April 28, 2024 | His: Love as Children, Living as Exiles (I Peter 1:1-2)

Transcription

I’m grateful for the magnificent love of Christ for us. This morning we’re going to be in the book of First Peter, chapter one. Children, if you’re headed out the door to Children’s Church, you’re welcome to go out the back. Now, if you’re staying in here with us, we’re glad to have you here as well.

Several months ago, really about a year or a little more than a year ago, we started on a particular journey as a church, which we’re going to continue in that journey is to worship God through all of the Bible, and to apply it as we can by his power to all of our lives. We’re coming to the end.

We just finished the Book of Job, and at this point, having worked through Job and John before that, on Sunday mornings, as well as in Sunday school and Bible studies, we’re at a point where we’ve finished up 14 books of the Bible that we’ve done teaching from our church in some form, some more detailed, some more overview.

We’re finishing up, just finished our 14th book, and as we move to a different book, as we move to first, Peter, this is a very different task than studying the book of Job. In some ways, first, Peter may be a lot more familiar to you. after all, it was written a thousand years later than the Book of Job.

It was written as a letter to a church, which is something or to multiple churches, which is different from job. So in some ways it may feel more familiar. It may feel easier in other ways. Maybe we relate to the story that’s told in job in a different way than we relate to the letter that’s written in first Peter.
And that’s one of the beauties of Scripture, of God’s plan. He didn’t just give us one book. I know we bind it as one book, but he didn’t give us one book. He gave us a library of 66 books written over well over a thousand years by many different authors, doctors and fishermen, and shepherds and kings in different genres, where we have poems and proverbs and wisdom, literature and history and prophecy and letters.

And that’s God’s wisdom in giving us this range of books, so that when we come to first Peter, we don’t come to it exactly the same way that we came to Jobe. In many ways, it’s the same. We come saying, what does God want for us to know? But the way he’s communicated throughout his word is staggeringly diverse, which is good, because this room is staggeringly diverse, too, and he knows how to communicate what we need.
God says all Scripture is given by him, by his inspiration, and is profitable to tell us how we should live and how we shouldn’t live. To tell us how we should think and how we shouldn’t think, so that we’ll be prepared. We’ll have everything that we need for every good work. So as we come to a new book, I’m excited to embark on a new book.

I’m a little sad to leave Joe behind to, but I’m grateful that God and His wisdom knows exactly what we needed in His Word, in every book, in every genre. And so before we dive into First Peter, let’s pray. Lord, we come and we sit before you. We sit before your wisdom that you knew every word of Scripture needed to be there.
That we need the poems and the wrestling’s. And the story that we find in Jobe. And that we also need the letter and the truths that are revealed here in first Peter.
Help us to bow before you to hear what you have to say. Help us to take the truths that we read, hear the truths that we have sung this morning. May they impact our lives.

And we thank you for your wisdom. We thank you for your word. In Jesus name. Amen.

As I was concluding, Jobe, one of the things that was hard to me in the last few weeks, especially as we got to God’s speeches at the end and as I talked with some of you, was that there are there are questions I get to the end of job and I don’t think, well, he just answered every question I had.
And I know we all have different sufferings and challenges that maybe you see, like I would say, the book of Job helped answer some of those questions. It helped sustain me and strengthen me. But it didn’t get me all the way to where I want to be either. I don’t have all the answers that I want about suffering and challenges, and I knew I was heading into First Peter next.

So I’ve been reading through First Peter off and on for a while now.

And one emphasis has really concentrated to me as I went through the book this morning. We’ll do some introductory things, some overview things to set the stage really for the next several months in first Peter. But one emphasis that you could boil down really to one word, which for my soul is exactly what I needed. After hearing Job.

That’s the word his. Because I get to the end of Jobe and I think, all right, there’s some philosophical wrestling, and I see how this could all work out and all this kind of stuff.

But how does that affect the way I relate to God? And does God just look at his creation like there’s this thing over here? If something bad happens, fine. If something good happens, fine. But I’m wiser and I know the best way to do it.

