Prepared for Battle
Exiles- In the World, Not of the World • Sermon • Submitted • Presented • 1:26:04
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Notes
Transcript
Sermon
Sermon
Key passage
Key passage
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,
and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you,
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.
In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials.
These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.
Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy,
for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls.
Introduction
Introduction
In our series, we are highlighting a radical view of our role as Christians in a broken and sinful world.
We began this series looking at God’s holiness and justice through the book of Habakkuk.
If you missed that series, you can watch it on our Youtube channel.
Our series moved to its second phase last week as we opened up the book of Daniel
We saw that this is much more than an exciting adventure book in the Bible
Rather, it is a snapshot of a man who struggled and fought to maintain his faith in a wicked and evil nation.
We opened up the box last week and described some of the nature of this Babylonian kingdom, the wickedness of Nebuchadnezzar and the personal struggles of Daniel as the system of the Babylonians singled him out and intentionally attempted to strip him of everything that He had been raised to know.
The topics we are going to discuss are not issues of “How does the church raise up in America?” The topic we are covering is much bigger than that. We are discussing how the church is to live as exiles in a pagan and sinful world.
A pagan and sinful world that has always been pagan and sinful.
I hope the principles we draw from our series are not limited to our specific context of year and location.
Rather, I hope the principles we draw from our text are practical and relevant for all time, regardless of context.
We are the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of God has existed since the resurrection of Jesus.
The broken and sinful world we are called to live in has existed as it has since Genesis 3.
We are in a bigger battle than we realize. We need to learn from those who have gone before us and fight the battle in front of us.
Topic
Topic
The topic we are going to open up today is the subject, faith.
Even though we are using Daniel as our example of faith today, we are going to use 1 Peter 1 as our guide through the topic of faith.
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,
and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you,
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.
Our passage today starts off where we left off last week.
Last week, we talked about our identity as followers of Jesus.
This passage starts off with a statement of the Gospel.
Peter states to us the Good News!
It starts with “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!”
We have to understand that all of our understanding of faith is not based on us, our sincerity, our knowledge of theology, or our length of salvation.
It is all based on the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!
Through Jesus, we have new birth
We are not who we were
We have a living hope
It is not a dead hope. It is a hope that endures. It is alive. It is not a place or time. It is a person. Jesus.
We have a resurrected King
Jesus is not dead, He is resurrected and this is the source of our hope
We have an inheritance that is kept in heaven for us.
It will not spoil, perish or fade
Does it say that inheritance is for us here or in Heaven?
Heaven.
It is a holy inheritance. It is a pure inheritance
It is not stained by sin or greed. It is for eternity, not temporary.
Last week, we looked at our identity in Christ
WE ARE A CHOSEN PEOPLE, A ROYAL PRIESTHOOD, A HOLY NATION, GOD’S CHOSEN POSSESSIONS.
Add these things together. Do we have anything to praise God for today?
Absolutely.
And here is where the rubber hits the road: all of this is a promise, a hope, a certainty through Christ of our future.
In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials.
These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.
Even though we have our identity and the promises of God through Christ Jesus, we are shown that we will endure hardships, trials and grief.
But these are not punitive and valueless events.
There is a purpose of our struggles in this world.
They refine our faith and they enable us to give praise, glory and honor to God when Jesus is revealed.
So as we look at our faith, we have a natural path to navigate as we discuss this topic:
What is faith?
Why does our faith need testing?
What are the tests of our faith (and what are not tests of our faith)?
How do we endure?
WHAT IS FAITH?
WHAT IS FAITH?
This is a topic that we have discussed quite a bit over the last year. Faith is a word all of us use in our lives and in our understanding of God, but it is a difficult word to put a definition to.
We use words like: believe, trust, hope, blind, and other words to describe our faith.
But when life boils down to circumstances that are hard to understand and in our humanity, we fail to see where God is in our world, words like “hope, or trust” start to fall flat.
I want to approach faith from a completely different angle and fight to understand it in a way that gives us guidance in our troubles.
True faith is built by a relational knowledge of God
We don’t have faith in what we do not know. We have faith in what we do know.
As we grow in knowing God, our faith is built.
In this, God becomes the foundation of our faith
True faith results in obedience
If we claim to know God and have faith in God, but disobey God, we have lied about one of the building premises.
Now let’s take a journey into the life of Daniel
Do we see in the life of Daniel a man of obedience to God?
Absolutely! Even in the stories we know of Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah we see men who obeyed God regardless of consequence.
Because we see this obedience, we know that Daniel was a man of faith.
