The Journey with Pastor Steve DeWitt

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Serving and Suffering . . . Just Like Jesus - Part B Oct 05, 2026

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Steve DeWitt Serving and Suffering . . . Just Like Jesus - Part B Download Study Guide for Spiritual Exiles, 1 Peter 2:18-21 Scripture Reference: 1 Peter 2:18-21 Visit the series page: Exiles: A study in 1 Peter Donate to Support The Journey Sermon Transcript for Spiritual Exiles, 1 Peter 2:18-21 Sermon Series: Spiritual ExilesMessage: Serving and Suffering … Just Like Jesus Airdate: 10/2 and 10/5/26Programs: 2370 and 2371“Servants, be subject to your masters with all respect, not only to the good and gentle, but also to the unjust. For this is a gracious thing. When mindful of God, one endures sorrows while suffering unjustly. For what credit is it if when you sin and are beaten for it, you endure? But if when you do good and suffer for it, you endure, this is a gracious thing in the sight of God.”“For to this you have been called because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example so that you may follow in his steps.” May God bless his word to us this morning. Last January, we had here in Northwest Indiana, we had the fifth worst snowstorm in Chicago's history. Do you remember? You may remember.And part of why we remember here at our church is that that Sunday morning, we did something that we hadn't done since 1999, which was cancel all of our services that morning. So my family, we were stuck at home just like you were stuck at home. And, when you're a pastor planning on preaching, it's not like you have other, you know, calendar items on a Sunday morning. So there we sit, now not having any services, wondering what we're going to do. So we were talking about this, and Jennifer mentioned to me.She said, you know, I've been wanting to maybe watch that that that show everybody's been talking about, Downton Abbey. And me, with absolutely nothing else to do, thought a little PBS masterpiece theater to make my wife happy, why not? Right? So we we started with the, you know, the first season. We put on the first episode of the first season, and we started watching.And I think that morning, we watched a couple episodes. And by noon on that Sunday, we were completely hooked. Right? And over the next, I think, probably month and a half, we watched all five seasons of episodes of Downton Abbey. And I'm here to tell you, until they the new ones come out next January, we're a little jittery.Right? Kind of like, when is it coming? Is it coming? We gotta know what's gonna happen. So Downton Abbey.Now, I don't know how many of you have used a blizzardto watch this show. Maybe you've watched it because you wanted to. Maybe you have no idea what I'm talking about. But it's been a wildly popular show. And it's very different than kind of normal television because it's kind of masterpiece theater.It's really well written. And the setting of Downton Abbey is in early part of the last century, so early twentieth century. And it's set in this estate where there is an earl who is the lord of the estate,and you have the family living in this beautiful castle, and then there is the serving staff. And so, the the show's intrigue then is that you have this family that has all of its kind of drama going on, and don't all families have drama going on? And, and they're very prim and proper, and it kind of is odd to us in our day because we see all of the cultural norms for people living in that sort of hoity toity kind of setting where there's lots of, you know, expectations and you do something a certain way and with a very stiff upper lip.But then you have the serving staff. And these are the people that are, you know, they they kind of live in the quadrants of the house. They're not family. They serve the family. But they have all of their own drama going on.And the the fun of of the show, I think, is just that it's so easy to relate to these people because they seem like people that you know, right, in the way that they act and and the way that they relate to each other. So this this staff of the house. With the staff of the house, you find all of the backbiting, cheating, lying, and stealing that we generally see in our workplace as well. So let me introduce you to some of the staff, or the cast members. Can I do that a moment?K. We're getting into Downton Abbey here this morning. Here's some of the, here's some of the staff. K? So upper left, there's the, there's the earl of the place, Lord Grantham.And you gotta say it like Lord Grantham. You know, it's sort of that way. And and so he's kind of the he's running the show. Carson is the butler. And he's a very likable guy with a really cool voice.If if I had his voice, our church would have 20,000 people in it. Just people would show up to hear that voice. It's really an amazing voice, unlike my own. O'Brien. She is the the, like, personal assistant to the wife of Lord Grantham.She is conniving, devious. She's a gossip, very self serving. That's O'Brien. Anna, upper right, nice girl next door, the kind you want your son to marry. You know, she's just so pure hearted with a little bit of a sort of, you know, she's got some spunk in her as well.So that's that's Anna. Tom Barrow, that's Satan. Okay? Tom Barrow is Satan himself. He is you talk about conniving.I mean, this guy is constantly working an angle. He is always, you know, very self serving. He will slander. He is devious. He is just in there creating problems all the time.Everythinghe shows up in, there's there's gonna be drama around it. Okay? Tom Barrow. Then you have Mrs. Hughes. And missus Hughes is, like the head housekeeper, and she is she's kind of like the mom to the staff.K? She's the one they go to when they have sorrows, and she's trying to keep everything unified. And she has the hots for Mr. Carson. K?So there are more staff than this, but that's just a general introduction to the staff there at Downton Abbey. Show is really well written, but I think, again, the intrigue and the popularity of this is that is that as you watch the show, you can almost think of people in your life that are just like O'Brien or just like Barrow or just like Carson. And you see the kind of way that they're, you know, getting along or not getting along in the serving staff. And it just reminds you so much of people that you that you know. The serving staff, they are I mean, they they they're very prim and proper with, you know, Lord Grantham and the family.But behind the scenes, they some of them, they mock the family and they steal from the family. You know, a little silverware here, a little wine there, whatever it is. They're stealing and conniving. It's just really an interesting it's an interesting show. And here's the question I wanna ask.K? If you were to watch Downton Abbey and I said to you, one of the serving staff is a Christian, and I want you to see if you can figure out which one it is. How would you go about trying to discern which one of those staff members is a Christian? Like, how would you know to watch them in the way that they work, the way that they respond to Lord Grantham or Carson or O'Brien who are in authority over them? How would you know from the way they conduct themselves there in the workplace whether or not they may be a Christian or not?What would you look to? The quality of the effort they give, their work ethic, how they treat others, and things like this would probably be the way that the clues that you would look for to discern which one of them actually is a follower of Jesus. And here in this text today, we find Peter continuing this. He's developing and turning this this this reality. These people he's writing to, they're they're exiles.They're in this place where geographically and spiritually, they do not they do not connect with the values around them. And yet, they're having to do normal life. They're having to live in all the normal social categories. And last week, we saw they were citizens there. How do they how do they live as citizens in a in a in a pagan environment, a hostile environment to their Christianity?And we see Peter saying, you need to respect even pagan human authority that is placed over you because that authority is put there by God himself. So therefore, honor everyone. Honor even the emperor, the crazy emperor Nero. And so now Peter continues here and he moves to the next category, the next sort of social category that all Christians have to live in. Namely, we all have to work, don't we?We all have to make a living. And in the making of a living, we are all interacting with people or working for people who don't share the values, the faith of of Christianity, many times are hostile to that. So how does the Christian then work in a world that is set against it? And that's what Peter is addressing here, workplace and workplace relationships. And so complicating this, and maybe you picked this up in in the first verse here, is that we are peering now into a a, a very different world than the one that we than we live in.Almost like people watch Downton Abbey just because it's so, like, intriguing to see how that world was a little bit different. That's a hundred years ago. How much? Two thousand years ago. All the way back when Rome was the world power and, you know, society and and culture was very, very different.And you see that in verse right there in verse 18. “Servants, be subject to your masters.” Now how many of us think, that's awesome. Right? No.We're we're we are automatically appalled by that because we don't live in a world where you have masters and masters that have property, people as property. That kind of that kind of of of slavery, if you will. But in the first century, it was absolutely normal practice. Almost every Roman family in the entire Roman Empire would have had serving staff. K?They would have called them slaves, serving staff. Get this. One quarter of the entire population of the Roman Empire were slaves. A quarter. One one commentator said it was the most common employer employee relationship in the ancient world, was this relationship between a master and his servants.We find it all over in the Bible. Paul talks about it often. Philemon is an entire letter that Paul writes to the owner of a slave who Paul has led to the Lord and the slaves going back now to him to serve under Philemon. So there's a whole book of the Bible. It's a very short one, but it's a book of the Bible that is talking about this very, cultural reality.Now a further wrinkle that we have, and this is part of our struggle, is that whenever we see the word slavery, having grown up the way that we have and, in the world that we've lived in, we automatically think about British slavery or we think about American slavery of of Africans. And indeed, that was slavery, but that was, what, two hundred years ago. We're going back now two thousand years ago where that experience was very different. So we have to read this verse not through the grid of the American slavery, but into what it actually was. And I'm gonna try to describe that here for you a little bit.These servant slaves were considered the property of the owner, but they served in a variety of roles such as managers of the household, trained professionals like doctors, teachers, even musicians would have been servants. There were extensive Roman laws about how, protecting those that were slaves and keeping, you know, theoretically keeping the owners of the slaves from being too cruel or not caring for them. In fact, Grudem, one of my favorite commentators in first Peter, says, there is no current comparable status in the Western world. In other words, he's saying, we have no frame of reference in our experience for what this actually was. So one of the reasons I I brought up Downton Abbey is that if you can think about more of more Downton Abbey than Roots.K? More Downton Abbey than the movie Roots, the the miniseries Roots. K? Only where maybe the earl actually is the master and owner of the serving staff, but largely treats them like you see them being treated in the show. K?That is more of the of the situation. And so that is why as we come to this text, we're not gonna you know, nobody here is probably owned legally by somebody else. But really what this is describing in the fair application for us is any place where I am in a employer employee relationship and I am under the authority of somebody else is essentially the the same as what those servants in the first century were dealing with as Christians now serving under, you know, a pagan master. How should I act? A a quarter of the whole empire was exactly that.So as Christianity spread across Asia Minor and the Roman Empire, you had owners becoming Christians like Philemon. You had servants or slaves becoming Christians now creating this sort of awkward relationship where they may gather together for prayer. They may gather together for worship. But then when they go home, the one owns the other. That's kinda weird, isn't it?But that was the reality. And so the New Testament writes into the reality. We can say it shouldn't be that way. Have been different. But that's the way that it was.And so the the the New Testament strives then to help masters and servants. Paul writes to masters about the way that he they were to treat their servants, to write into that and say, this is how we redeem even this very broken cultural system. So we're gonna look at this from the perspective that we all can relate to, and that is, what does it mean to be a Christian in the workplace? If we could watch Downton Abbey and say, okay, which one of those is a Christian? We know one is, if we happen to know that.How would what would you expect to see from an employee working at Downton Abbey? What would it look like? How would it be maybe be different than what the other staff is, the way they operate and what they care about? That's where we're going. So notice that Peter begins, you know, not with time cards and work reports, but he begins with attitude.Look what he says. “Servants, be subject to your masters with all respect.” New revised standard translates it, “slaves accept the authority of your masters with all deference.” Now I think it's pretty plain. Most of us here probably instinctively know what he is getting at here, do we not?This is about our attitude towards authority. That doesn't mean when I'm in the workplace that I'm a floor mat and, you know, I just am, you know, blindly obedient. But what it does mean is that I am showing respect for the authority that the employer that I am working for has over me. And notice it says, with all respect. K?So that kind of throws out the window. Maybe you're thinking, well, maybe I can improve, I don't have to be, like, super respectful. No. It says, all respect there. Do you see the word?This includes our words, our responses to our company, our bosses, and our general demeanor. To ask this question, does your boss get the idea from you that you give deference and respect to him or her in their place over you? Like, wouldn't it be interview interesting to interview all the bosses of everybody in our church and say, how is how is that Bethelonians?What kind of employee are they? What do you get from him or her?Do you get attitude, or do you get respect? And Peter here is saying, point number one, Christians will respect authority. Why? Because we see all authority as being established by God. Right?That's why we look at the government. And we may not agree with the government. We may not like the politicians of the government, but…

