from God's Word. 1 Peter 2 verses 11 and 12, this is God's Word. Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation. All right, let's pray. Dear Father, thank you for all the blessings that we have in your son, Christ, to have an identity that's associated with his. I thank you that you are near to us, that we can know you, that you gave us your word so that we can have wisdom for this life and get to know who you are and that you love us. Thank you for choosing us and making us your people. Help us to glorify you, to serve you as a royal priesthood. Help us to be light to the world that you bled for, that you purchased. And please help us, inspire us this morning to fight our selfishness and to live winsome lives for the glory of your gospel. In your name, amen. Please be seated. All right, so if you were to take last week's passage and to isolate it and to look at it not knowing anything else about the rest of 1 Peter, you might find today's passage a bit of a surprising follow-on statement. So last week, Rick preached to us about our high calling, the blessed identity that we have as Christians. We are a royal priesthood and a holy nation that's chosen by God. We are God's people. So at face value this alone would seem to imply prestige and power, royalty and divine blessing and respect from everyone here on earth. But as we know from experience and from the rest of scripture, even though we are royal and holy and divinely chosen in God's eyes, we are sojourners, exiles and evildoers in the eyes of the world. So this dichotomy of Christian identity And also the themes that we'll see evident in our passage this morning, including trials, sojourning, maligning, spiritual warfare. These are all captured masterfully by the allegory of Pilgrim's Progress. So just by a show of hands, who has read or listened to Pilgrim's Progress before? Okay, good, a good group has. So if you haven't, I strongly recommend that you do. Several prominent Christian leaders have referred to it as the most influential book that they've read second to the Bible. And Charles Spurgeon himself actually read it over a hundred times. So for those who haven't read Pilgrim's Progress, it's an allegory that was written by John Bunyan in 1678, and it revolves around a man named Christian. His initial problem is that he has a huge burden on his back, which is the weight of sin. He reads in a book that he should flee the city that he's from, which is the city of destruction, and seek another one, the celestial city. So Christian embarks on a dangerous journey to seek relief from the burden and also to find the celestial city. On this journey, he meets many different people, both foes and friends. And what I like about it is John gives them the name that describes their character. So you meet someone like Mr. Worldly Wise Man, for example. The book does a great job at capturing the essence of the Christian walk and spiritual struggles while also remaining well-written and entertaining. So for families with young children, I'd actually recommend there's a Little Pilgrim's Progress. It's written in 1947, and it's a target audience of 6 to 12-year-olds. And I brought a couple extra copies. We were doing some cleaning, and we had extra copies of both Adult and Little Children's Pilgrim Progress. So let me know if you want one. But if you do read the unabridged adult version, expect to find yourself occasionally saying to friends and family, whence came you and whither are you bound? It's this fun language. And here's a quick parenting life hack for you. Next time you're out hiking with your children, they're tired, and you're at the bottom of a hill, just tell them, thou must ascend and conquer the hill of difficulty. And that'll really help a lot, I think, so. Alright, so I have three main points for you this morning as shown in your outline. First is that the world is not your home. Second is to crucify your flesh. Third is do good that glorifies God and shattered, slanderous stereotypes. So before we dive into any of these points though, I want us all to dwell on the passage as a whole and really draw out some meaning before we get into any of the specifics. So we're going to spend about 10 minutes in kind of like a group Bible study format, do some exegesis together to analyze some of the particulars in the passage. And this is going to help us get at the meaning and then draw out some applications from it. So I decided to try a little bit different delivery method here to facilitate it. Also, I'm sure that everyone's had plenty of turkey lately. So a former pastor of mine used to refer to today as tryptophan Sunday. So I have some slides to help you follow along and also help you stay awake. So let's begin with the passage on the screen above. I switched up some backgrounds, hopefully it's legible. But we're gonna go through four slides on this passage. Each one's gonna cover a different emphasis that'll be listed at the bottom of the slide. So we'll go over passion, people, practice, and purpose. And each of these is gonna build on our understanding of the passage. And I've color-coded some of the different steps, so hopefully you can get the whole big picture and focus in on specifics. And then we have some zoom-ins for those in the back. So hopefully this all works out. So let's start by looking at Peter's passion on the next slide. So the first few words of verse 11, they communicate the passion behind Peter's statement. So the word for beloved is actually agapitos, which you might recognize as being derived from the word agape. which is typically used to refer to divine love. So Peter here is calling his readers divinely loved or dear and beloved of God. It's