If Daniel had faith, what can we deduce from His life?
He relationally knew God. He didn’t just know about God. He knew God.
Here is what I want you to see in the life of Daniel.
There is a principle that we need to understand about God and how He works.
“God always prepares us for battle before He sends us into battle”
Last week, we spent an extraordinary amount of time and effort to highlight the struggles that Daniel endured in the first chapter.
But, let me ask you a question, “How did God prepare Daniel for that moment?”
This will be an exercise of reading between the lines, but I don’t think I am stretching too far in this conclusion.
Daniel didn’t just roll out of bed one day full of faith and ready to take on the indoctrination of the Babylonian empire.
It isn’t a stretch to conclude that Daniel was trained up in the ways of the Lord.
He was taught the Scriptures from a young age.
He was taught how to pray
He was taught that God was much more than a theological topic. He was a real and relational God that could speak, hear, act and know.
Daniel’s parents were intentional in training him like this. How do I know they were intentional?
Let’s take a look at the culture during the time that Daniel was raised:
How long, Lord, must I call for help, but you do not listen? Or cry out to you, “Violence!” but you do not save?
Why do you make me look at injustice? Why do you tolerate wrongdoing? Destruction and violence are before me; there is strife, and conflict abounds.
Therefore the law is paralyzed, and justice never prevails. The wicked hem in the righteous, so that justice is perverted.
The world and the nation that Daniel grew up in was violent, unjust, destructive and argumentative. Habakkuk even says parts of it were wicked.
Here’s the thing about that culture. Much like ours, they all believed they were Godly because they were the children of Abraham and they had a covenant with God.
But in the face of a sinful world, Daniel’s parents stood out and taught him to know and obey God regardless of the sinful world around them.
GOD PREPARED HIM FOR THE BATTLE BEFORE SENDING HIM INTO THE BATTLE
God knew him and walked him through that time
God has equipped us for today
God did not equip Daniel for today, He equipped us for today.
WHY DOES OUR FAITH NEED TO BE TESTED?
WHY DOES OUR FAITH NEED TO BE TESTED?
This is a tough question to process and I don’t believe there is a singular answer to this.
If faith were simply a gift that was handed to us, it seems almost cruel of God to beat up on that gift.
But faith is not a gift handed to us that we need to return to him in mint condition.
Faith is something that refines and grows into something of great value to us and glory to God.
But the refining and growth process is difficult.
For us? For God? For others?
The first question I have is “Who benefits from the testing of our faith?”
Us? God? Others?
I would argue, all of the above.
Does God know our faith? Yes.
But as we see in this passage and the passages we read last week, God is glorified and praised when our faith is tested.
Is the testing of our faith for us? Yes.
We sometimes have a great belief that our faith is something that it is not.
The testing of our faith is a way that God reveals to us that our faith is partly rooted in things that are not true.
God knows us and He wants us to fully know Him and see Him in our lives.
In order for this to happen, we need to allow Him to bring to our attention the parts of our lives that are not built on Him.
Is the testing of our faith for others? Yes.
God allows us to experience these struggles in part so we can help others as they endure testing as well.
It is a part of building up His church. We need each other as we all struggle to live as citizens of His Kingdom in a pagan world.
But the overall purpose of the testing of our faith revolves around the same purpose for our very lives:
These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.
Let’s go back and check on Daniel
Did Daniel’s testing result in praise, glory and honor to God?
I think we can say that it did
Did Daniel’s testing result in an example that we can follow today?
I hope so! I built a sermon series around that thought.
Did Daniel’s testing result in growth and refinement of his own faith?
I believe it did.
And here is something else the testing of our faith can do.
If we work backwards in the life and story of Daniel, we can find that in the middle of one of the most evil, demonic, pagan societies in History, God placed Daniel, a man of God at the right hand of the King--- For His glory, praise and honor.
If God wanted Daniel in that place, He had to produce within Daniel the character and faith he would need to bring God glory, praise and honor.
The testing of Daniel’s faith was the brutal process of leading Him through everything we spoke about last week in Daniel 1 so Daniel would become the man God needed him to be.
Also, he endured all of what we spoke about last week so Daniel would be on the right path to being where God wanted him.
All of this was brutally hard for Daniel, but it all resulted in Praise, Honor and Glory to God.
WHAT IS THE TESTING OF OUR FAITH?
WHAT IS THE TESTING OF OUR FAITH?
As we look at the testing of our faith, we have to ask ourselves the question, “When is my faith being tested and when is it just life throwing curve balls at me?”
