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Thank you. Thank you, Karen and Seth. It's great to have Brother Jeff Nauer back. I guess we really didn't give him a proper introduction. And it's not like he's wanting that. But when we consider this building project, we discuss together as leadership, the desire of having someone come alongside us to guide us in the fundraising aspect of it. I'm not a great fundraiser. Pastor Terry's even worse. So, uh, So we wanted to kind of give that over. And boy, he has been a tremendous help and a guide throughout this time. And again, just some very practical suggestions. I always thought those signs along the road were just there for other people. I didn't know they were there for me. I remember Brother Doug followed me one time. Remember that Brother Doug? By the time we got to where we were going, which was Harrisburg, he said I had made 13 traffic violations in that time. So I said, I didn't need to use my turn signal. You knew I was going over there. So anyway. So yeah, those are all really, really good suggestions. By the way, the pandemic hit us, we weren't expecting it. Like he said, the Lord knew all about it. We have lost some people in the midst of that, but honestly, very few in comparison. I believe that today on the average Sunday, we are now averaging nearly 60 people that are attending now that were not attending before the pandemic. And so it's an incredible amount of change. And the Lord has been so gracious to us. So the loss in comparison. Now, of course, you can't replace those that we lost in person, but in count. We thank the Lord for how he has taken care and provided for us during this time. So the Lord is faithful, no matter what comes our way. And we just got to keep our eyes on the Lord, keep our focus, keep our prayers toward him and ask him to continue to lead and to direct our paths. And he has been so faithful to take care of us. And so no matter what age bracket you're in, no matter what economic bracket you're in, and so forth, the Lord is faithful and will take care of us during these troubling times. Turn with me in your Bible to 1 Peter chapter 2. Why are you here? I don't mean, why are you in church? I mean, that could be a question in and of itself, but why are you on this earth? Here's a larger question. I mean, if you go through life really not knowing why you're here, you'll probably make many choices that reflect you really don't know why you're here. But if we understand why God actually has us on this earth, I mean, why did he choose to have us born? Why did he choose to have maybe the children born under us? Why did he choose to place us in Lancaster County? Again, if we come to a conclusion, if we basically come to an understanding of that, it will help us in making decisions as to where we live, where we work, where we go to college, why we go to college, what major we'll take in college, how we act. Paul said when they were in Thessalonica, we behaved ourselves differently because we knew why we were here. So again, if we understand why we're here and what God's ultimate purpose is for us, it impacts the way we make decisions and how we live our lives. Again, the people to whom Peter was writing were people gone through the midst of persecution. Again, they may have been greatly asking, why are we here? because they're now scattered abroad. They're now suffering the persecution generated by Nero, but really has now been also accepted and duplicated by many others in Rome. And so they had to, Peter was trying to help guide them in the understanding of, okay, what's your place? Why does God have you here? And how should you live accordingly? So I want to talk to you today about Christians submitting to God's calling. It's a message that starts here, but really will be carried out over the next couple of verses and probably two paragraphs in this chapter in the next two weeks. But let's consider this, the idea of a Christian being submitted to God's calling. Let's see what that looks like. Let's begin with the word of prayer. Your father, we now come to you in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. So thankful for the fellowship that you have blessed us with. So thankful for the need to have a building project. And a need, I think initially we thought that may go away. We may not need to complete anything because of the pandemic. And then we saw you had a much greater idea in mind for us and we thank you for that. There's such a privilege in being part of what you're doing, part of what you're trying to accomplish. I just pray now you guide us in the moments that we have together to consider your word and then to look at and see how it fits into our lives. I pray that you would help us to carefully consider what Peter had for them, but all these admonitions are also there for our learning. So what you had in asking Peter to write for us today, in Jesus' name we pray, amen. Again, we would say this book is called Peter, 1st Peter, there's a 2nd Peter. And we would say that the author is Peter, but we have to ultimately realize the author is God. All scripture is given by inspiration of God. God breathed. God had this author. Holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. So while Peter was specifically writing to a specific group of people that God had intended, God also, because this is His word, this is God's holy word, can use this for any generation going through any trouble or living in any type of a world, I guess you would say. There's something that Peter calls them back to remembrance again, and I just want us to, first of all, help you to consider your relationships. Look at verse