the same word that God actually used to refer to Jesus, his son. And the second term that we see that communicates Peter's passion is the word urge. And even though urge is a pretty strong word for us, we don't really have a great word in English that actually captures the sincerity and strength that Peter's using in his term. But some of the other words that we might use are besiege, beg, or implore. But you can get a sense that Peter's writing from a deep connection with them and about matters that are critically important. But before Peter tells them what to do, he anchors his instruction in their identity. So let's go to the next slide. The word as, which appears at the beginning here, is not used to make a comparison or an analogy. It's used as an explanation. Peter is saying, because you are sojourners and exiles, this is what you're to do. So let's think about these two terms a little bit further here. So I thought the definition of sojourner from Help's word study was insightful. They said, Someone that's passing through but still in personal relationship with the people of that locale. This temporary but active relationship is made necessary by circumstances. And the term exile is a pretty similar one. It's translated as foreigner, alien, or stranger. It literally means someone that lives alongside of others but not permanently. So Peter's reminding his audience that they were temporary residents and pilgrims that are just passing through. They didn't belong here. So this pilgrim perspective has double meaning. First is that they were foreigners to society, that they were in the sense that they are actually from a different land. Most of them were probably from Rome. And this is the same word that's used in the Greek Old Testament in the Septuagint, where Abraham says that I'm a foreigner. I don't have any land. I need somewhere to bury Sarah. So he's saying he's from a different place. He's traveling through, he doesn't own anything. The second meaning is that believers are aliens to this world because we're citizens of heaven. This world is not our home. We are pilgrims only passing through. And as Peter's letter received greater circulation, Christians in later centuries and even today, we look at this as the primary meaning, the spiritual understanding. Christians from all cultures and times are able to identify with this concept of being a spiritual sojourner, irrespective of our standing in society. So Peter's audience, they didn't belong by social or by theological standards. And so Peter goes on to employ these religious rejects to practice biblical behavior. And that's on our next slide. So Peter, he urges his readers to abstain from fleshly passions and to keep honorable conduct. And these are not separate ideas. They're actually connected. So I know a lot of Bible translations will insert a period here between verse 11 and verse 12, but this shouldn't be a break in thought, actually. It's the same thing, same purpose behind them. And the KJV actually captures this with a semi-colon and the Berean literal Bible does it with a comma. But the reason why this is important is because it's not only keeping good conduct that builds a witness, it's also abstaining from fleshly passions to not compromise your witness. So the word that's used here for abstain is to distance, or to stay far away. This is a lot more forceful than just resist. Resisting would be like going into a bakery and coming out with a coffee, but not buying a donut. But abstaining would be walking on the other side of the street, not even going past the bakery. So there's a difference there. The reason to stay away is because the fleshly passions actually serve as soldiers against your soul. Each passion is a soldier intent on killing your soul. So Peter tells his readers to stay far from sin and to maintain a winsome manner of life. So the words honorable and good in our passage here, they come from the same Greek word, and it means beautiful, attractive, and winsome. So they aren't just to shun sin and to do good because that's what good Christians should do. They're avoiding to taint their witness, and then they want to make Christ attractive by having attractive behavior. And so this leads into our purpose on the next slide. So Peter has told these divinely loved spiritual strangers that they are to behave differently because they are different. And because they are different, both culturally and religiously, they're more closely observed. So Peter tells the Christians to capitalize on being watched and to live a life that's free of debauchery and to live a life that's marked by a winsome manner of living. The goal is to silence the Gentiles' slander and to win them over. Consistent, honorable, and beautiful conduct will cause the indigenous population to believe that God is valuable, to esteem him as such. Scottish preacher Alexander McLaren, he wrote, the world takes its notions of God, most of all, from the people who say they belong to God's family. And I'm sure you've heard, they read us a great deal more often than they read the Bible. So some Gentiles who lived among and watched Peter's audience here, they did convert to the faith. They glorified God on the day of visitation. And I think at first reading, our tendency is, for most of us, is to assume day of visitation equals day of judgment, because we do know that in the end, every person will bow their knee to Jesus. But this is different, actually. The word for glorification here indicates a voluntary heart change of actually esteeming God as valuable. Not forcefully submitting, but esteeming Him as worthy. And you might recognize the word on the slide above, episcopate, as a word from