Um, thank you, sir. Couple of things to say, uh, next week I will be back, but I will look much, much better.
Tammy will be on my arm. That will, that will help improve things quite a bit, so I'm very happy about that.
Um, this, yesterday, uh, I had to go and help out someone who, uh, needed my help with a wedding.
So I did that and it was halfway here, and so, um, Tammy's like, I don't really know those folks.
I don't really know if I want to go sit through a wedding where I don't know the folks. I don't know if I want to go to a reception where I don't know the folks. I said, got you, got you, you don't know them.
So anyway, uh, that meant that she did not, I offered, you know, if she only drank coffee. It would solve so many problems in our marriage.
Uh, for you that live with non-coffee drinkers, you know what I'm talking about, you know, because I want to wake up and go to a place and have good coffee. She don't want to do that.
So I said, I could drop you off at a coffee shop and you could spend two hours there. And she said, yeah, that's not happening.
So anyway, that's why I'm here alone today and I got here kind of late last night and pulled in. Um, but I, I wonder if any of you have picked up on what has been happening in the last few weeks here at this chapel.
Has anyone noticed that we've all been preaching out of First Peter? There's a few nods and there's a lot of confusion.
You see, um, Mark contacted me probably, uh, I don't know, uh, before Easter and said, hey, what if we, what if we do a series, you and, uh, me and Bobby will do, um, a series out of a book.
And I said, that's great. Here's all I want you to do. I want you to determine what book it is and I want you to determine what sections we're going to do.
I mean, because, you know, we, we can't coordinate very well. We live in different places.
And so then he, he wrote me back, uh, maybe three weeks later and said, we're in First Peter and you have chapter two. Well, at least he gave me the book.
So anyway, um, we're in First Peter and we're in chapter two, but we're actually to get the full impact of chapter two, you have to dip into First Peter 1.
Uh, and we'll start in verse 22 in just a moment. But let me say that, uh, before I preach this, when Paul wrote his letters, he had certain things he seems to talk about a lot. He talks about faith a lot, right?
When Peter talks in his letters, one of his main things that he's talking about is tribulation or, or trials. He also talks about being a, a pilgrim.
Uh, he talks about sojourning here. Uh, just this, it's the old song, remember the old song, "This World Is Not My Home." I'm just traveling passing through. That, that's a lot of Peter's message.
If you went to James, you would find a lot about works, and what James is trying to say is since you already have faith, you should also have accompanying that faith, the works that prove that you have that faith and the works that are, you know, uh, appropriate for that faith.
And so when you get to Peter, there's going to be certain themes that we're going to talk about, and let me also say that this theme seems a little strange for me to preach here. I just got to tell you the truth.
Because when I come in the doors of this place whenever I'm blessed to do so, I see extremely happy people, I see people milling with one another, talking to one another.
I don't see anybody having to stand off by themselves and not be talked to. Uh, and I've seen that in churches all my life. Have you seen the same thing?
Um, but this the message today is on unity. And I started thinking, now, Lord, Mark gave me chapter two and I don't know why I've got chapter two because the first thing's on unity and this church doesn't need it.
That's, that's my first thought. And then the Lord reminded me, you don't know what this church needs. I said, okay, fair enough.
Um, but one of the great blessings of preaching through a series is you preach things that you don't think someone needs because you're going through the whole book.
And sometimes you're preaching something you say, nobody's going to need this, but I've got to preach it, it's in the series. And so that may be a little bit of what I'm feeling today.
But I will say this, I think everyone has been in a church at one time or another just kind of looking around, uh, most of us have been in a church where there was no unity.
I'm reminded of, uh, a friend of mine, this is probably, this is probably about 25 years ago, I was a young pastor and somebody said, have you heard about Pastor so-and-so, my friend, and have you heard about his church? And I said, no, what happened?
Well, the church he was in was a church that was over a hundred years old and my friend decided it would be best, working with the deacons, they decided it would be best for the church to relocate.
Now, if you know anything about relocating of a church, uh, I already mentioned what could be a really big problem, because the church is over 100 years old.
