07-26-09 The True Message of Redemption

1PE 2:9-10 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God's own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light; for you once were not a people, but now you are the people of God; you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

We’ve been in these two verses from 1^st Peter so long

that some of you nearly have them memorized

simply from hearing me repeat them so often.

If that’s happened

let my assure you that you are by far the better for it

because it would be difficult to find two verses

that do a better job of expressing what’s really going on

between God and His people.

For most of the past two months

we’ve been looking with amazement

at the things our God has been telling us about ourselves.

We’ve listened to His description of us

and done our best

to put what He’s said

together with what we think we know about ourselves.

And everything He’s said about us

is filled with such honor,

such significance,

such value,

such gratitude that it’s been difficult for us accept it at times.

A chosen race...

a royal priesthood...

a holy nation...

a people for God’s own possession...

And then, in our final minutes together last week

we began to look at the only reasonable response on our part

in view of all that God has accomplished in us.

And right here, of course,

is where, if we are not careful,

we may have the most difficult time of all

in hearing correctly what’s really being said.

For many of us

the corrupting, poisoning power of our past religious training

combined with our own natural guilt and fear-based responses to our God

have conditioned us to expect the hammer,

the prod,

the guilt-driven duty we must fulfill

if we are ever to receive from God what He’s promised.

Maybe the best way for me to explain what I’m seeing here

is to set God’s truth

next to the religious imitation

so that we can see the difference between the two.

And let me begin with the truth.

Peter’s wording in these two verses,

both the words he’s chosen

and the order in which he’s arranged them

is so careful.

We’ve seen where he starts -

by sharing with us

this glorious view of what God has already done in our lives.

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God's own possession...

Then, after first sharing with us those truths,

he goes on to say that part of the reason God has done what He’s done

is so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light...

And the first and most critical observation I want to make here

is that our ability to fulfil the second part of this verse

is dependant upon our having understood and believed the first part of the verse.

We are not here in order to market the Christian system.

We are not here for the purpose of convincing others

that they should turn their lives over to Christ

or submit to His lordship in their lives.

We are certainly not here

to try to guilt people into improving their moral conduct.

We are here first of all,

and most of all

to discover what our God has done for us through Christ.

Then, to the degree that we make those discoveries,

to the degree that God’s Spirit

reveals to our spirit and then bit-by-bit to our minds and emotions

the truth about who we really have become though Christ,

to that degree we will find ourselves both equipped and motivated

to proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.

And that word proclaim is critical to what Peter is telling us here.

That is not a word used to describe an intellectual statement.

It’s not like “teach” or “educate” or “communicate” or “convince”.

It’s a word that describes a kind of confident outburst

that’s rooted on both absolute truth and tested personal experience.

And I know that what I just said

is way too academic.

Do you remember that blind man in John chapter 9 -

that beggar blind from birth?

He’d never met Jesus

until that day when Jesus spat on the ground,

took the little bit of mud made from the spittle,

placed it on the man’s eyes

and told him to go wash it off.

When that man plunged his head under water,

and then brought it up again,

what do you think were the first words he spoke?

I think he shouted, “I CAN SEE!!!”

That’s a proclamation.

It wasn’t a learned response that he then recited at the correct moment.

It was simply his expression of what he’d experienced as the result of Christ’s involvement in his life.

In fact, when the Jewish leaders tried to convince him

that this Jesus was not to be trusted

the man responded by saying,

JOH 9:25 "Whether He is a sinner, I do not know; one thing I do know, that, whereas I was blind, now I see."

He wasn’t telling anything more than he knew,

but what he knew was very much worth telling.

That’s what Peter is talking about

when he says Christ has done what He’d done in our lives

that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.

And what if right now you can’t see?

What if right now your own life

is flooded with darkness?

What if right now there is no real awareness of His marvelous light?

Then don’t fake it,

and certainly don’t try to peddle some sort of religious system.

You think that darkness is only reserved for unbelievers?

