Study Guide: "A Chip Off the Old Block"

Text: 1Peter 2:4-10

OPEN:

I'm not sure of the origin of the term "chip off the old block," but I'm sure most of us are familiar with its meaning. The metaphor refers to a child imitating a parent or grandparent, or any person imitating another.

Keep that idea in mind as we consider this text from 1 Peter, because it gets to the heart of the text.

The focus on these verses is verse 5: "like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ."

This is a word from the Lord to his church, not primarily to individuals. We know this because the "yourselves" in verse 5 is plural and refers back to 1:1 where Peter addresses his audience: "To the exiles.... who have been chosen and destined by God the Father." That's us! We are a holy priesthood.

This text was used by Martin Luther to reject the traditions of the Roman Catholic Church. He coined the phrase "priesthood of the believer." Western individualism has taken this slogan and turned it into a license for personal freedom in belief and lifestyle. But this context is corporate, not individual. To view this priesthood as providing us direct access to the Father is accurate, but it's not the purpose of the metaphor. This refers back to the Old Testament system of priesthood.

As an Old Testament priest stood between a needy people and a holy God, so holy priests advocate not their own position, but the needs of the people to God, and the expectations of God to the people. So, we as a church in the 21st Century are expected by God to represent Him accurately to the world and in turn to offer acceptable spiritual sacrifices to Him.

Let's look at these two responsibilities in turn:

I. WE ARE TO ACCURATELY REPRESENT GOD TO THE WORLD.

To understand our role we must begin at the right place--focus on Jesus Christ.

(v. 4) "Come to him, a living stone...."

     1) There are many biblical references to Jesus Christ as a stone:

A rejected stone (Ps 118:22)

A building stone (Isa 28:16)

A stumbling stone (Isa 8:14-15)

An overcoming stone (Dan 2:45)

     2) Notice that Christ is the living Stone, and we are living stones.

It is no accident that Peter uses the same image to compare us to Christ.

The similarity is intentional.

The small pebbles are to be miniature replicas of the larger rock, chips off the old block.

2. The way we represent God to the world is by being like, looking like, sounding like, living like Christ.

Eph 5:1,2: "Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ...."

As Christ's church, we must make sure that we are Christlike in all things at all times. Too many people artificially separate their church life from real life.  That's why we can appear to be saints at church, and live like hell the rest of the week.

William Law (1686-1761) wrote in A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life:

"There is no reason why we should make God the rule and measure of our prayers, why we should look wholly unto him and pray according to his will, and yet not make him the rule and measure of all the other actions of our life.... For there is no other reason why our prayers should be according to the will of God unless our lives also be of the same nature.

This is the reason that we see such ridicule in the lives of many people. Many people are strict when it comes to times and places of devotion, but when the service and the church is over, they live like those that seldom or never come there. In their way of life... they are just like the rest of the world. This leads the world to make light of those because they see their devotion goes no further than their prayers."

If any member of this church leads such a blatant lie, he or she makes everything we do as a church a mockery in this community.  Our criteria for success as a church is never how many people attend or how much they give, but how we narrow the gap between what we profess and what we practice.

The simple application is that either Christianity prescribes clearly the way to live our daily lives, or it is practically useless.

This is what it means to be a holy priesthood-- accurately represent Christ to the world.

II. WE ARE TO OFFER ACCEPTABLE SPIRITUAL SACRIFICES TO GOD.

"to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ." (v.5)

What are these acceptable sacrifices?

1. Our bodies.

(Rom 12:1) "Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer  your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God-- this is your spiritual act of worship."

Everything you do with your body is to be done as an offering of worship to God (hammer nails, drive car, prepare a meal, program a computer, read a book, throw a baseball, etc.).

(1 Co 10:31) "So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God."

2. Praise and Thanks.

(Heb 13:15) "Through Jesus Christ, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise-- the fruit of lips that confess his name."

Our praise should be regular and genuine spiritual activity, not sporadic and hollow.

3. Acts of Love.

(Phil 4:18) "I have received from Epaphroditus the gifts you sent. They are a fragrant offering, an acceptable sacrifice, pleasing to God."