When you're over 100 years old, someone going there, their grandfather put in that flower bed. Their grandfather painted that vestibule.
Their, their grandmother was the first one who cooked in that room. Yeah, it, it's just something, always there and people are like, don't touch it. Don't touch it.
So I knew he was going to be in for trouble when he, when he planned it. But then they said, yeah, they said, they voted and the vote was like 90%. I said, well, that's good.
And then he said, yeah, but some of the older folks are really unhappy about it. I said, I know, that's terrible. I mean, he's just going to have to go to those folks and talk to them and make sure they're okay.
And he said, no, that's not what he did. I said, what'd he do? He said, he created a peace committee. Oh, what? A peace committee. And he put everybody who was unhappy with the vote on the peace committee.
Now, I don't claim to know a whole bunch of stuff. But that just seemed like a really bad idea to me.
And so I called him up and I we'll call him Tim. I said, Tim, I heard what happened. You had the vote, vote went well. Yes, it did. But still got some folks out unhappy. Tell me what you did.
He said, well, I put together this peace committee and these folks that are unhappy are going to go talk to some of the stronger members, the, the folks who are very vocal on this.
And I said, Hey Tim, do you know what the opposite of peace is? What do you mean? Just the opposite of peace. War?
Did you just declare that your church was at war and you had to have a peace committee? Well, I didn't mean it that way. I said, it doesn't really matter what you meant, buddy.
And so sure enough, um, that peace committee went out and adjusted everyone's ideas and they had to revote.
And when they revoted, this time the folks, the 10% who did not want to move, won. And the folks who wanted to move lost.
And then the folks who wanted to move left. Unity. Unity. How do you handle it? How do you keep it?
Because I'm going to go ahead and give you a cliff notes here. I'm going to cheat a little bit. I'm going to tell you what I think this passage is telling us before I actually break down the passage. It's simply this.
As children of God, we already have unity. There's not some big plan to make it happen. God's already done all that. Our job is to maintain unity.
So with that, let's get into the text and I have a few assorted verses I'm going to read because it's a big, big area. But let me just read, uh, starting with verse 22, and you'll see I'm skipping around a little bit.
Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth, that means you have trusted Jesus, you've, you've believed the gospel.
So that you have sincere love for each other. Love one another deeply from the heart, for you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of the imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God.
Therefore, rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind.
Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, now that you have tasted that the Lord is good.
As you come to him, the living Stone—you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.
Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
Let me break it down real quickly for you. One thing that might confuse you as we read through this passage is I'm trying to give you a heads up so it doesn't. Peter is going to change metaphors.
He does that quite a bit. He's going to talk about this and then he's going to compare us to something else. But this first part is him simply saying that we must maintain unity.
And the Christian life is not something simply that when you trust Christ as our savior and that is how we enter the Christian life. There's no other way. Being born into a Christian family does not make you a part of the Christian life.
It makes you a part of a Christian family. It's when you trust Christ as your savior, when you repent of your sins and trust him, that is what makes you a Christian and you can live the Christian life.
But the Christian life can also not be lived by a Christian. Does that make sense? Do you agree with that?
There are people who do not live, that they are Christians, but they're not living in such a way that they're showing Jesus in the way they live. And so when it comes to the Christian life, really, it works if we do.
It works if we put in the effort to work for that. And most of us know that when unity breaks down in a church, you see it in different ways.
You see what I said a moment ago. People that are isolated, you see people that, that have really short conversations where they used to have longer conversations, right? You see people avoid one another.
Uh, the first church I ever joined when I was 14 years old. I came to Christ at 14. Now my parents belonged to a church before and I was not a member because I had not been baptized.
At 14, I trusted Christ as my savior. I joined a church. And it wasn't until two years later someone mentioned to me, well, we can't do that because Miss so-and-so and Miss so-and-so would be in the same room.
And I said, so? What's that mean? And they said, well, you know, they don't get along. And I said, they don't get along? Their kids are the same age. Their kids do stuff together. He said, yeah, but not mom and mama. They don't.
