ‘looking forward to something’, there’s no sense of confidence about the future.

And it’s easy for the farmer whose property has turned into a dust bowl to lose hope. It’s easy for someone like you and me to look around and think back to what we had and see what’s going on in our lives at the moment and think, ‘I hope it rains tomorrow, I hope something changes, I hope it gets better tomorrow.’ It’s devastating to lose hope, you see, hope is the opposite of uncertainty.

We’re going through a series called, ‘A Confident Life in Uncertain Times’ and as we are going to see today as we get into God’s word, we do live amidst uncertainty. That’s the reality of life. We’d like to run away from it but it’s just not the way it’s going to be. And so God wants us to have that quiet confidence and peace amidst all this uncertainty that’s going on. At least that’s the way it should be.

But for so many people, hope is mixed up with uncertainty, it’s kind of a hopeless plea almost, “I hope it’s going to rain tomorrow.” Hope becomes a desperate thing rather than a certain thing, hope is a fading thing rather than something that shines brightly.

I remember a time in my life when I lost all hope that something good would happen and it was such an incredibly dark time. Hope’s like a light in the storm, uncertainty is this nagging sick feeling in the pit of your stomach that drains the life out of you and we all hope in something, without hope we can’t keep going. Without hope there’s no tomorrow.

So Peter, the apostle, writes this letter to the exiles of the dispersion, these exiles who were under persecution, who were living in uncertain times. They were tough times, incredibly tough. There was brutal persecution, torture, we talked about that last week and this is what he writes in the first chapter of his first letter, 1 Peter chapter 1, verses 3-5, let’s have a listen.

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. In his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and into an inheritance that can never perish or spoil or fade – kept in heaven for you. You who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time even though for a little while you’ve had to suffer some trials.

He talks about hope, there’s a lot in this, it’s real ‘rubber hits the road’ stuff and we’re going to unpack that into our hearts and our lives.

A Certain Hope

Well let’s take a look at what Peter is saying to these suffering, persecuted exiles about hope:

Praise be to the God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and into an inheritance that can never perish or spoil or fade – kept in heaven for you. You who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time even though for a little while you’ve had to suffer various trials.

He starts off here talking to these persecuted believers about doing something that they mustn’t have felt very much like doing – praise! And when life’s tough, when I’m down, when the drought continues, when we sink into this thing that goes down and down and down the decision to praise God in the middle of it, why? Well, he gives us an answer, because we have a ‘new birth into a living hope’.

Can I encourage you? If you are in the middle of an exile, of trials, of difficult times, now is the time to decide to praise the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, you know why? Because He’s up to something good! Maybe we can’t see it but actually it’s got nothing to do with whether or not the drought breaks, it’s something much bigger. It’s the new birth we have into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

I have a small bundle of shares in a company listed on the stock exchange and I can watch the share price go up and down, by the minute, on the internet. It’s lovely to see the price up and it’s a little bit disappointing when the price goes down. But if I put my hope into those shares, my whole sense of security, I’d go nuts because they go up and down, like our circumstances, like people’s moods, like friendships, like anything. There could be a stock market crash tomorrow.

Who or what do we put our hope in? And Peter is saying here that God, in His great mercy, has given us a new birth, a new start into a living hope. Out of the goodness of God, a new birth, a new start. Do you feel like a new start today? Do you feel that you just need your slate wiped clean so you can go forward? Praise God because in His great mercy He has given us a new birth into a living hope.

Not some flaky uncertain hope. It literally means, this ‘living hope’ thing, to enjoy real life, to have true life, a vital power, you know exerting the same influence on the soul as life itself. To be full of vigour, to be fresh, strong, active, powerful, to have an impact, the sort of life we all want to lead. That’s what Peter is talking about here in terms of a living hope, a hope that brings us to life.

It’s such a sharp contrast to the sort of hope that says, “oh you know, I hope it rains tomorrow”, because the hope that God gives us, through Jesus Christ, through His resurrection makes a difference. It’s based on something certain, it’s based on the resurrection of Jesus, a historical fact and reality and that’s going to happen to me one day, one day you and I are going to cast off our body.

And if we believe in Jesus Christ, whether or not the drought in this life breaks; you know whether or not our circumstances in this life change; whether or not God chooses to make some things in my life, here and now, better or not; one day we are going to have a resurrection day, when we stand before God in glory, with no more sickness or pain or health problems or tears, to walk into an inheritance that is completely untouchable. Look at what Peter writes here in chapter 1, verse 4:

Into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade – kept in heaven for you.

This hope in Jesus is a new birth for a living hope into what? Into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade, kept in heaven for you. Literally, Peter writes here that God is guarding it for us, keeping it safe for us. Not like the stock prices, not like wealth, it’s not subject to thieves or stock market crashes or moths eating it or it tarnishing. It’s not like waiting for the rain to break from the drought, who knows whether that will happen? It’s not like waiting for whatever it is in our life that causes us uncertainty and fear to change, who knows whether that’s going to happen? Nothing like those things.

