Trial: Temptation from Worldliness

"As you come to him, the living Stone - rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to him - you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For in Scripture it says:

"See, I lay a stone in Zion,

a chosen and precious cornerstone,

and the one who trusts in him

will never be put to shame."

Now to you who believe, this stone is precious. But to those who do not believe,

"The stone the builders rejected

has become the capstone,"

and

"A stone that causes men to stumble

and a rock that makes them fall."

They stumble because they disobey the message - which is also what they were destined for.

But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

Dear friends, I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world, to abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul. Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us."

(1 Peter 2:4-12 NIV)

As we have seen so far, the people Peter was writing to were under a lot of trial. In the last post, we saw that they were tempted to hypocrisy; to live one way, but believe another thing. In this post, we'll see that they were also being tempted to worldliness.

Worldliness is basically the evil desires inside of us warring against our souls and forming a belief system. It is elevating culture over Scripture. In the Church today, we have two directions of worldliness that we are tempted to - progressive (following the culture of today) and traditional (rejecting the culture of today and trying to go back to the 1950s).

Culture in itself is not the problem, but it is what we choose to do with it. We are work in it, but not follow it. The traditionals think that because culture is so against Scripture, we should go back to the 50s when things were a lot more wholesome, but this is also worldliness, as it still elevates culture over Scripture, though a much older one. The progressives think that the views of the Bible are outdated and too strict for today. But whether progressive or traditional, any belief that puts culture over Scripture is wrong. Our goal should not be to say what values in culture are right or wrong, but to point people to Jesus and we will be made holy through faith in him.

Before we can point people to Jesus, we should be clear on the following five things:

1. Our Jesus (1 Peter 2:4-8)

- From the perspective of the world, Jesus is offensive, which is why Peter refers to him as a stone they stumble on.

- Some people will always find Jesus and the Gospel offensive, since he often speaks of hell and therefore people see him as intolerant and exclusive.

- People tend to like some aspects of Christianity like turning the other cheek and helping widows and orphans, but they don't like the fact that we say that Jesus is God and is the only way to heaven.

- We know, as Christians, that Jesus is God, Lord, Saviour, King and Christ and that to God, he is precious and priceless.

- Jesus is our cornerstone.

- In construction, picking a good cornerstone is vital because it determines the durability of the whole building. The builders would choose the best, most dependable stone to rest everything else on.

- Just like builders, we should build our whole lives on Jesus as our cornerstone - not anything else. If we based our lives on anything else - money, status, race, etc. - our lives will crumble because only Jesus and carry the whole load.

- People are happy for us to compromise and have a Jesus merely as one of the 'bricks' that make up the whole structure, but they don't like it when we base our lives on him.

- Everything will collapse if we don't have Jesus as our cornerstone.

- Peter also reminds us that Jesus is a 'living' stone.

- We have to ask ourselves if Jesus really is our cornerstone.

2. Our Identity (1 Peter 2:9)

- If we based our identity on our performance, we will either end up proud or in despair.

- We should instead base our identity on who it is that loves us - namely, God.

- Sometimes we are so focussed on comparing ourselves to others that we forget that God loves us.

- The people Peter wrote to were 'nobodies' who lived in an insignificant part of the world, but Peter calls them a 'chosen people' and a 'royal priesthood'.

- In Jesus, we are all royal priests and since he is our mediator, not one person is closer to God than anyone else because through Jesus, we are all equally God's children and have equal access to him.

- We tend to underestimate our significance and not realise that we are all in ministry. Yes, some people are in vocational ministry, but even if we are just in an 'ordinary' job, we are in ministry when we work as if we are working unto God because in doing that, we have the opportunity to change the world by what we do.

3. Our Worship (1 Peter 2:5; 2:9)

- We worship God in three main ways - with or words, our works and out wealth.

- We worship him in our words when we speak of him, in our works when we serve and help people and in our wealth in our tithes and offerings.

- If Jesus is really everything in our lives, he will show up in it.

- We should make sure that we are in fact regenerate and not just religious.

4. Our Community (1 Peter 2:10)

- You can't love Jesus and hate the church because Jesus loves the church and is building it.

- We were not a people before, but in Jesus we have all been brought together to be a people and that is why it is important to seek out and live in a community of believers.

- We can't 'do' Christianity on our own because we only get information on Sunday, but transformation comes from living that out in community.

5. Our Mission (1 Peter 2:11-12)

- The purpose of community is not only for our individual lives to change, but we are also to be missionaries in the world around us.

- Fundamentalists tend to leave the cities and hide in the suburbs and liberals tend to live in the cities and compromise, but Peter says we are to live counter-cultural lives and so do things like money, sex, gender, food, sex and job differently from how the rest of the world does it.

- We should abstain from worldly passions, but we should do good deeds.

- In living our lives counter-culturally, we will be ridiculed and people will speak evil of us, but we should continue because living in this way brings honour to God.

- Sticking to the Gospel means we will always feel homeless because our home is not on earth, it is in heaven.

- For liberals, the cornerstone is tolerance and diversity. Conservatives have self-righteousness, pride and intolerance as their cornerstone. But we should have Jesus and the Gospel as ours.