This is an unmistakable word to us as a church. Are we offering acceptable spiritual sacrifices to God?

Do we sing in the power of the Spirit according to the will of the Spirit as a manifestation of the Spirit of Christ?

Do I preach in the power of the Spirit, according to the will of the Spirit, as a manifestation of the Spirit of Christ?

Do we leave this place and live like Christ in the power of the Spirit, according to the will of the Spirit, as a manifestation of the Spirit of Christ?

CLOSE:

You and I are not isolated rocks, doing our own thing, disconnected from God and God's people. According to 1 Peter 2:5, we are part of something larger than ourselves.  We are each an integral part of what God is building, a spiritual house.

The stones are meant to fit together (like my friend who built a fireplace).

We are more than an occasional gathering of individuals who happen to be in the same building at the same time. We are God's temple, His dwelling place.  This is true of each of us (1 Co 6:19), but there is more of God to be known and enjoyed than may be expressed and experienced in isolation.

So, what kind of church are we? Are we imitating Christ in such a way that our church is an accurate representation of God in this community?

Is our worship acceptable to God or a mockery? Only holy priests make spiritual sacrifices that are acceptable to God.

Your attitude/ actions/ sins are never private matters.  They affect all of us.  There is no such thing as secret sin.  You can never say, "I'm not hurting anybody else."

"Like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices to God through Jesus Christ."

(Dr. Dane Fowlkes)

Study Guide: "The Brotherhood of Fishermen"

Text:  1 Peter 1:22 – 2:3

OPEN:

As we come to the close of chapter one and the beginning of chapter two, we encounter a fourth command. The three previous were:

Live in hope. "Set all your hope on the grace that Jesus Christ will bring you" (v. 13).

Live in holiness. "Be holy yourselves in all your conduct" (v. 15).

Live in fear. "Live in reverent fear during the time of your exile" (v. 17). Last week we saw that the river that should run through each of our lives is the fear of living in a way that does not honor God.

The fourth imperative is found in verse 22: "Love one another deeply, from the heart.”

Live in love.

A noticeable thing about these verses is the imagery of growth: seed, grass, withering, and newborn babies. How is the imagery of growth related to this command to love?

Grown-up love in our church is expected but also commanded as an indication of spiritual maturity.

Two thoughts on this grown-up love that the world is supposed to see in us . . .

I.  THE LEVEL OF LOVE IN OUR CHURCH DETERMINES OUR REPUTATION. (1:22-25)

     1.  Christian love/unity is both assumed and commanded in verse 22.

Assumed/expected: “Now that . . . so that . . .”

“sincere”: ahupokritos = without hypocrisy.

“love for your brothers”=Philadelphia=fraternal affection/brotherly kindness.

Peter assumes/expects that there would at least be affection and kindness in the church.  This is his minimum standard. Anything less than this does not qualify as a church.

Commanded: “Love one another deeply, from the heart.”

“Love . . .  deeply”: Aorist active imperative of the word agapao.   Comes from the root word meaning “much.”   The early church took a relatively unused noun (agape) and turned it into an action word/verb.

They understood that to truly contain agape/ God’s kind of love, it must agapao/ be put into action.

     2.  Why are we commanded to display a deep love in the local church?

Love is THE identifying mark of a disciple – love of God/love for others.

The Apostle John wrote a pastoral letter to several churches in which he emphasizes the necessity of love among the members:

1 Jn. 2:9-11: “Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates his brother is still in the darkness.  Whoever loves his brother lives in the light, and there is nothing in him to make him stumble.  But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks around in the darkness; he does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded him.”

1 Jn. 3:11:  “This is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another.”

1 Jn. 3:16:  “This is how we know what love is:  Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers.”

1 Jn. 4:12:  “No one has ever seen God, but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.”  (John is saying that the only way the unbelieving world will ever see God us through our expression of deep love for one another in the church!)

That’s what Jesus meant when he said in John 13:34-35:

“A new command I give to you:  Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.  By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

*The only thing the world has to judge us by is whether or not we love one another – at least affection but growing deep into God’s kind of love.