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War and Peace Oct 04, 2026

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Steve DeWitt War and Peace Study Guide for Spiritual Exiles, 1 Peter 2:11-12 Scripture Reference: 1 Peter 2:11-12 Visit the series page: Exiles: A study in 1 Peter Donate to Support The Journey Sermon Transcript for Spiritual Exiles, 1 Peter 2:11-12 Sermon Series: Spiritual ExilesMessage: War and PeaceAirdates: 9/30-10/01/26Programs: 2368 and 2369And let me add my good morning to you and great to see you here this weekend after our big Easter weekend. And I just want to take a moment and say thank you to so many volunteers and people that came together to pull all those services off, Good Friday services and then of course our Easter services. We've just got great reports from all the campuses. And just thank you for parking far away, coming early, sitting close, being hospitable, all those things that we encouraged. It was really a great weekend.We heard of a couple of adult men that received Christ as their savior as one indication of some encouragement, and we're happy about that. Our two new campuses had their first Easter, Gary and at Hobart Portage, and just great reports from both of those campuses. So really exciting. And by the way, need to say good morning to our Hobart Portage and Cedar Lake. Good to see you this morning, kind of.And thank you for joining here. And I also wanna mention to to all of our campuses that we are next weekend, we're gonna spend a little bit of time talking about the church and kinda where we're at, talk about mission them, give some updates on some things. So I hope you'll come back as we as we kinda get everybody on the same page. I have here a book, a little book, just a little book here. It's called War and Peace.Anybody read War and Peace? I see a few hands going up. I don't think anybody first service raised their hand. But War and Peace, it's kinda it's one of these books if you've you've not read it, you've probably heard of it. It's one of those books that just seeing somebody at the airport or coffee shop reading War and Peace, it's like impressive, isn't it?You think, wow, that person they're they're kinda serious about reading because they're reading War and and Peace. I've not read this, but the title of the book is a is a great outline for our passage today. And I I just wanna note to you that it's war and peace. It's not war instead of peace. It's not war then peace.It's war and peace. And as Christians, we get that. There is in the living of the Christian life, there is war and peace. We are in a battle Internally, especially, we are in a in a kind of war. But then externally, we are we are called and trying to express peace and beauty and love.And so we have this kind of dualism going on internally, Iwo Jima, externally, Beethoven's fifth. Right? That's the that's kind of the struggle of being of being a Christian. And Peter is going to explore this and give us some expectations today. And we're coming off this is our series in First Peter, exiles.We're coming off some wonderful verses, verses eight and nine and and ten, where he just summarizes what the church is and and who we are. We're a holy nation. We're a royal priesthood, people of his own of his own possession. We are in this world, we are declaring the greatness and the glories and the excellencies of the God who called us out of darkness and into his marvelous light. And so real high point kind of verses in the letter.And now Peter does war and peace. Let me read our text, and then we will do our exposition and application. Here is what Peter writes to us today. “Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which war against your soul. Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of his visitation.”So there is God's word to us today, and I want you to see just if you if you were if we were to read the rest of the letter, you would look back at these verses and say, those are really pivotal verses. Like, those are the verses where Peter goes from a more doctrinal explanation of the gospel and who the church is on the basis of new life in Christ and and resurrection into a very practical, what does it look like for this church to live in a hostile world, in a world where people don't aren't inclined to to liking us? What does it look like for the church to be faithful in its witness in a world set against it? So pivotal verses here. Verse 11 is war.Verse 12 is peace. K. So we begin with the war part. And, here's how he begins this little section here. “Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles.”There we have, the the words that we get our whole series title from. You might say, well, why do they call it exiles? There you go. There's another example. Sojourners and exiles.They are nearly synonyms. Both of them are describing people that are living somewhere where they don't primarily belong. Living somewhere not their place of birth, living somewhere not where their heart is. We get this a little bit in Indiana every football season where we live in Indiana, right? But during football season, if you drive through neighborhoods, you'll often see people that have flags out front of their house, right?They live in Indiana, but the flag will say Ohio State University or Michigan. Right? Or now this is the only acceptable one, University of Iowa. I love to see those. Those are fine.You can do that. The others though are saying something, aren't they? They're living in Indiana, but the flags are indicating that their hearts are elsewhere. So that if you went to the door of somebody who had that kind of a flag, you could knock on the door, and you and when they answer you, you could just say, you're not from around here, are you? And nine times out of 10, no. I was born in Ohio, and and I I cheer for the Buckeyes. Or I was born in Michigan, I cheer for, the Wolverines. So the flags in their hearts are saying something different. And as Christians, we are exiles and sojourners in this way. We live in this world.Right? We're we we live here. We're called to live here. But God has done this wonderful work in our lives, hasn't he? Amen?And so thankful for the grace of God in our life where he has now changed our hearts and and our our sense of belonging is not primarily in this world. Our our sense of belonging is the kingdom of God. This Paul writes in Colossians, for example, that “we are to set our minds on things above, not on earthly things.” So our affections and our hearts are are now for the kingdom of God and the future eternal life that's gonna be with him. This is what the writer of Hebrews, for example, talks about in Hebrews 11 where he lists the the hall of faith.Right? All of these different people in the Old Testament, remarkable saints. All of them were looking to a city, a future city, the city of God. They endured persecution here, but their hope was set was set there. Moses gives up all of the treasures of Egypt because why?His real treasure was Christ. We're called to that kind of a perspective living in this world as sojourners and exiles. So maybe I could ask you right now, what do the flags of your heart say? Where do you belong in your affections? Are you actually in exile?Are you a sojourner? Peter, well, what does that look like? Like, I don't have flags. It's a nice picture of Pastor Steve, but I don't have flags. What what does it look like to live in this world but to have our hearts and minds set on another?Peter urges us, essentially, first of all, to go to war. K? War and peace. He says, you gotta realize that you are in a war. Here's the here's the text.We're called to abstain from the passions of the flesh. The passions of the flesh. What is that talking about? Well, passion's good. Right?We ought to be passionate people. There's nothing wrong with passionate. Desires are good. God made us filled with desires, and those are not inherently bad either. What he is talking about here is the passions of the flesh.These are human passions left unchecked. These are human passions without law, without conscience, without consequence, without a sense of judgment, without the sense of God. These are illicit desires. This is man left to his own devices where his heart and his mind can do jolly well whatever they want to do. The passions of the flesh.Where do they come from? You might say, well, okay. That's interesting. But, like, how did I get these kind of passions, or where are they located? Here's where Jesus locates the problem.Matthew 15. “For out of the heart comes evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, and slander.” Yeah. That's in you. It's in every single one of us.How did these things get inside of us? Well, the Bible tells how that happened. Right? We go back into the Garden of Eden. God makes Adam and Eve their hearts, their desire, their every desire is for the Lord and for pleasing him and that relationship that they'd enjoyed with him and with one another.But when Adam and Eve rebelled against God, the Bible says that that heart, those desires that all the way to the core had always been good and holy, now we have died spiritually. And as we die spiritually, there enters into now our hearts another set of desires, another power, another force, indeed, an enemy. You have an enemy lurking inside of you. Every single one of us do. And that enemy is set against God.That enemy does not delight in God, does not delight in the will of God, does not delight in obedience to God. Rather, it delights in the opposite of all of that. It delights in what is illicit. It delights in sensuality. It delights in things that are are evil, actually.It delights in evil. This enemy inside our hearts. So the story of human history is not one of basically good people doing occasionally bad things. It is the story of fundamentally bad people occasionally doing good things, sometimes often doing good things. But the problem is that we retain in our hearts what Jeremiah calls “a desperately wicked heart.”It is inclined to evil. It delights in sin. This is the depravity of man. The Bible, that's what theologians call it, the depravity of man. Our hearts have that.You have that. K? We are bankrupt. We are we are morally defaulted. Our our setting inside is pride and self love.I didn't expect an amen there. How about people you know? Pride and self love. Amen to that? It's all around us, all these other peopleRight? The goal of this message is for us to realize the problem is not the primarily the world around me. The problem is not the liberal media. The problem is not the Republicans or the Democrats. The problem is not all of these other people.The problem with the world is me. It is my heart. It is my depravity. You know, if you're in a war, it's important that you identify who the enemy is, isn't it? It's generally easy in a war because it's the people that are shooting at you.It's the people that want to destroy you. It is the these are the people that are the enemy. Look how Peter describes our enemy. These desires, he says, which wage war against your soul. The Greek word there for war, that's not made up.It is actually it's a military word. It is describing a kind of battle. So think of a famous battle like Iwo Jima or something like that. Carnage everywhere, an enemy trying everything it can to destroy. That is going on within the human heart.It's going on within the Christian heart, I should say. The unbeliever has no battle. The unbeliever does not have any there there's no conflict inside. We have conflict because by God's grace, we have received this salvation. And what part of what God does when we are when we become Christians is that he gives us a new heart.Right? And with that new heart are all of these desires for the will of God and for pleasing God and the things of God. But we retain in our personhood the old self, the old man, and all those old desires. That is the enemy in Peter's language here. And there is a war going on.It is a real battle. And this enemy is a real enemy. I am not talking here metaphorically. I'm not giving an illustration. This is not analogy.There is a real enemy within you. And I wonder if you're aware of it. I wonder if you realize that you are in a war. You know, it would be a really terrible thing to be in a war and not realize it. Imagine a guy on the on the on the beach of Normandy, 06/06/1944, looking for seashells.What are all these bombs doing here and all of these soldiers? And what's the of the machine gun? And what is going on here? Somebody says, it's D-Day. Oh, but look at these shells.They're so wonderful and beautiful. If you're in a battle, you better realize it. If you're in a war, you better realize it. And, basically, the point of this message is that we are in a war, and I believe most Christians live their day and they don't realize it. Walk into the day thinking, hey.It's just another day, unaware that there is within us an active, real force that wants to destroy the good that God is doing in our life. And he is an enemy that must be defeated. So in this war, let's just draw up the sides here. On the one side, you have the heart, the new heart of the Christian, and those desires that the spirit has brought to us that can be also fanned into flame. And these are desires for holy obedience and joy and the glory of God.This is the side of love, and this is the side of all the goodness of God being lived out in our life, conforming to the likeness of Jesus. On the other side is what we're calling the enemy. This is the flesh. This is the old regime. These are the desires prior to salvation that dominated my life.This is sin and all of its corruption and all of its destruction and all of the things that God promises to punish in our life. Those are the two sides. And that battle is going on in every one of us. Be honest. Are you aware of it?Are you aware of it? Here's other scriptures that talk about this. Romans eight, “for if you live according to the flesh, you will die.” How about that for a verse? Live according to these desires, let them dominate your life, you will die.“But if by the spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live, but I say walk by the spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.” You see that kind of a dualism there. Right? If you live this way, you're not gonna gratify the desires of the flesh.“For the desires of the flesh are against the spirit, and the desires of the spirit are against the flesh. For they are at war with each other to keep you from doing the things that you want to do.” Read Romans seven. It's an entire chapter describing this battle, this strife, this war that goes on in the heart of the Christian. You say, well, how does he how if I got this enemy inside of me that's lurking, how does he how does he exactly wage war?We have to realize the battlefield within us is for our minds, for our hearts, and for our souls. What desires are going to rule us? What affections are we going to say that's the way that I'm going to go? And part of this challenge for us is that the desires that the the flesh is seeking to cultivate in us and to to lead us by in the world are normal. Hear me, Bethel Church. In the world, they are normal and acceptable. That's just the way that we live. That's the way that we roll as we live by those passions and desires. And so you can easily live in the world, and it comes at you all the time an…

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Serving and Suffering . . . Just Like Jesus - Part A Oct 02, 2026

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Steve DeWitt Serving and Suffering . . . Just Like Jesus - Part A Download Study Guide for Spiritual Exiles, 1 Peter 2:18-21 Scripture Reference: 1 Peter 2:18-21 Visit the series page: Exiles: A study in 1 Peter Donate to Support The Journey Sermon Transcript for Spiritual Exiles, 1 Peter 2:18-21 Sermon Series: Spiritual ExilesMessage: Serving and Suffering … Just Like Jesus Airdate: 10/2 and 10/5/26Programs: 2370 and 2371“Servants, be subject to your masters with all respect, not only to the good and gentle, but also to the unjust. For this is a gracious thing. When mindful of God, one endures sorrows while suffering unjustly. For what credit is it if when you sin and are beaten for it, you endure? But if when you do good and suffer for it, you endure, this is a gracious thing in the sight of God.”“For to this you have been called because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example so that you may follow in his steps.” May God bless his word to us this morning. Last January, we had here in Northwest Indiana, we had the fifth worst snowstorm in Chicago's history. Do you remember? You may remember.And part of why we remember here at our church is that that Sunday morning, we did something that we hadn't done since 1999, which was cancel all of our services that morning. So my family, we were stuck at home just like you were stuck at home. And, when you're a pastor planning on preaching, it's not like you have other, you know, calendar items on a Sunday morning. So there we sit, now not having any services, wondering what we're going to do. So we were talking about this, and Jennifer mentioned to me.She said, you know, I've been wanting to maybe watch that that that show everybody's been talking about, Downton Abbey. And me, with absolutely nothing else to do, thought a little PBS masterpiece theater to make my wife happy, why not? Right? So we we started with the, you know, the first season. We put on the first episode of the first season, and we started watching.And I think that morning, we watched a couple episodes. And by noon on that Sunday, we were completely hooked. Right? And over the next, I think, probably month and a half, we watched all five seasons of episodes of Downton Abbey. And I'm here to tell you, until they the new ones come out next January, we're a little jittery.Right? Kind of like, when is it coming? Is it coming? We gotta know what's gonna happen. So Downton Abbey.Now, I don't know how many of you have used a blizzardto watch this show. Maybe you've watched it because you wanted to. Maybe you have no idea what I'm talking about. But it's been a wildly popular show. And it's very different than kind of normal television because it's kind of masterpiece theater.It's really well written. And the setting of Downton Abbey is in early part of the last century, so early twentieth century. And it's set in this estate where there is an earl who is the lord of the estate,and you have the family living in this beautiful castle, and then there is the serving staff. And so, the the show's intrigue then is that you have this family that has all of its kind of drama going on, and don't all families have drama going on? And, and they're very prim and proper, and it kind of is odd to us in our day because we see all of the cultural norms for people living in that sort of hoity toity kind of setting where there's lots of, you know, expectations and you do something a certain way and with a very stiff upper lip.But then you have the serving staff. And these are the people that are, you know, they they kind of live in the quadrants of the house. They're not family. They serve the family. But they have all of their own drama going on.And the the fun of of the show, I think, is just that it's so easy to relate to these people because they seem like people that you know, right, in the way that they act and and the way that they relate to each other. So this this staff of the house. With the staff of the house, you find all of the backbiting, cheating, lying, and stealing that we generally see in our workplace as well. So let me introduce you to some of the staff, or the cast members. Can I do that a moment?K. We're getting into Downton Abbey here this morning. Here's some of the, here's some of the staff. K? So upper left, there's the, there's the earl of the place, Lord Grantham.And you gotta say it like Lord Grantham. You know, it's sort of that way. And and so he's kind of the he's running the show. Carson is the butler. And he's a very likable guy with a really cool voice.If if I had his voice, our church would have 20,000 people in it. Just people would show up to hear that voice. It's really an amazing voice, unlike my own. O'Brien. She is the the, like, personal assistant to the wife of Lord Grantham.She is conniving, devious. She's a gossip, very self serving. That's O'Brien. Anna, upper right, nice girl next door, the kind you want your son to marry. You know, she's just so pure hearted with a little bit of a sort of, you know, she's got some spunk in her as well.So that's that's Anna. Tom Barrow, that's Satan. Okay? Tom Barrow is Satan himself. He is you talk about conniving.I mean, this guy is constantly working an angle. He is always, you know, very self serving. He will slander. He is devious. He is just in there creating problems all the time.Everythinghe shows up in, there's there's gonna be drama around it. Okay? Tom Barrow. Then you have Mrs. Hughes. And missus Hughes is, like the head housekeeper, and she is she's kind of like the mom to the staff.K? She's the one they go to when they have sorrows, and she's trying to keep everything unified. And she has the hots for Mr. Carson. K?So there are more staff than this, but that's just a general introduction to the staff there at Downton Abbey. Show is really well written, but I think, again, the intrigue and the popularity of this is that is that as you watch the show, you can almost think of people in your life that are just like O'Brien or just like Barrow or just like Carson. And you see the kind of way that they're, you know, getting along or not getting along in the serving staff. And it just reminds you so much of people that you that you know. The serving staff, they are I mean, they they they're very prim and proper with, you know, Lord Grantham and the family.But behind the scenes, they some of them, they mock the family and they steal from the family. You know, a little silverware here, a little wine there, whatever it is. They're stealing and conniving. It's just really an interesting it's an interesting show. And here's the question I wanna ask.K? If you were to watch Downton Abbey and I said to you, one of the serving staff is a Christian, and I want you to see if you can figure out which one it is. How would you go about trying to discern which one of those staff members is a Christian? Like, how would you know to watch them in the way that they work, the way that they respond to Lord Grantham or Carson or O'Brien who are in authority over them? How would you know from the way they conduct themselves there in the workplace whether or not they may be a Christian or not?What would you look to? The quality of the effort they give, their work ethic, how they treat others, and things like this would probably be the way that the clues that you would look for to discern which one of them actually is a follower of Jesus. And here in this text today, we find Peter continuing this. He's developing and turning this this this reality. These people he's writing to, they're they're exiles.They're in this place where geographically and spiritually, they do not they do not connect with the values around them. And yet, they're having to do normal life. They're having to live in all the normal social categories. And last week, we saw they were citizens there. How do they how do they live as citizens in a in a in a pagan environment, a hostile environment to their Christianity?And we see Peter saying, you need to respect even pagan human authority that is placed over you because that authority is put there by God himself. So therefore, honor everyone. Honor even the emperor, the crazy emperor Nero. And so now Peter continues here and he moves to the next category, the next sort of social category that all Christians have to live in. Namely, we all have to work, don't we?We all have to make a living. And in the making of a living, we are all interacting with people or working for people who don't share the values, the faith of of Christianity, many times are hostile to that. So how does the Christian then work in a world that is set against it? And that's what Peter is addressing here, workplace and workplace relationships. And so complicating this, and maybe you picked this up in in the first verse here, is that we are peering now into a a, a very different world than the one that we than we live in.Almost like people watch Downton Abbey just because it's so, like, intriguing to see how that world was a little bit different. That's a hundred years ago. How much? Two thousand years ago. All the way back when Rome was the world power and, you know, society and and culture was very, very different.And you see that in verse right there in verse 18. “Servants, be subject to your masters.” Now how many of us think, that's awesome. Right? No.We're we're we are automatically appalled by that because we don't live in a world where you have masters and masters that have property, people as property. That kind of that kind of of of slavery, if you will. But in the first century, it was absolutely normal practice. Almost every Roman family in the entire Roman Empire would have had serving staff. K?They would have called them slaves, serving staff. Get this. One quarter of the entire population of the Roman Empire were slaves. A quarter. One one commentator said it was the most common employer employee relationship in the ancient world, was this relationship between a master and his servants.We find it all over in the Bible. Paul talks about it often. Philemon is an entire letter that Paul writes to the owner of a slave who Paul has led to the Lord and the slaves going back now to him to serve under Philemon. So there's a whole book of the Bible. It's a very short one, but it's a book of the Bible that is talking about this very, cultural reality.Now a further wrinkle that we have, and this is part of our struggle, is that whenever we see the word slavery, having grown up the way that we have and, in the world that we've lived in, we automatically think about British slavery or we think about American slavery of of Africans. And indeed, that was slavery, but that was, what, two hundred years ago. We're going back now two thousand years ago where that experience was very different. So we have to read this verse not through the grid of the American slavery, but into what it actually was. And I'm gonna try to describe that here for you a little bit.These servant slaves were considered the property of the owner, but they served in a variety of roles such as managers of the household, trained professionals like doctors, teachers, even musicians would have been servants. There were extensive Roman laws about how, protecting those that were slaves and keeping, you know, theoretically keeping the owners of the slaves from being too cruel or not caring for them. In fact, Grudem, one of my favorite commentators in first Peter, says, there is no current comparable status in the Western world. In other words, he's saying, we have no frame of reference in our experience for what this actually was. So one of the reasons I I brought up Downton Abbey is that if you can think about more of more Downton Abbey than Roots.K? More Downton Abbey than the movie Roots, the the miniseries Roots. K? Only where maybe the earl actually is the master and owner of the serving staff, but largely treats them like you see them being treated in the show. K?That is more of the of the situation. And so that is why as we come to this text, we're not gonna you know, nobody here is probably owned legally by somebody else. But really what this is describing in the fair application for us is any place where I am in a employer employee relationship and I am under the authority of somebody else is essentially the the same as what those servants in the first century were dealing with as Christians now serving under, you know, a pagan master. How should I act? A a quarter of the whole empire was exactly that.So as Christianity spread across Asia Minor and the Roman Empire, you had owners becoming Christians like Philemon. You had servants or slaves becoming Christians now creating this sort of awkward relationship where they may gather together for prayer. They may gather together for worship. But then when they go home, the one owns the other. That's kinda weird, isn't it?But that was the reality. And so the New Testament writes into the reality. We can say it shouldn't be that way. Have been different. But that's the way that it was.And so the the the New Testament strives then to help masters and servants. Paul writes to masters about the way that he they were to treat their servants, to write into that and say, this is how we redeem even this very broken cultural system. So we're gonna look at this from the perspective that we all can relate to, and that is, what does it mean to be a Christian in the workplace? If we could watch Downton Abbey and say, okay, which one of those is a Christian? We know one is, if we happen to know that.How would what would you expect to see from an employee working at Downton Abbey? What would it look like? How would it be maybe be different than what the other staff is, the way they operate and what they care about? That's where we're going. So notice that Peter begins, you know, not with time cards and work reports, but he begins with attitude.Look what he says. “Servants, be subject to your masters with all respect.” New revised standard translates it, “slaves accept the authority of your masters with all deference.” Now I think it's pretty plain. Most of us here probably instinctively know what he is getting at here, do we not?This is about our attitude towards authority. That doesn't mean when I'm in the workplace that I'm a floor mat and, you know, I just am, you know, blindly obedient. But what it does mean is that I am showing respect for the authority that the employer that I am working for has over me. And notice it says, with all respect. K?So that kind of throws out the window. Maybe you're thinking, well, maybe I can improve, I don't have to be, like, super respectful. No. It says, all respect there. Do you see the word?This includes our words, our responses to our company, our bosses, and our general demeanor. To ask this question, does your boss get the idea from you that you give deference and respect to him or her in their place over you? Like, wouldn't it be interview interesting to interview all the bosses of everybody in our church and say, how is how is that Bethelonians?What kind of employee are they? What do you get from him or her?Do you get attitude, or do you get respect? And Peter here is saying, point number one, Christians will respect authority. Why? Because we see all authority as being established by God. Right?That's why we look at the government. And we may not agree with the government. We may not like the politicians of the government, but…

