Introduction

--- Well, I want to welcome you to our study in First and Second Peter called Hope, Holiness, and Humility in a Hostile World. And whenever we study a book of the Bible, we want to kind of ask ourselves the question of, you know, what is the point? Why is this in the Bible? And what are we supposed to learn as we study it? And so this morning, I just sort of want to give an introduction to the book and the study itself. I'm so glad that God gave us a written testimony of what his plans and purposes are for us, for the world that he created. And you know, we're naturally inquisitive beings. He made us that way. He made us ask questions. And if you're a thinking person, you probably have asked the kind of questions like, what's the point? Why am I here? What is my purpose? What is the point of this? Why is the world so hard? Why is life so hard? Why does it have to be this way? And what hope do we have? The Bible gives us answers to these questions. And the letters, the first and the second letter that Peter wrote, I'm going to keep saying people for Peter all day, so just transpose that for me, would you? It's going to give us some really good insights because Peter was a real man. He's not a myth or a legend. He was a real man who really lived and he walked with Jesus. He listened to his teachings. He was an eyewitness to his life, to his death, to his resurrection, to his ascension. Peter was there. If you're going to learn something, don't you want to hear from someone who was there? So the eyewitness accounts are really important to us. And Peter learned the answers to a lot of those questions as he was with Jesus. And when the time was right, he wrote these letters to inspire other believers. Now people say that he wrote these letters around 62 AD or something, which means nothing to me. I understand the numbers. I understand the timeline, but it just evaporates in my head. But I got to thinking, well, the amount of time it was from when Jesus was resurrected until Peter wrote this first letter was about the amount of time I've lived in Ontario, plus maybe about two years. Now that I can wrap my mind around because I can think to myself, what kind of a person was I when I moved here? What kind of a person am I today? Have I changed? How have I changed this and that? What I love about Peter is as we read through the letter, he's just as passionate, has just as much faith as he did 28 years before. And we see that come out. If I were to sum up the message of the whole five chapters of 1 Peter into one sentence, this is what I would say about it, that the point is, in spite of a hostile world, maybe even due to a hostile world, Christians can live in hope, holiness by entrusting themselves to God with all humility. That is what we're going to learn from this book. That is what we can glean. So open up your Bibles to 1 Peter if you're not already there. This morning what we're going to do is just read verses one and two, and then we're going to spend 80% of our time doing a little biography about the man himself. Because I figure it this way, I figure, you know, he only wrote two letters, we're doing them now. In my lifetime, we may not pass this way again in Women of the Word. And so this is a good, like, let's just invest in looking at the apostle Peter. And I love to, boy, I learn a lot from learning about what God did in other people's lives. So we're going to talk about the author, Peter, we're going to talk a little bit about the audience, and then process verse two. So let's read those two verses.

And so that's how the book begins. And let's look at the author of this book. I've often kind of mentioned Little House on the Prairie books, Mary and Laura. And you know, I grew up right near Walnut Grove, Minnesota. And Mary was so good, so proper, always said the right things, so kind. And Laura was a little bit of a pill, you know. And I've always been able to really identify with Laura, it's like not always knowing quite the right thing to say and being a little impetuous, taking things into her own hands and taking action. I thought of that when I was thinking of Peter compared to some of the other apostles, especially John. It's like John is the soft one, the kind one, and Peter is just, you know, just impetuous. If you think about the apostles, you know, the Apostle Paul, he's the wise one. He has the wise words. And the beloved John, he's the intuitive one. He feels things very deeply. And James has the direct communication. And Peter, just God had to keep working with him and working with him and working with him, you know. He was rebuking when he should have been listening. He was sleeping when he should have been praying. He was fishing when he should have been waiting. He was denying when he should have been affirming. And if all else fails, just chop off an ear and it'll all be, you know. I mean, that's the kind of guy he was. And I love him so much for that because I can just relate. I can look back on all the things like I just wasn't doing the right thing at that time. But look, Peter. So I can take courage with that. But you know what? When the Holy Spirit came and invaded him, there was no stopping that guy. He preached his heart out on the day of Pentecost, 3,000 people came to the Lord. The first seven chapters of Acts, he just preached his little heart out. He was the man. He was