And when you come to first, Peter, the thing that we’re going to see is emphasized over and over and over. As Peter writes. He writes and says, you are. If you’re a believer in Jesus, you are God’s. You’re his.
Which we can take a couple different directions. One, we could go from first Peter chapter two, where he says, he called us out of darkness into his marvelous like so that we would proclaim his excellencies, and we could take the word his and say, what are we supposed to be doing? Well, we’re looking to His Excellency. He’s not My Excellencies, so we could go that direction with the word his.

But that’s not where I’ve spent most of my thought. It’s that I am his. And all of his people are his. What a privilege.

It’s a thrilling privilege to be his. That means. And I would say, if that doesn’t strike you immediately as thrilling, I understand it strikes me as more thrilling now that I’ve been thinking about it for a while, and I’d encourage you to meditate on that. What does it mean to belong to God? We saying, my hope is in the Lord.

Earlier, he shows his wounded hands and names me as his own. Why does that matter? Why is it important that he will hold me? I’m his wife. It’s thrilling. Think about if something belongs to you. You protect it. Assuming you care about it. When we say we’re his, we’re his family, his children. I think all of us would protect any children we knew were in danger.

But when they’re your children, you protect them a little differently.

When we belong to him, we have his protection. What about his provision? Again, you’d probably be glad to provide and help any child who needed it, but you would have a different responsibility and a different feeling about protecting and providing for your child. What about his attention? To say you’re his means. You can walk before the throne of the king and say whatever you need to say and say Father.

But you’re his.

How about Scripture describes his riches in glory? You’re his. That’s your inheritance. Peter is going to talk about that in chapter one, verse four and five. How about his family? All of the family of God is your family. You might have a wonderful earthly family. You might be here today and say, I don’t really connect with my family at all, but if you have faith in Jesus Christ, you have God’s family as your own because you’re his.

What about his power, his grace, his love, his wisdom on your behalf? As we come to this book, Peter emphasizes, he says he starts really with this first statement Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who are elect exiles, you’re his. You’re chosen. If you go over, just turn to chapter two real quickly. Verse nine you are a chosen race.

God chose you. You’re a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession. Verse ten. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people. You belong to him. Over and over through this book, Peter emphasizes to his readers that they are his. And he says, this is a thrilling privilege, but it’s also it’s thrilling.

It’s also a humbling reality to be God’s, because that means I’m not my own. I don’t belong to me. I belong to God. I’m not the highest good he is because I’m his. I’m not the main goal. I’m not the main purpose because I’m his.

We as believers, when we come and say we belong to God, that’s thrilling. And it ought to be. It’s also humbling because it means I don’t rule my life. I belong to him.

It’s thrilling. It’s humbling. I think it’s also sobering. It’s a responsibility to belong to God. Because since I’m not my own king, I have to follow what he has commanded me.

And since I am his, he has said the world hated me. They will also hate you.

That’s because since we are his, there’s two things that are true about us. Again, we’re see this theme over and over. We’re loved as children. And we’re living as exiles. Both of those things are true for believers living in this world. We’re not living in our home. Heaven is our home with Christ. We’re not living as people of the world.

We’ve been set apart. We’ve been separated. So we’re exiles. We’re strangers. We’re aliens in that sense of the word, not in the little green men sense. But we’re separated. We’re exiles, and yet we’re loved as his children. Those two things are related as we go through the book of First Peter. I hope you hear both of those and realize you can’t have one without the other.

If you’re his so that you are loved as his child, then you are not at home in this world.

They can’t be separated because they both point to the same ground. You belong to him.

And so as we go through this book, this is the theme that God has impressed on my heart as I’ve studied. We belong to him. Which is thrilling, humbling, sobering all at the same time because it means we have immeasurable blessings and privileges. But we live as strangers now.

So to to deal with some introductory ideas, looking at this book, I just want to talk a minute about Peter because we’ll see more as we go through this book times where an event from Peter’s life connects directly with something that he will say in this book, for example, I’ll just give you one example, though there’s many. If you look at chapter five, the beginning of chapter five, Peter says, so I exhort the elders among you as a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, as well as a partaker in the glory that is going to be revealed.

