Ordination Sunday

Ordination Sunday

Chet Phillips

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Well, good morning. My name's Chet. If this is your first time hanging out with us today, we're glad you're here. Things are going to be a little bit different than usual, so I want to start off by saying that. If you have been around a while, you'll realize that as we get going, but if it's your first time, I wanted you to know you kind of stepped into a different situation. Here's what we're doing this morning.

We're actually going to be ordaining Raz Bradley as an elder in our church. I'm very excited about that. It means a lot for our church family. And so we, in some ways, we're treating this a little bit like we treat weddings, which is here's what marriage is, here's what the gospel is, and then we spend some time talking kind of to the couple. And so this morning we're going to say here's what eldership is, kind of here's our story as a church, here's what eldership is. Let me let you get to know Raz a little bit, and then we'll spend some time kind of talking to Raz.

We'll talk to church family as well, but we're going to be talking to him some about what the Bible says, the role of a pastor, the role of an elder is. And so this is a big day for us. And I want to kind of tell you a little bit of history of our church family so you can see this. So Matt Freeman and I, Matt was up here, he was playing the guitar. He and I were roommates in college and both kind of felt called into ministry at the same time. I remember in college I really started, I grew up in a Christian home, and so I really started reading the Bible in college with one basic question.

Do I actually believe this? Do I actually believe that the Bible is God's word, that it's true, that it matters? Is this real? See, I grew up in a Christian home. My grandparents were Baptist missionaries to Nigeria. On my other side, Bob Jones, graduate, independent Baptist pastor and wife.

If I became a Christian, I got it honest. Like it comes family line to me. And so when I got to college, my question was, do I just believe this because my mama did? Or is this real? And so I really just started reading the Bible and asking that question, and I came to the conclusion that I believe it. I think the Bible answers some very fundamental questions for me, and it answers them kind of quickly in Scripture.

One of the things that you'll hear sometimes kind of arguments against Christianity is that it takes a really messed up world. It looks at the world which we know is chaotic and destructive and painful, and it says, no, there's hope and joy and happiness and magic. Like people will argue that Christianity doesn't have a realistic view of the world. But people will also argue that the world is beautiful and wonderful and amazing, and Christianity comes along and tries to spoil it for everybody and tell everybody it's terrible and horrible, and they should all feel bad about themselves. And the truth is Christianity steps into the middle of that argument and says, yes.

And it says that in the first three chapters of the Bible. It says that the world was created by a good God who made things wonderful, and that humans rebelled and brought sin into the world, and that messed everything up. Like if you tried to convince me inside of 30 minutes that the world was a wonderful place, I would believe you. You'd be like, look, rainbows. Like, yeah, rainbows, that's crazy. You'd be like puppies and babies and friendship and love and fried chicken, and I would be on board.

I'd be like, what a glorious land. But then if you immediately took 30 minutes to say, look at how terrible this is. Look at racism and hatred and genocide and natural disasters. The world just at times tries to kill us. What is that? Volcanoes.

It's like a beautiful mountain that spits fire out. And I would be like, you're right, this place is terrible. And Christianity steps in and says, yes, it was created by a wonderful God who made it beautiful and made it amazing, and that sin marred it. Not just us, but all of creation. That creation is an open rebellion against God. But it goes further than that.

It says this is actually a personal problem as well. That this issue of the world being amazing and being rebellious is going on inside of you. And when I read that in scriptures, I'm like, yes, I feel that. Because I think I'm wonderful. I'm special. When my parents told me I was a snowflake, I was like, you're darn right I'm a snowflake.

I was one of those kids. I was cutting snowflake construction paper in school, and they were like, see how your snowflake's different from all the other snowflakes? I was like, I do see that. And they're like, that's what you're like. And I was like, teacher, that's so true. Like, I know that.

I know that humans have value and worth. I see that. I believe it. It's like, I know it without having to be taught that. But then I also see all the stuff in me that is completely messed up.

Selfish. Hateful. Like, if we just said, hey, we're going to project your thoughts from the last week up here, I wouldn't show up. I'd just be like, no, we're not doing that. Because I know what I'm like. Because I have a wonderful wife.

I have a two-year-old son. I'm close. I don't do the months thing. And I care deeply about them. But there are times I'm at my house, and my wife's like, hey, could you help with this?

And my first response is, no. I don't say that. I fight that. But I know what I'm like. I know she's like, hey, could you get up? And my response is like, no, you get up.

He's your son, too. And then we get in the argument about, like, who had to give birth and stuff. And it just kind of breaks down. But I see in me this desire, this kind of this war of both. There's goodness. And there's also just open rebellion.

And the Bible steps in and says, yes. And so as I saw that clearly and that clicked so, so beautifully in my head, I began to ask, okay, so is what the Bible says true? That it's not God doesn't just sit up in heaven and say, now you need to be moral and you need to be good. But he actually looks and says, none of you are going to be able to do this. That all of you have rebelled. All of you have sinned.

All of you have fallen short. And he loves us so much. We're so valuable and yet so broken. That he steps onto earth, that he becomes a human himself and he steps into the brokenness. And that the cross is the celebration that our God both loved us and had given us worth and value. But also knew and hated so much the sin that was in us and the sin that was rampant in the world.

See, I see that if there's a good God, he can't be okay with sin. But if there's a good God, he can't just crush everybody, right? Like there's this balance of does he love us or does he not? And the cross says, yes, he loves us, but he hates our sin and he hates the brokenness in the world so much so that he'll take it onto himself. So in college, I came to the full conclusion that, yes, I do believe this.

And then I asked the question, so what's that mean? And I came to the conclusion that if I actually believe that, that humans were built for an eternity, that at some point we're going to stand before God and either we are going to say, I trust Jesus to be good on my behalf, to have died for my sin and to give me his righteousness, or I trust myself to be good enough. And the Bible says we all fall short in that people will be either saved by Jesus or condemned based on their own rebellion. If I actually believe that we're supposed to exist for an eternity, then everything mattered. Everything I did with my time, my co-workers, the guys I was playing football with currently, everybody in my dorm, like it mattered because eternity matters.

And God loved us enough to join us. And so we planted a church in 2013. I remember feeling specifically like we were supposed to start a church while I was in college. Matt showed back up to the room. And if you all know Matt, he's like just overly positive, aggressively happy. Like that's kind of his nature.

And I'm not that. And people periodically ask how we're friends. And it's like, I don't know, we balance each other out. But he came in the room and I said, Matt, I feel like I'm supposed to build a church. And he was like, oh, it's great. I mean, it's awesome.

Like with bricks and stuff. Like he was immediately happy but had no clue what I was talking about. And I was like, oh, no, but probably should find a different word. Like just with people and the gospel, like I think we should start one. And in 2013 we did with eight people sitting around my kitchen table with one basic simple idea. We think that Christians should be Christians in normal everyday life.

That everything matters. All the everyday stuff, your budget, your time, where you work, it matters. Because your co-workers matter. Your neighbors matter. That if this is true, that if God actually made a world that's rebelled against him and that everyone we know is dealing with the effects of sin, but only Jesus brings hope, then it matters. And there are a whole lot of people, the majority of people in our city, have no desire to be here this morning.

Christians. Christians. Y'all know what we do on Sundays is weird, right? Have you been a Christian so long you've forgotten that? Maybe you grew up in it. I know a lot of people in our church family just became Christians.

They know it's weird. Ask them. What we do is weird. Okay. You're going to tell people who aren't Christians they need to show up early in the morning on Sunday on a day they could sleep in. Most people immediately say no to that because it sounds terrible.

Hey, you remember how you were going to sleep? You know how it's cold outside? You know how your blankets are warm? Yeah. Okay. Get out of your blankets and come outside.

No. Then when we get here, we're going to sing songs to a Jewish guy who lived 2,000 years ago, but we say died. They're tracking so far. Came back to life. People don't do that. And then went into heaven alive in bodily form and later is going to come back to earth to judge it riding a horse.

We believe that. We're going to sing songs to him. Then we're going to open a book and talk out of it for 40 minutes. And then we're going to go try to do it. And I know some of y'all were just like, wait, did he say 40 minutes? Welcome to Mill City Church.

We're glad you're here this morning. I'm glad you came and joined us. It makes perfect sense if you're a Christian, if you actually believe what we believe. But if you don't, this is weird. And so what we believe is that Christians are supposed to be Christians 24-7 outside the doors in relationships with people at jobs that have nothing to do with Christianity. We're not all supposed to go take a full-time job being a pastor or teach at a Christian school.

Those are beautiful vocations and you should do that. But most of us should build doors at a factory. Most of us should work at CarMax. Most of us should go be a teacher at a public school where we can actually begin to love and serve and live like Christians. That we should move into neighborhoods and when we get a pay raise, we should stay in that neighborhood because of the neighbors we've built relationships with. That's what we started with, that simple idea that if we actually believe this, then everything matters.

So we had one community group in 2013. We said Christians should help other people become Christians. Group leaders should train other group leaders. Pastors should train other pastors. And churches should start more churches. So we multiplied, became two groups.

Then we became four. Then we started getting together on Sundays. The reason we got together on Sundays was because we wanted to be able to talk to everybody at once. And then we just kept training up leaders in our groups and multiplying leaders. And then we said that we wanted to raise up pastors locally because it doesn't have much to do with a resume. That the qualifications for a pastor, for an elder, are character qualifications.

And so we actually began the pastor and training process with Raz two years ago in 2015. And it was open-ended. Well, we started it in like 2014. And then we came back and said, this was too early. We don't want to do this. And he was like, okay.

And then in 2015, he had a great attitude about it. But he acted kind of like we were dumb and we agreed. And then in 2015, we were like, okay, we're for real this time. And he's like, all right, sounds good. And then he actually has been in pastor and training for two years. Some of y'all are like, wait, he's becoming a pastor.

I thought he was. Right. He's been doing this stuff for a while, serving in our church for a while. So let me tell you a little bit about Raz. And then we're going to actually look at what the Bible says about how elders should work and what pastors are supposed to do. So this is Raz and his wife, Christina.

If y'all don't know them, Raz is on the right. So Raymond Bradley, and I hope some of y'all just learned his real name is Raymond. And Raymond Bradley was born in Sydney, Australia, raised in Sydney, Australia. His wife is from South Carolina. And her name is Christina. She helps run our host team.

But Raz grew up in Sydney, not in a Christian home, not with a lot of Christian influences. He did go to a Christian high school, but that's just because it was a good high school in his area. His parents weren't ever like anti-Christian, but they were mostly like do whatever makes you happy. So they're not, they're for what he's doing now because they believe it makes him happy. But they're not Christians.

He didn't grow up in that environment. When he was 16, his mom had been diagnosed with cancer. And he began to really struggle with the idea of how does a good God allow suffering. And when he was 16, he placed his faith in Jesus. The following year, his mother passed away. And I remember talking with him and he said that he kind of felt like when that happened, he was standing kind of at a crossroads.

And there was this, this draw to, to just go chase after everything that makes you temporarily feel good. Come, come just do everything that kind of drowns the pain. And then there was this draw from Jesus that said, just said, come follow me. And he said, he really felt like he was kind of deciding, am I actually going to believe this? Am I actually going to be a Christian? And by God's grace in that moment, he decided, no, I'm going to follow Jesus.

I'm going to double down and I'm going to spend my life chasing after him. When he graduated high school, he was an electrician for a little while in Australia, which we periodically try to get him to do electrical work. But he argues that everything's 220 in Australia, so it doesn't work the same. Plus, he's on the other side of the globe, so his ladders disorient him because of the way gravity works. But he was an electrician for a little while.

Then he served with his church there as an Anglican church. And then he decided to come to the United States to get a master's degree at CIU. So he's been at Columbia International University for the past four years. He got his Master's of Divinity this past December, which we're very excited and proud of him for that. He's transitioned well into being an American. I've got a picture of him here with what I can only assume is one of his childhood heroes.

But he's transitioned well. He's learned how to fit in here. If you'll show the next one, it kind of proves that to you. There you go. He came here. He's like, I need to grow a mullet.