number 11 with me, just how it opens. He says, Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims. By the way, the phrase there, dearly beloved, isn't like maybe I would open a sermon maybe. Dearly beloved, listen as I speak. But it's actually talking about those who are dearly loved by God. It's not talking about just a casual address from one Christian to another. Referring to us as we love each other and we're referencing each other that way. It's actually a reference to those who are dearly loved by God. And he really calls them to recognize their citizenship in Jesus Christ. And you say, wait a second, Pastor. Haven't you talked about this before? I did. I even talked about it last week. Why is that? Well, because Peter keeps putting them back in remembrance of these things. Peter was good at that. In fact, writing 2 Peter, he says, I'm writing these things to put you in remembrance of these things. The realization is Peter wanted to make sure and ultimately God wanted to make sure they realized what their relationship was to God and to this world, because again, we're gonna live according to this. What is my relationship to God? As we went through the pandemic, no one expected this. In Bible college, we didn't have pandemic 101, just so you know. quit studying and start calling people, which was basically what you go into. Number one, I love to study. Number two, I hate calling people. There you go. So I said, how do you navigate through a pandemic when it hits? You weren't trained for this. And so I am sure throughout the course of the last year and a half, I've made some poor decisions based upon what seemed to be proper and what seemed to be what we should be caring for and what we should be careful of. And so I'm sure I made some foolish statements throughout that time. I'm sure I pointed some people in some wrong direction. And it wasn't because I wanted to hurt people, wanted to make bad decisions. You just didn't know. In fact, there were many pastors calling one another. I was getting calls from pastors who were 20 years almost my senior. What are you doing down there? I don't know. I have no idea what I'm doing down here. And so, but you know what I did find this? We held on to our American citizenship a lot harder than we did, or at least some did, than our Christian citizenship. And it all became about our rights and our constitution. And I'm not saying we totally dismiss all of that, but we have a higher calling than that. And making some of those decisions based upon that, just merely our citizenship to the United States of America, I really thought was somewhat foolish. I don't know of any of us that love wearing a mask, right? I do scratch my head sometimes. I did see someone yesterday riding a scooter wearing a mask. And I thought, well, I'm not sure about that, but it could have been for the bugs. I mean, it is a great bug screen. I used to ride motorcycles, I know. It would make a good bug screen. I did see a guy not wearing a helmet and wearing a face mask. Well, his brains may be splattered all in a row, but he won't have any bugs in his mouth. You know, sometimes I don't understand that. But you know what? I've talked to some who absolutely refuse. They didn't care about anybody. They were not wearing a mask. And they said, I don't care what everybody else thinks. I have my constitutional rights. You know what? I struggled with comments like that. Well, I didn't enjoy wearing a mask and sometimes I had to fight it myself. I'm just being honest with you. At the same time, you know what? I am called to a higher calling of that to love others more than myself. and to put on the Lord Jesus Christ. I remember, I was reminded, I spoke briefly about this one Sunday morning, Paul says that we have liberty, only we're not to use liberty to our own advantage, basically. Talks about in 1 Corinthians, and sometimes I think we use our liberty to our own advantage. And so Paul has to go back and remind him, and it's the third time just in this letter, He's reminding them, okay, the decisions you make are based on the fact that you're a Christian, not because you're living in Rome. See, it doesn't matter where you live, if you make the decision based on the fact that you're a Christian. Then it doesn't matter if you're living in the United States, if you're living in Romania, if you're living in Germany, if you're living in Africa, it doesn't matter where you live. if you're making the decision based on the fact that you are born again Christian. Turn with me to Ephesians chapter 2. We're going to go back here. You might want to keep a finger there, slip a piece of paper in there, even the study sheet, whatever it might be. Let's go back and just kind of get a glimpse of the dynamic change that took place. And by the way, I think it was more felt in first century Christianity than it was today, because they felt the change from a drastic separation between Jew and Gentile to all of a sudden this one body and one shepherd and one fold, that they weren't expecting. Now, we've grown up in a society like that. In fact, we've grown up in a society that is to be anti-racism. And when we think of that, we generally think of it more along the color line than we do Jew and Gentile. But I want you to see how Paul describes a different writer to a different group of people, the people of Ephesus. Look in verse number 11. Actually, the only command in the first three chapters of Ephesians is a command, remember. By the way, often as Christians, we forget where we came from. And he wanted to remind them. Look at verse number 11, Wherefore remember that ye being in time past Gentiles in the flesh, and he