Chosen: A Message for All of Us
1 Peter: Chosen • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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You can turn to 1 Peter 3 verses 8-12 today
And as you are turning there...
Overseer
The Christian world lost a giant of the faith this past week
Tim Keller lost the battle to pancreatic cancer
He was a pastor, apologist, teacher
He founded The Gospel Coalition—an organization to provide resources and support to pastors to help them communicate the truth of the Gospel effectively and clearly across cultures and generations
“The Christian Gospel is that I am so flawed that Jesus had to die for me, yet I am so loved and valued that Jesus was glad to die for me. This leads to deep humility and deep confidence at the same time. It undermines both swaggering and sniveling. I cannot feel superior to anyone, and yet I have nothing to prove to anyone. I do not think more of myself nor less of myself. Instead, I think of myself less.” - Timothy Keller (1950 - 2023)
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1 Peter 3:8-12 “8 Finally, all of you, have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind. 9 Do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, bless, for to this you were called, that you may obtain a blessing. 10 For “Whoever desires to love life and see good days, let him keep his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking deceit; 11 let him turn away from evil and do good; let him seek peace and pursue it. 12 For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and his ears are open to their prayer. But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.””
Finally, ALL of you—instructions given to all of us
Ah, finally something for everyone
Maybe you aren’t married
Not a husband or a wife
Not a servant
Don’t really have trouble following your government
Well, here is something for you. For all of us
what we discover in the passage today is…well, nothing new.
Peter simply tells us what hopefully we have heard over and over again
How the people of God should live with each other
Sometime stated in these exact words, and sometimes worded differently
And all of these things in our passage today you have heard me say, and I’m sure you heard Perry and Leon and John and those before them say these exact thing
And they sound so simple, so basic, so obvious
Yet, we have trouble living them, don’t we?
Because these things don’t come naturally to us.
We are not naturally unified
We are not naturally sympathetic, fully of love, tenderhearted and humble
We naturally want to pay evil for evil and to mouth back at those who have said something wrong about us
But it’s for this very reason that we are given these instructions.
It’s because what Peter is describing are those whom God has “called out” to be holy and chosen people
Those in whom God’s image is being made ever more bright and clear.
And we need to be reminded of these things often to keep our vision clear, and our hearts fixed on Him
Have unity of mind
And we just have to stop here for a bit, even though we have heard this so often
Unity of mind:
This is SO important.
This is what church is all about. Unity
After all, this was the prayer of Jesus even before He left this earth:
John 17:11…Holy Father, keep them (that is His followers) in your name, which you have given to me, that they may be one, even as we are one
Jesus’ desire for His followers is that they would be ONE. Unified!
The bible gives us two pictures of what a church is like
In Romans 12 and 1 Cor. 12, we have the picture of Church being a body—Christ’s body
In Eph. 2:19 church is called a “household”. It’s like a family.
And in these two pictures, it’s easy to see how important unity is
Body
it’s hard for a body to function if a limb has been broken
Or if there is a terminal disease—cancer taking over the body
It’s hard for that body to be “unified”
Family
If a family member is having serious relationship issues
Maybe spends most of their time in their room and only comes down for a meal and then disappears
Or maybe has left the home in anger and refuses to talk to the other family members
It’s hard to feel like that family is unified, isn’t it
Having unity of mind. This is the make or break point of church—whether or not we have unity of mind
The indication of whether or not a church is healthy and functioning properly
There’s so much that could be said here
It’s so simple. Unity: one simple 5 letter word
Yet we can make it so complex…so confusing
I would assume that all those who meet together regularly as the Church of Jesus and who use the Bible to discover what He wants us to know
I would assume that we have all read these words multiple time: Have unity
But, we still don’t quite have it figured out, do we?
As we look out over the church around the world, we still have different factions, denominations
Arguments, church splits
And here in this community, it’s hard for us as churches to agree on some things and to get behind a common mission or goal
Here at Fairview, how are we doing on this?
Notice, we aren’t commanded here to have
Unity of dress standards
Unity of living standards
Unity of “music standards”
But we are commanded to have unity of mind
And I would ask, “How are we doing with this here at Fairview?” Do we understand what is being commanded here?
It was 6 months ago yesterday that Darren was with us…Nov. 20
He challenged us to a reset
Maybe at the time it was hard for us to understand what we were committing to
But perhaps he was challenging us to this very thing that Peter commands here
It was a challenge to have unity of mind
Maybe the challenge was to figure out what we are going to agree on, rather than focus on what we disagree over
And that can be such a huge challenge for us. Because sometimes the things that we disagree over seem to loom over everything else
they occupy our minds,
They are what we talk about
Think about and agonize over
But how would it be if we understood more clearly what unity of mind looks like?
You know, wouldn’t it be nice if Jesus had created a big sign for us that said, “This is what it means to be unified, or to have unity of mind”
And He had made it super-specific
And He would have said, “IN order for you to be unified, you have to....
Live the same
Dress the same
Speak the same
Worship the same
That way we could read it and say, Yep, doing good here and here and here, need work here, that’s fine there
But that’s not what we find in Scripture
It’s not that those things aren’t important. Rather, it’s not where we find the emphasis placed on when it comes to unity
Rather, in a broad sense, what we have been discovering in 1 Peter is that Unity of mind means understanding what draws us together
Understanding why it is that we call ourselves a church in the first place
Understanding why we meet together to worship and encourage each other
What is unity of mind?