It’s absolutely certain, being kept rock solid and safe in heaven. Something that we can put our confidence in, based on what Jesus has done, based on his resurrection, on a fact. That’s what makes it lively and real and compelling and vibrant and alive. That’s the sort of life we have when we live in the full knowledge of that new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

And not only do we have a new birth into a living hope, not only is it based on the resurrection of Jesus, not only into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade but also look at verse 5, if you have a Bible:

 We who through faith are shielded by Gods power until the coming of that salvation.

So not only is our inheritance being protected but we, through faith, are shielded by Gods power. So everything we go through, every hurt and pain and fear, everything, God is guarding our inheritance in heaven but God is shielding us here on earth through his power. You, if you believe in Jesus, are being protected by the power of God, that’s a promise and we acquire that through faith.

Where the Rubber Hits the Road

We’re looking at this wonderful letter of Peter the Apostle to these Christians who had been dispersed from Jerusalem and Judea right across the known world, right into every part of Asia Minor through persecution. And they were living uncertain lives, they were living lives of fear. And this is the second message in a series that I’ve called Living A Confident Life In Uncertain Times. And there can be no confidence without hope, a certain hope for the future. This beautiful letter written by Peter, written to these exiles under persecution. Let’s just look at the passage we’re going through today again, 1 Peter, chapter 1, verse 3-9:

Praise be to the God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ because in his great mercy he’s given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade – kept guarded in heaven for you. You, who through faith are being shielded by Gods power until the coming of that salvation, the salvation that’s ready to be revealed in the last time even though we have to suffer some trials.

So that the genuineness of our faith being more precious than gold maybe found to result in the praise and the glory and the honour when Jesus Christ is revealed. Although you’ve not seen him you love him and even though you can’t see him now you believe in him and you rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy because you are receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

He’s writing here to these exiles in these confusing, fearful times. They weren’t where they were meant to be, they weren’t in their comfort zone. They were being killed and tortured and they were dying and what does Peter write about? Does he write about the problems that they were facing? Does he give a list of ten steps on how to deal with persecution? Does he teach them to rebuke the devil? No!

He is saying listen to me; praise God because in the midst of your exile, in the midst of your trials, look at it from a different perspective. The heaviness, the burden of these trials that your going through, there is a purpose in your suffering even though, for a little while, you have to suffer these trials. It’s happening to you so the genuineness of your faith, which is more precious than gold, will be found to result in praise, glory and honour when Jesus Christ returns.

There’s purpose to our suffering, he is saying, “set your hope, your faith on the end game”. When people are under pressure they often run around like chooks with their heads cut off. As soon as pressure comes against us we want to run around and flap and carry on but Peter is saying, “just get a grip; get your mind around the end game. Just look at what is set before you, an eternity of glory. And you’re suffering at the moment to purify your faith, there’s purpose in your suffering.” Paul, in Colossians, chapter 3, writes:

Set your mind on heavenly things.

That’s what Peter is saying here, “Yes you are suffering trials but get an eternal perspective, eagerly long for Jesus in the midst of your exile. Look forward to what is set before you.” And what happens when we do that here in our everyday lives, here in the midst of our trials and our sufferings is we discover what it means to have a new birth into a living hope.

Because that hope is based on the knowledge that Jesus was raised from the dead and that we, one day too, will have an eternal life, we will have that resurrection. It doesn’t finish at the grave, the grave is just the beginning. And that inheritance, that glory, that eternity is being kept for you, guarded by God in heaven so it won’t disappear, it won’t evaporate. We won’t get there and discover it’s not there anymore.

And right now as we go through those sufferings and trials so that the genuineness of our faith is being proven, we love Him, we desire Him, we adore Him, we believe in Him and we set our hearts on Him. And then we discover that the reward isn’t just then but right here, right now, there’s a reward. “Although you haven’t seen Him you love Him and even though you don’t see Him now you believe in Him and you rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy because you are receiving …” See the present tense, “… you are receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.”

In the middle of suffering, in the middle of exile, when we live in this new birth of the living hope, we experience an indescribable and glorious joy. The words that Peter used here mean, “completely over the top”, he can’t find enough superlatives to describe the joy that we experience amidst the trials and suffering when we let the Holy Spirit do his work in our hearts and minister to us what lies ahead.

You have been born into a living and vibrant and powerful hope that has fruit in us. I don’t know about you but I want that. I want to live my life like that. It’s not some fools gold, it’s not some fairy floss kind of life. Peter’s not trying to dress it up into some unreality. he’s making it very plain. You guys are going through some suffering and trials and that’s going to happen in life and that’s just the way it is but here is where the rubber hits the road, here is crunch time, here is decision time.

In the middle of my trials am I going to believe in God with my life? Not from a distance, not pay him some half attention, come on, no half measures, no ‘not taking this seriously’. God wants for you today and tomorrow and next week and next month and next year until the moment that you stand before him in glory, God wants you to experience an indescribable and glorious joy. The sort of thing that wells up inside you because of what lies ahead, through his spirit, not through anything else, not through us concocting anything but because when we rest our hearts and souls on this wonder of our future.