When we enter the family of God through simple faith in Christ’s payment for our sins

we all bring with us

the darkness from our past,

a darkness that will continue to blind us to Him and His love

until He leads us through it and into the light.

But the pressure of the religious community around us

so often keeps us from finding the courage and the freedom

to face that darkness honestly

and find His path through it into the light.

In the summer of 1968

I spent two months on the Carribean Island of Trinidad

going from door to door in a sweat-soaked white shirt and black tie

carrying a little suitcase filled with tracts

trying to get people to become Christians.

At that point in my life

I had almost nothing to proclaim about my God

and my own life was mostly a mass of pain-filled darkness and confusion.

I was a Christian,

but I knew almost nothing about my Lord -

who He was or what He’d done in me and for me.

I was desperately trying to fulfill the second half of this verse

before I’d gained even a little understanding of the first half.

Not surprisingly,

very few were drawn to the God I was trying to proclaim

because my own inner turmoil

spoke far louder

than anything coming out of my mouth.

I remember toward the end of that summer

I knocked on the door of a very nice lady, probably in her 50's,

and when she’d listened politely to my little presentation

she said, “You look hungry. Why don’t you come on in and I’ll fix you something to eat.”

She brought me into her kitchen,

offered me a chair,

and chatted with me while she made me scrambled eggs,

and it was wonderful

except that I kept feeling guilty

because I was suppose to be telling her about Christ.

Looking back on it now

I’m not at all sure she wasn’t an angel.

Certainly she was God’s chosen messenger to me,

giving me a tiny glimpse of the kindness He longed to pour out on me.

But now, 40 years later, after seeing so many places in my own life

where my Lord has replaced the darkness within me with His marvelous light,

proclaiming Him has become so much more a part of my life.

I have no problem pointing others to Him

because I know what He’s done in my own life.

But my point in all of this

is simply that our Lord never ever asks us

to give what He has not first given to us.

If right now your own life is mostly filled with darkness,

or with fear,

or with pain or unanswered questions,

and if you don’t even remotely see yourself as a member of a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, or a people for God's own possession,

then start right there in your interaction with Him.

Start with the darkness,

or the fear,

or the pain or the unanswered questions

and bring them to Him

and ask Him for eyes to see the truth - His truth.

It’s not usually that simple, of course,

and I apologize for making it sound as if it were.

Most of the time in my own life

replacing some area of darkness with God’s light

has taken months or more often years of the Spirit’s tearing down of my wrong thinking

before He can finally bring me to the place

where I can see the truth,

or feel His love,

or see His kindness that was there all the time.

I’m not saying there’s nothing we can do

to help that healing process,

but what we do bring is very different from what we might think.

And what I share with you right now

is going to sound far more simple

and, therefore, far more insignificant than it really is.

But if ever there was a point in my teaching

where I have considered telling you that I was about to share with you

the one single most important principle of my entire walk with God

it’s right here.

I’m not saying with absolute certainty

that this is at the top of the list,

but I will say it is impossible for me to overstate

the impact it has had on my walk with the King.

And maybe I can communicate this best

by once again taking us back to the beginning...to the very beginning.

Do you remember that event in the Garden of Eden

that caused everything to go so terribly wrong for the human race?

Of course you...

It was that whole business with the Tree,

and the fruit,

and Adam and Eve doing what God asked them not to do.

But do you know what it was that Adam and Eve did

that changed everything forever?

It may surprise you to know

that it wasn’t that they disobeyed God.

Certainly they did disobey God,

but the disobedience was simply an inevitable result

of their first great failure.

The real failure,

and the one from which all others flowed

was that they chose not to believe what God had said to them.

GEN 2:16-17 And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, "From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you shall surely die. "

That wasn’t a threat, you know.

It wasn’t some big power-play on God’s part,

it was a simple statement of truth,

truth Adam and Eve needed for their own well-being.

And all God asked from them

was that they choose to believe what He’d said.

