Living Memorial
The Gospel for REAL Life - A Study of 1 Peter • Sermon • Submitted • Presented • 43:20
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Memorials. Why do we have them? Why do we need them? What is the point of Memorial Day?
We need memorials because we are forgetful.
Okay, who has driven off, forgetting that you put your cup on top of your car? Who has driven off, forgetting that you did not close the gas-cap? Who has walked out the door, forgetting the very thing you were supposed to take with you?
We are forgetful. That is why we need things to help us remember. Strings on fingers, writing on hands, notepads, phones, etc.
It is also why we have memorials, and days set aside to remember.
Gettysburg Monuments...
Setting up Monuments is something that goes back even to Old Testament days. Believe it or not, people were forgetful back then as well.
Look at .
Be careful that you do not forget the Lord your God, failing to observe his commands, his laws and his decrees that I am giving you this day. Otherwise, when you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down, and when your herds and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase and all you have is multiplied, then your heart will become proud and you will forget the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. He led you through the vast and dreadful wilderness, that thirsty and waterless land, with its venomous snakes and scorpions. He brought you water out of hard rock. He gave you manna to eat in the wilderness, something your ancestors had never known, to humble and test you so that in the end it might go well with you. You may say to yourself, “My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.” But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth, and so confirms his covenant, which he swore to your ancestors, as it is today.
God knew they were forgetful, and He told them this is important! Do not forget!
What were they to not forget? Verse 14-16
Their past - God rescued you from slavery…, verses 14-17
Their past - God rescued you from slavery…, verses 14-17
New Living Translation Chapter 8
14 Do not become proud at that time and forget the LORD your God, who rescued you from slavery in the land of Egypt. 15 Do not forget that he led you through the great and terrifying wilderness with its poisonous snakes and scorpions, where it was so hot and dry. He gave you water from the rock! 16 He fed you with manna in the wilderness, a food unknown to your ancestors. He did this to humble you and test you for your own good. 17 He did all this so you would never say to yourself, ‘I have achieved this wealth with my own strength and energy.
Read verses 14-17
Their present - God gives you power to be successful, verse 18
Their present - God gives you power to be successful, verse 18
Read verse 18
Their Responsibilities - Remember Him and keep His commands, verse 11
Their Responsibilities - Remember Him and keep His commands, verse 11
It is so easy to go about life, and forget. To forget God and all He has done, and is doing for us. It is easy to forget the new way of life He has for us. That is why He gave the commands, and even put them on stone for them!
But He also gave them monuments, physical, visual reminders.
Turn to . Read
So Joshua called together the twelve men he had appointed from the Israelites, one from each tribe, and said to them, “Go over before the ark of the Lord your God into the middle of the Jordan. Each of you is to take up a stone on his shoulder, according to the number of the tribes of the Israelites, to serve as a sign among you. In the future, when your children ask you, ‘What do these stones mean?’ tell them that the flow of the Jordan was cut off before the ark of the covenant of the Lord. When it crossed the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. These stones are to be a memorial to the people of Israel forever.”
God told them to put up these 12 stones as a memorial. These stone memorials were their monuments. They were river stones in this case because they were to remind them of how God brought them across the river on dry ground, just like when He brought them out of Egypt (we see that in ).
When stones were erected as a memorial, a physical and visual reminder, they were called ‘Living Stones’. This was something that was done on several occasions. Samuel erected one after a victory over the Philistines in . He called his stone, ‘Ebenezer’, saying, “Up to this point the LORD has helped us.”
These were Living Stones in that they continued to tell the story. They reminded Israel of their past, what God had done for them. They reminded Israel of their present, which is God being with them. They reminded Israel of their responsibilities to remember God, and serve Him.
Living Stones, reminders of the Past, Present and Responsibilities.
That ties into what we are looking at today in 1 Peter.
Today, we are going to continue our study of 1 Peter, focusing on .
A few weeks ago, we saw in that we are living stones. We are each living monuments to what God has done!
You are a living monument to what God has done! No one can represent the work of God in you, except you! You are a Living Stone.
Peter is writing to believers who face trials of all kinds as they live their lives. He writes to encourage them. Though we are centuries later than the original audience, it still is true of us today.
He starts by telling us that we are exiles, foreigners. We may feel like they don’t belong, because we really don’t belong. God has done a work in us. He chose us, and saved us! He gave us new birth, a new life in Christ. This new life has a new, living hope! Our hope is founded in Christ, and the life He gives us. He has promised us an inheritance kept in heaven for us. He promised us that our ultimate salvation is coming, even though for now we are suffering. He is coming back for us! He wants to praise and reward us when He comes for us!
He wants us to keep our eyes focused on Jesus and the hope that is coming for us.
He will judge us impartially, so live in reverent fear. He has sacrificed Himself for us. He wants us to live for Him, and love one another.
He has given us everything we need to live and grow.
He has given us a special position, we are living stones being built into a temple in which He dwells. We all have a place in this temple of His, and we need one another as we worship Him together.
After talking about us being living stones, being built together to work together in offering sacrifices to God, Peter gets down to , the setting for the passage we are looking at today.
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.
In this verse we see a couple of the tings, that like Israel we need to remember.
We need to remember:
Coffee or soda on top of the car?
We need to remember:
We need to remember:
Our Past - Where we came from.
What we have, and why we have it.