The Holy Spirit puts in us an indescribable and glorious joy even though we have to suffer various trials at the moment. So set your mind on things that are above, do you want that? A living hope, the new birth, a fresh start here and now through the resurrection of Jesus. Go on, wrap your heart and mind around that, day by day, around the imperishable inheritance being guarded by God. His present protection right now that we acquire by faith. Go on; just believe no matter what comes along.

Do you want a confident life in uncertain times? Well, this is where the rubber hits the road.

It turns out that if we’re going to have a real and lasting confidence in what we believe. We actually have to live it out – a life that reflects the one that we believe.

We Need Stability

I am excited about today’s program; we’re talking about living a confident life in uncertain times. I don’t know about you but sometimes it seems that there are people and situations and issues and problems in life queuing up to shake my confidence.

At the local supermarket they have a little delicatessen counter and they have one of those little red machines where you take a number so they display the number for the next person. And some days, doesn’t it feel like all these problems and issues and things, you feel like saying, “just take a number and take your turn” because they all seem to be crowding in on us at the one time.

I guess it’s the world we live in. I mean, when I was growing up it was a different time. We had different outlooks, things seemed to be so much more certain. My Dad worked for the same company for almost 30 years. It seemed to be, I don’t know, a more gentle pace of life. But the world’s changed.

There’s no point in saying, “well, lets wind the clock back”, that’s just not going to happen. We are who we are, we live in the time we live in the place that we live and so many people are wandering around through life with precious little confidence, with no optimism about life and the future and where things are headed.

Come on, uncertainty, ambiguity, they’re a fact of life. I remember when I was in the Army training to be an officer, we used to talk about the fog of war. And the principle is that when you’re tired and when people are shooting at you and when you’re hungry and when the enemy is doing things that you just don’t understand, it’s like walking around in a fog. You don’t have all of the information you need; you don’t have an accurate assessment of the situation.

And sometimes our lives can be like that. It’s kind of a bit of a fog because we don’t know how certain things are going to turn out. We don’t know how this relationship or how this job or this financial situation is going to turn out and those things are just a fact of life.

But pressure and fear and fatigue can all conspire to make it hard to have any sort of security or confidence in life. And that is why we’re looking into God’s word today, in this four part series, to discover what He wants is for us, for you and me, here and now, to have a confident life in uncertain times.

And the problem with this is that sometimes people say to me, “Berni, are you dressing up life to say life’s always going to be easy? Are you dressing up life to say we are all going to be affluent?” Absolutely not! I’m not talking about an affluent consumption model, not that at all.

Just the other day I was talking with a young man in Africa. He has a wife and two beautiful kids plus seven other mouths to feed because these are relatives whose parents were killed in a recent war. And for him, the issue of uncertainty, the issues that can knock his confidence around are quite simply having enough money to put food on the table to feed those mouths. For him, he needs a confident life in uncertain times and that’s the heart of God for him.

It’s Gods heart that we put our trust in him, whether we’re affluent or we’re poor, whether we’re going through good times or bad times. Our confidence can be rocked by something as simple as comparing ourselves with the next person and we become like a cork floating around in the ocean. And there’s no better place to discover Gods heart for confidence in our lives than the letter of Peter, the first letter that he wrote and that’s what we’ve been going through over these last few weeks. That letter, 1 Peter begins like this:

From Peter an apostle of Jesus Christ to the exiles of the dispersion scattered through Pontus and Galatia, Cappadocia and Asia and Bithynia who have been chosen and destined by God the Father and sanctified by his spirit to be obedient to Jesus Christ and to be sprinkled with his blood. May grace and peace be yours in abundance.

I love that, these people that he was writing to were being tortured and killed for their faith. Peter’s writing to them here and it’s not God’s confidence for just a wealthy few but for the people who are doing it really tough, whatever that looks like – people scattered to the four winds. And he’s saying, “you’ve been chosen with a purpose”. And that’s what we looked at a couple of weeks ago and last week we looked at the fact that we have been born, if we believe in Jesus, we have been born into a new birth, a living hope, into an inheritance that God is guarding for us in heaven.

See, Peter is writing about, “if you believe in Jesus you have a right to confidence because it’s a right that Jesus purchased for us on the cross. If we put our faith in Jesus Christ, we can know that God has a purpose, we can know that we have a future no matter what we’re going through right now.” And these people were going through some really serious stuff.

This issue of confidence is an important issue. I’m not talking about pompousness, I’m not talking about arrogance, I’m not talking about selfishness, I’m not talking about having all the money in the world, none of those things. I’m talking about Godly confidence. confidence in the person of Jesus Christ. And that’s what we’ve been talking about over these last few weeks.

If you are struggling with confidence, if you missed those programs I really encourage you to hop onto our website www.christianityworks.com and you can listen to them again, this letter of Peter to these Christians who were being persecuted and he’s talking about confidence.