And uh, so I started watching. That's kind of fun in church, right? Started watching. And I would watch Miss so-and-so stay on the left side of the auditorium and Miss so-and-so stay on the right side of the auditorium.
And as far as I know, that's the way it, it was always that way. We've seen that. We've seen these things.
The problem with unity is when we stop meeting one another, talking to one another, truly engaging with one another and we can see it. So how do you keep that from happening?
Well, point number one, you live, this is key, you live like your new life is actually real. You live like what Jesus gave you is worth something.
You live like you have been, as the Bible said, made into a new creation. Old things are gone. Behold, all things are new. You live like that's real.
And I'm not trying to be trite when I say that. I'm simply making a point that you and I can live like it's not real. Here's the text.
You've been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable through the living and abiding word of God. Peter begins with the understanding that unity is a very foundation is based on us all having new life.
That's what Jesus gives us. Jesus takes our lives as broken as they are, as sinful as they are, and he makes us new creations. This is the new kind of life. It's not just surface change, it's the real deal.
You see, the old life that we had, it was going to fade away anyway, but the new life that we have in Jesus, it lasts.
When the old life that we had was tied to things that were temporary, but today, bless God as we walked in here today, and we saw one another, and we got ready to, to pray and to sing, we know that we have new life in Jesus and it's never going to go away.
And we're going to live with him forever. This means that unity is not based on personality. It's not based on preference. It's based on shared life in Jesus Christ.
That is what we have and that is the basis, the foundation of our unity. And when something feels strained, the old person that we were, we pull back.
That's what we do. I don't like that. I want to get away from that. But the new person that we are, we engage, and we try to figure it out, and we try to draw closer.
I saw a clip this last week, I didn't watch the whole thing, it's some of you, you scroll. I'm sitting somewhere, I was waiting, so I'm just scrolling through these different videos.
And one of them shows a, an elderly preacher and he gets up and that feels funny me saying elderly, anyway, he's older than me.
And he, and he's preaching and as he's preaching he's telling on himself. Everybody likes it when preachers tell on themselves. You ever notice that? They like it, they say ah, he's a loser too.
Anyway, but um, yeah, he's telling on himself how that he went into a hotel and he got into his room.
And when he got into his room, the, the hot water wasn't working. He calls down to the desk and he tells the woman, hey the hot water doesn't work in here.
And she said, oh, I know. I know yours is the only room that it doesn't work in. And I'm thinking, what? I've been in some bad hotels, but really?
And then he says, uh, he then began to just dress her down. You know how that, how dare you do this? How dare you do that? And he even made a statement something and it was after almost after this that I quit listening to him.
But he said, uh, you need to go and get an apology from your mom for birthing you. I mean, is that kind of stuff.
And then finally she says, he says, "You have anything to say for yourself?" And she says, "Yeah." She says, "Uh, I know you're a preacher and I heard you preach last week." And I thought, "Oh boy. There we go, there's the zinger." But all of us have seen that. We all fall back into that routine, and to live like we have truly a new life is the first step of unity.
The church that I pastored for 30 years, at about year ten, uh, a couple of the deacons came to me and they said, we've been doing some um, research on how much energy we're using.
And I said, great, what are we going to do? He said, we have a great idea. We are going to replace all the light switches in every room with light switches that the minute you walk in, they're motion activated and they just come on. The lights come on.
And here's the big deal. He said, if there's a class in there and they're moving at all, then the lights are going to stay on. But when everyone leaves, within five minutes, the lights go out.
And I thought, well, that's a pretty neat system. And he said, yeah, it's going to cost this kind of money and we will recoup that money in the first six months because we see that some, people are leaving the lights on all the time.
And I said, okay, that's great. So they switched out all those. They were in such a way that there was actually a switch, but there was a little kind of a light reader underneath it, you could push the switch to turn to make it stay on permanently if you wanted to.
But normally it was on a timer sort of thing and it would engage or not engage. So do you know what I did for the next 20 years in that church?
Every room that I walked in that was dark, I went... and about the time my hand is here, the lights have come on and my hand is still moving because I don't have that much uh ability to stop.
