— Welcome & Introduction — I appreciate Mike calling out the podcast. I should have told you that we actually are doing some special podcasts right now. There is a special little celebration coming up here in about 60 days. It'll be a big deal here at the lake and it'll be a big deal everywhere else. We're going to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and the founding of our country. I don't know if those Hellsgate people are doing something special with the fireworks, but this would be the time to do it, if you're going to.
<v So I actually did a podcast with doctors Jim and Ryan Denison that came out on Wednesday on the Faith and Clarity podcast. We are talking about that anniversary and we are also talking about a special newsletter series that Dr. Denison has prepared that actually comes out the first edition of that newsletter today called America 250>The History of Our Future. So if you subscribe to the daily article that Dr. Denison writes, that will show up in your email inbox today, probably already there, and will be there every Sunday afternoon for the next several weeks leading up to July 4th. If you go to Faith and Clarity, you can hear a podcast about that. There's also several more podcasts that will be coming that talk about the intersection of faith and the founding of our country.
<v So I actually did a podcast with doctors Jim and Ryan Denison that came out on Wednesday on the Faith and Clarity podcast. We are talking about that anniversary and we are also talking about a special newsletter series that Dr. Denison has prepared that actually comes out the first edition of that newsletter today called America 250>And how we need to pray and think and work as citizens of this country leading into the next 50 or so years of our history together. So check that out at the Daily Article denisonforum.org and also Faith and Clarity on your podcast platform.
<v So I actually did a podcast with doctors Jim and Ryan Denison that came out on Wednesday on the Faith and Clarity podcast. We are talking about that anniversary and we are also talking about a special newsletter series that Dr. Denison has prepared that actually comes out the first edition of that newsletter today called America 250>— Does God Ever Wink? —
<v Wanted to ask you this morning, does God ever wink at you? Does he ever prod you? Does he ever gig you in a way to just say, hey, I wanted to let you know I'm still here. Let me tell you a couple of stories. One of those was last night. I don't know if you were awake about 9:30, 9>45 last night, but I was out looking at the stars. One of the great things about coming out to the lake and getting out of town is that you can see further and better into the night sky. And so I was looking off to the north toward the airport and loving the stars, looking off to the west and had seen a great sunset.
<v Wanted to ask you this morning, does God ever wink at you? Does he ever prod you? Does he ever gig you in a way to just say, hey, I wanted to let you know I'm still here. Let me tell you a couple of stories. One of those was last night. I don't know if you were awake about 9:30, 9>And then I turned to go back into the house and I saw something that looked like a glimmer of red to the southeast. And I thought, what is that? And having learned from all of you that, well, fire is a big deal at Possum Kingdom, I thought, is it a fire? And I kept watching and kept looking, and I saw what I almost never see. I saw an incredible red to orange moonrise. And I can't see something like that without thinking of the psalmist, "The heavens declare the glory of God." That happened to me in another way about a month ago. God winked at me, he gigged me in a way. I had a little extra time, so I went to a park not far from my house to spend a little time reading the Bible and praying. And I happened to be praying through a portion of 1 Peter chapter 2. Verse 1, it says this, "Therefore, rid yourselves of all malice, all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander." And then this verse, "Like newborn infants, desire the pure milk of the word, so that you may grow up into your salvation if you have tasted that the Lord is good." I had read that passage, was thinking about it, praying through it, and I just started walking about 20 or so yards away from where my pickup was and the picnic table that I was sitting at. It was a morning just about as beautiful as this morning, and I was just walking around and I walked around and looked down on the ground and I found this, laying in the dirt. 20 yards from a picnic table, obviously left by some family with a preschooler.