the guy with the message. So I love how God took such a rough, you know, diamond in the rough and by his Holy Spirit just made him so valuable and genuine. You know, Peter is mentioned, his name is mentioned more times in the New Testaments plus the book of Acts than any other of the original disciples. Jesus is the only one that's mentioned more than Peter. So he really was a focus there. So I'm going to follow a little bit. I told you I want to do a little bit of a biography. And you might sit here and think, this has nothing to do with the Bible study that we're doing. But like I said, we may not pass this way again. And there's so much to learn by looking at the character of the man who wrote this. So I want to take this opportunity to do it. The Gospel of Mark, you may have heard, is probably really the Gospel of Peter as told to his nephew, John Mark, who wrote it down. And we only get 16 verses in the Gospel of Mark. And we find that Peter, along with his, well, I'll call him Simon at this point, okay, because that was his original name, along with his brother Andrew, they were the first ones that Jesus called and said on the Sea of Galilee and said, hey, guys, come follow me. And they responded. So Simon was the first of the disciples that followed Jesus. And by the time we get to Mark chapter 8, Simon was the first one to sort of correctly affirm or identify exactly who Jesus was. And it kind of happened this way. They were walking along Jesus and some of his disciples. And he said to them, he said, who did the people say that I am? And the disciples said, well, some say that you're John the Baptist. Some say that you're Elijah or Jeremiah or one of the other prophets. And in my mind, I see the whole little train just stopping. Like they just stop and Jesus says, who do you say that I am? And it's Simon who looks at Jesus and said, you are the Christ. You are the son of the living God. And in Matthew chapter 16, Matthew's account of that time tells us a lot more information than what Mark does. But Matthew's account says that Jesus looked at Simon and he said, blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my father who is in heaven. And Jesus goes on to say, and I tell you that you are Peter. And on this rock, I will build my church. There's so much happening in this conversation, especially that last word. Because to us, church is a supernormal word. We probably use it half a dozen times a week. I'm going to church. Get ready for church. Oh, that's happening at my church, right? This word had never been said before until Jesus uttered it right there. This word, church, means, it is the Greek word that we know as ekklesia, but it is basically ek-kaleo. Kaleo means to call, and ek, the prefix, means out. This word means the called out ones. And Jesus is beginning to birth in their hearts and understanding that everything that they've known about being a son of Abraham is going to begin to change. Because Jesus is thinking about the kingdom of God, which is the called out ones. You guys, me, we are the called out ones. We have been called out of the world. Well, Jesus goes on to say to Peter, and I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Now, in this conversation, there's so much happening. First, Peter won the Sunday school quiz with the right answer, right? Jesus! Who are you? Jesus! So he wins the quiz of all the disciples. Next, Jesus looks at him and changes his name. Says, you got a new name now. That doesn't happen regularly in life, right? And then we have this whole unknown entity that Jesus is talking about, the church, the called out ones. And then Jesus says, and I'm going to give you the keys of the kingdom, which I'm sure Peter didn't really know what that was all about and probably didn't fully understand all of that until he got to Acts chapter 10. But there's a lot going on. And I'm sure it was a really dynamic time. And it says, after these events, immediately. So I want to link this. This is in the same conversation in Matthew. It says, immediately, Jesus began to teach them these things, that the Son of Man must suffer many things, be rejected by the elders and the chief priests, the scribes, and be killed and raised on the third day. And that must have been a little challenging to hear, because up until this point, I kind of feel like they had enjoyed a lot of affirmation. Like, a lot of people had been healed. There was miracles. There was all this bread that showed up for thousands of people at a time. And now Jesus begins to talk about suffering and rejection from a hostile world. And so Peter pulls a Peter, and he pulls him aside. He pulls Jesus aside, and he rebukes him. And he says, far be it from you, Lord. This shall never happen. So then Jesus pulls Peter aside, and he rebukes him. And it says, Jesus rebuked Peter and said, get behind me, Satan, for you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man. Now, have you ever been rebuked before? Can you think of a time you have been rebuked? I was in second grade, and I went to a Girl Scout meeting at my Girl Scout leader's house in town. And it was winter, and I lived on the farm, so my mom drove me into town. But some of my friends who lived in town just naturally walked to her house. And I was in the living room, and I heard in the other room that Janelle was walking to her house, had slipped on the ice, and