This week we’re going to continue on with that theme and this first chapter of this letter is remarkable. It’s a remarkable letter, it’s a beautiful letter to suffering Christians and Peter goes on to address a different issue, the issue we’re going to look at today. It’s still related to certainty, to courage, to knowing deep inside that God is in control and that no matter what’s queuing up at our door it’s still going to be okay.

Peter talks about how we think and how we live and we’re going to read a passage now which is from that letter, if you have a Bible, grab it. 1 Peter, chapter1, verses 13-25:

Therefore, prepare your minds for action; be self controlled; set your hope fully on the grace to be given to you when Jesus Christ is revealed. As obedient children, don’t conform to the evil desires that you had when you lived in ignorance. But just as he who called you is holy, so you’ll be holy in all you do because it’s written: “Be holy, because I am holy.”

Since you call on a Father who judges each mans work impartially live your lives as strangers here in reverent fear because you know that it wasn’t through a perishable thing like silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you by your forefathers but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish.

He was chosen before the creation of the world but was revealed to us in these last times for your sake. Through him you believe in God who raised him from the dead and glorified him and so your faith and hope are in God and now that you’ve purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for your brothers, love one another deeply from the heart because you’ve been born again, not from a perishable seed but from an imperishable seed through the living and enduring word of God.

For all men are like grass, all their glory is like the flowers of the field, the grass withers and the flowers fall but the word of the Lord stands forever and this is the word that we have preached to you.

There’s a lot in that but the three main themes are, what we do with our hearts and our hands, what motivates us and the unshakability of Gods word.

Get Ready For Battle

It turns out that the way we think and the way we behave have an awful lot to do with our level of confidence. It’s a real paradox to me but the whole, “me, me, me”. thing, you know that selfish, “it’s all about my comfort. It’s all about my satisfaction”. That attitude feeds an incredible sense of insecurity whereas an attitude of love, an attitude of sharing and giving and serving breeds a quite confidence in our hearts.

Now the apostle Peter knew that. He’d just finished talking about the fact that we’ve been chosen with a purpose, that we’d been born into a living hope through Jesus and then he goes on to say this in chapter 1 of the first letter of Peter, almost at the end of the New Testament beginning at verse 13. Truly, if you have a Bible grab it, open it up and have a read:

“Therefore,” he says, “because of all the things Gods done, because of the confidence that you have in Jesus, because you have a living hope, because God is protecting your inheritance in heaven, because of those things prepare your minds for action. Be self controlled, set your hope fully on the grace to be given to you when Jesus Christ is revealed. As obedient children don’t be conformed to the evil desires that you had when you lived in ignorance but just as he who called you is holy, so you be holy in all you do because it’s written, “Be holy because I am holy.”

Peter starts here with what we think, it says, “Prepare your minds for action”. Literally, the words that he wrote in the original Greek say, “Gird up the loins of your mind”. The picture is one of a Roman soldier who wore a tunic and when the soldier was going into battle he would tie up his tunic so that frankly, he wouldn’t trip over it, so that he was ready for battle. And it’s the same with all of those things, those problems, those issues, whatever they are queuing up at our front doors. Peoples situations, oppositions, our own thoughts, the things that robs us of our confidence.

Maybe you’re a woman and you look at the next woman, you compare husbands and you compare her looks with you and you compare their kids, right? And it robs you of confidence. Maybe you’re a man struggling to put food on the table and it robs you of confidence.

Whatever it is, what Peter is saying is this: “Because of what Jesus has done, because of the living hope, because of your future – get a grip. Set your mind straight, be self controlled, put your hope fully on the grace that’s been given to you. Don’t flap around in the breeze; don’t run around like a chicken with its head cut off; don’t panic; don’t get dejected. Look, look at who you are in Jesus Christ, that’s the provision that the Lord made for you and me on the cross.”

That’s what he meant by the empty tomb. We’ve got a future, we’ve got a present and we’re safe because of who He is and what He’s done for us. And we deal with those things that rock our confidence by girding up the loins of our mind, by being transformed by the renewing of our mind and then getting our actions in line with that.
Right, get a grip on our minds, stop flopping around, this way and that. Jesus Christ is Lord, He died for you and died for me, He rose for us again and that’s the solid platform on which we stand.

Look at the next bit because he talks now about our actions, he says, “As obedient children don’t conform to the evil desires you had in the past but be holy because it is written,” God is holy.”What does holy mean?” Holy means special and clean and set apart.

I struggled for a long time to understand ‘holy’ but as you know a surgeon only uses absolutely clean, sterilised implements otherwise he’s going to infect the wound and the patient gets sick and dies. Those instruments are clean, ready to go, they’re set apart on the tray, they’re lined up, they’re special. That’s the picture of ‘holy’. That’s the life that Gods calling us to, a life of being set apart, a life of being clean and pure, a life of standing out, of being ready to be used by Him.