which bishop is derived. And it means overseership and visitation. And it's only used in two other places in the New Testament actually. So first when Jesus remarked that Jerusalem did not recognize the time of their visitation, this first visit wasn't judgment. It was to bring salvation when God drew near to them and they missed it. And then the second time it's used is in 1 Timothy 3, chapter one, which talks about overseership, which is synonymous with eldership. So here we get a picture of attending to the souls of people. So the word episcopate, it's also used in the Septuagint to describe when God personally intervenes bringing either wrath or grace. So Peter is saying that when some behavior will prepare Gentiles to glorify God, when he draws near to them, to call their soul to account. When God examines their soul, they will respond in faith. So let's go to the next slide. So to summarize here, and I realized this one's small font, Peter's passion comes through in calling them beloved of God and imploring them. Peter reminds them of their identity in the world's eyes and then also in God's eyes. He tells them to keep away from their fleshly passions, but to have winsome conduct And the whole purpose is so that the Gentiles might believe. So if we return to your bulletin outline, hopefully that was time well spent, that we can now tie our main points and applications back to our passage. And if you look, number one is because you are foreigners and exiles, this world is not your home. Number two is because fleshly passions wage war on your soul, you must crucify your flesh to abstain from sin. And then third, because unbelievers are watching and evaluating your faith, you need to practice good that glorifies God and stops slanderous stereotyping. So starting with number one, I think the main application for Western Christianity is, if the world is not your home, then stop acting like it is. Far too many churches and organizations are buying into the lie that you can still be cool and culturally successful in a mildly Christian manner. They'll say, you can live the worldly American dream just with a sprinkling of Christianity and give 10%, the rest for you. The Christian satire website, you may have heard of it, Babylon Bee, they capture this influence of materialism on Christianity in an article that says, hymnal lyric updated with, I surrender some, which I thought was telling. So the Bible is clear that following Christ involves a lifestyle of sacrifice that is radically different than of the world. The Bible is also clear that the world remains a snare to believers after belief. When the Bible uses the term world, it's referring to everything that is natural to depraved mankind and hostile toward God. And every Christian was once part of this world, but we must part ways with the world and can't conform to it. James admonished his worldly readers in chapter four, verse four, saying, do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. The world's value system and God's precepts are their polar opposites. You cannot please both of them. And John warned his readers against loving the world. In 1 John 2, verses 15 through 16, he said this, do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes and pride and possessions is not from the father, but is from the world. So these three things, lust, coveting, and materialism are snares to Christians. And John Bunyan illustrates this in Pilgrim's Progress by using Vanity Fair. It's a place that's full of worldly treasures and pleasures and entertainment. It's a place where many former pilgrims gave up and they took up residence to enjoy its goods and stopped pursuing the celestial city. The world is a powerful snare and it's caused many Christians to be ineffective and completely neutralize their witness, even for the spiritually mature. We have an example in the Bible. If you remember Demas, he worked alongside Paul for some time. He made it into the letters of, into Colossians and Philemon, but Paul's last mention of Demas is not a complimentary one. He says, for Demas, in love with this present world has deserted me. So I want you to think about this. If the first century world was enough of a snare to derail a co-laborer of Paul, then certainly America today is enough to derail us. In summary, because Christians do not belong to the world, they should not conform to it or blend in with it. We believers are spiritual pilgrims, each at different places in our journey, but I hope that Hebrews 13, 14 describes each of us here. For here we do not have a lasting city, but we are seeking the city which is to come. So I wanna spend five minutes on a few applications that we can make knowing that we're spiritual sojourners. First, a sojourner's heart's desire is to be at home. That's where they find fulfillment. That's where their thoughts and their affections will lie. Colossians 3.2 says, set your mind on things above, not on earthly things. So what do you set your mind on? What do you seek? Is it your eternal home or things of this world? So when life seems calm and you can kind of step back and relax, you allow yourself to daydream and plan, what is it that you think of? Is it possessions, pleasure, people, or paradise? Is it the next thing that you want to remodel in your home? Or the truck that you're saving up to buy? Is it possessions? Or is it where your next trip will be? Or the next adventure to take? Or that new hunting rifle you want? Is it pleasure? Or about the next promotion you're angling for at work? Or how you're going to boast about something on Facebook, but not make it look like boasting? Is it the praise of people? Or is it the return of your Lord and