I heard the word concussion. That was a new word in my vocabulary. I didn't really even know what it meant. Excuse me. And so I've never really been like a tattler kind of, but that's not the right word, like the town crier. Every family has one that must tell all the information first. That wasn't me. That wasn't my personality. Now, it wasn't then. However, something came over me that night, and my friend came into that Girl Scout meeting, and I turned to her and I said, did you hear that Janelle slipped on the ice and she has a concussion? And the Girl Scout leader rebuked me. And she said, we don't know how bad it is. We don't know any information. You don't need to be going and telling everyone what's going on. And I just kind of like probably curled up and like, I'm eight. What do I know? Like, but it made a big impression on me. Here's the point I'm getting up to. When someone rebukes you, whether it was proper or not, it was probably proper for her to rebuke me. But when someone rebukes you, does that not, does that situation not get burred into your mind? I could explain to you the arrangement of the furniture in that living room to this day. It's buried in my mind. What I'm getting at is this event when Peter rebuked Jesus and Jesus rebuked Peter. What I see going on in here, I see spread all over his letter 28 years later. First, the message that not only must the Christ suffer, but his children will suffer too. And when Jesus said to him, Peter, you're not setting your mind on the things of God. When you do your work on chapter 1 this week, you're going to get to verse 13. And Peter is going to write to these other people and say, prepare your minds for action. Be sober minded. Set your hope fully on the grace to be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed. I see words from that rebuke come out 28 years later. They were important. They got buried into his heart. They became part of who he was as an eyewitness of the ministry of Jesus. One thing we notice as we look at the apostles is they all have very different callings and very different purposes for their life. And one thing that I just think is just fascinating and interesting about Peter's life is that God seemed to reveal things to him in triplets over and over and over again. I just found it fascinating. So I want to enjoy it together. First, right after this event, when Peter is rebuked, it says six days later, it was Peter, James, and John. And they go up with Jesus, it says, up to a high mountain. And suddenly, Jesus is transfigured before them. He turns shining white. And there is Elijah and Moses, three people there with him. And of course, Peter doesn't know what to say. And so he's like, hey, should we like, I can build you guys some tents or shelters. Like, let's go to Home Depot. And I don't know, he just said, do you ever just start talking when you're nervous? And it's like, I've never done this before, so let's talk. Let's make a plan. Let's do something. But there was three people there. And then we see this happen over and over in the Garden of Gethsemane. After the Lord's Supper, Jesus takes Peter, James, and John into the garden. And he says, would you watch and pray? And he goes a little further. And he comes back, and they're sleeping. And he says, hey, guys, pray. And he goes a little further. And this happens three times, right? And Peter didn't yet know how to pray. And then right after that, he's in the courtyard of the guard. And what happens? He denies Jesus three times, doesn't he? And then after Jesus's resurrection, Peter's probably a little discouraged with himself. I get discouraged sometimes when I don't learn fast enough. And Peter just says, I'm just going to go fishing. I'm just going to go back to what I knew before. And he's out fishing. And Jesus comes out to them. And he goes, hey, boys, you catching any fish, you know? And this is the resurrected Jesus. And they have a large gathering of fish. And there's the fire on the shore. And Jesus cooks breakfast for him. And we have this conversation with Jesus and Peter. And three times, Jesus says, do you love me? Feed my sheep, right? And there's a lot we could go into about that. But three times that Jesus tells him, feed my sheep, it was like God was training him his whole life. Think three. Think three. Think three. See life in terms of three. Now, this is different than any of the other apostles. We don't see that with anybody else. And this is what I'm trying to gear up to, is that Peter was unique, just like you are unique, OK? And so I think one of the things, reasons, that God wanted him to see in terms of three is that it was God's intention as he built his church, his called out ones, that it was going to be comprised of three people groups, the Jews, the Gentiles, and those that are in between, the Samaritans, which are half and half. And that's exactly how it happened. Right after this business on the shore, right before Jesus is ascended in Acts chapter 1, the disciples and Jesus are walking together. And the disciples say to Jesus, they say, hey, when are you going to restore the kingdom of Israel? That's all they had experienced, was Israel being part of Abraham. So they said, and when are you going to restore the kingdom of Israel? Well, that was the wrong question, because Jesus wasn't going to restore the kingdom of Israel. Jesus was