08-02-09 The True Message of Redemption Pt. 2

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.

After spending most of two months on these two verses

I believe we will complete our study of them today.

I started something last week

that I didn’t finish

because I got just a little bit side-tracked

in sharing with you the tremendous power and security

that comes into our lives

whenever we choose to believe our God’s words to us -

believing them as absolute truth

no matter what other voices either within us or around us

may contradict what He’s said.

And I got into that whole discussion

through Peter’s statement in which he tells us

that part of the reason why God has made us a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God's own possession

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

And my intention when I began last week

was to show the contrast between the real thing

and the religious imitation we so often encounter in the world around us.

But we ran out of time

before I got us where I was wanting to take us

so we’re going to drop back into this study where we left off

and see if I can do this week

what I intended to do last week.

You see, the thing that impressed me so strongly

with what I heard Peter saying to us here

is that all our Lord has ever wanted us to do

is to focus our lives on discovering personally

who our God is and what He’s done for us,

and then, as we grow in our understanding of Him -

or as Peter put it a few verses earlier, as we taste of His kindness,

we will just naturally proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness and into His marvelous light.

I think I might have just made that too complicated.

What I want us to see

is that our proclaiming the excellencies of our God

is not an assignment given to us,

it is simply a byproduct of personally tasting of His kindness.

We are only equipped to proclaim the truth about Him

to the degree we have entered into a personal discovery of who He is.

And I have to tell you

that what I’ve just said to you

is so very different from what I was told by others

during the early years of my Christian life.

So much of my early religious training

told me that now that I was a Christian

it was my duty, my obligation to “witness” to others

with the intention of doing what I could

to bring them to the point of submission to Christ.

In fact the church environment that surrounded me

when my Lord entered my life in my late teens

was a church world that handed me a clearly defined list of duties

at the time I stepped into the family of God.

Now that I am a Christian

I must read my Bible every day,

and have a pray time each day,

and attend church at least once a week,

and give money to the church,

and witness to others.

And if I wanted to take my commitment to my Lord to an even higher level

I should consider the possibility

of going into some kind of “full time Christian Work”.

Which meant that the whole first phase of my Christian walk

was spent immersed in varying degrees of guilt

and a chronic sense of failure

over how far short I was falling at any given time

from what was required of me.

Which is exactly what Satan wants to produce in our lives

through the religious systems he’s created.

Nothing sucks the life and vitality and joy and effectiveness

out of the child of God

more powerfully than the belief

that we are always falling short of our Lord’s expectations of us.

It is absolutely crucial to the success of Satan’s warfare against us

that we never gain any clear view

of the depth and the intensity of our God’s love for each of us.

If we did

it would bring a freedom of spirit into our lives,

and a hunger for our God,

and a delight in His presence

that would transform our lives at the deepest level.

It would become our light in the dark times,

and our security in the hard times,

and our hope for the future,

and our motivation for righteousness,

and our reason for getting out of bed each morning.

It would consume us

in a way that...well, in a way that caused us to proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.

And this right here

is at the heart of all that Peter is saying to us in these verses we’ve been studying.

To be a witness for our King

is simply to allow your ongoing discovery of God’s love

to be visible to those around you.

And when we correctly understand what He’s doing in us and through us

it is the most natural thing in life.

Have you ever been loved by another person,

loved in a way that leaves you knowing

that they care deeply about you right where you are, just as you are,

and that your presence in their life fills you with joy?

If so, have you ever noticed how references to them

just sort of creep into your conversations with others.

Things they said,

things you’ve done together,

things you’ve learned from them...

Why is that?

It’s because God designed us as relationship beings.

The imprint of God within us

is the ability to both give and receive love.

And whenever we build a true love relationship with another person

it becomes a major defining issue of our lives.

It isn’t simply one of a multitude of equally significant aspects of our lives,

it is the center,

the core from which all other things derive their meaning and purpose.

And if that’s true in our human relationships,

it’s even more significant in our relationship with our Creator.

If we can ever get past all of the sewage

that blinds us to the truth about Him and His heart response to us,

if we can ever gain even the tiniest glimpse

of the way He loves us

and the delight He takes in our presence with Him,

His presence with us

and our delight in Him

would infiltrate every aspect of our lives,

and our conversations,

and our attitudes,

and our priorities,

and our goals.

This is why, when Paul wrote that remarkable letter to the Ephesians,

a letter written by him to reveal to us

the true nature of the Church of Jesus Christ - His physical body on this earth,

the letter in which he tells us

that in God’s design He will now reveal Himself to the entire created world exclusively through us,

after revealing to us this amazing role we now play in God’s unfolding creative drama,

Paul then drops to his knees

and prays the one prayer that must be answered

if we are ever to be qualified for the role assigned to us.

EPH 3:14, 17-19 For this reason, I bow my knees before the Father, ...that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fulness of God.

That is what we are here to proclaim - God loves us.

But that proclamation has power

only to the degree that we believe it ourselves,

and not just believe it intellectually

but know it in our spirits.

Do you know why you like my teaching?

And yes, I do know that I’m making an assumption when I ask that question -

obviously I’m assuming that you really do like my teaching.

I know there are a few of you here

who really don’t like my teaching

and I honestly can’t imagine why you put yourself through the agony of coming,

but I also know that most of you are here at least in part

because you do indeed like my approach to teaching Scripture.

Do you know why?

I do.

You like my teaching

because you like my God

and you know that I like my God very, very much.

There are some of you

who like my teaching

because it lines up perfectly with your own knowledge of God.

And for others

you like my teaching

because even though right now you still can’t bring yourself to believe I’m right,

still there’s something huge within you

that’s hoping very much

that just maybe God is as nice, and as good, and as kind, and as forgiving, and as compassionate as I tell you He is week after week.

