02-21-10 Parting Words

1Pe 5:12-14 Through Silvanus, our faithful brother (for so I regard him), I have written to you briefly, exhorting and testifying that this is the true grace of God. Stand firm in it! She who is in Babylon, chosen together with you, sends you greetings, and so does my son, Mark. Greet one another with a kiss of love. Peace be to you all who are in Christ.

We have come to the final 3 verses of our study of 1^st Peter.

They are the type of verses

that we would tend to ignore in casual Bible reading,

in much the same way as we would ignore that portion at the bottom of a letter

where the writer says, “Yours Sincerely”

before he or she signs their name.

When we read “Yours Sincerely”

we don’t even think about the words

because we view them as simply an established convention of letter writing,

something to tack on before signing the thing and sticking it in an envelope.

And I think we tend to bring a bit of the same attitude

to the type of remarks we have here in these final three verses.

But I don’t want us to leave this letter

without looking a little more closely

at what Peter does in these three verses

partly because there are some hidden treasures for us in these final words,

and, I’ll admit, partly because I’m simply not quite ready to let go of this letter.

I know from my conversations with some of you during the past months

that this letter has become for you

far more than just something we’re studying together on Sunday mornings.

It has become an anchor for you

during a very difficult time in your own life.

And what Peter has given you

has not been just knowledge,

and in fact not even mostly knowledge,

but what he’s given you has been hope.

To borrow his own words from his second letter,

this has become your light shining in a dark place,

a light that has at times given you both the guidance and the courage to go on.

When God’s truth touches the human spirit,

or at least the spirit that’s open to Him and reaching out to Him,

that’s what happens.

It has the power to take us beyond ourselves,

beyond our pain,

beyond our fear,

beyond our confusion,

to lift us up when we just want to give up

and place something solid under our feet.

I can’t explain how our Lord does that,

I just know He can and He does.

That’s part of what the author of Hebrews was trying to tell us

when he told us in Hebrews 4:12 that, “... the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow...”

In the life of true believers

it literally changes the course of our lives,

becoming for us the voice of God Himself.

And there have been times in a number of your lives during the past months

when Peter’s words have done just exactly that.

And now this morning

we will listen to his final words to us.

Last week we ended with that powerful affirmation

in which he assured us that,

1Pe 5:10-11 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.

In many respects it was that statement,

that strong affirmation of the absolute and certain commitment of our God to us,

and of the certainty of His ability to bring us through anything we face in this life

that Peter was heading toward from the first words of this letter.

I didn’t mention it last week,

but I do love those two phrases he uses to describe God.

He doesn’t just tell us that “God will perfect, confirm, strengthen and establish you.”

He says “...the God of all grace...”.

Peter knows that the greatest battle we will ever fight

is the battle for the correct understanding of the heart of our God.

He knows it is a battle we wage everyday of our lives,

a battle we fight in the face of a whole world of lies being flung at us.

And given the nature of that battle,

and the importance of it

he does everything within his power

to keep us armed with the truth.

And so here he gives us a title for our God.

He is the God of all grace.

He is the God who immerses His friendship with us in grace,

the One who never ever brings to His friendship with us

a list of our offenses against Him,

the One who looks past our pain,

and our confusion,

and our failures,

and our stupidity and sees our need,

and who then reaches out to meet that need.

He is in deed, in reality the God of all grace.

And then there is that second phrase,

the one that is even more amazing for what it says.

He is not just the God of all grace,

He is the God who called you to His eternal glory in Christ.

He called us out of our darkness

and into His marvelous light.

But even more,

He called us not just to see His glory,

but to share in it.

He is well pleased to have us bear His name,

and to share in His authority

both here and now on this earth,

and when He returns to establish His Kingdom.

Mat 25:21

"His master said to him, 'Well done, good and faithful slave. You were faithful with a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.'

I don’t understand that,

I just know our God takes great joy in being good to those who are His.

And from there Peter then goes on to tell us

that not only does our God know about the suffering that enters our lives,

but He also places strict limitations on it,

assuring us that it will not crush our spirits or separate us from His love.

1Pe 5:10

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.

He then closes the teaching portion of his letter

with a benediction of praise to his Lord, To Him be dominion forever and ever. Amen.

But those are not the final words in this 1^st Epistle of Peter

because following that benediction

Peter did something that fascinates me.

And for this to make sense

I need to let you know

that even though the words we’ve been studying are certainly Peter’s words,

they were not literally written by Peter’s hand,

but rather they were dictated by Peter to his friend and traveling companion, Silvanus,

and then Silvanus wrote them out as Peter spoke.