And I just turned it right back off. And so I turned it back on again. What I was doing was living out of the old habits. Agreed?
And this is what I'm trying to say about unity. Unity, if we live out of the old habits instead of the new person that Jesus has birthed within us, then we are not going to have unity. We're going to lose that unity rather than maintain it.
A second point that uh Peter teaches us is in verse 22. Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth, love one another earnestly from a pure heart.
Peter moves from identity that we do have new lives now. We are new people. And we have to break those old habits, we have to live in recognition of that new life.
He moves from that identity into a relationship. But he does it with precision. He doesn't just say, since you know the truth. He says, since you've obeyed the truth.
He says Peter is saying this. You already know what it's like to make an active choice and to do something. So make another active choice and do something.
And the active choice in this case is simply this. The gospel has already done something for you. It has purified you. It has reoriented your life. It has changed who you are.
And the first evidence that Peter points out is not, get this, the first evidence of new life is not just his great private devotion. It's not someone who knows how to have great times alone with God every morning.
The first thing that he shows is loving one another. You know, this is what the church was known for. The early church was known for having an absolute love for one another.
And so that was the unity because they loved one another. Love for one another is not an add-on in the Christian life. It's, it's not something you choose like you're buying a car and you decide to add a sunroof to it.
It's not like that. It's not at all. It is the core of the Christian life, one of the clearest expressions of it. And when he sharpens it to "love one another earnestly" earnestly from a pure heart.
The word earnestly carries the idea of being stretched. Of something that is a little bit of an engagement that is difficult. And there are difficult people to love.
A book was written uh, several years ago that I read called "Well-Intentioned Dragons". And it was talking about church people, "Well-Intentioned Dragons." You've got to be careful. Sometimes people will blow fire all over you uh while they have the best intentions. And what do you do when those things are happening? You still love them earnestly.
You still contend that love in your heart. This is an active choice that you make. Because unity is not something that we assume.
Unity is something that we that God has already established and is something we strive to continue with it. If unity is not actively pursued, it slowly weakens.
Again, this is one of the joys of coming here to this place, is to see you guys actively pursuing this. By greeting one another, talking to one another, praying with one another.
I, I love that today when Randy got up and he he was going to pray for us, he also read the Beatitudes because two things happened out of that. Number one, I'm thinking I think I want to switch my sermon. I want to go to the Beatitudes today because I love the passage.
And the second thing is, I'm realizing once again how my heart is warmed just by hearing the word of God. And one of the admonitions in scripture is that the church is to be a place for the reading of scripture.
And as we read the scripture, we find that it draws us closer together because God's already established everything we need for unity. And then we act upon that. We live in what we have.
Peter's point is that love doesn't wait for something urgent to come up. Love moves in the most ordinary times.
Sometimes we see someone maybe at church, maybe it's at a place and we haven't seen them forever and we're all excited. And that's great. And that's normal. And we go up and we're so happy to see them again.
But it's also really wonderful for us to not have to wait for that. It's also the Bible teaches us the earnest desire is for us to try our best at all times to love one another, to care for one another.
Because unity doesn't hold itself together. It is built. Let me say it again, it only works if we work. We work on this idea of unity. Number three.
Get rid of what is hurting your relationships. Now that is so plain, isn't it? So ordinary, right? Get rid of what is hurting your relationships.
You guys know that we come we come here often with our friends David and Julie, right? Julie does not like the sound of food being chewed. We were playing cards one night and Tammy had bought Corn Nuts.
Oh, y'all know. And I am, uh, I've got a soda and I've got a bowl of Corn Nuts and I'm just chowin' down as I'm playing these cards. And I look up and she is glaring at me.
Julie has glared at me a few times. We have a brother-sister relationship. Uh, and you know what that means. Sometimes brothers and sisters are at each other. But she was glaring at me. And I said, I meant it innocently, "Do you want some?""No!" And then David starts laughing. He says, you're chewing those and it's loud. And I said, "Oh, like she won't let you chew ice." He said, "Exactly. If I can't chew my ice, you can't have your Corn Nuts." And I, because I am a person of unity, I said, "Huh. Good thing I'm not married to you." Unity. It actually does take working on. Sometimes it's humor, hopefully. But we express it. And we get rid of what is hurting our relationships.
