What in the world? 1 Peter chapter 2. We're going to be here for a little while, and I'm going to take a short break out of 1 Peter to deal with something, some subject matter that will put us into chapter 3. But that'll be some time. So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and evil and all slander. Like newborn infants, long for pure spiritual milk that by it you may grow up into salvation if indeed you've tasted that the Lord is good. As you come to Him, a living stone rejected by men, but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves, like living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For it stands in Scripture, Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious. Whoever believes in him will not be put to shame. So the honor is for you who believe, but for those who do not believe. The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone and a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense. They stumble because they disobeyed the word as they were destined to do. But you are a chosen race. a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into marvelous light. Once you were not a people, now you are God's people. Once you would not receive mercy, but now you would receive mercy. 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. I'm going to do something a little different today. I'm going to comment again on verses 9 and 10, then I'm going to teach verses 11 and 12 with some application. And of course, verse 13 comes into very much like Romans 13, be subject for the Lord's sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do evil, etc. This is the will of God that by doing good, you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish people. And so on and so forth. But in these things, I want to remind us that we are to read this letter as one thing. We are to read this letter as a letter. We are to read this letter as instruction. And we are to read this letter within the context of the totality of the New Testament, which includes the Gospels, so that we may understand the picture of the Old Testament as it is presented here for us. Beloved, the older I get, the more I see the abuse, the malignment, the overlording that happens in the name of the Bible in every institution on the earth that uses it. The church is no exception. The church, as we know it, has abused the scripture more than anyone. And so when we see people in our world, when we see people in the spaces where we hang out, like the internet and other places, and they have this extreme response to things that are labeled Christian, we should understand why. We should understand the reality that their reaction is because of our lives as a people. Not indicting you or the person sitting near you or us individually or specifically, but yes, us as Christians, those who profess Christ. And all of us, no matter who we are, have prejudices, have biases, have things in our world that we have adopted as Christian living that are not found in Scripture. I would say that we probably, if this were a class, and I would ask for your input and we take a minute to talk or to write things down, I probably could ask the question, what are some things that you consider are just uniquely Christian in our culture that Christians do say, think, or believe? And I would say for you to write two or three things down. It very well may be that all, if not a majority of everything that is written down or spoken is not biblical. Christians should do this. Christians shouldn't do this. Christians should think this way. Christians shouldn't think this way. Christians should speak this way. Christians shouldn't speak this way. And all of a sudden we realize that what we are is our identities are rooted in a list of things that we are to display rather than a righteousness that we've been granted. And there are some ought to's, but I'm of the opinion at this point in my life that there is no room for a believer who is really rooted in the gospel, and when I say that, I mean by way of maturity and focus, and that can fly out the window. No matter how mature you are right now, it can fly out the window tomorrow. There's no room for us when we're clear to say, I should've, or I could've, or I would've. We can say, I did, and that's okay. Because who I am and whose I am cannot be changed. We spend a lot of time culturally trying to figure out who is and who is not with us, and every identifier that we have seen in our lives, a majority of those identifiers, is just another law. Even if it's theology, it's just another law. It's just another act of the flesh, an act of the mind, an act of the will. Some decision, some mindset, some something. Friends, that's not what the Bible teaches us. The Bible teaches us in verse nine, but you are a chosen race. You are a royal priesthood. You are a nation that is set apart, not Israel, not America, not Egypt, the body of Christ. And you are called out as holy so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light. Now would you think about that for a second? Let's think about that for a second. We're in darkness and that darkness according to the New Testament teaching in the gospel narratives shows us that it is a spiritual darkness that results in spiritual things and Christian things and godly things according to our understanding. But when we as cultural religious people think about darkness we think of things that are just like really, really bad. Ideas that are really, really off. desires that are, oh, don't speak of those. When in the mind of the Jewish people who received these letters, this letter specifically, this darkness was their daily prayer life, their daily tithe, their daily synagogue, their daily dietary restrictions, and everything else. The 613 laws that they followed failed to