We know this because of the next words we read in verse 5:12.

Through Silvanus, our faithful brother (for so I regard him), I have written to you briefly...

This Silvanus was the same man, Silas, who was well known and well respected in the early Church.

In fact, he was a close friend and traveling companion of Paul,

even being mentioned by Paul in his introductory comments

in his letters to both the Corinthians and the Thessalonians.

And now, here he is with Peter,

serving a crucial role in taking Peter’s spoken words to his fellow Christians

and putting them into written form.

And why didn’t Peter simply write his own letter?

Well, I don’t know,

but I can guess.

I think writing came hard for Peter.

I think getting the words onto the paper

was something he struggled with.

What do we know about him?

Well, we know who he was and what he was before Christ entered his life.

He was a fisherman.

He obviously had a good mind,

but he was a work-with-your-hands kind of man.

That’s what he did,

that’s who he was,

and that’s who his Lord wanted him to be.

And isn’t it encouraging to see the way God put the people around him

who could do for him

those things he couldn’t do himself.

It’s all part of the way God designed the Body of Christ.

We need each other,

we are each designed for our own unique roles,

and if there hadn’t been a Silvanus we would never have heard the mind of Peter.

But following the words recorded by Silvanus,

he puts down the quill

and Peter then takes it up and writes the remaining three verses in his own hand.

He does this for several reasons.

He no doubt did this on the original manuscript

in part simply as a confirming signature,

putting his own handwriting on the document to confirm its validity.

But he did it for more reasons than just that.

He did it because there were a few more things he wanted to include in this letter,

things that he wanted to do personally.

And if we are going to appreciate the power

of what Peter does in these final three verses

we need to keep in mind that at this point in his life

Peter knew exactly who he was.

He knew he was one of the recognized leaders

of this remarkable work God was doing on the earth.

His authority was unquestioned,

and the significance of his words were unparalleled.

I believe Peter knew he was writing a document

that would remain in existence until the Lord returned,

a document that would have authority

literally in the lives of all Christians for all time.

Now, as we’ve already seen in this study,

he personally believed that the Lord’s return would be very soon,

perhaps in a matter of weeks or months or a few years at most.

But I believe Peter understood

that what he was writing

would carry the same significance in the lives of those who read his words

as did the writings of Moses and King David himself.

So what are these things that were so important to him

that he chose to write them out himself?

Well, the first, of course, was to acknowledge and affirm Silvanus for his role in writing the letter.

And then he goes on to say, I have written to you briefly, exhorting and testifying that this is the true grace of God.

And with that statement

he is revealing to us that nothing has really changed

since the earliest days of the Church.

There is no more powerful message,

no more powerful or life-changing truth in human experience

than the true message of the grace of God.

When we hear it correctly

it both frees us and imprisons us as nothing else can do.

It frees us from our guilt,

and our fears,

and our shame,

and our futility,

and our aching empty loneliness of spirit,

and unites us eternally with the One who has loved us absolutely

since the instant of our conception.

It gives us beauty for ashes

and exchanges our brokeness for hope.

But it also enslaves us to the love of our Father God.

And when we finally encounter the real thing,

the true grace of God,

we can never turn back, and never turn away

because there simply is no place else to go.

But from the beginning of the proclamation of the message of the grace of God through Christ

Satan has always had his counterfeits,

tacky little imitations

in which the grace of God is little more than a prayer we pray

and a religious form we fulfill

that will then guarantee our entrance into heaven when we die.

And when Peter proclaims, ... this is the true grace of God...,

he is telling us that if what we’re into

doesn’t look like what we see him talking about in this letter,

then what we’ve got is not the real thing.

And what has he been talking about?

He’s been talking about a life that will at times get very much harder

because of the presence of Christ within us,

and about a call to moral integrity when the world around us calls us fools,

and about a living walk with a living God who can and will bring us through.

And then Peter goes on to say, ...this is the true grace of God. Stand firm in it!

Stand firm in it!

His words are clearly intended to encourage us,

to affirm to us

that who we are and what our God is doing in us and through us

matters so much more than we could ever even begin to imagine.

And then Peter goes on to write a sentence

that I will tell you simply fascinates me.

He says, She who is in Babylon, chosen together with you, sends you greetings, and so does my son, Mark.

OK, the first part of that sentence is pretty straightforward.

Peter tells us that he is writing from Babylon.

And depending on which commentary you trust

this could be the literal city of Babylon,

or possibly some other city to which he applies the title figuratively.