Savior, who will usher in a new age, removing pain and triviality from this world? Is it about the life that's to come? The one that's eternal where our own accomplishments quickly fade away? Is it paradise? Now, being ensnared by the world doesn't just mean wanting expensive things. It means finding fulfillment in worldly things and worldly experiences, and it's gonna look different for everyone. So the temptation for me, honestly, to be sucked into the world is not connected to possessions, but to nonstop fun. That's my weakness. So my selfish dream instead of retirement would be to convert a sprinter van into a camper and to live for weeks on end near a national park or climbing area. But Ruth is quick to kill that in me and will pretend it's her spiritual discernment holding me accountable to live in Christian community. And that's why it is. But what about you though? What is it that your heart longs for and how do you correct it? So in Pilgrim's Progress, the strength and consistency in which Christian sets his focus on the celestial city, it's directly connected to the frequency and sincerity that he reads the book he was given. A second observation about pilgrims is that they travel light. Sojourners did not own property. They did not acquire many possessions and settle in. Travelers merely seek temporary lodging as they steadily pursue their journey to their final home. They take along only what's necessary and helpful to assist them on their journey. So if we're spiritual pilgrims seeking a permanent home in heaven, then we shouldn't become encumbered with things of the world. We should keep and seek only those things that help us to faithfully follow Christ and to lead others to him. And then a third observation about pilgrims is that they aim to arrive. They don't stop short of their destination. And Paul often wrote of the spiritual discipline that was needed to fight the good fight, to finish the race, to walk worthily, to arrive. It takes effort, continue to pressing on. You can't just drift toward your destination. In Pilgrim's Progress, some pilgrims became content with their current circumstances and they stopped short of their journey. They fell asleep in what's called the enchanted grounds. It's near the end of the journey, right before you cross the river to go to the celestial city. So that's allegorical for right before you die, this is near the end of your life, when things are easier. And it says, at the enchanted grounds, life was easy and pleasant. So the pilgrims fell asleep, never to continue their journey, content just to rest. I suppose there's a number of applications for this, but one could be about believers that are pretty far along in the journey of life that are comfortable and have retired. Not just from vocational work, but from most roles and responsibilities in life. Retired from life in general, and just kind of on cruise control, not investing in or ministering to others, and no longer growing themselves. And if we are spiritual sojourners, we can't take our foot off the gas pedal. We will be journeying until our time on earth is done. Paul said he had not yet arrived. He told Timothy he had not yet arrived. You will not yet arrive, so don't stop, sure. And during this journey, we will continually be under siege by our passions of our flesh. So let's look at the second point in our outline. Because fleshly passions wage war on your soul, our battle strategy is to crucify the flesh and to abstain from it. So these passions of the flesh, they're our own sinful desires that come from within us. It's our formal default disposition. It's what our minds and our bodies were used to. Verse nine says that we were called out of darkness. That's where we resided. And while our souls have been redeemed, our bodies and minds haven't been made new yet. Our body still remembers the old habits and our minds still retained all that baggage. So we need to combat these desires by crucifying them. You can't just ignore them because they're inside you. Your own flesh is producing these passions to wage war on your soul. And Satan wants us to fail. He has a different plan than God. He doesn't want us to be light and winsome. So he attempts to ensnare us with sin. And Satan knows and exploits our weaknesses. So he seizes ideal opportunities to send in his soldiers. So these soldiers, they have many different names. We may call them greed, lust, anger, hatred, gossip, bitterness, laziness, jealousy, and so on. But their skill and their strength, it'll vary depending on its victim and their circumstances. For example, if a husband and a wife have been fighting and divided for some time, Satan's sure to send in the soldier of lust. And if a dad, let's perhaps call him Jeff, returns home from his family after a long and stressful day at work, Satan's likely gonna send in the soldier of impatience and harshness. This strategy, I think, is described pretty well by C.S. Lewis in his book, The Screwtape Letters. So how do we fight off these soldiers? Well, Peter's answer is not by hand-to-hand combat, but to starve them out. Peter tells his readers, he tells them to abstain or to distance themselves, not to engage, but to keep away, to starve them out. So the bakery analogy I gave earlier probably seems a little too simplistic. So to make it more convicting, at least for me, let's replace the donut with lust and the bakery with movies. So trying to resist eating a donut would be like watching an R-rated movie and just saying, I'll look away at the inappropriate parts. Avoiding the bakery would be like watching The Princess Bride instead. But let's be honest, though. When Hollywood rates a movie PG-13, they're not making lust