What is a real privilege to be able to introduce Robert Carr. Dr. Carr is a missionary with World Harvest Mission. You've been serving in Kenya for 20, 21? 18 years. Our church has been supporting their ministry for several years, and it's a privilege for us to do so. Dr. Carr received his doctorate in ministry from Columbia International Seminary and is ordained in the Eastern Pennsylvania Presbytery. And it's a privilege to have them come and share with us about their ministry and for Dr. Carr to come and share with us the Word. Great to be with you this morning and privilege of breaking bread with you. That word that we all live under live up to and works in us every day. Many of you who have been following the Arab Spring in the Middle East know that about 80 churches were burned in Egypt. You may have also heard that in Kenya not too long ago a mall was attacked and about 70 people died because they said they were Christians. In a recent book by Ray Ibrahim called Crucified Again he claims that there is now more persecution of Christians than in the darkest days of the Roman Empire. And what we're about to read in the book of First Peter, chapter four, verses seven to eleven, was written to believers just prior to the worst systematic Roman persecution under the Emperor Nero. So I'm going to read this now, First Peter, chapter four, and I'm going to start in verse one, though, to give us some context. Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves with the same way of thinking, for whoever has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, so as to live for the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for human passions, but for the will of God. The time that is past suffices for doing what the Gentiles want to do, living in sensuality, passions, drunkenness, orgies, drinking parties, and lawless idolatry. With respect to this, they are surprised when you do not join them in the same flood of debauchery and they malign you. But they will give account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead. For this is why the gospel was preached, even to those who are dead, that though judged in the flesh, the way of the way, the way people are, they might live in the spirit the way God does. Verse seven, the end of all things is at hand, therefore, be self-controlled and sober minded for the sake of your prayers above all. Keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins. Show hospitality to one another without grumbling. As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another as good stewards of God's varied grace. Whoever speaks as one who speaks oracles of God, whoever serves as one who serves by the strength that God supplies in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. Let me pray. Father, we pray that these words of Peter May inform our minds and motivate our hearts and our wills to do your will for we pray in Jesus name. Amen. So, yes, persecution now is greater than it's ever been in the world. And during the time, this time of Peter's letter, it was This letter was written to encourage and prepare Christians for the persecution they were going to face. Well, you know, Peter himself, the author, had a checkered history with persecution and suffering. Remember when, remember, he refused to let Jesus wash his feet. He didn't want Jesus to humble himself like that. And then he objected to Jesus's suffering. Remember, he told when Jesus said, I'm going to to Jerusalem there, I'm going to I'm going to be accused and I'm going to be crucified. He said, oh, may it never be Lord. And what did Peter say? What did Jesus say to him? Get behind me, Satan. And yet. The patriarch Jerome tells us that he was eventually crucified upside down himself under Nero, considering himself not to be worthy to die as his master did. I first became really interested in this passage because I thought, now, what is Peter going to tell us to do? What are the most important things to do if we know we're going to live through persecution? And you would think he would say, well, get out there and preach the gospel. That would be the only thing he would say. Well, I think that's assumed in this passage. But let's look at what he really says. And I think he tells us three things. He tells us, first of all, that we need to have a telic trajectory. You have to say that five times real fast, a telic trajectory in your life. And secondly, we need to pray. And thirdly, we need to love each other. We need to know how to love the saints. Well, those three things have a proper perspective in our lives of where all history and life is going. We need to know how to pray and we need to love each other. There are the things that Peter told a church that was just about to go under persecution, the three things that they needed to understand and do. So what is the telek trajectory? It really comes from the Greek word telos, which is the word used there in verse seven, where Peter says the end. The end, the telos. of all things is at hand. And the telos is something that is far off, but quickly approaching. It can be, it can describe a purpose or an objective that we're trying to reach. You see, Peter saw all of life intersecting with that great moment in history. And he mentions this several times throughout the book of First Peter. For instance, he talks about the last times or the end times, the eschatos, where we get the word eschatology. He talks about when Jesus Christ will be revealed and his glory revealed. He talks about us being strangers and aliens on our way to our true home. He talks about the day that Christ will visit us. And the coming judgment and the last chapter, he talks about when the chief shepherd will return. Well, how close are we to the end? Two thousand and fifty some years later, when Peter wrote, Jesus hasn't come yet. And yet Jesus gave us many signs that we might know when the end was near. In Matthew 24, remember all the signs he gave us, he