I need to run around with an American flag. I need to make fireworks happen a lot. So there you go. But he recently got his Master's of Divinity. For a while, he was a camp counselor at Bethel Christian Camp and is now on their board of directors. He works at the South Carolina Baptist Convention now.

And all of that is great. And I think his resume is probably really impressive. And I'm sure when you sit down with him to do an interview, his Australian accent makes him stick out in your mind. And so you remember him better. But that matters little when it comes to becoming a pastor.

Biblically, the qualifications aren't what do they look like on paper, but the qualifications are what's their character. And that's why we've walked through this process with him for the past two years. And continually did follow up on here are areas you need to grow, here's where you need to repent. Because it's character-based qualifications. And don't get me wrong. And we're excited that we'll have a pastor who can read Greek.

But we believe in raising up local pastors, local elders, so that we can actually know what they're like. And so we're excited today as our church gets to do something we haven't ever done before, which is take somebody who's been around for a while and have them become an elder here. To tell you just a few more things quickly about Raz. Raz is the type of guy, if you don't know him, he's the type of guy who is good at everything. So kind of the type of person you've hated most of your entire life.

He's the kind of guy that you spend a couple months trying to learn how to play a song on a guitar. And then he goes, what is this, a gore-tar? And he takes it from you, and then he plays it better than you. And he's like, that's neat. And you're like, oh, you know how to play the guitar? And he's like, that's the first time I've touched one.

That kind of guy, like you learn a game, and you're like, I'll teach this to Raz, and I'll be better at him than it. And then he's immediately like, once he learns the rules, he beats you in it. This is a perfect example. He decided, he and his wife decided they were going to knit hats. And when he told us that, when he told me that, I was like, that's cute. That's precious.

No, I love that you're going to knit. That's great. And then like a week later, he sends this picture. That he knit that. And it's like, I don't even know how we're friends. What on earth?

How do you knit that? And then I don't even think he knits anymore, because he defeated it. He won knitting. Y'all didn't even know it was competitive. He won. So here, this is just, as one of your pastors, if you're part of our church family, and even if you're just here today, you're one of Raz's friends, I want to make a request.

There are two things I have learned that Raz is not good at. One of them is putt-putt. Y'all don't know how happy that made me. Because he just melted down every hole. The second one, the second thing Raz is not good at is losing. Because he's been good at everything his entire life.

So here's what I need you to do. Because we compete in things periodically, and our church family hangs out all the time. If you are on Raz's team, I need you to intentionally be terrible. For his sanctification. For his growth. For his growth in humility.

Don't make it super obvious. But be terrible. I just, I'm just asking. I just appreciate that. That's just a rule to apply for the rest of your life. So here's what we get to do today.

We're going to talk a little bit about what it means to be an elder. What eldership is. And then we're going to actually bring Raz up here, and we're going to pray over him. And he'll be an elder in our church family. And so, if you will, turn to 1 Peter chapter 5. If you have one of the white Bibles, it'll be on page 590.

This was a letter written by the apostle Peter. The disciple of Jesus is written to a group of churches. So he's writing to multiple churches at once, and they're supposed to just kind of disseminate this letter around and read it in their churches. And in this section, in chapter 5, where we're going to pick up and look at the first four verses, he's talking specifically to elders about eldership. What eldering is supposed to look like. So let me just define some terms as we get started.

The Bible uses that word elder. It comes from the word presbyteros, which is a Greek word. That's where we get Presbyterian from. That's where we get the word elder from. The Bible also uses the word overseer, which is where we get the word bishop from. And Episcopalian, we get that word from the word that they use the word overseer.

It's translated in a lot of versions. It also uses the word shepherd, which is where we get the word pastor. So, in general, when we talk about it, elder is the office. The actual position, the title. And then oversee, shepherd are things that you do. But we just use the terms pastor and elder interchangeably because we think that the office is actually elder.

But most people say pastor around here. So that's why we're using the terms the way we are. And we believe that biblically there should be multiple elders, multiple pastors in local churches. We like that model. We don't think necessarily that everybody's wrong if they do that differently. But we see that in Scripture when it talks to elders, it's always plural unless it's talking about one specific person.

It'll say this person is an elder, but otherwise it's elders in churches. And so when Raz is ordained today, which is just a fancy word that means becomes a pastor, he'll be as much a pastor as I am, as much a pastor as Matt is. We take this very seriously because in some ways when we lay hands on Raz and ordain him this morning, he's our boss as much as we are his so that we mutually agree, mutually submit to one another and try to serve together as a team in our church family. So that's kind of how that works. Let me pray real quick and then we'll start reading the text. God, we thank you for your grace.

And we thank you for the weightiness of what we're getting to do today and that we get to celebrate this together as a church family. Pray that as we read your word, you would train us, teach us, change us, that we might look more like you. In Jesus' name, amen. 1 Peter 5, starting in verse 1. So I exhort the elders among you.

Exhort means urge or strongly encourage. 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. Okay, so he begins to say, I'm exhorting you, I'm encouraging you, and then he gives his three qualifications for doing so. Here's why you should listen to me. And the first two make sense to me and the third one sounded really weird. And it took me a minute.

I had to kind of sit with it for a while to try to understand why he included it. So the first one is, I'm also an elder. I exhort you as a fellow elder. The second one is, as a witness of the sufferings of Christ. Meaning, I was there when Jesus died on the cross. I was one of his earliest followers.

I'm a disciple. Both of those sound like, yeah, okay, those are good qualifications for why I should listen to you. And then the third one is, as well as a partaker in the glory that is going to be revealed. And so I was like, okay, he ended the list with this, and he included it on par with, I'm also an elder, and I was there when Jesus died on the cross. I'm a partaker in the glory that is going to be revealed. And I think a short way to say that is, I'm going to heaven also.

I'm also going to be with Jesus for eternity. And so it's like, that sounds great, but so are all Christians who place faith in Jesus for their salvation. Like, that's what he does, is he brings us into his glory. He brings us into eternity with him. And it's like, so why is that in the list? It's because that's common to all Christians, but I think the reason Peter includes this is because it is absolutely uncommon to humanity.

That this is weighty, that Christians will partake in glory with Jesus. That we've been called into an eternity to not only just be there, but to reign with him. And so as I read that, I realized how beautiful it is that Peter includes it, because he's saying, I'm going to spend eternity with Jesus. I'm going to partake in his glory. I'm going to be a part of him being elevated and honored and declared worthy for all time. That's why Paul, at one point, when the Corinthian church is having an argument and they're about to take something to court, he says, don't y'all know you're going to judge angels?

Y'all can't even handle simple human matters? What he's saying is we're called into an eternity forever with Jesus. We should see the weightiness of that. And so Peter includes it in this list. And I just kind of wish that as Christians, we would grow out of just giving each other advice, but realizing that we hold weight because Jesus has redeemed us and called us into eternity. So that when you're with your community group and they're asking for like, I'm struggling with this idea, that we wouldn't just be silent, but we wouldn't just also just pop off with the first thing that pops into our head, but that we would actually carry and understand the weight of we've been redeemed and we're going to reign with Jesus.

And when we speak, there's weight to it because we're Christians. So that's why he includes it in that list. And then here are his instructions as to what an elder ought to do and then how an elder should do that. And then why an elder should do that. So he's going to start off with what he's going to say, how he's going to say, why?

What shepherd, the flock of God that is among you exercising oversight. So shepherd, the flock of God that is among you exercising oversight. We we use that word shepherd. The Bible uses that word shepherd a lot to give us this picture of a shepherd with sheep as Americans. I don't think we're very familiar with that picture. I'm not.

I think Americans are mostly familiar with cattle. If we're familiar with anything, we're familiar with cows. I used to actually help a friend work on a cattle farm like a cow. He had heifers and we helped them get fat. That was the job. Here's the thing about cows.

You don't get emotionally attached to them because you're going to eat them soon. That was the point of the cows. So we were going to help them eat to help others eat. That was the point. And so we didn't name them. We didn't become their friends.

You might become a friend with a dairy cow because you're going to see it a lot and it's going to hang around for a while. But beef cows, you don't. But with shepherds and sheep, there was a much closer relationship. That a shepherd would know his sheep, would care for them, would be with them, would sleep where they slept, would lead them where they were going to be. That when one of them got lost, he would leave the ones that weren't and go find the one that was. That he would, if a predator came along, a bear or a wolf, he would fight it, defend it.

So that a shepherd both feeds sheep and kills wolves. And that's the picture that we're given here where he says, shepherd the flock of God that is among you. I want to point out two things, Raz, as we look at this. The flock is God's. It belongs to Jesus. These are his people, his church.

Paul says it this way when he's talking to elders in Acts chapter 20. Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. To care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood. That the church belongs to Jesus, that he purchased by his blood, that he loves and cherishes and cares for. And that he's called certain people to step up and to shepherd and care for them as well. But ultimately it's his flock.

It's his people. It's his church. It also says, shepherd the flock of God that is among you. Meaning that pastors, elders should be a part of the church. Normal, everyday Christians. Like, I'm a Christian first before I get to be a pastor.

Raz, you get to be a Christian first before you get to be a pastor. I think it's been damaging and unhelpful. And I've heard in a lot of pastoral circles where pastors say stuff like, I really just need some people that I can be honest with. So I have to seek accountability and relationships outside of my church. I had a pastor one time tell me, he was moving to be a pastor somewhere else. And he said, I learned my lesson with my last church because I lived right near the building.

And I would like run into people that were a part of my church at the grocery store and stuff. And so this time I actually moved 30 minutes away so that that wouldn't happen. And that just hurt me inside. Because as a pastor, you get to be a part of the church. You get to be a normal Christian. You get to struggle with sin.

Like my community group that I get to be a part of is not impressed with me. They don't think I'm special. They had reservations about that snowflake speech I gave earlier. Like I get to be a normal sinner in love with Jesus. Following him in normal life. So you shepherd the church that you're among, that you're a part of, that you relate to in normal life.

Shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight. Oversight means lead. Make decisions for. Care about. Shepherd. Care about.

Defend. Protect. Love. Chase it down. And exercise oversight, which means lead. Make some decisions.

Be unpopular at times for what's best. One of the things I will tell you all about Raz is that he does love this church. And he does love Jesus. And he cares a lot about whether or not this church is actively seeking to follow and love Jesus. I have probably over the course of our church life existence from 2013 on, I have argued more with Raz than with anybody else in our church family. Maybe my wife.

She's in our church family. We argue from time to time. But Anna, then Raz. He cares. He cares a lot when he's come to a conclusion on something and he believes that this is the best course of action. We argue.

We butt heads because we both care. We both want to see things be good. I remember Raz went to work because he works at South Carolina Baptist Convention. He was working all day. He came to meet us when he got off work for us to argue for two hours about how membership ought to be done. Because we did that this past year where we said this is what it means to be committed to this church family to say, I follow Jesus, but I'm actually going to buy in here and serve here and give here and fight for health here.

And Raz and I argued for two hours about how to do that. And thankfully Matt showed up and tried to help. He made it a little bit worse, but it was good. And then Raz went to go play kickball with some people in his apartment complex. And I just remember texting him that night and I was like, man, I hope we get to argue a lot more in the future. And he sent back anytime.

And I knew he meant it. But you care and you fight for what matters. You seek to lead. That's the calling. That's what pastors should do. Shepherd and oversee.

Jesus is people. But then he tells them how. He says, he's going to say, not this, but this. Like, not in this way, but this way. So he says, not under compulsion, but willingly.

You shouldn't become a pastor because you feel like you have to, but you should actually desire it. You should want to. Being a pastor is hard enough. If you don't want to do it, I think it would be terrible. Like, you should desire to lead, to serve, to take on this position, to lay your life down on behalf of others. So he says, not under compulsion, but willingly.

Don't get into it because your parents want you to. Don't get into it because you think you have to, but get into it because you have a desire for it. Not for shameful gain, but eagerly. So that people shouldn't become pastors. I think shameful gain is a couple of things. I think that can be, I want the title.

