Living Stone, Holy People

• The following message by Aleister Beg is made available by Truth for Life. For more information, visit us online at truthforlife.org. We pray briefly. Break thou the bread of life. Uh dear Lord to me as thou did break the loaves beside the sea. here on the sacred page. We seek thee, Lord. Our spirits long for thee, oh living word. Amen.
• As we return to this um chapter 2, uh coming up with a sevenfold division for uh these uh five chapters is a challenge in itself and the way in which it’s broken down is arbitrary and could be done differently. It’s a reminder to us as well that the punctuation that we have in our English translations is on the most part uh there in order to help us navigate our way through the text. In fact, that’s always why it’s there.
• But sometimes it can almost point us in the wrong direction depending on how we’re reading it. So for example, when I began to look again yesterday at the beginning of chapter 2, which begins, so or therefore, I said to myself, if I look back at the immediate context in the 25th verse of chapter 1, uh this is the word, this is the good news that was preached to you.
• So this is the word, this is the good news that was preached to you. Therefore, if I didn’t know what was coming next, I would be tempted to think that it would then say, “Therefore, since it was preached to you, now you must go and preach it to others as well.” And in essence, that actually is the unfolding exhortation.
• But the way in which we understand at least I’ve tried to understand the beginning of chapter 2 is not in light of the 24th verse of chapter 1 but in light of the 22nd verse because there having purified your souls by obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love one another earnestly from a pure heart.
• Now what is it going to mean to love one another earnestly from a pure heart? The word of God has done its work in the readers to whom Peter is writing and they are no longer what they once were. They have been ransomed as we’ve been reading in chapter 1. And in many ways they would have been akin to the folks in Cree to whom uh Titus is writing. And uh he described them as those who were passing their days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another.
• And here as Peter picks up his uh theme and his exhortation, it’s clear that these kind of issues were certainly not unique to various geographies of the world. And here in the scattered regions of modernday Turkey, the writer has to address the church in that place in the way that it is addressed in other places.
• The days in which they had lived according to those principles are now in the past and now they’re living as the new people of God. He’s about to address their behavior in relationship to the outsiders. That will be tomorrow all being well. Verse 12, keep your conduct among the outsiders or the Gentiles or the pagans. Your conduct matters when you’re outdoors. But here you will notice that he actually begins at home.
• At home, sincere brotherly love, Peter says, demands action on the part of the Christian. And that action involves getting rid of stuff, putting away things, and particularly putting away the sins that spoil fellowship with one another that mar our testimony before the watching world and actually inhibit our ability to listen to, learn from, and benefit from the Bible itself.