follow. And all the while, what we see here is that no matter what we are doing, if you look at American evangelicalism, we are in a place where in order to be identified, generally speaking, as a believer, or to be blessed by God, not even as a believer, but as a believer who is blessed by God, stuff better be going well. Things must be going right. You must have a right mind. You must have a polish about you, spiritually, in some sense. I mean, when I was a kid, the times we went to church, you dressed up. The guy who showed up to service without a suit was either homeless, trying to kill us all, or on drugs. We let them stand in the back until after service when the seniors of the congregation could take them out back and deal with them accordingly, whatever that meant. Away from the eyes of the innocents. And they either never showed back up or they showed back with a suit that didn't fit and a tie that was way too wide because it was way too old, but the uniform was acceptable. And that's where we live in the world. We live in the world wearing a uniform, wearing a mask, wearing whatever the heck's been hanged on the hanger for us to put on and we're not aware of it. And all the while, while we're doing that, we're seeking after a righteousness that we can't obtain, that cannot be gained. We're in darkness. And Jesus, who is the light that came into the world, shined upon us. He found us cowering in the corner, walking into the wall of our own self-righteousness, our own self-sufficiency, our own self-indoctrination, our own cultural proclivities. And He blinded us with His light and we could only see Him. And when the light was shining on us, we could see the stupid things that we were wearing eventually, not instantly. Sometimes it takes years for that to really come to fruition, but what we could see was Him. And everything else around in the darkness was dispelled. And we lose that. Just like Jesus speaking to John in his Revelation, in his Apocalypse, that's what the word means, revealed things. He tells the church of Ephesus that I have, I know all of the good deeds, I know your persistence in doctrine, I know that you've taught, that means they stood fast and taught truth. I know you didn't even put up with people who, these knuckleheads, who didn't think rightly and live rightly and made false statements about me, taught things that weren't, y'all didn't even tolerate that kind of stuff, but I have this one thing against you. And it's so bad, Jesus says to the Ephesians, I'm gonna take out your lamp. You know what the lamp, you know what the light, the life of men, of mankind is? It's Jesus Christ in us. And we're to what? do and live in such a way in our conduct, in such an honorable way, that when people speak against us as evildoers, the light that shines on us is obvious that we're not. And they will see your good deeds, and the scripture says there in verse 12, they will glorify God on the day of visitation. So how do we get to this place? How do we get to the place where this rock of offense wasn't something that we were tripping over? And why is it so many disobeyed the rock? You know what the word there really, they wouldn't hear. They wouldn't listen. There's nothing to obey in the gospel. You just have to hear it. The obedience is hear the word of the Lord, taste and see that the Lord is good. And there's nothing to taste. There's nothing for us to pick up. There's nothing for us to put into our mouth. It's put into our mouth. And Jesus is saying, I found you, I sought after you, I pursued you, I chased you, and you ran from me, but I am bigger than you. I am the King of kings, and I am the Lord of lords, and I am the master of all things, and I own your soul because I bled for it. And no matter how you treat me, no matter how you hate me, no matter how much you wish I would just leave, I will not leave. I will stand here and I will stand in the gap, my blood and my body for yours. And you cannot escape it. You can't escape it. because I'm the cornerstone and you've been set in place to be a house that gives glory to my Father in such a way that no one can balk and no one can convict you out of it. So what are we to do then? What is our natural, in the supernatural sense in which we are Christians, believers, saints, beloved, the elect of God, the household of God, what is our place? To proclaim the excellencies of Him who carried us out of darkness into His marvelous light. And we can do it by saying this, look at me. Didn't Paul say that? Follow me as I follow Christ. Or look at me and people go, wow, look at you. And you go, ha, I'm just a reflection of my Lord. So we really don't say, look at me, we live in such a way that people notice. See, people notice any way we live, right? No matter who we are, no matter what we're standing for, no matter what our core values are, we'll talk about that today. Because I believe Peter gets into core values as Christians, as suffering saints. Verse 10, it says, we were not a people. You were nobodies, but now you are. You had not received mercy, but now you are the ones who receive mercy. And I quoted that last week out of the Old Testament. You've received mercy. You know the story of Jesus when he, in the gospel accounts, where he goes into the temple. And the very things that were used as sacrifices, what were they? Dove, sheep, and other animals, and those who could not afford that, a sack of flour. These are necessary elements to depict the picture of Christ, the gravity of righteousness and justice, of which none of us could ever really be truthful and say, I don't deserve justice. Yes, we do. But we will not receive it because Christ received it. Just like he went into that temple and the scripture teaches us the prophet says he will have zeal for his father's house. Was it the church