Your heart is so filled with darkness right now -

the darkness that comes from fear, or shame, or anger, or bitterness,

or perhaps the darkness that comes from trying so hard

to be good enough so that God will like you.

And yet week after week

you listen to me telling you

that God likes you very much indeed right now, right where you are,

without you having to do anything to get Him to like you.

And my voice is a tiny spot of light in the darkness,

not yet bright enough for you to find your way into His arms,

but still bright enough

for you to know you cannot deny its existence.

And if any of what I’ve just said

fits with what’s going on inside you right now

then let me remind you once again

of Peter’s words in his second letter to us.

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.

Through all the muddle in your own spirit right now

what you are seeing,

what you are responding to

is the truth about your God - the truth that He loves you with a love that has no limits.

If you can hear that in my words,

keep listening,

keep staring at the light until the truth floods into your soul

as the sun floods the world at daybreak.

I do understand that process, you know.

Do you think I was born loving my God?

No one is born loving their God.

In fact not only do we not love Him,

but we view Him as the great enemy of our souls,

the One who seeks to cage us in a life without fun,

without freedom,

without all those things that we know we simply must have in order to be happy.

How deep are the lies within us,

and how blind we are to what is right in front of us.

We are so convinced that fame

or great wealth will fill our souls with joy

even though those few who achieve great fame and wealth

nearly always live sad little lives of turmoil and unhappiness.

Was Michael Jackson a happy man?

Great wealth,

great fame,

great talent,

and a sad, pathetic, miserable little life.

My own personal pathway to success when I was young

was going to be through acting.

You didn’t know that about me, did you?

I was addicted to the stage from Jr. High School on.

I was a drama major in college

and I just knew that if I could find a career on stage I would be happy.

Then my Lord barged into my life

and began to give me eyes to see,

and what I saw changed the course of my life forever.

One of the first things I saw

was that nearly all of these drama people surrounding me

were very strange people,

people I didn’t really want to be identified with.

And then, from there, step by step,

piece by piece

His Spirit led me through my own personal pilgrimage

in my growing discovery of how good my God is

and how deeply He loves me.

And He has a pilgrimage perfectly designed for you as well,

one that will look completely different from mine in the details,

but one designed to bring you into the same discovery -

the discovery of the breadth and length and height and depth of God’s love.

I remember a conversation I had more than 30 years ago

with a Jr. High student I’d built a friendship with.

At the time Sandee and I were resident managers of an apartment complex in Soldotna.

I spent my days cleaning toilets,

and doing endless maintenance duties,

and trying to keep our aging Ford Pinto running.

My young friend was busy sharing with me

all the things he was going to buy in the future

so that he could have a really good life.

Then I asked him who was the happiest and most fulfilled person he knew personally.

He said, “Well, I guess you are, Larry.”

Then I said, “And who has less money and less stuff than anyone you know?”

He figured that was probably me too.

I don’t think he especially liked that conversation much.

Of course I know there are barriers in your life right now

that stand between you and your discovery of your God’s love.

I don’t know the specifics,

but I know they’re there

because they were there in my life as well.

What is it that makes the thought of God truly loving you

seem like an absurdity?

Where has evil engulfed your life?

Where have you been hurt deeply,

where have you been wounded in ways that have made the idea of a loving God seem like a joke?

What loss have you suffered?

The loss of someone you love?

The loss of that one thing you knew would have made everything wonderful?

The loss of your health?

The loss of some hope or dream?

The loss of your reputation, or your security, or your innocence?

What is it in your life

that serves as your proof that a God of love could not exist?

Well, if you will follow that path He’s seeking to take you down,

and if you will take that thing, whatever it is,

that thing that has been your proof that this God could not really love you,

and if you will place it in His hands

it will become your doorway into the deepest discoveries of His love you will ever have.

The time will come

when you will say to Him,

“My God...my beloved God... I know what You’ve done

and it is wonderful indeed!”

All of which is to say

that if right now there is nothing within you

that honestly wants to proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light,

then don’t.

Just give yourself permission to discover

or to rediscover His love for you.

So, then, is there really nothing we can do

or fail to do

that will cause Him to stop loving us?

Is this Divine love really without prerequisites

or conditions

or requirements we must fulfill?

Is it truly unconditional love?

Yes, it truly is,

and in your own personal pilgrimage

one of the things He’ll do

is to show you yourself - either the greatness of your own sin,

or the greatness of your potential for sin.

And He will do this

not to shame you,

or to crush your spirit,

or to flood you with guilt or regret,

but rather He will do it

because it is knowledge you must have

if you are ever to correctly understand

the true nature of His love for you.

The blind man’s proclamation that he could see

had power only because he had been blind.

Our proclamation of the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light

has power only because our spirits really were immersed in darkness.

He loves us just as we are,

without expectation,

without probation.

ROM 8:1 There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

His love has no qualifications,

no expiration,

no conditions attached.

Peter says simply,

1PE 2:10 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.

He doesn’t say you could be the people of God

if you fulfill certain ongoing responsibilities.

He doesn’t say you might receive mercy

if you prove yourself worthy.

He says simply,

... now you are the people of God;... now you have received mercy.

But if God’s love

truly is this way,

if it is without condition,

without reservation,

without revocation under any circumstances,

if Paul got it right

when he told us that, ROM 8:38-39 ... neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord...,

then what difference does it make how we act

or what we do?

And of course that’s a question that very much needs to be answered,

and so it will not surprise you to know that that’s where Peter goes next in his letter.

And we’ll look at his answer to that question next week.