any less likely. The point's not that you can't watch R-rated movies or PG-13 movies. It's to be conscious of what content will be there and how likely you are to be affected by it. It'll depend on the movie, and it'll depend on your spiritual condition. But don't play with fire. It's better to distance yourself from temptation than to welcome in its friends and try and resist it. So you must kill these desires because they seek to kill you. Our goal is what Paul told the Galatians in chapter 5 verse 4, he said, those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. And I was thinking about this and I think one of the strongest tactics that a Christian can employ to starve out their own fleshly desires is to frequently recall that we belong to God and we have His Spirit in us. To realize that this life is not about us and that we have His Spirit on our side. And that's what Paul told the Corinthians on why they should flee immorality. It's in chapter 6, 19 through 20, he says, or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit within you whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. And you have been bought with a price, the greatest price that has ever been paid. The divine blood of Jesus, son of God and co-creator of the universe, he gave his life to redeem you. Not to free you, but to purchase you. So when you receive his forgiveness, you belong to him. And life isn't about you anymore. And the sooner we can realize this and stop living for ourselves, many fleshly struggles will lose their hold on us. Lust will weaken because your mind won't be able to say, ah, my spouse has been harsh and cold for a long time. I'm stressed, I deserve to feel better. Greed won't have a foothold because now your treasure's in heaven. Anger won't have opportunity. This was, I think, I can't remember who told me this. This was a good summary. Most causes of anger can be simplified to the statement, I don't like what just happened to me. So if we can remove me or self-centeredness from the equation, we will find that we can endure much more difficulty than if we were to try to live a Christianized version of a self-focused life. So it comes down to a battle with pride and selfishness. And it's one that Pilgrim's Progress depicted as Christian fighting, an intense battle with Apollyon, who interestingly enough was the most hideous and the worst foe he faced, and that's himself. And the battle lasted for over half a day in the Valley of Humiliation. But we do not fight this battle alone. God gave you his very own spirit. He indwells you as a personal divine counselor. And with the Holy Spirit, every struggle can be conquered. Actually trusting that you can have victory over each struggle is half of the battle. And I wish we had more time to dwell on some strategies for spiritual warfare, but we don't. So I'll just recommend one book that I found really helpful. It's called Victory Over the Darkness. It's by Neil Anderson. And it's a great study on our identity in Christ and what that means for us right now in the present. So with that, Let's transition from abstaining from fleshly passions to maintaining good conduct. They do share a joint purpose though, to live a distinct and winsome lifestyle that prepares unbelievers for belief. So let's look at our third point in that line again. All right, because unbelievers are watching and evaluating your faith, practice good that glorifies God and stops slanderous stereotyping. So Peter's goal with believers is twofold. I should have brought that over here. So with believers is twofold, that they would have inner purity and outer fruitfulness. And he also has a twofold purpose with unbelievers to silence and convert critics. So our lifestyle is to make our evangelism believable. So let's start out by considering some of the things that Peter's readers were accused of and how they reversed their reputation. So there were a number of grave misunderstandings and untrue evil stereotypes in the first century. Some of them are almost humorous how crazy they are, but this included that Christians used to kill children and drink their blood and eat their flesh during the Lord's supper. Also, they used to believe that Christians practice incest because they referred to each other as brother and sister. that they were atheists because they refused to worship the state gods, that they were prone to political insurrection because they wouldn't participate in rituals that honored the emperor, and that they wanted to lead slaves into rebellion because Christianity elevated them, gave them a new dignity in life, and threatened their social structure. So when the pagans were slandering the Christians as evildoers, these were some pretty sinister accusations, but they were ones that were easier to counter. So Peter gave them some practical ways in his letter on how they can debunk the slander, which is shown on the slide above. So the red text shows the actions and attitudes that would debunk the slander, and the green text shows how it glorifies God. So I'm not gonna read these, but perhaps you can just skim the red and green words. These statements here that follow our passage in chapter two, they deal with submitting to authority. So honoring the emperor, obeying human institutions, servants respecting their masters, all of this serves to silence any slander about Christians being insurrectionists or leading slaves into rebellion. And then we see the next chapter, the statements in chapter three, they deal with marriage and personal interactions. These instructions are not merely just biblical advice on how to have a happy marriage, though this is part of that, but it's how your marriage can be distinct