building? Was it the temple? Was it the synagogue? No. It was his body that he had zeal for. The house of God is the body of Christ. The body of Christ are the saints. The saints are the ones for whom Christ died when he said it is finished. And so he goes in and even the picture of Christ was tainted. The spiritual things that they needed to do to remind them of the gravity of God's mercy and the gift of God's love and the overpowering supremacy of God's grace. What happens? Jesus walks into the temple and he sees where people could not travel with these things. They could not carry a bunch of birds with them. They could not carry a bunch of sheep with them as they nomadically walked with camels and livestock and different things and food. They don't have a transit system. So part of the temple worship is that the priesthood, the Levites, would manage crops. And the people that had would bring more, and of course you weren't required to give all of your stuff away, but there was an exchange. So you could bring coin, or you could bring something you could exchange, and you could get what was needed for the ceremonies. Instead of traveling 12 days with a bunch of sheep, you just walk in there with a little money, or whatever it is you bartered with, and they had the sheep ready for your, and it's supposed to be an even trade. But it wasn't. The scales were crooked. They were gouging these people. The very righteousness that was symbolically seen in the killing of these animals and the shedding of their blood was now a fool's market of thieves and robbers and liars. And so Jesus seeing this thing, what does He do? He walks in and says, can I have your attention? I'd just like to see your books for a minute. I want to just sort of talk about these things. I know some of you probably preaching to the choir, but some of you are scoundrels and we're going to get to the bottom of this and we're going to fix this." No, he didn't do that. He also didn't walk in there and start giving a sermon and start making him feel bad. No, he walked in there. He saw what he saw. He went over around the room and he found a way to make a scourge. You know what a scourge is? Well, when I was a young child, my grandmother and great-grandmother on my mother's side, when you got in trouble, they made you walk to the redwood, to the red, not the redwoods, that'd be a long way to walk, the red tips, and you picked a switch, and you brought the switch back, and the notion of what this was told was that, go get a switch, I'm gonna tickle your legs. I never laughed. It wasn't funny. And they would just take that thing, and it would blur. You know, you take a pencil, make it look like it's rubber, hey, to that switch, and it would blur, and you could hear, and it would tickle your legs and you would dance and you would cry. Well, imagine if that were ropes and leathers. Jesus took them and He found these leather straps and these ropes and He bound them all together like a pom-pom. on a Friday night football game, and he made a scourge out of it. He went in with this three-foot thing, and he just began to beat them over the head and face, kicking over their tables, opening up the cages, letting out their merchandise, opening the gates, letting the sheep go free. Now we like to say in our Christian culture, that's right, a bunch of robbers and thieves, we got to knock over their stuff. We got to tear them down. No, Jesus gets to tear down what he built. Jesus built it. Jesus gets to tear it down. And he did. You have been brought out of darkness into his marvelous light. You have been uncaged and set free. That's the reality of that, right? By what authority do you have to come in here and destroy our livelihood? These people went bankrupt. He took their money and threw it into the crowd. Who has a right to do that? God has a right to do that. And only God has a right to do that. And there's nowhere in the New Testament where God has ever told any believer or any congregation or any pastor or any professor or any theologian or any apologist to do that verbally, emotionally, ideology, with an ideology or physically. We stay out of it. The point of that is, just like Jesus came and tumped out all those animals and freed them from the robbers and the thieves, when He said it was finished on the cross, He did just that. The robbers and the thieves today are not taking our checks and cashing them in for false sacrifices. They're taking our minds. And what we think is righteous is a dead bird that doesn't even fly. We've received mercy. Verse 11, so therefore he says, beloved, beloved. I should just teach the rest of the hour with this word. Beloved. That's who you are. No matter how someone else may treat you or see you, that's who you are. And you know, when you are the beloved of God, you're at the highest place that you can ever be. Even if you're at the lowest place in this life. I urge you as sojourners, that means people that are passing through. It's not your home. You're traveling. And exiles who have been kicked out of their homes. I mean, think about it for a second. Here are these Jewish people who now can't stay home. And they're looking at it as a bad thing, but what Jesus did is kicked up in the cages and let him go. Where is your identity in the gospel? Because there's nothing that you can say about yourself, nothing that you can say about who you are, that will remain when you're glorified, except that you are a child of God. Nothing. So let us look to that which is immovable. So we're exiles, that means we're free. But we're not free from each other, we're free from the bondage of sin, from the bondage of the church, from the bondage of biblical abuse, from the bondage of historical things that aren't correct. And I've gotten what I'm about to say every year of my life, to