In 1981 I went with a friend to share the gospel in a housing project in New York city.
We slept at a rehab center, and you could hear frequent gunfire throughout the night.
At the time that area…called Bed Stuy, had the highest murder rate in the US.
We spent our days walking the streets and sharing the gospel…One man I met was trapped in a destructive lifestyle…he wanted to change but could see no way out.
In his 20 years of life, he had never traveled more than 10 miles from the place we stood on the street and talked.
I shared the gospel and tried to cast vision for a different life than the one that he was living…I offered to buy him a bus ticket to Wichita and help him find a job…his situation was dangerous to say the least.
He stood there in despair, surrounded by forces that were pulling him down…and the thought of leaving…to me, as simple as getting on a bus…was to him, impossible to imagine…he could comprehend no life outside of his neighborhood.
I understand that he could have been changed there, and moving to Wichita would not have automatically changed his heart.
My point is that he was stuck in a place…physically, mentally, and spiritually.
As embodied beings, we live in a place and in a time.
God alone transcends both space and time.
But like my friend…we live, so to speak in a physical place, as well as a mental and spiritual place.
A coach might say to a distracted athlete…”Where’s your head at?”
Literally, it’s hopefully still attached to her body…but the idiomatic meaning is that while her body is on the court, her mind or thoughts are elsewhere.
Right now, your bodies exist here in this room.
Your mind may be out wandering around somewhere else in cosmos.
We are all very used to living on planet earth…it’s all we have ever known.
Even if you have traveled widely on the planet…relatively speaking(considering the size of the universe)…you haven’t been very far from here.
For Lord of the Rings fans…we are all more like Hobbits than Rangers.
We have become accustomed to the Shire…this is normal.
But if we don’t the mental and spiritual work to push ourselves to contemplate the larger realties of the gospel…of realities beyond our everyday experience.
…we are limiting our perspective, our joy,(as we will see next week) our impact, our resiliency…our understanding of the Bible and the gospel itself.
We are like my friend, who would not get on the bus to Wichita…it seemed impossible to him.
He could not imagine a life apart from the place he had lived his entire existence.
Peter, the close friend and companion of the Lord Jesus…the one who failed Jesus after making a brash boast…the one who was restored by the Lord and became a leader in the newly birthed church has written two letters.
As I read his letters this week…I could imagine him standing on my little corner of the world…telling me… “Terry, there is more, you know…a lot more.”
“Yeah, Peter, I know…but this is all I’ve ever known.”
“I get that, I’m not one to judge…I mean you literally have read my story…it wasn’t pretty at times…but as you live in your place and time…you have to learn to live as an exile here…a sojourner.”
“You can’t get trapped…don’t let the world shrink to the size of your own experiences.”
Let’s read, 1 Peter 1…
1 Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, To those who are elect exiles of the Dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia,(Turkey) 2 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: May grace and peace be multiplied to you.
Some have questioned whether Peter actually wrote this letter.
Their primary argument is that Peter would have given more first-hand stories of his time with Jesus…he had some cool stories to tell.
Why do they think that?
Because that’s what they would have done.
But that is, of course, a silly argument…They are not Peter, and they are missing his larger purposes.
They are thinking of what we would expect from today’s perspective.
Today, we would have something like a book tour…
“My experiences with Jesus the Messiah”. By Peter (aka: the Rock)
Peter doesn’t do this because as a witness he is testifying to Jesus not to himself.
Nothing wrong with telling “your story” but the gospel is the facts of the life, death, resurrection, and return of Jesus.
Peter probably told his friends lots of stories about his time with Jesus.
But when Peter went to write the church, a church about to suffer a great deal, he stuck with the facts that could sustain and change them.
Like Paul wrote…
“For we do not preach ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake.” 2 Cor. 4:5,6
Again…there is a place for personal stories and experiences…(Paul tells some) but that is not Peter’s purpose here.
What he is writing is timeless…written in time, but meant to be timeless.
He tells us his purpose in the last chapter.
I have written to you briefly, encouraging you and testifying that this is the true grace of God. Stand fast in it.
There is a tendency to start with my experiences then go to the Bible and seek to understand them…this is problematic, because it is backwards.
We start with the Bible…then we seek to understand our experiences in the world.
To start with me, my time, my current events, my experience…then go to the Bible will result in stunted views of both my experiences and of the Bible.
