Well, good morning.
This week begins Lent.
So we are breaking from our study of the book of Leviticus, which we've been doing since the beginning of January.
We're taking a break for Lent.
Lent are these 40 days leading up to Easter.
And so Lent comes from the word Lenten, which means the season of spring.
So as we enter spring and around us, we're going to begin to see different things blooming and blossoming around us.
I think this week I saw a cherry tree blooming.
Like we're going to begin to see this, like we're going to be studying New Testament passages and contemplating our need of Jesus and what new growth Jesus might have for us in our hearts.
Now, as a boy, I went to the Thomas I Group in Lilburn, Georgia on Highway 29, next to the baseball card shop.
So I could always get my eyes checked and get a baseball card or basketball card.
And they would sit me in that chair 20 feet from the eye chart, swing that apparatus in front of me.
The Ferroper is what it's called, invented by Chad Ferroper.
Now I don't I have no idea if Chad Feropeter invented it or not.
But that is the Ferroper, and they put it in front of you.
Anyone else?
Remember this?
Maybe you still do this?
And what do they do?
They go, this one or this one?
This one or this one, right?
This one or this one?
This one or this one.
And what are they doing?
They're getting the correct lens for you.
Because we need the correct lens as to see rightly.
Now, sadly, we all have a bad lens when it comes to how we see God.
Because we can even hear that we are loved by God.
We can even hear that, which would be a major breakthrough.
We can hear that, and then we can still wake up tomorrow and revert back to life by the law, or we could say life by performance.
And this is why we need the gospel to become Christians, but then even as Christians, we need the gospel day to day, week to week.
We need to be preaching the gospel to ourselves because we do have different lenses that we use to look at the world and God and ourselves.
The three main lenses are the worldly lens, the religious lens, and the gospel lens.
So the worldly lens says this merit or obtain that, whatever that is, you can fill in the blank.
We're all very good at filling in that blank.
Merit it, earn it, obtain it, then you will be enough.
The religious lens says merit or obey, then you will be accepted by God.
So you need to shape up more and more and more as to be accepted by God.
So then the questions inevitably eventually haunt us.
What must I do today to really be favored by God?
Which produces an incredible amount of anxiety and fear and time for us as Christians.
Both the world and the religious lens leaves us in our own performance.
But the gospel's different.
And that's the good news.
The gospel lens.
You are already accepted in Jesus.
Therefore, because of that, because it's already true.
Therefore, be free.
Grow and obey.
This brings us to our morning's text, 1 Peter 3, 18 through 22.
I will read 18 through 20.
For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, because they formerly did not obey, when God's patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water.
Point number one is this In Jesus you have a wise teacher and a perfect substitute.
We need a wise teacher.
A lot of people believe Jesus is a wise teacher, and he is, but he's also a perfect substitute for us.
Verse 18, Christ suffered once for sins, meaning it is over.
The journey for forgiveness and righteousness is over in Jesus.
We know we should go to bed early.
We know we should wake up early with enough margin to have our devotional time, and we're gonna have a prayer time, and we're gonna journal, and we're gonna have a little meditation time, and then we're gonna go for prayer walk, and then we're gonna go for our jog, and we're gonna be healthy people spiritually and emotionally and physically, and we're gonna do all of this.
So we know we should, but man, isn't it easy at 10 o'clock at night to go to the freezer and get the chunky monkey out, right?
And you watch just one, just one, just one more, just one more.
And then in the morning, you know, you don't wake up at six, you wake up at seven, you don't wake up at seven, you wake up at eight, right?
Now, even if you are the kind of person who goes to bed early and you wake up early, you're very disciplined, you can keep all that in check, you are still like the rest of us, that you are never as loving, none of us are as loving or patient or kind or generous as Jesus calls us to be.
And this is why we don't just need a wise teacher.
We need a wise teacher and a perfect substitute.
And this is why it says in verse 18, the righteous, Jesus, the righteous for the unrighteous, Jesus for us, that he might bring us to God.
So what brings you and permanently sets you secure with your heavenly Father is not you.
He comes to us while we do not always go to him.
Verse 19, which is a strange little verse, verse 19, in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison.
Strange little verse.
So did Christ preach to dead people?
Or verse 20 like talks about people from Noah's day.
Did Christ preach to angels?
Did he preach to demons?
That's all very debated.
You can continue to debate.
That, what is clearer is this Noah story.
This Noah story is very clear, and this Noah story is pretty fantastic.
If you remember the big ark and the big flood, this is how you probably learned it, right?
And the world was populated, and everyone just forgot about God.
They just did their own thing, lived their own way.
And so there was incredible selfishness and abuse in the world there in Genesis.
