03-08-09 More Simple Than We Think

1PE 1:7 that the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold which is perishable, even though tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ;

Our walk with our King is so much less complicated than I once thought.

In my early years as part of the family of God

it all seemed at times so almost overwhelming.

There was so much I didn’t know,

so much I wanted to learn,

so many principles,

so many ideas,

so many areas of teaching and truth.

And each time I would listen to another teacher

I would come away confronted once again

with how little I understood.

But during the past 40 plus years,

slowly, gradually things have changed.

But they have not changed in the way you might think.

Certainly I have learned a great deal in that time

and accumulated a whole lot more knowledge than I had in those early years.

But it is not the accumulation of that knowledge

that has brought about the greatest changes in me.

The real changes have come

in the growing discovery

of how remarkably simple and uncomplicated our walk with the King really is.

And in a very real sense

my growing inner peace with my God

has not come from having conquered the system,

but rather from discovering that there is no system I need to conquer.

What Peter does for us in the opening verses of his 1^st Epistle

says better than I ever could

what I’m trying to say right now.

We ended our study last week

with the 7^th verse of the first chapter,

that verse I just read for us in which Peter says,

1PE 1:7 ...that the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold which is perishable, even though tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ...

We spent our morning last week

talking about the way in which true faith - true practical trust in our Lord and in His love for us -

is always tested.

It cannot be otherwise given the world in which we live,

a world currently under the dominion of the enemy of our souls,

a world drenched in corruption,

a world that resists the truth about our Creator at all costs.

There are a number of religious substitutes to true faith, of course.

Some of them take the form of a sort of mindless allegiance to a religious system,

a system that promises if certain acts or duties are fulfilled

then certain rewards or benefits will be awarded.

It’s a sort of bartering system with whatever God concept the person has accepted

or the religious system has given them.

And then there are other forms of “faith”

that are nothing more than blind, irrational leaps in the dark,

based on the belief that, because I have chosen to “have faith”,

(whatever that means,)

therefore things will all work out OK.

That isn’t what our Lord asks of us,

and it certainly isn’t what Peter is talking about

when he talks with us about the proof of your faith.

What Peter is talking about

is something very real

and very personal

that takes place between us and our God.

And to understand what Peter is saying here

we need to see it in the context of the next verse.

In verse seven he’s just said,

...that the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold which is perishable, even though tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ...

And then in verse 8 he goes on to say,

... and though you have not seen Him, you love Him, and though you do not see Him now, but believe in Him, you greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory...

Now, it’s obvious in this 8^th verse

that Peter is not simply talking

about our developing a more sincere level of devotion to the Biblical system

or about us achieving a higher level of faithfulness to Christian values.

He’s talking about something very real

and very personal that’s taking place between us and our God.

He begins by saying, ... and though you have not seen Him, you love Him...

And when he says this

he’s stating the obvious - that right now we cannot physically see Christ present with us.

But I think there is a little more involved in this statement than just that.

Remember who’s talking with us.

This is Peter who lived with the Lord in the flesh for three or four years of his life.

Peter was one of the few in the history of the Church

who saw Jesus.

And he knows that almost none of those who would read this letter

would be among the few who had that great privilege.

But here is the amazing thing,

the thing that separates true Christianity from all religions,

and in fact from all other experiences in life.

Even though we have not seen Jesus in the flesh,

and will never see Him in the flesh while we remain in this body,

yet our submission to Him, our entrance into His family through our simple trust in His death as payment for our sins,

gives our spirit a living awareness of Him, and of His presence with us, and of His love for us

that defies human logic and understanding.

It isn’t just that we appreciate what He’s done,

or that we honor Him as our God,

but as our spirits discover His presence with us and His love for us

we begin to literally, personally, deeply LOVE Him,

and delight in Him,

and rejoice in His presence with us.

And right here is where I run into trouble from a teaching point of view.

I can teach you principles,

I can teach you historical truths,

I can share with you a Christian world view.

I can help us understand

both what our Lord has said and why He’s said it to us.

But I cannot teach you into a personal awareness of His presence with you or His love for you.

But one thing I can do for you -

I can tell you with absolute certainty

that this is where He’s taking us

and this is the basis upon which everything else in the Christian life is built.

Without a growing awareness of His love

and our love response to Him in return

there are no adequate reasons for us to do those things our Lord has called us to do.

Most of all

we do it for Him.