I want the honor that comes along with it. I think some of that's passing away. I don't think people care about pastors as much as they used to. Like, if you grew up in the South, people, it was like a more honored position than it is now. And some of that's okay. And some of it's probably good.

But I think people could get into it as like, I want a respectable, I want to prove to my dad. I want to like, it's a bad reason to do it. Shameful gain could also be monetary. It can be. I know of pastors who are wealthy. I don't know any personally.

But I've seen them on TV. And I've seen them on the internet. And I know that that's a thing in the U.S. That you can actually become a pastor to make money. If that is Raz's plan, just so you all know. He's done that very poorly.

He chose our church. He's not getting paid. So he's going to come on and eagerly. I actually believe that he models this well for us because he's continuing his job, his full-time job elsewhere. But coming on and taking on extra work and extra responsibilities here to serve in this capacity.

I also know that if he was not becoming an elder today, he'd be doing the same thing he's been doing. He'd be doing the same thing we're about to ask of him and wouldn't care. So I'm excited that everybody in our church family who is a pastor, myself, Matt, and now Raz, will have done what we're doing for free prior to getting paid for it. And would still be doing it if we weren't getting paid for it. So it says, Not for shameful gain, but eagerly.

Not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock. So that you lead by example, not by position or title or forcefulness or volume. That the pastorate isn't a place for bullies. But for humility and servanthood. I remember when I first, first time I sat down with Raz, he was first coming around and was wanting to hop in a group. And he'd been a part of Midtown and he was coming to talk.

Just give a cab coffee with me and ask like, what would it look like if I came and just hopped in with y'all and help start this church? I remember talking with him and I came back and I called Matt on the way home and I said, Hey, this guy named Raz wants to come hang out. He's probably going to hop in my group. He seems really smart. He seems really driven. He seems very knowledgeable.

He ultimately wants to be a pastor or missionary. I think he should hop in and I think we should not let him do anything. He can take out the trash. He can do some real service roles that no one will see him or know who he is. I think he's really probably would be great at almost anything. So let's not let him do anything.

And Matt was like, sounds great. So Raz hopped in and for a long time, we just kind of put our hand on top of his head and didn't let him do anything other than background cleaning. He's done a lot of stuff in our church family that nobody ever knows he did. And he didn't keep saying, hey, guys, I'm really smart. I'm important. I can read Greek.

Y'all need to let me do something else. He just did what we asked of him with a great attitude. And so then we kept asking more and more and more of it. That's what Jesus says in Matthew chapter 20, that he didn't come to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. And that whoever would be first among you must be your servant. Whoever would be chief among you must be your slave.

Even as the son of man came to give his life. He says that. And so we believe that Christian leadership isn't climbing a ladder, but it's descending one. And it goes from service slavery to death. So if you can't take out the trash and if you can't clean up after everybody's gone and if you can't show up earlier and help everything set up.

And if you can't open your wallet and give money and not have anybody know about it, then you can't lead in the church. Because it only gets worse from there. The more people see you and the more you get elevated, the more you're called to slavery and to death and to giving up your life for them. Raz, realize that as you become an elder today, that's the call. Service, slavery, and death. Not domineering over those in your charge, but being an example to the flock.

The role of a pastor is to not be right or to prove to everyone that you are right, but to set an example, to serve them, to love them, to sit with people and cry, to listen and to listen and to listen and then to speak. And then he's going to say, why? So he says, what? Shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight. He says, how? Not under compulsion, but willingly as God would have you.

Not for shameful gain, but eagerly. Not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock. And now he's going to say, why? And when the chief shepherd appears, that's Jesus, he will receive the unfading crown, you will receive the unfading crown of glory. Jesus is the chief shepherd. On our order chart, Jesus is at the top.

We don't have a senior pastor that's here. We have a senior pastor in Jesus. That's what chief shepherd means. And it says, when he appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory. Raz, I believe that in that sentence, we have as pastors, both something that should keep us up at night and that should wake us up in the morning. He says that when the chief shepherd appears, meaning that Jesus is coming back, we won't get to shepherd and be pastors forever without the chief shepherd coming back.

He's going to come back. There's going to be a day when we stand face to face with him. Hebrews 13 says it this way. Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you. Leap that up for just a minute.

There's going to be a day when every pastor stands before Jesus and gives an account for souls. For some of you who've grown up in church or have been a part of a church where the pastorate did not look like Peter just described it. It was domineering. It was for shameful gain. It was under compulsion. It was mishandled and misused.

Can I make you a promise? There will be a day when every person who shepherded one of Jesus's churches will stand before the chief shepherd and will be held accountable for souls. And Raz, I think that ought to keep us up at night. I think that ought to drive us to our knees. I think that ought to drive us to prayer and for mercy and for grace and for Jesus to be at work at us through His Holy Spirit that we would handle the care of souls of people who He died for to make His. That when we give an account we can say, Jesus, I trust in Your grace for me.

I trust in Your payment for me on the cross. And I trust that I tried to do as best I could. But I do have good news. Peter does not include that in this list to scare us. Although I do think it is kind of scary. Peter does not include it there for that reason.

Oh, can I say one thing, church family, real quick? From this passage since we read it that I think is, that also scares me. Can I just tell you all things I'm afraid of? It says, obey your leaders and submit to them. I think that word obey and submit is very terrifying for me as a pastor who's going to give an account for souls. That's one of the reasons why we want multiple pastors so that we can come to conclusions prayerfully together that the Holy Spirit can give us unity.

We don't do a whole lot of voting. We actually come to it like we, if one of us is saying, I have issues over this, we pray about it. We try to, we say, okay, well let's keep talking about it. Let's keep arguing about it. Let's, let's, so that when, because church family, it's one of the reasons we did membership this past year for you to say, this is where I'm plugged in. This is where I'm going to serve.

This is where I'm going to connect. This is where I'm going to give. This is where I'm going to labor because you're called to obey and submit in a local church. And I know as Americans, those words are cuss words. Liberty or death. I don't obey and submit to nobody.

Right? On the, on the other end of a gun, maybe. My cold dead hands, you know, like we're Americans, we say these things. Christians are called to obey and submit. And I kind of, as a pastor, I really just wish the author of Hebrews had said, consider the things they say. Think about, hold with some weight, but then at the end of the day, you're ultimately responsible for this.

Honestly, I think that actually means that there are house rules in churches. Here's what I mean. I got a two-year-old. Matt and Katie have a two-year-old. As they grow up together, there are certain things that we're called to that all Christian families should do that Matt and I are both supposed to do in our houses that are, this is what it looks like. And then there are house rules.

So when I was growing up, up until the time I left my dad's house, I was 18, I had to be in bed at nine o'clock. My older brother went to college, came back, was living at our house. My dad would say, if you're going to work for me, you're going to be in bed at nine o'clock. He was like 22. He had a bedtime and an early one. That stuck with me my whole life.

At about 9.30, I'm like, I better be getting to sleep. I can't be, I'm not a party animal. Like, when I met my wife, she didn't even have a curfew. I was like, what time do you need to get home? She's like, I don't have a curfew. And my first thought was your parents hate you.

Because my parents were so intense. It just turns out she never did anything real bad, so they didn't really police her that much. We needed a nine o'clock bedtime. So, those are house rules. As Emmy grows older, she may have to be in bed at seven. I don't know.

I may let my kids stay up late. Just kidding, it's nine o'clock. Or if you get loud or annoying before that, that indicates your sleepiness. If you're bothering me at 8.30, it's bedtime. Those are house rules. If I tell my kids to be in bed at 8.30 and they're up at nine, they are actually rebelling against their father, they are sinning, the Bible has told them to obey their parents, that's a house rule.

The Bible doesn't say children should be in bed at nine o'clock. Does that make sense? I think this means that in churches, whoop, I think this means that in churches there are house rules. I'm going to keep pointing like y'all know it's up there. Remember it, what it looked like. I think that in churches there are elders who actually have responsibility of making decisions and that the local church says, I'm a part of this.

And here's what he says though. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning for that would be no advantage to you. Church family, Raz is going to become an elder today. And by God's grace he'll get to do that for 20, 40, 60 years. And I hope that our church that at the end of the day he can say it was a joy that I got to serve that church. It was a joy that I got to shepherd and oversee those people.

When they had a problem, they talked to me, they didn't just leave. When they disagreed, we had heated debate because we both cared and we both wanted to do what mattered in the church. When there was something that was outside of, the Bible kind of gave us some guardrails, but we made a decision. They said, we're on this team. We're going to fight for it. We're going to lead in it.

We're going to, I pray that our church makes it a joy to be a pastor here. And can I just say, so far, I know Matt and I are blessed to be able to lead here. It's been a joy. I appreciate our church family. And I know how difficult those first two words are to obey and to submit. And I appreciate how much y'all care and fight and stay.

Thank y'all. And I really mean that. And I pray that we get to continue to do this, continue to pursue the city, continue to fight together. But Raz, as I was saying earlier, Peter doesn't include that to scare us. He includes it not to keep us up at night, but to wake us up in the morning. Because he says, when the chief shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory.

You're supposed to live your life as a pastor, serving, putting yourself last, taking phone calls at random times in the day and night that go get with people, go connect with people, go listen to people, go fight for things that matter when people don't care, go sit down with someone who's actively trying to run away from Jesus and do everything you possibly can to say everything you possibly can so that they won't. And what Peter is saying is do this humbly, continually, eagerly, and willingly. And one day, Jesus comes back and the king of the universe is going to honor you for your struggle and your fight for however long you did it. There's going to be a moment when the God of the universe who deserves all glory and all honor and is ultimately sovereign eternally, eternally, and infinitely worthy is going to pause for a moment and look at pastors and say, well done.

Thank you for hustling. Thank you for loving. Thank you for caring for my church. Peter says that so that you would always have a reason to wake up and fight because there's going to be a day when you stand before the chief shepherd and he pauses and honors you. The one, the one being, the one person in all the world that it matters to be honored by. So Raz, it's my hope and prayer that we get to do this a long time together.

We get to be really old, that we get to pastor well beyond our usefulness. I hope we get to do it while we're bad at it and can't even remember anything. Like, I can't remember stuff now. I hope it gets worse and I'm like 80. People are like, you should step down and I'm like, make me. Just kidding.

Raz is shaking his head because all of that was incorrect. But I hope we do get to do this a long time together. Serve alongside one another together. And I hope we get to raise up more pastors in our church family. I hope we get to send out more churches from our church family. And I hope we get to celebrate together all along the way as we chase after Jesus and his fame and his glory and his work here on earth.

Raz, will you come up here? Matt, will you come up here? Here's what we're going to do. We're going to lay hands on Raz, pray over him. Matt and I are and then we'll have a chance to do that as a church family. Raz, pastors are supposed to willingly, eagerly shepherd and oversee God's church until ultimately the Holy Spirit calls you to step down or Jesus comes back.

You get to meet him. By God's grace, are you willing to take on this role and responsibility in our church? Yeah. Okay. Let's step over here.

We're going to pray. Matt's going to pray and then I'm going to pray and then we'll have an opportunity to all pray together. Amen. God, I thank you so much for Raz. I thank you that in your divine sovereign plan that there was a friend that he went to school with that shared the gospel with him. Your Holy Spirit convicted Raz of the sin and he turned from the sin and he placed his faith in you and he's never looked back.

That every bit of Raz's life has mattered since that time. God, you brought him here to the States. You brought him to Columbia International. You brought him to Bethel Christian Camp. You brought him to the South Carolina Baptist Convention. You brought him to Midtown and to be a part of Mill City Church.

God, your hand has been on Raz every step of the way until the time where two of his friends get to stand on his side and pray over him as he becomes an elder of this church and Jesus, we praise you. We praise you for your work in his life. Lord, I thank you for the gifts and the talents and the abilities that you've given him but more than anything, God, I thank you for his heart. I thank you for how much he loves you and how much he loves his wife and how much he loves this church family and how much he loves seeing people come to know you and to worship you and follow you. I thank you for the people that he's been able to share the gospel with.