Everything that God hated was happening.
And so God decides to start over.
He floods the earth to wipe it clean, which probably looked more like this.
We've seen this before.
This is Leon Comir's 1911 depiction.
We do not use it in our children's classrooms.
Rest assured, we use the first picture, not the second.
It was so horrible.
If you look at this painting, it was so horrible.
Come here is communicating something here that you see lions and you see bears, and they're not even attacking anyone or anything else.
It was so horrible.
Everything, everyone is just suffering.
And in Genesis 6.8, we read this But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.
Which can be worded this way Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.
So Noah starts building this huge boat in the middle of the desert, and Noah and his family and some animals, they board it, and they're saved.
Now, other people groups also had flood stories.
Sumerians had flood stories, Africans, Babylonians all had flood stories about rains wiping away cities and people.
Which makes sense because floods happened.
And everyone told their story, and they said it a very similar way that the rains would come, the rains came to punish evil, that the evil that the people were creating, and the lesson was this.
The lesson was always this.
If you keep doing this, I will keep flooding you.
You will reap what you sow.
You will get exactly what you deserve.
So everybody knew this flood story.
And so Moses is telling the story about Noah, and you can just see all the people just nodding along.
Yep, know this, heard it, I've heard it, heard it over there, heard it over there, heard it over there.
But this story's different.
The story to Israel is different.
Genesis 9, 12, and 13.
And God said, This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come.
I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth.
And God goes on to say there in Genesis 9, never again, never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all of life.
Two years ago I was fishing in Wyoming with my fishing buddies, and we finished a day of fishing, killer day of fishing, and we stopped at the stagecoach in Wilson, Wyoming.
Went inside, got two fish tacos, lovely drink.
We had a lovely dinner, we walk outside, then here is what we see when we come outside.
Forgive my big face there.
I was very excited.
Double rainbow.
Anybody else seen a double rainbow?
Right?
It's a big moment of your life.
Double rainbow.
We crossed the street, we walked into the pasture, and we watched this double rainbow turn into like a just vibrant, vibrant single rainbow.
And then we just stood there.
Like for, I don't know, half hour.
I have no idea.
And we didn't really say anything.
It was one of those moments you were in front of something so like kind of majestic and unbelievable.
Like all that we kept saying, like someone every once in a summer go like, wow.
Amazing.
Awesome.
Man, wow, amazing, awesome.
Like this is like a repeat.
Amazing, awesome.
The rainbow.
Still, still today, the rainbow is a message from God to his covenant people.
Verse 13 says this I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth.
The word rainbow is warbo, meaning God laid his warbow down.
Now, the point is not that floods will stop.
Sadly, we still have floods.
The point is that God chooses in his grace to us, through Jesus, not to be vindictive or condemning to you.
This God relates to us through the covenant of grace known in Jesus.
Point number two is this our worldly gods will always judge us, but God's judgment is satisfied in Christ.
On Tuesday, I stopped and I bought a lottery ticket.
Um is that okay?
I don't know.
Uh anybody else?
Don't know if I'm allowed to say it or not.
Just one.
I am a Christian, so just one ticket.
That's what Christians do.
Christians buy one.
Um this is my lottery dream home right here.
This is my lottery dream home.
This is on the Bigwood River in Idaho.
Uh it's for sale right now.
It's for sale uh for a mere$19 million there in Idaho.
Um Ski Mountain behind, you can fish over.
And I know this because I'm ridiculous.
This is why I know this.
And I'm worldly, and this is why I know this.
And when I'm bored, when I'm bored, I like to open up Zillow on my phone and I look at mountain houses that I will never, ever, ever, ever, ever be able to afford.
But if I did, I would, I would, I would be so Christian with it, guys.
Like, I would be so Christian with my$19 million mountain house.
You you can't even imagine.
I would host retreats and I'd have friends could use it.
I'd let friends use it.
Um, maybe the guest house, not the main house, but they could stay in the guest house.
That would be okay.
You can come, you could come.
Now it's easy for this fun little escape dream that I do, maybe you do this, um, to suddenly kind of ricochet back and judge me.
Because like all of a sudden I'll feel this um message that says, like, then I would be enough.
Then I will be content.
Then I could be really joyful.
And suddenly, this worldly God, which was so fun for a little bit, it judges my present moment, day-to-day life.
And it's always saying the same thing.
All the little gods always end up saying the same thing.
You are not enough.
That's how all little g gods work.
But God's judgment is different, and that's the good news.
Because all the judgment that you're not enough, or you're a mess, or you're a mistake, all your sin, also all your inability to get your goodness as good as it should be, all of that is satisfied in Christ's forgiveness for you and his righteousness for you.
That that imputation is true for us.
