Today, True Grace is the title of the message, and you'll notice that we have actually come to the end of 1 Peter. At some moments I doubted that we'd ever make it. I crawled through this remarkable letter. Here are the closing comments that Peter gives in this letter that he sent, of course, to scatter congregations, mostly in what we would understand to be Turkey, but they were in other places as well. As I was thinking about it, reflecting and praying about whether or not even to take the time, right? Because is it not true? You look at this. How many of us, when we get to the end of a letter, you just say, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, right? Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. You don't take notice of it. You just figure it's kind of a formula. You just roll right through it. And we do the same thing, of course, with the way we begin letters. You know, dear, blah, blah. And then you get down to it. I thought to myself, you know, as evangelical believers, our stand is that every word that has been written was divinely inspired and preserved. And so, you know, without being obsessive about it, I think it's right at times to stop and say, now just exactly what is it That's being said to us here. I don't want to just zip by and assume that I already know what's been written. So listen, and then I'm going to make some comments. Peter writes, he says, by Sylvanus, a faithful brother, as I regard him, I have written briefly to you, exhorting and declaring that this is the true grace of God. Stand firm in it. She who is at Babylon, who is likewise chosen, sends you greetings, and so does Mark, my son. Greet one another with a kiss of love, peace to all of you who are in Christ. Brief, indeed, not long, but what does he say? What is the Spirit saying to us? First, it struck me as I looked over these few verses, that like Paul, Peter relies on someone else. He says, by Silvanus, a faithful brother as I regard him, I have written briefly. Now, the idea is that Silvanus actually wrote the letter that Paul dictated to him. That was a big deal back then. How many of you are old enough to remember what a typewriter is? How many of you are old enough to remember when a typewriter, you had to insert the little white thing to white out your mistakes? Well, although I'm extraordinarily young for my age, when I was getting my master's, a normal person didn't dream of typing their own paper. You could have no mistakes. And so you hired somebody at a dollar to a dollar fifty a page. Now, we're talking about 50 years ago when a dollar fifty was probably as much as you earned in an hour. Expensive. So, Peter relies on Sylvanus. At that time, Every form of paper was expensive, ink was expensive, and although virtually every Jewish male was taught to read and write, that was part of the Jewish culture, it was not equally true amongst the Gentiles. And so, the capacity to take dictation, the capacity to write, was highly valued. A coveted skill. So, what we're reading here is that Peter relied on Sylvanus. He relied on Sylvanus. And the consequence, you and I are blessed as a result of this, right? You see, if all he had done was spoken, likely the words would have disappeared into the minds of various people and they would have gone on about life, but because it's written down, Peter's words were sent to many places and his work and the consequences of what he did were multiplied. Tremendous multiplication of the effect of what Peter was saying. Paul, if you're familiar with the letters in the New Testament, Paul often gave a list of faithful workers at the end of his letters. Again, I thought some more about this. Did you ever wonder if your name would be listed down at the end of someone's letter? You know, in both the Old and the New Testament, there's a long list of names. If you're like me, there are certain places in the Old Testament, numbers, right? Skip all the way up to certain places in Chronicles, Nehemiah and Ezra, and you say, oh no, it's that chapter. Oh! So-and-so and so-and-so and so-and-so and so-and-so. Why don't they have English names that we could pronounce them and we didn't have to work? Oh, it's just a pain in the neck. Why in the eternal Word of God all these names? Well, there's a variety of ways to think about it, but certainly we cannot miss this. That people are important. to God, individual people. One of the precious truths that's conveyed to us in Hebrews is that the Lord Jesus Christ stands before the Father, interceding for us. And I don't think that Jesus intercedes for the crowd in Oroville. He intercedes for us by name. And so you ask the question, well, why are people important to God? God doesn't need us. He's absolutely self-sufficient in every way. Well, the answer is as easy as can be. He loves us. And when you love someone, you pay attention to them. I suspect that most of us could name our friends' children. The children of our friends are important to us. We love our friends. We love their children. We want to know their names. As you know, my sister-in-law and one of her cousins is here. It's been interesting for me to eavesdrop on their conversation as they talked about growing