Now let me tell you what Peter says might be hurting relationships. This could be friends that are in church, out of church, this could be husband and wife. Listen to this.
Therefore rid yourselves of all malice, all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, slander of every kind like newborn babies crave pure spiritual milk so that it may, so that by it you may grow up into your salvation. So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and slander.
Now watch this closely, there's something here that I noticed that I had not noticed before when I preached this text. There is an exchange here.
It is put away this, long for this. This is the relationship clues that Peter has given us. Put away something that's hurting the relationship and then you will long for this. Now let me break that down a little bit.
First let's break down these words just a bit and these are very very minor simple definitions. Malice is a settled intent to see someone else hurt. That's why they call it malice.
It's when I want to see you hurt. I want to see the worst. That's pretty ugly.
Deceit. Deceit is baiting a hook. It is manipulating outcomes. I am using deceit to get what I want you to, from you.
By the way, deceit does not always look extremely nefarious. Deceit can look very sweet. Deceit many times is flattery. It's whatever I have to do to get what I want from you. That's deceit.
Number three, hypocrisy. The classic definition, it's what the word comes from. The idea of wearing a mask. It is when I am wearing something, I am putting on a face, I am putting on something, but I'm not letting you know who I really am.
Envy is resenting someone else's good. That's why Philippians says to rejoice in good. This is the opposite of that. In other words, when something good happens to you, I rejoice with that.
Let's say I walked in today and half of you here had just won brand new vehicles. Something happened at the lake and half of y'all won them and I come in and my first thought is not, I should have been here, why didn't I get to win one. Not real happy about that.
My first thought is man, that is fantastic. I'm so happy for you. That's great. That's not always easy because we have something the Bible describes as a sin nature.
That's why the first point, back to the first point, live what you already are. You now have a new nature. So, those are, that's, that's envy. And it's a tough one. It really is.
Uh, envy, let's bring that down, that might be a little hokey, you think half of you won a new vehicle. Let's say you're at the job and the one guy who's in the same position or the one gal in the same position you are, they got the raise and not you. Is that better? Make a little bit more sense. Okay, it's, that's envy.
Slander. We all know it. But it is speaking down on to someone or speaking about someone behind their back. And here's the challenge. And I want you to think about this.
These things don't feel destructive in the moment. Slander in the moment doesn't feel destructive. It feels justified. Let me illustrate.
Someone has done something I don't like what they do. I go over to my friend and I say, I'll tell you one thing, this is what's going on. That person, they always do this, and I don't like it about this, and they're just not a real person, they're not who they say they are.
Now, what I feel is justified because they did something to me. I didn't like what happened, so I'm justified in doing that. No, you're not. You're destructive.
So you see why these are tied to his preaching on unity? These kind of things feel justified.
In other words, uh, I bait the hook to manipulate somebody. I can feel justified in doing that. After all, I was going for the greater good. They didn't understand what really needed to happen.
Or I I can wear the mask. I just I just don't want anybody to see uh that I'm really upset right now, and so I'm just going to pretend all and pretty soon it becomes your way of life because it destroys you.
So we replay conversations, and we fill in what they we think they meant. And we build our own case within ourselves about the person who we're unhappy with.
And the more we do that, the more settled we feel, we can rationalize. But what is happening during all that is we are training our hearts.
Training our hearts. to act in such a way that is not who we really are. And the next time something happens, we fall right back right back into that routine. So, now here's here's the point I had not seen before.
Peter doesn't say if you just get in the Bible and read the Bible, you will not have malice, envy, hypocrisy, slander. He doesn't say that.
He says if you put those away, you will begin to get hungry for the word of God. That's interesting, isn't it? We get it out of order.
We think that if I just read more of the Bible, I won't slander people. No, the Bible says active effort, it only works if we do. Put it away. Say no.