going to build the kingdom of God, which was the church, the called out ones. And he responds to them, and he goes, well, first of all, it's not yours to know the times that my father has set. But you stay right here in Jerusalem, and when the spirit comes on you, you will receive power to be my witnesses in right here, Jerusalem and Judea, and in Samaria, and to the outer parts of the earth. There's three places that you are going to be my witnesses. And Peter was the apostle that was there on the day of Pentecost, preaching that sermon when that first people group came in to the kingdom of God, the Jews, 3,000 people. And then he goes to Solomon's portico, and he preaches. And 5,000 people get saved and believe in the Lord and receive the Holy Spirit. And then after Stephen is stoned in Acts chapter 8, and those Jews are sent, they start getting scattered. And some of them go up to Samaria, and Philip goes up to Samaria. And the Samaritans, some of the Samaritans start believing on the name of the Lord Jesus. And Peter and John go up there, lay hands on them. They receive the Holy Spirit. And boom, number two. Now we've got Jews and Samaritans that have come into the kingdom of God. This church, this called out ones, called out from the world to be separate strangers in the world. And then it's not long, and Peter is at. the house of Simon the Tanner, and he has the vision of the sheet being brought down, and the sheet contains both clean and unclean animals. And the voice is, Peter, get up, kill, and eat. And the message is, there's a mixture now. It's not just what you have known. It's both clean and unclean. And how many times does that sheet come up and down? Three times. Isn't that fun? I love how God does that. And soon, Peter finds himself in the house of Cornelius, a Gentile. And the Gentiles start believing in Jesus, the Messiah, the name of Jesus. They believe in him. They get saved. Peter lays hands on them. They receive the Holy Spirit. Boom. We have completed all the people groups that God intended to be part. And aren't we glad? Probably every one of us is a Gentile. God worked in Peter's life. Keep going until you hit three. Keep going until you hit three. You know, that was just something that he did with him. And I love how God used Peter because his ministry, and then it's just about done. We hardly ever hear from Peter again. So the ministry God had planned for him was swift. It was impactful. It was just like Peter's personality. And I want to tie up this little biography about Peter by going back to something. You can turn, you know, I didn't even mention it, but there is some space in your study guide here to take notes right on the introduction page. You can turn to John chapter 21. You can just write it down if you want. But I want us to review something else that happened. During that time, because I think that this is a huge application for you and me, before God set him loose with the keys of the kingdom, when Jesus was saying to Peter, do you love me? Feed my sheep. There's a conversation and there's something that happens that brings a final, I guess I want to say rebuke from Jesus. And I think that, again, that made a big impression on Peter and it set a tone for his life. John 21 verse 17 says, he said, Jesus said to him a third time, Simon, son of John, do you love me? And Peter was grieved because he said to him a third time, do you love me? And he said to him, Lord, you know everything. You know that I love you. Jesus said, feed my sheep. And now just like he gave him a foreshadowing with that whole, you know, I'm going to build my church. He gives Peter a foreshadowing of his future. But Jesus says, truly, truly, I say to you, when you were young, you used to dress yourself and walk wherever you wanted. But when you were old, you will stretch out your hands and another will dress you and carry you where you do not want to go. This he said to show by what kind of death he was to glorify God. And after saying this, he said to him, follow me. Well in verse, the next verse 20, Peter, Peter didn't answer Jesus. He didn't say to Jesus, you betcha, I'm going to follow you. It says Peter turned and saw the disciple whom Jesus loved following them, which is John. So he turned his attention to John. And then he said to Jesus, what about this man? Fascinating, isn't it? His response, he turned, he looked at someone else and he queried about his life. God gives each of us a natural personality that he gave us when we were born. As we come to him and are indwelt by the Holy Spirit, he gives us spiritual gifts. And he gives us tasks that he wants us to accomplish, good works prepared in advance for us to do. They're all unique over this whole room. There's hundreds of different types of tasks that God has given us to accomplish. If we, like Peter, make this mistake and we turn and look at another disciple, we may begin to wonder about all the things God has given us, our personality, our gifts, and not put them to good use. When Peter did this, Jesus said to him, this is the rebuke, Jesus said, if it's my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you? You follow me. And so we have a repeat of that charge. You follow me. You know, when Amy was doing that second song, that last line was ready to do your will. And it captured my attention because, of course, I knew what I had put in my