describes that, look at verse 12, that at that time ye were, here's the greater dynamic, you were without Christ, You were aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, meaning you didn't belong as part of God's chosen people. You were strangers from the covenant of promise. They had all kind of promises as a Gentile. You were like, where's the promises for us? So he said, you were without Christ. You were without a Jewish citizenship. You were without promises and having no hope. Why did they have no hope? You were without God in the world. See, I can't imagine. Well, dear friends, before we were saved, it was somewhat the same. The citizenship was different. It was a Christian citizenship instead of a Jewish citizenship. But we were without Christ. The promise that God has for Christians weren't available for us. We had no hope when we were without God. So we were navigating our way through this world, and maybe at a very young age for some of you, but some of you it was later in life, you navigated 20, 30, 40 years that way, or maybe even more. You had no hope. Because you're without God. By the way, if you're without God today, honestly, you're without hope. I'm not saying a United States hope, I'm talking about an eternal hope. An eternal hope that maketh not ashamed. So he goes on and continues to describe this a little longer. I don't want to take a lot of time here. It's just a wonderful passage. Look at verse 13. And I'm still in Ephesians 2. But now... I love that phrase. I'm working on a series right now about but now and but Christ. But now in Christ Jesus, ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ, for He is our peace. who hath made both one, speaking of Jews and Gentiles, and hath broken down the middle wall partition between us, which they knew exactly what that looked like, maybe even they could identify some of the stones that were in that wall, and that he hath reconciled both, again, Jews and Gentiles, unto God, and in one body by the Christ, having slain the enmity thereby, and were far off, excuse me, and came and preached peace which peace to you, which were far off to them that were nigh, again Gentiles to them that were Jews, for through Him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father. Now therefore, listen to this, ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and of the household of God." And again, I just want you to stop and consider your relationships. At one point, you're outside of God's family and just part of this world. But now... So we ought to make decisions based upon not our American citizenship, but our Christian citizenship. Again, it boiled down to some of the decisions I made during the pandemic. To some, I'm sure they thought, wow, you don't believe in the Constitution. You're not a strong patriot. But there's something higher than that. There's something about recognizing I'm a child of God. And I've got to make my decisions based upon what properly reflects Him, not our country. I know it's kind of a hard pill to swallow, but it's the truth. Turn back with me now, because I said relationships, plural, and I want to go back to the other side of it now. I just read in Ephesians chapter 2, you're no more strangers and foreigners, but we are. It's just strangers and foreigners to someone else. You see, now that we become children of God, according to 1 Peter 2 and verse number 11, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims. It was just strangers and pilgrims now in this world. Now, this world is not their home. Again, Rome was their citizenship. They were Jewish, but they were living in Rome. And he says, now that you're children of God, You're strangers. And it means to be living in the midst of someone, but not being part of them. That's what the word strangers there meant. It's like being a neighbor, but not belonging in that neighborhood. At times we have people move into our neighborhood and our neighborhood's not an upper echelon, but there's a difference between the way most of our people have carried themselves, the conservatism and so forth. And, you know, I remember one of the first times I saw one of our neighbors, a new moving, come out of the house without a shirt on. I was like, I was like devastated. Now that might seem commonplace to you, but in our neighborhood, that's not. I don't think I've ever seen one of our neighbors outside without his shirt on, speaking of the male gender, of course. I just don't remember seeing that. I've seen one of the men out mowing the yard, and all of a sudden now we've got neighbors that will come out and mow the yard and do whatever, and that kind of took me back. And the idea here is, again, sometimes we're living in a group of people that just don't seem to fit in. And I want you to know as Christians, or when you became a Christian, and maybe this was never really explained to you even in this transition, but all of a sudden, it's not as much about being an American as being one of God's children. And I now got to make a decision based on not what properly fits an American, but what properly fits a Christian. And so for the third time, and I can imagine this had to be something they needed reminded of because they're actually being attacked by the Romans. So where they felt at one point maybe safe and protected, they're living in Rome by choice. Now they feel like they don't belong there. And now they feel like they wish they could leave, but they may be killed for their faith. Again, so we have to stop and just consider our relationships. What are you first? What are you foremost? A Christian or a patriot American? I know one sounds maybe easier to say out in