Decide not to. Decide not to slander. Decide not to deceive someone. Decide not to be envious. I mean when it hits, say no.
And when you put those things away, you will desire the sincere milk of the word. And it's kind of like this, these things ruin our appetite for what God has for us.
Now, having three grandchildren, and two of them little boys who know what snacks are. Tammy and I were driving home the other day. We we don't say this, and by the way, Brittany never listens to these videos.
Please, pretty, don't do this one either. But we were saying we didn't have snacks all the time. I mean, we had dinner, lunch, whatever it was, and we might have dessert, but not snacks all the time.
And they come in and instead of dinner, they want snacks. And they know where the snacks are. Brittany has put in lock, put locks on all the cabinets.
Anybody else, y'all familiar with that? You put locks on the cabinets? Because, and it's not because there's there's bleach in there. It's because there's snacks in there.
And they don't know where the snacks are. But here's the problem. And I watch like a hawk. That's what you do when you're a grandfather. You really watch. Cause you can't get involved. So you watch.
And I watched one day and it was Easter and they got their Easter basket and we're going to have dinner in just a few minutes and so Finn, the oldest, he wants this marshmallow rabbit that's in this, it's about 20 of them in here. He says, I want one of these. Can I have a snack? Can I have a snack?
And she says, no, we're going to ruin dinner. And I'm just watching her. And after about mm 40 requests... request is a kind word... she said, okay, just one. Y'all know where I'm going with this, right?
And so he eats that rabbit like *gulp*! I want another one. And so I watched until the whole package was gone. Gone! That took maybe 10 minutes. Now it's time for dinner.
Guess what? He's not hungry. He has ruined his appetite by the behavior he has taken, which is eating all this stuff that is not good.
And that is exactly what we do. We ruin our appetite for the good by engaging in these behaviors.
So what Peter says is if you put those away, you actively decide. And I'll be real honest with you here. There's sometimes when I say to myself, and I do believe in walking in the spirit.
I do believe in the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Not only for evangelism and not only for preaching and not only for prayer, but I believe it's also for daily living.
And so I, I am all about praying for the Holy Spirit. But there's sometimes we just simply say to ourselves, no, not doing it. I don't need to jump on my knees real quick and pray for 30 minutes that the God will that God will help me not slander.
I just don't slander. I mean, make sense? Maybe I'm too pragmatic. But that's uh, that's the way I read this scripture is that there's a hinge. It works if we do. If we get busy doing what we need to do.
Okay. Number four. Look at my clock. Don't sit back. This is for unity, to maintain unity.
Don't sit back, be part of what God is doing right here. Be part of it.
Verse four says, As you come to him, and here we're changing metaphors, so be aware of it. Still talking about us. As you come to him, Jesus, the living stone, rejected by humans but chosen by God and precious to him, you also, like living stones—same thing—are being built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
Here's what Peter is telling us. He's now using the metaphor of the entire church. The foundation of the entire church is built upon Jesus and we are the stones... metaphor again... of the church. We build it up.
We are the people that are part of his body. And he is, he is the, he is the cornerstone. So it's like this. Jesus sets the line, he sets what we're going to be and we simply get in place. We get in place.
For some of you that were military, you might really understand that. Get in your place. This is what the metaphor is here. Christ the cornerstone.
Everything aligns with him. Everything aligns with him and to him. We are placed together. Excuse me.
As part of the structure. This means that your role matters. Anybody played Jenga before? Jenga lovers, Jenga haters?
Jenga. At that wedding they had a giant Jenga on the table yesterday. Or last night. And I looked over at it and they had removed a number of the bottom pieces.
And it was leaning a little bit. And I thought... boy, it's about to crash. Some parents are gonna go crazy because kids are doing this.
Because if you remove pieces, the structure can fail. The structure's not what it needs to be.
Doesn't have the integrity, doesn't look like it should look, is not able to accomplish what it can accomplish. You are perhaps one of those Jenga pieces that you have pulled yourself out.
And what that means is the structure is not what it should be. Now, does that mean the church is going to fail because of you? I don't think so. Um, do I know of churches that have failed because someone very important pulled out?