some degree, the statement Well, how do you know your interpretation of all this is correct? See, that's the beauty of the difference between interpretation and exposition. Those are fancy words to say, what do I think it means versus what does it just say? Take it at face value. And the teachings, the doctrines, remember we talked about that two weeks ago? The doctrines that we learn from the New Testament are very clear. Every believer is in some sense obligated, but more importantly, out of adoration, they get to live according to the gospel rather than according to the flesh. We take off the things that we're covering up, the robe of righteousness that can't be removed. Like Superman always had his suit on under his suit, right? We can't. We get to. It's not we have to. We get to live in this way. We get to be free. It's not interpretation. It's clear. What is it? If we're in Christ, we're a new creation. The new man in us, Jesus Christ, is now our righteousness. Jesus Christ is now our wisdom. Jesus Christ is now our knowledge. Jesus Christ is the filter through which we live this life. His work and His promises and His power are ours. Everything He is belongs to us and we belong to Him. But not in the way the world says it. Not in the way the Christian world says it. How do you know? Because the Bible says that joy is the command, freedom is the promise, glory is the hope. Nothing can change that. So that if we're doing everything, what about leadership? Who's the leader of this here thing? Jesus Christ. And so we as sub-leaders, in any particular issue we are the ones who then have to do what Jesus did who spoke not a word in his own defense but gave himself up entrusted himself to the one who judges faithfully I don't want to do that and I have bit my tongue and bowed to people for so long that there is a very strong I'm gonna say this, and I don't mean it the way I say it, but there's a very strong spirit in me. There is some spirit in me, like, yay, go team type thing. There's a go team spirit in me that sometimes just wants to put it out there and just let people see it. And sometimes I do in behind closed doors. And I've done that a lot in the last year and a half. But I still have to arrest it, not because I feel guilty doing it, because I have to ask myself, what is the core of my identity? And it is my righteousness in Christ Jesus. So therefore, if what I'm about to say or do, it may be the right thing, but the wrong time. It may be justified, but the wrong motive. More importantly, is what I'm about to say, the way Christ would do it. And no, I don't want to get into the bracelets and the t-shirts and the stickers and WWJD. No, what did Jesus do? How did He leave us? And then not only do we get to see Jesus in the life of His ministry through the narratives, we are taught Then how to apply that into our lives every single day and it boils down to one single thing. Love with compassion, kindness, and patience in everything. How are we doing? How's our report card? It don't look good, but guess what? There is no report card because the record has been set. We get all A's. Why? Because Christ did it right. So we model our lives in that way. And so we filter everything. Are we always going to have that opportunity? No. There's some things we're not even going to be able to give time to think through these things. But then when we do think through them, we don't do that, oh, was I doing right? Did I hurt the Lord? Did I? Stop. You cannot hurt your Father. Grieve the Spirit. That doesn't mean make Him sad. Doesn't mean make Him mad. You're going to find yourself in, as an exile, whether you're doing great or whether you're doing horribly. And if we're to measure it, this is a gourmet meal, but I saw a roach on the plate. Well, too bad. I'm not paying for it. I'm certainly not going to eat it. We are not doing well, but we are righteous. That changes me. It helps me realize that it doesn't matter what kind of face y'all give me. With all these micro-expressions that I absorbed subconsciously for so many years, now I absorb them with great intention. And I no longer think about them. I just, huh. Must be tired. Must have gas. Must be whatever. Must be something funny about the way I look or speak. Don't know, don't care, doesn't bother me at all. I'm serious about it. Good. So here we are, and we're looking at what it means to abstain from the passions of the flesh. But beloved, that list is long. What does the flesh love? The flesh loves everything that makes the flesh happy. The flesh loves everything. The flesh loves control. The flesh loves power. The flesh loves autonomy. The flesh loves independence. The flesh loves money. The flesh loves to spend it. The flesh loves food. The flesh loves to eat it. The flesh loves to be on diets. The flesh loves to be healthy. The flesh loves not to be healthy. The flesh loves to think that we're better than everybody else because we're doing well, but we're humble, so we don't say anything. We just pray for their souls. Or even then, we've already told ourselves that, you know, we really are humble. I'm not any better. I just wish they'd do this, because it'd be better for them. That's busybodiness. I mean, the list goes on, and then there's all the other stuff, you know, getting cold-stole drunk, becoming a drug dealer, robbing a bank, yelling at your spouse, yelling at your kids, slamming a door, saying fun words to the guy in front of you because he brake-checked you because you were driving too fast anyway on the freeway, and all the other things. But to abstain from the passions of the flesh really has everything to do about keeping our focus on who we are, not about what we should not be doing. Let me tell you something, church, and I've been preaching here for 12 years, and I haven't not said