In discussing this, we need to take a step back and look at this topic from the lens of God.
First of all, can God bring testing and trials into our lives for His purpose and His glory?
Yes
Second, can God bring holy and righteous judgment?
Yes, He can
Last, are there things that happen in life that are incredibly hard that are simply the result of living in this world?
Yes, this is true as well.
Not every hardship is a God-sent test from God.
But I believe that every hardship and trial can serve as a refinement of our faith.
Here is why. Our faith is not connected to the temporary things of this world.
Our faith is connected to the Almighty God who has brought us out of the kingdoms of this world to be a part of His Kingdom.
Everything we struggle with in this world will test our dependence, knowledge and trust in Him.
Because of that, I am going to point to two ways that our faith is tested and these two ways are very connected.
Addiction to Comfort
Addiction to Control
Addiction to Happiness
I would argue that nearly every test of faith will revolve around one of these topics.
Whether your struggle is with finances, health, loved ones, sin (and temptation), or grief they will all rip on these topics in our hearts and minds.
The reason I created this list is because when I feel like I am in a season of refinement of my faith, these thoughts go through my mind:
“This struggle is so hard” — addiction to comfort
“Life seems out of control” — addiction to control
“I am so miserable”— addiction to happiness
What do they all have in common?
They all have the temporary things of this life raising up in our eyes as trials and struggles.
Last week we said that our trials come from one of three areas:
I did something stupid
Someone else did something stupid
Or life in a sinful world does stupid things (no one’s fault)
These trials may come as a result of the natural consequences of sin
They may also come from God refining us and preparing us for future use in His glory.
Again, “Does it matter how you got into the trial?”
No. What matters is what you do during the trial.
This is the purpose of our passage in 1 Peter today. We need to be reminded of the things that God has blessed us with that cannot be shaken:
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,
and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you,
But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.
Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
These are not here to be warm, fuzzy feel good verses.
These are here to remind you of who you are and what God has done in the midst of our refining times.
In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials.
These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.
As we said before, God knows the genuineness of our faith.
But we often do not. The parts of our faith that are counterfeit or built on a foundation of temporary things must be burned away.
Last week we shared a slide of the way we were and who we are:
SHOW SLIDE FROM LAST WEEK (DARKNESS/LIGHT)
It is easy for us to look at the movement from the side of darkness to the side of light.
But the struggle is that we still have a sinful nature that embraces the temporary and sinful world.
It is not wrong be be comfortable
It is not wrong to have control in certain areas of our life
It is not wrong to feel happy
But our faith is not built on these things and we discover this when they are taken away from us.
HOW DO WE ENDURE?
HOW DO WE ENDURE?
The refinement of our faith will always challenge us in the three aspects of faith that I showed earlier.
Resolve Allegiance to God
This is a complete surrender
Understand that we have a role, we have a responsibility to live a life that God desires in this world, but this resolution is to trust ourselves to Him regardless of the outcome.
He is God, I am not.
Relational knowledge of God
We do not muster up fresh faith. Faith is not sincerity
Faith is growing in our knowledge of God
The opposite is true as well. I don’t believe you can have faith in God without knowing God.
Obedience to God
Sometimes, in our suffering all we want to do is be miserable. We must always seek obedience.
Obedience is always the result of faith. This is what James says in the NT about how faith without works is dead.
Daniel
As we surrender to God and seek God, we grow to know God. As we know God we learn to hear His voice and we obey
In this difficult growth and refinement of our faith, we learn to have the peace of God that passes all understanding.
Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!
Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near.
Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.
And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
Where do I find my peace?
We will either find our peace in our physical circumstances or we will though faith, find that our peace in in Christ in our circumstances.
We can say that in another way.
Peace comes not from difficult situations. Peace comes from Jesus being with us in difficult circumstances.
Where did Daniel find his peace? Was he fretting and worried?
No, he resolutely surrendered to God’s plan
He knew God
He obeyed God
This resulted in peace that withstood the difficulties of His trial.
Conclusion
Conclusion
I want to conclude with a very important point.
You will find a theme that rolls through the scriptures a bit below the surface.
It is a theme that can only come when we embrace faith.
We can see it in the passage we just read:
Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!
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,
These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.
These trials are not for our own mental health and wellbeing.
These are so God is glorified, honored and praised in our lives and even through our circumstances.
As we look at our temporary issues, or as we look to the bigger issues in our nation and world, we must go back to the truths that
God is in control— I must resolve myself to trust
God is King— I must obey Him
God loves us— I can know Him