said that there would be wars and rumors of wars. Today, there are over 35 wars going on in the world, and at least 10 of them, in at least 10 of them, over 1,000 deaths. People are dying every year. He said there would be earthquakes. The National Earthquake Information Center tells us that there are about 20,000 earthquakes every year, 50 a day are happening in the world. And we can expect at least 17 major earthquakes and at least one big one that will be over eight in the Richter scale. Jesus said there would be false prophets and Christ. Walter Martin in the Kingdom of the Cults tells us that there are over 17 million people in the United States worshiping in cults. He said that there would be an Antichrist. Now, my personal interpretation is this is the same as the spirit of Antichrist. I don't think there's going to be anyone particular person in history. I mean, we used to say it was Hitler, it was the Pope, it was Henry Kissinger, you know. There are others that others might think of today, you know. I'm not going to mention any names. But 1 John 4, 3 talks about the spirit of Antichrist, that spirit that opposes the gospel. Jesus said that there would be great persecution and betrayal. We've just talked about this. that is going on everywhere from Denmark, from somebody who draws a cartoon, to Sub-Saharan Africa, from Morocco to Nigeria to Indonesia. Let alone, now that's just persecution going on in terms of Islam versus Christianity. Think about communism, which is still actively persecuting Christians, especially places like North Korea, China, Vietnam, Cuba, and several other places in the world where communism is trying their best to thwart the ongoing march of the gospel. Unsuccessfully, we can say amen to that. Paul has his own list of what the end times will look like. He talks about this in 2 Timothy chapter 3, 1 to 5. He says that men will become lovers of money, lovers of self. They will be proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to parents. Hear that, children? They will become lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, and they will have an appearance of godliness. But deny God's power. Sound familiar? Well, how close are we to the end? There have been, unfortunately, some great Bible teachers like Harold Camping, who thought that he could predict when the end would come. And then. Was. I thank God that he was able to repent of that after he missed it a couple of times. You see, Jesus told us we would not know the day or the hour. Let me tell you something. We are closer today than we were yesterday. That's how close we are, and we're always to think, according to the scriptures, that it is imminent. One of the key signs we didn't mention in Matthew 24 is this one. Jesus said in Matthew 24 14. This gospel of the kingdom will be preached throughout the whole world as a testimony to the nations and then and then the telos will come. And in this passage Peter tells us that we're to have a telic trajectory, an end times perspective of life. In order to do this, he tells us right here in verse 7 that we're to be self-controlled and sober minded. Other translations say serious and disciplined or sensible and clear headed or clear minded. The fact is Most Christians live in a fog, and they need Peter's spiritual windex. They need a clearer vision of what's happening around them. Somebody, we were chatting last night at our kind host, the Macbeths, and talking about how Africans acknowledge, first of all, and know that there is a God and there is a spiritual world. And here in America, we always feel like we don't understand that. We live in this illusion that all there is, is what we see. And we need this perspective of Peter's so that when we're suffering, we won't give up. And when we're in comfort and ease, we won't forget the reality of the spiritual world and where we're headed. In America, if there's a problem, we can Google it. Technology will come to the rescue. Why do we need God? I can say, my wife and I, we've always said that when we lived in Africa, we prayed more than we do when we're here. I wonder why that is. It's because we don't think we need God with all the conveniences that we have. And yet, I know many of you have experienced very real suffering, even though you might not have a gun to your head and you might not be thrown in prison for preaching the gospel. Well, you might. I take that back. Times are changing, but all of us have experienced illness, broken relationships, problems with finances, problems with children, And then we're surprised when something like the Twin Towers happens or our own government pressures us to accept same-sex marriages or accuses us of intolerance when we speak our faith. We need spiritual Windex. We need Peter's perspective and his tele-trajectory. The end of all things is near. We need to become tele-trajectory terrorists and help people to have a proper fear of what? There is the fear. Not grenades, not bombs. We know that Jesus is coming back to make all things safe, good, and in proper order And in light of this tele-trajectory that he tells us we should have, he tells us that we need to know how to pray. Isn't that what it says? That we should be self-controlled and sober-minded for what? For the sake of your prayers. Billy Graham taught us that every day he got up out of his bed and his feet went on the ground, he said to himself, what? Is this the day that my Lord will return? Is this the day? And he lived in that expectation and still does, we thank God. This is why we need to be self-controlled, sober minded, serious and self-disciplined. I've read some, I'm going to mention some good books that I've read about prayer. This would be an unlikely one for a Presbyterian to mention. But Mark Batterson in his Circle Maker, very popular book right now. I think it's. Very motivational, if you want to be motivated to pray. He says three things about prayer, he says, we should dream big, we