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Mission from 1 Peter
“Go make disciples of
all nations!”
“You will be my
witnesses to the ends of the earth!”
That is the mission
that Jesus gave to His church.
“Go make disciples of
all nations!” – we looked at that two weeks ago.
“You will be my
witnesses to the ends of the earth!” – we looked at that last week.
Christ saved us
through His death and resurrection, now He tells His people to Go tell it
on the mountain, over the hills and everywhere. We have our marching
orders from Jesus Himself: “Go, Be my witnesses. And keep going till I return.”
And we say. Ok.
I understand these marching orders. But what on earth does that mean for me in Eastbourne in
2008. If these are our marching
orders then where is the march?
Where is this Christian movement that’s going to witness to the
world. Where is this body of
witnesses covering the earth, discipling nation after nation? If there was a march I’d join it. If there was a discipling army I’d
sign up and we’d claim the world for Christ. But that doesn’t look like the world I see around me. I don’t feel like there’s some gospel
world tour that I can join.
Instead I feel much more like an isolated stranger in the world, I
feel like we’re little Christian outposts scattered throughout the
nations.
So how does Christ’s
great commission apply when Christ’s people are strangers in the world
and scattered throughout the nations.
That’s why we’re going
to think about the book of 1 Peter this morning. Because here is a book written by an
apostle of Jesus Christ, who knows a thing or two about mission. Here is a man who was there when Jesus
gave the great commission. But
here he is writing a letter to scattered people
1 Peter 1:1
Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, To God's elect, strangers in the
world, scattered throughout [these places in Turkey] Pontus, Galatia,
Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia,
This letter is written to people under the
same marching orders that we are under.
And their situation is just like ours. They, like we, are God’s elect, strangers in the world. Do you hear the tension in that
phrase? Chosen by God, a special
people to God. But strangers in
the world – refugees, aliens. In
God’s eyes ‘chosen’ In the
world’s eyes ‘outcasts.’
Now this tension is natural to the
Christian life, because this is exactly the life Jesus lived. Christ was the One who v20 tells us
was eternally chosen of God, He is the true Witness
of God. But He lived in the world
as that Witness and was despised and rejected by the world. The tension of living in the world as
God’s witness is a tension that literally killed Him. And we are those who are called to be
obedient to Jesus Christ. Look at
chapter 2:21. I could have picked
loads of verses, but here’s a typical one. 2:21
Peter is talking about living as a Christian
under hostile authorities and he says:
21 To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving
you an example, that you should follow in his steps.
He’s been talking about living as a witness
in difficult circumstances but as Peter goes on he describes Good
Friday. Living with these
tensions Peter says is a like crucifixion. He keeps making that link – mission is like crucifixion.
Ultimately they are the same thing because
mission is leaving your comfort zone and extending yourself into another
person’s world and laying down your life for the life of others. And that’s just what the cross was –
Jesus leaving the ultimate comfort zone and extending Himself into our
world and laying down His life for the life of others. Mission is cross-like and the cross is
missionary.
Now many people want to think that you can be
a Christian without suffering. Peter says no – we follow a crucified
man. Many people also want to
think we can be a Christian without witnessing, again Peter says no. We witness as Christ witnessed – we
leave our comfort zones, extend ourselves into other people’s worlds and
we lay down our lives for the lives of others. Just as Christ suffered in mission and then went to glory –
so Christians will suffer now in our missionary activity but we suffer
with hope because we will share in Christ’s glorious future. That’s the
broad picture of 1 Peter. And I’d
recommend that you read it this week to see just how practical Peter is
in addressing the issues of mission in a hostile world.
Peter is an old hand at mission and so he
knows where the tensions are. He
highlights, for instance, tensions with the authorities. Turn over the page and look at the NIV
headings – just above chapter 2:13 – It talks about ‘Submission to Rulers
and Masters’. Peter has to write
a whole section on what it’s like when the authorities make it
difficult to live and speak as a Christian. Well that’s no less relevant today 2000 years on. Then Peter from v18 talks about
difficulties in the work-place – what about when your boss or your
work situation makes it difficult to live and speak as a Christian. That’s addressed. And then families, marriages. What about when your spouse is against
Christian things? What then? Peter addresses that. Then over the page from chapter 4,
Peter addresses what it’s like living for God when your friends
and family and everyone around you is carrying on in sin. I don’t know any Christian for whom
that’s not a tension.
Peter knows what mission looks like on the
ground. He really is an old hand
at this. Tensions with
authorities, tensions in the workplace, tensions in the home, tensions
with old patterns of living.
But in the remaining time we have I want
Peter to teach us how, in the midst of such tensions, we go about
bringing people to God.