<v Wanted to ask you this morning, does God ever wink at you? Does he ever prod you? Does he ever gig you in a way to just say, hey, I wanted to let you know I'm still here. Let me tell you a couple of stories. One of those was last night. I don't know if you were awake about 9:30, 9>And I thought the Lord is gigging me, reminding me that he's right here with me, with us all the time. And that I need to be like the baby that once had this pacifier in its mouth, craving for more connection with him. Craving like a baby does for its bottle at night or at nap time, to be craving for his word so as he says, "I can grow up into this thing called the salvation that Jesus died on the cross and that we celebrate in his supper." Crave it so that I can grow up into everything that this salvation is about, that it's for, that it's about the transformation of my life.
<v Wanted to ask you this morning, does God ever wink at you? Does he ever prod you? Does he ever gig you in a way to just say, hey, I wanted to let you know I'm still here. Let me tell you a couple of stories. One of those was last night. I don't know if you were awake about 9:30, 9>So, yes, I did wash it, by the way. But this thing is hanging out with me in my pickup truck these days, reminding me to continue to grow as a believer. I learned a long time ago the truth of this statement. Salvation in Christ is the miracle of a moment, but maturity in Christ, growing up spiritually is the miracle of a lifetime. That's how this works. The Apostle Peter talked about the salvation experience in the very first part of the letter. He said in the first chapter, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, because of his great mercy, he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead." That's the miracle moment of salvation, and if you've never experienced it, it is that moment where you come to understand who Jesus is as savior, as the forgiver of the world because of his sacrificial perfect death on the cross and his resurrection from the grave. Again, what we celebrate in this meal, that is the moment when you believe that Christ comes to live in your heart to forgive you of your sin, to give you the promise of a new start and a new life and a new destination in heaven. That's the miracle of a moment. But the miracle of a lifetime is growing up into this great new life. And the rest of this letter in many ways is about the Apostle Peter telling people who are scattered across one region of the New Testament world, "What does it mean to grow up like this?"
— Growing Up: 1 Peter 3 — And when you get to the third chapter, I want to read just a few verses out of chapter 3 beginning at verse 8. This is what he says in part it's like to grow up and to become mature as a believer. Would you stand? Let me read these four verses to you out of chapter 3 beginning at verse 8. Finally, Peter says, "Finally." Now you know that's like the preacher's permission word to keep talking for another 20 minutes, okay? Finally, Peter says, "All of you be like-minded and sympathetic, love one another and be compassionate and humble, not paying back evil for evil or insult for insult, on the contrary giving a blessing, since you were called to this." Listen to that phrase. "You were called to this when you were born into the faith as a Christian, so that you may inherit a blessing." And then he quotes what possibly was a favorite passage of Peter from Psalm 34. "For the one who wants to love life and see good days, let him keep his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking deceit, and let him turn away from evil and do what is good. Let him seek peace and pursue it." "Because the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are open to their prayer, but the face of the Lord is against those who do what is evil." You may be seated.
— Growing Up: If I was to put this in one sentence, what does it mean to grow up as a Christian? It means that you and I are called of God in grace to live and love, to serve, and even sometimes to suffer like Jesus. That's what it means to grow up. That's what maturity looks like. And I think in these four short verses and in the surrounding passage, Peter is helping us to get our minds around this on a very practical daily and consistent basis.
— First: Healthy Relationships — So let me just break this down for you a little bit. What does it look like to grow up? Well, it means first of all that you keep reaching for healthy relationships with each other. Have you come to learn that people are messy? I mean, downright dirty sometimes. But guess what? It's not just other people, it's you. We are all really messed up people. We are so messed up that the only thing that could straighten us out was for a perfect almighty and all holy God to come and manifest and express himself as one of us and to give himself on a cross so that we could have a new birth. That's how messed up we really are. Peter says, finally, it's almost like he gets to this part of the letter and he says, okay, if you forget everything else I've told you, remember this is how Jesus wants you to love and live.