The Bible will end up looking just like my life…small and inadequate…and my life will just not make sense.
We have to get on the bus, so to speak…venture beyond ourselves.
Starting with the Bible does not mean that we can easily make sense out of everything that happens to us and around us.
But we will have an adequate framework for all of what we see in the world.
By starting with the Bible…I mean looking at life through the lens of the gospel as given in the whole of Scripture…Gen. through Rev.
And all of its implications for work, church, marriage, jobs, physical pain, mowing your grass, funerals…all of it.
We must start with the Bible…then go to experience.
*I once stood in a snowy Kansas cornfield, chill factor below zero at the funeral of a man who had taken his life…I heard above the sound of taps and the howl of the wind the wails of his 13-year-old daughter.
-It was a picture of utter desolation…I felt like evil wins…sights, sounds, emotions…but I could only interpret correctly through the lens of the gospel…and I prayed and remembered and saw what I was seeing through the lens of Scripture.
*Many times, I have seen what I am looking at through the lens of Scripture…and it did not make it easy, but it did make it clearer.
The message of Peter and the other apostles(these witnesses to the resurrected Christ) was not individual testimonies about “what the resurrection means to me.”
Rather his message was the Lord’s interpretation of his own work…Jesus told them (us) what his actions meant.
They could see him live, die, raise from the dead…but he had to reveal to them what it all meant.
Peter, in his letters, was preparing the church for trial, for terrible testing with a strong hope in Christ.
Before we walk through this opening passage, I want to talk about an important phrase that describes how the Bible presents life now in the Kingdom of God…and how a non-biblical alternative can make life more confusing.
The term is a bit complex…”inaugurated eschatology”
I hate to use the term because it is technical…but you are familiar with the concept if you have been around…I usually call it “The already/not yet kingdom of God.”
Inaugurated means “it has started” “already began…but not completed”
Eschatology refers to the study of the end.
The final stage in God’s work to bring his kingdom come, his will be done.
Biblically the Kingdom of God has come already…at Christ’s first advent.
We now live in the last days…the end…the eschaton…has begun.
But the Kingdom will come in fulness…at his second advent, his return.
We live in the middle of the end.
We experience life in the kingdom now in our lives and our churches as we are changed and being changed by the gospel…and then we seek to bring change in the world around us.
*Doing good work at work. Loving our families. Mentoring kids or fostering children. Helping immigrants. Building the local church. Sending people overseas. Investing in the hurting.
In all of this…sharing the gospel.
The Kingdom of God has come, but it has not come in completeness…we live between the advents or coming of Christ…we live in the already/not yet kingdom.
This is inaugurated eschatology.
Now, to the view that confuses things, it is called “A realized eschatology”
Or, a utopian view of life now.
“Realized means”…we expect the Kingdom in all of its full power and experience right now.
Rather than “already/not yet”
It is “already”
Church life should be perfect…our lives should be more perfect…we should not experience disease, discomfort…we should have constant experiences of peace, pleasure, success.
It should be easier to get along with each other…we should agree more.
The church should be changing the world in more visible, perceptible ways.
If you bring this utopian, realized eschatology to Peter (Bible as a whole)…you will be unable to make sense out of what he is writing.
And you will be continually disillusioned by the world…it won’t make sense.
It’s one common cause of people leaving their faith or reinterpreting their faith to match their experience.
Peter is writing when trouble is brewing for the church…and terrible, widespread suffering is about to come.
Emperor Nero is about to look for a scapegoat for his political problems and his gaze will fall on the church.
He will literally use the bodies of Christians to light his gardens and other horrific trials are coming for these Christians.
If they believe that becoming Christians means the Kingdom has come in fullness now…they will be unprepared for the world as it is…and is about to become.
So, he will write to them,
“… prepare your minds for action; be self-controlled; set your hope fully on the grace to be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed.” 1:13
And so, now…
live in harmony with one another; be sympathetic, love as brothers, be compassionate and humble
And…
I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world, to abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul. 12 Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.
And…
“Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed.” 4:12,13
A realized eschatology does not make for resilient Christians…the opposite is true.
It makes us surprised at the trouble we face, it is strange and unexpected to us.
It makes us disillusioned when relationships are not perfect and we when don’t agree on everything and we are not making headlines for changing the world.