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War and Peace - Part B Oct 01, 2026

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Steve DeWitt War and Peace - Part B Study Guide for Spiritual Exiles, 1 Peter 2:11-12 Scripture Reference: 1 Peter 2:11-12 Visit the series page: Exiles: A study in 1 Peter Donate to Support The Journey Sermon Transcript for Spiritual Exiles, 1 Peter 2:11-12 Sermon Series: Spiritual ExilesMessage: War and PeaceAirdates: 9/30-10/01/26Programs: 2368 and 2369And let me add my good morning to you and great to see you here this weekend after our big Easter weekend. And I just want to take a moment and say thank you to so many volunteers and people that came together to pull all those services off, Good Friday services and then of course our Easter services. We've just got great reports from all the campuses. And just thank you for parking far away, coming early, sitting close, being hospitable, all those things that we encouraged. It was really a great weekend.We heard of a couple of adult men that received Christ as their savior as one indication of some encouragement, and we're happy about that. Our two new campuses had their first Easter, Gary and at Hobart Portage, and just great reports from both of those campuses. So really exciting. And by the way, need to say good morning to our Hobart Portage and Cedar Lake. Good to see you this morning, kind of.And thank you for joining here. And I also wanna mention to to all of our campuses that we are next weekend, we're gonna spend a little bit of time talking about the church and kinda where we're at, talk about mission them, give some updates on some things. So I hope you'll come back as we as we kinda get everybody on the same page. I have here a book, a little book, just a little book here. It's called War and Peace.Anybody read War and Peace? I see a few hands going up. I don't think anybody first service raised their hand. But War and Peace, it's kinda it's one of these books if you've you've not read it, you've probably heard of it. It's one of those books that just seeing somebody at the airport or coffee shop reading War and Peace, it's like impressive, isn't it?You think, wow, that person they're they're kinda serious about reading because they're reading War and and Peace. I've not read this, but the title of the book is a is a great outline for our passage today. And I I just wanna note to you that it's war and peace. It's not war instead of peace. It's not war then peace.It's war and peace. And as Christians, we get that. There is in the living of the Christian life, there is war and peace. We are in a battle Internally, especially, we are in a in a kind of war. But then externally, we are we are called and trying to express peace and beauty and love.And so we have this kind of dualism going on internally, Iwo Jima, externally, Beethoven's fifth. Right? That's the that's kind of the struggle of being of being a Christian. And Peter is going to explore this and give us some expectations today. And we're coming off this is our series in First Peter, exiles.We're coming off some wonderful verses, verses eight and nine and and ten, where he just summarizes what the church is and and who we are. We're a holy nation. We're a royal priesthood, people of his own of his own possession. We are in this world, we are declaring the greatness and the glories and the excellencies of the God who called us out of darkness and into his marvelous light. And so real high point kind of verses in the letter.And now Peter does war and peace. Let me read our text, and then we will do our exposition and application. Here is what Peter writes to us today. “Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which war against your soul. Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of his visitation.”So there is God's word to us today, and I want you to see just if you if you were if we were to read the rest of the letter, you would look back at these verses and say, those are really pivotal verses. Like, those are the verses where Peter goes from a more doctrinal explanation of the gospel and who the church is on the basis of new life in Christ and and resurrection into a very practical, what does it look like for this church to live in a hostile world, in a world where people don't aren't inclined to to liking us? What does it look like for the church to be faithful in its witness in a world set against it? So pivotal verses here. Verse 11 is war.Verse 12 is peace. K. So we begin with the war part. And, here's how he begins this little section here. “Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles.”There we have, the the words that we get our whole series title from. You might say, well, why do they call it exiles? There you go. There's another example. Sojourners and exiles.They are nearly synonyms. Both of them are describing people that are living somewhere where they don't primarily belong. Living somewhere not their place of birth, living somewhere not where their heart is. We get this a little bit in Indiana every football season where we live in Indiana, right? But during football season, if you drive through neighborhoods, you'll often see people that have flags out front of their house, right?They live in Indiana, but the flag will say Ohio State University or Michigan. Right? Or now this is the only acceptable one, University of Iowa. I love to see those. Those are fine.You can do that. The others though are saying something, aren't they? They're living in Indiana, but the flags are indicating that their hearts are elsewhere. So that if you went to the door of somebody who had that kind of a flag, you could knock on the door, and you and when they answer you, you could just say, you're not from around here, are you? And nine times out of 10, no. I was born in Ohio, and and I I cheer for the Buckeyes. Or I was born in Michigan, I cheer for, the Wolverines. So the flags in their hearts are saying something different. And as Christians, we are exiles and sojourners in this way. We live in this world.Right? We're we we live here. We're called to live here. But God has done this wonderful work in our lives, hasn't he? Amen?And so thankful for the grace of God in our life where he has now changed our hearts and and our our sense of belonging is not primarily in this world. Our our sense of belonging is the kingdom of God. This Paul writes in Colossians, for example, that “we are to set our minds on things above, not on earthly things.” So our affections and our hearts are are now for the kingdom of God and the future eternal life that's gonna be with him. This is what the writer of Hebrews, for example, talks about in Hebrews 11 where he lists the the hall of faith.Right? All of these different people in the Old Testament, remarkable saints. All of them were looking to a city, a future city, the city of God. They endured persecution here, but their hope was set was set there. Moses gives up all of the treasures of Egypt because why?His real treasure was Christ. We're called to that kind of a perspective living in this world as sojourners and exiles. So maybe I could ask you right now, what do the flags of your heart say? Where do you belong in your affections? Are you actually in exile?Are you a sojourner? Peter, well, what does that look like? Like, I don't have flags. It's a nice picture of Pastor Steve, but I don't have flags. What what does it look like to live in this world but to have our hearts and minds set on another?Peter urges us, essentially, first of all, to go to war. K? War and peace. He says, you gotta realize that you are in a war. Here's the here's the text.We're called to abstain from the passions of the flesh. The passions of the flesh. What is that talking about? Well, passion's good. Right?We ought to be passionate people. There's nothing wrong with passionate. Desires are good. God made us filled with desires, and those are not inherently bad either. What he is talking about here is the passions of the flesh.These are human passions left unchecked. These are human passions without law, without conscience, without consequence, without a sense of judgment, without the sense of God. These are illicit desires. This is man left to his own devices where his heart and his mind can do jolly well whatever they want to do. The passions of the flesh.Where do they come from? You might say, well, okay. That's interesting. But, like, how did I get these kind of passions, or where are they located? Here's where Jesus locates the problem.Matthew 15. “For out of the heart comes evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, and slander.” Yeah. That's in you. It's in every single one of us.How did these things get inside of us? Well, the Bible tells how that happened. Right? We go back into the Garden of Eden. God makes Adam and Eve their hearts, their desire, their every desire is for the Lord and for pleasing him and that relationship that they'd enjoyed with him and with one another.But when Adam and Eve rebelled against God, the Bible says that that heart, those desires that all the way to the core had always been good and holy, now we have died spiritually. And as we die spiritually, there enters into now our hearts another set of desires, another power, another force, indeed, an enemy. You have an enemy lurking inside of you. Every single one of us do. And that enemy is set against God.That enemy does not delight in God, does not delight in the will of God, does not delight in obedience to God. Rather, it delights in the opposite of all of that. It delights in what is illicit. It delights in sensuality. It delights in things that are are evil, actually.It delights in evil. This enemy inside our hearts. So the story of human history is not one of basically good people doing occasionally bad things. It is the story of fundamentally bad people occasionally doing good things, sometimes often doing good things. But the problem is that we retain in our hearts what Jeremiah calls “a desperately wicked heart.”It is inclined to evil. It delights in sin. This is the depravity of man. The Bible, that's what theologians call it, the depravity of man. Our hearts have that.You have that. K? We are bankrupt. We are we are morally defaulted. Our our setting inside is pride and self love.I didn't expect an amen there. How about people you know? Pride and self love. Amen to that? It's all around us, all these other peopleRight? The goal of this message is for us to realize the problem is not the primarily the world around me. The problem is not the liberal media. The problem is not the Republicans or the Democrats. The problem is not all of these other people.The problem with the world is me. It is my heart. It is my depravity. You know, if you're in a war, it's important that you identify who the enemy is, isn't it? It's generally easy in a war because it's the people that are shooting at you.It's the people that want to destroy you. It is the these are the people that are the enemy. Look how Peter describes our enemy. These desires, he says, which wage war against your soul. The Greek word there for war, that's not made up.It is actually it's a military word. It is describing a kind of battle. So think of a famous battle like Iwo Jima or something like that. Carnage everywhere, an enemy trying everything it can to destroy. That is going on within the human heart.It's going on within the Christian heart, I should say. The unbeliever has no battle. The unbeliever does not have any there there's no conflict inside. We have conflict because by God's grace, we have received this salvation. And what part of what God does when we are when we become Christians is that he gives us a new heart.Right? And with that new heart are all of these desires for the will of God and for pleasing God and the things of God. But we retain in our personhood the old self, the old man, and all those old desires. That is the enemy in Peter's language here. And there is a war going on.It is a real battle. And this enemy is a real enemy. I am not talking here metaphorically. I'm not giving an illustration. This is not analogy.There is a real enemy within you. And I wonder if you're aware of it. I wonder if you realize that you are in a war. You know, it would be a really terrible thing to be in a war and not realize it. Imagine a guy on the on the on the beach of Normandy, 06/06/1944, looking for seashells.What are all these bombs doing here and all of these soldiers? And what's the of the machine gun? And what is going on here? Somebody says, it's D-Day. Oh, but look at these shells.They're so wonderful and beautiful. If you're in a battle, you better realize it. If you're in a war, you better realize it. And, basically, the point of this message is that we are in a war, and I believe most Christians live their day and they don't realize it. Walk into the day thinking, hey.It's just another day, unaware that there is within us an active, real force that wants to destroy the good that God is doing in our life. And he is an enemy that must be defeated. So in this war, let's just draw up the sides here. On the one side, you have the heart, the new heart of the Christian, and those desires that the spirit has brought to us that can be also fanned into flame. And these are desires for holy obedience and joy and the glory of God.This is the side of love, and this is the side of all the goodness of God being lived out in our life, conforming to the likeness of Jesus. On the other side is what we're calling the enemy. This is the flesh. This is the old regime. These are the desires prior to salvation that dominated my life.This is sin and all of its corruption and all of its destruction and all of the things that God promises to punish in our life. Those are the two sides. And that battle is going on in every one of us. Be honest. Are you aware of it?Are you aware of it? Here's other scriptures that talk about this. Romans eight, “for if you live according to the flesh, you will die.” How about that for a verse? Live according to these desires, let them dominate your life, you will die.“But if by the spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live, but I say walk by the spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.” You see that kind of a dualism there. Right? If you live this way, you're not gonna gratify the desires of the flesh.“For the desires of the flesh are against the spirit, and the desires of the spirit are against the flesh. For they are at war with each other to keep you from doing the things that you want to do.” Read Romans seven. It's an entire chapter describing this battle, this strife, this war that goes on in the heart of the Christian. You say, well, how does he how if I got this enemy inside of me that's lurking, how does he how does he exactly wage war?We have to realize the battlefield within us is for our minds, for our hearts, and for our souls. What desires are going to rule us? What affections are we going to say that's the way that I'm going to go? And part of this challenge for us is that the desires that the the flesh is seeking to cultivate in us and to to lead us by in the world are normal. Hear me, Bethel Church. In the world, they are normal and acceptable. That's just the way that we live. That's the way that we roll as we live by those passions and desires. And so you can easily live in the world, and it comes at you all th…