should pray hard and we should think long. Dream big. God is able to do all things, right? Above and beyond all we ask or imagine according to his power that works within us. Dream big. Pray hard. It is work, praying, isn't it? And you need to make time to do it. And you're getting distracted all the time. And you have to discipline yourself to pray. And he says, think long. And I just want to mention something about that last part, thinking long. I think often we get discouraged praying because we don't see the answers quickly that we're praying for. I can remember being in a little Bible school in Oklahoma and I didn't have a car and I was trying to get back to Philadelphia to visit my family. And I became very anxious about it. And every day I'd ask, did you talk to that person? Do you know anybody who can give me a ride? Finally, I just gave up. And I said, you know, God is just going to get me there when he wants to get me there. And I'm going to relax. And I told this to a friend. They said, you know, now you're going to find a ride. And I did. And it was just that simple little lesson to me that God wants us to pray for things, not only to accomplish the things we think need to be accomplished, but because he wants to do something in us. He wants to change our mind. You know, we read in First John that if we pray according to God's will, we know what we have we ask for. I want to tell you something. We don't always know and understand the will of God, but he works on that as we pray according to his revealed will. Now, as Presbyterians, sometimes we think that because God is sovereign, he's going to do what he wants. And why do I have to pray? Well, you know, isn't it wonderful that God lets us in a mysterious way be a part of his sovereign will that he's already decided to do? But he's waiting for us to be a part of that. Have you ever asked your children to help you bake a loaf of bread? Or men, if your kids have helped you with a carpentry project, do you really do that because you think you'll get that job done faster? Probably not. But you want to be with them. You want them to be a part of what you're doing. And you want them to learn something. And I think that's what prayer is like. God invites us to partner with him in his great plans of redemption in the world. What a privilege. But usually, as Christians, we have our heads in the sand. I find this particularly true in America. I mean, I listen to BBC, sometimes CNN, because I want to hear world news. I don't want to just hear the latest fire and murder in my neighborhood. There are more things going on in the world. And yet many Christians tell me, I don't want, oh, that brings me down. It's depressing to listen to world news. And I think that's because we don't really believe that our prayers will change anything. We don't, do we? Wouldn't we pray for world events more and want to hear what's going on in the world if we thought our prayers would make a difference? Hello? John Smed has a great book on prayer also. His latest book is Journey in Prayer, and he really takes the Lord's prayer and models what all our prayers should be like. And he reminds us that the Lord's Prayer does not begin with give us, lead us, deliver us, but it begins with our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come. So that should be the priority of our prayers. And that's another thing he does as we spend time in prayer. I loved praying through Psalm 91. It's a great way to pray. But He will change your mind as you're praying for what you think you should pray for. So often our prayers are short-sighted. We just want healing or we want comfort. Or do we want to further God's Kingdom? I remember working with a great doctor not working with him, but I knew him in Kenya. And he was doing a wonderful job in several of the hospitals. And one day he said, you know, I'm really struggling. We were praying together and he said, I'm really struggling now because I thought to myself, what good does it do to heal people who are on their way to hell if I don't share the gospel with them also? Because he was thinking that, well, if I just go around and heal people and help them, they'll somehow maybe find out I was a Christian. And so it really helped him to say, I need to make the most of every opportunity and speak the gospel to people when I'm with them. He was getting more of a tele-trajectory. Well, do you want your prayer to be more serious and disciplined? You probably need to do more of it. Your personal prayers. I want to tell you, I think one of the ways God has kept our marriage together is by praying together, by really saying every day we need to pray together. If it's just even a few minutes. We did it in the car on our way over here. Are you part of a men's group? Men, we need to hold each other accountable and pray with each other. Are you part of a woman's group? Ladies. And are you able to really open up and share what's going on in your life and have others pray for you? Are you part of a home group, I hope, in this church where you can be part of a community and pray for each other as well as what's going on in the world? Paul Miller has another great book on prayer. called The Praying Life. And he talks about, you know, even though we need concentrated time of prayer, prayer needs to be an attitude of our lives, just the way we breathe. With our eyes open, we can pray. When somebody mentions to you, well, could you pray for me? Yeah, let's do it right now. Why not? Why not pray in public more? Why should we be afraid of somebody hearing us pray? You know, if the world can preach about all their false values without shame, why can't we pray for each other in public and pray for others in public as well? So Peter's telling us to have this tell the trajectory in our lives and one of the things we need to do is to learn how to pray. He also tells us that we need to know how to love. We read this in verse 8. He says, above all, keep