up. And they talked about, at one point, I won't reveal who, it's never good to reveal anything, but began writing down, now your children's names are, and they're married too, and now they have grandchildren, that's why we die, at some point you just can't keep up with this. So that's a natural thing, that's just a natural thing, we understand that, we understand that. They're important because we love them, but it is scarcely to be wondered that amongst our children, Some will stand out, don't they? Some stand out. Some fulfill our dreams. Others surpass our dreams. And still others follow dreams we never dreamed of. It's not the same with all of the children. But when you love someone, When you love someone, you draw close to them with your heart and you inquire about them with your mind. You want to know. You want to know. You want to know their situation. You want to appreciate what they're going through and so on. We hold some of our children as being remarkable, don't we? Not so much because of what they have done as because of what they have gone through in order to arrive where they are. Now, do you think God is less attentive to us than we are to our own children or the children of our friends? I don't think so. I don't think so. I think that God has a very high level, high profile interest in every single one of us. And we should be conscious of that. And be thankful for it, and there's another consideration as children of the Lord. Are we like Sylvanus? That is, or are we like Peter? Do we have those who magnify our works, making the little we do much more than it would be on its own? Remember, that's what Sylvanus is doing for Peter. And Sylvanus is the guy who's writing down another man's words and then he makes sure that they're in order and then he makes sure they get sent out. And so that's, you know, one of the things that some of you don't know, but I do, and that is Gary Stanzik. How many know Gary Stanzik? Gary Stanzik is one of those obscure people who hides up in the sound room. And every week when he's here, he listens to the whole message and then he edits it and he chops out all of the stupid things I say, which I do now and then, right? And then he makes sure that it is ready in order to be broadcast out onto the Internet. He's a sylvanus to me. He's a sylvanus to me. I think it's worth thinking about, right? Do I have someone who draws alongside of me, whoever I am, right, to magnify, to increase my works and my effectiveness is increased by the fruit of their efforts? Because you can turn that around and I thought it would be good to think about that. Am I one who draws alongside of someone else to magnify their ministry? It works in both ways. And by the way, any person can do both. So that's something to think about. We talk a lot about being the body of Christ. We talk a lot about the fact that we are here called together in order that we would together serve the Lord. And this is being together. This is togetherness in service. That I rely on others and I myself am relied upon. And that shows the dynamic, I think, of interactive grace. Silvanus for Peter and Tertius for Paul were names written down with a thankful heart. Our love for Christ should instill in us to have the aspiration that our name will be written down with thankfulness by those whose lives have been blessed because we were there. So, I think all of that is a worthy set of reflections when Peter writes, by Silvanus I have written. So, you and I might want to reflect upon that and ask if we can take that model, that model that captures God's love for us, God's intention to work through us and both to work through us by ourselves carrying the major load and somebody comes alongside and helps us, or we come alongside somebody else and help them. And if you're not doing either of those things, I think you might want to spend some time on your knees before the Lord and saying, Lord, what am I supposed to be doing? What am I supposed to be doing? How can I be your servant? Now, Peter says he wrote briefly, which is true enough. If you think about some of the other letters and books in the in the New and Old Testament, you know that they can be a lot longer. It's an exhortation, he says. It's a declaration of what he calls he refers to, interestingly, as The true grace of God. The true grace of God. I think we need to read that soberly. If there is a true grace. Then there is also a false. We know that. Grace is defined as unmerited love or the freely given love of God. We know that. Grace is God's freely given love, which, on the basis of Jesus' sacrifice for our sins, forgives sinners. Now notice, if you read your New Testament carefully, the Bible does not just say that God extends forgiveness. What it says is that God has accomplished our redemption through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It's a done deal. Those who are saved by grace live the rest of their lives from within the covenant of God's grace. That's why Jesus says when we partake of the supper, He says, this cup is the new covenant in my blood. And when we partake of that cup in faith, we are participating in the covenant of God's grace. Grace is God's freely given gift. And