Here’s his statement Shepherd the flock of God that is among you. We’ll skip a few lines here. Go to verse four. When the chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory. Why did Peter think that way? Because Peter was sitting in front of Jesus when Jesus said, I am the good Shepherd. And Peter thought that way because at the end of Peter’s life, when he’s sitting out there after Jesus was raised and Jesus comes and says, Peter, do you love me?

You know I love you, Lord. Feed my sheep, shepherd the flock. Peter uses this language because it comes out of Peter’s life and we have so many stories of Peter think we know Simon Peter the fisherman. This book was probably written near the end of his life while he was in Rome. There’s some hints at the end of chapter five that would say, probably while he was in Rome, I would say it’s probably around 62 to 64 AD somewhere in that range.

So 30 ish years after Christ died. After Peter had been serving God faithfully for 30 years or so. If that’s the case, it was written before the fall of Jerusalem, before major persecution had started up from Nero and Rome, but not before people knew it was a possibility. So as he writes, and we’ll see, he writes about suffering.

He writes about government, he writes about all those things. He was probably not sitting under the worst persecution, but he could see it on the horizon. He knew it could come. And so he looks at these people and says, how can I shepherd this flock the way Jesus commissioned me and told me to do it? How do I shepherd this flock?

Think of these. Think of key moments in his life just to put us in the right frame of mind to hear Peter. So he’s a fisherman. He’s called from his fishing nets to follow Jesus. Think about the Mount of Transfiguration. He goes up with Jesus on to the mountain with two others, and he sees Moses and Elijah, and he sees Christ revealed in his glory.

I can’t even imagine what that must have been like. And yet Peter. In verse eight and nine of chapter one, he wants to make sure the people reading don’t think, well, of course, Peter, you saw Jesus. Of course you follow him. He says in verse eight, though you have not seen him, you love him, though you do not now see him.

You believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory. He says, yes, I saw him on the mountain. Yes, I saw his glory revealed. You haven’t seen him, but you love him, and you rejoice with that same sight of glory. He wants them to know that just because he was on the Mount of Transfiguration doesn’t mean that they can’t really know Jesus like Peter did.

Or Matthew 16 Jesus asks Peter and the others who do others say that I am? And they say, well, some say Moses, some say John the Baptist. We don’t know. Jesus says, but who do you say that I am? And who is it? We all know Peter tends to be like the spokesman for the apostles who speaks up Peter, and he says, you are the Christ, the son of the living God.

Jesus responds, blessed are you on this rock. I will build my church. We’ll talk more about that when we get to chapter two. But right afterwards Jesus says, Now I’m going to go die in Jerusalem. Peter says, no, Lord, you’re not doing that. And Jesus says, get behind me, Satan. So when we’re reading this from Peter, we have a guy who went from like the highest to the lowest in, you know, one conversation.

You got it right. The Christ, the son of the living God. Get behind me, Satan.

I can relate to Peter because I have those days. I know this is true and this is good. In the next minute, what I’m thinking is not true and it’s not good. And it wasn’t just then it was Peter saying, I will stand by you forever, drawing a sword in the garden, attacking the soldiers because he knew Jesus couldn’t be defeated, Jesus tells him to put it away, and now Peter denies him.

Three times swearing he doesn’t even know the man.

And yet Jesus comes after the resurrection and says, do you love me? Feed my sheep. We have Jesus telling Peter, Satan has desired to have you, to sift you, to oppress you and push on you. And Jesus says, but I have prayed for you so that your faith would not fail. And Jesus knew by the way, that his request would be answered, because he says, and when you return, strengthen the brothers.

First, Peter is an example of Peter doing exactly that. After he returns, he writes this book to strengthen brothers. We could go into acts and we see him preaching at Pentecost, boldly proclaiming in front of who knows how many people we know. Thousands were added to the church. We don’t know how many more people heard. And this fisherman gets up and says, I’m going to tell you about what happened.

We have Peter saying, you tell me we can’t preach the gospel. Should we obey you or God? This is the guy who’s writing this book.