Finally, our response to opposition is not to return evil for evil, but to 'out love' those who oppose us. We should call those around us to repentance, but at the same time, we should humble ourselves and also repent. We shouldn't become proud and self-righteous. In living our lives in this way with Jesus as our cornerstone, some people will come to know Christ.

Trial:Temptation from Hypocrisy

"Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for your brothers, love another deeply from the heart. For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God. For

"All men are like grass,

and all their glory is like the flowers of the field

but the word of the Lord stands forever."

And this is the word that was preached to you.

Therefore, rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind. Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, now that you have tasted that the Lord is good."

(1 Peter 1:22 - 2:3 NIV)

The people Peter wrote to were going through a lot of trials and were tempted to hypocrisy. They believed one thing, but were tempted to act another way to make things easier for themselves.

In these verses, there are three points:

1. Revelation - 1 Peter 1:23-25

2. Regeneration - 1 Peter 1:23; 2:2-3

3. Response - 1 Peter 1:22; 2:1

The Bible is important because through it God speaks to us, so we don't need to speculate. Though Peter is talking about the Word of God, which is the Bible, he also means the preached word. Unlike other books, the Bible is the living word of God and our spirit is made alive through it. Just like the Bible is abiding and has persevered through time, we too can persevere, so Peter says, "All men are like grass", but the word of the Lord will stand forever. It has so far!

The Bible has been translated into 3,000 languages and has been read by many different people and has not been without opposition. Over the course of history, people have been persecuted in violent ways, but they have not put down their Bible. The Roman Empire banned the Bible, but though it has disappeared, the Bible is still with us.

Our view of the Bible is inextricably related to our view of preaching, so that if we have a low view of the Bible, we have a low view of preaching. On the other hand, if we have a high view of the Bible, we will also have a high view of preaching. It is God's word and so we must put ourselves under its authority and also the authority of preaching, even though it is counter-cultural to submit to any kind of authority.

There are many examples of preaching in the Scriptures. It starts with God preaching the world into existence. In Genesis 3, we have the first false sermon preached by the serpent, who tempted Eve, but later in the chapter, God brought Adam and Eve together again and preached once more, and this time about Jesus. Throughout the Bible we will see that Satan has a succession of false preachers to lead God's people astray and at the same time, God raises up prophets to reveal the truth to the people. This culminates in the last of the Old Testament prophets, namely John the Baptist, and after this we have Jesus. He states in Mark that he came to preach and once he was baptised by John, he was taken to the desert where Satan tried to preach false sermons to him, but Jesus resisted by preaching the truth.

Just like in the past, there are many false teachers as well as teachers of the truth, so we have to be careful who we listen to and who we follow. Paul speaks often of wolves coming in to the church to lead the sheep astray. We know who wolves are because they don't tend to lead people into repentance. They accommodate and excuse sin. Jesus, however, preached repentance, which is turning our backs on sin and turning our faces toward God. Jesus preached repentance so much, that the only way to get him to stop was to kill him, but even that didn't stop him because he rose three days later and continued preaching.

When the Holy Spirit came on the disciples in Acts 2, they also preached. The disciples continued to preach all throughout Acts and the only time Acts doesn't speak about the preaching of the apostles is when they were put into prison. The apostles were totally committed to preaching and they did not let imprisonment or persecution stop them. Preaching is to continue until Jesus returns where the last sermon will be preached by an angel (Revelation 14:6).

Revelation contributes to regeneration. First, the word must be preached to us and then we will change. Once we put our faith in Jesus, we will get a new heart, be born again, become a new creation, have union with Christ and in the end, be raised with Jesus from the dead. The only way we can know more about God and be passionate about him is to go to his word.

In the Bible, there is only perishable or imperishable seed. We are either sons of Adam or sons of God. All of us are born into sin and the only way out is by salvation from God.

- Psalm 51:5 - we are born in sin

- Psalm 58:3 - all fell through Adam

- Ephesians 2:3 - by nature, we are children of wrath

Regeneration is a gift to make us completely new, whereas religion is all about sinners trying to do better and earning their way into heaven. We can't do anything to regenerate ourselves because we have as much control of our new birth as we had of our old birth. Just like we had no say about us being born into the world, we have no say about being born as a new creation in God.

Since repenting and trusting in God are both signs that we have been born again, we have nothing to boast about. We were saved because God chose us and not that we chose God. After our re-birth, our desires change too. Before regeneration, sin seems good and we desire to do what we want, but after regeneration, we desire to please God and turn from sin and be like Jesus.

Finally, we come to response. We respond by obeying the word and so the last thing we would want to be as new creations is hypocritical. Religion tries to get us to change as a result of guilt and fear and we have to try change ourselves into a new person, but regeneration gives us a new heart and so our desires change (Psalm 37:4).

We will still be tempted, but we shouldn't pursue it. We should instead pursue the deep passion of our hearts and go after God. Sin and sinful desires are shallow desires next to our deep desire to please God. We shouldn't listen to Satan and we need to listen to God. We overcome sin with worship. We overcome lies with the word of truth. We overcome Satan with the Spirit. We overcome temptation with our passion for the things of God.

In pursuing our deepest desires, we can overcome the enemy.