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War and Peace - Part A Sep 30, 2026

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Steve DeWitt War and Peace - Part A Study Guide for Spiritual Exiles, 1 Peter 2:11-12 Scripture Reference: 1 Peter 2:11-12 Visit the series page: Exiles: A study in 1 Peter Donate to Support The Journey Sermon Transcript for Spiritual Exiles, 1 Peter 2:11-12 Sermon Series: Spiritual ExilesMessage: War and PeaceAirdates: 9/30-10/01/26Programs: 2368 and 2369And let me add my good morning to you and great to see you here this weekend after our big Easter weekend. And I just want to take a moment and say thank you to so many volunteers and people that came together to pull all those services off, Good Friday services and then of course our Easter services. We've just got great reports from all the campuses. And just thank you for parking far away, coming early, sitting close, being hospitable, all those things that we encouraged. It was really a great weekend.We heard of a couple of adult men that received Christ as their savior as one indication of some encouragement, and we're happy about that. Our two new campuses had their first Easter, Gary and at Hobart Portage, and just great reports from both of those campuses. So really exciting. And by the way, need to say good morning to our Hobart Portage and Cedar Lake. Good to see you this morning, kind of.And thank you for joining here. And I also wanna mention to to all of our campuses that we are next weekend, we're gonna spend a little bit of time talking about the church and kinda where we're at, talk about mission them, give some updates on some things. So I hope you'll come back as we as we kinda get everybody on the same page. I have here a book, a little book, just a little book here. It's called War and Peace.Anybody read War and Peace? I see a few hands going up. I don't think anybody first service raised their hand. But War and Peace, it's kinda it's one of these books if you've you've not read it, you've probably heard of it. It's one of those books that just seeing somebody at the airport or coffee shop reading War and Peace, it's like impressive, isn't it?You think, wow, that person they're they're kinda serious about reading because they're reading War and and Peace. I've not read this, but the title of the book is a is a great outline for our passage today. And I I just wanna note to you that it's war and peace. It's not war instead of peace. It's not war then peace.It's war and peace. And as Christians, we get that. There is in the living of the Christian life, there is war and peace. We are in a battle Internally, especially, we are in a in a kind of war. But then externally, we are we are called and trying to express peace and beauty and love.And so we have this kind of dualism going on internally, Iwo Jima, externally, Beethoven's fifth. Right? That's the that's kind of the struggle of being of being a Christian. And Peter is going to explore this and give us some expectations today. And we're coming off this is our series in First Peter, exiles.We're coming off some wonderful verses, verses eight and nine and and ten, where he just summarizes what the church is and and who we are. We're a holy nation. We're a royal priesthood, people of his own of his own possession. We are in this world, we are declaring the greatness and the glories and the excellencies of the God who called us out of darkness and into his marvelous light. And so real high point kind of verses in the letter.And now Peter does war and peace. Let me read our text, and then we will do our exposition and application. Here is what Peter writes to us today. “Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which war against your soul. Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of his visitation.”So there is God's word to us today, and I want you to see just if you if you were if we were to read the rest of the letter, you would look back at these verses and say, those are really pivotal verses. Like, those are the verses where Peter goes from a more doctrinal explanation of the gospel and who the church is on the basis of new life in Christ and and resurrection into a very practical, what does it look like for this church to live in a hostile world, in a world where people don't aren't inclined to to liking us? What does it look like for the church to be faithful in its witness in a world set against it? So pivotal verses here. Verse 11 is war.Verse 12 is peace. K. So we begin with the war part. And, here's how he begins this little section here. “Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles.”There we have, the the words that we get our whole series title from. You might say, well, why do they call it exiles? There you go. There's another example. Sojourners and exiles.They are nearly synonyms. Both of them are describing people that are living somewhere where they don't primarily belong. Living somewhere not their place of birth, living somewhere not where their heart is. We get this a little bit in Indiana every football season where we live in Indiana, right? But during football season, if you drive through neighborhoods, you'll often see people that have flags out front of their house, right?They live in Indiana, but the flag will say Ohio State University or Michigan. Right? Or now this is the only acceptable one, University of Iowa. I love to see those. Those are fine.You can do that. The others though are saying something, aren't they? They're living in Indiana, but the flags are indicating that their hearts are elsewhere. So that if you went to the door of somebody who had that kind of a flag, you could knock on the door, and you and when they answer you, you could just say, you're not from around here, are you? And nine times out of 10, no. I was born in Ohio, and and I I cheer for the Buckeyes. Or I was born in Michigan, I cheer for, the Wolverines. So the flags in their hearts are saying something different. And as Christians, we are exiles and sojourners in this way. We live in this world.Right? We're we we live here. We're called to live here. But God has done this wonderful work in our lives, hasn't he? Amen?And so thankful for the grace of God in our life where he has now changed our hearts and and our our sense of belonging is not primarily in this world. Our our sense of belonging is the kingdom of God. This Paul writes in Colossians, for example, that “we are to set our minds on things above, not on earthly things.” So our affections and our hearts are are now for the kingdom of God and the future eternal life that's gonna be with him. This is what the writer of Hebrews, for example, talks about in Hebrews 11 where he lists the the hall of faith.Right? All of these different people in the Old Testament, remarkable saints. All of them were looking to a city, a future city, the city of God. They endured persecution here, but their hope was set was set there. Moses gives up all of the treasures of Egypt because why?His real treasure was Christ. We're called to that kind of a perspective living in this world as sojourners and exiles. So maybe I could ask you right now, what do the flags of your heart say? Where do you belong in your affections? Are you actually in exile?Are you a sojourner? Peter, well, what does that look like? Like, I don't have flags. It's a nice picture of Pastor Steve, but I don't have flags. What what does it look like to live in this world but to have our hearts and minds set on another?Peter urges us, essentially, first of all, to go to war. K? War and peace. He says, you gotta realize that you are in a war. Here's the here's the text.We're called to abstain from the passions of the flesh. The passions of the flesh. What is that talking about? Well, passion's good. Right?We ought to be passionate people. There's nothing wrong with passionate. Desires are good. God made us filled with desires, and those are not inherently bad either. What he is talking about here is the passions of the flesh.These are human passions left unchecked. These are human passions without law, without conscience, without consequence, without a sense of judgment, without the sense of God. These are illicit desires. This is man left to his own devices where his heart and his mind can do jolly well whatever they want to do. The passions of the flesh.Where do they come from? You might say, well, okay. That's interesting. But, like, how did I get these kind of passions, or where are they located? Here's where Jesus locates the problem.Matthew 15. “For out of the heart comes evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, and slander.” Yeah. That's in you. It's in every single one of us.How did these things get inside of us? Well, the Bible tells how that happened. Right? We go back into the Garden of Eden. God makes Adam and Eve their hearts, their desire, their every desire is for the Lord and for pleasing him and that relationship that they'd enjoyed with him and with one another.But when Adam and Eve rebelled against God, the Bible says that that heart, those desires that all the way to the core had always been good and holy, now we have died spiritually. And as we die spiritually, there enters into now our hearts another set of desires, another power, another force, indeed, an enemy. You have an enemy lurking inside of you. Every single one of us do. And that enemy is set against God.That enemy does not delight in God, does not delight in the will of God, does not delight in obedience to God. Rather, it delights in the opposite of all of that. It delights in what is illicit. It delights in sensuality. It delights in things that are are evil, actually.It delights in evil. This enemy inside our hearts. So the story of human history is not one of basically good people doing occasionally bad things. It is the story of fundamentally bad people occasionally doing good things, sometimes often doing good things. But the problem is that we retain in our hearts what Jeremiah calls “a desperately wicked heart.”It is inclined to evil. It delights in sin. This is the depravity of man. The Bible, that's what theologians call it, the depravity of man. Our hearts have that.You have that. K? We are bankrupt. We are we are morally defaulted. Our our setting inside is pride and self love.I didn't expect an amen there. How about people you know? Pride and self love. Amen to that? It's all around us, all these other peopleRight? The goal of this message is for us to realize the problem is not the primarily the world around me. The problem is not the liberal media. The problem is not the Republicans or the Democrats. The problem is not all of these other people.The problem with the world is me. It is my heart. It is my depravity. You know, if you're in a war, it's important that you identify who the enemy is, isn't it? It's generally easy in a war because it's the people that are shooting at you.It's the people that want to destroy you. It is the these are the people that are the enemy. Look how Peter describes our enemy. These desires, he says, which wage war against your soul. The Greek word there for war, that's not made up.It is actually it's a military word. It is describing a kind of battle. So think of a famous battle like Iwo Jima or something like that. Carnage everywhere, an enemy trying everything it can to destroy. That is going on within the human heart.It's going on within the Christian heart, I should say. The unbeliever has no battle. The unbeliever does not have any there there's no conflict inside. We have conflict because by God's grace, we have received this salvation. And what part of what God does when we are when we become Christians is that he gives us a new heart.Right? And with that new heart are all of these desires for the will of God and for pleasing God and the things of God. But we retain in our personhood the old self, the old man, and all those old desires. That is the enemy in Peter's language here. And there is a war going on.It is a real battle. And this enemy is a real enemy. I am not talking here metaphorically. I'm not giving an illustration. This is not analogy.There is a real enemy within you. And I wonder if you're aware of it. I wonder if you realize that you are in a war. You know, it would be a really terrible thing to be in a war and not realize it. Imagine a guy on the on the on the beach of Normandy, 06/06/1944, looking for seashells.What are all these bombs doing here and all of these soldiers? And what's the of the machine gun? And what is going on here? Somebody says, it's D-Day. Oh, but look at these shells.They're so wonderful and beautiful. If you're in a battle, you better realize it. If you're in a war, you better realize it. And, basically, the point of this message is that we are in a war, and I believe most Christians live their day and they don't realize it. Walk into the day thinking, hey.It's just another day, unaware that there is within us an active, real force that wants to destroy the good that God is doing in our life. And he is an enemy that must be defeated. So in this war, let's just draw up the sides here. On the one side, you have the heart, the new heart of the Christian, and those desires that the spirit has brought to us that can be also fanned into flame. And these are desires for holy obedience and joy and the glory of God.This is the side of love, and this is the side of all the goodness of God being lived out in our life, conforming to the likeness of Jesus. On the other side is what we're calling the enemy. This is the flesh. This is the old regime. These are the desires prior to salvation that dominated my life.This is sin and all of its corruption and all of its destruction and all of the things that God promises to punish in our life. Those are the two sides. And that battle is going on in every one of us. Be honest. Are you aware of it?Are you aware of it? Here's other scriptures that talk about this. Romans eight, “for if you live according to the flesh, you will die.” How about that for a verse? Live according to these desires, let them dominate your life, you will die.“But if by the spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live, but I say walk by the spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.” You see that kind of a dualism there. Right? If you live this way, you're not gonna gratify the desires of the flesh.“For the desires of the flesh are against the spirit, and the desires of the spirit are against the flesh. For they are at war with each other to keep you from doing the things that you want to do.” Read Romans seven. It's an entire chapter describing this battle, this strife, this war that goes on in the heart of the Christian. You say, well, how does he how if I got this enemy inside of me that's lurking, how does he how does he exactly wage war?We have to realize the battlefield within us is for our minds, for our hearts, and for our souls. What desires are going to rule us? What affections are we going to say that's the way that I'm going to go? And part of this challenge for us is that the desires that the the flesh is seeking to cultivate in us and to to lead us by in the world are normal. Hear me, Bethel Church. In the world, they are normal and acceptable. That's just the way that we live. That's the way that we roll as we live by those passions and desires. And so you can easily live in the world, and it comes at you all th…

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His People. His Possession. His Proclamation - Part B Sep 29, 2026