Here’s the bottom line. If we’re not living out a holy life, this whole faith thing is not going to work because our lives will be diseased and that will rob us of the good life that God always intended. We get infected and ultimately we die just like the patient. What we believe and what we do are two parts to our relationship with God and ultimately, if what we do is different to what we believe, we’ll go with what we do every time.

That confidence that we’re supposed to have gets undermined and gets infected like the wound of a patient. The good life gets eroded and then, then we have no confidence, we end up like a cork in the ocean. When we’re doing good, we’re living good, when we give sacrificially, when we honour other people, when we live like Jesus, you know what that does in our hearts? It ministers truth into us. It gives us the quiet assurance of the living hope that we have in Jesus Christ because deep in our hearts we can see that this thing works.

That’s why we’re called to be holy. We’re set apart to be used by God because if that’s not how we live, we won’t enjoy confidence, we won’t enjoy assurance, we won’t enjoy the living hope that we have in Jesus Christ. We can’t believe in one thing and do another. Do you know what that’s called? That’s called hypocrisy; none of us like a hypocrite and it doesn’t work. Now the next bit, the next bit is a reminder of why we should live like this. God said, “Look, just never forget these things.”

The Rock on Which we Stand

Peter gives us a good reason for holy living and that reason is based on what God has already done. Let’s have another read to get this into our hearts. We’re reading from the letter of 1 Peter, chapter 1, beginning at verse 17. This is what he writes:

Since you call on a father who judges each mans work impartially, live your lives as strangers here in reverent fear. For you know it wasn’t through perishable things such as silver and gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Jesus Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. He was chosen before the creation of the world but was revealed in these last times for your sake. Through him you believe in God. God who raised him from the dead and glorified him so that your faith and your hope are in God.

Peter starts this bit off by saying, “live your life as exiles”, and we are exiles. You believe in Jesus then your citizenship is in heaven. We’re like an exile in a foreign land, yes we’re in the middle of this world but we’re not of it. We belong with God, we belong in heaven so we’re living our life as strangers and exiles and Peters saying, “do it in reverent fear, a right fear, a good fear”. We talked about that in our last program.

God sees it all, God’s there. Whatever we do, whatever we think, whenever we’re angry or we’re horrible to other people or we’re selfish or pompous, Gods in that place and He’s a God who judges every man and every woman impartially. In view of that, whatever we do, whatever we think, he knows and he provided for us. He didn’t come and save us by paying money, by silver or gold, he saved us through the blood of his Son, through the death of Jesus on the cross.

It’s incredible, God hates sin so much and He loves us so much that He, Himself, through his Son bore our sin. It’s a mystery too deep to understand and He saved us from an empty life of doing the same old, same old and brought us to an abundant life. Not through the things of this world, not through silver and gold but through what Jesus did on the cross.

Why should we be holy? Because of what God’s done for us. Because God will judge the living and the dead one day and God’s made provision for us through his love and grace in Jesus Christ. If there was ever a reason to live a holy life, it’s the grace of the cross, it’s the price of the cross, it’s what Jesus did for us. With precious blood of Jesus Christ, a lamb without blemish, we have been redeemed from an empty way of life and that’s where our certainty is, that’s where our motivation is.

We can’t live a holy life on our own. I can’t, you can’t. We can’t just conjure it up out of thin air, I’ve tried believe me and it doesn’t work. But when we dwell at the foot of a cross, when we honour Jesus, when we worship him, God changes us. He changes us from the inside out. And if we’re not worshipping Jesus, you know something? We can’t live a holy life; we can’t say from a distance “I believe in Jesus” and expect to be able to live a holy life.

If we’re not one with Him we can’t do it on our own. You see, God didn’t save us through worldly things, God didn’t redeem us through perishable things like silver and gold. He redeemed us with an imperishable seed, with the blood of His Son. And for that thing to become affective in our lives, for that wonderful, wonderful blessing to become a reality in our lives, we have to have a relationship with this Jesus, in prayer, in worship, in getting into Gods word just like we’re doing at the moment. Jesus said in John, chapter 15:

I am the vine, you are the branches and boys and girls, apart from me, you can’t do anything.

And so, to live this holy life we need to connect into this Jesus, close, intimate with Him – Him in us, us in Him – through prayer and worship and getting into His word and then obeying it and living it.

Peter starts here with our mind and he calls us to be transformed by getting our minds ready for the battle and he tells us here, “your motivation is because of the goodness and the grace of God” and that has to translate into actions and you know what happens? It comes around full again.

Those actions, when we give; when we sacrifice; when we just bite our tongue when we’d rather rip a person in half; that goodness witnesses the confidence that we can have, the hope, the living hope we have in Jesus Christ back into our hearts. And instead of spiraling downwards and being like that little cork in the stormy ocean we start spiraling upwards, closer and closer to God in deeper and deeper faith, a more wonderful revelation of who he is. That sense that we’re on the right track, that confidence that we’re safe.