This Noah flood story would have blown people's minds because all the other gods were judgmental and angry.
But this one and this story and this God says, no, no, no, I covenant with you.
I want to be gracious towards you and love you and move towards you in love in this Jesus to come.
1 Peter 3, 21 and 22.
Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven, is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, powers having been subjected to him.
So Peter is saying, even the noblest religious acts do not save you, only Jesus.
And it's all water imagery, like this passage, right?
We had like the Noah thing and the flood, and then it bridges over into like the baptism thing.
Like all water imagery as a way to say, point number three, you exist, you are immersed moment by moment in the finished work of Christ.
When I was in elementary school, I'd get home from school and get my snack and turn on TBS reruns.
Anybody else from the 1900s?
We watch TBS reruns.
And I love to watch in the afternoons on TBS the Beverly Hillbillies.
This was one of my absolute favorites, the Beverly Hillbillies.
Uh Jed Clampett, if you remember, Jed Clampett was from Missouri.
He was out hunting a rabbit one day, and he discovers there's oil on his land.
He's lived on this land always, as poor as can be.
But all underneath him the entire time was all this oil, and he discovers it.
So he takes his millions and millions of dollars, and he and a handful of the family members, they moved to Beverly Hills, and they live in this lavish house.
So you get these simple country folk living in Beverly Hills.
They have this lavish house, they have these lavish cars, and that's what the story's about.
And they lived all this from a gift, a gift that they always had.
It was always there, that oil.
They just had no awareness of it.
They had no integration of it into their life.
So the point is, is the wealth, you have a wealth of forgiveness and righteousness and value in Jesus.
Our journey as Christians is about integrating that into our lives.
Your faith is not the cause of this.
Your faith didn't cause God's grace.
God's grace is already there.
Your faith is the awakening to it and the beginning of the integration of it into your heart and your life.
That's point number four.
Our faith is the journey of the implications of grace already given to us in Christ.
Our faith is the journey of the implications of God's grace to us that we know in Jesus.
So we are not asking questions like, what must I do today as to be accepted by God?
That's a religious question.
That's a performance question.
We're asking gospel lens questions like, where do I run when I believe Jesus is not enough?
What would it look like for me to live more deeply in God's acceptance and less in people's opinion?
What would it look like for me to be freer and godlier in God's lavish love for me?
I just wrote those three questions this week.
You could write another three or ten.
But those kinds of questions, gospel lens questions, this type of journey of discipleship is based in a gospel foundation of a gift already given to you that's true.
So the question is based on these gospel truths.
You're already forgiven, you're already righteous, you're already accepted, you're already loved.
Therefore, therefore, how is this working itself into our hearts and lives?
This past Wednesday was Ash Wednesday, so maybe you saw on Wednesday, or maybe you went to an Anglican or Catholic service and you walk down front and you get a little cross with ashes put on the forehead.
Maybe you saw somebody with that.
Historically, those ashes were taken from the palms, from Palm Sunday the year before.
Now, Palm Sunday is the Sunday before Easter.
And they would take those palms, they would burn them, take those ashes, and then the next year on Ash Wednesday, those would be the ashes used.
Palm Sunday was that Sunday where Jesus marches into Jerusalem.
Everybody's waving the palm, saying hallelujah, everybody's in it.
They just, oh Jesus, we love you.
They all ran away later, but oh, we love you.
And the point is, is even all my earthly hallelujahs get burned up.
Even all my goodness needs God's grace.
It's a way to say, I'm still weary, I'm still more fickle than I wish I was, and I just need to admit how much I need God's grace to me, and I'm so thankful for it.
So we come into 40 days, headed towards Lent.
We're gonna contemplate our need of Jesus and we're gonna rest in the fact that we are buried with Christ in baptism.
We live immersed, immersed in the full forgiveness and righteousness of Jesus for us and the newness of life that we might experience.
Any growth is coming from a grace already given to us.
And I want to pray for us as we head into the season.
Let's pray together.
If you're open to it, you can just open your hands in front of you as a symbol of saying, God, I want to be open to what you have for me in this season.
Heavenly Father, forgive us for the ways that we view you and the world and ourselves with a worldly or religious lens.
Would you give us a gospel lens?
Would you give us this foundation that we are already loved, already forgiven, already righteous in the full sufficiency of Jesus for us?
Would you help us to have our journey of faith be the implications of this already lavish grace?
What does it mean for our hearts today?
What does it mean for my status?
What does it mean for how I view people, how I love people, my need of people?
Would you free us in greater ways, help our unbelief, increase our trust, that we might walk with you in profound ways?
In this season of Lent, as we see the new growth around us, would you create new growth in us?
In Christ's name.
Amen.