notes. Ready to do your will. We sing that, ready to do your will. I think in this lesson about Peter, one thing we can really take away is that there's a couple things that are necessary for us to be ready to do God's will. Number one is the first rebuke. When Jesus said, you haven't set your mind on the kingdom of God. First thing we have to do to do God's will is set our mind. Prepare our minds for action. Be sober minded. Set our mind on doing God's will. The second thing we have to do is this simple charge Jesus said two times. You follow me. Never mind John. Never mind what he's doing. And you all know what I'm talking about because every one of us have compared or thought about or said to ourselves, why does my lot in life seem so hard and hers is so easy, right? Or why do I have this skill set or spiritual gift set? And she has that or whatever. You get it. We, at some point in our life, we all have to just get that comparing thing and that turning and looking at somebody else just washed out of our life. So that's a huge application for me as we look at the apostle that God planned to be all over the early church, preaching up a storm. Somebody coming in and getting saved and then we hardly hear a thing until 28 years later. Paul and I were laughing this morning about, you know, he's in a position like he has recordings of when he preached years and years and years ago and, you know, sometimes you listen to something you may have said like 20 years ago and you're like, you know. And I said, yeah, isn't it great that Peter, like of all people, it's like God was just like, like don't write anything down until, let's get like 28 years under your belt, then you can write. But anyway, okay, really quickly here. Let's talk about the audience this letter was written to. So enough about Peter. It says they were written to those who are elect exiles. God's elect strangers in the world, another translation says, another translation says, God's chosen people living as foreigners. The point is these are the called out ones, okay? Then that first rebuke from Jesus, when Jesus talked about the called out ones, you see this impact all through 1 Peter about being strangers, aliens in the world, and he even talks about them that way, elect exiles, you are chosen, you have been called out. So Peter's writing to refugee Christians, okay, scattered throughout the area we now know as Turkey. They came from both Jew and Gentile backgrounds. Some of them may have been saved right there on the day of Pentecost or with Peter's early preaching. Some of them may be converts from converts from converts. It's an eclectic group of people, but they are isolated, marginalized, despised, harassed. They're having a hard time. And I kind of feel like this letter was written before the big persecution that came as a result of Nero. I feel like God inspired this letter to go out as a way of preparation, like as if it's like, it's hard now, but get prepared because it's, we can relate to that kind of thinking. It might be shocking as we study this letter to see how maybe insensitive Peter might sound to what's going on in their lives. We're going to find that he never empathizes with them. He never works behind the scenes to change public policy and get some laws that are going to, you know, help them out. He doesn't even offer sympathy in this letter to their difficult persecution. He only talks about the hope that they have. He builds up the hope in their heart and he wants them to set their hope fully on the grace to be given them when Jesus Christ is revealed, not to set their hope on tomorrow might be a better day. It's probably not going to be a better day, Nero's a coming. It's probably going to be a worse day than it is today. So set your hope fully on the grace to be given you when Jesus is revealed. They probably asked a lot of the same questions that you and I do about life. And they knew the answers to those questions. They knew that Jesus was their hope, but I think that if they're anything like me, they're weak and they leak. I feel like I leak that great information I'm supposed to bury in my heart and hold on to. Everything that God tells me about my hope and my future, it just leaks out of me. I think that's why we gather together, right? And encourage one another so that we study the scriptures and we're built back up. And in this Bible study, you're gonna hear things that you know. You know the answers, but you leak the answers. And so we're gonna remind ourselves things like always be prepared to give an answer for the reason, for the hope that you have. Things like your adorning should be the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit. Things like God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. Things like your adversary the devil roars around like a prowling lion seeking whom he should devour. We know these things, but we need to be reminded, we need to be encouraged. So those are phrases we're gonna run into. We could talk about a lot of things in terms of introduction, but just to sort of kind of begin a landing cycle here. The title of our study is Hope, Holiness, and Humility. Now isn't that cute? I didn't plan a triplet. I didn't plan that. Maybe God planned it, but how perfect is that, right? So let's just identify each one of those really briefly. If you look at the outline on the next page in your