Jesus says that this gift is designed to reconcile us to God. To reconcile us to him as our judge and our Lord. The two extremely important understandings of the relationship. He is our Savior because he reconciles us to the Father as the one who judges us and the one who is Lord over us. It is a new covenant, not because it is strikingly different from the old, except in one major particular. The old covenant was based on God's grace through the law, as revealed by Moses. You see, when you read the Old Testament, it's essential that you recognize that God, in his grace, liberated Israel from Egypt before he spelled out the law. The law was not given in order that the Israelites would learn how to make themselves righteous and good enough to escape Egypt. The law was given for a very different kind of purpose. What was the purpose of the law? The law was given as the means for sustaining the relationship between Israel and God. God is holy. We need to be a holy people. God saves us when we're trapped in Egypt. Afterwards, He says, now look, if you and I are going to walk along together, we need to be agreed. We need to agree. on how we walk. How many of you are married? A whole lot of people who are living together without benefit of marriage, I say. This is certainly something I'm glad to figure out. If I could call a meeting of the elders, we need to have a conversation, right? That's all right, we'll work it out. My point simply is this, is that, you know, Alright guys, here's a straight story. The woman lays a plan and she captures you. You thought you, not she, yes. Now, when that happens, you come into the marriage and you have just escaped Egypt but you don't know that. You thought you conquered something but you got in and she says, now what's going to have to happen? You and her are going to have to learn how to walk together. Well, you know, those of you who are familiar enough with the Scriptures, you know all I'm doing is I'm simply playing verbally on the Scriptural teaching that the church is the bride of Christ. And so, by His grace, we have been called into a living relationship with Him. But having arrived, as it were, in the house, now we have to figure out how we're going to walk together. And He happens to be in charge. And so, we learn to function according to the law. A holy people who were to live in conformity to the character of God and in dependence upon His promises for ongoing forgiveness, protection, provision, and remaining faithful and not turning to idols or other gods. One of the essentials, right? One of the essentials for a good marriage is knowing how to forgive often. And the same is true with us in God. Knowing how to forgive often. because it's hard to coordinate our desires and our impulses. So the law was given as a means for sustaining the relationship between Israel and God. They were to be a holy people living in conformity to the character of God and so on and so forth. Sadly, if you read the Old Testament, you realize that the Jews failed at virtually every single aspect of what it was that they were called to do. In a sense, though, as we think about the Old and the New Covenant, in the Old Covenant, was an external covenant, for it relied upon an elaborate set of circumstances for continuance. the institutions of the priesthood, worship and the centrality of animal and other sacrifices, along with the establishment of Israel as a distinct nation amidst the nations of the world. All of this then set the Israelites apart so they had an opportunity, they had a chance to live according to a set of rules and prescriptions and principles that made them different than the surrounding nations. They didn't want to be different and they eventually weren't. But when you come then to the New Covenant, we recognize it's new because the essential means for its continuance are now internal rather than external. The New Covenant, which is in Jesus or in Christ, relies above all else on the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit. This is why you have absolutely mandatory to continually refresh and renew your relationship with God through prayer. Not just reading the Word, through prayer. You need to be in communion with God through the Holy Spirit. It is for and by this indwelling, right? what Paul goes on to say. I'm doing strange things. In this spirit he says that we are first of all sealed. This is in Ephesians. Chapter one, we are sealed by the Spirit, that it is through the Spirit that we become new creatures in Christ, that we are able to function on a different set of principles and rules. We rely upon a different source of energy for living our lives. We are preserved. One of the most lovely statements in the Old Testament says that as you walk along the road, that the Spirit of God will tell you, go right, go left. Go right, go left. You'll be listening to the Spirit of God and trusting in His direction. Oftentimes that direction comes to us from people around us. So, we recognize that it's through the Spirit that we are able to grow in grace and truth. Right now, this is not formal, but we have a possibility of beginning something called Celebrate Recovery. An individual is interested in