loving one another earnestly since love covers a multitude of sins. And then he goes on to describe that. And if you're like me, you probably take your Christian relationships for granted. Do you really think you need each other? Now I want to ask you, do you always sit in the same seat every Sunday? I can only say that because I know I would do it too if I was in the same church every Sunday, which I rarely am. But I want to encourage you to get to know some of the folks on the other side of the aisle. You know, many times we think there's going to be a day, God, when you bring all the gifts we need in the church and then we'll really be rocking. I want to tell you that today, this day, what's today, the 23rd of March, you have all the gifts you need in this room. to be the body of Christ to this community. And you probably don't know it, but some of the people in this room have gifts that you need for you to mature in your faith in Christ and be a more effective witness in the world. Get to know the people across the aisle and the people who God in his sovereignty has placed in your Christian community. Look at all the things that Peter says about the importance of community and loving one another in the book of First Peter, chapter one, he says, look at it this way. This is how important. Other Christians are in your life, chapter one, he says, we have been born again into a living hope with imperishable and uncorrupted inheritance. We are a chosen race, he says in chapter two, a royal priesthood. We are God's holy nation. In chapter three, he says that our wives have inner beauty as well as outer beauty. And our men should be living in an understanding way with their wives. Amen, ladies. Chapter four. He tells us that each of us have been given unique gifts to serve each other. And witness in the world and chapter five, he tells us that we have leaders under shepherds, pray for your pastor. Pray for your elders and deacons, pray for all the leaders in your church. He says that we have leaders and under shepherds who serve not for money, but for the reward they will receive from the chief shepherd someday. And he tells us Peter tells us in this book that we stand in the true grace of God as Christians and that we are so full of joy and love for one another. We want to greet each other with a holy kiss. Or if you live in Philadelphia or maybe New Jersey, you give each other a holy bump or a hug. You don't want to get too carried away. But in their culture, they would kiss like that. When I first went to East Africa, I remember seeing two men, two African men holding hands, walking down the road. And I said to the missionary, the resident missionary there, I said, don't tell me they have that problem here too. He said, no, you don't understand it. In East Africa, it's very common for men who are good friends to hold hands with each other. And we have been, sex has been so perverted in our minds that we think something else when we see it. And in the Middle East, in the Mediterranean world, this was a very common thing for men to do. And I'm not suggesting that men do that now in the context of our culture, but You should really love each other and you need to show affection to each other and appreciation for each other because of who you are in Christ. He tells us it's very interesting, but he tells us this passage, which is also in Proverbs 10 and 17, that love covers a multitude of sins. And I think he's telling us here that we need to overlook a lot of the things that annoy us about each other. I'm not saying that's why you sit in the places you do. But there are even ways that worse than that we offend each other. And hopefully it's because we're not conscious of it. I remember in my own life, I remember a guy, we were going to a church one time, and there was a guy who had a little goatee, and he used to wear a rubber band around it. And every time I saw it, I thought, oh, I wish he would take that rubber band off of there. Really, you know? Now, please, I hope I didn't offend you. Maybe you have a goatee and you have a rubber band on it. I thought, you know, and then it dawned on me, that guy is a precious saint. He is a precious child of God. In fact, he was a missionary working in a very difficult place. And I thought, you know, I can look past that. I can even hug that brother if he has a rubber band on his goatee, you know? And so we really need to overlook a lot of those petty things. We need to do it in our marriages, too, by the way. overlook those petty things and remember who we are and how much we need to respect and honor each other as children of God. Now, this passage doesn't mean that our love atones for our sins, but it's because of Jesus's atonement, we can overlook each other's sins. Amen. And I would encourage you to come to the Lord's table today. If there's something between somebody in this room, the scriptures encourage us to get it right. Either talk to them before you take communion. You're going to be handling the bread, the one loaf that represents us, the body of Christ. We should not be divided when we do that. Let me encourage you to either do it before or make up your mind. If you need a longer conversation, you commit yourself to talk to that person. After taking communion. Or don't take it at all. In verse 9, Peter tells us that we should show hospitality to each other without grumbling. Think about their context. in the Middle Eastern world. Remember, if we read the New Testament, they're always washing each other's feet. Imagine how much trouble you had to go through to to host somebody in your house. I'm thinking of what it was like for us and I mean, we still go back to Africa and what it's like when we go into someone's home and and how humbling it is when the children come and kneel down in front of you to show respect to you and the wife kneels there and you touch their shoulders and they get up and then they go and get that scrawny chicken that