book, I just want to say right now that some of you who are more of a, like a big picture thinker, you can do details, but only once you've looked at the whole thing. Like if you put together a piece of furniture, you must look at the image. Like what's my finished product supposed to look at? Then you can deal with, you know, little bolt A goes into part B and all that kind of stuff. So if you're like that, like read through that outline a few times to get a sense of the whole picture. Then you can enjoy the details when you just look at one little verse, but you can see that right away we're going to cover this Hope, Holiness, and Humility. Hope is, we have a certain hope knowing that whatever we are going through right now in our life, whatever difficulties, suffering, disappointments, discouragements we have, by the power of the Spirit within us, we can prepare our minds to set our hope fully on the grace to be given us when Jesus Christ is revealed. If that's 10, you might feel today I'm a 1.2, or I'm a 7.3. You may be somewhere on the scale, but by the power of the Holy Spirit, we have the potential to allow the Spirit to help us set our minds fully on the grace to be given us so that we see the hostility in the world as something that God uses in our life to build his godly character within us. Not something to be gotten rid of necessarily, but something to be embraced and engaged in and say, God, use this difficult situation to make me like you, to make me holy. The second point, we have both the privilege and the responsibility to reflect his character. The word tells us, be holy as God is holy, and he will continually nudge us in that in our life, to be holy. And then the last one is humility, which reminds us that we are each born into a specific place and a position in life, and humility is walking in that capacity to conform ourselves to exactly who we are and who God has called us to be, nothing more and nothing less. I've sort of drilled in this point that as we observe the Apostle Peter's life, it was very specific. It required a sense of humility for him to not be the Apostle Paul and to not be John, which I'm sure John was going around just loving on everybody all the time, and Peter's not that personality, and I'm sure there was times that he kind of thought, oh, that's what, you know, whatever. But humility is viewing ourselves in proper perspective. And then we just want to read verse two again, since we're enjoying the threeness of the life of Peter, let's look for the trinity as we see this opening comment that he has when he talks about called according to the foreknowledge of God the Father in the sanctification of the Spirit for obedience to Jesus Christ. And we see the triune God there, for sprinkling with his blood, may grace and peace be multiplied to you. God the Father chose us and he set us apart to be called out by the Spirit for obedience, for us to accept the gospel of Jesus Christ. It boils down to the concept that we say often in Women of the Word, God chooses us first, we have to choose him back. Once we've made that completed transaction and received the grace of God, then we have peace. Peace is that inner result of the working of the grace of God. If you have a friend or someone in your life who's just not at peace, they don't have the peace of God, there's probably a further work of grace yet for them to embrace in terms of their relationship with the Lord, because peace is a result of that. Well, this week, as we leave here, you have the task of studying chapter one. I just want to encourage you to read through the chapter as many times as possible throughout the week, okay? And like I said, you can do your study guide in chunks or all at once, and we'll come back next week, we'll talk a little bit about it, and next week you'll have an opportunity at your tables to discuss the things that God showed to you. And I just want to emphasize that that's a super important part of our Bible study, is you processing at home, reading it at home, you have something to share, something to offer, because someone at your table might really learn something from some of the insights that the Lord gave to you and vice versa. So I'm going to close in prayer, and then Anna's going to come up and share with us how we're going to pray regularly. So Father, thank you for allowing us to see these things in the life of the one that you chose to write this letter to people who were discouraged and having a difficult time in life. Lord, may we learn and glean from the things that we see in Peter. Lord, I want to ask you two things for us in this room. Would you help all of us to prepare our minds for action and to set our hopes fully on you? And Lord, would you help us to follow you passionately, diligently, Lord, and to attack those things that you have prepared in our life for us to do, and to just live our lives for you, for your glory, Lord, with reckless abandon. Even if we make kind of mistakes along the way, Lord, we know that your rebukes are gentle and they are profitable for us. And so we just want to ask you to just bring it on, just fashion us, rub off those rough edges, make us useful tools in your kingdom, Lord, that we might see all the people brought into the kingdom that you have desired, Lord. Lord, bless our time of prayer as we commit it to you, in Jesus' name, amen. Amen. Amen. ---