I thank you for the groups that he's been able to lead as a part of our church family. I thank you for the ministries that he's overseen and God, as he takes a step into being an elder in our church, I pray that you would help him continue to serve faithfully and humbly for many, many years. God, I pray that the three of us would look to you as our chief shepherd that you are the leader of our church and we submit and follow you and that we get to get after it for many, many years here in this city to see more people come to know the love of Jesus and to follow him in the normal, everyday life. God, in the name of Jesus, we commend Raz to you that by your grace you would empower him to keep him from stumbling, to keep him faithful, to help him to grow daily more in love with you, to see your people and the city more the way you see them.

That God, as he steps into being an elder in our church, that you would give him wisdom and humility and patience, kindness and love, that he would sacrifice, that he would be an example to our church family as he follows you, that he would help us look more like Jesus. God, I pray that he would be kept far from sin. I pray that he would be quick to repent, that through your grace you would help him to own his sin quickly, to be honest with his community group, to be honest with our church family, to walk as a broken, weak sinner, saved by grace, changed by Jesus. We ask God that your blessing be on him, that your blessing be on our church, that you would use our church family to help others come to know you in this city.

In Jesus' name, amen. Raz, if you'll step down here and Christina, if you'll come up and stand with him. They're going to stand down here and if you will, church family, if you, if you, we're going to pray for them now, just kind of together, collectively asking God to bless them, to use them in our church family to work through them. If you know Raz or you're in his community group, you're part of our church family and y'all want to come up here and actually lay hands on them and pray around them, I'd ask you to go ahead and move, move, go ahead and move and do that this morning. And we're just going to pray kind of silently.

If you, if you don't know Raz as well, but you're part of our church family, why don't you pray where you are. So, but we're just going to take a minute to, to kind of quietly stand before God on their behalf and ask him to work. through them, to bless them, to guard them, to use them. And then, when we've prayed here for a minute, I'll pray out loud and then, we'll sing, sing a song and finish up today. Let's pray. Let's pray.

Let's pray. Let's go. Let's pray. Let's pray. Let's pray, let's pray, let's pray, let's pray, let's pray, let's pray, Amen.

In the name of Jesus and by your spirit, we commend them to you, Lord, and we ask you that you would guard them, guard their marriage, bless their service, help them to grow in their love for you. We ask you to work mightily in our church family for your glory and your name. In Jesus' name, amen.

Stand Firm

1 Peter 5:12-14

Stand Firm

Chet Phillips

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Transcript

Good morning. Everybody have a good Halloween. I dressed up as Anger from Inside Out, thank you, which, I mean, wasn't too much of a stretch. I mean, I had to wear dress pants, but otherwise, pretty straightforward. I hope everybody had a good time, and good to see everybody this morning. So, time changed last night, and who's the person that was like, sweet, an extra hour of sleep?

I know it's really 8 o'clock, or I know it's really 9 o'clock, but I'm still going to bed. Who's the person that was like, a bonus hour? I better stay awake. Like, it's only 9. I better, like, yeah, okay. So, we've got a mix here.

But anyway, we're in our last week of the First Peter series. So, we've been in this series for the past year and a half. No, it's only been about 20 weeks or so. We've been walking through it. Most of this year, we've been in First Peter. And we've just been going verse by verse through the book of First Peter because we believe that all Scripture is helpful.

And instead of jumping around all the time and looking at different things, we actually just want to kind of walk through a book, learn from the book, see everything in context, grow in our ability to study the Bible together. So, we're going to be in First Peter chapter 5. The last little bit is on page 658 if your Bible is one of these. And what we're going to do is just kind of read this and just talk about it a little bit and kind of see how Peter wraps the book up. And so, First Peter chapter 5, we'll start in verse 12. It says, By Silvanus, that's a really sweet name.

It does sound to me like he makes TVs. But, by Silvanus, a faithful brother as I regard him, I have written briefly to you. So, he most likely either Silvanus actually penned it while Peter talked, dictated it, and Silvanus penned it, or at least Silvanus is the one who delivered this letter. So, he would have traveled around to all the different churches and actually all at once read it out loud to everybody. So, by Silvanus, a faithful brother as I regard him, I have written briefly to you, exhorting and declaring that this is the true grace of God. Stand firm in it.

She who is at Babylon, who is likewise chosen, sends you greetings, as so does Mark, my son. And so does Mark, my son. She who is at Babylon is most likely a reference to the church in Rome. So, they would have used Babylon as kind of like a weird cryptic code word for Rome. I don't quite know why. And she just being the church.

So, she who is at Babylon, so the church in Rome also, who is likewise chosen, sends you greetings, and so does Mark. And that's most likely Mark, author of the Gospel of Mark, my son. Greet one another with the kiss of love. Peace to all of you who are in Christ. So, we're going to spend most of our time today looking at greet one another with the kiss of love. So, we're going to talk about what kind of kiss that is, kind of the best practices on how to go about it, length of time, hand placement, that kind of stuff.

And then we're going to institute. No, I'm kidding. We're not going to spend any time there. Although, cool, kiss of love, great. We're going to spend most of our time looking at where he says, I have written briefly to you exhorting and declaring that this is the true grace of God. Stand firm in it.

So, Peter's finishing up his letter and he says, I've written briefly to you exhorting and declaring. So, declaring means I taught, I said it. And exhorting means I encouraged. I pressed hard into it. But, this is the true grace of God. Stand firm in it.

And so, what we're going to do is we're just going to kind of take a, we've read through the whole book together. We've studied through the whole book together. We're going to zoom out and just say, okay, what is he talking about? What is the true grace of God? How do we stand firm in it? What is his, what's his main point?

What is the true grace of God? What was the thing that he was pressing on the whole time? What was he trying to get us to understand the whole time? And then, how do we stand firm in it? What does that, what does that look like? What's that mean?

And how do we do that? Um, you don't, in life, you don't have to know a lot of stuff. I mean, if you go do trivia nights places, it helps. But, but most people who do really well know one thing and are very good at it. They're, they're really good at it. So like you have a friend who's good at a handful of things.

And so you have like, you call them and you're like, I need, I need help with some plumbing and they can, they can get you only so far. But in certain problems, like you need someone. No, I just want someone who, this is all they do. They plumb. That's it. They are a plumber.

That is it. That's all they do. I just want that person. Not the person who can kind of do half of this. Get in the middle of it, take it all apart and go, yeah, I don't know. I've never seen that before.

Like, like just knowing something and being very good at it. And that's just kind of how life works. So if you know one thing or captivated by it, gripped by it, and really just make that it for you, then that actually can take you much further than knowing a whole bunch of stuff. And I'll give you an example. And this is kind of a rule in business in general. But I want to show you all.

This is Google's homepage. That's it. You've got Google search, which you can also just press enter. And then you've got, I'm feeling lucky. But you're only doing one thing.

Google is a search engine. That's what you're doing. That's why we say things like Google it. It's become a verb because that is synonymous with using a search engine. So we used to have like Ask Jeeves, which was a butler that Googled things for you.

And this happens now. You remember, and some of you are old enough to remember, and I'm in this. You remember before Google and before smartphones when you used to have to sit and think to remember something? You're watching a movie on your VHS. Yes, you would pause it and go, what else has that guy been in? And everyone in the room would go, uh.

And you would sit and think. And you would have to try to remember. And if you were good enough at lying, you could convince everybody. No, he was in Hook. He was in Hook because he was the guy. He was one of the pirates.

And you could like, if you sold it hard enough, you get everybody to move on. And they could never find out. Like lying used to be way easier before Google. But you remember, you just have to sit and think. Now this happens.

And this is a real thing. You will go, ah, who's the head coach there? Or did they win that game? Or what has this person been in? And you'll sit for about seven seconds. And someone will go, this is stupid.

I'm going to Google it. And what they mean is sitting and thinking is stupid. That's the point. It's like, why would we sit and think when we have Google? But Google, that's it.

That's what they do. Don't change that. Do you remember Yahoo? Some people still use Yahoo. I don't know why. Yahoo started off as a search engine.

This is Yahoo's homepage. They're a search engine, I think. There's a lightsaber there. Kendall Jenner wears $1,000 sweatpants to the airport because this is her life. I needed to know that. Yahoo doesn't even know what they're doing.

Look to the left here. Mail, news, sports, finance, weather, autos, fantasy. Weird screen dating, shopping, making parents. Makers parenting, sorry. Not making parents, that's weird. Health style, beauty, politics, movies, travel, tech, TV.

Google? Google? Yahoo. Yahoo. Okay. Having one thing.

That's why we Google stuff. That's why you're never like, I'll Yahoo it. Do that in a conversation this week just for the heck of it. Someone's like, I don't know what he's, I'll Yahoo it. So when we read the book of Peter, the first letter that Peter writes and sends it out to the churches, we're going to see actually as we look at the whole thing that it's way more Google than Yahoo.

That he's got one thing. I have written to you declaring and exhorting that this is the true grace of God. What I have said to you can be boiled down to that one thing. This is the true grace of God. Stand firm in it. So we're going to pray and then we're going to look at what he's talking about.

God, we thank you for how good you are. And we thank you for the time that we've gotten to share studying this book that you authored through Peter. We thank you for how it has helped us. And God, I pray that we would see as we kind of look back over this letter, that we would clearly see the true grace from you. That we would clearly see what the main point is. And then God, I pray that you'd give us the grace to stand firm in it.

In Jesus' name, amen. Okay, so what's he been talking about? Flip back to 1 Peter chapter 1. We're going to kind of run through. We're going to jump around a little bit because we've got to see kind of what he's been saying. He starts off by calling them elect exiles.

So it's Peter and the apostle of Jesus Christ to those who are elect exiles. And then he lists off a bunch of places. Okay, that's kind of one of the main themes he's going to carry throughout the book. Is that he's writing to people who, because they are Christians, because they have placed their faith in Jesus, they are elect, which means they are chosen, they are loved, they are wanted, they are made into a people, they are gods. And they're exiles. Which means that when you became a Christian, you did not disapparate into the air.

Is that not what they do in Harry Potter? Disappear? You didn't get sucked up. You weren't beamed up, disappeared, your clothes became just a pile on the ground. That's not what happened. You're still here.

You're chosen by God. You belong to him. The Bible tells us over and over again that our home is in heaven, but we're still here. And so what he's saying is that you're chosen by God. You belong to him. You're his people.

But you're where you are on purpose. God has exiled you on purpose. Where you are. And then he goes into verse 3. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope.

Through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you. Who, by God's power, are being guarded through faith for salvation, ready to be revealed in the last time. So he says, you're elect exiles, and here's why. You've placed your faith in Jesus, and he was resurrected from the dead. He died. He was buried.

And he rose again. And the tomb is forever empty. And he is forever at the right hand of the Father. And you have an imperishable, undefiled, unfading eternity. A hope held for you because Jesus rose from the grave. The first 12 verses in this is one sentence.

It's like a crazy, amazing, run-on sentence of here's how amazing Jesus is, and here's what he's done for you. And here's how you have hope forever secure in Jesus. Hope forever secure in the resurrection. It's yours, and he has an eternity and an inheritance that's kept for you. Verse 13. Therefore, preparing your minds for action and being sober-minded, thinking clearly, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the Revelation of Jesus Christ.

So our hope as Christians is set fully on the grace that will be given to us, brought to us, because of the resurrection. So Peter starts off, his main point that he begins with is, your hope is in the resurrection and an inheritance that is forever yours, and set your hope fully there. Set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you when Jesus returns. For Christians, when Jesus returns, what is brought to us is not condemnation, is not judgment, is not guilt, is not disappointment. I used to think about that. I used to think, when I actually meet Jesus, is he going to be proud of me, or is he going to be disappointed in me?

When I stand before the throne of God, is he going to be proud or disappointed? I used to think about that all the time. Is he going to look at me and go, I'll let you in, because you trust me. And that's about all I've got to say. Because you didn't, you just... And I used to, I would be so worried that he would be disappointed, but what he says is, set your hope fully on the grace that will be given to you.