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Steve DeWitt His People. His Possession. His Proclamation - Part B Study Guide for Spiritual Exiles, 1 Peter 2:9-10 Scripture Reference: 1 Peter 2:9-10 Visit the series page: Exiles: A study in 1 Peter Donate to Support The Journey Sermon Transcript for Spiritual Exiles, 1 Peter 2:9-10 Sermon Series: Spiritual ExilesMessage: His People. His Possession. His Proclamation.Airdate: 9/28-9/29/25Programs: 2366 & 2367That's what we're gonna do. You know, we're in the thick of March Madness. And I have to warn you, I'm just seeing this as my, kind of green light to let my inner sports fan out in this message. So I'm gonna do that here. And, we're in March Madness, the NCAA tournament.Maybe you've been watching it. Last night's game was crazy as one example, but so much fun. And and, I love, basketball in particular. Many of you know that. And, you know, as crazy as it is now, we we actually go back maybe, what, thirty years, and you're in the midst of the great dynasty of UCLA basketball.You know, talk about how great teams are, Kentucky, etcetera, now. You wanna talk about greatness. You gotta look at at, UCLA coached by the great John Wooden. They won seven NCAA tournament championships in a row. He won 10 in total.So back then, it wasn't hard to fill out your bracket. You just kinda went UCLA, UCLA, UCLA, UCLA, and everybody tied because everybody picked the same team to win the whole thing. That's the way that it was, a true a true dynasty. Once, they won 88 consecutive games in a row. 88.Only to lose in the great state of Indiana. Playing who? Notre Dame.So we're gonna I'm amongst friends, sports fans, friends here. If you know that Notre Dame defeated them and broke that record.But John Wooden just talk about John Wooden a second. You know, he was the iconic coach of UCLA. To this day, famous not only for his accomplishments, but he's quoted all the time. If you follow sports much, Wooden is quoted all the time. They call them woodenisms Because John Wooden had the ability to take kind of like life wisdom, sports wisdom, and just make it into a little statement that is easily remembered, easily quoted.For example, “winning takes talent to repeat takes character.” Apparently, they had a lot of character in those days at UCLA. “It's what you learn after you know it all that counts” and things like that. So how great would it be if we could, hear John Wooden, like, at the halftime, speech or maybe in the huddle, ten seconds left. This is what we're gonna do.He just had a unique ability to take big truths and to make them small and to make them memorable. And I love it when the Bible does that. You know, there's so much in the Bible you can kinda read and maybe it's ethereal. You scratch your head a little bit. But then there are certain passages of Scripture that just take it down and just say, this is what it's all about.Right? Like John three sixteen. For the gospel, John three sixteen is a verse like that. This is the essence of the gospel is way more than this, but this is the essence of the gospel. Or, the role of Jesus, Colossians one eighteen, so that in everything he might have the supremacy.Love that verse. Why? It just summarize it's like bottom line of bottom lines. This is what it's all about. Well, the passage we have in front of us today is a verse like that regarding the church.Why are we here? What's our purpose? What are what's going on? This verse does it so wonderfully, so beautifully. It might be end up being your favorite verse in first Peter.And so here we have Peter. He's part of the inner member of the inner circle. He's a leader of the apostles. He's a leader in the early church. Here we have the leader of the church telling us today, this is why you exist.This is your purpose. Now get after it. K? Kinda like John Wooden would have done. So let me read first Peter two verse nine, and then we're gonna see what it's what it means.But you are listen, church. “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” Very pastoral language by Peter here intended to be an encouragement. Remember, these, this letter is written to people that have been relocated. They are exiles in in Asia Minor.They are sojourners in a culture that they don't know. They are struggling. And Peter wants them to realize that they have an identity that is different than what the people around them are saying who they are, what their feelings are saying about who they are. It doesn't matter what the culture says. It doesn't matter what your feelings say.It matters what God says about you. And God has something to say about Christian identity and Christian purpose. I also want us to realize that this is not just for exiles, that this passage is for us today. If you're a Christian, this is you. He is describing you.He is describing us collectively. Who are we? Why are we here? What is our purpose? You know, I can't help but notice that in the teams in the in the NCAA tournament, all of them, one of the first basic things is you've gotta know what team you're on.Right? And so what do they do in order to identify what team they're on? They they all wear jerseys. And emblazoned on the jersey is the team, the university that they represent. And so they have, you know, Duke or Kentucky or the team about to lose to Kentucky.You know, these are the identities of these teams in the tournament. And they all know who they are, though. If you're gonna be a winning team, you've gotta know, first of all, who are you? Who are we, church, in the eyes of God? Notice, you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession.This is identity. K? Identity. One of the things that we know about all human beings is that we all we all crave an identity. In fact, we all need an identity.We all need a place to belong. We all desire very much a sense of belonging. This is where I think our family or our hometown or the school we attended, these provide certain identities for us. One of the first things that, you know, when you meet somebody, what do you say? Where are you from?And your identity is somewhat out of where you come from. This, I think, is part of the appeal of a lot of the of the sports teams and the sports mania where you watch these games. You watch a a Manchester United game or an Alabama football game, and you're gonna see a huge thousands of people all dressed in the same colors, wearing the same kinds of of, of jerseys. And they're in the stands. Right?They are doing nothing really other than screaming to contribute to the victory or the loss, but they see themselves as connected to this team or this organization. And you can laugh at that, but people take it seriously. Like, they seriously are identified with that. The fortunes of that team up and down. Their emotions ride with the ups and downs of that team.What is, I think, part of that appeal? We gotta belong to something. I gotta belong to something that is bigger than me, something that I think is really, really important. And in our culture, sports teams are one of the big identities that people attach themselves to. And, of course, this is all about relationship.I wanna feel like I belong to something, that I'm in relationship with something that is greater than myself. In a sense, we're all that seventh grade boy standing in the cafeteria wondering where to sit. What table will accept me? Where can I go that I have a sense of belonging? Could I ask you, where do you belong?What do you choose to identify with that gives you a sense of meaning in your life? What would you say is your identity group? This might be helpful. If you were to die today, what would people, your friends and family, what would they write about you in your obituary? If you read through obituaries, generally, they say this is so and so.He's from this family. And he was an avid this. He was a part of this organization. This is the things that really mattered to him. What might your family say about you?Or I do funerals and, you know, they'll have the casket oftentimes and the family and friends will adorn the casket with the things that were the identity of that person. And so there might be a picture of his dog. Or there might be, you know, his favorite sports team. There's a something from the team in there. Or it could be a Harley Davidson hat.It almost doesn't matter. Right? Because the human heart craves, longs, and must find some identity with something beyond itself. We're made that way. We crave it.We long for it. And, of course, the curse for all of our human identities is that they are all fleeting, and they are all temporary, and in the end, they are all disappointing. Right, Cubs fans? Right? Now that's a silly example, although some of you take it seriously.I'm showing the superficiality of that. But all of our human identities, in the end, are fleeting. Even the most meaningful ones, family and marriage, we don't, in the end, get to keep those, do we? Why? Because death is separation from all of our human identities, everything connected to this world.Death is the is the is the separation from that. If only there was somewhere, something that we could belong to that is real in this life and endures in the next life. If there was some place that I could have a sense of belonging, where I could feel like I have an identity and I could know that it's not bound up in the whims of sports or the marketplace or the stock market or human relationships or friendships or even family separated by death. Wouldn't it be great if there was some place that I could actually, not just theoretically, but actually see as my identity and to know that this will be my identity forever. Even death can't take it away.Wouldn't that be fantastic? And that is essentially what Peter is encouraging these exiles with here. And he does so quoting mostly Exodus 19, and here he lists four blessed and enduring identities that are true for every single genuine and authentic follower of Jesus Christ. Let's walk through them together. First of all, he says, you are a chosen race.A chosen race. We hear chosen and we think this has something to do with us. Right? Like LeBron who has tattooed giant across his giant back, chosen one. I think for LeBron, he means that to say something about him.Right? He is the chosen one. And this of course was the stumbling block of Israel because God chose Israel. God chose Abraham, all of his descendants.And for all of those years in in in in spiritually speaking, it became a stumbling block because the Israelites thought their choosing was about them.It said something about their worth. It was something about we're better than the other peoples. We're higher. We're special. And Moses in Deuteronomy wanted them to realize God didn't choose you because of you.Here's what he says. “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. But it is because the Lord loves you.” Did you hear that?Why did God choose to love Israel? It had nothing to do with Israel. It is because God himself is love. The choosing has everything to do with God. And we here now in the new covenant, elect and chosen by God, sovereign choice election by God.It does not give us pride. It does not make us think that this is about us any more than the donkey on Palm Sunday might have thought, they're clapping for me. They're wavy palm branches for me. Palm Sunday is not about the donkey and the church and the choosing is not about us. It is about God's sovereign love where he, for reasons only he knows, chooses to set his love upon undeserving, unmerited sinners like us and to say, I love you because I'm love.And when God sets his love upon you and you respond to that love by loving him through the gospel, we enter into a a place. We enter into a a people group. God is forming a new people group. His chosen people. His chosen race.We are a royal priesthood. That does not mean that we are kings and queens or princes or princesses. A priest in Israel was somebody that was allowed to draw near to God. A priest was somebody that ministered in the temple and offered the sacrifices and represented the people to God. God allowed the priest into a place that the people were not allowed to come.We are now in the new covenant, a royal priesthood. We're not kings and queens, but God, the King, bids us to draw near to him. He allows us access into his presence. In the new covenant, my prayers offered in Jesus' name are heard in the very ears of God himself. We are we are close to him.We are near to him. We're near to the King. We're royal priests. We are a holy nation. Listen to Grudem.“Just as believers are a new spiritual race and a new spiritual priesthood, so they are a new spiritual nation, which is based now neither on ethnic identity nor geographical boundaries, but rather on allegiance to their heavenly King Jesus Christ who is truly King of kings and Lord of lords.” Do not miss the radical nature of even that statement. In a day where, especially in Israel, there was a sense that we are the people of God. We are the nation of God. And what does God come along and do?And what does Jesus do? He dies on the cross not for just for the Jew, but also for the Gentile. Now all who believe in Christ are part of the nation of God, the family of God. We have a kind of citizenship. We don't immigrate.We don't apply. Citizenship is by faith in allegiance to Jesus as Savior and Lord. And if Jesus is your Savior and Jesus is your Lord, then he is King of the nation that you're a member of. You become a part of that. And that means that there's no ethnic line on that.There's no age line on that. There's no geographical line on that. The child living in the hut in Africa is as free to become a part of this nation as the wealthy Wall Street stockbroker is, and the educated Harvard person is, and the Eskimo is, and the Aborigine is. It doesn't matter who you are, where you are, what your background, your skin color, the blood in your veins. It matters if you believe and trust in Christ.And if you do, welcome to the nation. Welcome to the nation. The nation of God. A fellow citizen with anybody else who has pledged allegiance to the King. We are part of a holy nation.And fourth, and I think most wonderfully, these words here, that we are a people for his own possession. That Greek word there for possession is used describing the practice of the ancient kings of the East, who in those kings like kings now or presidents now, really any nation, has to pay for roads and swords and ships and provide various things for the people of that particular nation. And so taxes are taken in and it goes into the treasury. And out of the treasury of the the nation, those things are are met. But the ancient kings of the East would have they would have the monies of the country that while they were king, could lay a claim to those things.Those were the things that were used to provide for the needs of the country. They had though a special treasury. A special treasury box, gold in that box that was not part of the national treasury. This was their own treasure. That word is the word that is used here.We are, to God, a personal treasure. We are, to God, a personal possession. This is about relationship. We belong to him. We belong to almighty God, a treasure to the most high God.Here's just two verses tha…

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His People. His Possession. His Proclamation - Part A Sep 28, 2026