The truth is, it doesn’t really matter.

What does matter is what he says in the rest of the sentence.

The she is most certainly a reference to the church in that city.

And he tells us that she is chosen together with you...

Don’t you love that?

Peter always brings us back to the way things really are.

This isn’t about us choosing a religion,

or even us choosing our God.

This is about our God choosing us,

our God seeking us,

calling us to Himself,

our God forever looking for those who will be open to His love.

Listen to this!

It’s a statement made in 2^nd Chronicles 16:9.

"For the eyes of the LORD move to and fro throughout the earth that He may strongly support those whose heart is completely His."

And this, from the mouth our King Himself.

Joh 15:16

"You did not choose Me but I chose you, and appointed you that you would go and bear fruit, and that your fruit would remain, so that whatever you ask of the Father in My name He may give to you.”

I’ll say it as simply as I know how - our God wants us, seeks us, calls us to Himself

because He loves us.

And if you have found Him

it is only because He first found you

and chose you

and revealed Himself to your Spirit,

giving you eyes to see,

and ears to hear,

and a heart to respond to His love.

But there is something else taking place in this 13^th verse,

something else that fascinates me even more.

And it’s found in that final phrase, and so does my son, Mark.

And for this to make sense to you

I first need to give you a little background on Mark.

The Mark Peter is referring to

is almost certainly the John Mark who appears a number of times in the New Testament.

He is, in fact, the one who wrote the Gospel of Mark,

the earliest written account of the life of Christ.

He was not one of the first disciples

because he was probably only in his early or mid teens

at the time of the crucifixion of Christ,

but it is commonly believed among many Bible scholars

that he was the “young man” in Mark 14:51-52

who was in the garden with the disciples at the time of Christ’s arrest

and who had his clothes ripped off of him when the guards tried to grab him.

He was a member of Paul’s team on his first missionary journey,

a nephew of Barnabas,

and then, for a considerable time, a traveling companion of Peter.

And when he wrote the book of Mark

he was simply putting into written form

Peter’s words and recollections as Peter told his listeners about this Jesus who changed his life forever.

But what fascinates me so much about Peter’s description of Mark as my son

is why it’s there at all.

In the verse just before this one

we’ve just heard Peter describe Silvanus as our faithful brother.

So why didn’t he use a similar phrase to describe Mark?

I believe he didn’t

because of the role Peter served in Mark’s life

and because of what Peter wanted to accomplish in this young man

through Peter’s publicly declaring before the entire Christian world, “This is my son!”

Mark was not Peter’s physical, biological son.

As far as we know, Peter never had any children of his own.

But clearly there was a relationship established between these two

that was so significant to both of them

that Peter chose to identify Mark as his son.

And I need to warn you that what I share now

may become more personal

and perhaps more difficult for some of you men than you might want.

But I have thought about this for years

and I want to try to put it into words

with the hope that it may help alter a tragic problem in our society.

Perhaps the four most powerful words a man can ever hear or ever speak

are the words, “This is my son!”

I find it fascinating that, at the one point where God publicly validated Jesus when He was on this earth,

of all the things He could have said,

what He chose to say was, THIS IS MY SON!

There is a validation that comes with that proclamation

that goes far beyond anything else that could be said.

It carries with it the message of absolute approval, and trust, and fulfillment, and pride.

And there is an application of this truth in our human relationships

that is of tremendous importance.

We mistakenly believe in our society

that the transition between a boy and a man

is simply a progressive process.

The body goes through it’s physical changes,

and boy learns more and more adult skills,

and he takes on more responsibility and more freedom

and over the period of five or six years the transformation is complete

and the boy has become a man.

But it doesn’t work that way.

The truth is that entrance into the adult male world is by invitation only

and in God’s design

it is an invitation that comes from the father to the son.

And maybe I can explain this most easily

by describing how it’s suppose to work.

If things go as I believe God designed them to go,

there should come a point relatively early in adolescence,

a point soon after that initial physical transition from boy’s body into that of a young man

when his father will come along side him

and proclaim to the adult world in his son’s hearing,

“This is my son in whom I am well pleased! I now welcome him to the adult world and give him my absolute and unqualified permission to enter. I give him the authority to claim his rightful place among men and I give him the freedom to discover and fulfill his unique God-given role in this world.”

Now obviously it is rarely done with words like that,

though I do believe there must be some kind of verbal affirmation by the father to the son

in which the son hears his father wholeheartedly affirming his son in and to the adult world.