We love each other without partiality/prejudice because salvation treats us the same.

Without Christ we are the same (v. 24) – “like grass.”

With Christ we are the same (v. 23) – “not of perishable but of imperishable seed"

If God treats us the same in salvation, who are we to do any differently in the church?

John 13:34: “As I have loved you, so you must love one another.”

James 4:12: “There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the one who is able to save and destroy.  But you – who are you to judge your neighbor?”

II.  THE DEPTH AND AUTHENTICITY OF OUR LOVE IS DETERMINED BY OUR LEVEL OF SPIRITUAL MATURITY. (2:1-3)

The only way we get to the place where we love this way, is by deepening our walk with Jesus Christ:

  1. We Need To Get Rid of Some Things (2:1):

The meaning of “rid yourselves” is literally to undress.

 a.  All malice.

Kakia= badness, active or passive wickedness.

Comes from a root word meaning “intrinsically worthless.”

Get rid of anything word, thought, action that is intrinsically worthless.

        b.  All deceit ("guile").

Dolos= a trick, bait

Comes from an old word meaning “to catch with bait.”

We bait each other at times with our words, trying to catch them in a mistake so that we may pounce on them for it.

    c.  All hypocrisy ("insincerity").

Hupokritos

Be real!

            d.  All envy.

Phthonos=jealousy.

Comes from a root word that means to shrivel or wither.  May mean desiring the other person to shrivel and may mean it causes you to shrivel.

   e.  Slander of any kind.

Katalalia=to defame the character of someone

We are told to add these:

      a.  Crave the Word of God (2:2)

      b.  Grow-up! “grow up in your salvation”

The Christian life is a continuing process, not a past experience!

What is Peter getting at here?  He is telling us that we prove our spiritual maturity by having deep love for one another.

The reason for most church disunity and conflict is a group of people who have never grown-up in their salvation and they attempt to run the body of Christ in place of Christ who is the head of the Church.

James knew this.  He wrote about it in James 4:1-12.  The content is corporate, not individual.

CLOSE:

Grown-up  love in our church is expected but also commanded as an indication of spiritual maturity.

One Sunday on their way home from church, a little girl turned to her mother and said, "Mommy, the preacher's sermon this morning confused me. The mother said, "Oh? Why is that?" The little girl replied, "Well, he said that God is bigger than we are. Is that true?" The mother replied, "Yes, that's true, honey." "And he also said that God lives in us? Is that true Mommy?" Again the mother replied, "Yes." "Well," said the little girl, "if God is bigger than us and he lives in us, wouldn't He show through?"

I am saying this morning that God wants to show through us.  He wants to reveal what the Father is like by the way we love each other.

Study Guide: "A River Runs Through It"

Text: 1 Peter 1:17-19

OPEN:

My all-time favorite fishing movie is actually the screen version of author Norman MacLean's memoir of his youth spent in Montana.  "A River Runs Through It" tells the story of the MacLean family, presided over by the strict but encouraging Presbyterian minister Rev. MacLean and his loving wife. Norman, the older son in his family, takes his school work and writing a bit too seriously for Paul, the impetuous younger son. Paul would rather have a good time, drink and play cards than get involved with academic study. Where Norman wants to be a college literature professor, Paul would prefer to stay in Montana all his life and wrangle some kind of job writing for a local newspaper. Fly fishing is the constant for each of the men in the story, and fishing becomes inseparable from life for each of them.

Our text for today speaks of a theme that God intends to run through each of our lives.  It may surprise you to note what that theme is according to the Apostle Peter: Fear.

We're learning some "Life Lessons from a Lifelong Fisherman" by studying the small New Testament book known as "The First Letter of Peter." We're learning how to live despite difficult challenges and, at times, overwhelming circumstances.  

Verses 1-12 of chapter one are a celebration of what God has done to make us his own forever.

Verses 13-19 of chapter one issue three commands for living in the here and now.

The first command is to live in hope. "Set all your hope on the grace that Jesus Christ will bring you" (v. 13).

The second command is to live in holiness. "Be holy yourselves in all your conduct" (v. 15).