this in any of those years, Overcoming sin in our bodies and in our world will never happen if we look at that sin and try to overcome it. If we're focused, whatever we focus on is what we will become. Whatever we put our attention to is what we will become. I don't care how much mind over muscle you've got in your brain, sitting there with your feet kicked up eating bonbons and watching Netflix, it's not going to make you strong and healthy. Focusing on, I don't want to do that, I can't do that, I can't do this, is just a one-way ticket to those things. I don't want to be like that. I don't want to feel like that. I don't want to think like that. Great, there you go. You're there already. You're there already. Even when you're not doing it, you're walking on the edge of the thing you don't want to do with your one foot touching the water, trying to do this. I'm not doing it. Hopping along. The Bible says to put our thoughts on that which is eternal. Put our thoughts on that which is holy. And I never, just until recently, In the last months or so, did I realize, like my grandmother, when she would say some things to me as a child, and she would say things so emphatically, and I'd make a comment, she'd say, uh-uh, son, no, you're a child of the king, you don't have to think that way. But then I always thought about what I didn't want to think about. And now I'm starting to see that and frame it in such a way of going, you know what, if I think about being the child of the king, I can get a little haughty, but when I think about what he paid for me, I'm humble. Being born into royalty, hey, but what did my father do? He killed his son so that I could be adopted. He paid my debt so that I wouldn't die. He sealed my fate so that I wouldn't get lost. He created the world so that He could find me. Okay. You see the difference? I know it seems like just a little nuance. But beloved, when you say something, why does the Bible say over and over again to renew your mind, to change your thinking? The word repentance is about changing your thinking. It has nothing to do with what you do and everything to do with how you think. So as long as you think repentance is putting something down, you've missed the point. Repentance is putting something up. Repentance is lifting up your righteousness. Repentance is saying, you know what, I'm the righteousness of God. Not while we sin and put something in people's faces, which I've done. Standing on a pulpit with thousands of people standing out there, pointing at them. Because I'm mad at three of them, so I hurt all of them. You know? That's abuse. That's spiritual abuse. Lording over, which the Bible says disqualifies me until I get under control. Well, when you first season of your entire ministry, you're taught to do it, you think that's qualified. What does it mean? See, Peter has transitioned from discussing identity now to calling us and exhorting us on how to live in that identity and not only live in that identity, but look, live in this identity in a world that hates us. And see, everybody's like, oh, social media is on fire. Oh, you see what's going on at the Olympics? Who cares? The painting's not even... Guys, get over it. This is not an attack on Christianity. It's an attack on stupidity that people have called Christianity for a thousand years. It's an attack on hatefulness. It's an attack on the reality that most people who bear the name Christ publicly are hateful, wicked, awful people who do not know how to love their neighbor much less themselves. But it feels good to be part of a crowd, not that crowd. I'd rather die and live in a box and be hated by men. Wait a minute, that's the cornerstone that was rejected by men. We shall be rejected, not because of what we stand for, but because of whose we are. I want you to hear that, church. The purpose of the pulpit is to equip the saints to do the work of the ministry with joy and peace and calmness. We, if you didn't know, are in an election year. And I don't want to hear how Jesus would vote. Because you will not like my discussion. I'd love to have it, but it's not going to be an official thing, right? But I can tell you what is official from this pulpit is you will love your neighbor as yourself and your enemy. Why? Because that's what you want to do. That's who you are. You see the difference? It's because when I said you will love your neighbor as yourself and your enemy, you're like, oh, you're going to tell me what to do? No, because that's who you are. You will breathe today. Your eyes will blink. You will think, I can hold my breath and not blink. and you will try, and your eyes will water, and you will pass out, and your lungs will breathe. We will. And it may come through pain, it may come through tears, it may come through irritation, but God will work on us in His time. He will bring us to a place of compassion. How do we come to a place of compassion? By knowing who we are, but also by going through times where our flesh rises up. Beloved, listen to this. Yes, I'm preaching the truth that you will sin, and in that sin, God will use it to declare you righteous again and again and again and again and again. Eh, my son paid for that one, my son, my son, my son. Come on, dude. 52-card pickup. We got it. Then eventually, these things, whether they be internal, external, or just ridiculous things or whatever, will ultimately then come to a place of praise for you. You will proclaim His excellencies. But you won't look at yourself like a worm deserving of death because you're a saint, the righteousness of God. Why? Because that's what God says about you. Why am I not living like that? Because you've got your mind off of Him. We take our focus off. And you're going to do it today. You're going to do it tomorrow. And that's okay. It's okay. People hate