having that get started here. Celebrate Recovery helps people particularly who are overcoming destructive personal behavior. Have you ever tried to overcome destructive personal behavior? Do you know how many times you need to be reminded what you're supposed to do? Again and again. It's like raising a two-year-old. And so, these are the ways in which, these are the resources which are given to us in Christ that we would grow up into the image of the Son of God. So, essentially then, we're told that God writes His law on our hearts. Now, all of this is true grace. True grace. Jesus makes the comment in Matthew chapter 5, the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount. He says, you know, I have not come to abolish the law. I've come to fulfill it. I've come to fulfill it. And so, we recognize that true grace fulfills the law. That's what true grace is designed to do, is to enable us to fulfill the law. True grace, you see, honors God as holy. He's holy. Well, so then, on reflection, of course, if you're going to read intelligently, you want to reflect and think about what it is you're looking at. And so you realize, oh, well, we have true grace and we have false grace. And it's just a very quick run through a false grace denies and sets aside the law of God. Obviously, right from the beginning, you realize, oh, there's a complete parting of the ways here. Right. True grace fulfills the law, recognizes that's the that's the central action of Jesus Christ. And it enables us to walk in increasing conformity. False grace sets aside the law of God, that is, the righteousness and holiness of God. False grace can take any myriads of forms, but in effect, every form of false grace fosters the illusion of human self-sufficiency. Thank you. I can figure this out for myself. Thank you. I can do this on my own. Thank you. I'm clever. Thank you for helping me clean up yesterday's mess. Now I'll make my own mess. But false grace will always have the effect of weakening the tie between the creature and its creator. So, we begin to have a clear sense of the distinctiveness of those who operate according to these two different kinds of grace. True grace is opposed to the character of sin, and sin is lawlessness. Now, there's an easy confusion about lawlessness. Lawlessness is not the absence of rules and regulations or of standards and expectations. That's what we think. Oh, it's a lawless person. Oh, operates just simply off the cuff, doesn't have any respect for anybody else. Oh, no, no, no, no. You don't understand. Lawlessness is the denial of the authority of God. That's lawlessness. It's the refusal to accept the authority of God as the ultimate lawgiver. And instead, we will make our own rules. We'll make our own laws. There's a book I read a long time ago by Golding. It's about those boys who crash on an island. I can't remember all of a sudden. Lord of the Rings. Lord of the Flies. Oh, a number of you have read it. I suggest you read it if you haven't. It's a perfectly horrendous book. And the reason it is horrendous, it is just absolutely believable. And the reason I mention it now is that there's a group of boys, they're English boys, which is the problem. And they crash and they're all in their late elementary and early junior high years. There's a problem. And they have to survive. They're no adults, and so they have to survive on their own. And the reason I mention this is because when they attempt to survive on their own, they create rules, rules, rules, rules, rules, rules. Sure. But they're out of any contact with anything beyond their own imagination. A lot of people who think that's grace. You might think of the law of God as establishing the channels through which our lives and liberties can flow so that we can creatively and constructively meet the demands of life. The law of God not only ties or unites us to God through promise and the faith, but it also joins us. With others to share in the advance of God's kingdom, as it were, weaving the bonds of love and fellowship in in the church. So now you come back, you see, you come back and you recognize, oh, I see. If I'm going to operate according to true grace, then I'm going to recognize the actual authority of God. And I'm going to understand that what God says is I must work together with other Christians in order to advance the purposes of God in the world. I am not free. In other words, I am not free to get up, walk out the door and be unconcerned nor thoughtful of my fellow believers for the rest of that week. If you do that, you are disobedient. because you are saying to God, I'm too busy. It's not for me. I have something else I'm going to do. You have to think about that. Think about that. Sometimes you do have something else to do, but then you need to weigh it and decide, well, where is it and how long and when will I return to walk in harmony with my brothers and sisters in the Lord? Am I a servant? You don't have to serve to the ministries of the church, of course. There are multitudes of ways of serving and representing God. Don't ever get the idea you have to be ecclesiastical. That's not true. But you must be serving. That is true. But that is what we have been called