— First: He wants you to be people who strive with each other, pursuing unity and sympathy, what the, what the might best be understood as empathy with each other. That you learn to put yourself in each other's shoes, you learn to deal with each other in kindness and in care, and that you keep striving every day for the most redeemed relationships you can have with every single person. You live out what the Apostle Paul said to another one of the New Testament churches, to the Philippians. He said, "Do nothing, listen to this, do nothing out of selfish ambition or conceit." That's a pretty good marching order, well, for the rest of your life. "Do nothing out of selfish ambition or or conceit, but in humility consider other people more important than yourself." Peter echoes that by saying that not only do you pursue this unity through compassion and love, but you do it with humility. You ask God for the strength and for the wisdom to live a life where you put other people first. You consider what their situation is, what they're going through, what their challenges are, and you try to feel with them the perspective that they've come to hold, especially if it is in great opposition to your perspective. And you try to deal with them in a way that produces a healthy relationship. That's why Jesus said, the most important thing for you to remember is that you are to love God with all of your being, your heart, soul, mind, and being, and to love others as yourself or the way that God has loved you.
— First: During that same little prayer time where this little pacifier was discovered, where God winked or gigged me in some way, I started thinking through other parts of First Peter that I was reading that morning. And over the last three or four weeks, there's a prayer that has emerged that I've learned to start praying more consistently. It started on that morning about a month ago. It got reinforced when I was in worship a Sunday or two ago. But here's the prayer that I think God wants me to pray for a while, maybe the rest of my life. Lord, would you make me and us humble, wise, and brave.
— First: Would you make me humble enough to know that I'm a broken sinner like every other person that I'm going to meet on any given day, and that I am wholly dependent upon you for a new life and a new heart and a new way of living and loving and serving. Would you make me wise in the wisdom of God to be able to see things the way you see them, God, and to be able to make choices in a way that will consistently honor you and bless people? And then, Lord, would you make me brave? Would you make me brave like Joshua? Would you make me brave like Peter? Would you give me the courage to actually obey and do what you have shown me to do, especially as I relate to other people. Do you know we need help doing that over and over again because people are messy.
— First: Do you feel like your voice is more rested than it was a few years ago? If you do, it's probably because of what's been going on reported by The Wall Street Journal this week, that we're talking less. Over the last 10 years, probably because of electronic communications like texting and WhatsApp and those types of things, they actually started watching and counting our words. It's a little bit different if you're older than if you're younger, but on average, about all of us are using about 400 words a day less verbally than we did 10 years ago. You realize that's about 12,000 less words spoken by all of us a month. 120 to 140,000 words a year less than what we used to say to each other.
— First: And when I read that article, I thought to myself, this is why in part we're not connecting well. What's the last time you had a really great conversation that connected you to another human being, especially human being that you were struggling with? We've replaced it with email and text, social media posts, instead of simply sitting across the table or across a coffee cup and having a meaningful interaction with people. Now I understand they can be difficult, they can be cantankerous, they can be confusing, they can be frustrating, we can all be that.
— First: But you do remember that the only thing in this world that's going to the next world are people. And we can't give up striving, struggling, pursuing, forgiving, helping, encouraging, and showing kindness to the people that we're going to spend eternity with. Keep reaching in the love and grace of God.
— Second: Replace Retaliation — The second thing in that category is that you replace the desire to retaliate. Because that's what our sinful nature wants to do. We learn it when we're preschoolers and we perfect it when we're teenagers, but we learn that when somebody hurts us, we're going to hurt them back. If somebody insults us, we're going to insult them back. We call them cut downs when I was a teenager. If somebody cut you down in the cafeteria or on the basketball court, you went to look to find the best way to cut them back, even stronger, sharper. That is the intuitive nature of what it means to be a sinner. Nobody is going to show you up. Nobody is going to gain the upper hand.
— Second: As I was thinking about this passage and thinking about what I wanted to share with you, I was wondering what this might have looked like in Peter's life. Growing up on the north end of the Sea of Galilee, just gosh, a stone's throw from the water, he grew up to become a fisherman along with his friends James and John. And then probably in their late teens or early twenties, along comes this rabbi from Bethlehem by way of Nazareth. They hear him, they listen to him, they watch the crowds be drawn to him, and over time one day, Jesus just walks by them as they're tending their nets and doing their work and did what sometimes Jewish rabbis would do. Gathering up a following, he invites Peter, James, and John, among others, to become his followers.