public and more glamorous, but dear friend, I want you to know what I am first as a Christian, a child of God, and that I ought to be the best American citizen I can be as a child of God. So let's consider our relationships. Where are you? And maybe there needs to be some adjustment on how you view this world. For the most part, a lot of the wave of the pandemic is gone for us, praise the Lord. But you know, we just had a prayer letter from the Kilmers, and right now the pandemic is worse than it's ever been in their section of Africa. So let's pray for them, because they need to be, and this is one of the ways we can apply this message, let's pray for our Christian brothers and sisters in other countries of the world, like the Kilmers, who are now in the worst part of the pandemic. and having to live like Christians first, showing the love of Christ, and then as people of Africa, especially the Zulu tribe second. So then let's secondly consider our calling. And again, this won't stop today, because this really carries throughout the rest of the chapter. If you're newer to here, I kind of preach by paragraphs, and last week I put two paragraphs together. We're working through this book. And again, when I started this, it's how to shepherd scattered sheep. That's what Peter was trying to do, help shepherd sheep that were scattered. And I thought, wow, that's exactly where I am. So I turned to 1 and 2 Peter, James a lot during the pandemic, just to try to get help as a Christian and as a pastor. And again, I know I made mistakes. And I regret that and I'm sorry for that. But again, we've got to consider now what's our calling. And over this paragraph and the next couple of paragraphs, we're going to see this extended. We're under new management now. We've been bought with a price. Therefore, we're to glorify God in our body and our spirit, which are God's. So, let's make some new decisions. Let's go back now to verse 11. Dearly beloved, again, those who are loved by God, I beseech you, and this is more than I come alongside you, this is really kind of, I'm begging you, I'm pleading with you. This is not I'm yelling at you, I'm demanding you, this is I'm really requesting this of you. Abstain from fleshly lust. As a Christian, you ought to be abstaining. You've heard of abstinence culture. Years ago, Billy Sunday and others would preach on that. And of course, at the forefront of that was the moonshine and the alcohol going on. But this is broader than that. Abstain from fleshly lust. You say, what's a fleshly lust? Well, I don't know. What are yours? There's no temptation taking you but such as is common to man. So whatever you're battling, someone else is battling too. But none of the two of us have all the same. I say it this way, and maybe I heard it, I don't know. We all have sin problems that are common, but we all have our own spiritual temptation DNA. Meaning I might be tempted by these three things and Brother Mike might be tempted by one of them, Brother Doug might be tempted by two of them, but they might look at the other ones and say, oh wow, why do you like, I wouldn't even, I'm not tempted to do that at all. So we all are kind of unique. But none of the temptations are unusual. They're all common to man. And God's gonna provide a way of escape for all of us. But he's saying, now as children of God, this is what I'm asking you to do. Abstain from fleshly lust. Again, I think if I was living in that Roman culture, I'd want to take my own stand. I want to stand up. I want to stand against these Romans. You can't treat us like this just because we're Jewish. You can't treat us this way just because we're Christians. We're living in Rome too. He says, you know what, that's not the battle I want you to face. The battle I want you to face is the one with your own soul. And I want you to abstain from fleshly lust at war against your soul. Do you realize the things that we desire in the flesh attack our own spirit? Let me just give you a couple of illustrations. One would be David. David had a desire for Bathsheba. What did he need Bathsheba for? He already had seven wives. So what did he need Bathsheba for? Didn't that end up warring against his soul? Her beauty was a great temptation. It caused misery in his life for well over a year and really probably impacted him for the rest of his life. So that desire to have her, was it worth it? I think if you ask David later, well I know if you'd ask David later, no it wasn't. He describes it through several of his Psalms. What about Samson? Who did he want? Against the will of his own parents. He wanted Delilah, right? Did that desire war against his soul? It sure did. You see, sometimes we want something. John Calvin would say, our heart isn't just desiring idols, it's a factory of idols, meaning we're constantly producing things we want more than God. And I don't know about your heart, but it sure describes mine right. And so, we've got to recognize, we've got to stop and recognize, we need to abstain from the fleshly lust. It wars against our own soul. Here we are trying to reach the world for Christ, and we've got a battle in our inner man. But then it doesn't stop there. Look at verse 12. It flows right into verse 12. having your conversation honest among the Gentiles. And by the way, when using Gentiles here, it was number one, literal, because he was talking to the strangers, the Jewish Christians here, but it also can be used as the unsaved. What does it mean to have your conversation honest? Well, the word conversation here is actually a word for lifestyle. And the word honest here actually means something that's genuine, something that's true, something