We have his boldness, and he wrote this book partly to give them confidence. We have someone who is a close companion of Jesus, but who got it wrong over and over and over. And so he writes to them to say, you can have closeness with Jesus too. And let me tell you about the goodness of Jesus, the Shepherd.

When you get it wrong.

And so you have Peter saying, I have to strengthen and shepherd these people. How do I do that? This book is his attempt to do that by God’s grace. So who’s he writing to? Well, he describes him in verse one. He says to those who are elect exiles of the dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia. He writes to these these different areas within Asia minor, and he writes to churches that are there, and he calls them elect exiles.

I want to talk about what that is, and I’ll come back to what I just said in a minute that he’s writing to churches that are there. Elect exiles are words. We use those words. But sometimes it gets a weird idea. Sometimes exile can sound like somebody threw you out, which isn’t entirely what he’s saying here, because he’s going to say in verse two, it’s not that the people exiled you, it’s that you’re exiled according to God’s knowledge and power and purpose.

So when he calls them exiles, that might get us the wrong idea, but it works. But if you think of those who are rejected by the world, if you think of sojourners that aren’t at home here, they’re travelers. You think of someone who lives in a certain place right now. But that’s not their real identity. That’s what the word here that’s translated exiles points to.

He says, you are travelers, old song that some of you know. This world is not my home. That’s the idea I’m just passing through. This isn’t where I live forever. This is not home for me. When he says exiles, Peter’s looking at believers and saying, this is true of you. This is not your home. You are rejected by this world.

You’re traveling to somewhere else.

Now, in the interest of making sure we have our introductory idea here, I also want to say, well, who is he thinking about as believers? I told you, I thought, I think he’s writing to churches. Who is he thinking about? Are they Jews? Are they Gentiles? Questions that could come up there. There’s a couple of things, and I’ll tell you these verses and you’re welcome to write them down if you want to go look or you can look now in chapter one, verse 14, he describes them as living, as being conformed to the passions of their former ignorance, which doesn’t sound like the way Peter and Paul talked about Jews.

Now we could say maybe they were ignorant in some ways, but there’s a sense in which you say it seems like this might be at least include Gentiles. Verse 18 of chapter one also says they were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from their forefathers. Well, certainly the law keeping the law by itself would be a futile way, but it’s not normally referred to that way.

If we go to chapter two, I read it earlier, verse nine. He uses this language of chosen race, royal priesthood, a holy nation. Those are all languages that he did use to describe to Jews in the Old Testament. But he continues and says, you called out of darkness once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people.

That’s exactly the same phrase that’s used in Romans chapter nine to refer to Gentiles being brought into the church, along with Jewish believers as well. And if we were to go to first Peter chapter four, the way he describes their past, he says, here’s the kinds of things you’ve lived in. They were not the kinds of things that Jews typically did idolatry, immorality.

So I think what he’s doing is looking at churches which had been formed in Asia minor, which included Gentiles and Jews. I think his emphasis actually is probably on Gentiles in that context, but both Gentiles and Jews, churches in Asia minor, in other words, people a whole lot like us. That’s the point of what I just said in all of that.

Who’s he writing to when you read first? Peter, we really can. Unlike questions about job, where you say, who is he writing this to? Unlike some things in the Old Testament, when you read first Peter, you can say Peter the Apostle thought about a church like Berean Bible Church and people like each of you sitting in it and said, here is how I’m going to try and help them live in the reality that they belong to God.

So if we’re exiles, if we’re call it foreign citizens, we’re heavenly citizens. Philippians says that our citizenship is in heaven. If we’re exiles or foreign citizens, how is it that we came to be foreign citizens? What’s different about us than someone else that makes us exiles? What’s different about us and someone who’s not a believer in Jesus? Well, first God chose us to be his.

If you had someone, let’s say a wealthy family. Take whichever one you want. You can do Bill gates or whoever. Somebody with tons of money, and they go to the slums of the worst inner city in America, wherever you want to pick. I don’t really care. And they adopt somebody out of that and say, I will protect you and love you and care for you.

You will now have all that I have. It’s yours.

