Introduction to First Peter (Part B)

It is about what God puts into you, not what men call accredited or anything else men may say, and that doesn't have to be lived out with an attitude of bitterness or contention, but it is a fact that every believer has direct access to the throne of God, and we are not interested in having a caste system within our faith, and yet there are a lot of places that have it and will not depart from it. This is Cross-Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the book of 1st Peter. Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross-Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching.

And now here's Pastor Rick as he continues his introduction to the book of 1st Peter in 1st Peter chapter 1. We should want to be people of a high caliber of character. Should we aim lower? Should we aim for something else?

Should we pick out some other target? Absolutely not. This is why we love the Proverbs. The Proverbs are about character.

If you want to get it right, says the Proverbs, then consider these things and don't be the fool in the bunch. The fact that the very man who compiled these Proverbs, even authored many of them, became the wisest fool of them all, is an absolute warning to everyone who would be righteous. So these lessons that come out of the Scripture, they abound. Do I, with my life, offer anything to counteract what Satan is doing? As I look at the life of Peter and I see him influenced by the Holy Spirit, and then I also see him influenced by Satan but not energized. When Jesus said, get behind me Satan, he was talking to Peter and through Peter to Satan who was influencing him. And we go out into the world and we find a society of people not only influenced by Satan but energized by Satan.

And the question is, what do I do with my life to counteract that? That's why we assemble at churches like this for preaching. That's why God has ordained this. Because you won't get it shopping or staying at home or whatever chores or things that remain to be done.

It is the house of God where the word of God is to be preached and the Holy Spirit is to move in the lives of those in the building. That is his intention. You can say no to that or you can receive it. And so the question is, what do I do with my life to counteract what Satan is doing? Am I the salt of the earth or not? So I know for a fact that there are sitting here in this room right now those who are godly influences, those who are doing things for the king, who are part of the processes and the war, spiritual war of counteracting the enemy's movements and attacks and plans. Acts chapter 1, Jesus said this to the disciples, Peter in that group, you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you shall be witnesses to me in Jerusalem and Judea, Samaria and the outer parts of the world. And what he was saying to them is you are going to get what you need to preach me.

That's what it means. Not to show off, oh look how holy I am to preach the gospel. That's what he is talking about and that is what they went off and did. And Peter is continuing this in his letter to these Christians who are trying to do the same thing as they are hounded by the citizens of the Roman Empire because of their hatred for the Christians at the time this letter was written. Once this Simon Peter was converted, Jesus always was real and foremost to him. Never did Jesus sink into some abstract theory.

Well, maybe he's not. That never happened to Peter. 2 Peter chapter 1 verse 16, we did not follow cunningly devised fables when we made known to you the power and coming of the Lord Jesus Christ but were eyewitnesses of his majesty. We saw it and you can't take that away from us. And I'm telling you I was there. You believe it or not, that's on you.

I know what's on me and that's how every Christian should respond to this life, to anybody that disagrees with their personal born again experience. I met him. I don't need you to sign off on it. I would like you to. I would like you to also have this experience. But I don't need it.

I want it and I want you to want it. So we have to become wise as serpents, as harmless as doves in the ministry of this power of the Holy Spirit to preach Christ. Many Christians today would never allow themselves to sit under the authority of a Simon Peter because he had not enough formal education for them. That's pride. For who's the first person in the Bible to show up with pride? Satan himself. I'll be like the Most High. I'll sit where he sits.

I'll take that power. And he was cast to the earth. When he saw man, he hated him from the beginning.

And so we look at these things, we collect them, we hope that they shape us, that they impact us. But as I said, many Christians have too much pride to receive from people today like Simon Peter. Acts chapter 4. Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John and perceived that they were uneducated and untrained men, they marveled and they realized that they had been with Jesus. And seeing the man who had been healed standing with them, they could say nothing against it. But when they had commanded them to go aside out of the council, they conferred amongst themselves, saying, what are we going to do with these guys?