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Steve DeWitt His People. His Possession. His Proclamation - Part A Study Guide for Spiritual Exiles, 1 Peter 2:9-10 Scripture Reference: 1 Peter 2:9-10 Visit the series page: Exiles: A study in 1 Peter Donate to Support The Journey Sermon Transcript for Spiritual Exiles, 1 Peter 2:9-10 Sermon Series: Spiritual ExilesMessage: His People. His Possession. His Proclamation.Airdate: 9/28-9/29/25Programs: 2366 & 2367That's what we're gonna do. You know, we're in the thick of March Madness. And I have to warn you, I'm just seeing this as my, kind of green light to let my inner sports fan out in this message. So I'm gonna do that here. And, we're in March Madness, the NCAA tournament.Maybe you've been watching it. Last night's game was crazy as one example, but so much fun. And and, I love, basketball in particular. Many of you know that. And, you know, as crazy as it is now, we we actually go back maybe, what, thirty years, and you're in the midst of the great dynasty of UCLA basketball.You know, talk about how great teams are, Kentucky, etcetera, now. You wanna talk about greatness. You gotta look at at, UCLA coached by the great John Wooden. They won seven NCAA tournament championships in a row. He won 10 in total.So back then, it wasn't hard to fill out your bracket. You just kinda went UCLA, UCLA, UCLA, UCLA, and everybody tied because everybody picked the same team to win the whole thing. That's the way that it was, a true a true dynasty. Once, they won 88 consecutive games in a row. 88.Only to lose in the great state of Indiana. Playing who? Notre Dame.So we're gonna I'm amongst friends, sports fans, friends here. If you know that Notre Dame defeated them and broke that record.But John Wooden just talk about John Wooden a second. You know, he was the iconic coach of UCLA. To this day, famous not only for his accomplishments, but he's quoted all the time. If you follow sports much, Wooden is quoted all the time. They call them woodenisms Because John Wooden had the ability to take kind of like life wisdom, sports wisdom, and just make it into a little statement that is easily remembered, easily quoted.For example, “winning takes talent to repeat takes character.” Apparently, they had a lot of character in those days at UCLA. “It's what you learn after you know it all that counts” and things like that. So how great would it be if we could, hear John Wooden, like, at the halftime, speech or maybe in the huddle, ten seconds left. This is what we're gonna do.He just had a unique ability to take big truths and to make them small and to make them memorable. And I love it when the Bible does that. You know, there's so much in the Bible you can kinda read and maybe it's ethereal. You scratch your head a little bit. But then there are certain passages of Scripture that just take it down and just say, this is what it's all about.Right? Like John three sixteen. For the gospel, John three sixteen is a verse like that. This is the essence of the gospel is way more than this, but this is the essence of the gospel. Or, the role of Jesus, Colossians one eighteen, so that in everything he might have the supremacy.Love that verse. Why? It just summarize it's like bottom line of bottom lines. This is what it's all about. Well, the passage we have in front of us today is a verse like that regarding the church.Why are we here? What's our purpose? What are what's going on? This verse does it so wonderfully, so beautifully. It might be end up being your favorite verse in first Peter.And so here we have Peter. He's part of the inner member of the inner circle. He's a leader of the apostles. He's a leader in the early church. Here we have the leader of the church telling us today, this is why you exist.This is your purpose. Now get after it. K? Kinda like John Wooden would have done. So let me read first Peter two verse nine, and then we're gonna see what it's what it means.But you are listen, church. “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” Very pastoral language by Peter here intended to be an encouragement. Remember, these, this letter is written to people that have been relocated. They are exiles in in Asia Minor.They are sojourners in a culture that they don't know. They are struggling. And Peter wants them to realize that they have an identity that is different than what the people around them are saying who they are, what their feelings are saying about who they are. It doesn't matter what the culture says. It doesn't matter what your feelings say.It matters what God says about you. And God has something to say about Christian identity and Christian purpose. I also want us to realize that this is not just for exiles, that this passage is for us today. If you're a Christian, this is you. He is describing you.He is describing us collectively. Who are we? Why are we here? What is our purpose? You know, I can't help but notice that in the teams in the in the NCAA tournament, all of them, one of the first basic things is you've gotta know what team you're on.Right? And so what do they do in order to identify what team they're on? They they all wear jerseys. And emblazoned on the jersey is the team, the university that they represent. And so they have, you know, Duke or Kentucky or the team about to lose to Kentucky.You know, these are the identities of these teams in the tournament. And they all know who they are, though. If you're gonna be a winning team, you've gotta know, first of all, who are you? Who are we, church, in the eyes of God? Notice, you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession.This is identity. K? Identity. One of the things that we know about all human beings is that we all we all crave an identity. In fact, we all need an identity.We all need a place to belong. We all desire very much a sense of belonging. This is where I think our family or our hometown or the school we attended, these provide certain identities for us. One of the first things that, you know, when you meet somebody, what do you say? Where are you from?And your identity is somewhat out of where you come from. This, I think, is part of the appeal of a lot of the of the sports teams and the sports mania where you watch these games. You watch a a Manchester United game or an Alabama football game, and you're gonna see a huge thousands of people all dressed in the same colors, wearing the same kinds of of, of jerseys. And they're in the stands. Right?They are doing nothing really other than screaming to contribute to the victory or the loss, but they see themselves as connected to this team or this organization. And you can laugh at that, but people take it seriously. Like, they seriously are identified with that. The fortunes of that team up and down. Their emotions ride with the ups and downs of that team.What is, I think, part of that appeal? We gotta belong to something. I gotta belong to something that is bigger than me, something that I think is really, really important. And in our culture, sports teams are one of the big identities that people attach themselves to. And, of course, this is all about relationship.I wanna feel like I belong to something, that I'm in relationship with something that is greater than myself. In a sense, we're all that seventh grade boy standing in the cafeteria wondering where to sit. What table will accept me? Where can I go that I have a sense of belonging? Could I ask you, where do you belong?What do you choose to identify with that gives you a sense of meaning in your life? What would you say is your identity group? This might be helpful. If you were to die today, what would people, your friends and family, what would they write about you in your obituary? If you read through obituaries, generally, they say this is so and so.He's from this family. And he was an avid this. He was a part of this organization. This is the things that really mattered to him. What might your family say about you?Or I do funerals and, you know, they'll have the casket oftentimes and the family and friends will adorn the casket with the things that were the identity of that person. And so there might be a picture of his dog. Or there might be, you know, his favorite sports team. There's a something from the team in there. Or it could be a Harley Davidson hat.It almost doesn't matter. Right? Because the human heart craves, longs, and must find some identity with something beyond itself. We're made that way. We crave it.We long for it. And, of course, the curse for all of our human identities is that they are all fleeting, and they are all temporary, and in the end, they are all disappointing. Right, Cubs fans? Right? Now that's a silly example, although some of you take it seriously.I'm showing the superficiality of that. But all of our human identities, in the end, are fleeting. Even the most meaningful ones, family and marriage, we don't, in the end, get to keep those, do we? Why? Because death is separation from all of our human identities, everything connected to this world.Death is the is the is the separation from that. If only there was somewhere, something that we could belong to that is real in this life and endures in the next life. If there was some place that I could have a sense of belonging, where I could feel like I have an identity and I could know that it's not bound up in the whims of sports or the marketplace or the stock market or human relationships or friendships or even family separated by death. Wouldn't it be great if there was some place that I could actually, not just theoretically, but actually see as my identity and to know that this will be my identity forever. Even death can't take it away.Wouldn't that be fantastic? And that is essentially what Peter is encouraging these exiles with here. And he does so quoting mostly Exodus 19, and here he lists four blessed and enduring identities that are true for every single genuine and authentic follower of Jesus Christ. Let's walk through them together. First of all, he says, you are a chosen race.A chosen race. We hear chosen and we think this has something to do with us. Right? Like LeBron who has tattooed giant across his giant back, chosen one. I think for LeBron, he means that to say something about him.Right? He is the chosen one. And this of course was the stumbling block of Israel because God chose Israel. God chose Abraham, all of his descendants.And for all of those years in in in in spiritually speaking, it became a stumbling block because the Israelites thought their choosing was about them.It said something about their worth. It was something about we're better than the other peoples. We're higher. We're special. And Moses in Deuteronomy wanted them to realize God didn't choose you because of you.Here's what he says. “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. But it is because the Lord loves you.” Did you hear that?Why did God choose to love Israel? It had nothing to do with Israel. It is because God himself is love. The choosing has everything to do with God. And we here now in the new covenant, elect and chosen by God, sovereign choice election by God.It does not give us pride. It does not make us think that this is about us any more than the donkey on Palm Sunday might have thought, they're clapping for me. They're wavy palm branches for me. Palm Sunday is not about the donkey and the church and the choosing is not about us. It is about God's sovereign love where he, for reasons only he knows, chooses to set his love upon undeserving, unmerited sinners like us and to say, I love you because I'm love.And when God sets his love upon you and you respond to that love by loving him through the gospel, we enter into a a place. We enter into a a people group. God is forming a new people group. His chosen people. His chosen race.We are a royal priesthood. That does not mean that we are kings and queens or princes or princesses. A priest in Israel was somebody that was allowed to draw near to God. A priest was somebody that ministered in the temple and offered the sacrifices and represented the people to God. God allowed the priest into a place that the people were not allowed to come.We are now in the new covenant, a royal priesthood. We're not kings and queens, but God, the King, bids us to draw near to him. He allows us access into his presence. In the new covenant, my prayers offered in Jesus' name are heard in the very ears of God himself. We are we are close to him.We are near to him. We're near to the King. We're royal priests. We are a holy nation. Listen to Grudem.“Just as believers are a new spiritual race and a new spiritual priesthood, so they are a new spiritual nation, which is based now neither on ethnic identity nor geographical boundaries, but rather on allegiance to their heavenly King Jesus Christ who is truly King of kings and Lord of lords.” Do not miss the radical nature of even that statement. In a day where, especially in Israel, there was a sense that we are the people of God. We are the nation of God. And what does God come along and do?And what does Jesus do? He dies on the cross not for just for the Jew, but also for the Gentile. Now all who believe in Christ are part of the nation of God, the family of God. We have a kind of citizenship. We don't immigrate.We don't apply. Citizenship is by faith in allegiance to Jesus as Savior and Lord. And if Jesus is your Savior and Jesus is your Lord, then he is King of the nation that you're a member of. You become a part of that. And that means that there's no ethnic line on that.There's no age line on that. There's no geographical line on that. The child living in the hut in Africa is as free to become a part of this nation as the wealthy Wall Street stockbroker is, and the educated Harvard person is, and the Eskimo is, and the Aborigine is. It doesn't matter who you are, where you are, what your background, your skin color, the blood in your veins. It matters if you believe and trust in Christ.And if you do, welcome to the nation. Welcome to the nation. The nation of God. A fellow citizen with anybody else who has pledged allegiance to the King. We are part of a holy nation.And fourth, and I think most wonderfully, these words here, that we are a people for his own possession. That Greek word there for possession is used describing the practice of the ancient kings of the East, who in those kings like kings now or presidents now, really any nation, has to pay for roads and swords and ships and provide various things for the people of that particular nation. And so taxes are taken in and it goes into the treasury. And out of the treasury of the the nation, those things are are met. But the ancient kings of the East would have they would have the monies of the country that while they were king, could lay a claim to those things.Those were the things that were used to provide for the needs of the country. They had though a special treasury. A special treasury box, gold in that box that was not part of the national treasury. This was their own treasure. That word is the word that is used here.We are, to God, a personal treasure. We are, to God, a personal possession. This is about relationship. We belong to him. We belong to almighty God, a treasure to the most high God.Here's just two verses tha…

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Craving Spiritual Milk and Spiritual Growth Sep 27, 2026

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Steve DeWitt Craving Spiritual Milk and Spiritual Growth Study Guide for Spiritual Exiles, 1 Peter 2:1-3 Scripture Reference: 1 Peter 2:1-3 Visit the series page: Exiles: A study in 1 Peter Donate to Support The Journey Sermon Transcript for Spiritual Exiles, 1 Peter 2:1-3 Sermon Series: Spiritual ExilesMessage: Craving Spiritual Milk and Spiritual Growth Airdate: 9/22-9/23/26Programs: 2362 & 2363We continue our series in First Peter today, and you can open your Bibles if you have one with you. And we get into the second chapter of this letter. And by way of introduction, you know, for about twenty years, the milk industry sponsored a series of advertisements. These were billboards, magazines, TV advertisements. Some of you old timers might remember this.It was called either got milk or milk, it does the body good.Right? And so they one of the strategies they incorporated with this is that they would get famous people and they would have the milk mustache, right? And they would put them up there. And I just dug up a couple here to remind you maybe of how they did this.You may remember him. You might remember him. And they did a lot of this kind of thing. And the idea was that, hey, if these famous people drink milk, look at how successful they've been and seemingly healthy they are, then therefore, who wouldn't wanna be healthy like them? So, therefore, drink, you know, drink milk.Well, here's a question. What about spiritually? Is the same thing true spiritually? Will a normal, healthy Christian have a desire to grow? And maybe what we need in this, I got thinking, was a slightly different ad campaign for Christians.And so here, I'll give you an example of kind of maybe what I was thinking possibly might work. This one, I think this will this will next one will really pastor Gary Butler here at Bethel Church.What would those insinuate? Well, if you want to be like Martin Luther or Gary Butler, then you better be drinking your milk.But how do we do that exactly?Like how do Christians grow? And Peter brings us here today to one of the core values of our church, which is growth. And it's great when God grows us in in width. Right? Today, we birth a new campus and things like that that that seem to indicate a growing sphere of of of spiritual growth.But what Peter is not he's not talking about this way. He's talking about this way. How do we grow deeper or how do we mature as Christians? And will a healthy Christian want that? That's where we're going today.Our passage is First Peter two verses one through three. I'm gonna read God's word, and then we're going to get into it. Here's what Peter writes. “So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander. Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk that by it, you may grow up to salvation.”“If indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.” It’s important when you read the Bible to realize that those chapter divisions and those verse divisions, those were all added, like centuries after these letters were written. When Peter was writing this, he didn't say, okay. And now for chapter two of my book. He just was writing.And so the context and what's said before often is critical to understanding what that person is saying when they're actually saying it. And so if we just look a little bit to the latter part of chapter one, we see that there really are three themes that Peter has been developing. One of them is the need for moral purity and obedience in the Christian's life. We see that in verses 14 and following. Verses 22 and following are all about us loving one another.And then we have in verses twenty-four and twenty-five, teaching about the word of God. An authentic Christianity, you can study it in history. You can find it alive anywhere in the world. It will always prioritize those three things, the need for obedience, the the need for loving one another, and the role of the word of God in the hearts and the lives of the people of God. So what Peter does now is he's been talking about these things, and he he gets practical with it.You can almost sense him, you know, thinking of the people that are listening to the letter thinking they they may not know exactly what I'm talking about. So how about if I get a little bit specific now with what it looks like or maybe what it doesn't look like to be obedient, to love one another, and to prioritize the word of God. And what he does here now beginning in chapter two is that he lists five I'm calling them toxins. Five toxins to any Christian relationship and certainly any Christian church. Notice that he begins with the word so, at least in the ESV, the the Greek word there.It's just that word often translated therefore. And when you see these little conjunctions, it's easy to kinda skip over them. Right? You haven't really looked at a conjunction since grammar class, and you didn't even like doing it then. But when you read the Bible, these little words tell you what the author is intending.And so he begins the chapter by saying, therefore or so, based on everything I've been saying here, this now is what I want you to realize. And what does he want us to realize? That when it comes to loving one another, moral obedience, and the role of the word of God, he begins now with five things that will destroy all of that, particularly the loving and the unity part. And he lists now these five toxins that any Christian should try very hard not to have a part of their lifestyle, and every church should work very hard at not having a part of being kind of the culture of the church. So let's just walk through these one at a time.He begins with malice. K? Malice. Malice is a word it's a general word for evil of any kind. But because Peter is talking about interpersonal relationships, they translate it malice.And that's a pretty good word. It's not a word that we use all the time. Do we understand what it means? To have malice towards somebody is the opposite of loving them. It is to have evil in my heart towards somebody else.And because of that, you could view the first one in the list as kind of a general statement that summarizes all of them. Right? If you don't have malice in your heart, you're probably not slandering somebody. Right? Or you're not deceiving them.So malice is kind of generally having malintent, a lack of love towards somebody else. If love is giving of yourself for their good and their joy to build them up and bless them, malice is the opposite of that. It is to view them negatively. It is to think and plot in my mind, how can I take them down? How can I hurt them?How can I make myself look better than them? So we are to take just generally malice towards other people. We're to get rid of it. We're to put it aside. I skipped actually something I wanted to mention to you.The word there for get rid of in the ESV, also translated, put away or actually, it's put away in the ESV. It's also translated get rid of. It is the word for taking off a garment. Okay? Taking off a garment.And the imagery here is with these things, you are you're like clothes, you are taking them off and you're you're putting them away. Why do I do that? In fact, maybe to ask the question, how often should you do that? How often should you take off the clothes? First service thought that was a trick question.But then I sniffed the air, and I realized they had no idea. People, you should do this daily, and some of you should begin applying that right now. Right? Daily, we want to take off the dirty clothes and to put it in the hamper and to why why do I do that? Because I want I wanna wear clean clothes.I don't wanna wear dirty clothes. It's only in a desperate situation when you need to wear something do you begin going through those dirty clothes. I'm gonna put this on again. No. I want clean clothes.That's the imagery of this. Put off these things. Why? Because I wanna put something else and something better on. K.So put off malice. Secondly, put off deceit. Now I think most of us know what deceit is. This is to deceive. It is deception.It is lying. The word in the Greek here is actually a word that fisher it's used for fishermen.I don't if you have fishermen here, but all of us understand the concept of fishing. Right? Nobody fishes with a bare hook unless they're really biting, and that's a lot of fun.Always, when you're fishing, you have a hook, but it's hiding in something else. Right? There's a worm or there's a jig or there's a surface lure that looks like a frog or whatever it is. And that fisherman is putting that thing out, and he's doing all that he can to make it look real, to make it look like it's something the fish is going to like. But then in the end, it's something that the fish doesn't like.Right? Because he sets the hook, and now the fish is on the line. The deception has done its deed. In our relationships, deceit deceit is anytime that we are less than honest with one another. Now we live in a day where lying or shading the truth is almost acceptable, right?We listen to politicians. We listen to the superstars and all of that. We always wonder, are we getting the real story, right? Because there's such a pattern of of deceit but in the church, we are freed from that. Why?Because we know the truth in Christ. Right? Now I'm in a place where I don't I don't I don't want to walk in darkness. I want to walk in the light, John says. There is this freedom from having to to be deceitful towards others and certainly to use my words in a way that would be damaging or would mislead you.That is the key. He's not talking here about when you say, oh, I think I've I've got that appointment at noon on Friday, then you look at your calendar and actually it was Saturday. It's not where you're like, oh, I've gotta go and I've gotta ask forgiveness. But it was an honest mistake. K?Here's the test. What is my motivation with my words? Am I using my words in some way to either mislead the other person or in some way to cause for them to see me in a way that's not true, to pump myself up in front of them? That would also would be deceit. We're to put these things away.Third, hypocrisy. Now, I can skip that because you never see that in church. Actually, we see it so much that we have metaphors for this. It's to be two faced or to speak with a forked tongue. Have you ever heard that phrase?What is that referring to? It's the snake. Right? And they got the the end of their their tongue. It's it can it's got little like, it's got two parts to it.So the the snake's tongue, it can wiggle here and it can wiggle here. It's a forked tongue. And there are some people that are really good at saying one thing over here and saying another thing over here. They are duplicit. Literally, two faced is what hypocrisy means.They are one way to these people, and they're another way to these people. Is this a problem amongst amongst Christians? It's a problem in my life. I think to be a Christian is to struggle with a kind of reality that I'm following Jesus, I believe in him, I'm a Christian, I'm a Christ follower, But to also struggle with the reality of my humanity. Right?And so some people's solution to that is to act one way here and to act another over here instead of embracing the gospel which says that I am a sinner saved by grace. The gospel frees us from the need to be hypocrites. Right? Somebody said the church is the only organization you have to acknowledge that you're a sinner to get in, and then you spend the rest of your time trying to act like you're not one. Right?And so we all walk around and we're all good and we're all perfect and everything's fine, and I haven't sinned since I got saved thirty years ago. No laughter on that one. Indeed, hypocrisy. There was a recent poll amongst 20 somethings in The U. S.That said that I think it let me get the number right. 86% of non Christian 20 somethings perceived Christians as being hypocritical.Apparently, 20 somethings are in a wonderful moral standing to judge the quality of the lives of others, which itself is hypocritical, of course.But I digress regarding the self defeating question there. But the point being is that many people obviously view Christians and see you driving to church this morning.Right? And they say, oh, no. They're just a bunch of hypocrites in there. There's that kind of thing. That's not what Peter's talking about.He's talking about the intentional, duplicit living that lives this way, sanctimonious, I'm a follower of Jesus, I'm righteous, but they have another face, another life. This, I think, is one of the struggles of second generation Christians who grow up in the church. Right? Because they see mom and dad at church, small group, whatever it is, and, you know, everything's cheery and happy. And I'm, you know, I'm we're all very, very, very, very committed Christians.But then they see at home, and obviously no parents are perfect. But you realize this is why second and third generation Christians often struggle and maybe even reject the faith professed by their parents because they see intimately the two facedness. I could talk more about that. I don't have time. The point that Peter is making is that the gospel frees us from having to have two faces.We're free to be who we are in Christ. We don't have to play act. We don't have to wear a mask. We can be real and authentic. I sent some authenticity in the videos for the baptism today, did you not?That was that was very encouraging. Don't be sanctimonious. Don't act high and holy but secretly live another way. Be who you are. We are who we are in Christ, right?Just be who you are. The third one is envy. Okay? Envy. Envy or jealousy.Jealousy, they're they're like twin evil sisters. They're very similar. Slight difference between envy and jealousy. Envy? Envy says, I crave what you have.Jealousy says, I crave what you have, and I don't want you to have it. Right? I'm jealous of you. Think of Joseph's brothers as an example of this with the coat of many colors. Envy leads to jealousy because the more convinced I am that I would be happy if I had what you have, the more I'm going to resent you for actually having it.Jonathan Edwards about envy. Envy may be defined to be a spirit of dissatisfaction with and opposition to the prosperity and happiness of others as compared with our own. The thing that the envious person is opposed to and dislikes is the comparative superiority of the state of honor or prosperity or happiness that another may enjoy over that which he possesses. And the point that Edwards makes here, it's not just that you have the car, the house, the reputation, or the body that I want. It's that I sense that you're happy having it, and I resent you for that.It's a key insight, I think. Love is the opposite of that, isn't it? Love doesn't envy other people for having things that I don't have. Love is self giving for the good and joy of others. And so if you have something that I don't have and you're happy about it, I can be happy with your happiness.I can join in your happiness, not resent you for being happy. Why? Because I'm for you. Love is to be for other people. And when they succeed and when they have things that God allows them to have or whatever it might be, now we can be happy with one another.This is why I think envy and jealou…