But our discovery of Him and His love

and our spirit’s love response to Him

is very much of a slow, gradual, progressive discovery in our lives.

Some of you here this morning

honestly have very little awareness of His love.

In truth, it’s mostly just a sort of hope tucked away in the back of your mind,

something you hope is true,

but honestly have no living awareness of.

I understand that perfectly.

That’s where we all start

when we first reach out to our God.

And that shouldn’t surprise us, either,

given the forces that are working against our discovery of the truth.

When we are most honest with ourselves

we all know that there are plenty of reasons why this God of ours shouldn’t like us,

things we’ve done or not done

that are exactly opposite of what He would have wanted us to do.

And then we all live immersed in a swirling cesspool of religion.

It takes on countless different forms in each of our lives,

but the underlying message is always the same -

“do good, be good and God will love you...do poorly and He will not.”

Is it any wonder we hide from our Creator

and struggle with our personal discovery of His love?

There are some things that will help.

In fact, Peter gives us one of them in this verse we’re looking at today.

1PE 1:8-9 ...and though you have not seen Him, you love Him, and though you do not see Him now, but believe in Him, you greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory, obtaining as the outcome of your faith the salvation of your souls.

OK, Peter begins by talking about this love response to God

that we can know within our spirits,

but then he goes on to say, “...and though you do not see Him now, but believe in Him, you greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory...”.

And in that phrase he is revealing to us

a process we go through

in our discovery of our Lord’s love for us,

a process that, when it is completed,

has the ability to generate tremendous inner joy.

And here again I need to be careful

that I say this in a way that doesn’t give the wrong impression.

I mentioned a few minutes ago

a common form of bartering between us and our God

that is deeply imbedded in much of the religious world.

It is a bartering system

in which our religious framework hands us a list of duties,

a list of things we can do

that we are told will please God and earn His approval.

And if we enter into this type of exchange between us and God,

we will then do those things we think will please God.

We will live the life we think He requires us to live.

But it’s really fascinating to see what happens within a person

when we approach God on this basis.

Even though we may not do it on a conscious level,

we will keep track of those things we’ve done

that we believe fulfill our obligations to God.

And as we keep our portion of the agreement

we then see God as being obligated to “bless” us.

We see Him as owing us a good life,

owing us visible rewards for our faithfulness and obedience to Him.

And the results of this type of approach to God

can never ever produce within us

either an awareness of His love for us

or a true heart of joy and gratitude.

During those times when our life may be going the way we think it should

it will bring us no sense of gratitude

because we simply see it as what was owed to us,

God’s rightful response to us for our fulfillment of the contract.

And when things don’t go as we think they should,

when evil touches our life,

or pain comes in,

or our children don’t follow the script we’ve written for them,

or someone near us whose life isn’t nearly as “good” as ours is suddenly honored above us,

it makes us furious at our God.

After all we did for Him,

after we so carefully kept our part of the bargain,

how could He treat us this way?

Religion can produce some very fine looking facades - some great external performance,

but no religious system can ever cause the human spirit

to greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory,

nor can it cause a person to fall in love with their Creator.

And I mention this now in the context of Peter’s comments here

because I don’t want what Peter says to us in this 8^th verse

to ever be confused with this type of religious obedience.

But having said that,

Peter does tell us

that if we start with whatever awareness we have of God’s love,

and use that awareness

as the beginning place for trusting what He says to us - believing Him at whatever level we can,

that process will bring about huge changes

both within our soul response to God

and in the quality of our lives.

I think I’m making this too complicated,

so let me just describe what I see Peter saying to us here.

When we come to Christ,

when we enter His family through simply believing He’s telling us the truth

when He tells us that Christ’s death paid our debt for our sin forever,

from that point on

the Spirit of God begins telling us at the spirit level

that our God really does love us, and that His longing is to be absolutely and eternally good to us.

Certainly, there are a whole lot of voices around us

screaming very different messages,

but still from the very beginning

there is planted within us the birth of that truth.

He’s really there,

He’s really good,

and - wonder of all wonders - He might just love me...

OK, from that beginning

Peter then calls us to trust Him, to believe in Him

at whatever level we are able.

Typically what He’ll do

is to open our eyes

to some issue in our life,

some area in which we are making choices that He knows are destructive to us and to others.

Or possibly He will bring to mind

some choice we made in the past,

a choice that He wants us to take responsibility for in some way.