and how it can showcase the gospel to the lost. So these relational instructions are informed by our passage, So verses 11 through 12, they introduce the practical body of the letter and they serve as a call to mission mindedness and to lifestyle evangelism. Some other actions that the Christians became known for included burying the dead, caring for the sick and dying and ministering to the poor. So what's the application for us today though? None of us here have ever been accused of incest, eating children or inciting political rebellion, but there are plenty of negative stereotypes of Christians, and ones that I think are a little more difficult to combat, because some of them have a fair amount of truth to them. So the first way to combat stereotypes is to clean up our act, to exhibit inner purity. And I think that many unbelievers would agree with Gandhi's statement, I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ. And that's why abstaining from passions of the flesh is so important. One of the most frequently cited criticisms of Christianity today is that we're hypocrites. So when you are watched closely, it just doesn't take that much to ruin your witness. Someone with many good deeds can instantly ruin their witness and sin. When you meet someone for the first time, they don't have an opinion of you, it's neutral. It'd be like you're an empty glass vase, but your continued good conduct over time would be likened to slowly filling this vase with an eyedropper, just drop and drop of clear water as they start to see who you are. Eventually, the water fills the vase, and it's appealing. It looks refreshing. But a single egregious sin, no matter how brief, can ruin your entire witness just like dumping in a cup of black coffee into that vase. You can't remove the coffee. It's mixed in. Your reputation's irreparably damaged. Your only recovery option in the long term is to slowly continue adding clear water, diluting the stain, displacing it slowly bit by bit. Eventually the water will clear up, but never crystal clear again. And however, it'll take much longer to reach clear water than it did to fill it up in the first place. And I think that is what happens far too often with some Christian leaders in sexual sin. A whole decade of effective ministry can be ended in a moment when a sexual scandal is revealed. And the time that it takes to rebuild that reputation is often much longer than it took to build the first time, and few people stick around long enough to try. So Peter, he's imploring his readers. He's begging them to stay far away from sin, lest they give unbelievers any reason to continue in their unbelief. The second way to combat the stereotypes is to be winsome, to exhibit outer fruitfulness. German philosopher, Heine, he posed this to Christians as a challenge. He said, show me your redeemed life and I might be inclined to believe in your Redeemer. So to win the world, there has to be some common ground of what is good. Our good behavior must have some sort of overlap with what society recognizes as good and have a benefit to them. So this would exclude morning devotionals, volunteering at Awana, leading a home Bible study, preaching, doing work projects at church, And while all of these are good things and we need to do them, our Christian activities alone cannot serve as a sufficient witness to an unbelieving world. They could rightfully ask, well, why should I care about all the religious stuff that you do? And while society wouldn't appreciate us burying the dead like the first century, anyone in our culture would respect charitable giving and caring of the poor, orphans and the widows. But I wanted to take a few minutes to think about what are some good things that we can do as Christians to counter specific stereotypes in our culture here. So here's a very brief list on how we can combat criticisms that I've heard and you've probably heard too. So in response to the only book they ever read is the Bible, and most of them don't even know their Bible, well, invite them to a book club, read a non-Christian book, discuss your worldview and support it with scripture. In response to Christians, in response to people who say Christians only want to prevent abortion, but they don't care about the baby after it's born, show them statistics of Christian adoption and foster care. Apparently Christians adopt twice more often than non-Christians. We can certainly do better, but it's not as though we're doing nothing. And then also tell them of the opportunities where you can volunteer at Alternatives Pregnancy Center, which also offers post-abortion counseling. In response to Christians are closed off, cliquish, and ingrown, well, invite people into your life, not just for dinner, though that's part of it too. Expose them to other Christians as well. Just do life with them. Invite them to your Christmas parties, go on hikes, Take them on camping trips, go to the zoo with them, play in the creek, play golf, sporting events, whatever it is. Go trick-or-treating with your neighborhood. Don't stay in your basement. Don't segregate and view the lost as this is ministry time, and then the saved or your believing friends as this is fellowship time. Love both of them. Enjoy both of them. It's not as though unbelievers are unenjoyable. And then be generous with your time and your money. Give legitimate Easter baskets with good stuff in them and not just a Bible and tracks. Shovel driveways, give Christmas cookies. We could create a huge list of outreach ideas, but I don't think our effectiveness is limited by our creativity. I think it's far more tied to if we genuinely care for them. And I really wish I had five minutes to