I can’t rely on me. You can’t rely on you. We haven’t got it. This only comes from really dwelling with Jesus at the foot of the cross and worshipping him and that’s the point of this last part of the first chapter that we’re going to look at now. It says this:

Now that you’ve purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have a sincere love for your brothers, love one another deeply from the heart because you’ve been born again. Not of perishable seed but imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God. All men are like grass, our glory is like the flowers of the field, the grass withers, the flowers fall but the word of the Lord stands forever and this is the word that was preached to you.

When we go to live out that life of love, it’s not in our own ability because your ability and my ability are like the grass, like the flowers of the field. They’re here today and gone tomorrow but the word of the Lord stands forever and this is the word that I am now preaching to you.

God has an amazing plan for us to live a confident life. And part of that plan is about the people that he puts around us. But how can we live so that we build one another up?

Firm Faith Foundations

Well this is the last of the four messages in the series that I’ve called, ‘A Confident Life in Uncertain Times’. Life is full of uncertainties, on the one hand we can say, “I believe in God. I believe in Jesus. I believe in what he did for me. I believe I have eternal life and in God’s glory”. But there are things in our lives, little things like termites, that eat away at the foundation of faith, here and now.

I’m not talking about what’s happening in the future. I’m talking about living life today, right where you are, right where I am, with all the stuff going on around us that we have going on around us. Without firm foundations of faith, life is pretty miserable.

I was talking to a man recently who had just been retrenched. He was devastated, and that’s a natural response. This man’s in his early sixties and he’s not ready to retire but the question for him is, in a society that’s geared towards young people and youth, how is he going to find another job? And he said to me, “All my life I’ve put my trust in the Lord.” But now life had hit rock bottom for him, he was passionate about what he did. I’ll never forget the look in his eyes because the eyes are the window to our heart and you could really see the grief and the pain in his eyes.

Now whether it’s a major thing like that or just a whole bunch of small foxes in life that spoil the vine, those things can undermine our sense of security, our sense of confidence in what God’s doing. To put it bluntly, those things can undermine and attack our faith, like little termites eating away at our faith foundations.

Maybe a husband and wife aren’t as close as they’d like to be; maybe things are a bit hard with the kids at the moment; maybe there are financial worries; maybe there are work pressures and all of those things add up and they nibble away. And before we know it, what once were firm faith foundations, are like a fragile honeycomb ready to collapse.

Here’s the good news, here’s the great news, God wants us to have a confident life, to have faith in Him through all of those things and you know what? That sort of life is a life worth living, a life where we can weather those storms.

That’s why over the last three weeks and again this week, we’ve been looking at 1 Peter. This is one of the last books in the New Testament. And the background of this letter, 1 Peter, is that Peter the Apostle is writing to a whole bunch of Christians who are exiles, who have been dispersed out of Jerusalem and out of Judea, through persecution against Christians. And these people are really being persecuted. These people are being tarred and torched at garden parties by Caesar; these people are being tortured and beaten and burned for their faith. And so that’s who he’s writing to.

And he writes about a life of purpose, a living hope that we have in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. He writes about living a holy life. And the whole point of Peter’s letter is to breathe certainty and confidence into the lives of the listeners and the readers of that letter despite everything that’s going on in their lives. And that’s the point. We can sometimes think, “If I’m going to put my faith in Jesus, if I’m going to put my faith in God, nothing should go wrong, everything should be perfect in life”. But life’s not like that.

So today we’re looking at this last message in this series and I’ve called today’s message, ‘Living a Rock Solid Life’, an unshakeable life, just like Peter wanted for the people he was writing to. These people who were going through all these trials and struggles. We looked at the first chapter in the last three weeks and today we’re going to look at the second chapter of 1 Peter and how to live a rock solid life.

It’s about being a part of Gods team so if you have a Bible, go and grab it, open it up right towards the end of the New Testament and go to 1 Peter, chapter 2 and we’re going to look at verses 1-10. This is what he writes:

Therefore rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and slander of every kind. Like new born babies, crave pure spiritual milk so that by it, you may grow up in your salvation, now that you have tasted that the Lord is good. As you come to him, the living stone – rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to him – you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

For in Scripture it says: “See, I lay a stone in Zion, a chosen and precious cornerstone, and the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame.” Now to you who believe, this stone is precious. But to those who do not believe, “The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone.” And, “A stone that causes men to stumble and a rock that makes them fall.” They stumble because they disobey the message – which is also what they were destined to do.

But you, you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you weren’t a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy but now you have received mercy.

It’s interesting, these days, so often we see faith in God, faith in Jesus Christ, as being an individual thing. ‘My’ relationship with God, ‘my’ faith walk; ‘my’ life and of course it is but as you read through the New Testament, faith is always set in the context of community. It’s startling to read Romans and Corinthians and Ephesians, all those letters from that perspective, there’s a very clear and strong community dimension.

These Christians were undergoing persecution and trial and Peter is writing to them about the certainty that they get from being a community in Christ, a people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation. C S Lewis once wrote, “Is any pleasure on earth as great as a circle of Christian friends by a fire.”