That everything, when we stand before God, is unearned. It's not based off of your behavior, if you've trusted in Jesus. It's based off of Jesus' behavior. So that God welcomes us the way he would welcome Jesus. Our hope is fully there. Because of the resurrection.

Because we have an inheritance, imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for us, through the resurrection. And we just trust. We have faith. We're guarded by faith. And we set our hope fully on grace. Okay, so if someone has their hope fully set on the stock market.

If someone has their hope fully set on being a professional athlete, what happens? You pour a lot of energy there. That guides how you think about things. How you walk through life. When I was in college, I played college football. I was mostly on the team, but I kept thinking, like, at some point, I'm going to play.

You know, you wait. At some point. Coach is going to see me, and he's going to think, good Job, in his head, and he's going to say it out loud, and then I'll get to ride on the bus, and I won't get car sick, which I always did. I'd get off the bus and be like, Coach, I need something. This is bad. I used to think that.

And I remember one time before practice, because football for me was, I had set my hope there. So it guided for me where I went to school, what I did with my time, how I made friendships, when I went to sleep, what I ate, what I did with my free time, was mostly set on football. I remember before practice one day, we were all out there before the coaches got out there. We were just on the field kind of hanging out, and I picked up a football, and I looked up a few guys near me, and I said, just a second, think about how much of your life has been devoted to this little leather thing. Like, how many hours of your life, or days when you add the hours up, has been devoted to this little leather thing.

And one of the guys who was an All-American linebacker heard me, his name was Antoine, and he goes, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, shh, hey, hey, shut up. Chet, say that again. And like, now there's like, everybody's listening to me that was over there. And I was like, how much of your life has been devoted? How many hours, and how many, when you add those hours up, how many days? When you think about workouts, when you think about practices, has been devoted to this little brown leather thing.

And it was like, the most profound moment that I think I've ever been a part of on a football field. Because there's not a lot of heavy thinkers out there. And their guys were just like, I mean, really, you could just see their brain like trying to do math. I'm like, how many hours am I going to be out here today? How many days have I done this? Like, people are just like, man.

And for all of us, you might could hold up something. Maybe it's not a brown leather thing. Maybe it's a relationship. Maybe it's, just pull out a dollar bill. How much time has been spent setting our hope there? How much time has been spent setting your hope anywhere?

And so what Peter starts off with is, Jesus Christ was raised from the dead. And you have an inheritance, undefiled, unfading, imperishable, kept in heaven for you. Set your hope there. His first sentence, we had to break up into 12 verses because it was just this. I have too many words to tell you how amazing what Jesus has accomplished for us is. Set your hope there, fully, on the grace that will be provided for you.

Then he goes into chapter 2. We're going to look at verse 9, chapter 2. But 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. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people. Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. So what he says, our hope is fully in the resurrection.

Our hope is fully in Jesus. Jesus is above all things, and our hope is in the grace that will be provided. And now, we've been made into a new people so that we might proclaim his excellencies, the excellencies of him who brought us out of darkness and into his marvelous light. that we were trapped, that we were enslaved, and that Jesus came and became enslaved, became trapped, became nailed to a tree, took our guilt, our punishment, our shame, took our beating, took our death so that we could be set free. So he just said, in the chapter before, he said, follow in obedience because you've been purchased, you've been ransomed by the precious blood of Christ.

That we were bought back through Jesus' sacrifice. We were enslaved, we were in darkness, and he's called us into his marvelous light. There's a movie with Brendan Fraser that is called Blast from the Past. And in that movie, he and his family lived in a bomb shelter because a plane crashed on their house, and his dad already had a bomb shelter because he was really afraid of the Cold War. And so he made his whole family get into this bunker. And then at some point, Brendan's like a little kid, and then he grows up, and then he's like, well, we're running out of food or something, so you've got to go out into the world.

And so it's a fairly entertaining movie, which is, you can't say for many Brendan Fraser movies. And there's this one point, though, where he spent his whole life in this little box underground. And there's this one scene in the movie where he sees the Pacific Ocean, and he just stares at it, and then he just runs into it. He's like fully clothed. He just, it just like captivates him. And I just have this picture that that's just a small glimpse of what it means for us to be called out of darkness and into his marvelous light.

The amount of now freedom and hope and massiveness that we just can't even take in, can't even really understand what that means for us to have been enslaved to sin, headed for death, headed for destruction, headed for hell, and Jesus rescued us and brought us into his marvelous light. Okay. Peter says, everything, banking on, hoping in, the gospel, that Jesus died for you, that he rose again, that your hope is secure because of that. And then, he says, so, so obey, even when you don't understand? And so one of the things we talked about when we talked about that was that when we come to something in the Bible that we just, I don't, it doesn't, doesn't give me enough.

Like I don't, I want it to tell me more as to why I should do this thing that it says I should do. I want it to tell me more as to why I should care about this. And one of the things we talked about was that if Jesus really died for us, then he's ultimately trustworthy. So, taken. We talked about this. There's a guy in taken, his daughter gets taken, and he has a select set of skills and he goes and gets her back.

And then she gets taken a whole lot more, I think. So he's not, his select set of skills is getting back, not keeping. But, in the second movie, if he calls her at the beginning, I hadn't seen the second movie, I saw the first one. He calls her, if you hadn't seen it, this is what happens. If you have seen it, this is hypothetical. In the second movie, if he calls her up and says, she answers the phone and he says, you're going to be taken.

Because that's what he says. He doesn't say kidnapped, he says taken. You're going to be taken. I need you to get as much money as you possibly can. I need you to set the house on fire. I need you to head north 50 miles and meet me out of Texaco.

Now, if you're his daughter, what do you do? You don't ask questions. You get as much money as you can. You burn the house down and you drive to the Texaco. Because he's trustworthy. And for Christians, when the Bible doesn't give us enough, we get to walk back to Jesus, the Son of God, who deserves honor and glory and praise forever, went to a cross for me to rescue and redeem me, to make me his.

He is ultimately trustworthy, even if I'd rather he explained this more. So Peter goes, obey. Then Peter goes, submit to authority. Follow the leadership of your country. Submit to those over you. Listen to your bosses.

And you're like, well, my boss is an idiot. He doesn't. Listen to your boss. Whether Trump wins or loses, whether Clinton wins or loses, whether Bernie Sanders, who is also the co-creator of Seinfeld, wins or loses, doesn't matter. Because our hope is not in the political system. Our hope is not in the authorities over us.

Our hope is fully in Jesus. And then he goes, so he goes, submit to authority. Then he starts talking to servants. And so he's basically saying that whatever you do on a regular basis with your job, here's how to do it. And when things don't go well, continue trusting Jesus. Then he goes to husbands and wives.

And he says, wives, even if your husband is terrible, submit and follow because your hope is not in your husband, but in God. And he says, husbands, realize that you need grace too, that both of you have to be rescued by Jesus and lead well, serve well, love well. Then he goes into suffering. And he talks about suffering for a long time. That in the midst of pain and heartache, we can trust in Jesus. That when people don't like us and when we're ridiculed and when we're made fun of and people say, oh, I didn't know you were into superstition.

Oh, you really believe what was written in a book. Haven't we grown past that? Aren't, isn't that so backwards? You're going to be on the wrong side of history. It's one of my favorite ones that I get to hear. And over and over you hear this and you keep thinking, are we?

And Peter's saying, no, in the midst of that, continue to trust, continue to believe, continue to hope because of the resurrection. Then he talks about what we get, how do we relate to each other in the church. So really, Peter says, everything's about the resurrection. Our hope is in Jesus. And then he just talks about all kinds of stuff. And it's like, I feel like maybe you lost your point, Peter.

Like, you talked to wives and you talked to husbands, you talked about submitting to authority and then you were like, honor the emperor and love God and then you were like, if you suffer, and he just kind of goes all over the place. You brought up Satan, just out of the blue. What's his point? Why does Peter start off so heavy here and then just talk about all kinds of stuff? Normal everyday life stuff, being married, doing your job, living in a country, having governors and people over top of you. Like, why does he do that?

I've heard recently people talking about asteroids hitting earth. So I don't know if y'all know this. We're on a rock that's on an angle. It spins really fast. And then it's constantly hurling in outer space in like an oval shape around the big yellow one and that's the sun. And there are other rocks doing this too.

And as far as we can see, there are other big yellow ones and other rocks swirling around and the more we look at it, the more we're like, there's more stuff out there. They pointed a telescope into nothingness and it was just a little, like a little tiny black thing and then they let it just soak up light for a really long time and then they were like, there's a whole bunch of stuff there we didn't even know about. Like, you can get on the internet now, I encourage you to Yahoo it, and you can, you can see all of these beautiful pictures of all of this stuff that's going on. And so we're spinning on this oddly shaped rock in an oval and there's these other rocks just like whizzing around.

All the time. Now they're not as big as us, but like, I don't know, stuff blew up somewhere else and then like gravitational pools like throw it and it's just whizzing around and so there's this potential for us to be spinning on our little rock around the big yellow one and then this other little rock just come flying in and our gravitational pool will be like, come on in! And then this rock just smack into us. Now, NASA's paying attention to these things and so they're most of the time being like, we're good, we're good right now, like I think you can ask NASA, anything going to hit us? And they're like, nah, not anything big, nothing to worry about, but they're doing studies and trying to figure out what would happen if it did.

And so I read a study that they did in New Mexico and they, I think it was like a mile sized rock if it hit, if it smacked into the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. And what they said was that all the coastal areas would just be destroyed. One of the quotes is this, it says, the coastal lands would be devastated, not by the actual impact, some 1,500 miles away, 1,500 miles away, but by a relentless succession of colossal waves traveling at the speed of a jet aircraft and towering much higher than the Empire State Building. That if a giant asteroid smacks into the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, there would be a colossal succession of massive waves bigger than the Empire State Building traveling as fast as an airplane that would just start pounding everything.

I've also read that if that happened, there would be enough dust and enough debris and enough problems that the whole climate would change and everything would be different for everybody if this happens. Regardless of where one of these big ones hits, everything is different. And Peter is saying, you're the Earth and the Gospel is that asteroid and nothing is the same anymore. If you are a Christian and you have placed your faith in Jesus, your little thing you had going is not the same anymore. There is nothing that is untouched by this. And whereas this is destructive, the Gospel brings life and meaning to everything.

And so Peter goes into all of this random, normal stuff because the Gospel goes into all of this random, normal stuff. That colossal wave after colossal wave of the Gospel has begun to wash over your life. And so some of you are struggling with a particular issue, you are hurting in a particular area and you went to Jesus and you said, help me. You saw the Bible said, yes, he helps marriages. Yes, Jesus works in relationships. Yes, Jesus works in the midst of brokenness and the pain and loss.

Yes, Jesus died for us and he suffers alongside of us and he understands and so you trust in Jesus and then you begin to realize everything is different. So first it was just, I realized I can't go to work the same way and then it's, I actually can't even view work the same way. I can't even view what my goal in life is the same way. I can't view my money the same way. Or I realized that this relationship, I can't think about it now without having the gospel wash over it. But then it actually affects how I relate to everybody.

People I like, people I don't like. It affects my marriage. You see, the gospel permeates every aspect of our lives and that's why Peter says, here's the gospel. Now, work, submission to authority, relationships, marriage, because the gospel impacts everything. Nothing is left untouched by the fact that Jesus Christ died for us. Do you know what we're saying we believe as Christians?

That we were rebellious against a holy, righteous God. That we were trapped in our sin, destined for destruction. That hell and heaven are real. I can go, I preach, I read the Bible and stand up and say things. I can go weeks without thinking about heaven or hell. In any kind of real way.

But what we're saying we believe is that there is a real place of eternal joy in relationship with God and there's a real place of eternal torment. And that Jesus came because he loved us so much and he didn't want us to get away from him. Didn't want us to rebel. Didn't want us to be destroyed. That he took our rebellion on himself. That he took our pain.

That by his wounds we are healed, Peter says. That we were ransomed, bought back with the precious blood of Christ. And that our hope is forever secure through the resurrection. And that our hope needs to be set fully on the gospel and fully on the grace that will be provided for us. That that is the one thing that should be the overarching thing for every person who says they believe in Jesus. That your hope is fully set on the gospel.

