Sermon Brief
Date Written: August 18, 2007
Date Preached: August 19, 2007
Where Preached: OZHBC (PM)
Sermon Details:
Sermon Series: A Study in 1 Peter
Sermon Title: What is my duty to my church?
Sermon Text: 1 Peter 1:22 - 25
22 Since you have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit in sincere love for the brethren, love one another fervently with a pure heart, 23 having been born again, not of corruptible seed but incorruptible, through the Word of God which lives and abides forever, 24 because, “All flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flowers of the grass. The grass withers, and its flower falls away, 25 but the Word of the Lord endures forever. Now this is the word which by the gospel was preached to you.
Introduction:
Duty and responsibility are words that many people TALK about, but they are not something that many people LIVE by… I believe that duty and responsibility are 2 things people do not want to deal with because it interferes with their lives.
But the reality of the world reveals that in the physical world we ALL have to deal with duty and responsibility all the time, whether we want to or not. Some people choose to ignore their duties and responsibilities in life and it ultimately leads to unhappiness and failure.
But there are others in this world that accept their roles and responsibilities, like all the…
Dads out there whose duty and responsibility is to provide for their families. He is tasked to provide them with shelter, food and protection from the outside world. We see dads all the time understanding this duty and responsibility and doing what it takes to meet their responsibilities and to fulfill their duties as a dad and husband.
Like all the moms out there whose duty and responsibility is to provide for their families as well. Moms may be part of the financial provision for their family OR they may be the nurturing provider, OR in many cases they find themselves handling both!
Moms all around the world understand that when their child comes into this world, that they have a duty and a responsibility to protect, shelter and nurture that child.
• What about all the employees out in the world that have their own duties and responsibilities at work…
• What about all the students out there that have their own duties and responsibilities in school
• And there are those who take these duties and responsibilities seriously, and there are those who do not!
But this evening I am gonna meddle a bit into your own lives…I am gonna step on some toes and make some here a bit uncomfortable! I don’t do this for pleasure, but I do this because it is what God has called me to do!
I have found that when it comes to the spiritual world that many who claim Christ as Savior and Lord, simply do not think their Christian DUTY and RESPONSIBILITY is important. They want to claim the privilege of salvation, but they reject the duty and responsibility that comes with salvation!
In their minds they think, “I am saved, I am part of the kingdom, and the Bible tells me that God would never leave NOR forsake me, it promises me that nothing I do can take me out of God’s hand! So preacher, I don’t care what you say I need to do, I don’t HAVE to DO anything to be saved!”
Well, in the strictest sense of salvation that statement is true, in that you can’t DO anything to be saved! You cannot work for your salvation! But this viewpoint is missing the point altogether!
Salvation leads to service… not the opposite! I am not saying that if you are not willing to fulfill your duties and responsibilities of salvation that you will lose your salvation! Nowhere in the Bible supports such a statement!
But, I want you to understand something tonight that you may have NEVER ever thought about before. Being saved and having eternal assurance is NOT what salvation is all about!
Being saved just to have heaven as your eternal home… being saved just to avoid the eternal judgment of God… these are the benefits of our salvation but not the end!
Being saved is NOT about our eternal security in Christ, but it is all about service to the One who has saved us! It is all about being obedient and submissive to His plans and purpose. It is all about doing what He is leading you to do! Being saved is all about being willing to look at what God wants and ignore what YOU want!
1. Being saved is about loving God…(v.22a)
22a – “…since you have purified your souls in obeying the truth thru the Spirit…”
Contrary to what some may say about this passage, it has NOTHING to do with YOUR ability to purify your own soul! Notice that Peter says that the purifying of the soul comes only thru the Spirit…meaning the Holy Spirit! Meaning that it is God who brings us purification of our souls! It is NOT our decision to accept it that purifies us, but the mercy and grace of God in offering that purification!
Here Peter is simply stating that each believer has made a decision to accept Christ in an that decision God has come into their hearts and purified them by washing away sin and forgiving them!
What Peter is saying here when he speaks about ‘obeying the truth’ is when a sinner sees the ‘truth’… when they see Jesus who is the way the truth and the life… it is when the see Him and respond by obeying the truth… by surrendering to the truth… by allowing the truth to reign in their hearts!
You cannot ‘be born again’ unless you LOVE God! You cannot LOVE God unless you are willing to surrender the control of your entire life to Him! Here Peter is speaking to those who have made this step… they have placed Christ as Lord in their lives.
This evening, I want to ask you a question. You may have walked an aisle in your youth, you may have had your pastor baptize you one Sunday morning, you may have SAID that you are saved… BUT do you love God? Are you surrendered to His plans and purposes… is your love for God revealed in your total surrender and submission and obedience to His plan?
But not only are we to love God, but I can also see here in v.22 that in…
2. Being saved we must love others as well…(v.22b)
22b – “…in sincere love of the brethren, love one another fervently with a pure heart…”
I want us to notice the type of love Peter is telling us we have to have for ‘the brethren’… this is the fellowship… these are your fellow brothers and sisters in Christ that Peter is writing about!
First Peter says that we must have a sincere love for the brethren. That means that our love must be genuine and real. We cannot fake our love for the brethren; it has to be a real love!
2nd our love for the brethren must be a fervent love, we must be enthusiastic and zealous in our love for our fellow believers. We are called to be eager in doing what we can do for the brethren out of our passionate love for each other.
3rd Peter says that our love must be a love from a pure heart. This overlaps a bit with the first quality of sincere love. But it goes deeper. Our love must be a pure love, a love that comes only from the purity of our heart… a heart that is pure because of the God’s cleansing… a heart that is pure because of God’s love!