The church in the time of Peter was changing the world…in dramatic ways…but it was off the cultural radar.
The headlines it made was to be accused of depravity, anti-government sentiments, and of setting the fire that destroyed much of Rome in AD 64.
Nero used that fire to scapegoat and murder Christians and to try and halt their growing influence.
Peter likely wrote his letter around AD 63…they needed gospel hope for what was coming, and coming very soon.
That is always what the church needs most…gospel truth applied in their lives.
The Boxer rebellion in China in 1900 was an anti-foreigner/anti-Christian movement…where many Christians were killed.
Some Christians were shocked and disillusioned because they did not believe this could happen to the church…specifically they believed that the church would be raptured and not go through a terrible tribulation.
Well, this was localized, not global, but it was terrible tribulation for those who lost their lives.
Peter wants the church to be prepared…so he focuses them on timeless truth for their lives.
Now, let’s go back to Peter’s introduction to his letter.
Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, To those who are elect exiles of the Dispersion.
Peter was an apostle, which is an eye witness to the resurrection of Christ.
This is not his bragging rights…but his qualifications for writing with authority.
His words are the very words of God…what he knows, he knows directly from the Son of God.
Peter isn’t giving an initial presentation of the gospel in this letter…the gospel of Mark had already been written and circulated by this time…Peter probably had a hand in helping Mark write it.
He was writing to deepen the church’s understanding of the application of the gospel to their lives.
He was writing to a church made up of Non-Jewish converts to Christ in regions of what is modern Turkey.
He calls them “elect exiles” or “God’s elect, strangers in the world” or “Sojourners”
You can see some of Peter’s personal gospel transformation in this description of his readers.
He formerly struggled to come to grips with non-Jews being accepted by God…he had long term bias built into his heart and mind.
Now he understands that the gospel/good news is for everyone…and these believers are the elect of God…Gentiles are also God’s chosen people.
They are in fact, “elect exiles of the dispersion”
The word is “diaspora”
That word is familiar to us…it means the dispersion of a people from their homeland.
It was used of the Jewish people after they were first exiled from their homeland and scattered in the world in 587 BC.
There is a Ukrainian diaspora going on because of Russia’s horrible aggression.
What is interesting is that these believers in Turkey were, like my friend in NY…likely to not have traveled very far from the place they were born.
Yet they are called, the elect diaspora…exiles in a foreign land.
They are no longer in their true homes…they are sojourners.
They have been made citizens of another country.
We will see that this means they are more, not less, positioned to change the world around them.
You cannot change what you are addicted to, or trapped in…you can only really change the world when you no longer need it and its approval.
The more we live as strangers here…the more impact we can have.
This counter-intuitive.
It is commonly believed that people with minds set on heaven…do little good on earth.
But it is only those whose minds and hearts are set on their eternal home…who are positioned to do lasting good in space and time…this has proven true historically.
Christians have built hospitals, brought written language, fought to end slavery…and many other important changes empowered by eternal perspective.
If this life is all you have…then you have no permanent home…just this temporary one.
You are an exile with no homeland…when you run out of time, you are finished.
There are three main approaches to life now (and many variations on these themes)…one we will call addiction, another detachment, and the third “sojourner”
1. Addiction is what you most commonly see in our culture.
-One author describes this approach using the myth of Tantalus…we get our word tantalizing from the same root.
In the myth, Tantalus was made to stand in a pool of water beneath a fruit tree with low branches, with the fruit ever eluding his grasp, and the water always receding before he could take a drink.
This is the addiction approach to life on earth…”How much is enough? A little more.”
Satisfaction…is always out of reach.
2. The detachment approach is seen in the Buddha…his hands are often portrayed as folded…he is not reaching out like Tantalus…he is “content”
But the contentment is actually resignation…that’s not the same thing.
Life is suffering and the cure is to eliminate desire…if I don’t care, I don’t suffer.
3. Sojourner means that we are to, as Jesus said, be in the world but not of the world.
We are able to experience contentment in growing fashion…while enjoying the world as God has designed it to be enjoyed.
When we experience trouble and suffering…we do not detach.
We enter into suffering with Christ and others…this life matters and suffering is real.
At the same time…the loss of health, wealth, or even life itself is not the end of good…we are, after all, sojourners, not permanent citizens here.