share on how we view the loss, how that actually affects our effectiveness in reaching them, but I had to cut a lot of material. So I only have one minute to say this, but basically you can't be winsome toward the people you slander. And when we're looking at this passage here, this isn't saying your neighbor, who's an unbeliever, who also likes you. These are people that are calling you evildoers. And Christians need to stop slandering those who slander us. And I cannot count how many times I've heard Christians slam those crazy left-winged liberals. And yes, I disagree with them, but have you forgotten they still belong to the darkness? Satan is actively blinding their minds and he has a stronghold on their souls. They are lost and without hope, just like we once were. Similar to how Christian was trapped in the swell of despond, their condition is one to be pitied, not sandblasted. So don't add earthly insult to eternal injury. The battle's not with them, it's with the devil. Says in Ephesians, we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but we wrestle against the cosmic powers over this present darkness. Therefore, I encourage you, don't view them as an opponent, but instead as a destitute image bearer, the lost are also made in God's image. They just haven't yielded to him. So to summarize a point on winning over critics, to have the greatest impact, you have to have genuine concern and personal investment in their lives. There's no replacement for the disarming power of hospitality and personal care towards someone that doesn't like you or what you represent. So I'll conclude with an illustration of transforming hospitality. It's about a woman who was brought to belief by Christians living out our passage here and who has also brought others to the faith by her own example of living out this passage. Her name's Rosaria Champagne Butterfield, and I suspect that many of the women here probably are familiar with her because Orchard's Book Club actually read her book, Openness, Unhindered, Furthered Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert. So a little background on her. In her late 20s, she adopted a lesbian identity, having been allured by feminist philosophy and LGBT advocacy. She earned her degree, or her PhD, and then served in the English Department and Women's Studies program at Syracuse University from 1992 to 2002. Her primary academic field was critical theory. She specialized in queer theory. She advised the LGBT student group. She wrote Syracuse's policy on same-sex couples. And she actively lobbied for LGBT interests and was an AIDS activist. In 1997, Rosaria launched an attack on the religious right, and she wrote against the Promise Keepers. And a pastor named Ken Smith gently responded to her critical editorial in the local newspaper and offered to meet with her. So what started out, he became a resource on the religious right in the Bible, but then later became a confidant and a friend. Now I wanna read to you what Rosaria wrote herself about being won over by Ken. It says, Ken's Christian community gathered at his house at all hours. I learned this because he invited me in. For two years, I was loved and welcomed by a Christian community that I mocked, despised and rejected. I accepted them when it worked for me and I rejected them all other times. There is simply no way that I would have walked into a church if I hadn't had a genuine friendship with the man behind the pulpit. For two years, I was part of Ken and Foy's ministry. I met with them once a week. At their home, the door was wide open. People were always in and out of the house, people from church and not from church. Heated, genuine conversation would happen. People would speak honestly and tears would flow. It was in this context of hospitality that Ken brought the church to me because it was impossible for me to get to the church without the bridges of somebody's home. So Rosaria, she converted in 1999, so two years later, and that same year is the same year that she became tenured at her job. She described her conversion as a complete train wreck where she lost everything but the dog. She left her partner, her job, her groups, and married a pastor in 2001. She's now an author, a speaker, and a homeschool mom of four kids, and she uses her home daily for radical hospitality and has led many to Christ. The last book she wrote describes their hospitality ministry, and it's titled The Gospel Comes with a House Key, Practicing Radically Ordinary Hospitality in Our Post-Christian World. So that's the story of how God used Ken and Floyd to reach Rosaria and how God uses Rosaria to reach others. But what is your story? What will your winsome life look like? And how will you win the loss? How will you stand apart from the culture by what you do and don't do? So let's pray that the Holy Spirit may give us strength to obey God's word and that he would guide us in opportunities and avenues to draw the lost nearer to him. Would you please stand as we close? Dear Father, we are beyond blessed to be called your children. We don't deserve it and we don't do the title justice, but we are thankful and we ask your spirit to strengthen us to live by your precepts. So that our lives can be an example of who you are and what your love is like. We want to point to you and please forgive us when we point to ourselves. Each of us has different lost people in our lives that we care about that are close to us. And we want them to glorify you when you call them. Your son paid his blood to remove their debt too. So please work through us, opening our hearts and our lives to the lost. Help us to live for others and not for ourselves. In your name, amen.