That adopted child is now in some ways very different from the people they have been around, simply because Bill gates or whoever chose them and loved them and cared for them. They now have different resources. They now have different access to Bill gates or whoever. It’s different in the same way we are connected as we are exiles, because God has chosen us.

And I think sometimes I know my heart, sometimes I look at the way I’m different from the world, and sometimes I might think like, God, couldn’t you have just made us not be quite so different from those people? But that’s because I don’t realize how wonderful it is to be his. Just like in that scenario, someone who was adopted out of a poverty stricken situation might sit there and go, I kind of miss where I used to live, but you live in a mansion, and every time I say, God, do I really have to be so different from the world that they don’t like who we are as believers?

Every time? That’s in my heart. But we live in a mansion. Not literally, but that’s what we have in heaven waiting for us.

In chapter two, where we read, he says, we’re a people for his own possession. We’ve been chosen in that way. And then he continues in verse 11 says, I urge you as sojourners and exiles, his mind goes straight from this God chose you and loves you. Therefore you’re sojourners and exiles.

There’s no way to separate the two. So when we ask the question, how are we foreign citizens? How are we exiles? Well, because the King chose to adopt you. If you’re a believer in Jesus Christ.

We also have a new authority. We’ll camp a little more in verse one for a minute. Don’t just zoom past greetings. At the beginning of scriptural books, he says, Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, Apostle, doesn’t just mean he was a follower of Jesus, it doesn’t just mean that he knew what Jesus said, it means he is an authoritative spokesman, speaking on behalf of Jesus Christ.

The world around this church had no reason to care what Peter said because they didn’t care about Jesus Christ. But the church sitting there saying, we follow Jesus, well, that means they have a new authority. Now, if if I were to transport you into a different country. And say you are now in, I don’t know, pick one, we’ll go Brazil.

You’re in Brazil. And you live under the Brazilian authority. But then you get a message from someone who’s an American and says, we are going to pull all American citizens out of Brazil for whatever reason. Well, you say I have a different authority than the people around me because I’m an American citizen. And that makes you different. When you have a different authority, things change.

Really. You could you could divide the way people have thought throughout history into what is their authority. Is human reason the authority? Am I the authority is people’s opinion, the authority. It separates groups of people. Whatever you trust and say, this is the most important authority that separates groups. We have a new authority, Jesus Christ the King and his spokesman, his apostles, who have written so in many ways in terms of our citizenship and in terms of the authority that we have, because we’re citizens of heaven, we’re exiles, we’re travelers.

You could say this is a lot like our Constitution. Someone with authority wrote it down. And we look at it and say, this governs what I am to do as a citizen of heaven.

We’re far into this world because we have a new authority, because the King adopted us, and because we have new desires. He goes on. He describes in verse three, which we’ll talk about in a few weeks, we’re born again. In chapter two, he refers to the word says long for the word. We have different desires. Have you ever talked to someone who is a believer and you talk to them about an unbeliever?

You talk to someone who does not believe in Jesus, and you talk to them about something that you found just precious and amazing in God’s Word. And they don’t care at all. They might care that it means something to you, but they don’t see this as valuable. They don’t want to go and learn more about it. They don’t long for it.

That’s because they don’t have new desires. And you are strange if you have desires to say, I want to know what Peter says in these five chapters, that is strange to an unbelieving world around you. It makes you a traveler, a sojourner, a foreigner in some ways, certainly a foreigner on this earth. Because you have a desire for something different.

It’s just like some of you have lived overseas, and I’ve heard stories of people who would be overseas, and there’s certain things that you can’t get overseas that you’re used to here in America. And I will hear stories about people from America and other countries getting together, and they’ll talk about, May I just miss whatever food. You have a desire that sets you apart as being from America.

Now, you don’t have to be from America. But when you talk to the person over there who’s never eaten that food, they’re like, okay, great. But you’re living as a foreigner somewhere and your common desires with other foreigners, but who are from where you’re from, unites you.

What makes us foreign citizens? How are we exiles? We have a different authority. We have different desires. And the King adopted us. We’re his.