They do not get any authority from us. It comes from somewhere else. They had been with Jesus Christ. And many today, given the choice, would go sit under Solomon before they sat under a man like Peter because of his lack of formal education.

What is the point of bringing this up now? Because you must remember that it is about anointing. It is about what God puts into you, not what men call accredited or anything else men may say. And that doesn't have to be lived out with an attitude of bitterness or contention, but it is a fact that every believer has direct access to the throne of God. And we are not interested in having a caste system within our faith.

And yet, there are a lot of places that have it and will not depart from it. But don't let that be you. It is the truth that came out of this man, the wisdom, the anointing upon his life.

Others may diminish that and justify why they do. May it not be us. And an epic moment in this man's life, with all this I've said about him, came a day where he denied his Lord, where he failed. Total collapse.

It was catastrophic. But Jesus promised him another chance. And within that promise, he baked into that promise of victory.

Peter would die in allegiance to Jesus Christ. Three years after meeting Jesus, the promise was given to him. Only three years into his walk, John's Gospel chapter 21 verse 18, most assuredly I say to you, when you were younger, you girded yourself. You walked where you wished.

When you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will gird you and carry you where you do not wish. This he spoke, signifying by what death he would glorify God. And when he had spoken this, he said to him, follow me. This is the death that you're going to die in front of everybody, and God will receive the glory because you will not fail the second time.

How encouraging. Thirty years later, thereabout, it was fulfilled. Just like Jesus said. It is not uncommon for us to fail. And it is guaranteed that we'll get another chance if we want it, if we'll receive it. That is the grace of God.

That is the guarantee. God's grace. And it's all over this letter. Peter emphasizes grace throughout this first letter especially.

These letters are written again from a martyr to be. He never lost sight of that. Walked all of his ministry knowing how it was going to end for him.

He did not know the timetable, but he knew how it was going to happen. And so that flagship verse that I quoted, knowing this shortly that I must put off my tent, just as our Lord Jesus Christ showed me. The tent is the body. It's just a tent. It just holds. It's where the spirit and the soul reside.

It's really nothing. It's cast away. I'll receive a glorified body.

That day we're all looking for. And so wherever Peter went, his death sentence went with him, and everybody who was a Christian, they knew it. Be a witness, Peter, for me.

But they're going to kill you for it. Peter said, okay. Another lesson. This first letter that we're considering, and the second actually, we'll get to the second when we get to the second, one letter at a time, written about 64, 65 A.D. after the birth of Christ, about 30 years after the crucifixion. What had happened historically? Well, Nero, he is the one on the throne. He is the Caesar over the Roman Empire. Nero loved to build, as many of them did. Herod the Great, which was a great monster. Just many throughout history, they loved to build things. Well, Herod, Nero, he wanted to develop Rome further, put his signature on the city.

But he had no space. So it is believed that he concocted a plan to burn down a portion of the city that would allow him to then go in and redevelop that area. And when he did this, the fire burned for, I don't know, six days and seven nights out of control.

Many of the houses and the shops in that area where it started were made of wood, not made of masonry materials, and they just caught up until much of the city was destroyed. Well, the people blamed Nero from the beginning. Nero realized he needed to come up with a scapegoat quickly. And who else would be better to blame than those Christians? They were disliked Christians. We were disliked for two reasons.

One, because of our association with the Jews. Well, the Jews were never liked. The second was because of the influence that the Christians had over people in paganism who were being converted. They weren't worshiping the Caesar, and they weren't worshiping the man-made gods, and they did not share the beliefs of the Roman culture. And as a result, they were enemies of the state.

And so when Nero singles them out, it was an easy fit. The bitterness towards them was very severe, and that's what started the first persecution of the church by the Gentiles. The Jews had persecuted the Christians already a little bit, but now this was a state deal, living in the day we live in now. If we lost this last general election, we would be experiencing, I believe, a lot more persecution. The screws would be tightening on us because the culture doesn't like us, and we don't like the culture. Though the people in the culture, that's a different thing.