Another Brick in the Wall

It’s interesting that as the Apostle Peter starts this bit in his letter, this letter about breathing confidence into the lives of Christians who are being persecuted for their faith. He begins with an admonishment. You see this section that we just read is about living confidently in a community but he begins, before he talks about community, he begins with this admonition:

Therefore, rid yourself of all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and slander of every kind. Like new born babies, crave pure spiritual milk so that by it, you might grow up in your salvation, now that you have tasted that the Lord is good.

So, get rid of all malice, all deceit, all hypocrisy, envy, slander of every kind. Those things tear communities apart. Stones in a wall, which is the picture that we’ll look at that passage in a moment; it’s a picture of community of these stones being built together into this strong solid wall. Could you imagine how strong this wall is going to be if all these stones are arguing and fighting?

Before I became a Christian, my favourite saying used to be, “It’s so hard to soar like an eagle when you’re surrounded by turkeys.” Now that sort of attitude is not about community. Selfishness and getting your own way and wanting to do it our way; we’re not going to be a community and that’s why Peter begins, “… get rid of all malice, all deceit, all hypocrisy and envy and slander of every kind.” Because if we’re going to live together in a community, in a faith community, we need humility and kindness and gentleness and forgiveness.

Maybe Gods convicting you right now about the people that you’re in a faith community with, the people that I’m in a faith community with. You see, there’s no perfect Church! We can look at the people that we know and maybe you’ve been going to a Church for years and you’ve known these people for years and you think, “My goodness, I know everybody’s weaknesses and it’s never going to change and … grumble, grumble, grumble.”

Let the Holy Spirit convict you right now if you’re in that space. Get rid of all malice, deceit, hypocrisy, envy, slander of every kind because those things tear communities apart. Instead, like new born babes, crave spiritual milk, the word of God, drink it in. There’s nothing better for a young baby than mothers milk, man- made formula doesn’t have the same goodness or nourishment or antibodies. Mother’s milk was made for the baby and it’s the same with Gods word, there’s no substitute.

The worlds wisdom, me, me, me, numero uno, get what you’re entitled to, no wonder there’s so much uncertainty in life, we’ve forgotten how to live with one another, how to live in community. Gods word is about sacrifice, going without those things and unless we do that there’ll be no community and with no community comes no confidence, and then, talking to these people undergoing so much pain and uncertainty and fear because of their faith, look at what he writes:

As you come to him, the living stone – rejected by men but chosen and precious by God. You also, like living stones are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus. Because scriptures said, “See, I lay a stone in Zion, a chosen and precious cornerstone and the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame.” Now to you who believe, this stone is precious but to those who don’t believe, the stone the builder rejected became the capstone,” and, “A stone that causes men to stumble,” because they stumble because they disobeyed the message which they were destined to do.

In other words, he begins this discussion of community with the living stone rejected by many that is Jesus. Jesus was rejected by many. He was reviled and He was beaten and He was spat upon and He was crucified but He was chosen by God and precious to God, God’s only Son. And just like Jesus was the first one, the cornerstone – capstone; you, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood. For what purpose? To offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God.

The reason God builds us into this house is not for us, even though we get benefits. It’s for God. The picture of this house being built, these stones being laid is, firstly a stone had to be cut to size. This wasn’t one of these manufactured square bricks, perfectly shaped, no this was a stone in rough, and for a stone to become part of a building, first it has to be cut to size by the builder. In other words God is going to cut us to size, humble us, sacrifice, that’s what being cut to size means. It’s no fun being cut to size but that’s what God does with us. He cuts us to be the right shape to be amongst his people as a stone in this wall.

Secondly, a stone gets laid in place where the builder wants it, where God wants it. ‘Oh, I want to be a preacher; I want to be this; I want to be that; I want to do this; I want people to notice me.’ But we have certain gifts and abilities. God knows them better than us because He gave them to us and when He lays us just in the right place, it’s brilliant. The apostle Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians, chapter 12, verse 11, puts it this way. He’s talking about the giftings that God gives us and he writes this:

All these gifts are activated by one and the same spirit who allots to each one individually, just as the spirit chooses.

In other words, our gifts and abilities are gifts for the body of believers but God chose what he gave us and God chooses where He puts us and when we’re operating in God’s gifting and His anointing, that’s an awesome thing. It confirms who we are, we delight in what we’re doing, it builds our confidence in Him.

The third thing, firstly we’re cut to size, secondly we’re laid in place and thirdly a stone in this building, in this spiritual temple bares the burdens of the other stone, it’s a mutual thing. You think about the stones being laid down in the wall, the stones below me are carrying my weight and I’m carrying the weight of the stones above me, in other words we share with one another, if one suffers we all suffer, if ones honoured we all rejoice.

When we’re surrounded by God, by people who are on fire for God, that lifts us up, that builds us up, that holds us up. Now I’m someone who always spends time in the Word of God because that’s what I do. It’s a powerful thing, it feeds me and it’s such and honour and a privilege to be able to put these programs together. BUT I have a small group of people in my church, one man in particular called James. They are my support and encouragement and strength.