Three thoughts:
He did
We are
I can
First.
He did.
The great missionary task has been
completed. Did you know
that? I hope you know that. Christ has finished the great
work of bringing people to God.
Look with me at 1 Peter 3:18
For
Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to
bring you to God.
Here is the work of bringing people to God.
What does mission look like? Hudson Taylor getting on a boat to
China? Dr Livingstone in the
wilds of Africa? Billy Graham
speaking in a stadium? No
ultimately mission looks like Christ crucified. That was the work of bringing people to God. You know sometimes people say ‘I’m not
like Billy Graham’ and then conclude that they’re not an evangelist. Well you’re not a Billy Graham kind of
evangelist no. But we are all called to be like Christ. And He is an evangelist. In fact He IS THE evangelist –
He’s the one who brings people to God.
So please don’t try to be Billy Graham-like if that’s not
you. But please do be
Christ-like. And if you are
seeking to be Christ-like then you will be in the business of seeing
people brought to God. That is at
the heart of Christ-likeness. You
can’t be Christ-like and not be in the business of seeing people brought
to God. That IS the business
Christ is all about.
If you’re not a Christian this morning but
just looking into these things – this verse is for you. This verse says: Christ died for sins. Sin is our awful opposition to God,
our godlessness which is a godlessness that provokes God’s anger. This sin is the great barrier
to friendship with God. But here
is the rescue mission: Christ
died for sins once and for all.
He the righteous One died in the place of all we unrighteous ones.
As chapter 2 verse 24 says, He
bore our sins in His body on the cross.
God the Son stood in our place and took our godlessness to
Himself. He accepted the anger of
God that we deserve. And as He
put away these sins at the cross, He made the way to friendship with
God. The cross is Jesus, clearing
away all barriers and bringing you to God. (If you’re not a Christian here this morning – that is the
good news we’d love you to hear – friendship with God is on offer because
Christ has died for our sins. We’d
love to talk to you more about that afterwards if you want to know more).
But for all of us who call ourselves
Christians this verse is also absolutely vital. Because we must understand: Christ has brought me to God. My evangelistic efforts do not bring
me to God. It’s not about earning
brownie points when you witness and it’s not about losing them when you
fail. Christ has brought you to
God.
Among the Jehovah’s Witnesses, they teach a
very strong link between time spent witnessing and your chances of
heavenly reward. I was reading
yesterday that in the year 2000 alone almost a million Jehovah’s
Witnesses spent 181 million hours witnessing from door to door. A Jehovah’s Witness is expected to do
5 hours door to door work a week.
And when you hear that you become aware that
it’s very possible to mobilize incredible ‘evangelistic endeavours’ out
of fear, pride, pressure and guilt.
And let’s not simply point a finger at the cults. Christian leaders can also pressurize
and Christian witness can also be motivated by fear, pride, pressure and
guilt. I’m sure there have been
times for me when it’s been questionable: Am I witnessing to bring this
person to God or to bring me to God?
Which is why I must remember this first
point: He did it. Christ died for
my sins and He brought me to God – lousy, sinful, proud, failing witness
that I am. So verse 18 means your
evangelism doesn’t save you. But
it also means your evangelistic failures can never condemn you.
Christ died for sins. And those times I could have opened my
mouth and didn’t… those times when the Spirit opened a door of
opportunity and I didn’t step through.
That’s something that can hang around a Christian’s neck for weeks
even years or decades. I’m sure
you know something of the guilt that can be associated with
evangelism. But as a minister of
the gospel I declare to you: where you have been ashamed to speak for
Christ that was sin. And
Christ died for sins, He died for that as surely as He died for the
rest. Do you think Jesus died for
every sin except evangelistic failure??
No. He took those sins and
bore them in His body on the cross.
He faced their penalty and He put them away removing them from you
as far as the east is from the west.
And what about yours and my unrighteous
living that brought the gospel into such disrepute. What about that comment or that action
or those years of being a terrible witness for Christ. Was that unrighteous? Yes.
But Christ died for sins, the Righteous for the unrighteous. Do you trust Him? He has brought you to
God.
So no more fear, no more pride, no more
pressure, no more guilt. He has
done it. If you have trusted
Jesus, you have been brought to God, irreversibly, unimprovably. That’s the first thing, and it really
is a case of first things first.
Make sure you know your evangelism won’t save you and your
failures can never condemn you.
But then second – and here’s the exciting
thing. We are
already – a people who bring Christ to the world.
Look with me at chapter 2:9
1 Peter 2:9
But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people
belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you
out of darkness into His wonderful light.