If that takes place in a way that the son can receive and believe it

something huge relaxes within the son’s spirit and the son will be freed for the rest of his life

to grow into the man God designed him to be.

But how often does that kind of spirit-to-spirit communication between father and son ever take place?

It is very rare indeed.

And when most of us as young men began our transition from boy to man

and we came up to that massive wall that separates the two worlds,

rather than finding our father standing at the open doorway

reaching out to us and saying, “Welcome! Come on in!”,

what we found was a door closed and bolted

and a sign nailed to that door saying, “NO ADMITTANCE UNTIL YOU PROVE YOU ARE A MAN!!!”

The problem, of course,

is that what the sign asks is impossible to do.

There is no list of qualifications provided,

and no way for the son to ever know when or if he’s passed the test,

because it is simply impossible to get into the adult world that way.

And from that point on

the son will be driven into a frantic, life-long search

for some way to prove he is a man.

He’ll ask himself what things men do

and maybe he’ll start smoking,

or start drinking,

or start using all of those words that the tough guys in the movies use,

or he’ll try to have sex with as many girls as he can because of course only A MAN can do that.

And as he gets older

he’ll narrow his focus, choosing some select group of other men,

his target audience - his work colleagues or a select group of friends

and continue his frantic struggle to impress them and win their approval so that he can ultimately prove his manhood and find peace with himself.

And ten, or fifteen, or fifty years later

he’s still frantically trying to prove his manhood,

forever listening for some authoritative voice that will say to him,

“Your proof has been accepted,

welcome to the adult world.”

And wouldn’t you know it,

when our own sons reach that point where they are seeking admittance to the adult world

the only thing we know to do

is the same thing that was done to us -

we stand in front of the door

and tell our sons, “Sorry! No admittance until you prove you are a man.”

OK, I mention all of this for two reasons.

First, I mention it because I want us to know that I believe one of God’s greatest works in the lives of those men who come to Him

is found in His ability to break the power of this prove-you-are-a-man lie

in the lives of those who have believed it.

Sometimes He can do this by bringing into our life

some voice we can trust,

someone to whom we have given authority in our life,

someone who can say to us what our own father could not say, “Welcome to the adult world!”

This is exactly what I believe we have happening in these final verses in Peter’s letter.

This is why Peter writes my son Mark.

Peter is clearly, powerfully, beautifully validating this younger man

by publicly claiming him as his son before the entire Christian world.

Sometimes God can accomplish this healing in a man’s life through our own children

as we see them doing for us what our own fathers never did - validating us as adults.

But this only happens if our spirit is absolutely open to them and their spirit is absolutely open to us.

Apart from that spirit-to-spirit union we cannot hear it in a way that brings the healing.

And sometimes God Himself will accomplish this healing work within a man’s spirit

as He literally becomes not just our God but our Father, our Papa.

But that kind of intimate trust level between us and our God

takes years for most of us to build.

And it can only happen

when we allow our God to become to us

not the righteous Judge of the Universe,

or the Moral Lawgiver of the human race

who accepts us when we DO RIGHT and scowls at us when we fall short,

but rather when we allow our God to become our Abba Father,

our PAPA,

that Papa who holds our hand when we stumble,

and who catches us when we fall,

and who hugs us goodnight,

and who stands next to us before the world

with His almighty hand resting on our shoulder as He proclaims, “This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased.”

In other words,

the healing can only take place

when the grace of our God

has become more than just a doctrine,

when it has become the very air our spirits breath.

And then second, I mention this simply because for those of you who are fathers,

I want you to be aware both of the role you have

and of the question your sons will be asking you when they approach that wall between boy and man.

And when they ask it,

give them the answer that only you can give. “Come on in, son! Welcome to the adult world. I am well pleased with who you are and I rejoice in who you will become. You have nothing to prove. You are in every way the exact person your God designed you to be and I am honored beyond measure to have you standing beside me.”

And then, just one final observation here.

Obviously I have limited my comments to the father/son relationship

rather than both the father/son and father/daughter relationship.

Now, clearly, the father serves as the authority doorway into the adult world

for both his sons and his daughters.

But there is something unique that seems to take place in the male-to-male relationship.

How often do you hear of a father saying to his daughter, “PROVE YOU’RE A WOMAN!”?

It doesn’t happen.

It is far easier for a father to recognize and affirm his daughter’s transition into the adult world,

at which time his one focus frequently switches to protecting her

from every young male who has noticed the same transition.

But recognizing and affirming the son’s transition into the adult world

is far more difficult for many fathers,

probably because so few of us had fathers

who invited us into the adult world when we were in our early teens.