But they do not have the resources that we have. But we understand it. We understand, looking at the story, the history of those in ancient Rome and what the Christians had to go through there, the resulting persecutions, we understand it looking at our own society. It is the suffering brought on by persecution that caused Peter to address the believers in this very large territory of the Roman Empire. No less than 15 times does he use the word suffering in writing to them in this first letter. And we are to learn, looking at this, well how do I face such things? What do I do when I am being bullied? When things are against me, what is my attitude to be? It's not a pep talk. He's not trying to whip them up to feel good about going out and playing the game. He is laying out the facts.

You say you're a believer, then believe this because this is the way it is. And so the first letter, he deals with troubles from outside. The second letter, he deals with troubles from inside. The heresy, false teachers. We listen to these things and we say I don't want to be either one of those two. I do not want to be someone who persecutes the church from the outside. That's the unbeliever. And I don't want to be someone who comes to church and persecutes the church from the inside.

And many, many don't see a problem with it. So now we look at verse 1. Remember we're in 1 Peter.

I might have kind of gone on a little bit there. 1 Peter chapter 1 verse 1. Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ to the pilgrims of the dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia. So he uses his Christ-given name. Jesus named him Peter. He was born Shimon or Simon, Simeon.

God gives. That's the Hebrew name. The Greek for his name was Simon.

The Hebrew is Simeon. Jesus named him a rock, pitros, a movable rock, but not a small rock. That's a different Greek word. Peter will use the other word, lithos, when he speaks about the living stones. But Jesus named him a movable rock in contrast to Petra, the massive rock, the immovable rock. So you've got these three Greek words of a rock that we're working with. Pitros for the movable rock that's large. Lithos for the smaller rock like gems or stones on the ground.

These rocks would cry out to me. There was that word in the Greek used by Matthew, for example. And then Petra for the massive rock. First, pardon me, John's Gospel. There we find that Peter's brother brought him to Jesus Christ. No, literally brought him to Jesus Christ. Today, when we lead someone to Christ, we say, well, he led me to Christ. But Andrew physically takes Peter to Jesus Christ. John's Gospel, chapter 1, verse 41.

He found his own brother, Simon. That's, again, the Greek for Simeon, the Hebrew name. And said to him, we have found the Messiah, which is translated to Christ. The Hebrew word for Christ is Messiah. And the Greek word for Messiah is Christ. Anointed is our English word. But he brought him to Jesus. And when Jesus looked at him, he said, you're Simon, the son of Jonah. You shall be called Saphas, which is translated a stone, end quote.

Now what's with the safest thing? Well, that's Aramaic, for stone. And so when the writers of the New Testament put their stylus to parchment, they used the Greek language. And that word for safest, they used the Greek word petrus to interpret what Jesus meant. He's not a rock like Jesus, but he's a rock nonetheless. And Peter, of course, was a, it's an interesting story of a man named a rock who had moments in his life where he was movable, but overall he was not. He was everything that Christ said he would be. And so he wore that name. He wore it with honor. He starts out this letter, Petrus. Christ called me that.

And I'm not letting it go. An apostle. Why is this important? Authority. Authority submission to it does not come easily. Many people look for an opportunity to find problems with authority just so they can repel against it and make themselves feel that I did something today.

But you can't get away from it. And in Christ especially, the church was built on the testimony and the blood of the apostles and the prophets. Ephesians chapter 2 verse 19. The household of God, then verse 20, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone. The household of God. Do you belong to it or are you an outsider?

It's up to you. The church built by these men because God did it that way. Just like the Old Testament was built by the prophets and the kings and the priests and the people of God. He saw Jesus raise no less than three people from the dead and then himself. Yeah, I know the Bible says God, the Father rose and the Godhead is one and you're just not going to divide them in any kind of way.