So, Peter, the eyewitness to the resurrection of Christ…writing to “chosen sojourners” says they have been chosen…
2 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:
The Foreknowledge of God…is not meant to lead then into the theological laboratory…but to prepare them for comfort and confidence in real life.
I’m not saying the discussions of God’s sovereignty and human choice are not important…I’m saying they are not the main point here.
The main point here is comfort…and real-world perspective
For a people about to be burned alive for their faith…there is little comfort in nuanced discussions of theology.
Truth matters…and the truth is…
“You are God’s chosen people, exiles in this land that you only thought was home…your now hostile home and all of your suffering…is in accordance with the foreknowledge and fatherly love of God for his own dear people.”
He packs the reality of the Triune God…Father, Spirit, Son…and the timeless work of this Triune God in our lives…into this single sentence.
2 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:
1. They are elect exiles according to the foreknowledge of God…you are God’s chosen people…don’t be fooled by what is happening and about to happen that may appear to indicate otherwise.
*We all know that when trouble comes…we can easily lose our bearings.
Years ago, I read a book called “Against All Hope” it is the memoir of a man who spent 22 years in Castro’s Cuban prison system…he was imprisoned not for a crime, but by a criminal who was in charge of the country.
As was and is often the case in communist regimes.
He writes of terrible suffering and the persecution of Christians…and of incredible acts of grace and courage and faith and sacrifice.
His title comes from Romans 4 “Against all hope, in hope, Abraham believed.”
Gotta love that…against all hope, in hope…he believed.
This perspective…has empowered Christians to suffer and remain faithful through the ages.
A real hope now…a full hope is yet to come.
2. As his chosen people…he will faithfully finish the work he began in us…it is for us to cooperate and collaborate
Sanctification is the lifelong project empowered by the Holy Spirit in line with our ongoing choices to be conformed more and more to become like Jesus.
We are chosen by God, sanctified by the Spirit…to live lives of obedience to Christ.
Obedience is more about opportunity than obligation.
We “get to” live lives of obedience.
We get to live lives that align with God’s good purposes for our lives.
And when we fail to obey…we get to experience ongoing forgiveness.
This phrase…”Sprinkling with his blood”…refers to the ongoing experience of forgiveness that Christians need and receive as we move through life.
Again, our experience of salvation is already/not yet.
We have already been fully forgiven.
We have already been empowered for obedience.
But we will not yet fully obey…we are not yet fully changed.
So we don’t turn the opportunity of obedience into merely the obligation of obedience…of course it is both.
But we must see it as a gift, an opportunity to obey.
To live we must eat…it is an obligation.
If you are hungry and are offered food…that obligation feels much more like opportunity.
We are to see our calling to obedience that way.
We have already been changed.
We are not yet fully changed or fully obedient.
We will continue to sin (we don’t see this an excuse but rather as a reality)…so we must continue to turn to Christ for ongoing forgiveness.
Even the most mature Christian is painfully aware of remaining sin (and maybe for the more mature, the more they are aware of their own sin).
So, God’s purpose of “obedient to Jesus” will never be completely fulfilled in this life…but thankfully, we have the continual forgiveness of Christ in our lives.
Then he concludes his introduction with a common NT blessing:
May grace and peace be multiplied to you.
This is a favorite combination of the OT blessing of “peace” coupled with the NT blessing of “grace.”
Peter hopes and prays that God’s peace (in spite of coming troubles) and God’s unmerited favor would be multiplied and fill all of their moments.
Now…Peter, has them (us) ready…he is saying…”Okay, let’s dig in.”
CONCLUSION
John in one of his letters, beautifully ties together the themes of: Obedience to Jesus, ongoing forgiveness, and sweet relationships between one another like this…
But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin. 1 John 1:7
This is the life God wants for us…there is no perfection here (we need ongoing forgiveness) but there is a settled direction…and walking in the light leads to walking together.
Ongoing fellowship and forgiveness with Christ.
Ongoing fellowship and forgiveness with one another.
PRAYER
GOD, we give thanks as your chosen sojourners in the world…according to your eternal will and through the ongoing transformation to become like Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, for the purpose of full obedience to Jesus Christ…with full assurance of ongoing cleansing and acceptance when we fail. May the grace and peace of God be multiplied in every moment of our lives…amen