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Life in the fast lane: A Holy Nation 21st Sunday after Pentecost, October 5, 2008
The past two weeks we’ve been looking at our lives in the fast lane, and our focus has been on the relationships we have with each other, male and female. We’ve heard what the men had to say to the women, and we’ve heard what the women had to say to the men regarding what both need the other to know. So far we’ve been talking about the horizontal realm – the world we live in and relate to others in. Today we are turning our attention to the vertical realm, and how all this relates to our relationship with Jesus. To begin our look at this, we are going to 1st Peter chapter 2, verses 9 to 11. 1st Peter is the 21st book in the New Testament, so the order goes, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John – the Gospels that tell about Jesus’ ministry, death and resurrection; then comes the book of Acts that tells about the outpouring of the Holy Spirit; then come the Epistles, literally the letters. In light of Jesus’ ministry, and the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives, how shall we live? The order goes Romans, 1st and 2nd Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Colossians, 1st & 2nd Thessalonians, 1st & 2nd Timothy, Titus, Philemon, Hebrews, James and then 1st Peter. It might actually be easier to turn to the end of the New Testament and go backwards from the last book. Then you begin with Revelation, then Jude, 3rd, 2nd and 1st John, 2nd Peter and then 1st Peter. We’re going to dig a little deeper into who we are as we live in the fast lane, and what that means for us. To do this, we are turning to what God reminds us in 1st Peter. Again, we’re going to chapter 2, verses 9-11: But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. Dear friends, I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world, to abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul. 1 Peter 2:9-11 In your Bibles, underline the word “chosen.” We are a chosen people; you are a chosen person. In the margins of your Bibles next to these verses write the scripture reference, Ephesians 1:4 – "For He {God the Father} chose us in Him {Jesus} before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in His {God’s} sight. You and I were chosen before the world was ever created. God the Father, Son and Spirit looked through time and saw you and me here today. He saw your birth; He saw your life; He saw all the things that you would experience, and He said, “I know that person right there is not going to reject Me. I know that person right there is going to be devoted to Me, and I’m going to put into place the plan to save them from their sins, and bring them to live with Me forever.” How are we blameless in His sight like it says in Ephesians? Not by anything we’ve done, but by everything Jesus did for us when He took our sins on Himself and received our punishment. Those sins we confess and repent of are forgiven, and we stand before God clean and pure. When God sees believers in Jesus, He doesn’t see the sins, He sees the blamelessness of Christ. Back to our verses from 1st Peter. You can also underline “a people belonging to God.” This is key for us today as we continue in this series. We belong to God, not to the world. Notice what it says just a few words later: we were called out of darkness and into the light. Because of Jesus, we have been called out of this world, and into the kingdom of Heaven. We don’t belong to the fast lane… and yet so many of us seem to make our homes there anyway. Admittedly, it can be hard to avoid getting caught up in the fast lane, and we’ll get into that a little more next week. Things change; technology advances, and very often if you don’t at least attempt to keep up, you get run over and left behind. However, for us, and for our purposes in this series, the issue isn’t so much the fast lane, the issue is what we are doing while we’re in the fast lane. In other words, are we just like everyone else, going along and not really paying attention to whose we are, or, are we remembering that we are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God? If we are remembering that, everything changes, and how we live and move in the fast lane takes on an entirely different look and feel. Things actually begin to slow down a little, and the fast lane doesn’t seem so fast and overwhelming. But we’ve got to get this down: we are not a people who belong to God because we chose Him, because of our parentage, our church attendance, our name on a membership roster, or any other thing. We are God’s people because God chose us. Because He chose us, we have been called out to be different than the people in the rest of the world. Because we have been called out to be different from the rest of the world, we are a people who don’t belong to the world – in the world but not of the world. We live in the world, but we are not defined by the world; we may live in the fast lane, but we are not defined by the fast lane. You can write all these scripture references in the margins of your Bibles next to the verses in 1st Peter. The fast lane says, “Keep up with the Jones’!” 1st Timothy 6:6-10 tell us God’s people say, "… godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that. People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs." The fast lane says, “Do unto others before they do it to you!” Matthew 5:44 tells us God’s people say, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” The fast lane says, “Live the way you want to!” Ephesians chapter 5, verse 4 and verses 15-16 tells us God’s people say, “Let there be no obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place,{for God’s people} but rather thanksgiving” and, “Be very careful, then, how you live – not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil.” The fast lane says, “It’s better to go out in a blaze of glory than to fade away!” 2nd Timothy 4:6-8 tells us at the end of our lives, God’s people say, “…the time has come for my departure. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day – and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for His appearing.” No, Christians are not defined by the fast lane. We are defined by God, and He has called us His children. It’s an interesting and funny thing. Ask almost any person teenage on up, “Are you your ‘own person’; one who is an individual and does what they want without necessarily following along with the rest of the crowd?” and almost everyone will say yes, especially the younger they are. And yet the same people who say they are their ‘own person’ watch the same TV shows, listen to the same music, wear the same basic style of clothing, and live their lives pretty much just like everyone else…pretty much just like everyone else in the fast lane who swears they are their ‘own person’, too. God reminds us in our verses from 1st Peter that we are aliens and strangers in the world. What if we really lived our lives like that? What if we really grasped what Jesus has done for us when He moved us from being a people who were under the wrath of God, to a people who had received mercy from God? What if we lived our lives in light of that while we were in the fast lane? What if, when people asked us, “Did you watch that movie or TV show, or listen to that latest song?” we answered, “No, because it’s not something I want to expose myself to since I am no longer a part of this world”? What if we answered, “I’m abstaining from sin desires and things that pull me away from Jesus, because they war against my soul, and my soul has been saved by Jesus”? In other words, what if we really did do our ‘own thing’ in the fast lane by living counter to it; by living in line with what God tells us in His Word? What would that look like? It would mean inviting the presence and power of the Holy Spirit into our lives, and that would change us and deepen our faith. It would mean diving deep into the waters of our baptisms where God declares to us the same thing He declared to Jesus, “You are my beloved child in whom I am well pleased.” It would mean listening for that same still, small voice that called to the prophet Elijah in the book of 1 Kings chapter 19, and hear God asking us the same question He asked the great prophet: “What are you doing here?” It would mean no longer being swept along by the current of the fast lane, and instead finding that it doesn’t impact us as much as it used to. It would mean a changed outlook; a change in priorities; a changed life. It would mean life in the fast lane wouldn’t take us away from Jesus anymore. It would bring us closer to Him, and as we grow closer to Him, all the relationship issues we’ve been talking about the past two weeks between men and women would fall right into line. “Behold,” Look! See! Pay attention to this! “I am making all things new!” [1] Will we let Him? Will we let Him make us new? Us. Individuals. Man. Woman. Not “him” or “her”, but “me.” Will I let Him make me new? Will you let Him make you new, and let the healing and restoration and strengthening of our homes begin? Let the healing and restoration and strengthening of our relationships with our wives and husbands and sons and daughters and mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters begin? Or will we continue to try and keep pace with the fast lane, listening to all the things it says; going along with it and expressing our individuality by being just like everyone else, even those who are not Christians? We are pilgrims in a strange land. We are strangers, we are aliens, we are not of this world.[2] … you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God… Let’s hold on to that good news and promise this upcoming week in the fast lane. Amen |