Did you notice the word priesthood
there. Christ is THE priest – He
is THE One who brings us to God.
And now, we, His people, are a priesthood. We are a people who bring the world to
Christ – see, (v9) together we declare the praises of Him who called us
out of darkness and into His wonderful light.
Peter gives us good news. WE ARE this priesthood. He doesn’t say ‘work hard, try and
become priestly.’ He says you are
already priestly – all of you.
In about 5 months the Bishop of Lewes will
come and lay hands on my head and commission me in a service that I’m
really looking forward to. You’re
all invited to that service I think it will be a great time, but please
don’t call it my priesting. And
please, many people will call me a priest from that day on, but I hope
you won’t. Because there’s only
one priest in the New Testament – Jesus.
And there’s only one priesthood in the New Testament – and that’s the
church as a whole. I entered the
priesthood the day I trusted Christ.
And you entered the priesthood the day you trusted Christ.
If you’re a Christian you are part of a royal
priesthood. What do priests
do? Well they’re evangelists
really. Because a priest is basically
a go-between between God and the people – they take God to the people and
the take the people to God.
And so Why does the church exist? So that we can have a nice time,
enjoying being God’s special people?
No, we exist AS a light for the world. We exist AS salt for the earth. We exist AS a city on a hill that cannot be hidden. The church exists for the benefit of
the world – we are go-betweens between God and the world. And if you belong to the church you
have entered a priesthood, in fact you’ve entered the only priesthood
that the New Testament recognizes.
You are already an evangelist. That’s all an evangelist is – a
go-between. You are an
evangelist. You might be a
terrible evangelist right now.
Ok, but you can’t say you’re not an evangelist. It goes with the territory. You can’t come to Christ and not enter
into this priesthood. All
believers are witnesses to Jesus Christ in the world. You can do this well or badly but you are
a witness in the world.
But please notice that this is about the
whole church being a priesthood.
(WE ARE a people bringing people to God). In this priesthood, not everybody will
have the very same jobs. In a
minute we’ll think about the jobs that every single person has
within the priesthood. But for
now let’s think about some of the different ways of witnessing within the
priesthood.
Turn to 1 Peter 4:10. We could go to a number of places in
the Bible that speak of our various gifts in the work of mission, but
let’s stay in 1 Peter.
Each
one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully
administering God's grace in its various forms. 11 If anyone
speaks, he should do it as one speaking the very words of God. If anyone
serves, he should do it with the strength God provides, so that in all
things [by all people] God may be praised through Jesus Christ. To him be
the glory and the power for ever and ever. Amen.
Now there are many more gifts listed in the New Testament but here
are two broad categories – speakers and servers. And the word used for service is a
word really associated with serving at tables, hospitality gifts – gifts
of opening up your table and opening up your home to others.
And Peter says there will be differently gifted people. I don’t mind speaking in front of
people, I’m comfortable with that.
But my culinary skills involve a microwave and the defrost setting
and that’s it. Other people hat
speaking in public and would rather have their eye-lids caught in
industrial machinery, but they serve.
Now I’m not let off the serving hook, just cos I’m a speaker –
there are still many ways I must serve.
And a server is not let off the hook in speaking of Christ either
– there are still ways in which the server needs to put words to their
gospel hope – we’ll see that. But
what Peter is pointing towards is the church working together as a
priestly people – bringing Christ to the world.
And this mix of servers and speakers is such a brilliant evangelistic
combination. Can you imagine what
Peter is suggesting here: some people are great at hosting other people
and welcoming them in, serving them.
As these people open out their homes and their tables to friends
and neighbours, imagine if, liberally sprinkled around the place you
invited Christians who were particularly gifted at talking about
Christ? What would you have then? You’d have the way Jesus and the early
church did mission – that’s what you’d have.
Think for
instance of Levi, remember the story of his conversion in Luke 5? He was a tax collector and the day he
follows Christ – a very recent convert – he opens out his home to all his
non-Christian work colleagues.
And he invites Jesus and the disciples around and they have, what
is basically, an evangelistic dinner party. That’s absolutely typical of the way Jesus did
mission. (He’d generally be the
speaker, it would always be someone else’s place and you can rely on
someone like Martha to do the catering – that was so much of Jesus’
ministry.)
And it
wasn’t just about one-off evangelistic dinner parties. For Jesus and the early church it was
a way of life. The church
together, speakers and servers, being a priestly body to the world. That’s what Peter envisions.
Do you
realise you have entered the priesthood?
What are your gifts? How
can we use them in a priestly, witnessing way?
Ok so we’ve thought ‘He did’. We’ve reminded ourselves that we
ARE a priesthood. Now
finally, let’s think about what it is I am called to do.