I need those people because without those people, life gets tough, I’m out there on my own. That’s the way it’s meant to be and all these stones being built by God into this temple. Jesus is the corner stone. In other words, He’s the one that got laid first, the one that we’re all lined up against so that we’re in a row, we’re straight, doing things His way, not all over the place doing things our way but lined up beginning with a cornerstone.

And then Peter writes here, “… and he became a capstone,” and the picture there is when one of those stone arches was built with all those little stones in an arch, the top stone was the capstone and it bears all the weight and holds everything together. In other words, Jesus is at the top and yet He serves us by holding us together.

Jesus is the first stone to be laid and we’re lined up against him. We’re not just a bunch of people, we’re a spiritual house with Christ at the head, and the Holy Spirit and our obedience binding us together. Beautiful picture, that we are being built by God into his house, a spiritual house but for what purpose?

A Royal Priesthood

God wants a mature people; God wants a people who can shine his light into a hurting world; a people who can enjoy what he’s called them to be. Confident people, not cocky, not arrogant. People who have a quiet confidence in who He is, in who they are in him, what Gods called them to do. People who shine His love and His joy into this world.

And that’s exactly how Peter finishes off this passage that we’ve been looking at today in the letter of 1 Peter, chapter 2, to these exiles who are under extreme persecution. Let’s have a look at how he finishes it off in chapter 2 beginning at verse 9. He says:

You are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God that you may declare the praises of him who called out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once, you weren’t a people but now you are the people of God. Once you hadn’t received mercy but now you have received mercy.

You see, Peter is saying here, “you know how God wants to cut you to size and lay you as one of those stones in this wall?” This wall, that’s lined up against Christ, this wall that will be a spiritual temple, a spiritual house of God. You’re a chosen people, this is Gods plan before time began. You’re a people, you’re a body, you’re Gods family as well as just an individual and not only are you a chosen people, you’re a royal priesthood, you belong to the king.

But why does he call us a priesthood? Well, a priest in the Old Testament, the role of the priest was to serve God in the temple and to be a ‘go between’, between God and the people. But here, in the New Testament we’re being told there are no special priests anymore. We’re all priests! We’re all part of a royal priesthood and our job is to serve Christ and to take Him out into the world.

That’s why God calls us a ‘royal priesthood’. We’re the ones that can go into the Holy of Holies, we can stand in the throne room before God, we can see His glory, we can experience His goodness but He wants us to take that out as a priesthood into the world, glory to God.

Once you were not a people, once your were a rabble, once you were a bunch of selfish individuals wandering aimlessly around in futility. But now, now you are a people, not just a people but Gods people. Look at the next verse, “Now you are the people of God.” God has an amazing plan. As we humble ourselves and lay our lives down, He builds us into a royal priesthood, a holy nation so that we may declare the praises of Him who called us out of darkness into this wonderful light.

You see, when we declare God’s praises, when we walk out into the world with that joy in our hearts and on our faces, people look at us and say, “There’s something different about them. I want what they’ve got.” When we declare the praises of Him who called us out of darkness, we are being the royal priesthood; we are carrying Christ into the world.

God has this plan that as He builds us into a royal priesthood, a holy nation, that we’re part of His family and His plan for His glory and living in love and reaching out to the people who don’t know him yet and in love, bearing our brothers and sisters in gentleness and with humility and encouragement and support. As we are a stone in the spiritual house – a living stone, not a dead stone, not some piece of rock – a living stone in the spiritual temple that God is building us up together to be and we have to let other people do the same for us.

If we want to live a certain life in uncertain times, this is a powerful letter from Peter, this first letter of Peter. He tells us, you and I, if we believe in Christ we’ve been chosen with a purpose, we have a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus. God is protecting and guarding, in heaven, an imperishable inheritance, unspoiling, unfaded, undefiled for us and as we live holy lives, as we put away all slander and malice and envy and pride, all that stuff that will tear us apart, God builds us up.

Jesus said, “I will build my Church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.” As we allow ourselves, by God, to be built into this spiritual house together, we’re living out of Christ. That’s what it means to be a living stone and we discover this stuff works. We see how He cuts us and polishes us into shape and He puts us just in the right place next to other people. And then life’s no longer about winning, it’s about living and walking in love. It’s certain, it’s true, and it works day by day.

When we live like that the spirit of God ministers His peace and His confidence into our souls, deep into our spirits. Remember, Peter was writing this to people who were suffering such terrible things. The world says, “Buy this, spend that, eat this, go there, drink that – you’ll be happy.” But you, you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.

God has a plan to use you and me for his glory and as we live that plan out in fear and trembling, we discover in our own experience that He’s for real, day by day, week by week, month after month. He builds us into a spiritual house. He builds in us a confidence that is unshakeable no matter what the world will throw at us.

It’s a life-long journey but that’s His plan, it’s a wonderful plan, it’s a beautiful plan, it’s a delightful plan. It’s a plan for a confident life in uncertain times.