The third command is to live in fear. "Live in reverent fear during the time of your exile" (v. 17).

Essentially, Peter says the river that should run through each of our lives is the fear of living in a way that does not honor God.

I. Fear Living As Though Our Faith Were Not in God (v.17).

"If you invoke as Father the one who judges all people impartially according to their deeds, live in reverent fear during the time of your exile." (v. 17)

A couple of things strike me immediately when I read this.

  1) It sounds as if Peter is contradicting himself.  He has just told us to set all our hope on grace (verse 13), and now he's telling us that God will judge us according to or deeds. So, which is it? Am I judged according to Christ's finished work on the cross or on my unfinished work here on earth?

This judgment to which Peter refers has nothing to do with our salvation, but has everything to do with our rewards in heaven.

"For we are God's fellow workers; you are God's field, God's building. According to the grace of God which was given to me, like a wise master builder I laid a foundation, and another is building on it. But each man must be careful how he builds on it. For no man can lay a foundation other than the one which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if any man builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each man's work will become evident; for the day will show it because it is to be revealed with fire, and the fire itself will test the quality of each man's work. If any man's work which he has built on it remains, he will receive a reward. If any man's work is burned up, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire." 

(1 Corinthians 3:9-15, NASB)

In other words, Christ lays the foundation of salvation by grace.  I will determine what is built upon that foundation. What I do with this life matters for eternity.

  2) The second thing that strikes me is this matter of fear.  I thought that God is a God of relationship and that he implores me to explore and enjoy intimacy with him.  That sounds a lot more like love than it does fear.

Note several things about this fear:

There is no special word for "reverence" or "reverent fear" in the Greek language.  This phrase was the choice of Bible translators to provide the Editors' interpretation of what connotation they thought the word should have.

The word is phobeo, and it means to put to flight by terrifying (to scare away), to be seized with alarm. We get from this word phobia.  For example, I am claustrophobic.

1.  I choose to live in fear because I know that what I do today counts tomorrow, and all the tomorrow's that follow.

The same idea Paul had in mind in 1 Corinthians 6:18, "Flee fornication."

The same idea Jesus had in mind when he said, "If your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out" (Matthew 5:29).

2.  I choose to live in fear because I know that how I live today says a great deal about the condition of my heart. As we saw last week, outward holiness comes from an inner holiness. The external eventually reveals the nature of the internal.

Peter tells us that there is a very appropriate fear that all believers are to display: the fear of living as though we do not belong to God.

II. Fear Living As Though Jesus' Blood Is Not Precious (vv. 18-19).

"You know that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your ancestors, not with perishable things like silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without defect or blemish."

Paraphrase: "Live in fear, because you've been ransomed at infinite cost."

  1. Peter stresses the surpassing value of Christ's sacrifice.

He says that the blood of Jesus is "precious." This word in the Greek is timos and it means "beyond price." You can't assign a value to it.  It is priceless.

 

  2. This points to the fact that the ultimate purpose of Christ's sacrifice is not forgiveness, but transformation.

The design of Christ's redemption is to rescue us from a futile way of living. The aim of this verse is victory over the power of sin in your everyday life, not just forgiveness from the guilt of sin in the past.

So, we live each moment in light of the inestimable value of the blood of Jesus Christ that gives us life now, and throughout all eternity.

CLOSE:

Each time I've stood in front of a war memorial has had a profound effect on me.  Standing in front of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington D.C., or before the monuments erected to honor veterans from each war in Port Arthur's Veterans Memorial Park, or walking the civil war battlefields in the Shenendoah Valley of Virginia, I have been impacted by the sacrifice of those who've gone before me and gave themselves for my freedom.  I should be a better American because of those who fought to secure and sustain my freedom.

Today, we have the opportunity to hold in our hands a piece of bread and a cup of grape juice that should effect an even higher emotion.  When we meditate on the precious blood of Jesus and his body broken for us, it should result in life on a higher plane. We should live in profound fear of doing anything to dishonor our Christ and his precious blood that he shed freely for us. 

(Dr. Dane Fowlkes)