And that impacts everything. That's the true grace of God and it comes into every ounce, every bit of your life. There's not a second of your day when you were at work that does not now matter. There's not a millisecond of time while you travel down the road a mile that you go. There's not a conversation that you have that is not now infused with absolute importance and meaning because the gospel is real. Peter doesn't say exit the normal.

He says you're exiled into it. He doesn't say have set apart special times. He says no. Working. Marriage. Friendship.

It all matters. It's all important now because the gospel touches everything. The gospel impacts everything. And then he says stand firm. Don't forget. Don't forget where your hope is.

When you lose your job don't forget where your hope is. When you're at work and people don't recognize how hard you work and how important you are and how much you pour in and when your boss doesn't acknowledge the fact that you're working harder than anybody around you don't forget where your hope is. When you're in your marriage and it does not seem like there's any possible way that this could work out and your husband is not following Jesus and he's not repenting of sin don't forget where your hope is. Stand firm in the grace. Put your hope fully in the grace that will be provided for you.

Stand in it. Remember. Keep going. Keep remembering that your hope and your eternity is set secure in the resurrection of Jesus and so everything matters and all of the things that we chase after aren't as big and as important as they used to be. In light of the gospel everything matters and then all the things that we would say matters most no longer do. that we get to be normal Christians in normal life set free from the gospel by the gospel to follow after Jesus and have that be the thing the main thing for us where our hope comes from where our joy comes from and then we're untouchable in the midst of suffering then we're untouchable when work isn't going well then we're untouchable when marriage is hard.

Do you know why he covers all the difficult things? Because we need to remember in those moments that nothing has been taken from us that our hope stays secure when we're anxious we have someone who's rescued us redeemed us bought us back when we're worried when we're tired when we're sick when we're suffering when everything looks like it's not going to work out we get to remember that we've already been taken from darkness into his marvelous light and we already have our hope secure. Stand firm. Don't forget. Don't lose focus. Don't get caught up chasing after something so much smaller and so much more insignificant.

Stand firm in the true grace of God which is that Jesus has already done everything for us. Matt's going to come back up and we're going to we're going to celebrate by taking communion together and communion is a tangible reminder of Jesus' work on our behalf. So Jesus before he died before he went to the cross the next day he says this is my body that's broken for you this is my blood that was spilled for you and so one of the things that we do as Christians is we if you are a believer if your hope is in Jesus if your hope is fully set on the grace that will come to you we get to remind ourselves that all we need is Jesus. That our hope is there forever and so there's bread and there's juice and you take the bread and you can dip it in the juice and you can partake in communion which is a reminder a tangible reminder we need the gospel we need Jesus my hope is here forever and so I would just ask as we do this if you are a Christian and you go to take communion that you would just remind yourself of how good Jesus is and how much we need him and that you would ask God to help you by his grace and by his spirit to stand firm to not be caught up in smaller things to not be knocked off our guard to not be pushed around by normal life but to realize that the gospel applies to everything that there is not one square inch of your life that is not impacted by the fact that your hope is fully in Jesus forever and stand firm and praise Jesus that he's already done everything that needed to happen to rescue you to redeem you to bring you back and take communion I'm gonna pray and then we'll take communion together and then we'll sing God we thank you for your grace we thank you for your love we thank you for the hope that is ours fully and forever through Jesus and God I pray that the gospel would continue to wash over us would continue to permeate every single moment that there wouldn't be a moment in between heartbeats that was not affected by the gospel was not claimed by you and that God in all the normal things of life shopping exercising celebrating Halloween that God the gospel would be active that your Holy Spirit would be at work and that we would follow after you help us God as a church to stand firm in what's most important to not lose focus to not be knocked off our guard to not forget we praise you and we thank you that our hope is fully and forever in Jesus not in our abilities our goodness are mortals in Jesus name Amen

The Devil and the King

The Devil and the King

Chet Phillips

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Transcript

Well, good morning. My name is Chet. I'm one of the pastors here. We're going to be in 1 Peter. We'll be on page 658, if your Bible looks like this. If you have one of the blue and white Bibles from the Rose, we're on page 658.

We'll be in 1 Peter chapter 5. We've been walking verse by verse through the book of 1 Peter, and we're coming up on the tail end of it. Halloween is coming up this Saturday, and I find that when it comes to Halloween, you've got people kind of in different groups. We're going to take some—we're going to kind of figure out who's in the room this morning. So when it comes to Halloween, there is the group of people that are like, oh, yeah, Halloween was last week.

Like, you were at a place where, oh, look, there's bats on the wall. I guess Halloween's coming. Like, you just don't care. It doesn't even show up on your radar. You could care less about—couldn't care less about Halloween. That's the one that makes sense, that Americans say could care less.

Anyway, raise your hand. You just couldn't care less about Halloween. It doesn't show up on your radar. You don't care. Okay. Cool.

Yeah, we got a handful of people that are in that zone. Who falls in the—there's the other group of people that, like, care maybe too much about Halloween. Like, they're a little too excited. Like, to them in their brain, it's one of the major holidays. Like, it is the—it's a big deal. And so they're going to decorate their house a little prematurely.

They're going to—you're going to have some—when you throw a party, it's like a legit party. Like, people come over, and there's, like, cups with things bubbling out of the top, and they don't even know how you did that. And, like, you just—who's that? Who's that person? Cares a lot about Halloween, is excited about Halloween. Okay.

So I got two more questions that kind of fall along the same lines. If you're invited to a costume party, there's groups of people here. There are the people who get excited and show up, like, make the party good because they're there, because they know how to dress up. They know how to make it amazing. Who's that? Who shows up to a costume party just ready to roll?

Yes. Okay. Cool. I appreciate y'all. I like the people who go to costume parties dressed up. Who says no to a costume party because you don't want to dress up?

Yeah. Okay. I thought there were people there, too. Yeah. Who says yes, thinks they'll dress up, and decides not to, and just shows up anyway? Yeah.

Okay. That's the one I do. I'm like, yeah, I'm going to dress up this year. And then by the time I get there, I'm like, I'm my evil twin. Like, I'm the bad version of me. It's like, but you look the same.

Right. That's what I want to—I'm tricking you. Like, I'm my doppelganger. Like, that's how I go to Halloween parties. All right.

Last one. Horror movies. To be careful how I pronounce this horror. Raz, a friend of mine from Australia, he came over here. I think it was he was dating his now wife, and she asked him, you like horror movies? He's like, what?

He's from Australia, and he pronounces things. Like, actually pronounces things as opposed to Southern Americans who just kind of slur everything together. She's like, you know, horror movies. And he's like, no. Why would I like a horror movie? Why are you even asking me this question?

So horror movies. Who likes horror movies? Scary movies? Who likes them? Gets really excited. Yeah, I find people fall in different camps on these.

Like, they're like, you should see that movie. It's terrifying. I didn't sleep for three days. Why on earth would I want to watch that? I swear, when you get home, there's going to be a small child in your bed. Why would what?

No. You won't be able to walk alone for a week. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Who is the, I have no desire whatsoever to see a scary movie. Not going to watch it. Yeah, that's me.

Like, I do not want to see a scary movie. Unless it's Troll 2, I don't want to see it. Don't care about scary movies. Just don't. Well, we're coming up on Halloween, and we've come to this section in 1 Peter where Peter is going to talk about the devil. And in some ways, it's fitting because this is the time in our culture where everybody just, it collectively, we kind of think about these things.

Creepy things, demonic things, spooky things, ghosts, all that kind of stuff. And so what we're going to do is Peter's come to this section. He's talking about the devil. He's going to encourage Christians on how to respond to the devil. And so what we're going to do this morning, because I think we've been a church plant for going on three years now, two and a half years something, we've never taken a whole lot of time to talk about Satan. Never taken a whole lot of time to talk about the devil, talk about demonic things.

And so what we're going to do is just, in order to even understand what Peter is teaching us today, we have to understand who he's talking about. We have to understand who Satan is, how all that works, what demons are. And so we're just going to read what Peter says, and then we're going to zoom out and get a big overview on who Satan is, what he does, how he works, what the Bible says, big picture. And then we're going to come back to 1 Peter and say, okay, given that that's what, that's who he's talking about, that's what the Bible says about Satan, this is how we get to respond. And so this is going to be a little bit different than most of the time where we just read a passage and talk through it.

And if this is your first time hanging out with us, this is the first time we've ever spent any significant time talking about Satan and the devil and the demonic. So welcome. It's everybody's first time for this kind of a conversation too. So I'm going to pray and then we're going to, we're going to spend, we're going to read 1 Peter and then we're going to kind of zoom out and just spend some time talking about this. So God, we thank you that your word tells us what we need to know.

God, it doesn't always give us all the answers that we want to know, but it tells us what we need to know and we can be confident in you and in your word that you've provided so that we might study your word and know and be equipped with the information that we need so that we might be able to understand the world that we live in. And so God, we just pray that as we study this this morning, that we would learn what scripture says about the enemy and appropriately learn and that you would still get all the glory and it would still be about you. In Jesus name, Amen. Okay, so we're going to read 1 Peter 5, 6 through, no, 8 through 11 and then we're going to just kind of talk a little bit and see kind of big picture who Satan is and what the storyline is here.

So, be sober-minded, be watchful. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world. And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. To him be the dominion forever and ever. Amen.

Okay, so that's the section in 1 Peter, but he just says, your adversary, the devil, and so if we're not familiar with what he's talking about, it's like, well, what? Like, you just, you just going to bring him up at the end of the letter? Like, you just, I'm just supposed to know who you're talking about? So we're just going to take a second, zoom out, look at this big picture. I do want to read this. This is a, C.S.

Lewis was a theologian and an author in the 1900s in Britain. And this is, this is a quote he says about the demonic, and I think it's helpful. There are two equal and opposite errors in which our race can fall about the devils. There he just means demonic spiritual realm. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe and to feel an excessive, unhealthy interest in them.

They themselves are equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight. So what he says is there's kind of two ditches on the road of understanding the spiritual realm and understanding the demonic. One is just, they don't exist. It's not a real thing. The other is to be way too concerned, way overly interested, way overly afraid of. The demonic.

And so, I find that in our culture, we have some people who are overly spiritual. You see some of this. You've met the person that everything is like some sort of a spiritual thing. Like Christians sometimes will over-spiritualize things or everything's an attack. So you'll be talking to somebody and be like, yeah, my car broke down, just locked up on me.

And I got out and I said, Satan, get out of my car. Or, because I knew Satan was after me. And it's like, when was the last time he changed the oil? Like, maybe you should just take it to, like if a mechanic can fix it, it might not have been Satan. I'm just saying, maybe, maybe he didn't want you to go to the grocery store. What were you doing?

Like, what? Like, I mean, you've met some of those people that are like, the devil's after me. Like, every time something's happening, oh, the devil's trying to get us, we gotta pray. Like, okay, there's spiritual things, but that's a bit too much. I remember my dad telling me there was a lady that lived kind of out in the country and on some farmland and she worked at their house helping watch them during the day because both of his parents worked. She told him one day, she said, last night, the devil was looking in my window.

And he and his brother said, the devil? The devil was looking in your window? She said, Satan himself. And they went, what did he look like? She said, a cow. They were like, you don't think maybe it was just a cow?

She's like, no, it's the devil. So, there's some people like that, that just everything is some sort of, most of us in this room probably are more on this side. Everything has an explanation. We can arrive at everything through scientific method, through reason, everything can be explained. And even for Christians, you take one step in and you say, yes, in theory, I believe, because I believe the Bible, that there is Satan and demons, but you just, on a real practical level, have no room for that whatsoever. So, you believe it, but actually don't feel like that ever really shows up in any kind of way.

Maybe in other countries or something, but not here, not really a thing here. And so, what we're going to do is just kind of walk through immediately, I think, some of our pushback, and the biggest ones I hear are science and reason why we don't need Satan anymore. Or why we don't believe in Satan anymore, or why we don't believe in this kind of stuff anymore, science and reason. Science is just basically, we have science now, so we don't have the God of the gaps theory. People used to believe, like, whatever they couldn't explain, they just needed God, that we just say, well, we don't understand that, so God must do it.