Yes I have. I have. I have known of those. I've read about 'em too. But what this is telling us is, Jesus is the cornerstone and we're built upon him. So get in your place. And stay in your place. Be what you're supposed to be.
Peter doesn't give us a category of uninvolved. That's never in the scripture. Okay guys, here's your choice. You can do this or this or this or just stand by the sidelines and do nothing to be uninvolved.
He doesn't give us that. Instead, Peter is telling us that we have to be a part of what we really are. We're part of the body.
And then number five, represent Christ clearly. Clearly in your relationships. And this is verse nine.
You are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's special possession. Isn't that a great term?
We are God's special possession, that you may, here's what you do as God's special possession, you may declare the praises of him who has called you and here we go all the way back to the first part of the passage that I read to you.
He's called you out of darkness into wonderful light. He's called you from lostness unto found.
He's called you from away from God to close to God. He's called you from people that were enemies of God to friends and even family of God. Darkness to light.
That's why you, that's why you received mercy. So that you can now give mercy. Peter reminds us who we are. We belong to God. We've been brought into his people.
That identity carries a purpose. My dad used to tell me, uh, when I would think about doing something or I would ask him, maybe you all had a parent who did this too.
My dad would say, you are a Griffin. You do not do that. Now, that kind of built pride in me about being a Griffin.
Kind of liked that. Griffins don't do that. When my dad divorced, uh, when I was a kid, I was nine years old. Actually, my mother divorced him, and it was a tough time in my life, tough time in their family. It was really really um... a lot a lot of memories that are not the best memories that I've had to kind of work through and think about.
But my dad is the type, he was the type of man who was very emotional. He was a smart man. He was an accountant, brilliant, one of the most brilliant men I've ever met, he could just figure anything out.
But when it came to emotions, he crumbled. And so he loved my mother, this divorce comes and he crumbled.
And so what does my dad, the very smart financial guy do when he crumbles? He's not very smart financially anymore.
And so whatever she said she wanted, he said you got it. She said I want the house, you got it. I want the car, I'll pay for it. Uh I want you to pay for my lawyer, you got it.
He did everything. And he totally bankrupted himself. He sold his business, uh sold it very cheap, um and just pretty much gave up everything. Well one thing in the middle of that is that he had a loan at a bank.
And when all that was over, because the people are coming after him, he declared bankruptcy. And what my dad said was, I'm declaring bankruptcy so I have some breathing room, but I will pay everyone back.
And I remember as a kid watching that, listening to that, not quite understanding as I got older, I started understanding it better, but here, here was one of the key moments of what it means living uh to to clearly show your relationship.
And this was with my dad. After about 10 years, he finally paid a bank back that he owed money to. It took him, he's paying them every month, he's an accountant, so he does income taxes.
So he pays a whole lot during income tax season, right? And he keeps paying, keeps paying. And so my dad said one day he said, hey it's Saturday and the president of the bank is out up there and he's waiting for me. I'm going to meet him and I want you to go with me.
And I said, okay. So we got in the car and drove up there and he knocked on the door and the president came over and he opened the door and my dad went back to the office and the guy said, won't you sit over there. He said, do you drink coffee?
And we were just talking about this earlier today. I am at this time probably, uh 15. So I'm drinking coffee and I said sure. So I got a cup of coffee and I'm sitting here.
And after a few minutes, my dad comes back out, and he and that guy give a big hug and smack each other on the back, and they come walking out of there, and the bank president walks over to me and says, uh, "Mr. Griffin," looks at me.
I said, "Yes, sir." He said, "Tell you what your dad just did." I said, "Okay." He said, "Your dad declared bankruptcy ten years ago because some things really went poorly in his life, some bad stuff." He said, "But he has continued and paid me for 10 years. And every time interest rates went up, he went up on his payments." He said, "So he really followed this." And he just gave me the last payment, and he's paid in full, and he did not have to pay me legally. And then I, I'll tell you something about being a Griffin.