— Second: And by that time, we don't know the background, but by that time they had become so interested in him that they were willing to walk away from their business and their livelihood to become his disciples. But I wonder what this looked like in Peter's life a year or so later, when Peter's fishing partners James and John decided to game the system. And they got their mother's help, one passage tells us, and they went to Jesus and they said, "Jesus, you're a mover, you're a shaker, you're going to be somebody even bigger than you are now. We can tell." "You're a rising star, and we want your permission to be on your right and on your left in prominence." And guess what? Peter and the other nine heard about this little conversation.
— Second: Can you imagine when it says that the other disciples, finding out about James and John asking for the seats of prominence and honor and esteem with Jesus as he built his kingdom, who do you think led the conversation when it says that the other apostles were offended? They were angered. They were ticked off. Can you not imagine that Peter is at the front of that line, saying, "What is up with you guys? We're partners in all this. We got into this boat with Jesus together, and now you're trying to get ahead of me and everyone else here by gaming this system?" Think about it when Jesus finished the Last Supper, sang a hymn, went down the Kidron valley and went into his favorite garden into his favorite park for a time of prayer. What we call the Garden of Gethsemane. You can still walk in that garden today. You remember what happened? They had a conversation about what was coming and the disciples, Peter, they didn't understand, but Peter said before they left the room, he pulled out a dagger and he said, "Look, Jesus, we've got two swords." And Jesus, Jesus just kind of exasperated with him, just goes, "You know what? It's not even worth explaining. Okay, Peter, that's fine. That's enough. Let's go." And when they get down in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus is there and he is watching as the torches come down through the Eastern gate of the city of Jerusalem. He can see that entourage, that platoon of soldiers being led by Judas coming to arrest him. He had plenty of time to run away. Plenty of time to escape across the cross, but he just watches it come. And then what happens when Judas and the soldiers show up? Peter pulls out the sword and what does he do? Cuts off the ear of a guy by the name of Malchus, who was one of the high priest's soldiers.
— Second: Now let me ask you, do you think Peter was aiming for that man's ear? Uh-uh. He was aiming at his neck because he thought force needed to be met with force. And it is now Peter, years later, three decades later, writing that when somebody hurts you, refuse to hurt them back. Learn to live like Jesus lived. Learn to live like a lord, a savior, and a king who while he had nails being driven through his wrists and his feet, prayed for the very people who held the hammer. Refuse to retaliate. I don't know who's on your playlist, but I like that mine is pretty diverse. I definitely lean country, but I like a lot of other stuff as well.
— Second: One of those artists that you'll find on my on my iPad or on my music list is a country singer by the name of Martina McBride. One of my favorite Martina McBride songs is a defiant song called "Anyway". I am not going to sing any of it to you. But here's part of the lyric. "This world's gone crazy, it's hard to believe that tomorrow will be better than today. Believe it anyway. You can love someone with all your heart, for all the right reasons, in a moment they can choose to walk away. Love them anyway." "God is great, but sometimes life isn't good." I'm sorry, "Sometimes life ain't good. And when I pray, it doesn't always turn out like I think it should. But I do it anyway. I do it anyways."
— Last: Count on God's Promise — The last thing that Peter says is that if you're going to do this well, if you're going to live and love and serve and suffer like Jesus, then you have to count on God's promise. He quotes Psalm 34 as a way of reminding us that we have been called to a promise. You can read the whole letter of 1 Peter in about 13 minutes, and that's really the way you probably ought to read it sometimes. We do good digging down into a portion of it, kind of pull out the thoughts, we do well with that. But remember, it was written as a letter. It didn't have chapter and verse sections in it. It just was a letter.