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Jesus: A Crushing Rock or a Saving Stone? - Part B Sep 25, 2026

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Steve DeWitt Jesus: A Crushing Rock or a Saving Stone? - Part B Study Guide for Spiritual Exiles, 1 Peter 2:4-8 Scripture Reference: 1 Peter 2:4-8 Visit the series page: Exiles: A study in 1 Peter Donate to Support The Journey Sermon Transcript for Spiritual Exiles, 1 Peter 2:4-8 Sermon Series: Spiritual ExilesMessage: Jesus: A Crushing Rock or Saving Stone?Airdate: 9/24–9/25/26Programs: 2364 and 2365Alright, we're coming to our our teaching time now in in First Peter. We're continuing our series in First Peter, and we have a passage in front of us today that is both wonderful and challenging. It is wonderful because of the truth that's in it; it's challenging because the Peter who writes this uses these metaphors and these illustrations, and he kind of mixes them all up, and it's a little hard to get. I actually was looking at this thinking, how am I gonna teach this passage? But my job is to try to make it understandable and simple, and we'll try to do that today. But there's a wonderful truth, there's wonderful truths in here, and I hope God blesses our time in His Word. Are you with me?Alright, let's talk about stones today. Okay, let's talk about rocks. Rocks and stones. And one of the reasons that Peter talks about stones and rocks, and why we find it throughout Scripture, is because in the first century, in the ancient world, they didn't have things like we have for construction. They didn't have asphalt and steel and iron and things like that that make up the architecture of our cities and our towns. They just basically had wood and rocks. So when they were going to go to build something, whether it be a road or a building, they would have to have rocks. So everywhere you went, you saw stones and rocks. You walked on rocks, you lived in rocks, rocks and stones all the time. So when it came to illustrating things in in the first century, a very effective one was to talk about rocks and stones, because everybody could relate to that. And Peter here is going to describe Jesus as three different rocks, or three different stones, and I'm gonna read our text today and see if you can pick up on the three stones that Peter describes Jesus as.I'm reading now, First Peter chapter two, beginning in verse four: “As you come to Him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For it stands in Scripture: behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a a cornerstone, chosen and precious, and whoever believes in Him will not be put to shame. So the honor is for you who believe; but for those who do not believe, the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone and a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense. They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do.”Alright, did you pick up on the three? Can we say them in order? If you, if you did pick up on them, what's the first one? Jesus is a living stone. Secondly, Jesus is a cornerstone. And thirdly, Jesus is a stumbling stone. Yes. And that's just going to basically be our outline here, to talk about Jesus in those three respects. So we begin with Jesus as three kinds of stones.And just to note, it's a little ironic, isn't it, that Peter of all people is calling Jesus a stone, because after all, what did Jesus call Peter? Do you remember, his name was Simon, actually, and somewhere along the way Jesus says to him, he says, you know what, I'm changing your name, from now on your name is no longer Simon, your name is Peter. But what does Peter mean? Peter means rock. So here we have Jesus calling Peter a rock, and Peter calling Jesus a stone. I find that interesting. K. Very interesting.So Jesus as the living stone, what does that mean? "As you come to Him, a living stone", what might that be referring to? And when we see, for example, something that is an inanimate object now becoming alive, it sure sounds like, what does it sure sound like, resurrection, doesn't it? For something that is inanimate now to be animate, to be alive. Jesus was dead in the grave, now alive. Living stone refers to the resurrection of Jesus. Stones don't live, stones don't do anything, but in the Bible we find them occasionally being attributed some qualities like that. For example, you remember when Jesus, in His triumphal entry, the Pharisees come to Him, and as He's coming in they say, tell all these people to stop, they're singing your praises, tell them to stop. And what does Jesus say? If they stop, the rocks will cry out, right? So singing rocks, who's ever heard of singing rocks? Maybe the Rolling Stones is as close as we get to that, right? Rocks don't sing and stones don't live, so a living stone is the most remarkable thing.And here we're now continuing in the text here to see this illustration that Peter is working. He says he is a living stone rejected by men, but in the sight of God chosen and precious. And if you look at verse six, Peter is about to refer to Isaiah twenty-eight, which says, “behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone, chosen and precious,” and he applies the chosen and precious to Jesus. Now, how is Jesus chosen? How is Jesus precious? Well, Isaiah is foretelling the coming Messiah, and he uses this picture of a mason who is laying the most important stone in the building, the cornerstone. K. So how would a mason go about laying that cornerstone? Well, he probably would go to the quarry, or go to his inventory, and he would pick out the very best stone that he could find. Why? Because the cornerstone, the shape and the character of the cornerstone, becomes the shape and character of the entire building. The quality, the nature of that stone, shapes the quality and the nature of the rest of the building. And so you wanna make sure you have the very best stone that you can have. And so a mason would look over everything he had and he'd say, this is the cornerstone. And when he selected that stone, it became the chosen stone. K. The chosen stone. These words here are praising three aspects of Jesus' work: he is the living stone, resurrection; he is the chosen stone, Messiah; and he is the precious stone, speaking to his glorious and infinite worth.And Peter's goal in this language here is to encourage us in what way? Here's the principle: who Jesus is defines who we are when we are in a faith relationship with him. Let me say it again, who Jesus is defines who we are when we are in a faith relationship to him. Like a cornerstone to a building, the cornerstone defines the character and the nature of the rest of the building. Jesus is, for our faith and our salvation, he is that kind of a cornerstone, and when I am in a faith relationship with him, who he is defines who I am. K.And here's where the met metaphor is mixed a little bit, but he is the living stone because he is alive, because he was resurrected, we now live in that eternal life. I'm in a faith relationship with Jesus, as Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me will never die,” right? Because I live, so shall you, he says elsewhere. Because he is alive, because he was resurrected, when we are in a faith relationship with him, like a building in relationship to its cornerstone, the qualities that Jesus have become our qualities. And you'll notice then he says here that Jesus is the living stone, and we as, are are, like living stones. K. So he is alive, therefore we also are alive. I told you it's a little challenge here. K. But do you get what it's, what it's saying? I can go over that again. I'm looking around, nobody wants to say. K. More on this, we'll, we'll get going here.Look at verse five: “what are we, we're living stones, and we are being built up as a spiritual house. For it stands in Scripture: behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone, chosen and precious, and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.” And so here now we move to the second stone, he is the living stone, he is the cornerstone. Okay, cornerstone, and this quotation from Isaiah twenty-eight, Isaiah prophesies about the Messiah who would come, and his life and his ministry would be a kind of chosen and precious cornerstone. So the living stone is also the cornerstone of a great house, and we, like living stones, are the bricks and the mortar of that house.So the metaphor mixes here a little bit, but I think that we all can get this, especially if you like Lord of the Rings, and I haven't quoted from Lord of the Rings in at least two or three weeks, so it's time to do it again. If you like Lord of the Rings, or The Hobbit that's recently came out, you know that Tolkien, as he's describing Middle-earth, he talks about kingdoms, you have these various kingdoms, and the kingdoms are known as, for example, the house of Rohan. K. Now, the house of Rohan is not literally a house, but it is a kingdom. It describes the the king of the kingdom, the name of the king of the kingdom, and all who are in that kingdom are of the house of Rohan. Okay, or Gondor is another one. Okay, the kingdom of Gondor, if you are in, if you live in, the kingdom of Gondor, you are of the house of Gondor. It doesn't mean that you are a a brick or a stone, but the people of the kingdom are what make up the house of Gondor. And Peter is saying essentially the same thing here, that we are the of the house of Jesus. We are not literally bricks and mortar, we are living stones. Okay, we're people, but we make up the structure of this spiritual house, the house of Jesus Christ, that is made up of all who put their faith and their trust in him. We are in his kingdom, we are, we are his people.There's a story that goes about a king that was visiting ancient Sparta, the famous Spartan kingdom, and the the the the the Spartan king was boasting to this visiting Monarch about the walls of Sparta, and as the visiting king looked around, he could see no walled city, and he asked, where are the renowned walls of Sparta? And the Spartan king pointed to his army and replied, these are the walls of Sparta, every man a brick. Okay, and you can say right there, who are the walls of the house of Jesus Christ? Who are the, who are the structures and the beams and the and the the and the the materials of this house, this kingdom? It is those who have put their faith in Jesus, and his life now is their life, and his character now is their character, and we are the they, and we are living out this house, this spiritual house, as the people of God.For what purpose? Notice: to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God. We are priests, and this is a little bit of, again the metaphor keeps changing, but we are bricks in the house, but it doesn't mean that we just stand there like this and we do absolutely nothing. Rather, we are priests in this house. And the priests, if you look at the Old Testament, the priests in the Old Testament, what did they do? They represented men to God, and so you went to the temple and you went to the priest, and he took that sheep or that bull or that goat and he offered that sacrifice, and he represented you to God. But in the new covenant, no longer are priests needed, no, no more altars like that. We're not having something after the service, hey, take all your sheep and your bulls and your goats and go to the backroom and we'll offer those sacrifices for you, we don't do that anymore. Why? Because Christ's death was the once-for-all sacrifice. This new covenant is established by the blood of Jesus, not a bull or a goat or anything else. And so now, in this new covenant, we don't need that priest, that man that represents us to God, why? Because we are all priests in this house. We all have direct access to God, which Jesus has provided for us, he says that in the text, right, acceptable, acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. When Christ died, what happened to that veil in the temple? Torn in two, right? Representing the fact that from now on there is not one temple, and there are not priests; rather, there is one high priest, Jesus, and we are all priests, then, praying directly to God. We all have the ability to know and understand and interpret the word of God and apply it to our life. We minister to one another as priests in this house. It is a tremendous privilege to be a priest of God through Jesus Christ, and to offer, notice, spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God.Did you know, Christian, if you're a Christian, you're offering sacrifices? You're like, I didn't know that. Well, what kind of sacrifices might a Christian offer as a priest? Here are some, the Bible describes, Romans twelve one, we offer our bodies to God for service, my life, my body, the use of my body, my my day to day. I want this to be an act of worship to you, God. What was that song we started with, every praise to our God, every praise to our, here's the team over here, help me out, every praise to our God, every word of worship to our God, every praise, every praise to our God, yeah, they need me and Gary, what that means, but that's basically saying this point, that as a Christian and as a priest now, I have the privilege and the opportunity for everything that I do, every word of worship to our God, all my life now is to be, and can be, lived as a kind of offering directly to God through Jesus Christ, and God delights in it. K. When God, God delighted in the sacrifices in the Old Testament that were offered up in praise and worship to him, and now my whole life can be lived in a way that brings pleasure to God, as a kind of offering to God. Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all to the glory of God. And to, what a, what a freeing and joyous principle that is, to connect my whole life, all of it, my vocation and my recreation and my my health and my relationships and my marriage and my parenting and all the things that make up my life, all of it now, not just, not for me, but offered as a kind of glory to God.So if you're a Christian, you're a priest. The question is, are you a good one? Maybe to think about this week in your life: what did I do conscious of the presence of God, and intentionally done in a way pleasing to him? How did you do this week, Christian? Were you aware of God through the day? Were you aware of God, his watchful eye, the seeking of his pleasure with your words, your tongue, your giving, your love to others, all of it, as priests in this spiritual house of Jesus, pleasing to him? How might your week change if you saw each category of your life as an offering to God?Jesus is the cornerstone of the church. The third stone that we have here is a surprising one, I think, if you were just reading through First Peter, you wouldn't expect him to take the turn that he does here, but he talks about Jesus as the stumbling stone, and to do so he quotes again Old Testament, two passages that refer to, let me read them, let me read them here, a second, verse seven: “so the honor, the honor of being a priest, the honor of being in the house, is for you who believe; but for those who do not believe, the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone and a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense. They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do.” These are very sobering words here that Peter shares. He quotes from Isaiah one eighteen and Isaiah, I’m sorry, Psalm one eighteen and Isaiah eight, and both of these are using this stone language, but they're talking ab…