when I say it's okay. But if God is sovereign, it's okay. The culture that we live in, just like the culture that these Jews lived in, you might say, this ain't even out of the text. This is exactly what Peter's talking about, y'all. And I'd take any other PhD in the space to argue otherwise. The problem is we've stopped being pastoral from a pulpit and we've just become theological. One of the brothers shared with me just a few weeks ago. We've got to be pastoral. What's that mean? Caring for people. Walking with them. Sharing the journey. If what we teach out of the things that were given to us by the Spirit of God in the Word isn't going to impact how we approach the world in which we live and then empower us to go out, the only other alternative is to develop programs that we can assimilate people into to think they're actually doing the work while never actually doing the work at all of changing their lives and their attitudes and their hearts and their minds toward Christ. One will just get the image of it done. The other will change the world. abstaining from sinful desires. In Genesis 4, we hear these words, verse 7, If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it. You can't rule over something that doesn't exist. Beloved, we are free of this. We are free. There is no guilt. There's no shame. Christ has ruled over our sin. Keep your heart with all vigilance. For from it flow the springs of life. See Joseph and Daniel, I mentioned them last week, Joseph had this temptation, had these things. And what does he do? He refuses to give in to the things that are offered to him. Even though they would have been good for him, they could have given him power, they could have given him glory, they could have given him pleasure, he refused. And he says, how can I do? a wickedness and sin against God. I can't. My conscience won't bear it. So we have to live with integrity. That means we are to live as God has created us in the gospel, recreated us with contentment to be who we are in Him. In the reality that we are going to be in the flesh until the day we die or until the day we're glorified, whichever comes first. And in that flesh we're going to fall down. Daniel, the same thing. I mean, imagine, you go in there and you're telling them, I talked about the vision of the big boulder crushing all the nations. And they love Daniel so much, they're like, Daniel, you can have the royal feast. You can eat of the king's food. He's like, no thanks. Got to keep fit. Got things to do. I appreciate it. I'm not going to do it. Scripture says, but Daniel resolved that he would not defile himself with the king's food or with the wine that the king drank. So we should maintain a purity and a faithfulness of who we are by avoiding the defilement of sinful things. The problem is we can't say, well, food is sinful. It wasn't sinful to eat the food that Daniel was on. The food that itself was not sinful, right? We know that in the New Testament. But it was a picture of something else. So Daniel, because of the Spirit of God, was told not to do it. It's not prescriptive. You know how many books I've seen on shelves were like the Daniel diet? And this is God's blessing, you know, and I'm going, and I'm not picking at you if you feel like that. Go ahead, try it. Just don't shove it on me because I'm eating a cheeseburger on Saturdays. And I'm going to drink some wine. Not every Saturday. But maybe, it was a picture of something else. What are we going to get? We get everything that Jesus is as a drink. And we get everything that Jesus is as a meal. That's the picture. We don't have to go after what the world has for our righteousness and for our joy and for our contentment. We don't have to eat of the table of the world. That's the picture of Joseph as a precursor to Christ. Jesus didn't embrace the world. He saved us from it. Come of me who are thirsty, I will give you water, living water. I will give you water that you never have to come and thirst again. It will well up to eternal life. Come to me, eat of my flesh, and you will never hunger again. Do not labor for the food that perishes, but labor for the bread that endures to eternal life, John 6. This is the point of all these stories in the Old Testament. And there's freedom here. I said recently that some of the best Christians are unbelievers when it comes to living authentically. And I stand by that. Being honest about who they are and honest about what they need. And then they what? the Lord's prayer today. Ask and you'll find. Ask and you'll receive. Seek and you'll find. Are we seeking? But what does this all boil down to? How do I do it? It's just about self-control and mindfulness, being mindful about what we're doing and thinking, and asking ourselves, is this taking me to where I want to go, and is this being done in my life right now because of who I really am? Yeah, I got some thing, I got some, you know, this shirt, when you buy shirts, it has a price tag on it, right? We take that tag off. But we don't take the brand tag out, or the care tag, unless it irritates it, we cut it out. And then, when it gets all wrinkled up, dirty, care, now here are the cleaners, and when I get it, they've stapled another tag in it. So I have to take that one out. We're always gonna have other little tags. I've got a lot of little tags, and I'll be honest with you, beloved, some of those tags I know do not honor the Lord, but I'm being quiet about them, but I put them in as a part of my core values. I'm like, this is a tag I'm keeping, this is a tag I keep, this is a tag I keep, and one day I'm going to show those tags. By the Lord's mercy, I won't. But when I do, those of you who are my brothers and sisters will go, huh. And you'll see very shortly after that, yeah, I've taken this tag off now. It's in the way. It