He says, "So here's what I have to say to you. If you ever need anything, if you need a job, anything, you're hired because you were raised by your daddy." Well, you think that made an imprint? I've used that in a few sermons, but not many, but it floats around in my head all the time.
Because there's the moment when you live up to what you are. And what Peter is saying here is live up to what you are. Represent Christ in your relationships. People watch what we do. People watch how we respond.
Remember that story I told you at the very beginning about the preacher who chewed out the lady down at the desk. Yeah, they watch. They hear, they know. And so people watch our unity.
People watch how we treat one another. Another. And those moments are not small. And when we begin to live clearly with Christ in our relationship, remembering who we are, we don't leave things unresolved.
It changes how we handle our very affairs. So I'm going to close with this. God has already done what we could not do. He's given us life, new life in Christ.
God has given us a new heart. He's brought us together as his people. He's provided everything he needs for us to have for unity. It's all been engaged.
He's brought us together for that. So the question is not what needs to be done. The question is, do we live out what has already been done?
And this is where I close with a little bit of, uh, appointing and simply say this. Is there anybody in your life right now? Did anybody come to mind during this whole time that you thought, man, I've kind of let that slide and I should not.
There is a unity there that is missing. There is, we're going backwards in that area. There's something that I need to work a little bit harder about maintaining.
Maybe I just need to go ahead and really have a come to Jesus meeting. I mean I may be in that place at this point. I may be where I need to come back to someone and I need to ask for their forgiveness.
By the way I have asked for forgiveness from people who have done me wrong. Oh, you, you took the blame? No, I took the blame for where my heart went when they did me wrong.
I learned that in college. I had a guy rip me off. He was a, he hired me, and then he wrote me a check for the work I did, and then I came home for Christmas, and I cashed the check, and I bought Christmas presents, and then he, he canceled the check because he needed money.
And so I had such, oh my gosh, I was so angry at this guy because it embarrassed my dad had to catch me out, you know, all this stuff, all these presents here dad there's the present you bought um, it was that kind of a deal.
And so I held on to that for oh my goodness six months seven months and then finally God called to my heart one day a message like this and said you got to give that up.
You got to give that up. And I said, I will give it up, God. Today, I give it up. Now here's the kicker. The guy didn't, I was in college, the guy wasn't in college anymore, and I go back to my dorm.
Because I'm just, it's one of those really weird moments where we're supposed to go to lunch and lunch was the best meal, Sunday lunch was the best meal of the week, and the Lord's just really pushed on my heart, don't go to lunch. Really? No, go back to your dorm.
You need to pray some more. Went back to my dorm, shut the door, drop down on my knees, said, Lord, okay, I told you I'm going to forgive that guy. And about that time... I'm not making this stuff up. Preachers make stuff up all the time. No, they don't.
Uh, and I open the door and there's that guy! And he looks at me and says, I went to church today. I haven't been in church in six months. And during church God really got a hold of my heart. I cheated you. Here's the money.
And I said, man come on in for a minute. I said, and I've cheated you. Because I have downright hated you. And I need for this to be done over. And so we prayed together.
I got my money. And uh we both got peace. Unity. Is it worth it? You know that song we sang a moment ago? Is he worth it? Is this worth it?
It is worth it. Because we're gonna live out of the people that the new life that we have. We're going to put away things that damage relationships.
We're going to live within the relationship that we have with Christ, and we're going to maintain the unity that Jesus already started. He already gave it to us. Now let's pray together.
Father, thank you for letting us be together today. Thank you for this group. Uh, what a sweet group of people that I, I am blessed and I thank you that I get to come here uh to preach and to talk and to be friends with these folks.
But Lord, I know that everyone sitting here today that has trusted you as savior is your own special people. I know that they've received mercy from you, and more than that, you delight in them.
You absolutely delight in them. And I pray, Lord, that we give you even more opportunity to delight in us as we love one another, forgive one another, have unity with one another.
Lord, these are not easy things to do, but they show who we are and who we belong to. So I pray Father that we will follow you and as the Spirit leads, help us to have courage to do whatever you lay upon our hearts.
And we ask it in Jesus name. Amen. Thanks guys.