Is Jesus Your King?
I Peter
1:1,2 (cf. John 12:12-16)
Introduction:
I have this card in my Bible, I know it came from David Jeremiah’s ministry,
but I am not sure how it came into my possession. It has a reflection on John
14:1-3 on the back, and on the other side it says simply, “Keep calm, carry on!”
That is a good admonition in an election year!
With the cast we have before us and the delegates adding up, it would be
easy to get cynical, angry, or even to despair. Calm down, trust God! We don’t
know who the next “Caesar” will be, but we know the King of the universe! The Jewish nation was looking for a leader
2000 years ago. They wanted a king like David or Solomon, a leader who could
give them life and security in the Land.
Their trust should have been in the King of Kings! One of the great ironies in the gospels is
that last week of the earthly ministry of Jesus. The scene described by John,
an eyewitness to the triumphal entry is related in John 12:12-16...
12The next day the large crowd that had come to the
feast heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem.
13 So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet
him, crying out, "Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the
Lord, even the King of Israel!"
14 And Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it, just as it
is written, 15 "Fear
not, daughter of Zion; behold, your king is coming, sitting on a donkey's
colt!" 16 His disciples
did not understand these things at first, but when Jesus was glorified, then
they remembered that these things had been written about him and had been done
to him.
Notice the end of verse 13. The crowd cried out, quoting from Psalm 118,
but they added the last phrase to the quotation, fleshing out their
understanding of who this One was who came in the name of the Lord: the King of
Israel! The crowd hailed Jesus as messiah
and king on Palm Sunday. Ironically,
they were right. He was the King and is the King just as surely as He will be the King. But they were still thinking like their
fathers in the Old Testament times: they wanted a king like the nations around
them, a military leader, someone who would restore the glory of David and
Solomon. They didn’t understand that He
was the Passover-King, the King who was also the Lamb who would be slain for
the sins of the world. Later that week the leaders declared, “We’ll not have
this man to be our king! We have no king but Caesar!” Pilate ironically got it
right when he wrote on the placard that was nailed to the cross: “The King of
the Jews.” John’s gospel makes it clear
that Jesus was in control, no one took his life, He laid it down of his own
accord. The question for you, for each of us, today is: Is Jesus your
King? He is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, but the question is
will we submit to His Lordship? Bill Bright used to use the illustration of a
throne in our heart: do we insist that we are our own master? Or do we submit
to Jesus, giving Him his rightful place as Lord of our life?
The Maine Idea: If we realize who’s we are we will live in
submission to His rule, and remember we are foreigners and exiles in the world.
I. If He is
our King, He has authority to send us!
Peter... Think about who is writing this letter. Peter. He is certainly one of the more
colorful characters among the disciples of Jesus. I don’t think we would
describe him as “meek” or as an introvert! He was a leader among leaders.
Sometimes it may be (as our governor once said of himself!) that his mouth ran
a bit ahead of this brain. For Peter it happened when, a couple of times, he
tried to correct Jesus! He was the one
who walked on water, at least a few steps before he looked away from Jesus and started
looking at the waves and began to sink! When I think of Peter my mind goes to
the night of Jesus’ arrest, when first, Peter took a sword and cut off the ear
of the High Priest’s servant who had come with the others to take Jesus. Jesus
told Peter to put his sword away, and like the other disciples, as Jesus was
seized, he ran. He did follow, along with John from a distance, and you know
the story, that night, three times, he did what he said he would never do, he
denied Jesus. You might think about Peter running to the tomb on Easter
morning, or being restored, gently by the master, “Peter, do you love me?”
“Feed my sheep.” I think about the transformation after the resurrection,
starting on the day of Pentecost. Peter
stood up in front of the Temple and boldly preached Christ. Threats, arrests,
even beatings didn’t change anything. Jesus had conquered death and as long as
he had life Peter would continue to proclaim Jesus as Messiah and Savior.
Remember
how he got his name? He was born Simon bar Jonah, but Jesus gave him a new name.
It was that scene in Matthew 16:15-18,
15 He said to them, "But who do you say that I
am?" 16 Simon Peter
replied, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." 17 And Jesus answered him,
"Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed
this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.
18 And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will
build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
People have different ideas about what Jesus was
saying here, but I believe that the key idea is that Peter was among those who
had received revelation from the Father. And so Jesus is talking about building
His church on this idea that a few were chosen by God to be recipients and
stewards of His revelation. That is part of what is in view in the title
“apostle.”
“...an Apostle...” The title literally referred to one sent with a
mission, as an authorized representative, with authority to represent the
Sender. In Hebrew the term was Shaliach, a “sent one,” but always with
the idea of being commissioned by the sender as his representative. When we went on the mission field we gave limited
“power of attorney” to the treasurer of our mission. He could sign checks for
us, file our taxes, represent us in financial matters. The shaliach
or apostolos was more than that
however. It was more like being an
ambassador, the representative of one nation before another government. He spoke for the president and for the
people. The apostles were commissioned by the One
who is above all powers and all thrones.