But what Peter is saying here is not a new thing… In John 13:34-35 Jesus initiates this command to His disciples, “…a new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another…”(NASB)
This is no doubt where Peter is coming from when he writes this letter to the believers in Rome and for any other believer who will read his letter! Jesus’ love for us was fervent, it was sincere and it was from a pure heart… and our love must be like that for our fellow believers! Peter knew that Christ commanded that we love each other and this is a reminder to the believers of that command!
Being saved is about loving God and loving each other… but saying we love someone and SHOWING that love is 2 different things! To say we love our children, but then we don’t provide for them… reveals that we DON’T love them!
To love God and love the fellowship means that we are to serve God and serve the fellowship. Being saved is not about being served BY God but it is all about offering up our service TO God. Being saved and part of a church is not about what the church can do for you… but what you can do for the church in service to God!
So often we find people searching for a church, and they choose the church based on what it has to offer to them as individuals, to their children or youth! But spiritually speaking that is NOT what we should be looking for when we look for a church!
In searching for a church our desire should be to find where God desires us to SERVE Him! We should choose our place of fellowship based on our service TO God through that fellowship… not on what it has to offer us!
Don’t get me wrong, the church is here to serve God by meeting the needs of the believer and helping the believer to serve God! But that is NOT the main focus or reason for the church to exist! The church exists to spread the Gospel of Christ, not cater to the whims and desires of the saved!
For far too long believers in this country have been more interested in keeping the aquarium rather than going out fishing for souls! Our duty to Christ is NOT to maintain, but to grow and move forward! But for us to be able to do that, we must love one another with the love that Christ has shown us!
3. Being saved comes directly from God’s pure love for us…(v.23)
23 – “…having been born again, not of corruptible seed but incorruptible thru the work of God which lives and abides forever…”
I am going to shock most of you here tonight… listen up now… salvation comes from God! Did you hear me? Salvation comes from God!
Here we find Peter making an observation that may seem a bit simplistic to us, but it is very important for us to understand and put into practice in our lives! We are born again, thru the work of the Holy Spirit, because of what Jesus Christ did on Calvary, based on the wonderful love, grace and mercy of God the Father.
Peter says that believers have been ‘born again’… that is a phrase we use a lot today, but in the 1st century it was not used that much. As believers we have been brought out of death into life, by the saving hand of God! It is God who brings about salvation.
It is the incorruptible God of the universe that plants the seed of salvation in our hearts. It is the incorruptible God of the universe that nurtures that seed and allows it to grow to maturity in faith!
There is nothing we can do to save ourselves as we have a fallen sinful nature about us… that sin nature began in humanity in the garden when Adam and Eve fell from paradise. And from that time til now all born into this world are of a corruptible nature… we are born with a sin nature and we are easily corrupted in this broken and fallen world!
Nothing we can do will bring us to the point where we can know God… but it is the desire of the incorruptible to save that which is corrupted… Peter tells us in 2 Pet 3:9, “…the Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that ANY should perish but that all should come to repentance…”
God desires that all come to repentance and submit and surrender to Him. As the eternal God of the universe He has that desire for His creation to be reconciled to Him, and He has provided a way for us to be reconciled… through the Logos… the Word of God… which was manifested in the person of Jesus Christ!
It is only through Jesus Christ can we come to know salvation and know God! It has always been God’s plan to save us in this manner, and there is NOTHING we can do to earn that salvation, but we can accept it by confessing Christ as Lord and asking God to forgive our sins!
Our corruptible nature does not lead us to that point, but it is the incorruptible nature of God through the Holy Spirit that brings our hearts to the point where we see the need for our salvation! And that leads us to v.24 where Peter describes what our fate would be without God…
4. Being saved has nothing to do with us but everything to do with God…(v.24-25a)
24-25a – “…all flesh is grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of the grass. The grass withers and its flower falls away, but the word of the Lord endures forever…” (NASB)
Peter shares here what man will accomplish on his own… he will wither and die apart from God, but in God…through His word (Jesus Christ) we can endure forever! We can know salvation and eternity in Christ.
We can do wonderful things here on this world, but they all will eventually wither away and be of NO eternal value. God created humanity and humanity has advanced in what we can do… doing many great and wonderful things, but NONE of it is eternal… ALL of our accomplishments will fall and fail in the eternal scope of things!
Only the word of God which leads to salvation of the soul will endure forever! Only through salvation by and through the Word of God can we know eternal security in God! Outside of that we are doomed to be burned up and wither away… just like a beautiful lawn under the scorching Louisiana sun!
5. So let’s understand what He’s done and live as we should…(v.25b)
25b – “…now this is the word which by the gospel was preached to you…”
Knowing what we know from God’s word, and from the life that Jesus lived here in this world, how can we choose to live any other way than obediently to God?
We are called from death to life… from darkness to light… NOT to do as we please, but to serve the God who graciously offered us eternity with Him!
What is your life like today? Are you serving God as you are called to serve Him? Are you loving God and loving the brethren as God has commanded you? Are you living with the understanding that it is God and God alone who saved you? Do you live with gratitude and thankfulness in your hearts each day?
Tonight I call on you to surrender ALL of who you are to Christ! Don’t try to live YOUR life and fit God into it… When you were saved you were called to surrender to Him totally and completely… you were called to deny yourself, take up your cross and follow Christ! Is that what you are doing today?
As bro jerry comes I call on all here who are NOT living as they should be living… come and make things right with you Savior! Come as we sing!