to do. There's another dimension which comes through. What we begin to recognize is that the law of God separates us from sin. We know that. That's the intention of the law of God. But the consequence is it also eventually separates us from sinners. It does so because the faithful who are indwelt by the Holy Spirit operate according to a different set of fundamental truths and values from the unsaved or the not faithful. According to the law of God, the saved serve God, right? Does that make sense? It perfectly makes sense. But, according to the law of God, the unsaved serve themselves. The unsaved serve themselves. Now, don't be absurd and say every time you go out and do something that benefits yourself that somehow you're in sin. That's absurd and ridiculous, right? But you have to look at the pattern of your life and you say, what are the preoccupations that dominate me? What are the interests that drive me on? What are the things that capture my mind and my spirit? And am I, in fact, being captured by God for his purposes or am I ignoring them? I'm pursuing my own goals instead." Now, stepping back from that, as I was reading the letter, I thought, well, I wonder why, why did Peter, at this point, at virtually the very end of his letter, suddenly come up with the idea of false grace. He hasn't mentioned that once. At no point has he ever made that comment throughout the whole letter. This is odd to end your letter by introducing a comment that touches on nothing that you've spoken of before. It reminded me at once of 1 John 5, verse 21, the end of John's letter. You may not know this, if you're not really familiar, but John, he writes this lovely letter, and then he comes to the end, and the last thing he says is, little children, protect yourselves from idolatry. You think, idolatry? He hasn't mentioned idolatry once for the entire letter. What does he come up with this thing at the very end for? And the same thing here with true grace. Little children, keep yourselves from idols. So, was it perhaps in consideration of Peter, was it perhaps something that was on his mind all the time? Idolatry is, of course, the worship of things other than God. And those who fall into idolatry cannot overcome the world, but in fact are overcome by it. We know that, that's the definition of idolatry. So I think that with Peter, false grace is not an afterthought. It's not an afterthought, but has rather been an underlying concern throughout the whole letter. Now, think about it. Remember what the contexts are. He's writing a letter to Christians in the very early stage in the life of the Roman Empire. And we know, based upon the letter, they are facing persecution. They are facing rising, intensifying hostility against them for their profession of faith in Jesus Christ. It comes both from the Jews and now increasingly from the Roman officials. How tantalizing, right? How tantalizing for those facing disapproval, hostility, rejection, even persecution to redefine grace, to alter the definition as God's unmerited favor in enabling us to avoid the unpleasant consequences of faith. In addition, securing the believer relief from the difficulties and deficiencies of life. Surely, if we are the recipients of God's unmerited or unearned favor, then we can expect to enjoy a most favored people status in the world. Surely grace in these circumstances means that we escape from the hard realities and harsh demands and the unyielding principles of divine righteousness and holiness and move instead into the soft realities of kindness, comfort, enjoyment and pleasure. Isn't that grace? These are the sort of things that bring joy to the human heart, aren't they? Don't we like to, when somebody comes to us and they're distraught, what we want to do is hand them comfort. Isn't that true? I've been a pastor a long time. I know it's true. And I understand how it's true. But I also know that there's a danger. Perhaps amongst the more surprising statements that's given to us regarding the Lord Jesus Christ comes to us in Matthew chapter 16, verses 21 to 23. You see, false grace remakes grace, remakes grace according to the interests or the things of man. What do you mean? Isn't that what grace is for? No, it's not. This is what Jesus says in Matthew, chapter 16, verses 21 to 23, and I've isolated out a portion of it. This is this is immediately after Peter confesses that Jesus is, in fact, the Messiah. He's got it. He understands. And Jesus says, You know this not based upon yourself, but because the Holy Spirit, the Father, has revealed it to you. And that's how you know who I am, my true identity. And then Jesus, shortly thereafter, says, I'm going to go to Jerusalem and die. And what's Peter's response? Oh, no, you're not. Oh, no, you're not. And so here is what What we're told is you are the Christ, the son of the living God. Hearing Jesus say he would soon, quote, suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed. And on the third day, be raised. Peter protested. Far be it from you, Lord. This shall never happen to you. But Jesus. Turn and said to Peter, get behind me, Satan, you are a hindrance to me, for you are not setting your mind on the things of God. but on