Peter reminds us that before we were not ‘a people’. What does that mean? We were not important. We were not the ones anyone would pick.
Before we had not received mercy. Mercy is when you do not get what you deserve. What did we deserve? We deserved wrath. Jesus said that we were under God’s wrath for our sin. Before, mercy, we were condemned, and waiting our just rewards for our sin.
Our Responsibilities - How we are supposed to live.
Before we were slaves. Jesus related that whoever sins is not only under God’s wrath, but whoever sins is a slave to sin.
Before, we were in the dark. We were without proper understanding. Thinking we were so smart, we were like fools.
That is our past. It isn’t pretty.
In this verse we also have the second thing we need to remember.
2. Our Present - what we have in Christ
2. Our Present - what we have in Christ
Now we are special! We are chosen by God!
Now we are important. We are priests of the Most High!
Now we are great, we are His Holy nation, His special possesion!
Now we are no longer in darkness, but living in the light. No longer foolish, but having the truth and His wisdom.
Now we have received mercy! No longer under wrath. Rather, as Peter told us in , waiting for Him to come and give us Praise, Honor and Reward!
That is Our Past and Our Present. The passage today gets into the third thing we need to remember.
3. Our Responsibilities
3. Our Responsibilities
Let’s read .
Dear friends, I urge you, as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from sinful desires, which wage war against your soul. Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.
Submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake to every human authority: whether to the emperor, as the supreme authority, or to governors, who are sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to commend those who do right. For it is God’s will that by doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish people. Live as free people, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil; live as God’s slaves. Show proper respect to everyone, love the family of believers, fear God, honor the emperor.
Slaves, in reverent fear of God submit yourselves to your masters, not only to those who are good and considerate, but also to those who are harsh. For it is commendable if someone bears up under the pain of unjust suffering because they are conscious of God. But how is it to your credit if you receive a beating for doing wrong and endure it? But if you suffer for doing good and you endure it, this is commendable before God. To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps.
“He committed no sin,
and no deceit was found in his mouth.”
When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly. “He himself bore our sins” in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; “by his wounds you have been healed.” For “you were like sheep going astray,” but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.
Israel was to Remember their Past, their Present, and their Responsibilities. We, too, need to Remember our Past, our Present, and our Responsibilities.
What are our Responsibilities?
What are our Responsibilities?
Live out our role… Foreigners and Exiles.
Live out our role… Foreigners and Exiles.
Peter talked about this back in the opening verses of the letter. We do not belong to this world anymore. We do not fit in, because we are now different. We are now God’s people. We need to live out our lives His way, for His glory.
We should be different.
Before, we just did what we pleased, and lived for what pleased us. That is what sinful desires are. Living for self. That is what we were all about. However that is not how we are to live now. What are examples of those sinful desires?
The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.
Galatians 5:
These are the old ways of our lives. This is what comes naturally to us, and we gave ourselves to in the past.
We should be different. Even if everyone around us is doing these things, we should be different.
...wage war against your souls...
Peter says these things wage war against your soul. If we give in to these old sinful desires, it destroys us from the inside out.
God means for us to live in the light, in fellowship with Him, and these things destroy that.
God gives us hope. These things wipe out hope!
God gives us purpose. These things sidetrack and derail us, leaving us wallowing in the mud, and unable to move forward in life.
God has done so much to lift us out of the mud and set us up for a better present. But we are responsible to walk in it.
We are responsible to walk in His ways, not the old ways of our flesh.
We are responsible to live out our role - submit
Now, if we fulfill that responsibility, does that mean life will go well for us? Not necessarily.
When you stop living for your old sinful desires, the people around you will not like the change. They will say all kinds of things about you. They will accuse you of doing wrong.
so, what do we do? Be Responsible before God, so that they will continue to see the good deeds. They will be looking foolish when they say evil things because it just will not be true.
So, the first responsibility is to abstain from the old sinful desires.
The second responsibility is:
Peter gives a couple examples.
Live Godly lives in submission.
He says we are to live good lives. This would be what Paul described in .
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.
We are to live in God’s ways. Not living for ourselves, but for God and others.
And as we live out what God is working in us, we need to live in submission.
As we talked about a couple weeks ago, to live in submission just means to live in our proper role. Peter uses two examples in this chapter.
We are to live in proper submission, within our proper role, in relation to governing authorities and bosses.
Both of these authorities exist to punish evil, and to reward good. It does not always work out that way.
However, Peter makes it clear we are responsible to live good lives so that if we are ‘punished’, it is not deserved.
If we do what is right, and are accused, the accuser will look foolish.
Even if the people over us are harsh, and unfair, we are to submit to them. God calls it commendable to bear up under unjust suffering if we do it out of submission to God.
He then reminds us of the example of Christ. Was Jesus treated unfairly? Did Jesus suffer unjustly? Did Jesus respond? Yes, with truth and grace. However, He did not retaliate. He let the truth shine.
What was the result of Jesus’ suffering unjustly?
OUR SALVATION! God used Jesus’ unjust suffering to lead us to repentance.
That is what Peter puts forward as a possible result if we live out our responsibilities.
As people view the monument of God works which is pictured by our lives, they may come to praise God themselves! They may be saved!
The big Question?
Is Your Life the Living Monument it should be? Are you:
Remembering your Past?
Remembering your Present?
Living out your Responsibilities?