— Last: And you can imagine a group of believers like this in Peter's hometown of Capernaum or Nazareth or Bethlehem or Bethsaida or anywhere else in the New Testament world, can you imagine them getting this letter from the Apostle Peter, who is now in Rome and has been arrested by a guy named Nero, and he writes this letter back to them to encourage them to strengthen them. You know they didn't stop halfway through to have coffee and donuts. Read it out loud, read it from start to finish. And Peter says twice in this letter, this incredible phrase, "You have been called to this." Called to live and to love, to grow up and to serve, and sometimes to suffer just like Jesus did. And quoting Psalm 34, he says, "There is a promise in this from God. That if you will grow up and commit your life to living this way, that you will grow up in grace and you will be a blessing to others, and then there will be more blessing coming your way." I love the way he uses the Psalm. He says, "God's face, that is God's favor, will be turned toward you." You may know that phrase, the face and favor of God. Do you know it comes from the oldest piece of the Bible that we still have in our possession? If you go to Jerusalem, go to the National Museum, you go to this one little display, they'll show you a replica of an archaeological dig where they found a piece of scripture, a tiny little piece of scroll that is in fact the oldest piece of manuscript that we have today from the Bible. Do you know what's on that little tiny piece? It's a blessing that God told Moses and Aaron to pray over the people of Israel recorded for us in Numbers 6.
— Last: It goes like this, "May the Lord bless you and protect you. May the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you. May the Lord look with favor on you and give you peace." If you rely on God, you can count on that promise. If you learn to live that way consistently.
— Last: — Live as a Citizen — Now where might you have opportunity? Where can you live and love, serve, and sometimes suffer like Jesus did? Well, Peter gave you three places. My friend Gerald pointed out a couple of them real briefly last week, but let me just remind you. He says that you have a platform to do this when you're in town, when you're online, when you're living as a citizen. If you turn back just a little bit to chapter 2 and verse 13.
— Last: Peter says, "Submit to every human authority because of the Lord, whether to the emperor as supreme authority or to governors as those who are sent by him to punish those who do what is evil and to praise those who do what is good." "For it is God's will that you should silence the ignorance of foolish people by doing good. Submit." Oh, by the way, he uses that word "submit" five times by the way. "Submit as free people, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil but as God's slaves." And then this summary verse. "Honor everyone, love the brothers and sisters, fear God, and honor the emperor." Now that's an incredible statement from a guy who is living under one of the worst Roman Caesars that we ever heard about in history. A guy named Nero. Peter writes this letter probably around 62 or 63 AD, and he is executed by Nero probably within 24 months of finishing this letter to his friends. You've probably heard various things about Nero. Nero is a really good name for your dog, especially if you have a pitbull or another angry breed.
— Last: Let me tell you a little bit about Nero. Nero came to be the Roman Caesar at the ripe age of 16. There's a long, ugly story about how he got to be Caesar at 16. But he started off pretty good. Historians call his first five years, he reigned for about 16 years, first five years were called the peaceful blessing years. But after about five years he got tired of his mother pushing him. So he wanted to silence her influence, so he poisoned her.
— Last: And then, well, then he kind of went off the rails, as you could imagine at 20. Around 64, history tells us that the city of Rome burned. And nobody knows exactly who started the fire, but historians lean in the direction of Nero. But it was from that fire that Nero began to blame a new group called Christians, and had them widely persecuted and driven out of the city. When Nero finally was able to see the fire of Rome come to an end, guess what he did?
— Last: He started a building project where the fire had been and he built a fabulous palace where all the fire had destroyed part of the city. The palace was so beautiful. It actually had a rotating dining room that would mimic the movement of the planets and the stars. Kind of like what you see in Reunion Tower, he had one of those 2,000 years ago. And when you came into the palace, you went into a large vestibule, probably bigger than this building, with a 100-foot statue of guess who? Nero.