was scratching me real bad. I took it off. And inner purity is about being true to our identity. Not about putting a bunch of stuff away. And if that's confusing, I'd love to talk to you. Because I can prove to you within just a few seconds of talking that there is a level of stress in your spiritual and emotional mind when all you're doing is trying to not do something. So church, we need to be the community of faith that is open to these things and these people, like us. Don't hide when you're here. If there's a sin that offends somebody to find out, it's just because they're projecting and they're going, ah, they're going to find out about mine. Peter says to be holy in all of our conduct. And Peter, over in chapter 5, you'll see he talks about the battle that's within. I read it, y'all, last week. We're gonna face this battle like an Ephesians 6 type battle. There's never a time when we're without tension, without the potential for chaos. There's never a time when there's not something clawing at us. The question is, is Christ the Master? And if He is, let's go lay down at the bottom of the boat and quit trying to toss something overboard. Live honorably among unbelievers. Isaiah 52 verse 5 says, Now therefore what I have here, declares the Lord, seeing that my people are taken away for nothing, their rulers well, declares the Lord, and continually all the day my name is despised. Likewise Jeremiah 29 7, But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare. So think about that. What did Daniel's enemies want to do with him? They wanted to find corruption in him. They wanted to find a way to sling dirt, sling mud, but they couldn't. So keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so when they speak against you as evildoers, they can't see anything but your good deeds. And they will glorify God on the day of visitation. Now, what? How does an unbeliever glorify God when the works that they tried to find you doing of darkness are not there? God is seen in your works. Doesn't mean that they believe in. But they could. Honorable conduct. He says they could find no ground for complaint or any fault, Daniel, because he was faithful and no error or fault was found in him. Living with integrity. Ruth. Ah, I feel like I want to preach that entire book. Ruth's honorable conduct and faithfulness to Naomi and the God of Israel gave her the reputation among the people as such. Beloved, as the body of Christ, well let me quote Ruth 2.12, the Lord will repay you for what you have done and full reward will be given to you by the Lord, the God of Israel under whose wings you have come to take refuge. So we should live honorably. We should live faithfully, faithfully with integrity as a way of showing God in the midst of adversity, in the midst of struggle, in the midst of strife. We know who is and who is not an honorable person. We should never see a dishonorable person doing dishonorable things, saying dishonorable remarks, or acting in dishonorable ways and say, that's an honorable person because of this little thing. What a man says is worthless when it doesn't match with what he does. woman, man, child, mankind. There's a lot of talking about what? I'm going to be this and I'm going to do that. We even tell ourselves. How about we just do it? Doesn't James say that? Don't be just hearers of the word but be doers also. And the reality, if we do have ears to hear, it will impact us. It may be slow. Sometimes we're slow to launch. Sometimes we get in a sludge. Sometimes we're just going through stuff that it's just not gonna be there. It's okay if you have a fruitless place in your life. March of 2023, I cursed God to his face. Many times. Out loud. And I cursed a few other people, too. one of which will not speak to me. What do you do with that? I don't have the habit of doing that. It's the first time in my life that I've ever done that in the context of my ministry, to curse another pastor. And I'm not going to justify it. But oh my, did God let loose me from the cage? Because even though we are free, In the Lord, we are still in little cages, right? It's like the nesting, the Russian dolls that are little nesting dolls. You get down and you get, you know, just breathe. And it makes me wonder and somewhat worry if I think about it too much so I don't ruminate and just go, boop, your will be done, Lord. I wonder, like, what cage am I in now that I'm going to be set free from? What will I have to go through? to find myself at the bottom so that I can be set free from that cage. What things have I just been living blindly doing? And what cost has it had with the lives of those around me, my home, my church, my community, my wife and kids? And then the guilt, you know? You'll never understand freedom until you realize you've got on chains. Find you a smithy and get them knocked off. His name's Jesus. So we must be true in our conduct, witness through our deeds. I used to mock stuff like this, you know, because it became evangelism so backwards anyway. All of it. We must live what we proclaim more than we say it. So that when we do something that doesn't match what we say, it is so like, what? That people go, wow, and then we get to what? Proclaim the excellencies of Him who brought us out of darkness into light. Integrity. What else? A couple of things in closing. We need to have love and compassion, just as a reminder. We need to have this honorable mindset as a core value as a church. We need to have this holy mindset, but not what the culture says it is, what Christ is, who we are in Him. We need to have compassion and love. I've already said it. Let us love one another. By this, all people, Jesus says in John 13. By this, all people will know that you are my followers. If you have love for one another. Acts of service, empathy and support. You