“...of Jesus Christ...” We are so familiar
with the word “Christ” that it is easy to forget it’s meaning: Messiah,
Anointed One (i.e. King!). As Paul does
at the beginning of some of his letters, Peter identifies himself as an apostle
of Christ Jesus. This was the uniqueness of the apostles’ office. After the resurrection and ascension of
Jesus, in the foundational period of the church, they were called to be His representatives,
His ambassadors. It seems like a strange plan, not one that I would have come
up with. But Jesus has chosen, in this age, to work through the testimony and
preaching of His people. Could He send angels with flaming swords to proclaim
the truth? Could God himself speak in a
booming voice from heaven and say that Jesus is the Savior, put your trust in
Him alone? Of course. But God chose
another path. He chose to use His people to bring the Gospel to the world.
In the
first century, before the documents that became our New Testament were
completed and circulated, the Apostles had authority to speak in the name of
Jesus and to bring authoritative teaching, showing that Jesus is the Messiah,
the promised One, the fulfillment of the hope of the Old Testament
Scriptures. So Paul, in describing the
church as a “building of God,” said in Ephesians 2:19-22,
19 ...you are fellow citizens with the saints and
members of the household of God, 20
built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus
himself being the cornerstone, 21
in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in
the Lord. 22 In him you also
are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.
Do you see the picture Paul paints in
that passage? Jesus himself the cornerstone,
but in some sense the apostles and prophets of the New Testament age had a
foundational ministry upon which the church would be built. That might call to
mind what Jesus said to Peter, “You are
Peter, and on this rock I will build my church...” The Father had given Peter revelation,
and the apostles and prophets were the conduits of God’s revelation to the
church during its foundational period. They brought the word of Christ with
unique authority as His authorized representatives. As we bring the Christ
centered truth of the Bible to the world, as we share the “Good News” with our
friends and neighbors, He would send us as well. He said, “All
authority is given to me in heaven and on earth, go therefore and make
disciples...” If we realize who’s we
are we will live in submission to His rule, and remember we are foreigners and
exiles in the world.
II. If He is our King it is because of His love for
us, not our love for Him.
We are Chosen (Elect) Exiles – This particular
term, “exiles,” only occurs three times in the New Testament, twice in I Peter,
and once in Hebrews. The Hebrews
passages comes in that great chapter 11,
following the “Hall of Faith” list,
“These all died in faith, not
having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from
afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the
earth...” (Heb 11:13). They
were not “at home in the world. That is true of us. We are here, in the world, but we are not of the world. We hold residency in this
land, we have legal rights, but we are not home. During this election year there has been a
lot of talk about citizenship and foreigners, about exiles and aliens and walls
and bigger walls. It might be helpful to us to remember that we are “elect exiles of the dispersion.” The word “dispersion” is most frequently
used to describe the Jewish exiles who were displaced from the land, and
ultimately “dispersed” among the nations.
It seems pretty clear to me that Peter is using that word more broadly
here, and that his audience is predominantly gentile believers in Jesus. For example he says in 1 Peter 2:10, “10
Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; once you had not
received mercy, but now you have received mercy.” That language is
unambiguously applied to gentile believers.
It seems that Peter is using it in the same way here: “...of the dispersion...” then is referring
to the believers, Jew and Gentile, who are scattered among the nations like
seeds.
“...according to the foreknowledge of God the Father...” This word, prognosis, literally mean fore-knowledge, knowledge that antedates
our experience. In popular thinking
people sometimes suggest that God “knows beforehand” who will believe. That is
certainly true, He is omniscient after all, but is that the full significance
of the term? Let’s look at a few other passages...
Acts 2:23 “...this
Jesus, delivered up according to [or, “by
means of”] the definite plan and
foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.”
God’s plan and His foreknowledge are both causal
here, the means by which Jesus is delivered up. To really get at the sense of
the meaning of the word, it is helpful to think about the simple form of the
noun gnosis when it refers to the
knowledge of God. It seems the ideas “to know,” “to choose,” and “to love” are
closely connected.
Romans 8:29 “For those
whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his
Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.”
This is clearly more than simple objective knowledge about a person. It is
knowing in a more intimate and immediate sense.
Romans 11:2 “God has not
rejected his people whom he foreknew...”
What does it mean that God “foreknew” the Jews? I think we get a sense of the meaning in
Deuteronomy 7:6-8,
6 "For you are a people holy to the LORD your
God. The LORD your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured
possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. 7 It was not because you were more
in number than any other people that the LORD set his love on you and chose
you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, 8 but it is because the LORD loves
you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the LORD has
brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery,
from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.
Likewise the word is used to describe the Father’s “foreknowledge” of the
Son...
1 Peter 1:20 “He was foreknown before the foundation of the world but was made
manifest in the last times for your sake...”