— Last: He also was a person of the people. He liked to perform for them, and so he declared himself an actor and a singer. And so he would go on stage and entertain the masses with his singing and with his acting, but he let it be known that if anyone dared to leave while he was on stage, it wasn't going to go well for them. So there are actually written records of women giving birth to children in the audience rather than risk leaving during his performance. He was also an Olympian, if you can imagine that. He entered at one point a ten-horse chariot race, and while they were racing, his chariot and his horses got out of control, and his chariot turned over throwing him out and nearly killing him.
— Last: But guess what? At the end of the race, the judges decided, "Well, King Nero, Caesar Nero, he would have won anyway, so we're declaring him the victor." That's the guy that Peter is writing about when he says, "Love the brothers and sisters of the faith, and honor the emperor." If he could be called to live under that kind of corrupt leadership and to still be a faithful citizen, don't you think we can do the same? Don't you think whether we like or dislike who's leading at any given time, don't you think in the platform of our opportunity as citizens of a great American democracy that has lasted now more than 250 years, don't you think we ought to celebrate that, have the greatest party ever, and then commit ourselves to being the best citizens possible online and in person every single day.
— Last: And the Bible tells us under the pen of the Apostle Peter that the place to start is on our knees with prayer. So let me put you on the spot for a moment. Who's the president of our country? You can say his name. Who's the vice president? Who is the governor of our great state? Who's the lieutenant governor? Who's the speaker of the house for the United States Congress? Who is your local congressman? Can you name a member of your school board?
— Last: Do you name, oh, you can right back there. Yes, ma'am. Do you know the name of a county commissioner? If you don't, you should. Their names are readily available online. And if you don't like what's going on in your school or your county or your state or the Congress or the Supreme Court or anywhere else, why don't you start on your knees, not praying for them wholesale, but praying for them retail. Praying for them by name. And then ask God if he wants you to become one of those people.
— Last: The second place you can do this is at work. Peter talked about that in the 18th verse of the second chapter. You got to be careful about this, but slavery in New Testament times was vastly different from the way you and I think about slavery because of our American history. In many ways, you got to be careful about how you think and interpret this, but in many ways when the Bible is describing some of its aspects of slavery, particularly in the New Testament, it's talking about something that looks and sounds and functions a lot more like work and employment than it does about slavery. As my friend Gerald pointed out, God never in the Bible endorses slavery.
— Last: He talks about a system that needed to be redeemed and ultimately was and still is being redeemed by the power of the gospel. But in many ways in the New Testament, when you read about slaves, you're reading about something that looks and functions a lot more like employment. And he says to them in the second chapter, "Whether you've got a good leader or a bad leader when you go to work, honor God by working for your boss's boss." Do you realize everybody has a boss? And even if you are the boss, you still have a boss. His name is Jesus.
— Last: And when you go to work, whether you're the boss or the employee, your job is to honor God by the way you do your job, not to make the boss happy, but to make the boss's boss happy. By living your life as a person of truth and love, of service and sometimes sacrifice. Now does that mean that you take abuse? Of course not. Don't, you don't take this to an extreme and warp it out of its meaning, okay? But what he's saying is is that when you're in the community and when you're at work, those are platforms, those are places where you get to show your maturity in Christ.
— Last: — Live at Home — One last place, and then we'll be into communion, and that's at home. A really wise man said to me years ago, "If your faith doesn't work at home, don't export it." And it's often the hardest place for your faith to work. But let's read what he says about how to live and love for Christ at home in just the first few verses of this third chapter. "In the same way wives submit yourselves to your own husbands so that even if they disobey the word, they may be won over without a word by the way their wives live. When they observe your pure and reverent lives, don't let your beauty consist of outward things like elaborate hairstyles and the wearing of gold jewelry or fine clothes, but rather what is inside the heart, the imperishable quality of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God's sight. For in the past the holy women who put their hope in God also adorned themselves in this way, submitting to their own husbands, just as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him Lord.""You have become her children when you do what is good and do not fear any intimidation. Husbands, in the same way, live with your wives in an understanding way as with a weaker partner, showing them honor as co-heirs of the grace of life, so that your prayers will not be hindered." Now the first thing that women are thinking when they read this passage perhaps is, "Why is he saying so much to us and so little to our husbands?" My best explanation to you this morning, it's called attention span. The women could stay with six or seven verses, the men could only handle one. Now ladies, don't get hung up on the word "submit" here. Guys, don't go to seed on the word "submit" here.