they can't afford to give you but they're going to cook for you anyway and give to you and they're going to greet you and welcome you into their home and give you beyond what they're able to afford. Africans like it when you drop in on them anytime. You don't call them first. This is before cell phones too. You just stop in and they're so happy that you came to their house. Here we have to make a couple weeks in advance or a month appointment that I'm going to come see you. But we don't do that with family, do we? Aren't we happy when a relative comes in? Well, maybe most of them, anyway. Come in and see you, and you want to welcome them into your home and feed them. And this is how we should be with each other, folks. You see, we need to tag each other telecally, don't we? Or give each other a pet-treating poke. I'm getting carried away with my alliteration here. And he goes on to remind us that we have gifts, as we've just talked about, that God has given us for what purpose? To serve one another. They're not given for people to look at us or to puff us up. They're given for a purpose of serving one another. If you want to find out what your gift is. Now, I've been in charismatic churches where there's like this big mystery. I want to find out what my gift is. I don't know what my gift is. God's going to tell me today. You know, God is going to show you your gift as you look at the needs around you and you start serving. Your gifts will come out because that's what they're there for. Well, even the early disciples competed with each other, didn't they? They would call down fire on the Gentile tribes and argue with who was going to be first in Jesus's kingdom when he came in power in his kingdom. Of course, they figured he'd set up a kingdom in his first lifetime. But Jesus told them, they will know you are Christians by the love you show to each other. And he prayed in that famous prayer in John 17, Father, make them one as I am one with you. And so the unity we see in the Trinity is an example of the unity we're to have as the body of Christ. And in verse 11 here, We're reminded of why he gives us these gifts to serve each other. He says, whoever speaks should be as one who speaks articles of God, whoever serves one who serves by the strength that God supplies in order that in. Here's the purpose. In everything, God may be glorified through Jesus Christ and to him be glory, dominion forever and ever. The world needs to see the gospel by the way we treat each other as Christians. And I remember one African man coming to Christ early on in our ministry in Uganda. I was working there with my colleague. We had gone up into this mountainous region and started the first preaching points. And we met a fellow who was in charge. He was a medical officer. He used to dispense medicines for the government in a clinic there. And he was not a believer. And he asked us for a ride that would be three or four hours away around the mountains. So he got in the back of the car. And along the way, we would always get stuck in some kind of a mud puddle, because the roads were really bad. So we got stuck, and then we proceeded to argue about how we would get through the mud. He said, if we just put the pedal to the metal, and we're just going to break through this mud puddle, and I said, I think you're going to ruin your car, so I think we should Jack it up and put some stones under the wheels, you know, and make like a bed of stones that we can get over. He says, that takes too much time. So we went back and forth. Well, he had his way with his car and he did break some things in his car, but we got through. And then all the way back, this guy got to see us being reconciled to each other. He just sat there quietly. And by the time we reached our destination, we were just like we were before we had the argument. And he later on told us that that was very powerful in his life that helped him once come to Christ. And now he is the principal of a school that we established in that very area. And it just was amazing as I thought about it the other day that it's come full circle in that way. I think the way we relate to each other can be a stronger and more powerful testimony than all of our arguing with Muslims, Hindus, or atheists. And all you have to do is ask yourself, why isn't it that way? Why isn't our testimony as a body of believers more powerful than it is? And maybe it is. But to the extent that you guys learn to love each other, that gospel will be preached more powerfully in your community, the way you serve each other, the way you help each other. So as we come to the Lord's table today, let me ask you this. Do you know that your sins are covered and atoned for by the blood of Jesus Christ? If you do, you can join me in praying continually with this tele-trajectory in mind. Praying for and loving the many nations that are now at our doorstep in America. Let them see how we love one another as we live, not in the shadow of terrorism, but in the light of the glorious return of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Let me pray for us. Father, we do pray that you would give us a true perspective of where we live in history. We say, come quickly, Lord Jesus. And yet, Lord, We know that every day we don't think that way. We pray you give us a true perspective of what's happening, that you are coming soon and that the time is short to win those you are calling to yourself. Lord, give us hearts that would devote ourselves, devote our bodies and our minds to prayer. And Lord, that we would commit ourselves to love each other earnestly, to love the saints and give them the due respect, the respect that is due them, Father, and the love that is due them. Use our gifts to serve one another, Lord. Help us to appreciate the gifts that you've given each one here in this church. And by your spirit, Lord, Use them to continue to be a witness to this community for I ask in Jesus' name and for his sake. Amen.