But now we have science, we've figured it out, we know that it's natural, there's processes, we can test things, we can study things, we know stuff. The problem is, the Bible doesn't have this separation between the spiritual and the natural, so when the Bible says that God sent a storm, or God sent a flood, or God, he does it through natural means, the normal storm system, the normal, he just, he works in it. People say that, like, the reason, when the Bible says that God is the one who gives children, God blesses mothers with children, that they said that because they didn't know where babies came from. But now we know, in the Christmas story, where Joseph is going to divorce Mary because she's pregnant, the reason he was going to divorce her is because he knew exactly where babies came from.

And he knew that one wasn't his. And so he's like, this relationship isn't working, like, we can't do this anymore. And so we, honestly, the Bible doesn't have this gap there. The Bible is very much, God works through natural means, but it's spiritual as well. The Bible's even going to attribute some spiritual, some natural things that happen to demonic things. And if we're willing to believe that there is a God, a good supernatural being, a good personal, real being that is good, it's not too much of a stretch to believe that there is a real personal being that is evil.

So if you believe in a good God, it makes sense that there could also be a spiritual being that is evil. The other one is reason. And when I say reason, what I mean is, not the science side, not the nature side. So what we would say is, well, people couldn't explain nature so they needed science. And then people say, well, people couldn't explain behavior, they couldn't explain evil, but now we have reason. We have, we understand dysfunction, we understand pathology, we understand family history, we understand nature versus nurture.

We can, now, we understand that ignorance is what causes all these things. So what they, would they just say, this person's evil, we don't need that term anymore, like we understand that everything has a cause. And there's a quote from a guy named Andrew Delbanco. He was a, he's a professor and a scholar at Columbia University. And he wrote a book called The Death of Satan. And in this book, he says he's a secular liberal.

He's not, not a Christian, not coming from a Christian book. But here's, in his book, The Death of Satan, here's how he starts it off. A gulf has opened in our culture between the visibility of evil and the intellectual resources to cope with it. A gulf has opened in our culture between the visibility of evil and the intellectual resources to cope with it. What he's saying is this, when we got rid of Satan, we lost the ability to explain a lot of the things we now see. So when we just talk about pathology, when we just talk about dysfunction, when we just talk about ignorance, and then we had Holocaust, the final solution, death camps, that came out of one of the most intellectual, civilized, cultural giants in the world.

We have genocide. We have just heinous evil across the board. And if we no longer can use the term evil and we no longer understand that the world has an evil presence active in it, we have a really hard time explaining serial killers. We have a really hard time being able to step in. And that's the point of his book is, when we got rid of Satan, we began to lose our ability to cope with how much evil there is in the world. That we have a hard time explaining death camps without being able to say, no, that's actually evil.

That's actually broken and there's actually something working behind it, active in it, for evil. And so honestly, the Bible's not against science and it's not against nature, not against reason, but it is going to say that the natural and the supernatural are much more blended than we know and that there actually is an evil being at work. And so one of the big storylines in the Bible is war. So there's certain storylines that just kind of go through the whole Bible and one of them is that there's a cosmic war. And so we're going to read a passage from Revelation 12 as we begin to start looking.

We're going to have it up on the screen. We're going to read a passage from Revelation 12 as we begin to start looking at who Satan is, where he comes from. And so this is, Revelation gets misquoted a lot and people take it out of context and they draw big charts, but this is just explaining with some imagery what happened a long time ago. So it says this, Now war arose in heaven. Michael, and that's an angel that is named a few times in Scripture, just apparently a powerful angel created by God. Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon.

And the dragon and his angels fought back, but he was defeated and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent who was called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world. He was thrown down to earth and his angels were thrown down with him. And later on it says that there was about one third of the angels rebelled with him. And so we've got this picture of God created spiritual beings. So he created physical beings like us and he created spiritual beings that are angels and some of those angels rebelled against him led by Satan.

This is part of the storyline of the Bible that there was a powerful angel and a few places in the Old Testament are going to be where God's going to be prophesying to specific nations. It's going to seem like he's also talking about some of what happened in this epic battle, but there was a powerful angel that basically believed that he needed more power, more glory, became prideful and fought against God. Now he doesn't actually fight God, he fights more angels and they win. And then he comes to earth. So the idea of Satan hanging out in hell, like that's his base camp, it's not a real thing.

So I know you watch South Park and he's there with Saddam Hussein and that was hilarious or whatever. That's not a real thing. He's actually on earth because he's no longer allowed in the normal realm that he was in and he's kind of trapped in this area where he's been kicked out of and Jude 6 and 2 Peter are also going to say that the angels that went with him that did not stay in their proper place. So Satan led angels to rebel in heaven. That's one of the pieces of the story that we get from scripture. And all demons are just angels, spiritual beings created by God that did not remain where they were supposed to, did not do what they were supposed to, but rebelled against God.

And Satan is just a demon, an angel created by God that rebelled with them and the Bible kind of uses him as a figurehead or it would just say the devil referring to all of the demonic in general or talk about Satan referring to all of them in general, not necessarily just him. Sometimes it is specifically that one angel. But here's the thing. This is just kind of weird for us. Like we don't, we don't talk about this other places. Like the only two places I know that we, we even address this or think about this in our culture is pop culture.

So you have stuff like South Park is going to bring it up. We've got far side cartoons that are going to have jokes about it. You've got the movie Little Nicky where Adam Sandler is Satan's kid but he's the nice one. Like we just got that kind of weird. Then you got all your scary movies that go along with that stuff.

And then nobody else talks about it until you get to the church. And then the church talks about it because the Bible talks about it. You were never in a math class where your teacher was like, or a class in elementary school where your teacher was like, put away your multiplication tables and for the next 30 minutes before we go to lunch we're going to talk about demons. She wouldn't be a teacher very long. She's not allowed to do that. Some of you maybe were homeschooled and you never saw those multiplication tables but you talked about demons a lot.

Welcome. Sorry. That came out meaner than it was supposed to be. But no. Most of us in school we don't cover these things. We cover it in the church but here's the thing.

We got to take what the Bible says about these things and begin to form our picture. Not what pop culture tells us but what scripture tells us and begin to form our picture. And as you study scripture a few things start to come out. A few things start to become clear. First of all God created everything and he created Satan. God and Satan aren't yin and yang.

They're not equals. God is above Satan. Even in what we just read when Satan rebelled he did not fight God. He fought other angels and lost. Now there were more angels on the other team but he lost.

There is a time in the Bible where Satan fights God and that goes like this. It's later in the book of Revelation. So this happened a long time in the past and then there's another time where God fights Satan. It says Satan was released and he leads an army and here's what it says. Fire came down killed his army and Satan was thrown into hell. That's how that fight goes.

When God steps into the ring the fight is over. But at this point he rebels and the angels kick them out and they are sent to earth. Now the story moves. So this war that begins in heaven moves to a new battlefield which is the earth. And that's where we pick up in the book of Genesis. That's where we begin to see the ancient serpent shows up in the garden to lead humanity astray.

And he shows up and he tricks Adam and Eve into rebelling against God like he had. And then God shows up and immediately proclaims the first gospel which is he shows up and tells them there's going to be a male born of a woman. Now that's interesting because throughout the Old Testament genealogies are this man begat this man begat this man or this man was the father of this man was the father of this man was the father of this man. Every once in a while a woman's mentioned but she's always mentioned in relationship to a husband. But what God steps in and says is there's going to be a woman and she's going to have a son.

And he's referring to the only woman who ever had a son outside of a man being present which was Mary who as a virgin had a son named Jesus. And what he says is there's going to be a man who's going to come and you're going to bruise his heel but he's going to crush your head. And he proclaims the gospel over this rebellion that Jesus is going to show up and fix the problem. So Jesus shows up. He's born. As soon as he begins his ministry Satan shows up to tempt him because all he knows from what we can tell from scripture is just Satan knows who Jesus is and that he's got to mess him up.

He's got to keep this from working out. He knows that God is active. He knows that there's been some prophecies. He knows that this is coming and he's just got to mess it up. So he shows up and tries to tempt Jesus into rebelling against God because if he can get Jesus to rebel the plan's messed up.

And Jesus doesn't. Jesus withstands temptation and keeps going. So then Satan works actively through Judas Iscariot to kill Jesus because he's thinking okay Jesus will go to a cross not a throne. Jesus will get only crown he'll ever wear is a crown of thorns. Jesus will be destroyed. Jesus will die and he won't be able to fulfill his plan.

And so he works actively to kill Jesus and in the epic plot twist of all time in the most cosmic twist that God had worked up what Jesus did was he hid victory and defeat. He hid freedom in slavery. He hid life in death and on the cross undid everything Satan was working for. He Colossians 3 tells us that he disarmed Satan by going to the cross because what Satan's power was in sin and death and Jesus took our sin and our death so that it no longer has a hold over us. And so in the cross Satan was defeated because he didn't understand what God was actively after. He didn't understand how great power can be shown through humility.

He didn't understand how God had designed it for Jesus to come and not be exalted on earth but be exalted in eternity and to be exalted fully to show his glory fully through a cross not a throne. And so Satan is defeated but he's not gone. And so then we see how Satan now actively works to disrupt and cause problems until he is fully destroyed. So he's defeated in the cross but not fully gotten rid of until some future date. And as Christians when we became Christians we were invited into this battle. We were invited into this war.

Over and over again scriptures will say that our battle isn't against flesh and blood but against principalities and powers and spirits in heavenly places and that we're brought from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of his beloved son that this is a cosmic battle that we've been invited into to see more people meet Jesus. So a few things we need to realize and understand when it comes to who Satan is. One is he's finite created being not more powerful than God not equal with God. He can't be in all places at once. He does not know everything. just the sheer fact that he can't be in all places at once.

Look I think you're wonderful. Did you know that? I think you're very special. I agree with your mom. I think you're special and like a snowflake. But Satan is probably not messing with you.

The actual being Satan himself is probably not messing with you. Now the Bible uses Satan as a covering or the devil as a figure head for all demonic evil activity. So we are attacked by biblically demonic activity but Satan is finite. He's only in one place at one time. He's somewhere on earth but he's only in one place at one time. But there are demonic spirits that work with him to lead to lie to destroy.

So let's start looking at what does he do? If he's already lost in the cross what's his goal? How's he work? What's happening at this point? And so a few things I want us to just kind of see as we walk through. So what we read at first in 1 Peter and we're not going to unpack this yet but we're just going to see one of the things that Peter's queuing us in on.

Lost in the cross what's his goal? How's he work? What's happening at this point? And so a few things I want us to just kind of see as we walk through. So what we read at first in 1 Peter and we're not going to unpack this yet but we're just going to see one of the things that Peter's queuing us in on. Be sober minded be watchful your adversary

The devil prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. Okay so he's active and he's trying to seek someone to devour. What does that even mean? And so let's take just a second and just look at a few places in scripture where we begin to see how Satan actively tries to work to destroy to disrupt to deceive.