Let’s focus in particular
on chapter 3:15:
Here is the duty of every Christian within
the priestly body:
But
in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an
answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you
have. But do this with gentleness and respect
This is a word for every Christian: not just
the Christian speaker, everybody. Be prepared. It’s
the scout’s motto. Be
prepared. But it’s not, “Be
prepared with a swiss army knife.”
Every Christian must be prepared with words. It’s the sense of being ever-ready –
having something that you’re eager to show off.
Think of the engaged woman, ever ready to
show off the diamond. Think of
the avid cinema goer who’s just seen their new favourite film. Always prepared to put words to it. Or the proud owner of a new sports car
or a new outfit 70% off. Or the
football supporter of the cup-winning team. Or the proud grand-parent.
We are always ready to talk about the things that are important to
us aren’t we? I know people who
say they have no gifts with words and yet – get them on their favourite
topic and you can’t stop them.
Interesting isn’t it? We
talk a very great deal about things that excite us. And we also talk a very great deal
about the weather. But somehow
Christ get’s stuck in our throats.
That’s why Peter tells us to set apart Christ
as Lord in your hearts. That must
be our fervent prayer, that the Spirit would make Christ the highest
affection of our hearts. Higher
than the engagement ring, or the favourite film, or the dream car, or the
designer outfit or the football team or the grandchild. Jesus said ‘Out of the overflow of the
heart the mouth speaks.’ If the
words aren’t coming, the Bible says, there’s a heart problem. Through prayer, calling on the Spirit
of God, and devouring the Bible, Christ must find the number one slot in
our hearts. All the evangelistic
techniques will be worth nothing if the heart’s not right. And if the heart is right – the words
will come. Awkwardly at first,
but over time you will be able to answer people if Christ is set apart as
Lord in your hearts.
And if this is the overflow of your heart –
then, v15, you will answer people with gentleness and respect. If we know that we’ve been brought to
God not because we’re righteous but because Christ died for we the
unrighteous, then of course we’re going to speak with gentleness and respect. It’s a famous phrase but it can’t be
repeated enough – evangelism is one beggar telling another beggar where
to find bread. Gentleness and
respect should be the hallmarks of our gospel witness if we’ve understood
the gospel we’re witnessing to.
But now, finally, notice who it is who
initiates this evangelistic conversation in v15. It’s not the Christian. The non-Christian comes to the
Christian and they basically ask: “How is it that you live with such
hope? Your life is so distinctive and I think I know why. You seem to be a person of hope. You seem to be looking forward to
something and that seems to give you a power to live differently. What is the hope that is IN you?”
That’s literally what it says in v15: “the
hope that is IN you.”
It’s not about pointing to a hope that is in the creeds or in
a gospel tract. It’s not even
talking about the hope that is in the Bible. There’s supposed to be a tangible
evident hope IN US that non-Christians see and ask about.
Now has anyone said to you ‘You seem to live
a life of such distinctive hope, what is it?’ Really no-one has said that
kind of thing to me. People have
very occasionally noticed that I don’t swear or sleep around, but that’s
hardly what’s being spoken of here.
Do we live with our hope on our sleeves? Do we live as such future-oriented people that
non-Christians see we’re looking forward to something? And they just have to ask – what are
you looking forward to?
Well let me finish with these words from 1
Peter 1. Here is the hope that is
laid out in the Bible, is this the hope that is IN YOU? 1 Peter 1 from verse 3:
3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his
great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope
through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4
and into an inheritance that can never
perish, spoil or fade-- kept in heaven for you, 5
who through faith are shielded by God's power until the coming of the
salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. 6
In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have
had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. 7 These have come
so that your faith--of greater worth than gold, which perishes even
though refined by fire--may be proved genuine and may result in praise,
glory and honour when Jesus Christ is revealed.
Is this hope in you? If my heart is set on Christ, if my
hope is set on Christ, the words will come. If not, then we need to be encouraging each other with this
hope so that we not only know it but live it.
So as we bring people to
God. Remember, Christ has
brought you to God. Your
evangelism doesn’t save you and your failures won’t condemn you. Remember YOU ARE members of
Christ’s priesthood. If you’re a
believer you are a witness, you’ve entered the priesthood and you’ve been
gifted for the good of the whole body – so let’s be using our various
gifts in being a priestly people.
And finally, I can be a witness. Every one of us is called to be ever-ready to speak of our
Christian hope. If my heart and
my hope is set on Christ, the words may be faltering and flawed, but
Christ our Great High Priest, our great evangelist – He will make use of
them.
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