You turn it. The Godhead is manifested to us to help us get an idea of what's going on and just how thorough God's knowledge of us is. And his coming to earth as a babe born in a manger and then living through this life but virtuous nonetheless is educational for us. So that when we see him in the wilderness and he doesn't budge an inch to Satan, we understand no one can withstand a face-to-face assault of temptation from Satan on their own. He did because he's not like anybody else. He is the creator of the universe. Peter saw these people dead. Then he saw them alive, simply because of Jesus Christ. Those who scoff at these things are themselves scoffed at by God. God said, are you kidding me? I put the sun up there, the moon, the blue planet that just runs perfectly in the universe.

Nothing slams into it to kill it. And you scoff at the fact that I can bring a life back? Am I supposed to honor that?

Am I supposed to be impressed with some credential you've made up? We who believe, we fall down at the feet of the one who does these things, like Peter did. You know, when Peter saw Jesus do his first miracle, you know what Peter did? He fell down at his feet and said, depart from me. I am not, I am not a righteous man.

I can't handle this. And thank God the Lord did not listen to Peter. And so he saw also the transfiguration of Jesus Christ. The Greek word is metamorphosis.

We get our English word metamorphosis, metamorphosized. It changed. The radiant splendor of Christ was upon him in front of the eyes. Those three men that were there on the mount of transfiguration somewhere in the promised land, it's unspecified and good because somebody would have put a monastery there or something and have you another opportunity to commit idolatry. But that elevated appearance of Jesus Christ, he never forgot it. He was going to talk about it in his letters.

Peter never forgot these things. And he didn't strut around boasting about them. He just laid them out as they needed to, when they needed to be said, he brought them forward.

But he had so many other things to say because of God working in him. He saw Jesus walk on water in a storm carrying an elephant. No, he didn't.

There was no elephant. But he could have. He could have. I mean the fact that he walked on water, do you need anything else?

The fact that it was in a storm just adds to it. The fact that he was even talking and passing them on the boat. Peter saw that and he wasn't going to give it up for them. So let me ask you Christians, when you heard Jesus first speak to you, do you remember at any point in your life that he has spoken to you? Are you ready to give that up for anything?

You better not be. Peter was not. He heard the sermons. He saw the miracles. But it was the character of the man Jesus Christ that moved Peter the most and everybody else too.

The love. That's why on that day when Malchus dared reach out to arrest Christ, Peter tried to cut his head off. Fortunately for Malchus, Peter was a poor aim and he only got the ear because he wasn't aiming for the ear.

He was aiming to cut his head open. That was brave love but it was foolish love because Christ had already laid out to them what was going to happen and what was supposed to happen. This man personally knew Christ in human form and he was hand picked and sent out with authority and so he says, Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, I was there, I was chosen, I'm here now and I am working on behalf of the kingdom for these pilgrims.

That's his next word here in verse 1. Strangers, you could translate it that way too. Those traveling through.

Not going to be here long, just passing through. I have a destination to go to. 1 Peter chapter 2 verse 11, Beloved, I beg you as sojourners and pilgrims abstain from fleshly lust which war against the soul. What does that mean, war against the soul? It wants to take you to hell.

That's what it means. Everything that God is working in you, the flesh will try to work against us. That's the curse that is upon us but the blessing is the filling of the spirit. He speaks of the dispersion, the diaspora in the Greek and mostly for instance in James chapter 1 it is used, it speaks of the Jews that were scattered about the Roman Empire. Many of the Jews after the Babylonian captivity had no interest in going back to the promised land.

They learned to be merchants and they were preferring that lifestyle over the lifestyle in the promised land and they went around and found a bunch of gentiles to sell things to and they lived pretty well. We're so glad you tuned in today to study the book of 1 Peter on Cross Reference Radio. Cross Reference Radio is the daily radio ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel in Mechanicsville, Virginia and we're blessed to bring you God's word with each broadcast. If you'd like more information about this program or want to listen to additional teachings from Pastor Rick, please visit our website, crossreferenceradio.com. We also encourage you to subscribe to our podcast so you'll never have to miss a program. Just search for Cross Reference Radio in iTunes, Google Play Music or your favorite podcast app. We hope you'll tune in again next time to join us as we continue our study through the Scriptures right here on Cross Reference Radio.