The first is through sin and disbelief in the gospel. So a few different places in scripture and I included a few references in our community groups this week we'll actually read a good bit just so that all of our information comes from not Little Nicky not South Park but comes from our scripture we begin to inform ourselves through scripture

But we'll spend more time studying these things but I included some reference for people who want to follow up but sin and disbelief in the gospel basically one of the ways that Satan is active is in just leading us to sin because sin is destructive sin leads to death and sin keeps us

From God sin is so he gives us what we want a lot he baits us entices us says no what you need to be happy is this no no your marriage isn't good but this person would make you happy oh if you just made this much money if you just did this like he just leads us

To sin leads us to chase after other things to believe that other things will fill us up bring us joy the other thing that Jesus says specifically is that he tries to get us to not believe the gospel so when the gospel is proclaimed

That Jesus sets us free that Jesus gives us life that Jesus paid for our sin that Jesus makes us whole Satan tries to disrupt that and take that away another one and I don't think we realize this or think about this much

One of the other ways that Satan works actively to lead us astray and to disrupt is through religion and self righteousness okay now when I say religion some people are always like wait I thought Christianity was a religion what we mean

When we talk about religion quite often the Bible does use it sometimes in a good light a lot of times it's using it in a negative connotation we're using it in a negative way to mean the belief that my behavior saves me my behavior is what

Makes me good my morality my actions because all of that is my righteousness my goodness comes from me and the Bible is clear our righteousness comes from Jesus so Satan is active in as long as you trust you that's fine with him so most

Of us think that Satan's only working in harmful things but actually he can work through generosity he can work through really good behavior he can work through morals as long as there's no Jesus that's fine so I'm going to read 2 Corinthians 11 13-15 it's one of the references

But for such men are false prophets deceitful workmen disguising themselves as apostles of Christ Jesus and no wonder for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light so it is no surprise if his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness

There are people who will even say the name Jesus and be pointing you away from him pointing you towards your behavior towards your actions towards your goodness as long as you're trusting you Satan doesn't care there are multiple times where Jesus

Is interacting with the religious elite and he calls them broods of vipers which means you're the child of the serpent he's saying you're sons of hell sons of Satan he says you go over land and sea to get one convert and then make him twice as

Unhell as you are what he's saying is your religion your good work your effort your memorization your hard work like they used to like connect the bible to their wrist and their forehead like you thought your grandmother was religious because her

Bible weighed 47 pounds these people had the bible strapped to them until your grandmother gets a backpack bible she ain't nothing he doesn't care we can be as religious as you want to as long as you're not trusting Jesus actively at work in that another one

Is so he's actively at work in leading people away from Jesus which makes sense actively at work in making people confused about the gospel which makes sense but then he if you become a christian genuinely trust Jesus with your life with your sin then the next thing

He works after is disunity in the church and ineffective christians he just wants you okay if you're a christian well I lost that one but I gotta keep you from helping other people become christians some of the ways he does this is through just letting us be really comfortable I

Think keeping us distracted some of the ways specifically that are mentioned are Ephesians 4 26-27 says be angry and do not sin do not let the sun go down on your anger and give no opportunity to the devil second corinthians 10 talks about forgiveness and he says if you forgive him I forgive

Him we're to forgive one another and we're not to be ignorant to satan's schemes one of the ways that he works is he he gets you mad at you and doesn't want you to talk to each other that as long as we're frustrated as long as we're infighting as long as we're not sharing the gospel

That's fine whatever we can do to keep us aggravated to keep us frustrated to keep our feelings hurt and to keep us from talking to each other and having unity and being on mission is fine okay satan's a created being who rebelled against God who was

Defeated in the cross and now actively works to keep people from Jesus actively works to keep us in sin actively works to keep us ineffective in sharing the gospel now let's go to first peter and see what he says about him how we're to respond verse 8

Be sober minded that means think clearly think correctly one of the ways that we do that is we have incorrect information that's what we're trying to do just a second ago is get at least some correct information so that we know what we're thinking about how to respond so

Be sober minded then he says be watchful so be on alert just have your radar up for anything that looks like it might be enemy activity so if someone comes and is proclaiming Jesus to you but the whole point is here's how you be good here's

How you behave here's how you be religious here's all the things you have to do have your radar up they're not preaching Jesus they're giving you morality they're giving you religion they're giving you behaviorism they're giving you performance ism but it's not Jesus and

So be aware another one is this say you're hanging out on a Sunday and you think huh that's the second week that person didn't say hey to me I think I just saw a look did I see a look I saw a look I bet they're mad at me why would

They be mad at me I guess because they're a jerk I'm special when mom told me that it can't be my fault and then you'll come up with some reason oh I bet it was this I bet this is what they're thinking I bet they're mad about this you know what I'll do I'll be

Mad at them boom accomplished as opposed to being watchful and going hold on a second one of the things that I know that Satan actively tries to do is get me frustrated I'll go talk to him hey are you mad at me no I'm not mad at you why didn't

You say hey I don't know why didn't you say hey oh good point that person didn't say hey to me did you say hey to them no jerk like that's how that works like have a conversation be watchful know what's going on

Know that these things can happen and have your radar up that's what he says be sober minded be watchful your adversary so he's against you the devil prowls around like a roaring lion seeking

Someone to devour so we talked about how he works to devour I want you to show you two of the things he does first of all he prowls he's intentionally sneaky people have said well if Satan was

Real why he'd just show himself because that's a terrible plan terrible plan do you know how many anti-gun people would be at the Walmart buying rifles if we confirmed that the zombie apocalypse

Had started I'm so glad I'm in America come on you foot dragon slobber monster like if we found out that werewolves were real you know how quickly we'd be producing silver bullets they're real full moon silver bullet time so as soon

As like if Satan just showed up was like I am Satan you know people would be here next week pretty sure Jesus wins that one didn't realize that was true so he prowls he's sneaky he doesn't want you to know where he's at work he doesn't

Want you to know where he's active he's hiding it which all right let's play a game you're on a safari but you're just walking around it's really tall grass you see a lion over here you do not see a lion over here which one do you run from

The one you saw y'all aren't good at this game you run from the one you see y'all were like I don't know I think you're supposed to play dead I don't think that works with lions they're like sweet I don't have to

Run you run from the lion you see that's how that works this one surprises you you run this way and go dang it hey buddy that's how that works so yeah he's sneaky because then you're not aware you're not paying attention

Your radar is not up you don't know he can be at work he'd love for you to not believe in him that's fine with him he'd love for you to believe there's only natural causes for everything everything can be

Explained he doesn't need you to believe in him one of my dad used to teach us how to fight and one of his pieces of advice was if you're fighting while the other guy is still talking you have a distinct advantage

He said if his mouth is still open when you punch it that's a good start and honestly the enemy's like that if he's already started the fight before you know it started he has a distinct advantage so one of the ways that he does this is he's sneaky and he prowls

Around the second thing though is that he's a roaring lion which I want us to see this clearly Colossians 3 tells us that Jesus has disarmed the enemy that those of us who placed our faith in Jesus he has no power over us anymore because his power was in

Sin and death and Jesus has taken our sin and taken our death and Satan has no claim over us no power over us no condemnation over us any longer so once you do believe in his existence one of the ways he works is through roaring

Hearing a lion roar is terrifying but the roar is actually not the scary part of the lion it's the power that the lion has so when I'm at the zoo and a lion stands up and roar I'm like that was scary but I

Don't run because it's that giant ditch thing like if the lion comes at me I should be like bro you didn't think that through there's a lion in the ditch face looks hurt so when with Jesus having already conquered the enemy one of the

Things he's going for at this point for Christians who believe in his existence is for you to be very scared of him so some Christians don't want to talk about Satan or demons they don't want to bring it up they feel like it

Jinxes them they feel like oh we shouldn't be talking and they're unnecessarily afraid we should be watchful we should be aware we should be sober minded we should think about it clearly we are not to be proud or arrogant the power and authority

Is not in us we are not amazing Jesus is but we're also not to be terrified one of the word glory has several different ways that can be described in several different meanings meanings one of them is weight is weightiness which just means that you

Give things glory by giving them weight or sway in your life so I recently shaved my face I usually have a beard I recently shaved my face and people feel the need to tell me they didn't like it or that I looked like I was 12 it's like oh hi you look like a child thanks good talking to you it's nice to see you too but I do that because my wife and I met in high school and she needs to see my face every once in a while she has more weight

In my life than every person who saw me and told me I look like a child I care more about what she thinks I'm sorry I do also like the beard so I keep it and this time I shaved and she went I see why people like the beard I was like yes we're making progress soon she'll just be like just keep the beard I've seen your face enough but she has weight and so one of the ways that we give glory

To something or somebody is by letting them have some weight some sway some leadership in our lives some ability to affect how we act how we behave and when we are terrified of demonic things terrified of Satan it keeps us up at night we can't talk about him it's like he who must not be named when we do that we're giving glory to a being that deserves none now sober minded watchful

Not prideful not arrogant but also not giving them weight not giving him sway over your life how you act how your emotions work so he prowls and he roars and he's seeking someone to devour so we have an enemy who wants to destroy us let's figure out how we respond that's a good question what do you do with a prowling roaring lion who wants to devour you resist him

What helpful advice Peter should do a self-defense class alright ladies if you're in a parking lot and a man attacks you here's your plan try to get him to stop just resist it's like what that's not helpful I need like show me how to hold my keys with my knuckles give me a whistle something like I need a plan now just just just resist that'll be 50 bucks class is over

Like so resist him how firm in your faith okay cool resist him trusting in Jesus what's our faith our faith is that Jesus has disarmed the enemy through the cross our faith is that sin once had a lot of power over us guilt once had a lot of sway in our lives death was looming over us but now we have been

Rescued by a savior who took our sin who took our death and who set us free and when we are faced with enemy attack we just get to step back and say no I trust Jesus I don't have to be amazing I don't have to be good I don't have to be moral I don't have to accomplish this I don't have to be strong I don't have to be smart I don't have to

Be the best I trust Jesus and we just get to stand firm in our faith which is that Jesus is the ruling reigning king of all and that Satan has already been defeated resist him firm in your faith knowing that the same kinds of suffering now let me say this if you are not a Christian place your

Faith in Jesus you have a real enemy out to destroy you out to trick you into trying to be really good to prove something to God and to make him owe you out into tricking you into chasing after a million other things to find

Yourself to prove yourself to have value to be loved to find worth and you have a God who stepped in and rescued and redeemed you trust in Jesus trust the God who gave up his life

For you not the being that's after yours not the one seeking to steal your life but the God the creator of the universe who gave up his life for you he says knowing that the

Same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world what he's saying is realize you're not suffering you're not in this battle by yourself you ever exercise with a partner or go through something

Terrible with another person and you think to yourself I am I'm sorry that you're going through this terrible thing but man I'm glad you're here I remember in football camp watching someone else get cussed out and just being like I'm glad

That guy's here I'm glad I'm not the only one getting cussed at I'm glad I'm not the only one having to run after practice or being stupid there's just something about what he's saying just realize that

You're in a war and all of us are you've got a lot of teammates you're not by yourself the band's going to come back up here and we're going to sing and make much of

Jesus and we've got two more verses to look at here resist him firm in your faith knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout

The world you're not by yourself you're not alone it's not up to you there are others in this battle with you and after you have suffered a little while the God of all grace all freedom all joy all hope all peace

The God of all grace that freely gives freely poured himself out for us the God who went to the cross shedding his blood and giving his life so that you wouldn't have to shed yours or give yours the God of all grace

Who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ he's talking to Christians and he's saying the God of grace that's already redeemed you already rescued you already called you into an eternity where there is joy and peace and happiness

And freedom forever where the enemy is ultimately and finally destroyed who's called you to his eternal glory in Christ will himself restore confirm strengthen and establish you stand firm in your faith and trust that the God of grace is going to

Step in at the right time and make it all right it's going to step in at the right time and fix everything on your behalf to him be the dominion forever and ever amen one of the reasons we haven't talked a whole lot

About Satan one of the reasons we don't spend a whole lot of time on the devil is because the Bible is never about him he is never the focus he is never the point it is squarely on Jesus all the time Jesus is the one who gets the glory forever he's the one

Who has dominion forever he is the creator God that rules and reigns over everything to him be the dominion forever and ever amen to Jesus be the praise to Jesus be the glory to him be the strength to him

Be power to him be the kingdom to him be everything eternally it'll be him that's on the throne it'll be he that reigns and rules over all things forever it'll be him that makes his enemies his footstool it'll be him that is the king and glorious ruler of all

Because he hid life in death because he hid victory in defeat because he hid our sin on himself that he took it on himself so that we might be free so that we might be saved so that we might be rescued so that we might not have to walk around in fear of sin

Or death or Satan ever again it's to Jesus be the glory to Jesus be the kingdom to Jesus be the rule to Jesus be the reign to Jesus be the dominion forever and ever amen

The Shepherd and His Sheep

The Shepherd and His Sheep

Chet Phillips

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