Unity of mind starts with understanding our foundation
What our foundation is
WHO our foundation is
That is, the Rock, the Chief Cornerstone, Jesus Christ
chapter 2 calls Jesus the Chief Cornerstone, and we are being built up as a spiritual house
Individual stones, yet all part of the same house, the same construction
It means understanding and agreeing together that all of us, together, have been called out, by our LORD, that is Jesus Christ, the Head and Chief Shepherd of the Church
Called out to be holy, set apart. Unique
We are united together in the name of Jesus, just as He prayed for us to be
Unity of mind means understanding what it means to be citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven
And that is why we drafted and read those statements together
That is why we renewed our commitment to
Hear and obey the commands of Jesus
To guard our words
To reconcile quickly
to carry the light of Jesus to our neighbors
We drafted those statements to remind us of the kind of things that we agree on. At least should agree on
And I’m wondering, how are we doing on that? How’s that reset going for us?
Unity of mind means that we have sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind
These are all are an active part of a church body that is committed to unity of mind
We are told to
Be Sympathetic toward each other
That is, strive to feel what others are feeling
Rejoice with them in their joys and victories..in the things that make them happy
Sorrow with them in their hardships
Why is this so important when it comes to unity?
Because when we are striving to be sympathetic, we are forced to look below the surface of another person
We are forced to look beyond the things that irritate us, or the things that have caused us to have an issue with that person
Instead, we identify with that person on a heart level
You identify with that person as having some of the same hopes for the Body of Christ, the same desires as you do
And you begin to realize that maybe you have more in common than you had thought
Love each other—have a brotherly love toward each other
Not news to us, right?
We know our Bibles well.
Love is the most important thing when it comes to our relationship with God and with each other
But he says have brotherly love toward each other.
The kind of love where you may have some disagreements, and misunderstandings
Things might get rough between you
You might be like a Jacob and Esau.
a huge sense of betrayal and bitterness
But regardless of what happens, you heart is toward your brother
Do you know what I mean by that?
It means that when things aren’t right between you and someone else, you are really bothered by that!
Has someone done somethign that is hurtful? or has offended you?
Brotherly love is the kind of love that makes you take steps toward that person, not away
You work at tearing walls down that are between you, not retreating from your brother and putting up more walls
Have a tender heart
very similar to the word “sympathy”
Have a heart that is easily moved
You easily overlook the faults of others
You readily forgive when your brother comes and asks you to
This verse is very similar to Ephesians 4:32 “32 Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.”
so forgiveness and tenderheartedness go hand in hand
have a humble mind
Humility is so important when it comes to unity
Because God has created us all unique, with different ideas and points of view, and different ways of understanding and doing things
And a lot of our arguments and disagreements come from us not being able to see the other person’s point of view and not accepting that point of view because we don’t understand it
And it takes humility, a humble mind, to say, “I don’t understand it, but that’s OK.
You know what? I’m going to take the passage in Phil 2 to heart
In humility, I’m going to count that person as being more significant than me
I’m going to consider the interests of others, not just my own or (my small group’s interest)
That really takes humility! It goes against our wills
Don’t repay evil for evil
Be careful that no matter how badly you have been treated, you don’t treat others in the same way
Be careful that no matter how badly people speak about you or what you hear they have said about you, don’t you do the same
The word “Reviling” in vs. 9 means to mock or to slander, to insult someone or to call someone’s character into question
Whether it’s an individual or your church body
It’s a reminder to guard against our tendency to dwell on the negative when we talk about people
So I would ask again,
“How are we doing at this, Fairview? Are these things that we are learning together?”
You know, as I’ve said before, I came to you all with a pretty different background and history than some of you
I came with different ideas about church structure, leadership,
Different ideas about some practical outworkings of our faith
But I hope that’s OK
I still love you
I still try to be sympathetic toward you
And have a tender heart
I want to be humble—listen to you, even when it’s tough
(I would ask that you speak to me in kindness)
I don’t want to retaliate when I feel that I’ve been treated wrongly
Becuase here’s the thing
We are called to this kind of unity (vs. 9)
earlier, we were reminded that we are called to suffer just as Christ experienced suffering
But we are also called to this unity of mind.
And the reason is, that there is a blessing for this
Peter quotes from Psalm 34 verses 12-16”
English Standard Version Chapter 3
10 For
“Whoever desires to love life
and see good days,
let him keep his tongue from evil
and his lips from speaking deceit;
11 let him turn away from evil and do good;
let him seek peace and pursue it.
12 For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous,
and his ears are open to their prayer.
But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.”
There is great blessing in having unity of mind, isn’t there?
Do you desire to love life? Do you desire to see good days?
Then let’s have this unity of mind
Let’s watch what we say
Let’s pursue peace…chase after it
Because it’s in this sort of mindset, that the Lord blesses His people
This is what the Lord LOVES!
His eyes are on the righteous. He hears them when they pray
But for the wicked, He turns His face away. Their prayers are hindered
So, how are we doing, Fairview?
I just want to encourage us all
I believe that this is something we are growing in
I know that growth can sometimes be hard to see
But I believe that We are growing in our “unity of mind”
I’ve seen the way that you all act with each other
And I think, “Wow. This is a church that takes this seriously!”
I believe taht we are growing in our honesty toward each other and our
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