Now, since we’re his has children and exiles, we get a question that I thought about waiting towards the end of the series to ask this question, but I want to ask it. So we have it up front because I think it’s in the forefront of what Peter is thinking writing to a group. Okay, so we’ve set the stage.

Here’s Peter. We know some things about him. Here’s who he’s writing to their loved, unbelievably loved. But they’re living in strangers. One of the things that’s right in front of Peter is, how do I help them to maintain their identity as people of God when they live in a world that is always trying to make them feel at home?

And I’d suggest this for a question for you to think as we go through this series, the world around you is always trying to push and say, this is the real world. This is what really matters right here and right now. You should feel at home with the way we talk, the way we entertain ourselves, the way we pursue money.

You should feel at home with all of those things. The world is always putting this. Sometimes subtle, sometimes not so subtle pressure to say, be at home here. And Peter is writing this in part to say you’re not at home here. So how do you keep this identity of being an exile while the world pushes on you? Or if I could ask it a little different direction, how do you live in the reality that you are his?

When the world tries to claim you from every direction?

And we’ll see in Peter, we also see as we talk about our core values here at Barrie and Bible Church, those core values are an attempt to say, how do we do that? Because I’ll give you some passages and you can check these, but we’ll go to them as we go through the book. In first Peter one three through seven, he just rejoices in the gospel.

He says, how did this community come about at all? God’s gospel saved people and formed a community. That’s how he goes on. Later in that same chapter, he says the means by which he saved those people. We are born by the word. You can start in verse 23. Go down through chapter two. In verse three, we’re born of the word, and we’re to drink deeply of the word.

If you don’t drink deeply of the word, and certainly if you’ve never been born again by the word, then you won’t maintain an exiled identity and the world will creep in and you will say, yeah, maybe I am a comfortable. Maybe I am at home. Here we have the gospel. We rejoice in it. The word. In chapter two, nine and ten, he says, we were made to proclaim His Excellencies.

That’s a great way to describe worship. It protects our soul. He talks about that, too. It protects our soul to say, this is who God is and this is how great he is. How do you maintain this identity? You live by the gospel and rejoice in it. You look to the word and drink deeply of it. You worship and look to your King and proclaim His excellencies.

We relate to others. That could be chapter two, verse 13, all the way through 315 or so we relate to servants and government and kings, and we’re ready to give an answer for the hope that is within us. We do all of these things so that we maintain we are a group of people traveling to our heavenly home, and we don’t get lost along the way and pulled aside, and we do it together.

Chapter four and seven through 11 talks about showing hospitality to one another as God has given us gifts, using it to serve one another. All of this in an attitude of prayer. If we’re going to live in the reality, if you’ll hold this picture in your head, we’re going to live in the reality that we are his. We maintain our exiled identity.

We need to stay in contact with our King. That’s prayer and worship. We need each other. Just like if you were in a foreign country, you’d love to get together with other Americans. We’re in a foreign country and you get to gather with heavenly citizens and encourage one another. We need to be informed and transformed by the word.

We need to relate to those who aren’t citizens of heaven in such a way that we’re inviting them. We show compassion to them and care for them and saying, come, be a citizen of heaven with us. That’s how we maintain our exile identity. We long to see this reality grow. At Berean Bible Church, we pray that God will grow the vine, the body of people here so that we love the word more.

We rejoice in the gospel more. We overflow with worship, which then spills out into our relationships with each other and with people outside of these walls. We want to see that grow and as we want to see that grow. I want to tell you about three things briefly that we’ll be doing this summer. These are, if I could use the picture of a trellis and a vine.

Divine is the growth in those things. The trellis is something that’s supposed to support the vine. I love that picture because sometimes I think we gather together as a vine. We think I want to grow. I want to have better relationships with other people. I want to have community. Well, the trellis is only supported or the vine is only supported by the trellis if it’s using the trellis, right.

If there’s a trailer standing here in the vines just growing out here, that’s not really helping anything. So there are three things we’re going to do this summer, which are opportunities. They’re a trellis to see us grow in our connection with our King in prayer and worship, to see us grow in our community with one another. I’ll spend a little bit more on two of them.