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Jesus: A Crushing Rock or a Saving Stone? - Part A Sep 24, 2026

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Steve DeWitt Jesus: A Crushing Rock or a Saving Stone? - Part A Study Guide for Spiritual Exiles, 1 Peter 2:4-8 Scripture Reference: 1 Peter 2:4-8 Visit the series page: Exiles: A study in 1 Peter Donate to Support The Journey Sermon Transcript for Spiritual Exiles, 1 Peter 2:4-8 Sermon Series: Spiritual ExilesMessage: Jesus: A Crushing Rock or Saving Stone?Airdate: 9/24–9/25/26Programs: 2364 and 2365Alright, we're coming to our our teaching time now in in First Peter. We're continuing our series in First Peter, and we have a passage in front of us today that is both wonderful and challenging. It is wonderful because of the truth that's in it; it's challenging because the Peter who writes this uses these metaphors and these illustrations, and he kind of mixes them all up, and it's a little hard to get. I actually was looking at this thinking, how am I gonna teach this passage? But my job is to try to make it understandable and simple, and we'll try to do that today. But there's a wonderful truth, there's wonderful truths in here, and I hope God blesses our time in His Word. Are you with me?Alright, let's talk about stones today. Okay, let's talk about rocks. Rocks and stones. And one of the reasons that Peter talks about stones and rocks, and why we find it throughout Scripture, is because in the first century, in the ancient world, they didn't have things like we have for construction. They didn't have asphalt and steel and iron and things like that that make up the architecture of our cities and our towns. They just basically had wood and rocks. So when they were going to go to build something, whether it be a road or a building, they would have to have rocks. So everywhere you went, you saw stones and rocks. You walked on rocks, you lived in rocks, rocks and stones all the time. So when it came to illustrating things in in the first century, a very effective one was to talk about rocks and stones, because everybody could relate to that. And Peter here is going to describe Jesus as three different rocks, or three different stones, and I'm gonna read our text today and see if you can pick up on the three stones that Peter describes Jesus as.I'm reading now, First Peter chapter two, beginning in verse four: “As you come to Him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For it stands in Scripture: behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a a cornerstone, chosen and precious, and whoever believes in Him will not be put to shame. So the honor is for you who believe; but for those who do not believe, the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone and a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense. They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do.”Alright, did you pick up on the three? Can we say them in order? If you, if you did pick up on them, what's the first one? Jesus is a living stone. Secondly, Jesus is a cornerstone. And thirdly, Jesus is a stumbling stone. Yes. And that's just going to basically be our outline here, to talk about Jesus in those three respects. So we begin with Jesus as three kinds of stones.And just to note, it's a little ironic, isn't it, that Peter of all people is calling Jesus a stone, because after all, what did Jesus call Peter? Do you remember, his name was Simon, actually, and somewhere along the way Jesus says to him, he says, you know what, I'm changing your name, from now on your name is no longer Simon, your name is Peter. But what does Peter mean? Peter means rock. So here we have Jesus calling Peter a rock, and Peter calling Jesus a stone. I find that interesting. K. Very interesting.So Jesus as the living stone, what does that mean? "As you come to Him, a living stone", what might that be referring to? And when we see, for example, something that is an inanimate object now becoming alive, it sure sounds like, what does it sure sound like, resurrection, doesn't it? For something that is inanimate now to be animate, to be alive. Jesus was dead in the grave, now alive. Living stone refers to the resurrection of Jesus. Stones don't live, stones don't do anything, but in the Bible we find them occasionally being attributed some qualities like that. For example, you remember when Jesus, in His triumphal entry, the Pharisees come to Him, and as He's coming in they say, tell all these people to stop, they're singing your praises, tell them to stop. And what does Jesus say? If they stop, the rocks will cry out, right? So singing rocks, who's ever heard of singing rocks? Maybe the Rolling Stones is as close as we get to that, right? Rocks don't sing and stones don't live, so a living stone is the most remarkable thing.And here we're now continuing in the text here to see this illustration that Peter is working. He says he is a living stone rejected by men, but in the sight of God chosen and precious. And if you look at verse six, Peter is about to refer to Isaiah twenty-eight, which says, “behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone, chosen and precious,” and he applies the chosen and precious to Jesus. Now, how is Jesus chosen? How is Jesus precious? Well, Isaiah is foretelling the coming Messiah, and he uses this picture of a mason who is laying the most important stone in the building, the cornerstone. K. So how would a mason go about laying that cornerstone? Well, he probably would go to the quarry, or go to his inventory, and he would pick out the very best stone that he could find. Why? Because the cornerstone, the shape and the character of the cornerstone, becomes the shape and character of the entire building. The quality, the nature of that stone, shapes the quality and the nature of the rest of the building. And so you wanna make sure you have the very best stone that you can have. And so a mason would look over everything he had and he'd say, this is the cornerstone. And when he selected that stone, it became the chosen stone. K. The chosen stone. These words here are praising three aspects of Jesus' work: he is the living stone, resurrection; he is the chosen stone, Messiah; and he is the precious stone, speaking to his glorious and infinite worth.And Peter's goal in this language here is to encourage us in what way? Here's the principle: who Jesus is defines who we are when we are in a faith relationship with him. Let me say it again, who Jesus is defines who we are when we are in a faith relationship to him. Like a cornerstone to a building, the cornerstone defines the character and the nature of the rest of the building. Jesus is, for our faith and our salvation, he is that kind of a cornerstone, and when I am in a faith relationship with him, who he is defines who I am. K.And here's where the met metaphor is mixed a little bit, but he is the living stone because he is alive, because he was resurrected, we now live in that eternal life. I'm in a faith relationship with Jesus, as Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me will never die,” right? Because I live, so shall you, he says elsewhere. Because he is alive, because he was resurrected, when we are in a faith relationship with him, like a building in relationship to its cornerstone, the qualities that Jesus have become our qualities. And you'll notice then he says here that Jesus is the living stone, and we as, are are, like living stones. K. So he is alive, therefore we also are alive. I told you it's a little challenge here. K. But do you get what it's, what it's saying? I can go over that again. I'm looking around, nobody wants to say. K. More on this, we'll, we'll get going here.Look at verse five: “what are we, we're living stones, and we are being built up as a spiritual house. For it stands in Scripture: behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone, chosen and precious, and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.” And so here now we move to the second stone, he is the living stone, he is the cornerstone. Okay, cornerstone, and this quotation from Isaiah twenty-eight, Isaiah prophesies about the Messiah who would come, and his life and his ministry would be a kind of chosen and precious cornerstone. So the living stone is also the cornerstone of a great house, and we, like living stones, are the bricks and the mortar of that house.So the metaphor mixes here a little bit, but I think that we all can get this, especially if you like Lord of the Rings, and I haven't quoted from Lord of the Rings in at least two or three weeks, so it's time to do it again. If you like Lord of the Rings, or The Hobbit that's recently came out, you know that Tolkien, as he's describing Middle-earth, he talks about kingdoms, you have these various kingdoms, and the kingdoms are known as, for example, the house of Rohan. K. Now, the house of Rohan is not literally a house, but it is a kingdom. It describes the the king of the kingdom, the name of the king of the kingdom, and all who are in that kingdom are of the house of Rohan. Okay, or Gondor is another one. Okay, the kingdom of Gondor, if you are in, if you live in, the kingdom of Gondor, you are of the house of Gondor. It doesn't mean that you are a a brick or a stone, but the people of the kingdom are what make up the house of Gondor. And Peter is saying essentially the same thing here, that we are the of the house of Jesus. We are not literally bricks and mortar, we are living stones. Okay, we're people, but we make up the structure of this spiritual house, the house of Jesus Christ, that is made up of all who put their faith and their trust in him. We are in his kingdom, we are, we are his people.There's a story that goes about a king that was visiting ancient Sparta, the famous Spartan kingdom, and the the the the the Spartan king was boasting to this visiting Monarch about the walls of Sparta, and as the visiting king looked around, he could see no walled city, and he asked, where are the renowned walls of Sparta? And the Spartan king pointed to his army and replied, these are the walls of Sparta, every man a brick. Okay, and you can say right there, who are the walls of the house of Jesus Christ? Who are the, who are the structures and the beams and the and the the and the the materials of this house, this kingdom? It is those who have put their faith in Jesus, and his life now is their life, and his character now is their character, and we are the they, and we are living out this house, this spiritual house, as the people of God.For what purpose? Notice: to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God. We are priests, and this is a little bit of, again the metaphor keeps changing, but we are bricks in the house, but it doesn't mean that we just stand there like this and we do absolutely nothing. Rather, we are priests in this house. And the priests, if you look at the Old Testament, the priests in the Old Testament, what did they do? They represented men to God, and so you went to the temple and you went to the priest, and he took that sheep or that bull or that goat and he offered that sacrifice, and he represented you to God. But in the new covenant, no longer are priests needed, no, no more altars like that. We're not having something after the service, hey, take all your sheep and your bulls and your goats and go to the backroom and we'll offer those sacrifices for you, we don't do that anymore. Why? Because Christ's death was the once-for-all sacrifice. This new covenant is established by the blood of Jesus, not a bull or a goat or anything else. And so now, in this new covenant, we don't need that priest, that man that represents us to God, why? Because we are all priests in this house. We all have direct access to God, which Jesus has provided for us, he says that in the text, right, acceptable, acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. When Christ died, what happened to that veil in the temple? Torn in two, right? Representing the fact that from now on there is not one temple, and there are not priests; rather, there is one high priest, Jesus, and we are all priests, then, praying directly to God. We all have the ability to know and understand and interpret the word of God and apply it to our life. We minister to one another as priests in this house. It is a tremendous privilege to be a priest of God through Jesus Christ, and to offer, notice, spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God.Did you know, Christian, if you're a Christian, you're offering sacrifices? You're like, I didn't know that. Well, what kind of sacrifices might a Christian offer as a priest? Here are some, the Bible describes, Romans twelve one, we offer our bodies to God for service, my life, my body, the use of my body, my my day to day. I want this to be an act of worship to you, God. What was that song we started with, every praise to our God, every praise to our, here's the team over here, help me out, every praise to our God, every word of worship to our God, every praise, every praise to our God, yeah, they need me and Gary, what that means, but that's basically saying this point, that as a Christian and as a priest now, I have the privilege and the opportunity for everything that I do, every word of worship to our God, all my life now is to be, and can be, lived as a kind of offering directly to God through Jesus Christ, and God delights in it. K. When God, God delighted in the sacrifices in the Old Testament that were offered up in praise and worship to him, and now my whole life can be lived in a way that brings pleasure to God, as a kind of offering to God. Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all to the glory of God. And to, what a, what a freeing and joyous principle that is, to connect my whole life, all of it, my vocation and my recreation and my my health and my relationships and my marriage and my parenting and all the things that make up my life, all of it now, not just, not for me, but offered as a kind of glory to God.So if you're a Christian, you're a priest. The question is, are you a good one? Maybe to think about this week in your life: what did I do conscious of the presence of God, and intentionally done in a way pleasing to him? How did you do this week, Christian? Were you aware of God through the day? Were you aware of God, his watchful eye, the seeking of his pleasure with your words, your tongue, your giving, your love to others, all of it, as priests in this spiritual house of Jesus, pleasing to him? How might your week change if you saw each category of your life as an offering to God?Jesus is the cornerstone of the church. The third stone that we have here is a surprising one, I think, if you were just reading through First Peter, you wouldn't expect him to take the turn that he does here, but he talks about Jesus as the stumbling stone, and to do so he quotes again Old Testament, two passages that refer to, let me read them, let me read them here, a second, verse seven: “so the honor, the honor of being a priest, the honor of being in the house, is for you who believe; but for those who do not believe, the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone and a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense. They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do.” These are very sobering words here that Peter shares. He quotes from Isaiah one eighteen and Isaiah, I’m sorry, Psalm one eighteen and Isaiah eight, and both of these are using this stone language, but they're talking ab…

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