know, empathy is a trained thing. Once we get a certain age, empathy has to be trained and it has to be continually maintained. Empathy means I can put myself in other people's shoes and feel exactly what they feel as if it's going on in me. And the other side of empathy is I can understand the circumstances. It's both. Without both, it's not empathy. But we seek to find understanding and compassion. This grows as we put ourselves in other people's shoes, as we are able to filter what we don't like about this person with what God shouldn't like about us. And then we go, wait a minute, this is not a good exercise. The gospel, whoo, I'm free of that. You're free of that. Witnessing evangelism. It's an outflow of the life. It's not about the outline and all this other stuff and handing out a tract. I honestly don't even think we should do that again. I think a believer should hand out a tract. And I've got a reason. Now if you do, no problem. Do it. Me, I'm done. I've been done for a long time with tracts and I haven't used a gospel presentation in probably 17 years. I just share the faith. read the Bible, talk about what God has done to transform my mind in the context of what he's done on the cross for me. The final thing we need to really focus on as we do every Sunday is that we are to be in fellowship with the community of faith. And I know how I tend at Sundays like these, it's hard to get to know everybody. but we can get to know somebody. We are living stones being built into a house that God has established. That means we need to be in regular fellowship. It's not just about the Sunday. It's not just about having a picnic at somebody's house or doing something fun together. It's about intimate involvement and concern at the level that we're able to depending on where our life is. And sometimes we're really able and sometimes we're not. That's okay, too. That's okay, too. Let us consider how to stir one another up to love and good works. They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship. Why? Because everything that we do and say for each other should be for the mutual benefit and the edification, that means the building up of the body. And who is the body? Each one of us. Each one of us. And I know Pastor Trey's probably going to try to start doing a midweek here in the fall. I don't know if it's going to be every week, but it'll be some. And that's going to be good because there's a lot of people who are evangelized every week in my life who can't get here because they work on Sundays. Or they don't want to get up early because they work late on Saturday nights and they just can't drive 30 minutes to an hour. That's okay. There's no guilt in that. But what they need is fellowship, real fellowship, real life. Somebody that they know is not going to judge them, going to embrace them, and going to point them in the right direction of focus so that their life and their mind can be renewed on the gospel so that we can support one another. This morning I got up after just like an hour and a half. And like every good American, I picked up my phone and just looked at it to see if there was anything blinking or on fire or sounding. And there was some Facebook messages. Oh, that's neat. Two friends from around the globe, one locally and one overseas, had sent me something around 6 o'clock, my time. One was a passage out of the Proverbs, praying for you today as you preach. Thank you, brother. And another one was, Pastor, you don't often hear this, but your words matter. And what you're saying into the world makes a difference in a lot of lives. You don't need to know it, but sometimes it feels good to know it. And then he sent me a bunch of scripture. Take care and be calm. Have no fear. Do not be fainthearted because of these two stubs of smoldering firebrands on account of the fierce anger of Rezin and Aram and the son of Remaliah." What's the point? Isaiah 7. Take care and be calm. Have no fear. Peace to you do not fear, you shall not die. Judges 6.23. The Lord will fight while you keep silent. Exodus 14.14. and so on and so forth. Passage after passage after passage. Behold, God is my salvation. I will trust and not be afraid, for the God, Lord my God, is my strength and my song, and He has become my salvation. Isaiah 12, 2. So all this said, we take the table today because Christ has become our food. Christ has become our wine. He's become the very sustenance of us, and that even when nobody else can be depended upon, He can. He's faithful. So take the table in that spirit today. Take the table, and if you're not here with us, beloved, because you can't be, remember us. Remember others. Remember the body and the blood of Jesus Christ. Remember that we are the body. and know that people here are praying for you. And I pray that we all pray for one another in Christ. Let's pray. We thank you, Father, for the word, Lord, for the reality of the gospel, for everything that is ours in Christ. And Father, for even in the state that I'm in, with fatigue or whether it be sin or whatever it might be, Father, every single week, Even when I feel great about everything, Father, that is a frail place to be, declaring Your Word. Continue to humble me so that I may be confident in You and not me. So that we can go together as a body to become a people We have great impact in the small little world in which we live, that one day you will use as you see fit in the level and the degree that you see fit. We don't have the jobs we have because it's just what's there. We don't live in the place we live because it's just what we decided. Lord, you have ordained it all. So let us be. And help us to fight the fight of joy. It is an everlasting struggle. Father, through Christ, You have given us everlasting life. Thank You for that. In His name we pray, Amen.