I’ll mention a third, which we’ll talk more about next week. One is that I hope that you will be involved in care groups. We’re going to be starting up a new care group which will meet, it’s going to meet after church on Sundays here to make that a little bit easier. And it’ll be a good opportunity if you’re not involved in a care group.

And you say, I don’t know, maybe these care groups are already established. Maybe it feels weird. You’re welcome to go to the ones we already have. That’s fantastic. But if you’re not plugged in with a care group, we’d love to have you connect with this group. And part of the goal is as God brings people into that group and that group grows, then that group may decide there’s a group of us who would rather meet at a different time.

Great, they’ll go do that. And as God brings more people in, they’ll have a new opportunity to fill that group out again.

Do you have to be involved in a care group to be godly? No, of course not. But you do have to have encouraging spiritual relationships with one another where you can sometimes confront, sometimes encourage. You have to have community. This is a piece of trellis to say, would it be good for you individually or you as a family, to be part of that and grow on this trellis of care groups?

If you have any questions about this, you’re more than welcome to talk with me. You can talk with some of the other elders about any of these things as well. That’s one thing, another thing that we will do, and we’ll talk more about this one. Next week is for the Sunday school time. In the summer. We’re going to take that slot of 9 to 10:00 on Sunday morning, and we’re going to focus on preparing ourselves for worship and praying for the upcoming service and for the church.

It won’t be a series like, oh, I missed two weeks, I will, I don’t know what’s going on. Maybe I just won’t come back. It’ll be opportunity for a couple months to say. We gather together, we focus on a few thoughts. Maybe we read a psalm and we pray. Because if we’re going to stay connected with our king and we’re going to do that as a corporate group, this is an opportunity for us to do it together.

A heart of worship rarely just springs up without preparation. You guys know that. You know, sometimes Saturday evening can be real difficult and it affects the way Sunday morning goes for your heart. We want to have an opportunity over this summer to gather together, to pray, to ask God to cover our hearts. And these Sunday morning gatherings where we get as many the most.

The largest number of heavenly citizens that gather here for Berean Bible Church is Sunday morning. And so we want to have opportunity to cover that with prayer and hope and worship. And then the last thing that I’ll mention is over the summer also, these things will begin about right after VBS. So the not the first week in June, but the second we’re going to have a family prayer time on Wednesday evenings.

If you were part of this last year, I hope you think about it like I did, that it was a very special time. It’s an opportunity where we gather together. It’s an informal time. We sing a little bit. We have a short teaching related to prayer. We divide into groups of people to pray together. And one of the things I love about it is we split up so that five year olds are sitting next to 75 year olds, and that is a wonderful opportunity.
It’s a wonderful opportunity for a child to see how a grown, maybe a great grandparent prays.

What we’ll do to give you an idea will gather here on Wednesday evening a little teaching prayer, and then we’ll let the kids go. And they’ll play some in the gym, and the adults will finish up with another section of prayer. Very often we ended up just focusing on praying for the kids who just walked out the door during that time.

We call it family prayer time because we’d say everybody come and be a part of it any age. We also call it family prayer time, because what it feels like is somewhat like sitting around your living room at Christmas, and your family gathers and you talk about what God is doing. And so I invite you again. It’s a piece of trellis to say, can this vine of Berry and Bible Church growing community with one another?
Can it grow in such a way that says, we’re connected with a king and we’re not citizens of this world? These are opportunities for us to pursue that kind of growth. And I’d encourage you to think about how God would guide you in that as we go through first, Peter and say, these are some of the ways that God has ordained so that his children, who are strangers in this world, can walk through our whole life and maintain that identity, that we are loved beyond measure. And it’s thrilling.

But we’re also exiles, and it’s sobering and it’s hard. But Peter wants to strengthen the brothers and shepherd the flock to walk together in that reality. So I invite you to take a moment and just pray. Ask God what he will do in your life in Barry and Bible Church over these next few months. Ask him to fill you with worship and love for the fact that you are his, and then we’ll sing together.