He does this, not because these past or present sins

are still held to our account,

or because there is anything we could ever do to atone for them ourselves,

but rather because He wants us to have a clear, practical point

at which we can make a choice of trusting Him.

And this growth process

is totally different than obeying a set of rules handed to us by our religious system.

In fact,

quite often when our Lord begins this work in us,

giving us these practical, very personal choices of trust in Him,

one of the first responses we’ll find within ourselves

is to attempt to hide from them behind our religious system.

When our Lord brings these practical points of trust and obedience to us

they will frequently scare us to death.

And many times in the past 40 years

I’ve seen Christians literally drape themselves in fervent religious activity

in a frantic attempt to quite the voice of the Spirit within them,

even, on a few occasions,

enlisting in foreign missions activities to demonstrate their great devotion to their Lord

while at the same time hiding from His voice.

But here’s the remarkable thing -

the thing we can never know until we’ve gone through it and look back on it -

if we choose to trust His love when He begins this process in us,

if we choose to believe Him in what He’s shown us about ourselves,

those simple but rarely easy choices of trust

will bring about a healing and a freedom in our spirits

unlike anything we’ve ever known before.

As Peter puts it, we find ourselves greatly rejoicing with joy inexpressible and full of glory...

First of all we rejoice

because we discover at a whole new level

how much our God really loves us.

As we see Him walk with us through whatever choices He’s asked us to make,

and as we see Him knowing us

and caring about us

and carefully designing for us a very personal program of healing,

we come away overflowing with gratitude

that He cares about us at that level.

And second, we will rejoice

because, well, as Peter puts it,

we will 1PE 1:9 obtain as the outcome of your faith the salvation of your souls.

And please understand

that Peter is not talking here

about the salvation of our spirits.

He’s not talking about whether or not we will be welcomed into the presence of God

when we depart from this planet.

He’s talking about that life-long process

in which our souls - our minds, wills, and emotions -

are brought under the leadership of the Spirit of Christ within us.

He’s talking about practical growth in learning how to love those around us,

and how to make very real, practical daily choices of righteousness.

And why does that matter?

It matters because it just flat makes life better for us here and now.

It allows us to fulfill whatever callings our Lord has given us in this life,

and to love the people He’s given us to love.

So how do we go about growing in our awareness of Christ’s love for us?

How do we deepen our love relationship with Him?

Well, one of the big ways

is through our taking that tiny awareness of His love

that His Spirit places within us when we first come to Him

and using it as a basis upon which we trust His voice

and follow what He says about the growth areas in our lives.

And the more we trust,

the more we discover that it is always, only His love

that motivates Him in everything He says to us.

And of course there are other ways we grow in that love relationship, too.

A few weeks ago I was in a conversation with a fellow Christian

and I asked him what things in his life

had helped him to better understand God’s love for him.

And I’ll never forget his answer.

The first thing he said was “PAIN!”

He said that one of the biggest things in his life

that has helped him understand his God’s love is pain.

I asked him what he meant by that

and he shared with me

some times in his life when he’d gone through intense emotional pain,

pain that drove him to his God for help, and comfort, and healing.

And what he found in the process

was a God who was really there,

a God who took him just as he was - all filled with pain and confusion,

a God who held him through the pain,

and in the way that only God can do,

through the pain told His hurting child how deeply He cares.

Now isn’t that amazing?

Of course that is exactly the opposite

of what happens when we are involved in religious bartering with God.

When we are bartering with Him,

offering Him our little pile of good deeds

so that He will then bless us and give us the life we want,

when pain comes into our lives

not only does it not bring us an awareness of God’s love

but it actually makes us angry at Him.

But when we come to Him

knowing we have nothing to offer,

knowing we have no right to expect anything from Him,

when we come simply grateful that He has chosen to love us,

when the pain comes and we reach out to Him

even if He doesn’t immediately end the pain,

still in the midst of it we can hear His voice telling us of His love

and we will find our spirits loving Him in return.

Well, when I began this morning

I told you that throughout the years I have discovered

that our walk with the King is not nearly as complicated as I once thought it was.

And now, at this point in my life,

I’ve come to realize that it’s really always been about only one thing -

my growing discovery of His love for me

and the response of my spirit to that love.

1PE 1:8-9 and though you have not seen Him, you love Him, and though you do not see Him now, but believe in Him, you greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory, obtaining as the outcome of your faith the salvation of your souls.