Do you know what that is?

It’s faith.

Faith is simply choosing to believe what our God has said to us,

choosing to believe it more than we believe our own senses,

or our own reasoning abilities.

Did you think faith was some sort of mystical blind leap in the dark...

“I’m just going to do it on faith!”

“I’m just going to choose to believe it’s all going to turn out fine!”

“If I just have enough faith, I know it will happen.”

I attended a memorial service once

and as we were all sitting there listening to the eulogy

the lady next to me leaned over and whispered to me,

“I just don’t know what happened...I know we had enough faith for his healing!”

Folks, that isn’t faith,

that’s religious games at their worst.

True faith is simply choosing to believe

that we can and will trust what our God has clearly said to us

no matter what other voices within us or around us contradict it.

Adam and Eve’s first and greatest failure

was that they chose not to believe the voice of their Creator.

And that refusal to trust what He’d said

resulted in both physical and spiritual death being passed on to the entire human race

and all the compounded pain and misery that came with it.

But here is the amazing thing -

in His absolute justice

God has extended to every descendant of Adam and Eve

the offer to reverse the curse

simply by our choosing to do

what Adam and Eve refused to do - believe what our Creator has said to us.

And it gets even better than that.

It isn’t even that we have to figure out and then believe

everything God has said for the past 6000 years.

All we have to do

is to choose to believe

exactly the same thing that Adam and Eve refused to believe.

What did God ask of Adam and Eve?

“Believe what I’m telling you about this tree.”

With them it was that tree in the garden

and His message was clear and simple - this tree will bring you death.

And what does God ask of us?

“Believe what I’m telling you about this tree.”

And with us it is the tree formed into the shape of a cross,

the tree on which His own Son was nailed.

And His message to us is just as clear, just as simple - this tree will bring you life.

Now, I know I’ve gotten a bit side-tracked here,

but I get so frustrated at times

with how easily we take the simplicity and purity of God’s good news

and make it confusing and complex beyond recognition.

And I got into this whole thing

because I wanted to share with you

the one thing that has helped me the most in my interaction with my God,

the one thing that has resulted in whatever healing I’ve received from my God thus far,

and the one thing that has more profoundly impacted the course of my life

than everything else put together.

Whenever I’ve clearly understood what my God is saying to me through His Word

I’ve chosen to believe it

no matter what other voices within me or around me

may contradict it.

And if right now you are God’s child

and yet you find the darkness still so deep, so intense,

I urge you to begin with this -

take what your God has said to you

and cling to it no matter what.

And where do you begin?

Well, how about here...

2TI 1:12 ... I know whom I have believed and I am convinced that He is able to guard what I have entrusted to Him until that day.

What is it you have entrusted to Him?

How about your children?

If you’ve entrusted them into His care,

then why are you trying so hard

to be God in their lives?

Can you really do within them what needs to be done?

Can you give them a heart for their God

or create in them a love for purity and goodness?

Let Him be God in their life.

Maybe this will help.

PHI 1:6 For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.

And what if right now what you see when you hear His Word

contains only the tiniest glimmer of light.

What if it is mostly just a choice

in the face of feelings and fears that nearly overwhelm you.

Then let me offer two more pieces of truth that may help.

They are both from our good friend Peter,

the same Peter who knew darkness, and hopelessness, and despair,

a despair created by his own public rejection of his God.

He knew more clearly than most

that sometimes we must stare at the truth,

and keep staring

until what we see

becomes a living reality in our lives.

And so he writes,

2PE 1:19 And so we have the prophetic word made more sure, to which you do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star arises in your hearts.

Until the day dawns...

And it will - I promise you.

No, that doesn’t help much, does it.

What I meant to say was, God promises you, once again through the mouth of Peter.

1PE 5:8-11 Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls about like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. But resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same experiences of suffering are being accomplished by your brethren who are in the world. And after you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself perfect, confirm, strengthen and establish you. To Him be dominion forever and ever. Amen.