that's beautiful, something that's fitting. So he's saying, I want you to abstain from fleshly lust, having your conversation honest among the Gentiles, meaning while living a genuine Christian life. Whereas they speak against you as evildoers, that they may buy your good works, which they shall behold. So, they ought to be seeing Christ in us. Honestly, I think we blended far too well during the pandemic. And I think too much of Christianity just looked like everyone else. And we started partaking of things we weren't partaking of during the pandemic. The one I noticed, and this isn't the only one, but the one that stood out more to me than any was people that I knew had stopped smoking started smoking again during the pandemic. And I noticed, I thought, and I could be wrong, but I thought there was less people smoking before the pandemic than after. But again, why do a lot of people smoke? Because of the stress and they're dealing with stress and the nicotine gives, you know, an at ease feeling and causes you to relax a little bit more. There is a physical phenomena that goes on with it as well. And I think people somewhat picked up some sinful desires and started practicing some things. Why? Because of the stress of the pandemic. They turned back, they went back on some things. He says, you know what, I want you to live in such a way that while they're wanting to say something bad about you, they can't because they keep beholding your good works. What's it say in Psalm 40? He brought me up out of a miry clay. He set my feet upon a rock, established my going, put a new song in my mouth, even praising to my God that many shall see it and shall fear and shall... Are they, is the world around you seeing your Christianity? By the way, this was a perfect opportunity for us to show Christ. And I hope where you were and how you were living it, you were demonstrating Christ. And now coming out of it, we need to demonstrate Christ. Because we're citizens of God first. Let's go back to that, that relationship. We're citizens of God first, and we're just pilgrims and strangers in this world. And so now we want them to behold our good works. Why is that? Which they shall behold so that they would glorify God in the day of visitation. You know, the greatest opportunity that we have then is to win some souls to Christ. There's a couple of ways to maybe explain that phrase, the day of visitation. It may be when the day the Holy Spirit begins to work on their heart. It may be the day that they finally meet the Lord. I looked over a number of explanations to that passage of scripture there, but either way, it's talking about someone's eternal destiny. You see, it's not about us. It's about others. And we are to let our light so shine that others might see our what? What's the light? The good works. How do you have a light? What is the light? It's our good works. so that others will see our good works and glorify our Father, which is in heaven. And so I want us to understand, secondly, our calling. Now that we understand we're citizens of God, we're citizens of heaven, we're citizens of the kingdom, we are to abstain from fleshly lust having our conversation honorable, which means demonstrating good works that others can see it and shall fear and shall trust in the Lord. You know, someone had a great opportunity for this and you can close your Bibles. I'm really, I've come to the conclusion here. There are a couple of people that we can think of. I'm going to go back into the Old Testament. Remember Daniel? Book of Daniel. Daniel had a great opportunity. Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, Hanani, Azariah, and Mishael. They had a great opportunity. What did they do? They displayed Christianity. Others knew there was something different about those guys. And I don't think it was probably just the four of them, but I believe they were the leading four of them. And others noticed. Others were watching Daniel when the dictate was made of no praying. They're just watching. I know what he's going to do. You know what? He opened those windows just like before. He didn't keep those windows closed and pray in secret. He opened those windows just like before and they stayed standing while everybody else bowed down. Others saw their good works. But Lot had the same opportunity, didn't he? Lot's soul was vexed with the filthy conversation of the wicked. but he couldn't even lead his sons-in-laws to the Lord. They mocked him. Dear friend, why am I here? Again, I am here to glorify God with my life and to help bring others to Christ. It really boils down to that. There's a lot of other dynamics. There's a lot of other things that can be put to it. But I'm to glorify God with my life. And I'm helped to bring others to a closer relationship to God, whether through salvation or whether through growth. You say, is that because you're a pastor? No. It's because I'm a Christian. So why are you here? Why are you here, Butch? Pat, why are you here? Cheryl? Visiting, I'm gonna pick on a visitor. Second time visitor, I wouldn't have picked on her the first time she was here. You know, again, why are we here? We are here to glorify God. And we are here to bring others into a proper relationship with him. Again, what I am as an American takes back seat to all of that. I'm still a proud American, but seeking first the kingdom of God ought to be the desire of our heart. Is that the desire that you have? Let's pray.
Christians Submitted To God's Calling
系列 Shepherding Scattered Sheep
讲道编号 | 711211338405093 |
期间 | 36:48 |
日期 | |
类别 | 周日 - 上午 |
圣经文本 | 使徒彼多羅之第一公書 2:11-12 |
语言 | 英语 |
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