the things of man. You know, as a pastor, and I suspect that you too, if you love people, you have many opportunities in which you have to face exactly that struggle. Pastor, my wife has been diagnosed with cancer. The eyes look at you and they're filled with this longing. Please tell me God will heal my wife. But maybe he won't. And if he doesn't, does that mean you turn away from God? The things of God put righteousness and truth and holiness above the comforts and pleasures and priorities of the world. Let's go to Syria, OK? Let's be Christians in Syria. Are you going to believe in God? Are you going to stand by the faith? Are you going to confess that Jesus Christ is the Messiah? that you're likely to have your head chopped off. If the church had been born and raised in devotion to the things of man, we would not be Christians. It would have died. It would have been snuffed out. But it didn't. Instead, The church in its first three centuries had a harvest of martyrs and that has continued to the very present. The issues at this point become as profound as they possibly could be. You know that in the letter, Peter's theme has been, how can Christians be faithful to the end in a hostile and even persecuting culture? And his answer has been, that we can be faithful if we look to Jesus as the model for our lives. And the heart of that model is that we are willing to suffer for righteousness sake as Jesus suffered. That's the heart of the model. I'm willing. If that's what's called for me. You know, I thought about this now and then. If a horrible person who hates Christianity walks through the back door, who's the first person he's going to look at? Well, it ain't you. And I thought about this too, you know, whenever the messages that we preach here are put on the internet, how many eyes can read them? And who might read them who would become infuriated that anybody would say these things? We must be willing to suffer for what is good and for doing what is good, just as Jesus suffered. The reward for Christian faith and life is primarily what awaits us at the coming of the new age. We forget that. We live so well. We live so comfortably. We live with so many conveniences, as many conveniences as our debt can buy. We are called to be faithful. We are called to live according to the true grace of God. Peter said, stand firm. The letter has been an extended lesson in how to stand firm. We learn, he says, to see the issues, the priorities, the difficulties and testings of life are there to prove the infinite value of our faith and salvation. Better than gold, remember, at the very beginning, better than gold. So, how much gold are we willing to give up in order to stand fast upon the faith? Sometimes we talk about the government might cancel our tax deduction for giving to the church. What will happen? I'm confident in this congregation nothing would happen at all. And as a body of believers, we will continue right on giving because we're dedicated. But I don't believe it will be that way in all places. We recognize that suffering in life is a part of the process by or in which our souls are purified in anticipation of our being with the Lord in glory. We recognize that much in the world which appeals to us is actually compromising and corrosive of our true character and calling as a chosen race, a priesthood for God, a holy nation, a people for God's own possession. Who am I? I am a child of God through the blood of Jesus Christ, claimed by him for his purposes. That is my first identity. That, by the way, is an identity that precedes my identity as the husband of my wife. And that's who I am. I am born again in Christ. And by His grace, if called upon, I will suffer death in order to remain faithful to that primary identity. How do we survive? It is, of course, not the challenge of the huge threat. It is the challenge of the infinite number of small compromises that actually tells the record of the depth and sincerity of our faith. It's the hundred of choices that we make week by week in which we say, I remain devoted to the holiness of my God and to the pattern of life which he has instructed me to follow so that I both work by the grace and power of the Holy Spirit to suppress sin in my life and to bring the gospel to those who are in the darkness. We are to stand fast. We are to abide in love. And if we're going to do this, we must be constant in prayer. Please join me in that. Father in heaven, what a remarkable letter your servant Peter wrote. We understand under the inspiration of your Holy Spirit. We pray that by the power of that Spirit, Father, whom you have graciously given to us who indwells us in manner that is beyond our grasp, that we ourselves will grow in grace and truth over time, recognizing that at the very time that we overcome the controlling power of sin in our lives, We will increasingly sense a distance between us and sinners around us. And this will cause suspicion and resentment. Oh, Father, sometimes bringing a burden to the most intimate relationships. But, Father, may we, by Your grace, remain faithful. May we remain gentle and humble and place all our hope on our Savior. We pray this giving thanks in Jesus' name. Amen.