That may be the most striking example of the word “foreknow.” It was not the Father doubting or monitoring
if the Son would stand the test, or even knowing beforehand that He would do so. The point is that the Father knew and
loved the Son from eternity.
In our passage, I Peter 1:1,2, the recipients of the letter are “elect... according to the foreknowledge of
God the Father...” I think that is referring to the truth
that God knew us and loved us from before the foundation of the
world. We do nothing and did nothing to
earn our salvation. Of HIM you are in
Christ Jesus... That is grace, the unmerited favor of God. John described how that was demonstrated when
he said in 1 John 4:10, “In
this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son
to be the propitiation for our sins.” And so we are not our own, we are
bought with a price. And if we realize
who’s we are we will live in submission to His rule, and remember we are
foreigners and exiles in the world.
III.
Our Sovereign King, the Triune God, chose us on purpose, for a purpose.
Notice how Peter, in this greeting, ties together the Triune God,
Father, Son, and Spirit, as the one choosing us and saving us, on purpose, for
a purpose. He mentioned already that we were chosen according to the
foreknowledge of God the Father, now he speaks about the Spirit and the Son.
“...in
the sanctification of the Spirit...” Like the word “salvation”
“sanctification” can refer to God’s work in setting us apart in the past, in
the present, or in the future. There is the idea of the progressive
transformation that God works in us. It
is also true that the moment we believe we are positionally “set apart” but the
ongoing work of changing us to be more like Jesus will continue all our life.
Guess what, none of us is perfect! We all fall short. We are all, in practice,
a work in progress. Be patient, God
isn’t finished with me yet! One day we will see him, and we will be like him,
without the presence of sin. It seems here the next phrases clarify the sense
here...
“...for obedience and sprinkling
of the blood of Jesus Christ...”
God chose us on purpose, for a purpose. In Exodus we read about Moses
sprinkling the people with the blood of the sacrifice, and then going up on the
mountain to receive the tablets from God (Ex 24:9). The blood of the Old Testament sacrifices
couldn’t take away sin, couldn’t “sanctify those who were unclean.” That would require the blood of the
Lamb. We are not our own, we were bought
with a price. If we realize who’s we are
we will live in submission to His rule, and remember we are foreigners and
exiles in the world.
IV. He chose
us to bless us, and to make us a blessing. Peter uses the words of familiar greeting, “Grace to you and
peace...” But it is clear that from the
pen of an apostle this meant much more than simply “Greetings!”
“...grace to you...” The greeting becomes a
blessing as Peter speaks of God’s “grace,” His unmerited favor. The grace of God
that brings salvation is a blessing that is beyond what we could imagine. God
“lavished” his grace upon us. One writer suggests that “grace” signifies “God’s
love in action in Jesus Christ on behalf of sinners.” I would add the qualifier,
“God’s extravagant love in action...
etc.” He reconciled us to himself, he
gave us new life, and what’s more, He made us his sons and daughters!
“...and peace be multiplied...” And “peace”
was more than a hope for an absence of conflict. It would call to mind the
biblical idea of shalom, which was
life as God intended it for his people, in relationship with God and
experiencing his presence and blessing. It’s part of what Jesus had in mind
when He said “I am come that you might
have life, and that you might have it more abundantly...” (Jn 10:10b). At
the heart of the idea is know that we have peace with God, and that we have the peace of God.
The crowd spoke words of hope and blessing as Jesus entered Jerusalem
the week of the feast. “Hosanna! Blessed
is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”
But they forgot the fuller context of the Scripture they quoted, Psalm 118.
They forgot that the psalmist had predicted that He would be “the stone that the builders rejected.” It
was Palm Sunday, but Good Friday was just a few days away.
What is God saying to me in this passage? If we realize who’s we are we will live in
submission to His rule, and remember we are foreigners and exiles in the world.
What
would God have me to do in response to this passage? If we know Him, and submit to Him as our Savior and
Lord, our heart will be moved to obey Him. The debates and political ads are
tiring and can be irritating. It is easy to become frustrated when we don’t
like the options that we are being presented. Stay calm. Trust Him. Remember,
one day every knee will bow, and every tongue confess, that Jesus Christ is
Lord, to the glory of God the Father!
If we love Him, let us obey Him. He said “...you will be my
witnesses...” and “Go, make disciples...” We have a mission. Remember there are
at least two aspects of outreach, one is to bring the gospel to those around
us, our 8/15, those in our “sphere of influence.” Have you made a list of folks around you that
need Jesus, or maybe who are saved, but need to get back into church? Write it down, commit to praying for them
daily. Ask God to give you opportunities to speak, to give a reason for the
hope that is in you. (We have resources on the book table that can help!). So
we bring the gospel to people, we can also bring people to hear the
gospel. Next week, resurrection Sunday,
would be a great opportunity to do that!
AMEN!
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