— Last: Remember he uses "submit" at least four other times, talking about how we live as citizens and how we live as workers and how we live before God. We are to mimic, listen to this, we are to mimic what Jesus did for us on the cross when we relate to each other at home in marriage and as a family. And he points out four or five really simple things that really work at home whether you're a wife and a mom or a husband and a father or even as a child in that family. Let me point them out to you. He says, you know what, make whatever you do at home, make it a goal that you're pointing to Jesus when you're doing whatever it is you're doing at home.
— Last: That your life becomes a testimony to the presence of Jesus in your life to anybody and everybody that you live with. That's the first principle. The second principle is clear. Make sure you focus more on the internal character of your heart rather than the external beauty of your body. Do you know that personal grooming, both for men and women in our country, in our world, is a $600 billion industry. And it is no longer that women spend more on personal grooming, fashion, and appearance than men.
— Last: It's about 25 years ago, we were leading a Bible study in our church in McKinney and I heard for the first time some guys discussing what was going on in their lives and they talked about being metrosexual. Do you know what that term refers to? It refers to a man who spends too long facing the mirror getting ready to go out for work or for dinner. A man who spends as much or more time than his wife primping and preparing and shaving and combing and dressing. That's what the word metrosexual means. It's now been replaced. About a week ago, I heard people on the radio talking about this and they were evaluating a man that they were interviewing because he was guilty of what was called looksmaxing. You heard that term?
— Last: Looksmaxing. So, tomorrow morning somebody in this room is going to look at somebody that they are living with and say, "Would you come on? That's enough looksmaxing." Because that's what we're into. You think the Bible's not relevant? 2,000 years ago, they had people spending too much time worried about their outward appearance, not worried about their internal character. The third thing is he says, "Make sure you learn from godly examples." Look at Sarah, look at many others in the Bible, hopefully other people that you know.
— Last: He says, "Make sure you pursue understanding in a gentle way." And the last thing he says, "Make sure you respect everybody, because guess what, they are a co-heir of the kingdom of God along with you, nobody is better than anybody else." Do you think those things would make a difference at your house? If you kept pointing everything you did to Jesus. If you focused on the internal rather than the external. If you imitated godly people in the Bible and in the world that you live in. If you sought to understand before you criticized. If you respected everybody as a fellow follower of Christ. I think it'd go a lot better. Dr. Denison this week talked about the astounding reality that we are approaching the 250th anniversary of our Declaration of Independence from a little place called Great Britain. And their king back in the day, King George.
— Last: And now 250 years later, this week, the King of England, King Charles, came to town. And why did he come? He came for several different appearances to celebrate that we whipped their tails 250 years ago. For the second time in 250 years, a British monarch came to our country and addressed a joint session of Congress. Is that not wild? Dr. Denison, writing about this, just highlighted how amazing it is as a part of our history that King Charles represents the British monarch today, as the English poet Tennyson described him, as a crowned republic.
— Last: That is, one in which the monarch reigns but does not rule. Isn't that an interesting statement? What in the world is a king that reigns but does not rule? That is a king in name only, a king in symbol but not in substance. And it made me wonder when I read it, is Jesus more my king today than he was yesterday? I'm going to ask our servers to bring our elements to you this morning. But I want you to ponder that with me.
— Last: Jesus said that he is king, and as king, he wants to be the one to reign and rule in our lives. Leading us, growing us to the place where every day under his authority, we live and love and serve and even sometimes suffer so that people can know him better. Think about that as we contemplate this bread and this juice this morning.